Vic’s body was a handsome and lithe specimen, but for the prominent scars that marred his arms and back, a deep pale pink like blush roses. For all his confidence, it was clear being stripped bare this way was a blow to Vic, a secret shame Johnathan didn’t quite understand, though he could see it in the tense lines of the vampire’s body and the tight expression on his face. The fairies giggled at his nudity, as if the slight were a great party trick.
The buzz grew worse in Johnathan’s head. It trickled through his veins until his entire body hummed with it. He stepped in front of the vampire, allowing Vic to recover what he could of his clothing. His thoughts coalesced to a single focus. Johnathan refused to let the fairies keep degrading Vic. He would do the asking. The wording had to be precise, so these slick-tongued creatures couldn’t twist it to their advantage.
He rapidly tossed away one question after the other the moment they nestled in his mouth. He had to make the sting worth the bite. He ignored Vic’s intake of breath as he faced off the monstrous gathering. The visage of the group winked in and out in time to the throbbing ache in his shoulder. He focused on that monstrous side, the terrible truth of the fairies, and tried not to think what they would do to him.
Johnathan clenched his hands hard against his thighs. The fairy woman’s image wavered in time to his pulse. Pain stilted the power of their allurement.
Anchored within, he faced off with the fairy woman. “What killed the girls of Cress Haven?”
Was it the right inquiry? He could have asked any number of questions that could be twisted and evaded by the fairy woman’s artful tongue, but they had to find the root, the vital piece Vic was clearly missing.
The fairy woman focused on him, her expression curious.
Vic tugged at the back of his jacket. “John, no.”
Johnathan ignored him, forced to stillness as the fairy loomed closer.
Her fetid breath stung his nose as she traced along the pulse point in his neck with a single crooked nail. “Do you agree to the price, pretty one?”
His nostrils flared. “Would I ask if I possessed no currency?”
A smirk curved her lips. “You mince words as well as you dance, Prospective Newman.”
His skin tingled at the use of the title. He didn’t question how the fairy woman knew. These creatures were far too adept at scraping pieces of information from his mind.
Vic’s fingers dug into the back of Johnathan’s jacket. “No—”
“The question has been asked, little liar,” said the fairy woman. She spun away in a swirl of skirts. The others swayed, their voices inaudible murmurs that tugged at Johnathan’s focus.
“Do you think we were the only ones to wander this world when humans were blind, weak beasts in the dark?” The fairy woman sang to him, spinning in a blur. “Do you think we are the only ones who venture forth, to snatch, and steal, and play?”
Another damn evasion. Johnathan bit back a swear. The urge was strong to snatch the fairy by her shoulders and shake the answer from her. Would she keep slipping him snips and scraps without real truth while the fairies laid his secrets bare? Vic warned him of their cruelty and their love for games, and still, he charged in, confident he could outwit these creatures if only he were clever enough. Johnathan was a fool. His fingers twitched when she drew near, anger and pain twining together. Heat flared behind his eyes.
“Do you think we are the only ones to twist words? The only ones to bargain for more than we give?” She bowed to him as she passed with an exaggerated wink.
Johnathan’s irritation boiled over. His hand snapped out and snagged the fairy woman’s spider silk skirts so fast she stumbled. “I won’t pay for nothing.”
Her fury was swift and violent. A strip of tattered fabric tore free in his grip when she came at him. Somehow taller and greater than before, she loomed in, her true, terrible face revealed.
“You think I fear your anger, child of Adam? You think I won’t tear you to pieces for your insolence?” She spat and growled at him. Her maggot-stuffed eye sockets eclipsed his field of vision and his stomach roiled.
Vic grabbed at him from behind, trying to pull him away from the fairy, but Johnathan pressed back. Through the horror of her true face, his mind caught the wordplay. The fairy’s threats, frightening as her visage, were posed as questions, and had all the substance of shadows. It was another trick, another evasion. Vic told him they wouldn’t kill him. Could they kill him, even if they wanted to?
“I think, tricky and terrifying as you are, you follow certain rules.” He wasn’t ashamed of the waver in his voice. His knowledge was based around half-remembered rhymes and songs from a childhood with little time for such merry pursuits. Vic’s body pressed hard against his back. Johnathan was grateful for his physical presence but confused by it. He merely hoped he had the chance to process that thought if they survived this night. His words must have hit a mark, for the fairy woman’s horrid face twisted with deep, ugly rage, but something brought her up short.
A humming song rolled through the clearing. The fairy woman’s features crumpled in panic. She fell back from Johnathan to drop in a low cower. The inaudible murmur was laced with incredulity, a single word rising clear as a bell as the other fairies slunk to the edges of the clearing, a lone figure left standing in their wake.
Morrigan. The name shot into his mind, as if the realm branded the knowledge into him.
The newcomer was female, though her appearance didn’t confirm it. Her face and body were draped in gauzy veils that concealed all but the barest hint of her shape. Her presence was tangible, primal, ancient, and alien where it brushed against Johnathan’s mind. She evoked something beyond terror in him, pinning him in place surer than a mouse frozen beneath the gaze of a snake. A crown of branching antlers rose from her skull, swathed in clumps of spiderwebs like bunched silk. The veils that covered her were equally organic—webs, moss—held down by the weighted counterpoints of tangled teeth and bone so that her clothing clicked with each step.
Her attention was a boulder around his neck; it crushed the air from his lungs.
The rotted fairy was a child’s bogey compared to her, the Morrigan. Johnathan couldn’t look up as she drew closer. Instead, he stared at the shadow that trailed her, one that stretched longer and longer like a bridal train. That shadow sucked at his mind, filled his thoughts with rough-shod screams and broken pleas.
His gaze snapped back to her veiled face.
“Brave boy, beautiful boy, why did you come?” Her voice was the worst of all, for the deception it presented. A soft and sleepy voice, like a tired mother comforting her babe from a night terror, when the Morrigan was the source, the deepest terror in the darkest night.
It made his instincts scream. He didn’t need Vic's fingers digging into his sides to sense the danger there, and he knew better than to lie.
“I had to,” said Johnathan. Her focus flitted to Vic behind him, but she paid little attention to the vampire. When she reached for Johnathan with bone-white hands, he couldn’t quite swallow the whimper in his throat, but the Morrigan simply cupped his cheek.
“The taint of death marks you, but your innocence tastes like honeyed wine.” She sighed and released him, looking back at the cowering ranks of fairies.
Released from the weight of her attention, Johnathan would have pitched forward if Vic hadn’t hauled him to his feet.
The Morrigan tilted her head at the other fairies, speaking in that smooth voice of lullabies. “We cannot lie. We gild our tongues in silver and spin a net of half-truths. Beings of the Other, the Benign, and the Nether, do not possess the gift of deceit.” The gathered fairies flinched at her words.
“But you glamour,” said Johnathan. “Illusion is a lie.” He could feel Vic shaking his shoulders, but the words left his mouth before he could stop them.
The Morrigan merely chuckled. “I suppose you are right, brave boy. It is our defense against the iron and flame of Adam’s ilk.” Her pale hands reach
ed up and lifted the veils from her face.
Johnathan stopped breathing. It wasn’t the nightmare of the rotted fairy woman, but a face of hard sharp features, the First Mother, a half-forgotten memory that faded from his mind even as he stared at her. If he closed his eyes right then, he could not recall her face to save his life, but knew it would haunt his dreams until he died.
“I also cannot lie, but I follow the old rites, and I cannot give an answer without a question.”
Johnathan’s leg muscles trembled as he struggled to keep his feet under him. He knew she didn’t include the vampire in her statement. The Morrigan came for him, and that terrified him.
“What is killing the girls of Cress Haven?” he asked again.
The Morrigan clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Question asked, answer given. The ones who die do not have the strength for living.”
“What?” Johnathan stared at her, a riot of confusion knocked around in his skull. The Morrigan struck him as an ancient terror, and he foolishly believed she wouldn’t play the same word games.
“Oh, brave boy,” said the Morrigan, her expression a mockery of pity. “The abandoned boy, left to the mercy of the streets and death’s cool embrace.” Her words were stones hitting his skin, but it was not his worst secret. She suddenly gripped his chin, pinched in the clamp of merciless white fingers. “You must ask the right questions.”
Johnathan swallowed. Would this go on forever? It could. He had no doubt the Morrigan could answer every question in a similarly vague manner, an empty bargaining that would see his secrets completely unraveled like rind from fruit. He began to feel like she might work him until everything he’d ever buried in the dark depths of his soul had been brought to bright and humiliating light.
Vic clutched his shoulder. “John, let me do this—”
“You have no more secrets for me, vampire,” said the Morrigan. “I have no time or patience for sad little boys who don’t have the good grace to stay dead.”
Johnathan shut them out, trying to think. He hadn’t much time to accumulate many secrets, but the ones he did have drained the color from his face until he nearly matched the Morrigan’s complexion. He wanted to ask what was happening to the girls, what the Morrigan meant from her cryptic answer, but he could see one question after another peeling away his secrets until he had nothing left to bargain. Instead, he thought of the woods outside the Fairchild home. He thought of the horned creature he encountered when he chased after the beastly form of Lydia Fairchild, so similar and yet so different from the creature before him. He thought of Nathaniel Fairchild.
This wasn’t the bargain we made.
“Who did Nathaniel Fairchild bargain with?” Please be the right question.
A small smile played on the Morrigan’s lips. Johnathan did not know if that bode well or ill for him.
“We often make merry with the children of Eve,” she said.
Johnathan inwardly groaned, certain he’d failed again.
“We tease and cajole,” she went on. “We make fine offers but never promises. Our words are binding.”
The other fairies hissed and fidgeted at the Morrigan’s words, as if she handed Johnathan their great weakness. Maybe she had.
She tapped her chin. “Those from the Nether, however, do love their bargains.”
Vic flinched against Johnathan’s back and swore in a torrent of curses that made the Morrigan’s smile widen. Bewildered as he was by her answer, it appeared that a few pieces of this puzzle had clicked into place for the vampire at least. Wonderful, since Johnathan would pay for the information.
He braced himself when the Morrigan dipped forward and spoke in a hushed voice, acting like there wasn’t a pack of vicious fairies hanging on her every word. “There is your answer, pretty Johnny boy, now grown but once a dead man’s toy.”
She ran her fingers through his hair as she sang the words. He heard Vic’s intake of breath behind him but didn’t dare take his eyes off the Morrigan. She watched him, an expectant air in her expression. What was she waiting for?
Vic cleared his throat. “John, I need you to ask one more question.” The vampire’s voice was thick with regret. “We need to know how the victims are chosen.”
Didn’t they already? Or did they? Johnathan wanted to deny it, but he knew, deep in his gut, that Vic wouldn’t ask this of him if it wasn’t important.
The Morrigan waited. He had to ask the question himself.
“How are the girls chosen?”
The faintest crease of worry formed around the Morrigan’s eyes. What did that mean?
“Marked in ash, by fire and soot, branded to stone, and flesh, and root.” Her bottomless gaze held him, searching for something. He couldn’t shake the feeling he’d failed to find the correct wording for this one.
“Dammit,” Vic muttered. Johnathan shook himself, grateful for the distraction to break from that powerful stare. The Morrigan’s expression was unreadable. A mutinous side thought to try again, but Johnathan feared what she would exact from him in return. Already, he was anxious for what came next.
“Take your payment,” Johnathan rasped. His throat was so dry the words caught and scraped his tongue raw.
“Brave boy,” said the Morrigan. “What is your darkest secret? That you were Sir Harry’s lure, or that you enjoyed it?”
He shuddered at her words. He understood now. She wouldn’t pull the secret from him. He had to offer it freely. “My darkest secret is that…I loved him,” Johnathan whispered.
The Morrigan’s smile softened. She reached out and took Johnathan’s hands. Her thumbs brushed over his palms and stopped. The Morrigan stiffened, her thumb pressing into his once-injured palm. Her mouth opened as if she were about to say something else. Heat sparked beneath his skin at her touch. The healed-over wound itched. Johnathan fought the urge to yank his hand from her grip.
The rotted fairy appeared at her side, full of fear and fury. She seized the Morrigan’s wrist. “You can’t give them knowledge without payment offered,” the fairy woman hissed. “Even you cannot disavow the old rites.”
The Morrigan turned that terrible gaze on her. Quaking, the rotted fairy held her ground. The Morrigan released Johnathan and stepped away.
Questions rose in his mouth, sour and sharp, but the weight of exhaustion hit him all at once. Johnathan was drained beyond measure, the pain in his shoulder a constant dull roar like a relentless surf pounding the shore. He slumped in Vic’s grip, his limbs heavy and limp. He found he could barely keep his eyes open.
Vic took a shuddering breath. “We have to go. It’ll be dawn soon.”
Dawn? But it wasn’t yet midday when they arrived.
The Morrigan looked up at them. “Would you rather stay with us, brave boy? Stay here, with us, safe and warm. We will feed you sweet cakes and ripe fruits and dance until morn.”
Her words seeped into him like the warmth of a hearth fire. A beckoning warmth, away from blood and fear and from the sharp teeth that waited in the woods.
Johnathan glanced up and locked gazes with the Morrigan. Her attention would be as wonderful and terrible as the sun. Nourishing. Painful. Addictive. He could love a creature like the Morrigan as surely as he’d loved Sir Harry. The temptation rose, lending strength to his weary limbs.
Vic shifted Johnathan’s weight further onto his shoulder. Johnathan looked down at Vic’s pale, pinched face. The vampire watched the Morrigan with bitter resignation. Johnathan had questions for him, dammit. It was his turn for answers.
“I must politely decline,” said Johnathan.
Vic’s shocked gaze flashed up at him.
The Morrigan sighed. “Then go.” She flicked her fingers. The air heated behind them. The shimmering portal was open for them once more.
Vic released a shuddering breath and turned both of them toward it.
“Little liar, ask me,” the Morrigan called after them.
Vic paused. “You said it yourself. I have nothing left to
give you.” The vampire dragged them both another step forward and stopped. He grit his teeth though, and stomped the ground before glancing over his shoulder. “Ask you what?”
There was another pause. Vic winced at the absurdity of his question. Johnathan wondered what the Morrigan would do with the slip, but knew if he turned around, the fairies would ensnare him again.
“They have to be tainted,” the Morrigan said, followed by, “They have to be pure.”
Johnathan caught Vic’s frown. The whole exchange was odd, as if the Morrigan gave Vic a pass for his wasted question by giving him another nonsense answer.
Vic cursed and, with Johnathan hanging on his arm, headed out of the wood. “Don’t look back,” said Vic. “No matter what.”
It took every ounce of willpower Johnathan had left to keep his gaze forward, but this time, he obeyed.
Chapter Twenty
The weight of the heavens slammed down onto Johnathan. The sensation was beyond exhaustion, and he fought to keep his eyes from rolling up into his skull. Vic kept him upright when he sagged, resettling Johnathan’s good arm around his shoulders as he half dragged him away from the now normal patch of air.
“Here we are again,” said Vic, his voice light, but there was a note of weariness in his voice he couldn’t hide. “Me rescuing my damsel in distress.”
Johnathan couldn’t find the energy to retort, fighting the strong desire to lie down on the ground and sleep for a year. He wanted to be as far away as possible from the fairies, but his body was at its limits. Beyond its limits. If not for Vic’s immense strength, he wouldn’t have made it this far. Those cool hands on his were a strange comfort after his encounter with the fairies, one that brought his tangled emotions brimming to the surface.
“I don’t think my dignity can survive you carrying me right now,” said Johnathan. A small lie to hide the truth of his sudden awkwardness. His voice was a rasp of parchment over stone, the words like dust in his mouth.
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