Weald Fae 02 - The Changeling

by Christopher Shields

  What has happened again?

  He responded, “Clever diversion.”

  What was a clever diversion? What aren’t they telling me?

  I stared at Sara. She squeezed my hand and smiled as though nothing was wrong. I didn’t smile back. She studied my face until the movie came back on.

  THIRTY-ONE

  AUTUMN COMES

  The end of summer was bittersweet. I looked forward to starting my senior year, but after a few weeks of a relatively normal life, the rogue standoff excluded, August signaled the close to my last carefree summer. I truly hadn’t felt like an average teenager for more than a year, but I relished getting the chance to act like one nonetheless. Even if the Fae conflict happened to end before then, the next summer meant getting ready for college. The lazy days of having nothing better to do than float around on the lake were quickly drawing to a close. If the Fae conflict didn’t end, well, my gut told me that nothing about the next summer would seem normal.

  Everyone would be over again by noon. We planned to stay close to the cottage, maybe even drive somewhere. Until they showed up, I made my way to the studio to spend a little time with Mom and Dad. They had made a full recovery after Mitch woke up. Mom had spent the last several weeks teaching Dad to work with clay in the studio. They were there when I pushed the door open. Bent over and with a serious look on his face, Dad concentrated on turning a lump of clay into what looked like a small animal. Mom stood beside him patiently providing tips and encouragement. Poor Dad. He wasn’t particularly talented, but he kept trying. It was probably a good thing we inherited Aunt May’s fortune—he was destroying clay by the pound.

  “Nice rabbit, Dad,” I said, trying to be supportive.

  He glanced up, frowning, “Rabbit? It’s a coffee cup.”

  Mom cracked up and gently said, “Patience, honey.”

  “Oh, I totally see it now. Yeah, a coffee cup…” I said, trying not to laugh.

  He rolled his green eyes and tilted his head to the side. “I should ground you for lying.”

  A few minutes later, Candace walked in behind me, smiling broadly. “Hey.”

  “Good morning, Candace,” Mom said without taking her eyes off of Dad’s progress.

  “Good morning, Mrs. O’Shea, Mr. O’Shea.” She glanced at the gray mound between Dad’s thick fingers. “That’s great. I love rabbits.”

  Dad’s sigh filled the space, as his hands dropped to his side. He backed away from the table studying the wad of clay, and shook his head. Mom and I did our best not to laugh.

  Candace and I left them and went to my room. Alone and behind an Air barrier, I asked her to warn the others that they’d be getting guards. They would all need to be careful about their private conversations now. “I’m sorry, tell them I’m sorry.”

  Candace nodded. “Stop apologizing already. I figured that would happen—I think we all did. It’s not a problem. Now, tell me what happened yesterday when Sara got quiet.”

  She’d done it again and I couldn’t keep the amused look off my face. “Oh, my god. You noticed? How do you always pick up on those things?”

  Candace smiled. “It’s easy. You spend too much time listening to their conversations and not enough time watching their body language. Otherwise you’d notice the physical signs when Sara gets upset or concentrates on something.”

  “Physical signs? What physical signs?”

  “Sara relaxes her face, completely relaxes. It’s unnatural. There’s a tiny dimple in her right cheek when she’s acting normally. When she’s upset or concentrating, she overcompensates—the dimple flattens out. Her eyelids also open more.”

  Candace had often amazed me over the last year and a half. Her observations of Sara were no exception.

  “I’ve never noticed that—I always thought she had a poker face.” I made a mental note to confirm what Candace said.

  “No. She reacts differently than humans—completely different from you.”

  I laughed, recalling every time I caught Candace studying my expressions in the past. “What do I do?”

  She gave me the look: raised eyebrow, lips pulled to the right. “Fat chance. So, answer the question—what happened that bothered her so much yesterday? Was it just the Fae at the lake?”

  “I don’t know. She said something to Billy…she said, it’s happening again, and he said, clever diversion. I’ve thought about it all night. I have no idea what they were talking about.”

  Candace walked over to my dresser and picked up a picture frame, running her fingers around the edge. Her focus was somewhere in the distance as she began working it out. “Happening again…diversion. Diversion…do you think she was talking about the earthquake?”

  “Earthquake?” I asked.

  “Yeah, on the news. She did her face thing as the report started.”

  “I remember the report, but it didn’t make sense at the time. How is an earthquake in Alaska a diversion? What’s it a diversion for?”

  Candace shook her head, set the picture in place and wrapped her slender arms around her waist. She took three steps toward my window and then spun slowly, her mouth twisting to the side. “What if the earthquake wasn’t the diversion? What if something else was a diversion—you know, a diversion for the earthquake.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Think about it. The hurricanes, the earthquakes, the tsunamis—there have been a lot of terrible disasters lately. Hundreds of thousands have died in the last five weeks.”

  She was right, and the possibility startled me. A series of natural disasters had rocked the globe. First, hurricane season had arrived with the largest number of storms ever recorded, and several made the record book. Slow moving Hurricane Maxine cut a deadly swath across Cuba before strengthening to a category five in the Gulf of Mexico. It slammed ashore just west of Corpus Christi, Texas, wreaking havoc all the way to Gulf Port, Mississippi. Thousands died. Then Hurricane Sophia crossed the Atlantic below Bermuda before turning north along the east coast as a category five, flooding South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia before plowing into New Jersey and New York as a strong category four. The horrific scenes of flooding in Manhattan were all over the news, along with a death toll that climbed for weeks.

  A week before then, an 8.9 earthquake rocked the west coast of Sumatra and killed a quarter of a million people. Then a massive 9.4 earthquake leveled two cities on the Alaskan Coast, flattened huge sections of Anchorage, and caused a disastrous oil spill. The quake also triggered a landslide, which produced a powerful tsunami. It killed people down the west coast of North America, Hawaii, and Japan. The effects lingered for days.

  “My god. I hadn’t seen it, but you’re right.”

  She sat next to me and leaned back on the bed. “I can’t figure out what Billy meant by diversion—they didn’t say anything else?”

  “They didn’t say anything else, but I may know.”

  She spun her head and smiled, clearly intrigued. “What?’

  “Well, when we got back yesterday, the islands were filled with Unseelie, more than a hundred. I’ve never sensed as many, and all of them were waiting on something. There were even more Seelie here on the peninsula…”

  “Oh…” she said, her eyebrows drawing together, wrinkling her brow. “I knew something was up—you could barely breathe. What does that mean? Were they on the verge of fighting?”

  “That’s the weird part. Billy told me they were working together.”

  Her eyes bugged out. “Together? But I thought they were bitter enemies.”

  I nodded. “They are…normally. Yesterday, the Council detected the rogues when they came after us. The Council asked the Unseelie Elders for assistance…the Unseelie came here to help the Seelie.”

  Candace stood and walked to the window, curling her fingers around the white curtains on one side. “Okay. They were working together. There is a third clan at work here,” she whispered to herself.

  “Yes, that’s what it looks like,�
� I said.

  She turned her head halfway toward me. “So that was the diversion? Sending some Fae here to draw the clans’ attention?”

  I nodded. “It may have been. If you’re right, and that’s true, it means the threat is big enough it has the two most powerful clans, bitter enemies, working together. That scares me. It also means Fae are responsible for the earthquakes and hurricanes, for killing all those people. It means this has gotten much bigger than I thought. They’ve begun going after people.”

  Saying it aloud made it seem real. I sank back in the bed and closed my eyes.

  “Maggie, what do they want you to do? Why did they really take Mitch? Why did they attack me, or Doug?…why did they kill Rachel?”

  I didn’t need to open my eyes to see her worried facial expression. I could hear it in her tone. “I’ve told you that Ozara is an Aetherfae…”

  “Yeah.”

  “What I haven’t told you is that there is a second Aetherfae. It’s happened two times before. In the past, the other Aetherfae have tried to…well, they wanted to wipe out mankind. Both times they were destroyed by a human.”

  “A human?” she whispered.

  “Yes, a human who learned to control Aether. Humans who can do that are called Maebown.”

  Candace went silent for several moments. “Are you…one of those?”

  I nodded without opening my eyes. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I’m supposed to be. I haven’t learned to control Aether yet. But I will.”

  Candace curled up next to me and grabbed my hand. I know she had more questions, but she didn’t ask them. Without me saying a word, she knew I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I didn’t. After all she’d been through with Rachel, I couldn’t tell her that being a Maebown meant I would likely die myself.

  ***

  Candace, Ronnie and Doug went with me to swim practice after she and I explained to the guys what we thought had happened, what we thought was going on. The pain and fear in their faces as the enormity of the situation registered with them made me feel sick. They looked at me differently—at times like they were staring at a ghost. It affected Doug the most. He seemed distraught each time we made eye contact.

  After they reluctantly went home, I cornered Sara and Billy, determined to figure out if they could confirm any of our suspicions. Both were ready for my questions. Candace was right—Sara did give physical clues when she was hiding something. I tried not to focus on them. They confirmed some of my suspicions outright, and all of them unintentionally. The Aetherfae and the rogue clan were up to something, but Sara and Billy wouldn’t discuss it. Typical. They were both trying to protect me. It didn’t matter, because I knew one thing for certain: the Fae were somehow involved in the disasters and it had the Council worried. Intuition told me it was time to start spying on Council meetings.

  ***

  The last seconds of summer break ticked away. Sara and I drove Mitch to school, where the Council had arranged for him to meet a new friend. The threat to my family was greater than ever, and the Council thought it would be foolhardy to leave any of us unprotected. Smokey, whose real name I didn’t know, had taken the shape of a handsome young boy with large brown eyes, mocha colored skin, and lustrous black hair. A few inches taller than Mitch, he introduced himself as Charles Baker, but said he went by Charlie.

  Despite his reluctance to ever answer a question when he was keeping an eye on me, he grinned and bubbled in the elementary school parking lot. He compelled the other kids to like him, and just that quick, Mitch had a new bodyguard.

  The Council assigned a Fae bodyguard to each member of my family. My grandparents adopted a pair of standard Schnauzers they named Dade, after the county they called home for forty years, and Santiago, after the town in Cuba where my grandfather’s family had lived. I couldn’t imagine the Fae who were assigned to the roles were particularly happy about playing the part of canines—and they were more aloof than any dogs I’d ever encountered—but they accepted their jobs and went everywhere with my grandparents.

  Victoria and Sherman kept an eye on Mom and Dad when they were at the Weald, visiting frequently in human form, or watching unseen at other times. Two Fae guards were assigned to followed Mom and Dad when they weren’t on the Weald. One night, another Fae, who I didn’t know, began surveilling Doug at all times. Billy watched over Ronnie, and Gusty was paired with Candace. Gusty enrolled in school as well. Before long there would be as many Fae attending Eureka Springs High as humans.

  Honestly, having the Council that concerned about everyone’s safety was a huge confidence boost. While I would not learn of the Council’s final decision on whether I’d be allowed to stay in the Weald until New Year’s Day, it was a positive sign. Sara and Billy both believed that the Council would back me now that a Second Aetherfae was out there killing.

  ***

  Gusty met Sara and me in the high school parking lot. She flashed a large bright smile like an old friend, and never took her teal-colored eyes off me. Strutting across the short distance between us, I began laughing. Rhonda was about to have someone else to hate. Gusty was beautiful. Her heart-shaped face sat atop a long elegant neck, perfectly framed by radiant collar length blond hair, the ends curling just under her ears. I’d grown taller over the last year, to five feet ten, but I had to look up at Gusty. She was runway model tall.

  “Hello, Maggie, Sara,” she said.

  She was warm and vivacious, animated even, as she embraced me in the parking lot immediately apologizing for refusing to answer my questions during all the time she had spent tracking me. “You’re very clever, Maggie. I’m really glad I’ll get the chance ta know ya better.”

  Wow, I thought, she uses contractions like a human, and her voice is full of regional inflections. She’s nothing like I imagined.

  “Thanks, and thank you for enduring the hell of high school and teenagers to keep Candace safe.”

  “Don’t worry, Mags, I’m actually looking forward to it. I love high school. Ya don’t mind if I call ya Mags?”

  I forced my mouth shut and she laughed, rocking her entire upper body and curling her thin hands in front of her mouth. When she laughed, her nose wrinkled and her eyes seemed to glisten. Apparently she had studied human facial expressions—hers were spot on.

  “Good god,” I said, “you’re Fae?”

  “Yep. I’ll let ya in on a little secret—I love humans. Can I call ya Mags?”

  “Yep? Ya?” Sara said, amused by Gusty’s vernacular.

  “Yes, you can call me Mags,” I said, “all of my friends call me that. And what can I call you?”

  “Gusty is cute, but I’m going by the name Faye,” she said with a devious twinkle in her eyes.

  “Faye? How original,” Sara mused.

  “Sara, girlfriend, don’t be so frigid. It’s lame.”

  Sara’s eyes narrowed, “Girlfriend?”

  Faye and I cackled.

  Faye put her hands on her hips. “I’ve been to high school before, a few times, so I’ve had practice acting like a teen. Colloquialisms, Sara, are the key to fitting in. You should try it.”

  Sara exhaled and appeared slightly annoyed. “Don’t lose yourself in the part…Faye.”

  “Says the girl using an Irish accent,” Faye snipped.

  Sara shook her head. “Point taken.”

  With satisfaction written all over her face, Faye bent her head toward me, her full lips curving up at the edges. “Mags?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why don’t ya take me inside and introduce me to your friends.”

  As we crossed the threshold, the high-pitched squealing of a LAM siren greeted us like being hit with a bucket of ice water and nails. Faye was an immediate hit with Candace and Ronnie.

  Rhonda smiled and seemed friendly, acting like the official welcoming committee. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you, too. Rhonda, isn’t it? I’ve heard so much about you.”

  I grinned and shru
gged my shoulders as Rhonda shot me a quick look. She frowned, spun and strutted down the hall, flinging her hips so hard I was afraid she’d dislocate something.

  Faye whispered, “Pleasant, isn’t she?”

  We were both laughing when I sensed a Fae heading across the parking lot toward the building. Sara and Faye were tracking him too.

  “Maggie, stay here. Faye, don’t leave her side,” Sara said silently to both of us.

  We exchanged a quick look and I shook my head. Sara let out an exasperated sigh when I turned and headed for the door. “I forgot my book bag, I’ll be right back,” I said to Candace and Ronnie.

  Sara and Faye marched along beside me. When we cleared the door, Sara quickly checked to make sure nobody was watching, and then from thirty feet away she grabbed Drevek and slung him into the side of the building, pinning him.

  “I’m not here to hurt…”

  “Shut up.” Sara said softly. “I’ll ask the questions—you’ll give me answers. Understood?”

  He didn’t blink or attempt to free himself. “Yes.”

  “I thought we made it clear that if any of you came within a half-mile of Maggie, her family, or her friends, you’d be destroyed.”

  “I’m not…”

  “Shut up,” Sara said, a little louder this time.

  “I need to talk to Maggie,” he said.

  Sara squeezed him hard enough that I heard the bones in his arm break. Drevek grimaced, but didn’t scream. I did.

  “Stop, Sara!”

  She turned to me, “Maggie, the Council has given us specific instructions. It’s for your own safety.”

  “He’s not going to hurt me,” I protested softly. “Let me talk to him, Sara—please?”

  She studied him for a moment and I felt her relax her grip.

  Faye stepped between us, moved her face just inches from him, and whispered, “Drevek, if you so much as breathe in her direction, I’ll feed you parts of your own body.”

  He stared at her without moving.

  Faye flashed her long white teeth and growled, “Do you understand me?”