She opened her mouth to say something else, then snapped it closed again. She took a deep breath, and when she spoke again, her voice was much softer. “Yeah, I get into fights with my mom, too.”
Tears stung my eyes and I turned away, surprised at myself for crying so easily. I didn’t want her to see me upset and vulnerable.
She seemed to understand, because she didn’t say anything else, and just drove on.
Zil drove me to Mountain Man’s Pizza, an ancient hole in the wall with a wood oven. The vinyl seats were cracked, the old photographs of abandoned gold mines and horse-drawn buggies on the walls were covered in dust, and the cook violated several health codes with his bushy beard, but it was a local landmark. The place was dead at lunchtime, and we were able to get a booth in the corner away from other diners. Zil bought us a small veggie pizza to share and a side of breadsticks.
The food at Crowther Private Academy was good, but the menus were planned to be healthy, and pizza was an unexpected luxury on a school day. I cheered up after the first hot, gooey slice of melted cheese heaven.
I tried to find a neutral topic for us to talk about and realized that I didn’t know much about the other girl outside of school. “What d’you do for fun?”
She shrugged. “Not much to do around this sleepy town, huh?”
“Yeah,” I agreed with her, even though I always seemed to find something to do. I liked knowing everyone in Madrone and its quirky little places. “But what do you do when you hang out with your friends?”
The words were out of my mouth before I had time to think. I didn’t know if Zil had close friends like me. Our class was small, but it tended towards its own little groups. I couldn’t remember seeing anyone with Zil on a regular basis.
“Oh, you know,” Zil said lightly, but I could hear the strain in her voice, so she must have been thinking the same thing. “Anil and I work on projects for magitek shop sometimes. And I work for Marzell’s mom in the bakery part-time on the weekends.”
I blinked in surprise. “I didn’t know Marzell’s mom owned a bakery. Is that why he’s in cooking class, to take over from her?”
She shook her head. “Nah, he wants to go to culinary school and open his own business, some kind of upscale restaurant. His mom does traditional German dwarf baking, the kinda stuff that they’ve been making for centuries, and it bores him.” She picked up another slice of pizza. “Esther’s bakery is out in Cave City.”
I don’t know why that name stuck in my mind. All the local dwarves, even Marzell’s family who let him go to Crowther instead of their own dwarf school, lived out in Cave City. But I’d seen an Esther’s German Bakery somewhere before, and it bothered me that I couldn’t remember it now.
I saw Zil staring at me and put aside the thought with a smile. “What about your plans for the future? Do you want to go to college?”
She smiled back around a mouthful of pizza and bobbed her head. “Oh, yeah,” she said once she’d swallowed. “It’s the best way to get out of here. My brothers are already gone, and though my mom hopes they’ll come back, I don’t think they will. There’s so much more outside of these back woods. I’m thinking a school in a big city, like San Francisco or LA.”
“Wow.” I was impressed by her ambition. “What do you want to study?”
She tilted her head to one side as she considered the questions. “Maybe engineering of some kind? I’m good at magitek, but I don’t know if I want to be limited by that. Also, it seems like computers are getting big. If I learn programming, I might be able to get a job anywhere in the world.”
I nodded. “So you want to travel?”
“I just want to find somewhere that I belong.” Zil looked around the pizza joint, and I saw it through her eyes: small, old, dirty. “I know that’s not here.”
I couldn’t think of an adequate response to such an open confession. I felt bad for her, trapped in this tiny town, and wondered what made her so unhappy here. Could it have something to do with her negative remarks about the local Faerie Court, or was it just a case of longing for a change of scenery? I didn’t know how to ask her.
She took a long swallow of her soda and nodded at me. “What about you? Doesn’t seem like you’re going to join your mother’s business. Will you go into medicine like your dad?”
I looked up, startled out of my thoughts. “A doctor? I never thought about it.” I couldn’t see any big plans in my future: the present was already changing too fast for me to catch up with. “I thought maybe I’d look into community colleges and take some classes, try things out to find out what I was interested in, but there aren’t really any schools in Calaveras. I’d have to drive out to Sonora.”
“Or fly,” Zil said with a wink, and I laughed.
“But you’re afraid to get too far away from home,” she went on with a frown. “That’s the problem with people around here, they’re too small-minded. You get comfortable here in this narrow community and even if you’re not quite happy, you can’t really imagine going anywhere else, so you get stuck. You move into a house just a few miles down the road from your parents and you live and die in the same old patterns.”
Zil grabbed my hand across the table and held on tightly. “Don’t get stuck, Rosa,” she said, her eyes locking onto mine. “You’re better than this place. Take a risk and get out of here, do anything else, and I promise you, you’ll be happier in the long run.”
What could I say to that? Her plea felt so sincere. I couldn’t think of an easy lie to give her to cover up how I felt about leaving my friends. More than just Madrone, it seemed to me that the Faerie Court here was my home. Glen would inherit the Count’s title and Ashleigh would rule beside him, and I wanted to see what they would build together. I didn’t know what it was yet, but I felt in my heart that I had a role to play in that future, even if my short human lifespan wouldn’t be enough to see their full reign.
I squeezed her hand back and struggled to smile. “I’ll think about it.” That was the best I could promise her.
She seemed satisfied with that answer, because she nodded and let my hand go. She pushed the empty pizza platter aside and leaned back in the booth. “Let’s hang out here for a while. It’s warm.”
I felt like Zil had opened up to me a lot that day over lunch. Maybe I could push my luck a little farther. I got up and slid into the other side of the booth next to her. “You said that you would tell me more about the Unseelie.”
She looked around at the mostly empty restaurant, but there was still no one sitting near us. “Yeah, I did. What do you wanna know?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t know anything about them until a few months ago, except that they’re exiled on the other side of the Veil. They’re banished because they’re dangerous to humans, right? But you’re trying to help them.”
Zil snorted. “Humans are dangerous to each other, and you’re not locked up in the Other World.”
I remembered what Glen had said, that even humans had been specifically included in the exile, a sentence that meant permanent madness in Faerie. I didn’t know how long humans could survive on the other side, because time flowed differently there. How many years had they suffered before they finally died? But I was wary of telling Zil too much.
“Fae belong in Faerie,” I said. “Why should they come visit our world if they’re just going to hurt us?”
She rolled her eyes. “You don’t really know much about how the Faerie Court works, do you? They’re called the Seelie, so anyone who doesn’t agree with them is Unseelie. That doesn’t mean they’re evil and they want to kill all humans or subjugate them under their terrible rule. Maybe they want to change some laws, or reform the current political system. And not all of them are Fae.”
I stiffened. “Laws like the ones against mind-controlling spells? I think those are in place for a good reason.”
“Laws like dictating who can come and go across the Veil,” Zil corrected me with a shake of her head. “Or clinging to this ancient
monarchy for our leadership. Why does it always have to be someone with Fae blood in power? Did you get to vote on Duncan to represent all of the magikin in our county, and magic users like you?”
“Well, he became Count a long time ago,” I said slowly. “He was awarded the title for services he did to protect the county. I think he does a pretty good job, too.”
She drummed her fingers on the table. “So you think it’s fair that he gets to control everything for a hundred and fifty years? And then his grandson gets to take over, just because he says so? Sounds like nepotism. I thought we lived in a democracy.”
I stopped short. I’d always accepted that faerie politics were just different from ours. Besides, it always felt like we lived in a fairy tale from another time, with a castle on the hill, Glen training to be a knight, Ashleigh the beautiful princess who would marry him some day. “I never thought about it that way,” I admitted. “So you want to hold elections and give all the magikin the right to vote? Couldn’t you, like, start a petition or something?”
“Oh, yeah, a petition!” Zil laughed. “And then we’ll march up to the castle and stage a sit-in on their front driveway. Even if we could get them to listen, the Fae wouldn’t allow that kind of change, and they’re the ones the president listens to. He’s afraid of them.”
Then I saw what she was leading toward. “The Unseelie want humans to be more afraid of them so they can get what they want, don’t they? By using methods that the Seelie have sworn not to use. Mind control and killing people.” I shuddered.
“You’d rather have the Seelie banishing magikin and humans to the Otherworld instead,” Zil said with a measuring look.
So she did know about that. I tried to remember Glen’s explanation. “Under extreme circumstances, to protect us—”
“To protect their own interests,” she said with a shake of her head. “Actually, I don’t think we have to resort to fighting. If we just had more of our people on this side, then we could outnumber the faeriekin. It’s keeping us in the minority that makes us weaker than them.”
I frowned. Something was strange in the way that she said that. “Your people as in . . . more magikin? Were there a lot of other races exiled into Faerie?”
She tossed her ponytail back over her shoulder. “Most of us live there, and we’re not allowed to emigrate to the mortal realm. Where do you think we came from? We’re the ones who truly belong in both realms. Fae control the other realm and insist on calling it Faerie. Here, you humans say that you want to give us freedom as equals. Plenty of my people—pookhas, kitsune, nagas, everyone—they’d like to come here for the opportunity. But the Fae are the gatekeepers.”
My eyes widened when I thought about the implications. I knew faeriekin were hybrids, born of Fae and humans—the only races that could interbreed. But I’d never thought about where the other races of magikin had come from. I’d assumed they were just a part of our world, coming from different corners: kitsune from Japan, dwarves from northern Europe, pookha from the UK, naga from India. But if they could live in both worlds, and there were more of them on the other side eager to come here, that changed so many things.
“You don’t want to be a minority anymore,” I said out loud. “But our world is becoming overpopulated just by humans alone. And having so many of your kind—you’re different from us, and not everyone knows how to handle that. An influx of a lot of magikin would be terrifying for most people.”
Zil nodded. The golden glow of her eyes dimmed sadly, and she rubbed the back of her neck. “That’s why the Fae have agreed to keep us out,” she whispered, looking down at the table.
I reached out and put my hand on her shoulder. I didn’t know how much of what she said was true, but her feelings seemed genuine, and my heart went out to her. I could do nothing to comfort her, but just sit with her and let her know that I’d heard her.
My mind raced with new ideas. Did Mom know about this? I didn’t see how the problems of magikin affected her or our family directly. Even if it had inspired her to work with the Unseelie, she wouldn’t have needed to control us with her spells. Unless she was worried about us finding out what she was up to, and the spells were there to hide the truth—
I shook my head to discard the idea. She’d hinted that she disliked the Faerie Court over the years, and she’d gradually withdrawn from their gatherings, leaving me to visit the castle alone. But her spells over our family had been going on much longer, and they affected every part of our lives, from her marriage to Dad, to keeping Akasha in a school that she didn’t get along in. And Crowther was definitely a Seelie school, since Glen and Ashleigh both went there, so why would Mom insist on us going there? Things didn’t add up.
Then my blood ran cold. How much did Glen and Ashleigh know about this? I knew they kept secrets, but I never would have suspected this of them. At least not until recently, when Glen started acting so weird about what Heather knew about the Unseelie. Maybe this was what she was going to tell us before he stopped her.
I pulled away from Zil. “I need to think about all of this. I don’t even know if it’s true, what you’re saying.”
She looked at me with a half-smirk, but her sarcastic humor wasn’t behind it. “I get it, you don’t trust me any more than I trust you right now.” She waved at me to stand up. “I won’t give you proof, if that’s what you’re asking for. I might have told you too much already.”
I slipped out of the booth and glanced at my watch. School was just now getting out, and I could still meet up with Kai for the afternoon. “Could you drop me off in the middle of town? My boyfriend can give me a ride.”
Zil nodded, dragging her coat out of the booth with her. “Sure.”
13
Lie Detector
Rosamunde
Kai wrapped his arms around me the moment that I walked into the coffee shop and didn’t let me go for several minutes. “Is everything okay?” he asked finally. “You just blew off the rest of the day.”
I shrugged and pulled away. “Zil just wanted to chat.”
He looked me straight in the eyes. “You seem pretty shook up over it. What happened?”
I took a deep breath, watching him. He didn’t look like he was going to give this up easily, and if I was going to start spending more time with her—like I hoped—then I had to give him some kind of explanation. “It’s important that I win Zil’s trust,” I said finally. “She has information that I need.”
He drew me over to a table near the window and sat down with a frown. “Information about what?”
I bit my lip. “I don’t know,” I said in a low tone, glancing around the cafe. It was full of the usual after-school crowd, and I was afraid that someone could be listening in on me. “But she’s involved with people who might know where my mom is, and I need to go through her to get to them.”
Kai folded his arms over his chest with his thumbs pointed up. “How do you know that?”
Time to come clean about one of my secrets. “I—I sent a letter to my mom by leaving it at her store.” I avoided looking at him. “Not in code or anything, just a note asking her to let Akasha come home safe. Zil is the one who answered it. She said that she knew people involved with the Unseelie, and I had to prove myself to them before I could reach my mom directly.”
“So that’s what she promised you?” His tone was flat and disapproving. “How do you know she’s telling the truth?”
“I don’t.” It was the question that hung over my head every moment I spent with the other girl. “But it’s the only lead that I have right now. I have to try.”
He let out a sigh and dropped his arms to his sides. “I know how much this means to you. But what do you have to do, to prove yourself?”
I couldn’t tell him the details of the book I’d stolen and the possibility that I’d given dangerous information to people who might use it to overthrow society as we knew it. “Certain favors. Today we were just talking about random stuff. I think she really wants a frie
nd,” I added. I really felt sorry for her after our discussion.
“Well, making friends with her can’t hurt,” Kai said, and I could already hear the ‘but’ coming in his tone.
“I’m not going to do anything stupid,” I said before he could finish. I flinched as I said it, though, knowing that I’d probably already done something worse than stupid, and I would do more if it meant saving Akasha.
He smiled. “I know you won’t, Rosa. I trust you.”
I leaned over and gave him a short kiss. “Sorry I missed lunch with you today. Can I buy you a coffee to make up for it?”
“Sure.” We stood up to head for the counter, and he draped his arm over my shoulders. “You’re not going to tell the others about this, are you?”
I shook my head. “Not yet, at least not until I learn anything. By the way,” I whispered in his ear. “How much have you been to Faerie? Do you know anything about, like, are there other kitsune living there?”
He blinked in surprise. “Only Fae actually live in Faerie. I go there sometimes to run around for fun, but I couldn’t live there.”
“Of course,” I said quickly, avoiding his gaze. I looked up to the front of the line. “What do you want to drink?”
I had two options: go to the Otherworld and look around for myself, or cast a truth spell and see if I could discover who was lying about it. Traveling across the Veil was dangerous at any time, but it worked best when the moon was full. But the moon had been new just the previous Sunday, so I would have to wait two weeks before I could risk going on my own. On the other hand, the waxing crescent was in the sky now, and it was the perfect moon phase for casting a truth spell.
After hanging out with Kai for only an hour, I said goodbye and went shopping. I had to work quickly: the sun would set before five that afternoon, and then I’d only have about two hours before the moon set as well, and it would disappear behind the mountains even earlier. With Mom gone, there was no magic shop left in town. I had to buy my ingredients at the grocery store and hope they would work as well.
Fae of Calaveras Trilogy Box Set Page 36
