My head snapped up. “No!” I stared down at what I’d written. “I can’t do this. I don’t have any Fae blood.” I groaned and covered my face in my hands. “It’s useless.”
Mary put a hand on my shoulder. “What about Sir Allen? Could you teach him enough that he could help you?”
I shook my head. “It’s too complicated. This spell is written so that both parts of the magic have to be present in a single person, and a novice couldn’t perform it.”
I sighed. “This seemed like such a promising lead. I’d hoped if it didn’t work, I could at least adapt it into something that did. But without a faeriekin who knows both Fae and human magic . . .” I shook my head sadly.
Elizabeth, who had been digging around in the fridge with a teenager’s hunger, popped her head up. “I know a faeriekin who studies sorcery at my school.”
I turned to stare at her. “Who? Do you think that you could talk to them and convince them to help us?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, he’s one of Rosa’s friends, Glen. Maybe she could get to him for us.” She smiled a little when she mentioned Rosa. By her reports, their friendship was growing.
Akasha frowned. “Glen Byrnes, the Count’s grandson? He would never betray the Court. It would probably, like, break all of his oaths.”
“You’re right, he’s got to be loyal because he’s being groomed to take over from his grandfather.” I looked over the diagrams and notes in front of me, a solution so close to completion and yet so far out of my reach. “And yet, with the right motivation, could we get him to help us anyway?”
“Do you mean like tricking him?” Mary coughed. “I think if you asked him to do any of this, he’d figure out what your goal was. He’d probably freak out and turn you in if you even tried to talk to him.”
My heart pounded when I thought about what could happen to me if the Seelie Court arrested me. At the end of Charles Byrnes’s trial, he’d been found guilty and exiled to a dungeon in the darkest regions of the Otherworld, where the human part of him—most of him—had no doubt gone mad from living in the wrong world. If I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life running away from a similar fate, I had to find a way to make this gate work and get the help of more Unseelie. I could see no other way.
I looked down at my notes to avoid making eye contact with anyone else in the room. “We could blackmail Glen. Elizabeth can find out something that we’ll use as leverage. If there’s anything more important to him than his loyalty to the Court, that’s our key to compel him into opening the gate for us.”
We met with Sir Allen later to explain everything to him, and he gave us the answer. “No need for the espionage. It’s obvious what the most important thing is to Glen.” He tilted his head to one side dramatically. “His betrothed, Ashleigh.”
Mary gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. “Are you saying that we should threaten Ashleigh’s safety? She’s just a child!”
I stood up from the table. “She’s also a figurehead for the entire Court. She’s probably received threats before. We would have to kidnap her.”
“If she went missing,” Sir Allen said, examining his fingernails, “then every faeriekin on the entire west coast would be out looking for her. Where would you hide her?”
I looked over at Elizabeth. “Rosamunde is the key. She’s friends with both of them. She could lure Ashleigh away on some kind of sleepover or trip, and then we would tell Glen that we were actually the ones holding her. We’d have to be careful not to let word of her disappearance out to anyone else.”
The pookha girl shrugged. “I don’t know how you’d get Rosa to agree to that plan. You’d have to find some kind of leverage over her. It would turn into this complicated set of dominos where you have to start a whole chain reaction to get things moving.”
I shook my head. “But we already have something that my daughter wants. I’d exchange Ashleigh for Akasha.”
Akasha sat up straighter. “I don’t know if I want to leave you now.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “My hope is that if we succeed in our plan, I won’t be a fugitive any longer, and then I’ll be able to see both of you girls again.”
Mary tapped the table thoughtfully. “That’s a huge risk.”
Sir Allen coughed. “I think that you’re getting ahead of yourselves here. This will take a lot of planning to make sure that it goes off without a hitch, and you need to be sure that Rosamunde will agree to do this. What has she done so far, steal one book? I’d test her resolve with bigger challenges first.”
I looked over at Mary, and then we both looked at Elizabeth. “We’ll have to figure out what else we could get her to do,” I said.
Elizabeth nodded and came over to the table. “I’ve got a few ideas,” she said with a smirk.
19
Tested Again
Rosamunde
I got to Zil at school first thing on Monday morning. I waited in the parking lot until I saw her getting out of her car, and waved. I saw her whole face light up in a smile as she saw me and headed over.
“Okay, we really need to talk later,” I said, leaning closer to talk privately. Then, afraid that she would ask me to cut class again, I added quickly, “After school.”
Her smile faded a little. “Oh, yeah. I need to talk to you, too.”
My heart beat faster. “Do you have news for me?”
Zil glanced away, at the other students still arriving. “We’ll talk about it later.”
She didn’t say anymore, and as soon as we walked in through the front door, her walls went up and she ignored me for the rest of the day. I met up with Kai and my own friends, and tried not to think about what she might have to say.
But all during class, I kept glancing her way, hoping that she might look back at me and give me a sign. I tried to concentrate on school, but my mind was racing, thinking of all the possibilities. Zil had smiled when she first saw me, but then changed when she said we had to talk. Could that mean bad news? Maybe Mom and Akasha had finally fled the county. Or maybe the Unseelie just weren’t agreeing to meet with me, and I had to do more to earn their trust. What I had to tell them, that I knew they were telling the truth about the Seelie Court’s secrets of the Otherworld, might not be enough to sway them. Faeries loved oaths—I might have to promise something.
My palms were sweaty and my heart was pounding so loud that I thought everyone would be able to hear it. Kai did notice how nervous I was, and during lunch, he finally asked me about it.
“You don’t really have to go meet with her later if it makes you this uncomfortable,” he said. I’d told him about the meeting in advance, so he wouldn’t be disappointed when I didn’t go with him after school. He stroked the back of my hand with his thumb. “I know you’re trying to help, but this is really dangerous and I can see the strain it’s putting on you. It’s not too late to back out.”
I smiled at him reassuringly and shook my head. “I’m not unhappy, I’m just nervous,” I tried to explain. “I think that she has something important to tell me later and I don’t know what it is. Could be good or bad, and I’m going to worry until I find out for sure.”
He sighed. “I worry every time you go off with her. This isn’t worth getting yourself into trouble, Rosa.”
I kissed him on the cheek. “It’s sweet of you, but please don’t worry. I’m not going to let her talk me into doing anything that I don’t want to do.”
“Do you realize how excited you get when you talk about her?” He raised his eyebrows at me. “I think part of you secretly enjoys this, and that worries me most of all.”
“I don’t—” I started to say, but then I stopped short and realized it was true. I was practically bouncing in my seat with excitement. And I couldn’t honestly say that I was only excited about the possibility of finding out something about my mother or sister. A little thrill went up my spine when I thought about breaking the rules with Zil again.
I folded my arms a
nd put my head down.
Kai leaned closer and threw his arm around me. “Don’t sulk just because I’m right. I just want you to be aware so you’re careful.”
“Okay,” I promised. I tried not to look at Zil again for the rest of the school day.
Zil drove us away from the school, but instead of turning down the highway that would lead into Madrone, she went up the mountainside instead, following a narrow, winding road that I’d never been on before.
“Where are we going?” I asked at last.
“Up to the summit,” she said. “I just thought it would be nice to see the view up there.”
Before long, however, we reached the end of the road that had been cleared by the snowplows. Zil’s car was too small and didn’t have tire chains, so we couldn’t drive any farther.
She stopped and stared at the trees on either side of us. “Some view. I guess this was a bad idea, sorry.”
“You want a view?” I grabbed my broom out of the back seat and opened the car door. “Let’s go.”
Zil didn’t need a lot of tips to get the hang of riding on the back of the broom. “Just like balancing on a bike, right?”
“Something like that,” I said with a grin.
She wrapped her arms around my waist. I was grateful for her warmth as we flew up above the trees and the cold wind tugged at my jacket.
My favorite part was always that moment when we broke above the trees and saw the valley stretched out below us. The sun was out, making the snow cover glitter on everything. I heard Zil gasp behind me and felt her arms tighten around me.
I glided along for several minutes to give her an eyeful, and then set down on the top of an exposed rock.
Did I imagine it, or did she hesitate for just a moment before she let me go? But when I turned around to look at her, she had already turned away, taking in the panoramic scene at our feet.
I leaned my broom against an outcrop of the rock and came to stand next to her. “I hope you liked it.”
Her eyes stayed fixed on something in the distance, but I watched her mouth, and I saw the corners turn up just a little in a smile. “Yes, I did. You’ve never taken me flying before.”
“I wasn’t sure if I could trust you.” I looked at the ground, suddenly feeling guilty. “But then I went to the Otherworld yesterday, and I found out that you were telling the truth. The Seelie Court wants to hide it, but there are magikin living in their world as well as ours. And if they’re going to such lengths to hide it, then there must be a reason behind it.”
She flinched, but didn’t say anything for a minute or two. At last she took a deep breath and said, “So you trust me, because I told you something true. Even if everything else that I say is a lie.”
My hand went to my pocket and the lie detecting charm. “I think you might be one of the few people who aren’t lying to me.”
She sighed. “I wish that it was as easy for me to trust you. Your book’s very useful, by the way, but the others don’t think it’s enough yet.”
My heart sank for a moment. I’d been waiting for weeks for an answer, and now it was a no. Well, not quite a no, I realized. I looked up in surprise. “I’m on the right track, though? You think there’s a chance? What can I do to meet them?”
Zil glanced at me and then looked at the ground. “There’s a chance of winning their trust, and I get a vote on that. But I don’t think you’ll ever get to meet anyone besides me, no direct contact. That will give you—what did they call it—plausible deniability.”
The dangerous spell in the book. My hands clenched without thinking about it. “What do I need to be able to deny?”
“Maybe nothing,” she said quickly. “But they’re keeping me out of it, too. In case your involvement leads to me, I can say that I never did anything more than relay information.” She glanced over at me.
I met her gaze with a shock. I was the first one to look away.
“So, if you need to be able to deny things, then you probably haven’t even seen my mother.” I let out a sigh of disappointment.
“I—I can’t say yes or no,” Zil said. “I’m sorry.” And then she reached over and took my hand.
I stood there, feeling the warmth of her hand in mine, and for a moment everything went right out of my mind. I knew that she was only trying to comfort me, to make up for what she couldn’t say. I knew it must be my wild imagination that her touch meant something more than that. At the same time, it wasn’t the first time that she’d held my hand.
A hand squeezed on my heart. I heard Kai’s voice again, telling me that I was too excited about breaking the rules with Zil. Was I just enjoying the thrill of breaking the rules again?
Zil dropped my hand and wrapped her arms around herself. “I can tell you that there is a chance to get your sister back.”
My thoughts snapped back to the present and my real problem. “Really? How?”
She waved her hand vaguely. “I can’t tell you all of the plan right away. We’re still working out the details, and I need to make sure that you’re up for it.” She turned to me and looked me directly in the eye. “Rosa, I need to know. How far are you willing to go to get your sister back?”
I’d asked myself the same question enough times to know the answer. “I’d do anything,” I said, looking back at her steadily.
Her brows furrowed together. “Are you sure about that? Even if it means betraying your friends in the Seelie Court?”
“I guessed it would come to that,” I said with a nod. “And while I’ve never wanted to betray them, my sister is more important.”
“Good.” She flashed me a quick smile. “Then the next thing that I’ll need you to do for me is get me a copy of Glen’s magic journals, either from the sorcery classroom or from his house.”
I blinked at her in surprise. “What do you need those for?”
She shook her head. “I don’t need them, and I can’t tell you who or why. But it only has to be a copy, a photograph or something we can read, so he won’t notice that they’re missing or anything.”
I tried to figure it out for myself. Glen didn’t do a lot of sorcery, since most of his time training was spent on horseback riding, sword fighting, jousting—the proper skills for a young knight. The sorcery class with our teacher, Julie, was his elective at Crowther, but I didn’t know how seriously he studied it. He certainly wouldn’t be learning anything dangerous at school.
The book I’d given them contained notes written by a sorcerer, so maybe they needed help decoding his spell. I certainly didn’t want to give them any more dangerous knowledge about opening a gate, even if their reasons could simply be to help magikin trapped on the other side of the Veil. But why would they choose Glen specifically? There were other sorcery students at school, and the teacher’s books would have the most information. I guessed that I was having my loyalty to the faeriekin tested.
I took a deep breath. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
“Good.” Zil looked up at the sun. “I think we’d better get going if we’re going to drive back while there’s still light. I wouldn’t want to be on that road in the dark.”
I picked up my broom and we flew back to the car. I sat stiffly as we flew, hyperaware of Zil’s arms around me. She was just holding on so she wouldn’t fall off.
When we got back into town, she asked me if I wanted to go somewhere else. “We don’t have to talk about serious stuff, just chill,” she said.
Like friends. I heard it hanging in the air between us, even though she didn’t say it.
I shook my head without looking at her. “No, I’ll just go home. I’ve got a lot to think about.”
The next problem was to figure out how I could get at Glen’s magic journals. I wasn’t sure if he would keep them at his house or in his rooms at his grandfather’s castle, but I’d never been in either one. Glen’s family didn’t really invite guests over to their house: our group of friends always ended up at Ashleigh’s, where her dad was friendly and gave us fr
ee reign of the house. His rooms at the castle were also private; I couldn’t imagine going into the bedroom of a guy that I wasn’t even dating. I’d taken the book from the castle library and I didn’t want to repeat the experience of sneaking around right under the noses of the Seelie Court.
But Zil was right that Glen might keep a copy of his notes in the sorcery classroom at Crowther. I kept a notebook, a portfolio of my pictures, and a box of film waiting to be developed in Jennifer’s photography classroom. There had to be a record of his work at the school.
The school didn’t have strong security other than magical locks on the outside doors, and as a student I could get through those no problem. I just had to find an opportunity to get in to Julie’s classroom when no one else was there, snap some pictures, and get out before someone found me.
On Tuesday afternoon at school, I excused myself from my friends during lunch. “I’ve got to run an errand, so I’ll see you guys in class.”
Kai had a funny look on his face as he watched me stand up. “Can I go along and help?”
I shook my head. “No, I’ll do fine on my own.” I bent down and gave him a quick kiss good-bye, then gave him a significant look that said I didn’t want him to follow me.
He didn’t know the details of my conversation with Zil the day before, but he must have suspected something, because he frowned at me. “Well, okay.”
“‘Bye, Rosa,” Ashleigh said, flashing me a smile. Glen and Heather barely looked up from their food.
I kept an eye out for other people in the hallway as I made my way upstairs. The sorcery class met on the second floor of the old house that had been converted into the school, and I had to pass by the faculty lounge on the way. The teachers were already inside having lunch, though, and all of the students were downstairs in the dining hall, so I didn’t run into anyone on the way. I was grateful because the fewer people who I had to make excuses to, the better.
Fae of Calaveras Trilogy Box Set Page 40
