by AC Washer
“That’s bull.”
“No. Under the queen, that’s called survival.”
Chapter 18
When we’d returned to Edon’s desk, a body bag was lying next to it. Snoring. Loudly.
Edon stepped next to it.
“Louie,” Edon called over to a desk three down from his.
“Yeah, Chief.”
“What’s this?”
“Body bag, Chief.”
“Yes, but why is the human in it?”
“Supply was out of earplugs. We thought the bag might help.”
Deena’s snore choked on itself before going back to its natural seesaw rhythm.
“Chief, you taking it home with you?”
“Humans aren’t pets, Louie.”
Louie frowned. “Holding says they won’t take her. Can’t take much more of this—Orcs sound prettier.”
Edon rubbed his eyes. “Load her up in the backseat. And get her out of the body bag.”
“Yes, Chief!” Louie scooped up Deena, slung her over his shoulder, and marched out the precinct doors.
“Shall we?” Edon asked, motioning in the direction Louie went.
“I guess so,” I muttered, exhausted. I couldn’t process any more.
My bio dad was my foster brother, I was getting married to stay alive, and I was about to undergo the investiture where my great-grandmother was going to try to possess my body.
None of this felt real.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have few weeks to process everything—just one or two days before they dragged me to the investiture. Maybe my brain would jumpstart between now and then so I could figure a way out of this mess.
I bent down to grab Deena’s purse. It was heavier than I expected, which said a lot. As I heaved it onto my shoulder, keys shifted in the side pocket, clinking against each other.
“Hey, Chief?” Edon turned to a petite blonde, who fluffed her hair as soon as he laid eyes on her. “You’ve got a phone call.”
“Later, Renee.”
“But it’s the council,” she said, pouting her lips far enough out to rival a blowfish.
Edon sighed. “Which one?”
“Aaron.”
Edon muttered something under his breath. “Tell him I’m busy.”
“He said if you said that to tell you that you either talk to him now or he will bench the loyalist side of the force and replace them with pixies.”
“If he thinks he can blackmail me—” Edon stormed past me and toward the office, Renee scurrying after him, and left me…alone.
Alone in a precinct with only a smattering of fae cops at their desks.
Well, they all heard what he said about heading to the car.
I had a hard time not smiling as I walked as fast as I dared right on through the precinct doors.
Louie would have put Deena in his police cruiser, so I’d have to leave her behind. But honestly? She’d be fine. It wasn’t her life they wanted to ruin.
As soon as I got to Deena’s parked car I ran, pressing the key fob’s unlock button and sliding into the driver’s seat.
I locked the door and jammed the keys into the ignition, deja vu sweeping over me. Only this time, I swerved through a parking lot without Deena’s legs hanging out the window.
Instead, I saw Louie in my rearview mirror, an empty body bag in his arms, his shouts drowned out by the van engine as I floored it.
By the time I made it to vomit road, sirens blasted behind me. I pressed down on the gas, but the jarring up and down of the van was going to pop a tire or something if I didn’t let up a little.
I hated this minivan. Really hated this minivan.
And when police lights showed up in my rearview mirror, I was ready to torch the green slug.
Instead, I went faster, slamming against the mini hills and ditches that dotted the road like I had a death wish.
Between jerking lifts and jarring thuds, I could see the police car gaining as it seemed to bounce from one ditch to the next like a ping pong ball.
I’d made it halfway down the road when I’d had one thud too many. A tire popped like a shotgun going off, the front right of the van digging deep into ground.
I slammed my fists into the wheel, wanting to scream. I climbed out, glaring as Edon stepped out of his car, his face twisted into a menacing scowl.
But I didn’t care.
“In the back. Now,” he said, voice tight, as he jerked his arm to his car.
“No way.”
“Now,” Edon said as he stalked toward me like my dad used to, his threatening eyes never leaving mine.
I scrambled away until I’d backed myself against the car. I swallowed as static seemed to fill my brain, scrambling my thoughts.
He kept coming—closer and closer, his eyes flashing in anger—until his honey-brown eyes melted into hazel, his tan face becoming the pale white of the only man I’d ever truly feared.
My breathing hitched as he took another step forward.
Stop! Or at least that’s what I wanted to shout as he glared at me, his hands curled into fists, his ugly, reddened eyes glaring at me.
“You witch,” he said, his eyes going from me to the wrecked car behind me and back again. “You think you can do this and get away with it?”
He was close enough now that I could smell the alcohol—feel the flecks of spittle on my cheeks as he shouted in my face.
The sound of the screen door opening was enough to pull my eyes away from my dad. Caleb. He shouldn’t be here. He was supposed to be in school.
The part of me that knew this wasn’t real—that it wasn’t happening again—wanted to scream at Caleb to leave now.
I knew the ending. I knew it—but I couldn’t relive it. Not again. I scrambled through my mind, fighting, tearing out some sense of control. I couldn’t watch Caleb die in front of me again.
I wanted to blast the image away. Wanted to hide, knowing there wasn’t a single stupid thing I could do except scream. So I did. I screamed, and screamed, and kept screaming, because sometimes, that’s all there’s left to do.
When I opened my eyes, it was so bright that I had to close them again. When I cracked them open again and saw the sky, I scrambled up, looking around. I was still on the bumpy dirt road that led to town. Deena’s minivan still had a blown front tire and—
I spun around.
Edon laid crumpled on the ground in front of me.
Heart thumping wildly, I shot next to him only to see his chest move as he breathed.
I swallowed. My hands were clammy as I looked between Edon and Deena’s car.
I nudged Edon. His chest was moving, but he didn’t stir. I nudged him harder. Nothing. This time, I walked around him and kicked him in the butt.
I should have felt bad, kicking him when he was unconscious, but all I felt was relief that he still didn’t move an inch—and maybe there was just a little bit of satisfaction poking through.
No longer worried that he’d wake up as soon as I closed the car door, I grabbed Deena’s purse from the van and slid into the cruiser, the door still open from when Edon ran out of it to grab me.
One look at the back seat assured me that Deena was in the back seat where Louie had left her. Well, on the floor of the back seat, anyway. Apparently, she’d had a rough ride as well.
I’d have checked to make sure she was okay, but after she ripped out a long, drawn-out snore, I figured she was fine enough.
I drove off the road a little to get around Officer Edon and Deena’s minivan and then kept going.
We were going to Denver, and no fae was going to stop us.
Chapter 19
When I pulled into the hospital parking lot, I knew I had to hurry. I gazed up at the large glass and brick structure—built like a wave gone sideways—and swallowed.
I clenched my hand around Deena’s card and slid out of the cruiser.
Deena had stopped snoring about a half hour ago, but she still hadn’t woken up. I opened her door and
found her hair splayed all across her face, her orange and brown peasant skirt bunched up around her knees.
I shook her shoulder.
Nothing.
I shook it harder.
She slapped my hand away.
Hope burst through me, and I began tapping her cheek.
“Wha—what are you—Stop that!” Deana said, about to slap back before she opened her eyes and saw me. “Kella! What the hell you doing—” She paused, taking in the fact that she was lying on the bottom of a car. She grabbed ahold of the backseat, hauled herself up, and stared out the window. Then, finally, she looked back at me. “I’m in a police car,” she said flatly.
I nodded.
“Wanna tell me what I’m doing in a police car?”
I held out the keys to the cruiser. “It’s kind of a long story.”
Deena dragged her hand over her eyes before pulling them down, exposing the red underside of the skin beneath her eyes.
“You’d better start talking right now.”
“Don’t you remember what happened at the police station?”
“Police station? Aw hell, I thought that was a dream. Wait…am I still dreaming?”
I shook my head.
“So you…” She looked around as if someone might be lurking nearby, listening in on our conversation. She shifted closer to me. “So you really are a fairy?” she said, her voice several volumes lower.
“Um, elf, actually.”
“Damn.”
“I thought you didn’t cuss.”
“Girl, give me some credit. There’s a lot more swear words where that come from and I ain’t said one of them yet. Now what we doing at a hospital?” Deena froze. “Wait. Kella, you got something going on in that brain I don’t like. This is Caleb’s hospital. You running from the fae to your brother? He can’t help you. Kella, he’s in a coma. What are you thinking?!”
I held up my hands. “Yeah, the fae are after me, but I’ve been listening in on dispatch, and they only found Edon thirty minutes ago. Edon told them he had me right before I, uh, did something.”
“What happened—did you hurt Officer Edon?”
“What? No! He’s a little unconscious, that’s all.” And still was, last I heard.
“A little unconscious…And what’s your plan now? And don’t tell me we’re going to see your brother, because if I was one of those fairy people, that’s the first place I’d look for you.”
“I’ve got to see Caleb.”
“You ain’t listening to a word I say,” Deena said, throwing her arms up.
“No, you don’t understand. The fae—well, some of them—want Caleb dead. I don’t have time to explain. If you hadn’t been sleeping off pixie dust for the last hour—”
“Only an hour? Just how fast were you going?”
“I’m in a police cruiser. It doesn’t matter. Anyway” —she shook her head at me but I ignored her— “the point is I need to heal my brother before they try to make me queen.”
“You can do that?”
“Well, they say my magic is keeping him alive. And since he kept getting better while I was in the hospital and only got worse once I left, I figure being close to him is all he needs to heal. I hope.” Because if I was wrong, I was screwed. I had no idea how to work this whole magic thing.
“Okay, I get that,” Deena said.
“And if they find me and do the investiture…Well, from what Caleb says, I’m pretty sure they’re telling him he has to die so I can have my magic back. But if he’s already better because I healed him…”
“From what Caleb…” Deena took a deep breath. “So now you’re talking to Caleb who’s in a coma and he’s telling you they’re gonna kill him?”
“Yeah. You know, you’re taking this a lot better than I thought you would.”
Deena shook her head. “Way I see it, I’ve got a foster kid I’m removing because of child endangerment, another kid about to die, and I’m facing a lot of mess to make sure you two stay alive. All the fairy stuff comes second. I’ll think about that crazy sh—stuff when we get you safe.” Deena huffed out a breath. “Now what do we need to do next to make sure ‘safe’ happens?”
I dangled her DHS identification in front of her. “I need you to get me in.”
Deena snatched it from me. “Where’d you put my purse?”
I didn’t know why I thought that it would be so hard to get to see Caleb. No one had bothered stopping us as we entered the hospital’s large, glass doors. The security guard hanging out near the front desk didn’t even spare us a glance as Deena navigated us toward where we needed to go.
But in the end, it was Deena’s badge that was going to get me into the ICU.
“I’m here to take this girl for a visit to her brother, Caleb James,” she said.
The woman at the ICU reception desk turned to her computer screen, typing in a few things. “Looks like he’s in room 312—third door on the left…Wait, looks like he already has a visitor.”
“Who?” I asked, surprised. Not many people knew Caleb—he was kind of an introvert.
“Um…” The woman peered at her screen. “Says it’s a family friend.”
I turned toward Deena, my eyes wide. “There were no family friends.” I bolted down the hall, Deena running after me. If some fae already got to Caleb by passing for a friend, I didn’t know what I’d do.
I pushed his door open, out of breath, praying he was still alive, that this ‘family friend’ hadn’t done something awful to him.
Caleb looked small and pale, surrounded by plastic tubing. His body seemed like it was being held together by casts alone, but that wasn’t what grabbed my attention: it was the gaunt, orange-haired woman sitting next to him.
Her sunken deep blue eyes met mine, peering up at me as though looking through a fog. Those eyes—I saw them in the mirror every single morning. She smiled, her lips dry and cracked, teeth stained brown and dark yellow.
“Kella,” she said, her voice wobbly and hoarse. “I thought you might come.”
I swallowed, my gaze darting between her and Caleb, not sure which image was more disturbing. But I knew—knew—that this wasn’t some fae who’d come to kill my brother.
Even though she bore little resemblance to the picture of the vibrant, red-headed woman I’d found when I was six, I still recognized her.
Deena’s face was a mask of neutrality as she asked, “Excuse me, but who are you?”
“I’m Kella’s mother—the queen.” At the word queen, she laughed, a hysterical sound that sent goosebumps racing down my arms. “Queen,” she murmured again before shaking her head as if trying to clear it.
Even though I had already guessed, I still stood there in shock—a shock that only intensified when she added, “Kella needs to complete the investiture.”
I gaped at her. Where was the run far, far away and never return? Or the I love you so much—look how much you’ve grown? I wasn’t an expert on family reunions, but telling me to go back and get possessed by my great-grandmother was the last thing I’d expected.
“What?” I said, because that was the only word I could manage to push out. All the others seemed to back up into each other like some sort of verbal traffic jam.
“Kella, while I’m living and my mind is clear, she can’t get to you,” she said, tapping her head. “I have to be dead—or something close to it. That way, the queen and all that power binds to the staff. They told you about the staff, right?”
“Yes, but…this isn’t possible. Everyone’s trapped in their glamours. How can that happen with you still alive?”
Deena glanced at my mom and back to me, taking a step back as if to say this conversation was out of her area of expertise.
“Twelve years of this,” she said, tapping her right hand—a hand that I now realized held a needle. “All so we stay in our glamours—so everyone believes me dead. Twelve years of keeping her in that staff, away from my mind.” She laughed. “The queen’s bound to the investiture
staff, but she won’t be in a few hours. In a few hours, I’ll—first time in years.” She nodded her head, her hands trembling. “Need to be clean and wait. You understand?”
No, I didn’t understand. Not at all.
“You take drugs to—to keep the queen out?”
“Yes.” My mom jerked her head again, a sort of tic. Her hands trembled a bit more before stopping. She shook her head. “Queen can’t do much against this.” She tapped the needle against the chair, but she fumbled it. I winced as the needle fell, skittering across the linoleum floor.
“For the best,” she said, staring at it longingly from her chair. “For now.”
My mom was a drug addict.
The realization struck me as hard as any punch my dad had landed. After all this time…
First, I’d thought she’d abandoned me. Even when my dad said she was a druggie—that she’d overdosed—I’d never believed him. I thought instead that she’d saved herself. Still not mother-of-the-year material, but then Deena said she’d died exactly like my dad had said. But when I’d found out my parents were really fae, I’d started to hope I’d have a mother among them—albeit a twisted one who farmed me out as a changeling. But that was yanked from me, too. I was told she was dead yet again.
But now, right in front of me—proof positive—was my mother. A drug addict who was trying to save me—save us—from the queen.
Tears stung my eyes, and I didn’t know whether to be happy because she was alive or to cry because she was living like this—all for the hope that I’d go through the investiture and—and what?
If she was planning on getting clean—of bringing the queen back into her mind… Realization swept through me, the pieces clicking together.
With the queen in my mother’s mind, there wouldn’t be any power in the investiture staff. When I was crowned, nothing would happen—everyone would think the process was broken. I would be free!
Had that really been what she’d planning for all these years?
I stared at my mother, trying hard to look past the yellowed eyes, the sagging skin.
But what about her?
