And darkness envelops everything.
Three
Waking up is like clawing my way through thick, sticky mud while someone whacks my head repeatedly with a hammer. When I finally manage to unglue my eyelids and blink several times, I squint at my blurry bedroom, trying to remember how I got home and into bed.
Except this isn’t my bedroom.
Alarm rushes through me, clearing the haze and causing my head to pound even more. Nausea crawls up my throat as recent events flood my brain. The blood on Georgia’s face—Chelsea calling the cops—the party—an earthquake splitting the ground open and—what the hell happened last night? That last bit can’t have been real. There must have been something weird in Val’s drink.
My pulse thumps in my ears as I take in the unfamiliar bedroom and its stylish furnishings. On the other side of the room, someone opens the door and walks in. “Oh, you’re awake,” he says. “Morning.”
“Dash? Where am … Did you abduct me? What the actual fu—”
“Whoa, hold on there, Miss Potty Mouth.” He picks up a chair and moves it closer to the bed. “Mom’s nearby. She doesn’t appreciate language like that.”
I gape at him. “This is your house?” I had no idea rooms this nice existed in the crummy little town of Stanmeade. “What the hell am I doing here?”
“Well,” he says as he drops into the chair, “I had to rescue you from the mess you made.”
“The mess I made?” I press my hands over my face so I don’t have to look at him. The pounding ache behind my eyes intensifies and the nausea threatens to overwhelm me. “What was in that drink?” I mumble.
“Nothing sinister,” he says lightly. “Faeries don’t respond well to the alcohol humans manufacture, that’s all. I guess you’ve managed to stay away from it until now, otherwise you’d be familiar with the hangover effects.”
I lower my hands and push the duvet back. “You know what, Dash? You can make fun of me all you want. I don’t care, especially considering ‘faerie’ is probably the weakest taunt you’ve ever come up with.” I stand, my feet sinking into the plush carpet. “Just let me out of here so I can get home.”
Dash rises. “That’s going to be a little difficult.”
I place my hands on my hips and give him my fiercest glare—which probably isn’t that fierce, given my current state. “You’re not seriously going to try and stop me, are you?”
“No, I’m not going to stop you from doing anything. I just need to explain a few things first. Well, a lot of things, actually. So you should probably sit down.”
“I don’t think so.” I push past him, glancing at the mirror over the dresser, and— “What the—” I gasp, almost tripping over my own feet. I grip the edge of the dresser and stare for several horrified moments at the strands of bright color mixed in with my dark brown hair.
“Em?”
“My hair is blue!” I screech. I swing around, regretting it immediately when the room keeps spinning despite the fact that I’ve come to a stop.
“Oh. Yeah. I forgot you couldn’t see that before.”
“Why is my hair blue?”
He sighs. “You were born that way.”
My voice is slow and shaky as I say, “I was not born with blue hair.”
“You were. You just haven’t been able to see it until now. It’s … well, it’s a faerie trait. You’re a magical being, but your magic is kind of … faulty. Sometimes it’s there—like the first time you saw me when I was actually hidden by a glamour—but most of the time it isn’t. Well,” he adds with a frown, “until last night when it exploded all over everything. It hasn’t disappeared since then, so I have a feeling it’s here to stay now.”
Silence fills the room for several seconds, until I become aware of the fact that my mouth is hanging open. “You’re insane,” I whisper.
“I’m not insane. I’m just not doing this part particularly well, it would seem. Which isn’t entirely my fault, I’d like to point out, seeing as you’re already strongly biased against me.”
“My strong bias exists for excellent reasons!” I yell. “Which now include the fact that you dyed parts of my hair blue!”
He blinks. “You need to get past the hair thing. It doesn’t come close to being the biggest revelation of the day.”
“This is complete crap.” I turn and head for the door—but he gets there first and blocks the way with his body.
“You need to hear me out, Em. You’re going to be horribly confused if you don’t let me explain everything.”
I swivel around and head for the opposite side of the room, to the glass double doors through which I can make out a balcony. I don’t particularly want to climb down the side of the building in my current state, but I’ll do it if it’s the only way out of this room. I tug the doors open, hurry outside, and freeze.
In the expansive garden below, which is washed in the pale light of dawn, the trees and rose bushes are glowing. Not due to artificial lighting, but as if the luminescence emanates from within the plants themselves. Blueish white roses, and luminous purple leaves. Silver water trickles over the rocks in the water feature at the garden’s center, where two tiny creatures that look like winged horses are drinking.
“Get me out of here,” I whisper. My hands rise to squeeze the sides of my face, as if this is a terrible dream I can force myself to wake from. “Take me back home.”
Above the thudding of my pulse in my ears, I hear Dash’s footsteps moving closer. “I can’t. Aside from all the things I still have to explain, you also need to tell me exactly what you did last night.”
“Take me back.”
“Emerson, you can’t hide from this. I know you didn’t expect everything to change, but now it has, so—”
“Take me back!” I yell, grasping his T-shirt in both my hands and tugging him closer. “I want to wake up. In my own bedroom. Far away from you and your—”
“Fine!” He removes my fists from his clothing. “If you insist on being so difficult. If you insist on ignoring what’s right in front of your eyes.” He holds his hand up, palm facing the bedroom, and something pen-shaped flies through the air—through the freaking air—and into his grasp. The blood drains from my face as my brain rejects what I’m seeing. Pinpricks of light slide across my vision as Dash writes on the wall beside the balcony door. His hand encircles my wrist and tugs me forward into the wall—into the wall—and when everything vanishes into darkness, I’m so relieved because I know the nightmare is coming to an end. I know I’ll wake up soon.
“Happy now?” Dash says.
The darkness melts away, and I’m standing on the road a few houses down from Chelsea’s. The kid from next door rides down the driveway on his older brother’s battered bicycle. “Morning, Em,” he says as he rides past, lifting his hand to wave at me, then returning it swiftly to the handlebars as he wobbles.
I blink. Without looking back, I start walking. Quickly, almost at a run, as my brain works furiously to come up with a logical explanation for what just happened. This is some kind of super vivid dream. Or maybe it was a vivid dream, and I’ve just woken up—on the street? Barefoot? I falter and throw a glance over my shoulder, but Dash is nowhere to be seen. Obviously, because I was never with him. I’ve been dreaming. Flip, there must have been something seriously weird in Val’s drink last night. Something more than just alcohol.
I come to a sudden halt as an image of Val tumbling into a crack in the earth flashes across my vision. “That never happened,” I whisper to myself. “Val is fine.” I press my hands over my face, breathing in slowly and pushing aside the single thought that keeps trying to force its way to the front of my mind: I’m mentally ill, just like my mother.
I shake my head and hurry up the driveway, feeling for my phone as I go. It isn’t in any of my pockets, though. Did I leave it at the party last night? I push the back door open and walk into the kitchen.
“Emerson!”
I flinch and look up. Chelsea r
ises from the table and takes a few fumbling steps backward, knocking a box of cereal off the counter in the process. Val’s Uncle Pete, his uniform buttons straining against the bulge of his stomach, gets to his feet. He keeps his wary gaze on me as Chelsea asks, “Where have you been?”
“Uh …” That’s a good question, actually. One I wish I knew the answer to. “I knew you were pissed off,” I explain carefully, “and I didn’t want to make things worse, so I stayed away. And I’m so sorry about fighting with Georgia. But you know we argue all the time.” My gaze flits to Pete before returning to Chelsea. “It isn’t something you need to get the cops involved for.”
I expect her to shout at me like she did last night, but her grip on the counter tightens as she swallows and looks at Pete. His fingers twitch, his right hand clenching and unclenching. “What happened at the Masons’ house last night, Emerson?”
“The—the Masons’ house?”
“Don’t pretend you know nothing,” Chelsea says, a slight wobble evident in her voice. “We’ve heard all about it. We saw the video.”
“What video? What are you talking about?”
Pete moves forward, places his cell phone on the table, and pushes it toward me. I take a step closer and look down at the grainy, shaky footage of a bonfire and people laughing. The fire moves out of view as the person holding the camera turns and almost bumps into Val. After a quick apology, Val walks away. More laughter, someone shouts, “Emerson’s drunk,” and then the camera follows Val. It gets close enough to pick up her voice as she says, “I swear, I wish the earth had just split open and swallowed me whole.”
My blood chills. I watch myself swaying, eyes half-closed. “So what? Then let the earth split open and swallow you whole.”
I know what’s coming before I see it. Goosebumps race across my skin as the footage wobbles again, then focuses on the ground. The earth rips itself open in one grinding, shuddering zigzag. Val slips and disappears. I hear screams and shouting, and then the video cuts off.
My brain wants to reject what I’ve just seen, but it can’t. It happened, I say silently to myself. It actually happened.
Chelsea begins swearing repeatedly beneath her breath, and for some reason, Dash’s voice resonates in my head: Mom’s nearby. She doesn’t appreciate language like that.
“What the hell was that?” Pete asks, his voice a whisper now.
I open my mouth, but I can’t come up with an answer.
“Holy heck, it’s like having flipping Carrie living under my own roof,” Chelsea wails. “You have to take her away, Pete. Please just get her out of here.”
“Wait! I … I didn’t do that. It must have been a coincidence. An earthquake happened at the same time I was talking. You don’t think I could actually make that happen, do you?” I’m trying to convince myself as much as them. “And what about Val? Did she—”
“You don’t need to worry about Val,” Pete says. “But you do need to come with me.”
“Are you kidding? You—I mean—didn’t you see what else was happening there? Illegal underage drinking? You should be dealing with that, not this weird earthquake coincidence.”
“Don’t try to change the subject, Em.” Slowly, as if approaching a dangerous animal, Pete comes toward me. I take a quick step backwards, moving beyond his reach. He frowns and hesitates. “Em, please. We don’t need to make this unpleasant. We just want to get you somewhere safe so you don’t hurt anyone.”
“But I’m not going to hurt anyone, I swear.”
Another two policemen move from the hallway into the kitchen, and I realize they must have been waiting there the whole time. They’re backup. Because I’m supposedly too dangerous for one cop to handle. I shake my head, barely able to believe this is happening, as I inch further away from them.
A pause.
No one speaks.
Then all three policemen lunge toward me. Chelsea screams, chairs are knocked aside, and moments later I’m being dragged outside. Rough paving grazes my feet, and pain shoots through my shoulders as my arms are almost yanked from their sockets.
“LET GO!” I yell.
Their hands spring away from me so fast that the momentum swings the three men around and dumps them on the ground. “What the hell?” Pete groans. He pushes himself onto his knees and dives for my legs.
I jump backwards out of reach. “Get away from me!”
As if kicked with superhuman strength, Pete slides across the grass, through the door, and into the kitchen table. Chelsea shrieks again. At the sound of a crackle, I look down and see sparks—sparks?—whizzing around my hands. Icy terror drenches me.
“Time to go,” a voice says behind me. Something grips my arm, and before I have time to tear myself away, I’m pulled into darkness, a silent scream on my lips.
Four
The darkness evaporates to reveal Dash at my side and a garden bathed in the golden glow of sunrise. The same garden I saw from the balcony minutes ago. I shove Dash away from me, drop onto my knees, and throw up on the grass.
“Lovely,” he says when I’m done. “Thank goodness I didn’t take you back inside the house.”
“What happened to … to Val?” I gasp, trying to swallow down the urge to throw up again and failing.
When my retching finally ends, Dash says, “She’s fine. One of my teammates got her out of the ground. She’s already forgotten the whole thing.”
“How could she have …” My words trail off as I look up and see one of those miniature winged horses soaring through the air behind Dash. I climb slowly to my feet and look around. The roses and leaves are still faintly glowing, but their luminescence is less obvious now with the sun’s golden light filtering through the trees. The little horse lands in a shallow part of the rock pool and begins frolicking, tossing droplets of silver water about as it plays. Wherever the water lands, a silver mushroom pops up.
My brain keeps repeating the same message: I must be dreaming. This is not possible. I’ve gone off the deep end and entirely lost my mind. But I don’t think my imagination is capable of coming up with this kind of fantastical detail. And everything seems so real. The fresh scent of flowers, the prickle of grass beneath my feet. The sour taste of puke in my mouth.
“Explain,” I whisper. “Make this make sense.”
Dash folds his arms over his chest. “Okay then. Once upon a time there lived a little girl whose name was—”
I cut him off with a glare. “Don’t turn my life into some fairytale crap. Just give me the facts.” Something bright flies from the tip of my tongue, and my immediate thought is that I must be so angry I’m actually spitting saliva. But no. It’s a spark of light. The same kind that crackled around my hands after Pete was somehow thrown away from me. Fear slithers down my spine as I clamp my mouth shut.
“Okay, here are the bare-bone facts,” Dash says. “Magic is real, and it exists in a realm that overlaps with the world you grew up in. Fae live on this side; humans and all the other non-magical creatures you recognize live on the other side. I’m a faerie, like you. I’m also a guardian, which means I’m trained to fight dark magic, dangerous fae, that sort of thing. The day you and I first met, I had an assignment on your side of the veil.”
“The day you ruined everything,” I murmur, remembering my mother wailing, covering her head with her hands, shouting about things that weren’t real.
Dash looks annoyed that I’ve interrupted his story. “You have got to stop hating me for that. You know they would have taken her away anyway. Maybe not that day, but soon afterwards. She wasn’t in her right mind—”
“Don’t you dare talk about her.”
“Anyway,” he continues loudly, “nobody was supposed to see me, but you did. And with that color in your hair, I knew you were a faerie. But then it kind of flickered and was gone, and you couldn’t see me anymore. It was as if everything magical about you was suddenly bottled up, inaccessible. Once we were done with the assignment, I mentioned you in my Guild repor
t, and they—”
“Your Guild report?” I say with a snort. “You were like twelve. Does this Guild of yours breed child soldiers or something?”
“No. We’re not soldiers, and by the time training is done, we’re not children anymore. And I was thirteen, not twelve. I’d just begun my training. It was a group assignment, but we were all in different areas of the park, and I was the only one who had any interaction with you. So yes, I reported it afterwards. Faeries with dodgy magic who think they’re human shouldn’t be ignored.”
“Oh, right, because I’m probably a danger to society or something like that,” I say with a roll of my eyes.
“Potentially, yes.” Dash’s tone is deadly serious, and an image of the ground ripping open comes immediately to mind. I wrap my arms around myself and look away. “I don’t know if the Guild investigated you at all,” Dash continues, “because it was none of my business. I got on with my training, and it was about six months later when you showed up near another one of my assignments. Then a few months later you were there again.”
“I remember seeing you,” I murmur. “I figured you must live somewhere near Stanmeade. I thought it was weird, since it’s so far away from where I first saw you. In that park near where Mom and I used to live. But I was so mad at you that I didn’t focus too much on it being a weird coincidence.”
“Well, the Guild didn’t think it was a coincidence. They thought something else might be going on. That maybe your weird on-off magic was causing problems, or attracting trouble-makers or something, and that’s how I ended up with three assignments near you. But they couldn’t find any connection, and someone on the Council said you should be left alone. That the Guild shouldn’t interfere with you unless there was evidence that your magic really was breaking free and causing trouble. But the rest of the Council wanted someone to keep tabs on you, just in case. They complained about it being a waste of time and resources for a trained guardian to do it, though, so I volunteered.” His mouth pulls up one side in a half-grin. “We were encouraged to take on extra projects outside of training. It looks good on the resume. Shows initiative or something.”
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