I stared at her.
“You’ve been gone a long damn time,” she said.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Doubt it.”
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“What month do you think it is, Kevin?”
The inevitable question. The hairs on my arms prickled. At least she hadn’t asked what year. “Just tell me.”
“How does August sound?”
August? “Like bullshit.”
“You can think so if you want, but that’d be a waste of, well, everything.”
“August,” I said.
“Yeah. You don’t call. You don’t write. People worried you were, like, dead in a Faery ditch.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah,” she said again. “Don’t worry. I called your dad and told him you were among the living. When you get back, you’re probably grounded.”
“I’m eighteen. I can’t be grounded.”
“He’s pissed, is all I’m saying.”
“Understood. Did you bother to tell anyone else?”
“The usual suspects,” she said. “Rude is also pissed, but he’ll get over it faster than your father. He gets the stakes.”
That made me feel marginally better. “Amy?”
“Still under water.”
“I thought so.”
“You mean you were afraid of that,” Beth said.
I glared at her.
“It’s all over your face.”
“Thanks for letting me know,” I said.
She had the good grace to at least look sheepish. “Sorry.”
Beth set the coffee down on the floor and sat down cross-legged beside it, pulling the strap of her messenger bag over her head. “Amy is incommunicado with most of us. Rude and the rest of them checked up on her for a while, but she got tired of people always asking whether she’s okay. She can take care of herself, she doesn’t want reminders of her old life, blah blah. Her parents don’t know what happened to her. No one could bring themselves to go and tell them she was dead because she’s not, but it’s not like anyone could tell them the truth, right?”
“She ever ask about me?”
“Not once. Sorry, Kevin.”
I winced. Amy had held on to our relationship so hard. Then, she’d let it go so completely.
“The only person she’ll talk to anymore is Malek, because he helped her,” Beth said.
“By giving her the magical tattoo that turned her into a mermaid in the first place?” I didn’t think that fit under the definition of “help.”
“He gave her what she needed,” Beth said.
“No, it was what she wanted. That’s not the same thing.”
Beth narrowed her eyes. “Malek doesn’t do that. He wouldn’t do that to someone—give them what they want, no matter what it is. Not if it didn’t serve a higher purpose.”
“He does it all the time,” I said. “For money.”
“That’s what you heard?” she asked.
I nodded.
“You heard wrong.”
“But—”
“No buts,” she said. “I would know, wouldn’t I? End of discussion.”
“Since when does Malek serve a higher purpose?” I asked.
“Since always. You should get to know him better.”
She unzipped her bag. The sugar and dough scent that wafted out nearly drove me to my knees.
“Donuts?” I asked.
“A dozen glazed,” she said. “From Christie’s.”
The hole-in-the-wall down the street from Malek’s, where they made the freshest-tasting everything.
“Maybe I like you after all,” I said.
“It’s all right if you don’t.” Beth opened the box and passed it to me. “What happened to the fae who cut the Singer?”
“She’s dead.”
“Good.”
No uncomfortable facial expressions. No questions about the circumstances that made killing necessary or fascination with the gory details. Not even an “I’m sorry.” Just approval. I didn’t know Beth very well, but from what I did know of her, that kind of response was out of character.
Apprenticed to Malek? More believable by the minute.
Like she said, she’d know what Malek would and wouldn’t do better than the rest of us. If she said Malek helped Amy by giving Amy what she needed, then I’d have to accept that was what happened even if I didn’t want to. Beth was the mini-Malek.
He’d sent her ahead with the info about Famine. He trusted her. The stuff Beth had to say about Famine made me sit up and take extra notice for sure.
Famine had tried to take out Beth retroactively. I could follow that thought down the rabbit hole to where Beth was some kind of major player the forces of No Good wanted to take out.
I took a donut from the box. The thick, sugary glaze on the outside cracked under my fingers. “If you were Famine, and you were here in the In-Between, where would you choose to set up shop?” I asked.
“I got a pretty decent look at the road and the buildings when I got here,” Beth said. “There’s a couple of rows of these brick buildings behind this one. I’d take one in the back if I were her. That way, I could keep an eye out without being seen, and I could come up behind whoever I was watching without them noticing.”
She took the box from me, pulled out a sticky sheet of wax paper, and spit her gum into it. She crumpled the paper and shoved it in the pocket of her hoodie.
“Why do you want to know?” she asked.
I dodged the question with one of my own. “How long do we have until we need to move?”
“Malek should be here inside half an hour. He gets here, we go.”
“Where, exactly?”
“I’d say the shop, but I get the impression he has somewhere else in mind.”
“He didn’t tell you,” I said.
“Either he hasn’t thought much about it yet or he doesn’t want me to tell you something before he’s ready for you to know it.” She plucked a donut from the box and bit off half of it.
“You can’t keep your mouth shut,” I said.
“I acknowledge the problem. I’m working on the problem.”
In that way, she was exactly the same girl I’d met during the Demon-ocalypse. Maybe Simone was right. People were who they were. Maybe I could use that to my advantage.
“Show me the building where you think Famine is staying,” I said.
She stopped chewing and swallowed the remains of her bite whole. “Why?”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not planning to do anything stupid.”
“Said very often by people who are totally planning to do something stupid.”
“Tell me what you really think, Beth.”
“Why?” she asked again.
“Why do you think she’s suddenly showing an interest in the Singer and me?”
“If I’m some kind of major player in Famine’s mind, y’all are definitely in that category, too.”
“That’s not the only problem.”
“The blessed blade,” Beth said.
I nodded. “You know that it has to be blessed by someone the Singer loves, someone who loves her? Otherwise, it’d just be a knife. It could cut her, but not harm her much, right?”
“Right.”
“Before the Singer went to sleep, we talked about who might’ve blessed the blade. We were thinking it had to be personal. Someone from her human family. But I’m wondering about where Famine fits into the picture now. She could be angling to take us out while we’re hiding out here in the In-Between. I mean, we’re wounded. We’re vulnerable. Or there could be something else going on. Something that has to do with the realm of Faery.”
“I don’t know a lot about that,” Beth said.
“Not yet. I’m sure Malek will teach you.”
“It’s not like we don’t have forever.”
“Seriously?”
“When he took me as an apprentice, he marked me with his blood.
That means he always knows where I am because blood calls to blood. Also, that mark means that other gods will automatically know I’m claimed. And as a special bonus, that also means my regular life is over and I can forget about all the stuff I ever wanted to do or be, because now I only have one path: Malek’s. Plus, I get to be immortal. Eternity has a special, horrible ring to it. Doesn’t it?”
I nodded. “You’re alive, though.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s why I don’t complain more. So what’s the deal with Famine and the realm of Faery?”
The deal hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks.
“Fate,” I said, the flashing-lightbulb-over-my-head clear in my voice.
“You sound surprised,” she said.
“Surprised and worried.”
“Huh,” she said. “I’d say I don’t believe in fate, but my philosophy has shifted a little.”
“Doesn’t matter whether you believe in it,” I said. “It believes in you. Or to be less vague, faeries influence fate. If someone were to slip in and muck around with that—I mean, it’s already on its way to screwed up because of the disease—the consequences could be catastrophic.”
She tossed the half-donut she held back into the box and wiped her hand on her jeans. “No place should have that much power.”
“I didn’t make the worlds,” I said. But she was right. I’d bet that if Simone were awake, she’d agree, too.
The fae had their own story about how the world was created, and it didn’t have anything to do with seven days and an old white dude with a beard who uttered a word that brought the world into being. The fae said that at the beginning of all things, when the Earth was a superheated rock cooling over the course of millions of years, an angel fell in love with the planet and its potential. Because of that love, the angel fell into the center of the Earth, where he slept and dreamed all of life into being. His name when he lived among the stars had been Lucifer. After he fell, he became known as the Dreamer in the Land.
His dreams flowed out of his body on his breath, and his breath rose through all the layers of the Earth—all the realms of the Earth—including the realm of Faery, where those dreams were shaped before they flowed into the Human world. It was only in the Human world where those dreams took on form, where they became people and animals and plants and rocks and every other thing in creation.
Everything in creation was shaped in the realm of Faery. We were shaped by the fae.
That was the brass ring definition of fate if I’d ever heard one. And that was why Simone and I were so hot after fixing the mess in Faery. It was about more than people and land. It was about more than saving a singular species. Either we saved the Faery realm, or everyone, including humans, ended up destroyed.
Bad enough we had the disease to contend with. Bad enough that someone Simone loved, possibly her father, had it out for her. So much worse, now that I could begin to understand why Famine would be stirring the pot as well.
I’d never met Famine. If Beth and Malek had their way, I never would. And, really, I could get with that. Except for the part where she was a new player on the scene, and if I didn’t recognize her when I saw her, or recognize the sound and fury of her thoughts if I heard them, I couldn’t fight against her.
“Show me the building,” I said again.
Beth stood. “I don’t think I like what I’m seeing on your face. If I take you out there, I’m dead. Malek will kill me.”
“If you don’t take me out there, I’m dead. Maybe not now, but some other time not too far off. You and your boss can’t protect me from a freaking Horsewoman of the Apocalypse.”
“Malek is powerful,” she said.
“He can’t be everywhere. And like you said, she’s stronger than he is.”
“Maybe.”
“You’re afraid she is.”
She scowled. “Fuck you, Kevin Landon.”
“You don’t like being told what you feel either, do you?”
Beth studied me for a minute. “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“I’ll take you.”
“That’s it?”
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. When you’re right, you’re right.” She led me out the door and onto the road.
I glanced over my shoulder at Simone’s sleeping form. How could I leave her to investigate and still keep her safe?
The cold morning air sent a shiver up my spine. I covered it by folding my arms across my chest. Somehow, the chill made it easier to breathe the sulfur-tainted air. A breeze gusted. The branches of the oaks across the way rattled and the leaves hissed. Beth’s hair writhed like a nest of snakes. The hem of her hoodie billowed.
I slowed my roll and listened carefully for any danger thoughts I could pick out of the air, anyone coming for us right now. No thoughts other than my own rang in my head.
Beth jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow. I glared at her.
She pointed. “That one.”
The low, brick building looked exactly like the one Simone and I had taken refuge inside, except that it was exactly what Beth had said it was. Behind us. Out of the way. Normal. Not noticeable. No light shone from inside. No smoke wafted.
Maybe no one was in there.
“I need you to stay here and watch the Singer,” I said.
“She doesn’t need watching. She’s asleep.”
“And if I head over there and Famine or someone else uses that as an opportunity to hurt her while I’m gone?”
“If she does—if they do—what do you expect me to do about it?” Beth asked.
“You’re a god’s apprentice,” I said.
“I’m seventeen.”
I shook my head. “You’re not.”
The second the words rolled off my tongue, I wished I could take them back. She was, in fact, a year younger than me, and her whole life had been turned upside down, and she didn’t look as if she was dripping with magic or power.
Though I expected her to, she didn’t call me an asshole or tell me to go fuck myself again. “If you see anything explode, hurry back.”
“Deal,” I said.
I didn’t see any point in trying to be sneaky. I didn’t bother ducking or trying to quiet my step when the concrete gave way to dandelions gone to seed and crushed gravel and sand. I trailed my fingers along the brick-and-mortar walls as I wove a path among the rows of buildings. The taste of the air collected on the back of my tongue. I stopped once, turned my head, and spat on the ground.
No finger of death descended from the sky to touch and shatter me into a thousand pieces. No crow called on the wind. No stray thoughts rammed their way into my head. I walked straight up to the door Beth had pointed to. Before I had a chance to knock, it opened on creaking hinges.
A little girl filled the threshold. Well, she was too little to do that physically, but she seemed to take up a lot more space than she should.
She looked about ten. A dark blue dress with red polka dots hung to her skinned knees. She wore red socks and dark blue Mary Janes. She’d pulled her blond hair into pigtails. Her green eyes were shrewd behind her the tortoiseshell frames of her glasses.
She made my skin crawl. That was bad enough. But there was something else, too. A memory appeared in my mind as if it’d been summoned: my mother’s face. No, more than that. My mother, whole and alive the way she’d been years ago on a day I still saw sometimes in my dreams.
Mom had her brown hair cut in something she called a shag, and I thought it just looked messy, but also good. Summer had streaked it with gold, like the flecks in her brown eyes. She smiled at me, her cheeks flushed from too much sun because she’d forgotten her hat and we’d been to the beach down at Galveston all day. She smelled of sun lotion and salt and a tinge of August sweat, and she wore a purple tank top with an unbuttoned, untucked long-sleeved denim shirt over the top because her sunburn gave her a chill in the air conditioned house. She’d rolled down the hems of her faded, cut-off denim shorts for maxi
mum warmth, but kicked off her flip-flops as I watched. They landed on the linoleum in the kitchen with a shower of sand.
Oranges that smelled like summer lined the sill of the window that looked out on the backyard, where the branches of the oak tree waved in the wind and a squirrel raced along the top of the wooden fence behind it. Newspaper covered the big, oval kitchen table whose chrome pedestal had been so scratched by dog claws that no one could see their reflection in it anymore. We’d lost our yellow Lab, Abby, two months, one week, and three days ago. She’d been fourteen and had cancer. My heart still hurt. I pushed the thought of her away.
Mom peeled the plastic off a pound of ground beef and dumped it in the hot cast iron skillet on the stove. The meat sizzled. The rooster clock over the stove ticked off another minute. The air conditioning clicked on.
Mom’s voice sounded like the crashing of waves. “You worry too much, Kevin,” she said. “You keep working like you do, you’re gonna get that academic scholarship and I’m gonna be so proud of you.”
I’d always wanted one. I’d always wanted to go away to school. I didn’t fit in anywhere and she knew it. She wanted me to go.
It was only later, after she died in the accident, after Dad went down the beer-soaked rabbit hole, that it became an obsession bordering on whatever was worse than obsession. Then I had to get out or die trying. But with Mom? It was different. It was the way it was supposed to be.
“Put some water up, will you?” she asked. “The noodles always take longer to cook. And take a jar of sauce out of the pantry? The one with the peppers.”
“Diavolo,” I said. “The Devil makes the best shit.”
She rolled her eyes at my language, but she didn’t give me any crap about it.
I grabbed the big aluminum stockpot from the cabinet by one handle and flipped it into the sink. I turned on the faucet and watched the water fill the pot and couldn’t help the swelling in my chest because she’d said she’d be proud of me.
She only used that word when she meant it, which made for few and far between times. That made me hungry to hear it. If only I could, one more time. If only I could see my mother’s face somewhere besides my memory.
If I could make this memory real.
I’d slipped into memory without even realizing—not something I did. Not on my own, at least. Someone had sent me into a visceral experience of my past, of a moment that I wished I could get back.
Faery (The Faery Chronicles Book 3) Page 5
