Fixing Fae Problems

by Isa Medina

  Then fury sparked out of nowhere. It surged through my veins, evaporating the dread and anxiety and hopelessness. I scrambled to my feet and stared at Greenie’s bright green eves.

  “You know what, Greenie? Screw this!” Something took flight in the

  distance, but I was beyond caring who heard me. “I’m going to find the

  asshole responsible for all this, and you can eat them for me.” I kept the rage burning within me and reached for the seeker. Fifty-fifty chance of finding my heart’s desire, right? Well, there was only one thing right now I desired above all. And if it led me to my doom, then so be it.

  No more sneaking around. If my inescapable fate was to go down, as recent events had proved, I’d do it fighting. Even Greenie yipped in agreement

  Except the seeker was no longer there.

  I patted my waist in alarm. No artifact dangled from my beltloops. But how? The clasp of the chain wouldn’t undo by itself—it had survived several adventures, so why would it break now?

  Ren.

  It had to have been Ren. When he’d grabbed me around the waist and dragged me toward the exit window.

  “Fricking jerk!” I kicked the underbrush. I was going to strangle

  him. Or better, stab a melon in front of him a thousand times and

  watch him tum into a pincushion. Unluckily for him, he hadn’t lifted the dagger. Too obvious, I supposed, or too big a prize—he wouldn’t want to end up owing me a favor.

  I kicked the ground again. Entirely unsatisfying. But the lack of seeker reminded me that I did still have a backpack full of artifacts.

  In a room | didn’t know how to portal into—even if 1 figured out how to make a portal work.

  But… I] eyed the hound. His green eyes glowed softly in the overwhelming darkness.

  “Greenie. Remember my backpack? Can you take me to it?”

  Greenie stepped around me, sniffling the back of my T-shirt, then made a curt noise of agreement and lowered himself.

  I hopped on, holding on to his neck with all my strength as he leaped forward, barely squeezing into a pitch-black hole between the trunks. My eyes had gotten accustomed to the darkness, but everything

  turned into a blur once Greenie got moving. The trip was jarring, the

  uneven jumps and sharp turns to avoid obstacles rolling my stomach. I tried to concentrate on Greenie’s mossy form under me, the play of his powerful muscles and the certainty of his steps. He didn’t stop to sniffa single time, didn’t change his mind or appear lost.

  When he finally stopped, it took me a few moments to catch my breath. Every bone felt rattled out of their sockets. High-speed run through a dense forest at night—would not recommend.

  Peering into the darkness surrounding us, I saw no hints of the cabin. Although if the Faerie lights inside were off, it would be hard to find.

  “Where is it, Greenie?” ] whispered.

  Greenie pawed the ground and barked, looking straight ahead. I couldn’t see much other than thick tree trunks. Was the cabin right be-hind those?

  “You sure?”

  Another bark. A slightly offended one.

  Greenie dropped his bottom, forcing me off his back. I supposed this was as far as he could take me. Oh. I felt silly as I took in my surroundings with all my senses. The wards surrounding the cabin must be stopping him from going farther.

  I patted his head. “I’m sorry, Greenie. Will you wait here?”

  A happier yip and a swish of his tail was the response. With rubbery legs, I made my way through the trees, feeling around in the darkness and stumbling on raised roots. I kept going straight ahead until I came upon a small clearing with the cabin smack in the middle. Although Faerie had no moon or stars, there was enough ambient light to see its shape—it looked as rustic on the outside as it had on the inside.

  I sighed with relief and trotted forward, following along the wall. The instant I came near, the Faerie crystals inside came alive, spearing the darkness and producing a welcome source of light.

  As I thought, the cabin had no doors. I searched the illuminated bit

  of the forest until I found a rock. Wincing, I slammed it into the glass

  of one of the windows.

  It bounced off like the glass was made of plastic. I tried again, putting a bit more strength into it. Same result. ] tied the other win-dow.

  Nothing of nope.

  Seriously, what was this glass made of? I smashed the window again. Not a scratch. I couldn’t sense any ward imbued in the glass—it was just the toughest layer of melted sand to ever grace a hole in a wall.

  And on its other side, laughing at me, was the bed, the rug, the fireplace. My vision blurred when my gaze fell on the backpack, abandoned by the closed portal. I sniffed, wiping my eyes, blinking to stop any more tears. It did no good.

  “Dammit, Maddie,” I told myself sternly. “No time for this.”

  But really, what did I think I was going to do with the artifacts, any-way? Show up at Harmon’s office and give him the same deal Aidan

  had—artifacts for a name? I didn’t have a Fae Lord backing me. I had

  no advantages. They’d bag me and put me in some cellar and torture me until I gave up the location of the artifacts. They’d probably use one of Lockhart’s spells, just to put a cherry on top.

  The artifacts might not even matter in the end. If it tumed out Har-mon only wanted control over the Institute and wasn’t interested in the artifacts for himself, nothing I could offer would change his mind.

  I wiped my eyes again.

  If only Greenie could find this person like he had found Aidan or this cabin or—

  Wait a minute.

  15

  Greenie. Who always found me, no matter where I was. I had assumed that had something to do with me activating his Eye and awakening him, or returning it to him, or whatever it was that had happened in the basement of the Hub. This whole time, I’d thought that whenever I used my magic to call on him, it was because of this connection that he lmew how to find me.

  But what if it wasn’t?

  I began pacing, rolling the stone between my hands. What if finding something was part of who he was and had nothing to do with our connection? What if that was the reason someone had tumed his Eye inte an artifact?

  Sullivan had been willing to kill us for it He had set a hound on whoever dared interfere in his deal for the Eye. And while he had been present when I had set Greenie free on his soulless Fae, he might’ve assumed that after the fight, the hound would go back to its Eye self.

  With Aidan there, it’d have been confiscated by the Institute.

  What if Greenie’s Eye was the artifact they were trying to get from the Institute? Normal artifacts didn’t work on other artifacts. But Eyes did. Unlike a normal seeker, it could find specific stuff. It could find a specific artifact.

  I covered my mouth in shock at the enormity of the realization.

  Then my brain began working again. If Greenie’s Eye was what they were looking for, none of the artifacts in the vault actually mattered.

  I tossed the stone aside and took out Aidan’s phone. No reception, but all I needed were the photos of the Wishing Well’s wish list. There it was, in Sullivan’s list—the Fae-making artifact along with a note of Sullivan’s strong interest in Eyes. True, the artifact was on everyone’s list, but if Sullivan and his partmer had learned Eyes affected artifacts, they might’ve already found an Eye that acted like the Eye-dagger, ex cept that instead of reversing tradeoffs, it might nullify them altogether.

  If an artifact-finder like Greenie was all they needed, it would ex plain the sudden attack. With their aim within reach, why not throw everything but the kitchen sink?

  I couldn’t use Greenie to barter, of course. | didn’t know how to put him back into Eye form, and I wouldn’t subject him to that.

  A slow smile began to curve my lips; eagerness spread from within me—lacking the bite of fear and desperation but damn thirsty for revenge.<
br />
  No, I couldn’t barter with the Eye, but I could with something else.

  Sullivan had lost both the Eye and the soulless Fae gemstone, and Aidan had kept that gemstone in the power-dampening box.

  ] found a bigger rock, one with sharper edges. It, or perhaps my re-newed thirst for revenge coupled with a push from my magic, managed what my other attempts hadn’t—the window shattered.

  After clearing the leftover shards with the sheath of the Eye-dagger,

  I managed to slip inside the cabin. It looked exactly as we had left it.

  “Don’t worry,” I told the bed Aidan and I had shared. “You’ll be free in no time.”

  The bed did not answer, but a rustling from the ceiling did. Aidan’s bag hung between the beams. Apparently, Lord Velei’s goo-pet had been unable to free itself.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll free you later, too, buddy.”

  I emptied the backpack on the bed and put the box and the Keeper back inside. While I was pretty certain of my new plan, I didn’t want to chance the other artifacts. If there was one thing I’d learned in life, it was that plans didn’t often work as one first envisioned. Luckily for me, though, they did work out. Eventually.

  Hopefully, I’d keep the streak going.

  I tore a chunk of bread off the loaf in the pantry and ate it slowly, visualizing my next steps.

  Aidan’s bag on the ceiling made more rustling noises. | wasn’t

  about to let it free, and I should probably lock it in the pantry so it

  wouldn’t escape through the window, but…

  Hmm.

  Twenty minutes later, I climbed out the window and ate another piece of bread on my way to Greenie. Even though I took the wrong turn inside the darkness of the forest and ended up outside the wards thinking perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea, after all, he appeared within seconds.

  I brought out the box and opened it for him “Okay, Greenie. Smell that magic? Can you take me to the artifact that makes things smell the same?”

  Greenie sniffed the box, which resulted in a sneeze. Foul magic, in-deed. His eyes searched mine, as if making sure I really wanted to do this.

  “Yup.” I answered, returning the box to the backpack and shouldering it. “It’s my new plan—go big or go disappear so nobody ends up

  torturing me.”

  Greenie wagged his tail and lowered obediently, obviously deciding that if the dumb hooman wanted to go deal with dangerous artifacts, then at least he’d get to have a good time watching the resulting mess.

  Soon we were on our way, Greenie speeding through the dark forest and me regretting those chunks of bread. It seemed the type of natural portals Greenie used were far apart on Faerie’s bottom. Perhaps the ley lines didn’t reach this far down as often as they touched the trees growing from the ceiling.

  Eventually, he found one he liked, and into a mass of goo and muck we went The ley line was tiny, so narrow | flattened myself against Greenie’s torso, afraid to lose my head to one of the glowy Faerie crystals protruding among the pebbles.

  Our trip through the ley lines lasted longer than usual. By the time Greenie veered into the wall to take us out, its overwhelming magic was starting to affect me. A slight daze clung to my brain, and I had to force

  myself to focus on our surroundings.

  Greenie had brought me to the thin layer of Faerie lying between Faerie proper and the surface. Gray trees full of gray leaves rose to join the low, rocky ceiling, their branches digging in like roots, while more gray bushes grew among the trunks. Unlike the forests in Faerie, this one was a lot more open, the trees thicker. It gave the impression of being inside a deary block of Swiss cheese.

  I had only been here once before in my search for Aidan. And like that time, Greenie began sniffing around, advancing carefully among the trees. No insect calls or song of birds filled the air, no rustling of leaves under a breeze or scurrying of small animals—we were the only living things in this world.

  Peaceful, but creepy.

  Greenie wamed me with a soft bark then shot forward, sprinting through the forest until we reached a thickening of the trees. They grew around a rock formation rising from the bottom but not quite connecting to the ceiling. Some of the trees draped over the rock, hugging

  it close with their branches. Their trunks had acquired a browning tint to them, green leaves peeking here and there.

  Some kind of Fae house, perhaps?

  I slid off Greenie and approached warily. Glancing back at the hound, I asked, “Is it safe?”

  He sat, wagged his tail, and lolled his tongue. And because I was feeling more like myself instead of a pit of doom and despair, I decided to take that as an of course rather than an | can’t wait to watch you deal with the horrors within.

  The formation was wide and deep. It reminded me of those old burial mounds, but instead of being covered with grass, it was made of solid rock. On the back between two trees, I found a narrow opening, barely shoulder-width. The trees were bigger and more majestic than the rest, their leached colors almost ornamental.

  I studied the dark opening. The ambient Faerie light didn’t pene-trate inside, but unlike my stumbling through the forest earlier, this

  time I remembered Aidan’s phone.

  lis fashlight illuminated a rocky corridor—more of a fissure than Fae-made—littered with fallen leaves, gray and brown and green. They broke sharply under my sneakers as I made my way inside, hoping this was no giant human-eating trap.

  The light from Aidan’s phone dimmed considerably a few steps in, but it was still enough to see my immediate surroundings. The tunnel’s walls were natural, unpolished rock, and the leaves disappeared to re-veal a smooth stone floor.

  I sensed no wards—if only I had the same knack for sensing dor-mant spells—but a familiar awareness tugged at my insides. I had spent so long around artifacts now, that I had gotten too familiar with that particular feeling to notice it anymore. But it rose now, loud and clear. Artifacts ahead.

  I wondered if sensing artifacts was a byproduct of activating Greenie. I had always been able to sense wards, but sensing artifacts this

  strongly was definitely new. I had never felt this awareness while working at the Wishing Well, that was for sure.

  My steps slowed. A dark maw opened at the end of the corridor, completely pitch dark, and the phone’s flashlight weakened to be nearly nonexistent. Fae and electronics—a doomed affair, Which reminded me that not only the phone we had set up to record Aidan and Har-mon’s conversation had caught nothing, thanks to Lord Velei’s appearance, the recording would’ve gone to crap, anyway.

  Tentatively, I moved out of the corridor, keeping a hand on the wall. Faerie crystals became alight, inundating my surroundings with an ethereal, soft light. 1 found myself in a big, square room with a low, domed ceiling supported by the branches of four thick corner columns, carved into the shape of beautiful trees. Or perhaps they weren’t carved so much as trees turned into stone, they were so realistic.

  Gray-green vines spread along the walls, curving over niches on the

  left and right sides, and extended like a protective mantle over wooden

  chests placed underneath. I followed their encroaching travel along the walls up to the main feature of the room.

  On a series of steps rested a solid slab of polished stone, a figure lying on top.

  I pocketed Aidan’s phone and approached slowly, curious. The fig-ure was feminine in appearance, lying on her back, hands clasped over her torso. Long, wavy tresses framed her face and bare arms. She wore a soft sleeveless tunic and a breastplate made of the same type of opaque crystal as Fae blades. She wore no boots, her feet dainty and elegant peeking from under the tunic.

  The statue was incredibly lifelike. 1 had seen some amazing examples of stonework, but this… This could be an actual Fae simply lying down for a nap. Such amazing detail, down to her eyelashes and—

  I retreated all the way to the wall.

 
; Holy crap.

  This was no statue. It was an actual Fae.

  16

  She lay on the stone, still and unaware of my presence.

  No kidding—she’s dead. Cautiously, 1 approached again. Her skin was ashen, the fabric of her tunic a gray color that perfectly matched the slab of stone. It was hard to believe it wasn’t stone itself. Almost against my will, I watched my hand move forward, fingers stretched…

  All right, it was real fabric.

  I snatched my hand back and stared at the Fae in half awe, half apprehension she would suddenly sit up and attack me like a zombie.

  She was Fae-beautiful, her features serene, her lips parted in her eternal sleep. How long had she been dead? I recalled my conversation with Dawn. I’d have to make sure to tell her that the descriptions were right and Fae did not appear to decompose in death.

  Which meant whoever had made Lockhart’s Skull of Souls had liter-ally skinned Fae corpses.

  Yeah, Aidan would have to search for that one on his own.

  Forcing my gaze away, I focused on the walls. There were artifacts in here, and since the Fae didn’t look like a soulless Fae, ] hoped Greenie had brought me here because one of these artifacts had something to do with making a soulless Fae.

  I knelt by the ornate chest under one of the niches in the wall and used the Eye-dagger’s scabbard to push the vines away and pry the lid open—I wasn’t getting spelled this time.

  The lid balanced against the wall, and I peered inside. A dozen small compartments came into view, like one of those old alchemy trunks containing different poisons and vials, except in this case they separated items wrapped in faded linen.

  If my instinct wasn’t wrong, they were all artifacts.

  I poked them with the sheath first, trying to pry the linen aside, and when that didn’t work, I covered my hands with my sleeves and took them out one by one, placing them carefully on the floor.

  There were ten of them.

  How had nobody found and ransacked this place yet? Was it some kind of don’t-mess-with-a-Fae’s-tomb level of respect, or were they hard to find if you didn’t have a Greenie to lead you to them?