by Кирстен Уайт
“I’m so sorry! This is all my fault.”
He looked at me, frowning. “How is this your fault?”
“I got you electrocuted again.”
“I think we can safely blame the crazy faerie.”
I shook my head. “If you hadn’t—I don’t—Thanks.” I smiled and took his free hand in mine. “Really, really thank you. I’m pretty sure you saved my life. Or at least my soul.”
He sat up, not letting go of my hand. I liked that. A lot. “What was he doing to you?”
I sat on the bed next to him and stared at the floor. “I don’t know. It was kind of like what he used to do—with the heat. But it was different this time—stronger. It was like he was burning me up on the inside, forcing it into me. And it didn’t—” I stopped. I couldn’t tell Raquel about what I saw in myself now. Could I trust Lend with it?
“It didn’t what?”
I took a deep breath. “It didn’t go away this time.” Taking my hand from his, I pulled off the wrapping and stared at the red handprint and liquid flames underneath. Lend drew his breath in sharply and I looked up at him, shocked. “You can see it?”
“Of course I can see it!”
HAGTASTIC
L end could see the flames under my skin. I couldn’t believe it. Maybe they weren’t paranormal, after all. “Really? How can you see them?” I asked.
“It’s bright red! How could I not see? He must have burned you really bad.” Lend took my hand tenderly, looking at the burn. “Hand’s still freezing, though.”
My shoulders slumped in disappointment. “You can’t see it, then.”
He looked up, confused. “Is there something else?”
I bit my lip, then shook my head, avoiding his eyes. “No, nothing.”
“Evie. What did he do to you?”
“I don’t know.” That part was the truth, at least. I had no idea what he’d done to me, or what would have happened if he hadn’t been stopped.
“You can see something there, can’t you?”
I shook my head again, then closed my eyes and nodded.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. It’s like—it’s like the fire I felt from him, it’s still there, right under where the handprint is. Just swirling around, all golden and creepy. I’ve never been able to see anything under myself before.”
“Not even when he was doing this to you earlier?”
“I don’t know. It was different.” I tried to remember; I knew it made me feel warmer, but it always faded after he left. “I never bothered looking because it wasn’t permanent. The feeling always went away. Back then it was as if he was letting me borrow the warmth. This time it was like he was forcing it into me, making me take it.”
“Maybe this will fade, too?”
“I don’t know,” I said, trying not to cry. “It’s not just on my arm.”
“Where else?”
My voice came out a whisper. “My heart.”
Lend was quiet for a long time. “What did Raquel say?”
“I didn’t tell her. They’ve already got me classified as a paranormal. I don’t want to give them anything else that would make them—make me, I don’t know, weirder?”
“I can understand that. I’ve hidden from them my whole life. But where else are you going to get any answers?”
“They don’t know a bleep thing about faeries.”
Lend laughed.
“What?” I asked.
“What’s with the bleep? Didn’t they teach you any actual swearwords here?”
I blushed, then laughed. “It’s kind of an inside joke. Lish—Alisha, my best friend—she’s a mermaid, and the computer talks for her. It won’t translate swearing, so it all comes out as ‘bleep.’ I kinda picked it up.”
“I guess that makes sense in a weird way.” He was still holding my hand and looking at the burn. I really, really, really liked the feeling of my hand in his. It was amazing that even with everything that happened today such a little thing could still make me feel giddy. Granted, it would have been better if he wasn’t staring at the wound that had gotten him electrocuted and possibly meant I was even more of a freak than before, but I’d take what I could get.
“Isn’t there anyone you can ask about this? I’m kind of worried about it.”
I laughed. “I’m the one who’s freaking on fire on the inside. Lish would keep it a secret, but she doesn’t know anything that IPCA doesn’t. And I could always ask Reth what the bleep he did to me, but I kinda don’t want to see him again. Ever. And I’m sure no other faerie would help. They don’t really do helpful.”
Lend had a weird look on his face. “Did you say you’re on fire on the inside?”
“That’s what it looks like on my arm and chest—kind of all swirly and golden, like liquid fire.”
“Liquid fire.” His tone was flat, disbelieving.
Feeling defensive, I shrugged. “Yeah.”
He sighed. “‘Eyes like streams of melting snow, cold with the things she does not know. Heaven above and Hell beneath, liquid flames to hide her grief. Death, death, death with no release. Death, death, death with no release.’”
What. The. Crap. That was what I thought. And what I said was, “What the crap?”
Lend let go of my hand and rubbed his hands over his face. “I don’t know. It’s what the banshee gave us, some sort of prophecy poem. I have no idea what it means. And a lot of it seems like it means you. Your eyes, and you’re always talking about how cold you are. And now the liquid fire inside you.”
“Umm, yeah, but you’re forgetting that whole ‘death death death’ part! And I am not a killer!” I stood, insulted. I couldn’t believe Lend would think that.
He laughed drily, shaking his head. “Trust me, I really don’t think you’re the killer. You’re not exactly the slaughter-hundreds-of-paranormals type.”
“Oh.” Feeling stupid, I sat back down. “What do you think it means, then?”
“I don’t know. I used to think it was describing whoever was doing this, but now I have no idea.”
I thought about it. The whole thing was weird and creepy. “Hey, the part about heaven and hell—do you know any faerie mythology?” He shook his head. “Well, the traditional stories about them say that they were too bad for heaven and too good for hell, so they got stuck in the middle—Earth and the Faerie Realms. And they’ve been trapped here ever since, immortal, unchanging, trying to find a way back to heaven. Or hell. Or somewhere else entirely, I’m not sure. Trying to find a way out, I guess. Maybe it’s about the faeries!” If it was about the faeries, then it wasn’t about me. I needed it to be about the faeries.
He nodded thoughtfully. “Could be.”
“And! And! Reth was the one who came and got me from the vamps, and then he left pretty soon after taking me to his home—He totally could have gone back and killed them all!”
“But why? And it says ‘she,’ not ‘he.’”
I frowned. He had a point. “Still—there are lots of girl faeries. And he’s the one who put the fire stuff in me. I think it’s Reth.”
“You could be right. Honestly, I’m in so far over my head. I should never have come here. Not only did I not figure anything out, I can’t help anyone.”
I nudged him with my shoulder. “You helped me.”
He nudged me back. “That’s something, at least.”
I smiled, happy. Then I frowned. Lend didn’t belong here. As much as I never wanted him to leave, the whole thing was stupid. “I’m gonna talk to Raquel, see if we can get you out.”
He laughed, but it didn’t have any humor. “They won’t let me leave. And even if they do, it’d be with this ankle tracker, which would mean I could never go home.” He turned toward me, his face serious. “You should leave, though. You could get out, get away.”
I shook my head, sad. “I can’t. I don’t have anyone or anything outside IPCA. I’d have no money, no family, nowhere to go.” Ever since I found out the agency tha
t took care of me considered me one of the things they protected the world from, it was a lot harder to forget I was totally alone.
Reth’s words came back to haunt me. Stupid, stupid faerie. I sighed heavily. “Gosh, now I don’t even feel like watching another episode of Easton Heights.”
Lend put his arm around me and patted my shoulder. “At least there’s one good thing to come of all this, then.”
I elbowed him in the stomach, laughing. “Whatever.”
“You don’t have wireless on that thing, by any chance?” He had dropped his arm back to his side and was eyeing the laptop we used to watch the show earlier.
“Nope, sorry.”
“Evie!” Raquel was standing at the door. “Why don’t you have your communicator on you?”
“Forgot it. What’s up?”
“You’ve got a job.”
“A real one? Today?” Surely what I had just been through was enough to get me a sick day.
“Yes, today, right now. Hurry up.”
Sighing, I stood, leaving the laptop. Poor guy needed something for entertainment. “See you later, Lend. And thanks again for that whole electrocuting-yourself-to-save-me thing.”
“Anytime.”
I followed Raquel out. “Not that I’m nervous or anything, considering the last job almost got me killed and Reth burned a hole in my arm today, but what exactly is this job?”
“Ireland. Possible hag.”
“A hag? Oh, ick. Can’t someone else go?” I’d only met one hag before, but it was horrible.
“No, it’s unconfirmed. We’ll need your go-ahead for the bag-and-tag. Remember what happened with Alex?”
I had to laugh. Alex was this awesomely shy, bumbling kind of guy who worked in our section of
IPCA for a while. He was six foot four and about 150 pounds. Knew everything there was to know about any type of paranormal but was useless in the field. He came back once, triumphantly dragging a “hag” along. Yeah, turns out she was just a really old, ugly woman. That was a mess. Alex was never sent out again—permanent paperwork duty.
“I hate hags.” They were creepy. Beyond creepy. Way worse than vamps.
“I’m sending Jacques with you. I don’t want you going out by yourself for a while.”
“Fine by me.” Jacques, besides the natural werewolf enhancements, was huge. Definitely the kind of guy you wanted with you when you were feeling a little nervous. I stopped at my room to grab my bag of ankle trackers, my communicator, Tasey, and my knife.
We met up with Jacques outside Transport. A faerie was already waiting for us. Fehl. Of course, it had to be one of the few who ever paid attention to me. I was all faeried out for the day, but I had a job and there was nothing to be done. Fehl didn’t say anything, standing with her usual bored and annoyed expression. I had never noticed before, but her eyes were the same ruby color as her hair.
Like her voice, it was creepy and beautiful at the same time.
“Be careful, okay?” Raquel cautioned.
“Yeah, yeah.” Completely exhausted, I just wanted to get this over with.
Jacques and I stood on either side of Fehl. She held her hands out and we took them as a door appeared in front of us. Without thinking I had given her my hand with the burned wrist. She looked down and the briefest smile flickered across her face. “He didn’t finish,” she murmured in her breaking-glass voice. Sure that Raquel hadn’t heard, I clenched my jaw and closed my eyes, walking through the Faerie Paths toward my date with a hag.
LOST SOULS
W e stumbled out of the Faerie Paths into the dim sunlight of a hazy, cold field, surrounded by nothing but tall brown grass. Fehl quickly backed up through the door in a dead tree behind us. Good riddance. I pulled my arms around myself. “Shoulda worn a coat.”
Jacques shrugged. “It is not so bad.”
I could see the pond, a murky, lonely thing ahead in the distance, surrounded by a thin copse of trees. Why couldn’t these creatures ever hang out on tropical islands? I wouldn’t have minded a trip to Hawaii.
I frowned. “You should probably hide when we get close, let me stand there alone. She’s more likely to show, if she’s even there.”
“Are you certain you will be all right?”
“If I’m not, trust me, you’ll know.”
He smiled and we crossed the field in silence. When we were a few yards away from the edge of the pond, Jacques broke away and hid in a scraggly stand of trees. Putting one hand on Tasey, I walked to the edge of the water, picked up a rock, and threw it in. There was no reaction. I did it again.
Nothing.
Granted, I hoped nothing would happen. Hags live in ponds and creeks and look like old, gnarled women. Not even a very cute glamour, but what’s underneath is awful. They’re sickly green, with big, round fish eyes—pure white. Their hair is like clumps of rotting weeds, and they top it all off with three rows of needle-like, blackened teeth. Did I mention they eat kids? Yeah. Kids. They ask for help and then pull them under the water until they stop struggling. Then the hag eats them whole.
Hag protocol was pretty simple. You couldn’t get them in the water—too strong. But if you lured them out, it was easy enough to tase them, attach an ankle tracker, and call for transport. Unlike vamps, hags couldn’t be neutered. They were kept in a special unit somewhere in Siberia. “Humane
Detainment,” IPCA called it—a little odd, considering there was nothing humane or human about hags.
After ten minutes of walking around and tossing rocks into the pond I got bored. Maybe I was too old to attract a hag these days. I looked around the pond, trying to see any hints I wasn’t wasting my time. Most of the vegetation was still dead; spring had yet to visit this part of Ireland. The trees were thicker than I’d noticed, though. Then I saw something to my right. About two dozen feet away was an odd little mound, mottled green and gray, that seemed out of place. Pulling Tasey out, I made my way cautiously over. As I got closer, the scent of mildew was nearly overpowering—that was the hag smell, all right. Holding my breath, I tiptoed around to her other side. I couldn’t believe it.
She was dead.
I didn’t even know how to kill a hag. They were just one of those things that always were, kind of like mermaids. But she was definitely dead. Underneath the glamour, her milky white hag eyes were opened wide, her horrible face frozen in confusion. How had this happened?
I glanced around for clues, but didn’t see anything. Looking down at the hag again, I narrowed my eyes. There was something under the glamour, just where her heap of rags covered her chest. Finding a stick, I pulled down the cloth. There was the faintest trace of a handprint there—a handprint in pale gold, getting dimmer even as I watched, until it disappeared entirely.
Then I realized something else: the hag was steaming slightly in the cool air. Which meant her body was still warm. Which meant she hadn’t been dead for long. “Oh, bleep,” I whispered. I stood up straight, holding Tasey out in front of me and spinning around. The whole area felt sinister now, as though every clump of brown bushes or stand of trees held my imminent death.
“Jacques?” I called softly, backing away from the pond. I pushed the panic button on my communicator, hoping that Fehl wasn’t far from the transport point. “Jacques?” I didn’t want to yell. Of course, I’d been standing out in the open so long that whatever this thing was had probably already seen me. Far to my left I heard a twig snap. Dropping my bag of ankle trackers, I pulled out my knife.
“Jacques? Jacques, is that you?” My voice was shaking almost as badly as my hands. “Jacques?”
A scream ripped through the air, like a soul was being ripped from its body. Jacques’s soul.
Jacques’s body. And, hating myself even as I was doing it, I turned and ran as hard as I could for the tree. If this thing could take a hag and Jacques, I didn’t stand a chance. My breath tore at my chest as I pushed myself faster than I thought possible. I was running from death and expected it to catch me at any mome
nt.
The tree got closer and closer—and nothing was there. Fehl hadn’t answered the call yet. I sobbed as I ran. If she didn’t come soon, I was going to die. I made it to the tree and still there was nothing.
Shaking so hard I thought I would fall apart, I turned around, wanting to meet my end face-to-face.
The field was empty. I sobbed harder. I didn’t know whether I should wait for Fehl to come or risk using her name. Just when I was about to shout it, light burst from behind me and I grabbed Fehl’s outstretched hand. “Go, now!”
From the edge of the trees I saw a flash of fire shaped like a person, and then the door closed.
SELFISH IS AS SELFISH DOES
Raquel was sitting in a chair near my kitchen, talking quietly on her communicator when I woke up on the couch. She had stayed the whole night. I didn’t want to be alone.
Her eyebrows were knit as she rubbed her forehead with her free hand. I sat up. She looked over and gave me a strained smile, then continued her conversation for a few minutes. When she had finished, I sat on my hands so they wouldn’t shake. “Did they find it?”
She shook her head and heaved a new sigh. This one was laced with more stress and tension than any I had ever heard before—even more than her Evie, Evie, Evie sigh that showed up whenever I messed up big time, like when I was fourteen and stole her communicator in an attempt to reprogram mine to play music. I screwed up the entire system and locked everyone in their rooms for a few hours. It didn’t go over well. I was on Containment cleanup duty for a month.
If only things were that easy this time.
I didn’t want to ask, I didn’t want to know, but I had to. “Jacques?”
She shook her head sadly. “He was dead.”
I looked at the floor, tears welling in my eyes. I hadn’t done a thing to help him—I hadn’t even tried. Raquel sat next to me and put her arm around my shoulders. “There was nothing you could have done. If you had tried to help him, you’d both be dead now. And I know Jacques would be glad he died helping you escape.”
