Faelorehn - Book One of the Otherworld Trilogy

by Jenna Elizabeth Johnson

  * * *

  As soon as the final school bell announced the end of the day, I was out of class and sprinting down the hallway like some marathon endorphin junkie looking for the finish line. I had grabbed my books for homework between my last two classes, and now I was on my way to Robyn’s car before Adam could find me. It didn’t matter that I had not actually thrown the pinecone, and there was no way I could explain what had happened. They already thought I was crazy and the truth would only prove it and give them a reason to do actual harm to me.

  I skidded to a stop in front of Robyn’s car just as the rest of the student body started trickling into the lot. It took me a whopping two minutes (time I could have used racing to the trail that would have taken me the back way home) to remember that Robyn had a meeting with her Wicca friends today, that Tully had a group science project to work on, and that Will and Thomas had band practice until four. In a sense, it took me two minutes to realize I was a goner.

  I cursed and kicked the tire of Robyn’s car. I knew she wouldn’t take it personally and the only option I had left was to panic. What was I going to do? There was no way on this green earth that Adam was going to let my little infraction slide, and I knew he would enlist his thugs to help him hunt me down. Where were our teachers when you needed them? Ugh, that’s what I should have done. I should have ducked into one of the classrooms, feigning confusion on a homework assignment. At least I would have been safe for a while. Now I was merely a sitting duck.

  A shout and the sound of my name made me jump. Slowly, I turned my head back towards the school’s main building.

  I watched Adam and his gang emerge from the hallway, their heads swiveling as they searched me out. It was too late. My friends were preoccupied and I had nowhere else to go; no one to rescue me. If I tried to walk home now, they would follow me and wait until no one else was around . . .

  Adam’s dark head turned in my direction, and he pointed. My heart leapt into my throat. I started moving again, walking as fast as I could towards the public bus bench. If I was lucky, the bus would pull up and I could get on. I didn’t care if it took me further from home, as long as it took me further from Adam Peders. I hopped the bench, and then hurried over to check the schedule. I cursed as tears of true desperation began to form in my eyes. The next bus wouldn’t come for another forty minutes. I was doomed.

  My attackers drew closer, crossing the parking lot as if it were a field of cheery daisies. My stomach was in knots and my breathing was becoming shallow. It was when Adam was only fifteen feet away that I first heard the growl of an engine. The sound grew louder until it was right beside me, rumbling smoothly.

  “Meghan.”

  I took my eyes off of Adam and his friends, all of whom had miraculously stopped in their tracks. I glanced down and my jaw dropped. It was Cade. He was sitting behind the wheel of a fully restored, classic Trans Am, the silver phoenix emblem standing out against the black paint job. I didn’t know a whole lot about cars, but Logan had been really into sports cars since he could walk, and I’d learned a thing or two. The Trans Am would make most car enthusiasts drool in envy.

  Cade had removed the t-top, presumably to enjoy the fine weather, and was currently leaning slightly towards the passenger side. I watched in numb shock as he shifted the car into neutral and set the parking break. Then, reaching over, he pushed open the passenger side door.

  “Get in,” he growled.

  Tully and Robyn would have been horrified if they knew I was about to get into a car with some strange guy I had met only twice, and who had admitted to details only a stalker would know. I guess it was a good thing they weren’t around for once. The person I had been only a month ago would have been horrified as well. But I was different now, ever since I’d met Cade, and he had insinuated that my visions were not a product of my imagination. No, I still did not trust him. At least not completely. But I had two options to choose from: I could get into the car with him, or I could take my chances with Adam and his knuckle-dragging buddies. I had been wishing for a miracle, and if that miracle exuded danger and mystery and drove a fast car, well, heck, who could blame me if I was grateful? Beggars couldn’t be choosers, right?

  I glanced back at my tormentors. Adam and his followers weren’t looking at me anymore; they were gawking at the Trans Am. Boys. I stepped forward and climbed into Cade’s car, and that was when the enchantment broke.

  Adam stepped forward angrily. “Listen you little slu-”

  Cade was up and out of his car so fast I wondered if he hadn’t vaporized and somehow reformed just outside his door. Although he stood with his back to the cars whipping by on the highway, his own vehicle acting as a barrier between him and my classmates, he must have looked quite intimidating.

  “You no longer have any dealings with Meghan, and if you ever torment or insult her again, I’ll be sure to pay you a special visit at your earliest inconvenience.”

  Something threatening must have showed on Cade’s face, because despite his calm voice, Adam paled and nodded his head. Or maybe it was the fact that Cade towered over them.

  Adam grabbed his friends roughly and pushed them along, claiming that they had better things to do.

  Cade got back into the car, this time at a more normal speed. He closed the door a little too roughly and snapped on his seatbelt.

  “Buckle up,” he said, his voice hard.

  I obeyed, too shocked from what had transpired in the past five minutes to do anything else.

  He shifted the car into gear and pulled out onto the highway, gaining speed and heading north. The engine rumbled and the wind tossed my hair over my shoulders. Luckily, it happened to be another one of those ideal fall days, but there was a subtle chill to the air that drew goose bumps from my skin. I pulled my sweatshirt more tightly around me and glanced over at the boy, no, young man, sitting next to me.

  Cade looked very much the same as he had the last time I’d seen him. He had on a different designer t-shirt, this one a little more fitted than the first one I had seen him in. I caught a glimpse of something metallic circling his neck. I squinted. It looked like a thick braided chain that didn’t quite meet up just in front of his throat. It seemed familiar, but at the same time, completely foreign. I shook my head and forgot about it as I studied him further. My eyes lingered on his shoulders then trailed down his arms to find his knuckles white from gripping the steering wheel more tightly than necessary.

  I decided he must be a football player. Why else would he be so lean and muscular? Then I remembered that he probably wasn’t from this world. It had made me laugh at first, thinking that Cade might not be human. But if I was willing to admit his dog wasn’t of this planet, why couldn’t I bring myself to believe that Cade himself was from the Otherworld? The Otherworld. The information had been vague on the internet and I hadn’t found time yet to visit the local library.

  I shook my head slightly and glanced at his face from the corner of my eye. His features were so well-formed, as if he was the final, perfect draft of several failures before. It was during my shameless staring that he decided to flick his eyes in my direction. I felt myself flush. Surely he saw me studying his profile and most likely he thought I was some gawking, moon-eyed teen. Well, I couldn’t blame him, I kind of was. I expected him to laugh and make some clever remark about my being attracted to him. Ugh, it would be mortifying. But when he finally opened his mouth, it was to release a deep sigh. His tense stance seemed to melt away, his arms loosened and his knuckles regained some of their color.

  “Forgive me Meghan, I’m early. And I shouldn’t have spoken so gruffly to you earlier.”

  I blinked in surprise. Of all the things for him to say, I had not expected that. Yes, he was a day early, but what did that matter when he rescued me from certain death? Okay, that was putting it a little dramatically, but it would have been pretty bad had he not shown up right when he had. Another
coincidence? Or had I somehow summoned him as I had summoned the pinecone?

  “I wasn’t angry at you, but I just finished work less than an hour ago and it oftentimes leaves me a bit rattled. Besides,” now he turned and gave me a mischievous grin, “those, uh, young men, didn’t help improve my mood any.”

  Interesting . . . I couldn’t hear my conscience shouting out its warnings anymore . . . And young men? That was putting it kindly.

  The wind tossed his dark auburn hair around and he reached up with his left hand to rub the back of his neck. I dropped my gaze for a while and glanced out his window. We were coming up to the top of the Mesa and a quick flash of the view of the Pacific Ocean, held at bay by the pale gold of sand dunes, rushed by. That sight always warmed my spirits, and despite the anxiety I now felt, it had the same effect. I turned and looked in the other direction.

  “It’s alright. You helped me out, actually,” I finally said, my voice subdued.

  I felt him more than noticed him stiffen beside me. Could he really be angry at Adam and his friends on my behalf? Suddenly, the butterflies I had felt when reading his notes were back.

  To distract myself, I cleared my throat and said, “Why are you early?”

  Another sigh from Cade. “I finished my assignment early and I had a feeling you would be needing my help.”

  “Something to do with Otherworldly senses?” I braved. It was probably a long shot, but it wouldn’t hurt to fish a little.

  He was quiet for a long while, but eventually he said in a voice as docile as my own, “You could say that.”

  We both descended into silence after that. We came to the traffic light and turned left to go down the hill, leaving the corner market and the small collection of restaurants behind. As we made it to the bottom of the hill, I took in a great breath and asked, “Where exactly are we going?”

  I didn’t want to sound suspicious, but as the fear of Adam wore off, my awareness of being in a strange car pushed itself forward.

  “To Shell Beach,” Cade answered in a clipped tone. “The ocean calms me, and there is a particular spot that is a little more isolated than Pismo.”

  A shiver ran down my arms and I suddenly had the desire to leap from the car the second we reached the stop sign in the far distance.

  “I only wish for isolation because what we are sure to discuss cannot be heard by other ears. The beach is good because there will be other people around, in case you are worried I’m going to try something. And the waves make it impossible for others to overhear. Be calm Meghan, I mean you no harm.”

  I relaxed, but only a little. Once Cade hit the main part of town, he down-shifted his car and took on a more leisurely speed. The hum of its engine helped soothe my nerves a little. The streets in town were busy with people trying to get their errands done before heading home, so the traffic was more dense than usual. I shot up from my slouched position. I was supposed to have caught a ride home after school.

  “What is it?” Cade asked, sensing my unease.

  “I have to call my parents. They think I’m going to be home soon.”

  “When we get to the beach, you can call them. Tell them whatever you need to.”

  I nodded. I hated lying to my parents but if I told them a classmate and I decided to get together to work on some research after school, it wouldn’t be a complete lie. True, I was doing research, to some degree, but Cade wasn’t a classmate and I didn’t think any of my classes would require asking someone who was potentially from the Otherworld questions about Celtic gods and goddesses.

  The spot Cade chose to have our talk was a familiar one to me. The access to the beach itself was along a small road that ran between the edge of a bluff and a charming maritime neighborhood. We both got out of the car and Cade didn’t bother locking the doors since the top was off. He offered to put my backpack into his trunk and I nodded in agreement. We headed down the staircase that spilled out onto the gritty sand below. Several more rocks and a half dozen or so sea stacks littered the beach and shore. I liked this spot in particular not only for the huge towers of rock and the tide pools off to the north, but also because the tourists tended to flock to the sandy and pier-adorned Pismo just to the south of this point. I didn’t like crowds and to me, long sandy beaches were a bit boring.

  There were a handful of people walking below. A husband and wife and their two young sons; an older, fit woman playing fetch with her dog; a young college student and his girlfriend, perched upon a rock, waiting for the sunset. Not so many people that Cade and I couldn’t talk and not so few that, if he were to attack me, I couldn’t scream and draw their attention. He had chosen well.

  Once we reached the bottom of the stairs, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed my home number. To my great relief, Bradley answered the phone.

  “Yeah,” he said, sounding a little out of breath.

  I could hear my brothers screaming and chasing each other around in the background.

  “Bradley? It’s Meg. Could you tell Mom and Dad I’ll be home a little late today? I’m going to be doing some research with a classmate for this group project we have to do.”

  My brother turned and shouted something at the others, not bothering to cover the phone with his hand. I tried not to grin.

  “Meg? Yeah, tell Mom you’re going to be late because of a school project, got it.”

  “Thanks buddy,” I said, my shoulders slumping in relief.

  “Kay, gotta go. Logan’s got a spray bottle and Aiden’s supposed to be covering me- Aaaaaagh!”

  Chuckling, I hung up. “We’re all clear. I have at least two hours I think.”

  I turned and looked at Cade. My skin suddenly started prickling. He was studying me so intensely I was beginning to wonder if he was of the same opinion as Adam with regards to my face. The recollection of my lunchtime nightmare made my face flame anew.

  “What is it?” I asked self-consciously.

  He sighed and let his hands drop into his pockets. “Nothing, let’s walk. Over there.”

  He nodded towards the tide pools, the place furthest away from everybody else. I swallowed hard. If I were an ordinary high school girl and if he were an ordinary high school boy, I would be hoping for some romantic liaison on his part right then. But neither of us was ordinary and he was definitely not a high school boy. I had to work hard to get a hold of my wayward imagination. Even if he didn’t find me repulsive, it didn’t mean he was interested in me in that way. Besides, that line of thinking could get me into trouble.

  I paused to take off my shoes and socks. I had this rule about always walking on the beach barefoot. Cade lifted a brow and followed suit. Even his bare feet were attractive. I shook that thought off as quickly as I would a wandering spider. We walked in silence for a while, listening to the waves crash along the shore. I could see why Cade would choose this place to calm his anger. The ocean was soothing; the primitive heartbeat of the earth.

  When Cade decided we were far enough away from the other beach goers, he turned and looked at me, his hands still tucked in his pockets. I studied him for a while, still awed by how tall he was. His clothes fit him well and his shoes dangled from the thumb of his left hand. I hadn’t noticed his tattoos before; one on each arm, starting near his elbow and twining up to disappear beneath his shirt sleeves. Not surprisingly, they were Celtic in design, intricate, beautiful. It was then that I noticed the bandage on his arm. It wrapped around his wrist and went halfway up his forearm. Blotches of red bled through in many spots.

  I darted my eyes up to his, the shock clear on my face. “What happened?”

  He took a deep breath and turned his eyes, now a gray-green, towards the crashing waves. “Occupational hazard.”

  He turned back to me, grinning without showing any teeth. That action turned out to be just as effective as the Mojave sun on an ice cube.

  “And, what exactly is your occupation?”

  He
started in without any preamble. After all, we both had our suspicions of one another. We had both admitted as much those few weeks ago when he had lured me into the swamp and I had taken on his challenge to start my own research.

  “I have a duty to fulfill to one who is far more powerful than I. To regulate and control those creatures who don’t follow the rules.”

  I blinked, and not because of the salty spray which had just suffused the air.

  “Basically, I am in charge of capturing the Otherworldly creatures that do not belong in this world. Or to punish those who have broken the rules in the Otherworld. I am, in a sense, the Otherworldly Police. Or, if you prefer something a little more dramatic, you could call me a faelah bounty hunter.”

  I snorted, but not because I didn’t believe him. Hadn’t I seen him in action that night I had wandered into the swamp in my pajamas? I just thought the term Otherworldly Police sounded a bit ridiculous.

  “And that is how you hurt your arm?”

  He nodded and we fell back into nonverbal companionship.

  “I’m sure you have many more questions Meghan. Do not be afraid to ask me, for I intend to tell you more than you probably wish to know.”

  I swallowed. Hard. That sounded rather daunting. I didn’t want to know everything, I knew I didn’t, but from the look Cade was giving me, I knew he planned on telling me anyways. Taking a breath, I asked the question that had been bothering me from the beginning: “How did you know my name?”

  He cocked his head to the side and smiled. “The internet.”

  That time I really did laugh out loud. “Seriously?”

  He nodded. That was getting annoying.

  “It isn’t hard to find information on people these days.”

  “But why did you want to find information on me in the first place?”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Your home, Meghan, is very close to a gateway into Eile, the Otherworld. One I often use because of its convenient location in regards to my home on the other side, and because of how hidden and isolated it is. The scholars and historians call them dolmens, structures composed of rocks, forming a crude doorway of sorts. We Otherworldly folk call them dolmarehn. Not too far off the modern term, but if you want to say things properly . . .”

  He rolled his shoulders, and I nodded.

  “Dolmarehn,” I repeated the exotic word, trying it out on my tongue. It sounded creepy, like a word that might be found in a gothic poem.

  “It was when I was passing through this dolmarehn that I first detected you. You see, when you spend time in the Otherworld, you absorb its magic. That magic lingers in your system for a while on the other side, here on earth. It wears off in time, almost like a residue, but it gives us extra powers, you could say. Mortals call it glamour. It also gives us the ability to shift our appearance or shape to a certain degree.”

  An image of Hobo Bob came to mind, hunched over with the face of a very old man.

  Cade took a step forward, moving closer. He leaned his arm against the sheer side of the bluff just beside me and looked me in the eye. His were closer to that dark green now and I wondered what color my own eyes were.

  “When this residue is still fresh in us, we can easily detect others like us. If the residue is old, then we have to be much closer to each other to recognize one another. You just happened to be passing by on the trail that day.” He was quiet now, his voice barely audible over the waves.

  “And, and, when was that?” I stammered. I felt like a fool, letting his close proximity bend me to his will.

  “Several months ago. I kept an eye on you, did my own research. I was baffled, you see, for you give off a very strong aura, though I suspect you haven’t been to Eile in a very long time. Meghan,” he sighed and looked away for a minute, “like me, you are of the Otherworld. You are not human, but immortal. You are one of the Faelorehn.”

  -Twelve-

  Answers

  I think I might have blacked out for a split second, because the next thing I remembered, Cade was holding onto my shoulder as if I was going to fall.

  “What?” I whispered, my attention not on him anymore, but fixated on the fascinating shells being washed up by the surf. The grainy sand suddenly felt rough against my bare feet and the underlying smell of fish and salt made my nose sting.

  “Here, come sit down a little while,” Cade murmured, somewhere a bit too close to my ear.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough sense to protest. He sat me down on a large, flat rock, its surface warm from the sun, and took a seat next to me. For a while, we just watched the waves, Cade most likely afraid to set me off into a fit of denial or rage, me, well, I was just trying to get a hold of my swirling emotions. Disbelief, for what he had told me couldn’t be true. Hilarity because, let’s face it, it was ridiculous. And finally fear. I thought, despite everything else, my fear was the strongest.

  I couldn’t fully accept that what he had said wasn’t true, however, for I had seen things with my own eyes and heard things with my own ears that proved the existence of this mythical Otherworld. Just that very day, had I not enticed a pinecone to fly off the ground of its own accord and smash into the back of Adam’s head? But to be a part of it? To have emerged from such a place? To be immortal? I shivered. Despite my violent self-denial, deep down inside I knew it could be possible. After all, I had been found wandering all on my own when I was too young to have true memories, not a scrap of evidence to suggest who I was or how I had ended up in a sketchy section of Los Angeles by myself.

  “Do you remember the three questions I asked you, that afternoon in the swamp?”

  Cade’s words were calm, soothing, as if the simple cadence of his voice could win my trust. It was working.

  I nodded, swallowing before speaking, “If I had heard voices or seen strange things, if I had ever had premonition dreams, and,” I paused and looked up at him, his now gray eyes calculating, “and if my eyes had a habit of changing color.”

  He nodded and looked away. “All traits of someone with Faelorehn blood.”

  I let that digest for a moment, and then asked, “What exactly does it mean to be Faelorehn? And what do you mean, I’m immortal?”

  Was it like being faelah? I hoped not. He had called those creepy little creatures that had attacked me and the corpse hounds faelah; surely to be Faelorehn meant something else entirely.

  “The Faelorehn are the people of the Otherworld, the books and fairytales would call them fae, or faeries. We look very much like human beings, but as you know our eyes never settle on one color, we have heightened senses of the supernatural, and when we have visited the Otherworld for a length of time, our gifts become stronger in this world. It’s almost like a battery Meghan. When we spend too much time here on earth, our powers are drained and we must return to the Otherworld to recharge.”

  “We?”

  Cade picked up a stone and threw it into the ocean. It went far further than it should have been able to go with the force he had put behind it.

  “Yes, we. You and I. We are both of the Otherworld; both Faelorehn, both destined to live forever if disease or violence doesn’t claim our lives.”

  I had kind of already surmised that, so it wasn’t a surprise to me. I moved on to other questions. “If I’m from the Otherworld, then why am I here? Why did someone abandon me in the middle of Southern California when I was so young?”

  Cade cringed next to me. “I have a theory,” he said. “I believe you are either the daughter of someone very important and they felt the only way to keep you safe was to send you far away. Or,” he paused, casting me a softer look. “Or, you were unwanted, and there was no place for you in Eile.”

  Something in that second option must have had some significance to Cade, because he sounded almost pained by it; more pained than he should have sounded as someone simply delivering bad news. I wondered if he had ever been unwanted himself and my hea
rt opened to him.

  He sighed. “The only way to tell for sure would be to bring you to the Otherworld and try to discover your origins. But that is not an option right now. It could be dangerous, especially since you have no knowledge of the Otherworld.”

  “Can you teach me?” I asked, terrified and curious at the same time.

  He turned and grinned. “Yes, to a point, but not today. So, tell me what you discovered from your research.”

  I started out by mentioning Fergus, since his current absence made me think of him.

  “I read that Otherworldly animals are white with red ears. But,” I thought about the other supernatural creatures; the gnomes, the Cumorrig, the raven . . . “not all the creatures I saw were white.”

  Cade nodded. “Fergus is a spirit guide. He is connected to me. Spirit guides are hard to find, but they remain attached to their Faelorehn companion for life. When the ancients saw an animal that was white with red ears, they knew it was Otherworldly because spirit guides are able to do things normal animals can’t.”

  I tucked that information away: white animals with red ears were Otherworldly spirit guides.

  I continued to tell Cade what I had learned about the Celts and their deities. He nodded, waiting for me to finish before he spoke again.

  “Unfortunately, with our kind not everything is as it seems. The Otherworld is very similar to this one, parallel you could say, but on a different dimension; linked together but not dependent upon one another. We have plants and animals and everything you might find here, but our people are capable of shifting between the worlds. The Faelorehn and the faelah can come and go between this earth and the Otherworld, but human beings and the other denizens of this planet cannot enter our world.”

  I nodded, letting him know I still followed.

  “Long ago, our people first discovered a way to enter into this place, through the dolmarehn. Many were built, both here and in our world. We discovered the relative weakness of humans and unfortunately, the most powerful of our kind exploited that weakness. They are the ones who cannot be killed, and they became gods and goddesses to the ancient people of northern Europe.”

  This made sense, if any of it could make sense. I had seen science specials on T.V. that tried to claim aliens were responsible for building the pyramids, so why couldn’t the Faelorehn have slipped into our dimension and impressed early humankind with their supernatural strength?

  “Someday I’ll show you the dolmarehn that I most often use, but not today. The Otherworld is a dangerous place Meghan, even to one who belongs there, and if you don’t know what to expect, it can kill you.”

  That sounded daunting. The small bits and pieces of the Otherworld I had seen in this world were terrifying enough. I nodded severely, letting Cade know I concurred. The last thing I wanted to do was go wandering around in a strange place full of various faelah.

  Cade was silent for a few seconds, then he turned and looked at me. His skin took on the golden hue of the sun as it fell further towards the horizon. Some well buried instinct tried to coax me into reaching out and touching him, but fortunately my better sense squashed it before I made a fool of myself. Honestly, what had gotten into me?

  “Are you well?” he asked.

  I screwed my face up into an expression of confusion. Had he known what I had just been tempted to do?

  “With all of this, I mean. I have just told you that you are a being from the Otherworld, that you do not truly belong here.”

  I simply nodded, unable to come up with a good response.

  He shrugged. “Some people would not take it as well as you seem to be taking it.”

  “No,” I finally managed, “it’s a shock. To be honest, I don’t think it’s quite settled in yet. I still expect to wake up from some strange dream.” I grinned and cast him a sideways glance. “I have lots of those, you know. Strange dreams.”

  He smiled and seemed to relax a little.

  We watched the sun set before we got up to leave. The young couple was still there, but everyone else had left. As we headed back up the Mesa, I thought long and hard about what Cade had said. It made sense, in a perverse, twisted universe sort of way. If anything, it explained all the visions I’d had and all the voices I’d heard my whole life. The upside: it meant that I wasn’t crazy. The downside: it meant I wasn’t human. The mere thought made me light-headed. I wondered if I could come to accept that.

  Cade’s Trans Am rumbled up to the front of my driveway just as twilight was settling in. He put the car in neutral and got out to open the trunk. He handed me my backpack.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said. “There are a few errands I have to do; a few things I need to take care of in the Otherworld.” He ran his hand through his thick hair again. A habit, I was beginning to realize, when he was worried about something. I found it endearing.

  “We’ll talk more about this when I return. Don’t be afraid to use the oak tree again, and I’ll ask Fergus to keep an eye on you.”

  I smiled, a warm glow spreading through my stomach.

  Cade climbed back into his car and closed the door. “Oh, and Meghan,” he said, calling out to me through the passenger side window, “one other thing you should know,”

  “What’s that? I’m a long lost princess?” I joked as I hiked my backpack up onto my shoulder.

  Cade grinned and shook his head, “No.”

  I waited. Finally he took a deep breath and spoke, his voice hardly audible over the rumble of his idling car, “Stay away from the swamp as much as possible, and don’t trust anyone who claims to be Faelorehn.”

  He gripped the steering wheel and gazed straight ahead, past the broken barbed wire fence and the sign that read Dead End where our street met the horse path several yards away. “They know about you now, and I don’t yet know what they might want with you.”

  I blinked, wanting very badly to ask him a dozen more questions, but he’d been sitting there for a while and his car was loud enough to draw attention from inside the house. The last thing I needed was a barrage of questions from curious family members.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out something attached to a thin leather string. He threw it through the window and somehow I managed to catch it.

  “Keep that on your person at all times,” he said.

  I examined it. It looked like a wooden bead with some sort of ancient rune burned into it. “What is it?”

  He smiled again, “Mistletoe.”

  I arched my eyebrow at him. Was he flirting with me? I felt my face flush.

  “We Faelorehn use it to ward off evil spirits. The same way some people might wear garlic to frighten off vampires.”

  Nodding, I slipped it around my neck and tucked it under my shirt.

  “Goodbye for now Meghan. When I get back, I’ll tell you more of what I know and perhaps even teach you how to defend yourself against the faelah.”

  I took a step back and he shifted into gear. I watched for a while as his dark car disappeared around the first bend of our road, and listened until I could no longer hear its soothing rumble. Sighing, I walked up our short, sloping driveway and tested the front door. It was unlocked. The house was noisy as usual, with Mom making dinner and the boys attempting to do their homework, but failing miserably.

  “There you are!” Mom proclaimed after testing the marinara sauce she had on the stove.

  “Yeah, sorry. We had more research to do than I thought,” I lied.

  “Uh huh,” she said, giving me a rather knowing look.

  Confused, I said, “Bradley gave you my message, right?”

  “Oh, yes, he gave me the message, but,” she cast my father a glance. He was engrossed in the local news station, so she looked back at me, smiling. “I’m not surprised your research took longer than expected. From what I saw, I can’t say I blame you.”

  For about ten seconds I was completely flabbergasted. What on earth wa
s she talking about? Then I glanced through the window over the sink and realized that she had had a clear and unobstructed view of our driveway. I turned beet red.

  “No, but, we really . . .” I stammered.

  My mom laughed, then grabbed my elbow and pulled me deeper into the kitchen. “Oh come on! He was cute. What’s his name?”

  “Mom,” I grumbled, completely mortified and eternally grateful my brothers couldn’t hear us, “we were studying for an English assignment, really. It’s not what you think.”

  Oh, if only she knew how far off the mark she was. But I couldn’t tell her any of what Cade and I had discussed. She wouldn’t believe me and it would only lead to more treatments for my insanity.

  “Okay honey, if you insist.” She winked and I grumbled something about more homework on my way downstairs.

  I tried to get my homework done, I really did, but I couldn’t stop thinking about everything Cade had told me. How did one come to terms with the fact that they weren’t human? And what if I had been abandoned, unwanted by my real parents? Although my family loved me dearly, and I loved them, there was something painful about the knowledge of being cast aside by those who had created you to begin with.

  I shivered. Maybe I had been wanted and had been sent to this world for my own protection. But if so, why had there not been a note of explanation and why hadn’t anyone come to find me and tell me? No, I was sure I had been unwanted, for my birth family would have sought me out by now and I wouldn’t have been discovered by some random Faelorehn guy tripping over me while trying to do his job.

  Mom called down to tell me dinner was ready, and doing my best to compose myself, I went up and joined my family, feigning normal once again. I was good at it, after all.

  That night as I lay in bed, contemplating the shambles that was currently my life, I wondered when I’d see Cade again. He had dropped a bombshell on me; there was no doubt about it. Immortal? Otherworldly? It was too mind-boggling to consider. I couldn’t even imagine living for all eternity. The very thought scared the crud out of me.

  As the sounds of the day wound down and the silence of night fell over me, my mind continued to whir in thought. I needed to know more, so much more. I felt like a beginning swimmer, thrown into a stormy sea infested with sharks, barely able to keep my head above water. I pulled the mistletoe bead from beneath the old t-shirt I had put on before bed. The rune that was burned into the surface of the smooth wood was black and harsh, but it felt warm in my hand. Sighing, I tucked it back away, wondering if I would see more faelah the next day.

  After hours of tossing and turning, I finally fell into a troubled sleep, terrified of what the future might hold. High school was hard enough, but I couldn’t imagine what it was going to be like now that I knew I was definitely not like everybody else.

  -Thirteen-

  Attacked

  A week passed before anything bizarre happened, and even then it wasn’t much. Cade had stayed away like he said he would. I hadn’t even seen him posing as Hobo Bob in the mornings or afternoons. Even when I happened to glance up from my homework in the dark of night, hoping to spot an enormous, ghost-like dog just outside my door, I was left seething in my own disappointment.

  That was when I would remind myself that my only interest in Cade was purely an educational one: he knew the answers to my lifelong questions, and I simply wanted to know what those answers were. Doesn’t help that he’s built like a pro athlete, a voice in my head whispered. And he seemed pretty interested in you, if you ask me.

  Don’t listen Meghan, another voice said, you can’t trust him. How do you know he isn’t making up all this Otherworld nonsense in order to pull the wool over your eyes?

  Then the voices started to argue and I threw my math book across the room in frustration. It was a pretty bad sign when the voices inside your head started fighting with one another. I’m not sure what degree of crazy that made me. Regardless of what tricks my conscience was playing on me and whether I believed Cade had an ulterior motive or not, I needed to leave all options open until I had definite proof of what was true and what wasn’t.

  School that week was the same as it always was: the slow, grueling gauntlet all teenagers are forced to crawl through in order to pass on to adulthood. I was really quite surprised to learn that Adam and his friends seemed to be taking Cade’s words to heart. I half expected to open my locker Tuesday morning and find some ominous threat, but as the week progressed, the worst I got from him and his cronies was a rude hand gesture or a nasty scowl. Sometimes I imagined they were planning revenge; quietly waiting until all signs proved that the guy with the black sports car was gone for good. Now I had another reason to wish for Cade to come back.

  It was on my ride home the following Monday, exactly one week after my talk with Cade, that I noticed the raven again. Robyn was dropping me off at my house and my mind was still too caught up in thoughts of my unusual identity and the young man who had revealed it to me to notice anything out of place.

  “Hey Meg, what’re you doing Saturday?” Robyn asked through the passenger side window.

  I shrugged. “Sleeping in hopefully.”

  “Want to go to the old post office in Halcyon with us? We were thinking about getting some Christmas shopping done.”

  I thought about it for a moment. The Halcyon post office was one of our local hidden gems, an old mail building turned gift shop from when the town was first established about a hundred years ago. Although it still functioned as a post office for the small community of Halcyon, it also offered an eclectic collection of incense, chimes, home-crafted jewelry and apparel, independent books and, to Robyn’s delight, plenty of artifacts that appealed to her more unique tastes. And, I thought as Robyn awaited my answer, it will give me a chance to do something other than wonder when Cade is coming back . . .

  I shrugged my backpack further up onto my shoulder. “Sure. What time were you thinking about going?”

  “We’ll pick you up at ten.”

  I grinned and waved Robyn on, watching as her car puttered around the corner. It was then that I spotted the raven out of the corner of my eye, sitting on a high eucalyptus branch. If I hadn’t known any better I would’ve sworn it was whispering to something clinging to the side of the tree. Wait, I did know better. The raven was from the Otherworld, I knew that for certain. That meant it was at least as intelligent as Cade’s dog. A memory surfaced then, something I had read during my research. Something about the Morrigan and ravens . . . Ah, that was it. One of the Morrigan’s symbols was a raven. Could this bird belong to a Celtic goddess? I snorted. Now that was a stupid thought. That would mean that a goddess was interested in me. No, it just had to be another Otherworldly creature, drawn to my Faelorehn presence.

  Doing my best to drive away my sudden nervousness, I narrowed my eyes and watched the large bird. The creature it ‘spoke’ to looked somewhat like a squirrel, but its tail was more like a rat’s and its face was, in a word, grotesque. Strange, I didn’t even notice that it was bright red until after I observed those other details.

  I blinked and suddenly found two sets of eyes upon me; the raven’s dark red ones and the demented squirrel’s yellow ones. Shivering, I clutched my binder and spun on my heel, walking up my driveway as swiftly as possible.