Ryn sighs. “How disappointing that she won’t get to continue her mother’s legacy. But then, perhaps Mrs. Pixie Sticks was a cheater too.” I grip the knife handle harder. “Perhaps dead mommy dearest is looking down from her crummy cloud, proud of her little Miss Perfect for breaking Guild Laws and sneaking around with some pansy-assed—”
In one swift motion, I turn and fling the knife at Ryn. It spins through the air, end over end over end. With a satisfying thud, it embeds itself in the tree just inches from his head. Silence fills the hall. Ryn’s gaze—shocked, furious—pierces me. I don’t look away. I don’t even blink. “Oops,” I say, without a shred of remorse. “Guess I missed.”
“Violet!” My eyes flick to the doorway. It’s Tora, arms crossed over her chest, eyebrows drawn tightly together. “I need to speak with you. Now.”
*
I follow Tora up to the second floor in silence. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t look at me. Is she angry? She probably didn’t like the fact that I almost impaled Ryn. Or perhaps . . . Could she know about Nate? Could Ryn have told her before training began this morning?
Eventually I can’t stand the silence any longer. As we reach the top of the staircase, I grab her arm and pull her to a stop. “Look, I know I shouldn’t have thrown a knife at him, but if you’d heard what he said about my mother—”
“Not interested,” she says, holding a hand up. “Though I can’t say I was pleased by what I saw.” I look down at my shoes, preparing myself for the I’m-disappointed-in-you speech. It doesn’t come. “I called you out of training because I need to speak to you about—” she looks around, then lowers her voice “—something else. A favor.”
Ah. I know what ‘a favor’ means. Thankfully, it has nothing to do with Nate. “How can I help?”
“Well, it’s quite a tragic case, really. There’s a—Down, Nigel!” she snaps at the vine that’s slowly begun to wrap itself around her ankle. It slithers away. “Honestly. I swear that plant has a mind of its own.” She turns and heads down the corridor. “Let’s talk in my office. At least I know we can’t be overheard in there.” I follow her inside and pull the door shut. The light in her office is a pale, unhealthy hue. I glance up at the glow-bug on the ceiling. Following my gaze, Tora says, “Oh, I think he may be sick. He’s been flickering on and off since yesterday. I need to get someone to take a look at him.”
I drop into a chair in front of her desk. “So, what’s this ‘tragic case’?”
Tora sighs. “Last week the sister of one of our Seers was found dead. The family has barely begun to deal with this loss, and now they’ve discovered the sister’s daughter is missing.”
“Since when?”
“Last night. She’s only six years old. Her father is in his third century, I think, but this is his first, and only, child. He’ll do anything to find her.” Tora opens the cabinet behind her desk and removes a small sock. It’s white with pink stripes. “My contact down at Missing Fae snuck this out of the evidence room for me. Would you mind doing your thing?”
“Of course not.” I reach for the sock. Holding it in both hands, I close my eyes and focus. I send my mind out, letting it skim across a vast ocean of consciousness. When I find her, it’s as though I see through her eyes. She’s sitting on a mattress in a small, bare room. Her knees are drawn up against her body. She’s watching the door, and I know without a doubt that it’s locked. I open my eyes, grab a blank scroll from Tora’s desk, and scribble down where I believe the girl to be. “She’s in a house. A human house, I think. She’s locked in, and people are arguing in the room next door.”
“Thank you.” Tora takes the scroll. “Please excuse me while I organize an anonymous message to the guy heading up this investigation.” She strides across the room and opens the door. “And don’t even think about going anywhere. We still have counseling to get through.”
I’ve barely had time to consider an escape attempt from Tora’s office when she returns. She places a hand on my shoulder. “Thank you again, Vi. I understand your desire to keep your ability to yourself for now, but I applaud the fact that you can make good use of it, even in secret.”
“Um, sure. Of course.”
“Now. Back to business.” Tora seats herself behind her desk once more. “Sorry I wasn’t around this morning; the Council is sending me to the London Guild for a few days, so I had to organize some things.” She holds her hand out. “Tracker band, please.” I unclip the strip of leather from my wrist and hand it over. I lean back in my chair while Tora checks the details of last night’s assignment and fills in the mandatory Assignment Report form.
I run through the events in my head as she writes them down. How could I have done things differently? Surely I could have avoided killing the goblin. If I’d had more power I would have been confident to try stunning him when he first appeared, like Nate suggested. If I’d had the griffin disc with me I could have done that. I had thought about taking it with, but immediately dismissed the idea when I realized Tora would see all that power when checking my tracker band. She would certainly want to know where I got it from. Perhaps I should just tell her. I mean, I’ll have to tell her about Nate eventually, won’t I? I can’t keep him secret forever.
“Tora,” I say carefully. “Is it possible to store magic in an inanimate object?”
She looks up from the page. “Are you trying to avoid the counseling part of this meeting?”
“Well, yes,” I admit, “but it’s a real question.”
Tora signs the bottom of the assignment report and rolls it up. “If it is possible, I haven’t heard of it. Why do you ask?”
“I just . . . thought it would be a good idea for guardians to have an extra source of power on them while fighting. They wouldn’t have to worry about their magic being depleted.”
“That does sound like a good idea, which makes me think that if it were possible, someone would already have figured out a way to do it.”
“True.” Why didn’t that occur to me? “But . . . what if that person was hiding how to do it?”
Tora tilts her head to the side. “Why would they do that?”
“Um . . . I don’t know.” I chicken out of telling her everything else. “Never mind. I was just thinking out loud.” I slide a little lower in my chair, then sit up straight again as something else occurs to me. “Wait, I have one more question. How long do halflings live for?”
Tora sighs. “I don’t know, Vi. It depends what kind of halfling we’re talking about and how much magic he or she has. I think the general consensus is that the more magic, the longer the life.” She pauses. “Is this some written assignment you’re doing?”
“Um, no. Just another thought.”
“Okay.” Tora gives me a strange look, then settles back in her chair. “Then I guess we’d better get to the part you’ve been looking forward to the most: How do you feel about having killed the goblin last night?”
I make it to the end of the counseling session having said just enough to satisfy Tora that I’m dealing with having killed someone. And I am. I just don’t usually deal with death by talking about it. I prefer to shove it in a little box labeled Stuff I Don’t Think About.
“Okay, I’ve kept you long enough,” says Tora. “You need to get back to the Training Center. Here’s a note for whoever’s on duty.” She writes a few words explaining my absence onto the corner of a scroll, tears it off, and hands it over. I head for the door. “And Vi?” she adds. I stop and look back, my hand resting on the doorknob. “Please try to refrain from throwing deadly objects at your classmates.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I don’t return to the Training Center. Instead, I climb up to the fourth floor and hurry toward the library. I peek inside, checking for Amon, the head librarian. He’s cool, but he won’t approve of me missing training. And aside from that, I don’t want him asking questions about the two things I’m about to look up.
The library appears to be empty. I tiptoe across it, h
eading straight for the graduate records. I sit down between the shelves, breathing in the smell of old reed paper. I pull out the volume that includes the year my parents graduated. I flip through to the relevant page, then scan the list until I find their names: Kale Fairdale and Rose Hawthorne. My mother’s name is written in gold, indicating that she was top of her class. For years I’ve hoped my own name will be printed in gold in one of these books. I continue scanning the list, but by the end of it I’ve yet to come across an Angelica.
Perhaps Nate’s mother wasn’t in the same year as my parents. I turn back a few pages and search some more lists, then forward, and search some more. No Angelica. I lean back against a shelf, the book resting on my lap. So, either Angelica confused me with someone else when we met in the labyrinth, or she was lying.
Idly, I flip back to my parents’ page—and sit up straight. There it is. Angelica Ashwood, right at the top of the list. How did I miss that? A shiver whispers across the back of my neck. So she was telling the truth. There’s a chance, of course, that this could be another Angelica. But I doubt it. Nate’s mother seemed pretty certain she knew my parents. And hated them. Perhaps she and my mother had a similar relationship to the one Ryn and I share. Perhaps they were in competition with each other the whole way through training, and Angelica never forgave my mother for being top of the class.
I close the book, return it to its place on the shelf, and stand. I’ll think about Angelica later. Right now I have something else to search for. I place my hands on my hips and stare at the shelves around me. Where do I even begin to look for a spell that involves an eye-shaped tattoo? I wander around the library, reading the labels on the shelves, hoping for something to jump out at me.
“Is someone back there?”
Oh, crap. I guess Amon’s returned from his tea break or wherever he went. I slip behind the far end of a bookshelf and crouch down. I hear his footsteps as he walks past the shelves, checking down every row. He stops. I wait several seconds before risking a glance around the edge of the shelf. He’s neatening a row of books, pushing them from behind so the spines line up perfectly with one another. When he’s satisfied, he walks away. I hear the door to his office close.
I puff out a breath of air hard enough to lift a lock of hair from my forehead. How am I supposed to find out what this eye on Nate’s back means? If only I had the ability to locate things instead of people, I could easily find whatever book has that symbol in it. I take a step forward, then stop as something dawns on me: I can find people. So if I can’t find the spell that involves an eye-shaped tattoo, then I should be looking for the person who cast it.
*
The moon is lost behind heavy clouds, but Nate’s bedroom is brightly lit tonight. The overhead light, the television, the bedside lamp, the desk lamp—it’s almost blinding after the absolute darkness of the faerie paths. I tiptoe across Nate’s bedroom floor to where he’s working at his desk. The rain pattering against the window helps conceal the sound of my footsteps. I stop directly behind his chair and quickly cover his eyes with my hands.
“What the—” He jerks in fright, leaving a line of pen across his page. He reaches up to touch my hands. “Jeez, Vi, you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“Let’s go somewhere,” I whisper in his ear without removing my hands from his eyes.
“Uh, sure, why not?”
I was expecting a little more enthusiasm, but ‘why not’ will have to do. I grab Nate’s hand, quickly open a doorway on the wall beside his desk, and pull him in after me. He wraps his arms around me from behind and kisses my neck. For a second, I forget where we’re going.
Focus!
Right. Yes. The destination. I move to his side, never letting go of his hand. “Don’t freak out when we get there,” I tell him. “I’d hate for you to plummet to your death.”
“What?” He grips my hand tighter. “What do you—Whoa!” The forest appears around us. He grabs hold of a tree trunk on his other side and looks down. Down, down, down all the way to the forest floor.
“The night we met, you asked me why I’d choose to live in a place like this, and I told you that without creepy creatures I’d have no job.” Nate nods, unable to look anywhere except down. “Well, I also live here because I find it incredibly beautiful.”
“Right. Beautiful. And it’s a really long way to the ground.”
“So don’t look down, Nate.” I raise his hand to my lips and kiss it. “Look around.” I take my own advice and allow myself to soak up the wonder of this forest canopy world. Colors shift like smoke within the branch beneath our feet. Sprites jump from leaf to leaf, leaving sprinklings of glittery dust in the air behind them. Droplets of water are strung like pearls from the silver strands of a spider’s web. Bluebottle glow-bugs stick to the leaves and branches, lighting up the night with their blue-green bodies. And high above us, clouds are draped like sashes of color across the sky. Amethyst, azure, jade.
“You’ve had a few bad experiences in my realm,” I say softly, thinking back to Drake and Zell abducting us, and the night we spent trapped in the labyrinth. “I thought it would be nice to share something beautiful with you instead.” He squeezes my hand in response. “Follow me,” I whisper.
Many of the branches are wide enough to walk along, while the thinner ones make good handholds. We cross from one tree to the next, gradually climbing higher, until we reach the spot I’m looking for. Near the top of an ancient gargan tree, two colossal branches meet and form a hollow large enough for several people to lie comfortably in. Nate relaxes as we climb into the hollow and lie down, held safely in the gargan’s arms.
The clouds draw apart like curtains across a stage—perfect timing; I couldn’t have planned it better myself—revealing galaxy upon galaxy of glittering stars. “Incredible,” breathes Nate.
“I know.” I turn my head to look at him—and my stomach fills with ice. “Nate, your face!” I sit up, a hand over my mouth. I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner, but I was standing on the other side of him when we got here. “What happened?”
He sits up, raising his fingers to the bruised, swollen skin around his eye. “It’s nothing, Vi, seriously. I just got into a fight at school and—”
“A fight at school? But you don’t seem like the type of guy who’d—”
“I’m not,” he says, the words leaving his mouth in a hurry, as though he’s worried I may get the wrong impression about him. “I’ve just . . . been in a weird mood ever since we went down into that labyrinth. And today somebody just said the wrong thing, pushed me too far. But I’m fine now, I swear.” He takes both of my hands in his. “So I’m not actually human. Big deal.” He shrugs. “It’s not like I can do any magic, so nothing’s really changed. I just want to move on and forget we ever went down there, okay?” I hesitate. I’d been hoping to tell him about my plan to find the person who put the eye on his back, but I’m guessing that wouldn’t go down too well right now. “Okay?” he presses.
It’s the desperation in his eyes that convinces me. “Okay,” I say, adding my plan to the list of things I’ll think about later. We lie down again, and I snuggle against him.
“When did you first come up here?” he asks.
“My friends and I climbed up here years ago and decided this was a good spot to hang out. We used to come here at night when our parents were away on assignment. We’d bring snacks and stay up late and draw star-to-star pictures in the sky.”
“I remember doing that,” says Nate. “The picture thing. Or at least, I imagined pictures in the clouds.”
“It’s better when you’re a faerie, because you can use a stylus to draw actual pictures in the air.”
Nate turns his head to look at me. “Cheater,” he teases, his lips curling up on one side. “You’re meant to imagine the pictures in your head.” His fingers slip between mine. Looking back toward the sky, he says, “It must be amazing to be able to travel absolutely anywhere in just a few seconds. I’d go on holid
ay all the time if it were me.”
“Well, we can’t travel anywhere. I mean, we can travel anywhere in the human realm, which is probably what you’re thinking about, but in the fae realm most private places have protection over them. We can’t just open paths into each other’s homes the way I do into yours. Only the person who owns the place, and those who have been granted permission, can enter through the faerie paths.”
“So human privacy isn’t as important as fae privacy, is that what you’re saying?” I can hear the smile behind his words.
“Pretty much.” I squeeze his hand and laugh. “Most fae wouldn’t care to enter a human home. It’s just us guardians who go wherever we please.”
“Of course. And the fae who like to eat humans.”
“Yes.” He laughs with me this time. It feels easy, natural. I’m glad he’s back to normal, even if it did take a punch in the face to get him there. “Oh, I discovered something interesting in the library today.” The words are out before I can consider whether bringing this information up is a good idea or not. Oh well, no going back now. “I looked up the list of guardian graduates for my parents’ year. Your mother’s name was there.”
Nate is silent for a moment before saying, “Wow. That’s weird, isn’t it? That they knew each other when they were young, and years later you and I end up together.”
“Yeah, that is a little weird. But weird things happen in life, right?”
Nate nods. We lie in comfortable silence for a while, his thumb moving up and down against mine. He takes a deep breath. “Vi?”
I steel myself for something major, like a declaration of love. “Yes?”
“I’d like to take you on a date.”
“Oh.” Relief. “Cool. I’ve never been on a date.”
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