The Hidden Court

by Vivienne Savage

  “The joys of Chicago weather.” Liadan laughed and leaned over to peer at the list. “They’ve gotten trickier with these last clues, haven’t they? There’s no golden lane on campus.”

  Something in her words got me thinking. “You’re right. There isn’t one on campus, but there is one in Tir na Nog. The clue says to look for ‘where the autumn sun kisses the golden lane.’ I betcha it’s talking about the Yellow Brick Road.”

  Liadan clapped and squealed. “Where it meets with the Autumn Woodlands of Tir na Nog!”

  “Yes! I mean, what’s the point of being allowed to cross over if they don’t make it part of the game?”

  Suspicious of eavesdroppers, I quieted and glanced around the immediate area. Other costumed students traveled up and down the lanes and walkways.

  Beneath the privacy of our Prismatic Cloaks, we hurried toward the boundary of the university grounds. If we wanted to win the Annual Samhain Scavenger Hunt, we’d have to leave the mortal realm far behind us. Excitement rushed through my veins, hammering a wild drumbeat.

  The farther we traveled, the more alien and strange the environment became, beautiful but unlike anything in the mortal realm. Here, the flowers glowed like lanterns and will o’ wisps danced beneath a sky lit in a perpetual state of beauty by the aurora borealis.

  “It’s so beautiful,” I whispered. “I’ve only crossed over a few times, and only when visiting my grandfather in Italy.”

  “It is, yes. I’d love to come back with all our friends one day. Or maybe… maybe later tonight. After the hunt is over.”

  “Yeah, I feel a little bad about leaving Ben and Pilar out, but I figured you could use a break from the lovestruck stares.”

  “I don’t know how to tell him he isn’t my type,” Liadan said. She wrung her hands together. “Ben is sweet, but... is it awful of me to say he isn’t pretty enough?”

  “Do you like guys who look more like Julien?”

  “Oh, he’s pretty, but I dunno. I guess I just haven’t found the right person. I’ve uh…” She scuffed her shoe against the ground. “I’ve dated guys and girls both. I actually find Holly more attractive than Ben.” She stole a shy glance at me.

  I grinned back at her. “To be honest, I think Holly’s a little too diva for you. I’d give it a week before she drove you to murder.” Which was saying a lot, considering how much of a pacifist sweet Lia could be.

  “You’re probably right.” She laughed nervously and tucked her hair back behind her ear. In Tir na Nog, the tip of it tapered to a fine point, like an elf. Mine probably looked the same beneath my headpiece. “You’re not weirded out?”

  “Nah, that doesn’t bother me. You’re still the same Lia.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You should tell him you aren’t interested, instead of avoiding him. He won’t be mad or anything, and that way he’ll stop making puppy dog eyes at you. I mean, right now he just thinks he isn’t coming on strong enough.”

  A wisp circled around us and continued on its merry way as the path took us deeper into the faerie realm. I squinted at the sky again through the heavy canopy overhead and breathed in the fragrance of magic in the air. We weren’t more than a few minutes from our goal, even if time was relative.

  “I know you’re right, but I worry it will damage our friendship.”

  I shook my head. “Nah. If he’s a real friend, and he is, he’ll underst—”

  The trees rustled to our right, and then a twig snapped.

  “Hello?” I called.

  “It’s probably a pixie or something,” Liadan said, but she edged closer.

  We continued down the path, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. The branches whispered, the sound of something soft against barren bushes.

  “Is someone there?”

  The largest, gnarliest looking wolf I’d ever seen barreled from the trees. Thick ropes of bloody, stinking saliva dripped from its maw, and its eyes blazed red in the dimmed light. While most werewolves were pretty huge, this thing stood nose to nose with me on four legs and was even bigger than Sebastian, with a branching network of bony antlers twisting back from its head. Gore glistened on each point.

  A wendigo. Somehow, a wendigo had entered our sacred realm.

  Liadan screamed. I shoved her behind me and thrust out one hand to release a wave of Faerie Fire. It came by instinct, the molten rush of cerulean and gold flames one of the few offensive spells I knew. Undeterred, the wendigo bounded over the spell.

  “Oh shit! Run!” I urged Lia ahead of me. We jogged three or four times a week together around the campus, but while we were both in reasonable shape, I didn’t think we could outrun a darkling.

  I’d sure as hell try though. Dodging the few obstacles between us and the road winding back to the university, I ducked beneath low-hanging branches and hurdled upraised tree roots. The wilderness provided less room for our pursuer and all the space we needed to maneuver to safety.

  “We’ll never escape it!”

  Despite agreeing with Lia, the least I could do was give it an awful case of heartburn while she escaped.

  Feet pounding against the ground and heart hammering, I kept pace beside her despite the unstoppable brute closing the distance to our rear. “Cloak and run! I’ll try to slow it down.”

  “I won’t leave you here!” she cried.

  “You have to. One of us needs to get away to let the school know.”

  The wendigo came in fast. He leapt over our heads and cleared the space like he was taking a freaking step instead of jumping thirty yards in one bound. Holy crap. Liadan tripped over a root, shrieking as she fell to her hands and knees.

  “Lia!”

  I cast a ward around us, throwing all my strength into the protective spell. My puny shield didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of keeping him out, but it was better than pleading “please don’t eat me!”

  Towering above us by at least ten feet, the wendigo stopped shy of my defensive bubble and snarled. Had he grown even bigger than before? As the beast paced a circle around my charm, it wagged its tail, moving from one side of us to the next.

  Darklings may have gone over to the side of evil, but their intelligence didn’t suffer for it.

  “Pretty, pretty fae…” It spoke in a dry, gritty voice. “How delicious you will taste once I’ve sank my teeth in you.”

  Chills ran down my spine. I moved with him, keeping my body between him and Lia and also waiting for the beast to test my defenses.

  Then it began laughing at us. Not snarling or growling, but outright laughing as it fell back onto its haunches. It tossed its head back, revealing the decaying expanse of its mangy throat.

  “I can’t believe this,” it said in its deep, rumbling voice.

  “Wh-what?”

  The wendigo immediately melted away, losing two yards of its height to become my sentinel friend.

  I stared at him in his dirty, navy blue jumpsuit. He wore a hockey mask pushed up to reveal his face.

  “Gabriel?”

  “Sup, ladies. Happy Halloween. Or Samhain. Whatever y’all wanna call it.”

  “That was you?”

  “Well, an illusion.”

  Like a bad dream, the memory of the darkling’s hot breath on my nape lingered in my mind. The rotten stench was still in my nostrils.

  “An illusion,” I repeated.

  “Yeah.”

  Lia trembled behind me without moving or acknowledging she’d realized it was a prank. I was reminded of the pet guinea pig Mindi had as a child. The poor thing had died of a heart attack at two years of age, frightened to death by the family dog. Before it died though, it had just laid there in shock, trembling for an hour while her parents debated what to do.

  “Asshole!”

  I launched myself at him, fists first. Expecting him to sidestep or even bat me aside, nothing startled me more than when my fist landed in his jaw. We tumbled down to the grass together, rolling and flailing.

  �
��You scared the hell out of both of us!”

  “Hey, hey, wait!”

  “You big jerk! What if I had hurt you with my magic!”

  We came to a stop several feet away, my back to the grass and Gabriel above me while he pinned my hands to the ground.

  “Sky, I—”

  I headbutted him, cracking my brow against his face.

  “Fuck!” Gabriel backed off me and jumped to his feet in a flash. Blood poured down from his nose.

  I was so mad at him I couldn’t think straight. When I launched myself at him again, Liadan caught me around the middle.

  “I think you made your point, Skylar.”

  Gabriel shrugged his coveralls off his shoulders and took off his wifebeater. He pressed the fabric to his face to catch the blood from his busted nose. His voice honked when he spoke. “I did tell you I’d be testing you soon. It’s not much of a test if you know it’s coming.”

  It pissed me off more that he had a point.

  “It’s one thing to test me and another to scare the fuck out of my friend with me.”

  “Look, I’m sorry about scaring Liadan too, but I figured you both would realize something was up. Darklings can’t cross into Tir na Nog.”

  “Darklings can’t…” I stared at him then mouthed to myself, “Fuck.”

  Liadan laughed first. “He’s right. I about died of terror thinking we were doomed, and now I feel so silly.”

  She was right, but it didn’t make me any less angry at him for making me feel like an absolute idiot. Or looking like one.

  He rubbed his jaw. “Guess you passed. Damn. You handled yourself awesomely just now, Sky. Like for real. I mean, a real wendigo is probably going to be a dumbass once you shoot Faerie Fire at him. So you remembered your lessons.”

  “I did?”

  “Yeah. Or your subconscious did.”

  “Right.” There were better things for a subconscious mind to examine instead, like his shirtless chest and all the muscles he’d been hiding beneath his everyday clothes. All shifters had bodies worthy of a superhero action flick, but I preferred toned werewolves and the leaner ravens with their whipcord biceps and defined backs.

  And rock-hard abdomens etched in definition. Gabriel had one worth admiring.

  Liadan nudged me with an elbow. “Sky?”

  “Huh?”

  She giggled. “We lost you for a second there. You zoned out.”

  Although he no longer held his white wifebeater to his face, Gabriel clutched the bloodstained shirt in one hand while gingerly touching his face with the other. He didn’t wince.

  “I’m sorry for breaking your nose,” I blurted.

  “Nah, don’t be. Rodrigo does it all the time. Besides, I had that one coming.”

  Liadan laughed. “Here, let me fix that for you now that I can move again.” A single wave of her wand erased the blood from his clothes and hands. She made it look so effortless.

  “Thanks.”

  “Not a problem. Want to come with us to the Autumn Woods?”

  “Sure, I was on my way there when I saw you on the same path.”

  And decided to terrorize us. Calmer by the second, I walked between my two friends. When we reached the edge of the woodlands in a perpetual state of fall, we found no other students lurking nearby and took our trophies. The sheets didn’t seem to believe we’d cheated by working together, because it gave all three of us credit for claiming golden leaves.

  “Sweet.” Gabriel grinned and tucked his clue page away in his pocket. “So, anyway. Wanna hit up the Haunted House with us later?”

  “Me or both of us?”

  He shrugged. “Both of y’all can come. There’s room.”

  Wary of crossing paths with Jada, I hesitated. “Who’s ‘us’?”

  “Rodrigo and Amalia. What? You think Jada’s got time for a haunted house?”

  I shrugged. “I dunno. I don’t sit around and think about what she would and would not do.”

  His grin broadened. “Neither do I. Anyway, she’s with her girlfriends in the quad trying to win votes for the costume contest.”

  “Oh yeah, what’s she dressed up as?” Sexy policewoman or something probably. Nothing about Jada screamed original or unique.

  “Sexy cop.”

  “Ha!”

  “I’ll pass on the haunted house,” Lia said, “but you should go, Sky. I’ll live vicariously through you.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You girls finish the hunt, and I’ll meet you there at midnight. Sound good?”

  “It’s a date,” I confirmed.

  We touched our knuckles together in a fist bump then split to go our separate ways back to the school. Once Gabriel traveled beyond earshot, Liadan elbowed my ribs.

  “A date, huh?”

  “Shut up,” I mumbled. “We have three more clues to find.”

  10

  Haunted House or Heart Attack?

  Liadan and I turned in our completed scavenger sheet with time to spare before the winner announcement. The coordinators needed a couple hours to tally all the score sheets since each clue was magically graded by difficulty and time spent solving it.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” I asked Liadan.

  “I’m sure. You go have fun, and I’ll find Pilar and Ben.”

  “Okay, I’ll come find you all afterward.”

  Following the screams and wild pulses of magic lighting the night sky, I found the haunted manor at the edge of the residential quarters. According to Ben, the senior class of 1976 had convinced the provost to give them a derelict building slated for redesign. Instead of demolishing it for updated housing, the students transformed it into the site for the annual event. They’d made it a true spectacle of magic, glamour, and peaceful collaboration between the four races.

  Fog curled over the transformed yard, and broken gravestones jutted up from the ground. The pathway lights flickered ominously as I made my way toward the entrance.

  “You gonna brave that place alone?” a voice behind me asked.

  I spun around and came face-to-face with an Imperial Stormtrooper. “Er... no? Who’re you?”

  The guy removed his helmet. Dedrik Blackwood offered a small, tight smile. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “You didn’t. Besides, it’s Halloween. Scaring people is part of the fun.”

  “Oh yeah, you looked like you were having a total blast when you punched Fujimoto.”

  For a minute, I wanted to slap the smirk right off his face. “Were you spying on us?”

  “You weren’t exactly quiet. Half the Autumn Wood heard your scuffle.”

  “Oh.” Whoops. “So, um, did you need something?”

  “How’s your mentorship coming along?” he asked. “Are you actually learning anything from Monica or…? Sorry. You probably don’t wanna talk about it.”

  Something in his earnest, genuine expression tugged at my conscience. “Hey, look, I had no idea when I got here that you were at the school, and I’m sorry you got the shaft from Mrs. Hansford over who I was assigned to.”

  “It’s not your fault. Fujimoto’s a good sentinel, at least.”

  “He is,” I replied. Then I added in a softer voice, “So was your mom.”

  He colored around the ears. “Thanks. Um, anyway… I don’t want to hold you up if you have plans or someone to meet, but my current ward graduates this spring. I mean, I will too, but Riordan’s okay with me hanging around a couple more years for you.”

  “Oh, um…”

  He held up a hand. “No pressure.”

  “Thanks, Dedrik. Really. I’ll keep it in mind.”

  Once he jogged into the darkness, my path up the walkway continued. Rodrigo Gutierrez stood out among the other students assembled beside the steps to the dilapidated mansion. He’d dressed like a famous wrestler, down to the Polynesian tattoos on his shoulder. Beside him, Amalia wore the green and brown leather associated with a fantasy elf.
Pointed ears angled out from beneath her braided hair.

  “Hey, you made it.” Gabriel jogged up to me and grinned. Rodrigo and Amalia followed a little behind him.

  “Miss the haunted house? Are you kidding? The real Jason Voorhees couldn’t keep me away.”

  “Sweet. You got here just in time. They’re about to allow the next batch of people inside.”

  “Sup,” Rodrigo said.

  “Hey.” Amalia smiled shyly. “Glad to see you.”

  “Thanks for inviting me.”

  Rodrigo’s huge muscles glistened beneath the muted lanterns hanging from wrought-iron hooks beside us. They cast a spooky, blue glow over his chest, and I wondered how the hell he wasn’t freezing while wearing only tiny shorts and a replica heavyweight wrestling belt.

  “He’s not cold,” Amalia said, like she’d read my mind.

  Heat surged to my cheeks. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “But you were wondering. It’s cool, I did too. I think he’s kind of crazy, but then again, we passed one of your freshman friends in booty shorts.”

  Rodrigo chuckled. “Shifter gift.”

  “I have the same gift, and looking at you makes me cold,” Amalia muttered as she led the way.

  A yawning senior vamp stood beside the double doors in bloodstained doctor’s scrubs. “Take the wings off if you’re going inside the Haunted Manor,” he said. “It’s part of the rules. You can leave them here and return for them after you escape.”

  Escape. Right. Crinkling my nose, I turned and put my back to the group of older students. “One of you mind unfastening me?”

  “Sure,” Amalia said. “Hey, these are pretty nice, but why are there leaves and dirt in the feathers?”

  “I had to give a certain raven an ass-whooping.”

  Both Amalia and Rodrigo stared at Gabriel and, much to my pleasure, he blushed.

  “Don’t piss her off,” Gabriel muttered. “She has a hell of a right hook when her temper is high.”

  “Shortstuff got the drop of you?” Rodrigo busted out laughing. “Man, I wish I’d seen it.”

  Once the weight of my wings lifted from my back, I straightened and stretched my spine before taking the wings from Amalia and setting them carefully aside on a table behind the guy passing out entrance tickets.