Mum’s face paled at the mention of frogs bursting from my mouth. She and Dad exchanged a worried glance, which Mr Ormond caught.
“But as you can see,” he said, smiling to reassure them that he didn’t believe any such nonsense, “she’s not spitting frogs out any more. I suppose she had them in her pocket all along, and some of the eyewitnesses have become a little excitable. Isn’t that right, Violet?”
“Yes, sir.”
The four of us were crammed into his small office, arrayed in a tight semi-circle in front of his desk. My knee pressed up against CJ’s.
“Maybe you should suspend us, sir,” I suggested.
He frowned. “This is not a joke, Violet. I’m sure, once your parents take you home and you have time to think about your behaviour, such extreme measures won’t be necessary.”
Well, it was worth a try.
Then he’d shaken hands with Mum and Dad and sent us on our way. The last bell rang as the interview finished, and we got swept along in the usual tide of kids rushing to leave school.
Only today the tide seemed to swirl around us full of whispers and pointing fingers. Word had spread already.
“Give us a diamond, CJ!” yelled one boy.
Funnily enough, no one seemed to want a frog. I heard the word enough, though, along with disgusting and gross and freak. Never had so many people looked at me with such revulsion. I stuck close to Dad and tried to ignore them all, but by the time we got to the car I was almost in tears.
I’d expected the lecture to start as soon as the engine did, but neither of them said a word all the way home. Guess they were saving it up.
We trooped in from the garage and Dad pointed at the couch in the family room. “Sit.”
We did, though I made sure to sit close. CJ’s leg was warm against mine. Mum sat in an armchair, but Dad remained standing, leaning back against the kitchen bench with his arms folded. If he was going to rant I wished he’d just get it over with. The suspense was killing me.
“Okay, young ladies. I want the truth now.”
No, you don’t, Dad. You really, really don’t. Now I knew we were in for it. Last time he’d called us young ladies we’d been grounded for a month and scrubbing the shower with a toothbrush.
“And don’t bother looking at each other like that, trying to get your stories straight. I’m perfectly happy to interview you separately if that’s what it takes.”
“You don’t have to do that.” Immediately I tried to look cooperative, but I must have overdone it.
He looked at Mum and she nodded. “Violet, come with me while Dad talks to Crystal.”
“No! Can’t I stay? I won’t say a word.”
Mum’s gaze hardened. She did a death stare even better than Mr Ormond. “Get up.”
I sighed and stood up. I guess trying to keep it from them was a pretty forlorn hope anyway. She crooked her finger at me and I walked to the door with her.
“Before you go,” Dad said, “answer me one question. Where did you get the frogs?”
I hesitated.
He quirked an eyebrow at me. “Well?”
Fine. If you really want to know. We needed help. If we were going to fly to Las Vegas to see an illusionist, we’d need Mum and Dad on board with the idea. “Out of my mouth.”
We all stared at the three little green frogs on the carpet. They stared back, blinking their bulbous orange eyes as if surprised to find themselves the centre of so much attention. Mum drew her breath in sharply as they appeared, but Dad didn’t bat an eyelid.
“And the diamonds, CJ? The same place, I suppose?”
“Yep.” She caught the diamond as it fell and held it out for his inspection.
He sighed heavily and sat at the table, waving me back toward the couch. “Fine. You can sit down again. We don’t really want to be overrun with frogs. Being together suppresses the effect, I take it?”
I nodded and resumed my seat. How had he figured that one out so fast? And why was he so calm? My heart was pounding, but he seemed to be lost in thought, gazing off into space while his fingers tapped an absent rhythm on the table top.
“You’re taking this better than I thought you would,” I said.
Mum sighed. “It wasn’t entirely unexpected.”
“It wasn’t?” CJ stared open-mouthed. “Do you know what caused it? How do we get rid of it?”
“The Hendrix counter, I think,” Dad said to Mum. They both ignored CJ’s questions.
She nodded and left the room. Okay, this was getting weird—weirder still when she returned a moment later with a box no bigger than a paperback. It had a couple of dials on the side, but the main feature was a clear glass tube mounted on the front of the box. She knelt on the carpet and held it over the frogs. One hopped away but the other two sat patiently. As she adjusted the dials the glass tube began to glow a soft pink.
Then she brought the box to us.
“What is that thing?” CJ asked.
“A Hendrix counter.”
The tube flushed bright red as she held it out to CJ.
“For counting Hendrixes?” I joked, uneasy now. What was going on?
I edged away. I didn’t want that thing anywhere near me.
“Sit still,” Mum said. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”
“I’m not scared,” I said at once, but as the tube began to glow red that wasn’t exactly true. “What are you doing?”
Mum looked at me calmly. “It’s called a Hendrix counter because it was invented by a man named Hendrix. It measures the presence and intensity of aether, the raw stuff of magic.”
I laughed, but she didn’t crack a smile. “Seriously? Mum, you’re freaking me out.”
“You have some other rational explanation for why frogs are suddenly jumping out of your mouth when you speak? If you remove all impossible explanations, then the only possibility you’re left with has got to be the answer, however unlikely.”
“But magic’s an impossible explanation too,” said CJ.
“Says the girl dropping diamonds with every word,” Dad said.
“And where did you get this Hendrix thingy?”
Mum pulled out a chair and joined him, putting the Hendrix counter on the table between them. It looked rather like an old-fashioned radio. We faced each other, them together on one side of the table, the two of us on the edge of the couch across the room. It felt like being back in Mr Ormond’s office, only with more space.
Dad must have seen something of what I was feeling in my face.
“You’re not in trouble, girls,” he said, “but I need the truth. Obviously something has happened while we were away that we need to get to the bottom of.”
How could anyone get to the bottom of this freakiness? When I’d been a little girl Daddy had always been able to fix everything. Sadly, I was too old now to be reassured by his calm assumption that he could fix this. Although … the fact that he knew about magic, and even had a gadget to measure it, suggested that we weren’t the only ones in the family who’d been hiding secrets.
“Have you met any strangers lately?” Mum asked.
CJ rolled her eyes. “We just started at a new school, Mum. Of course we have.”
“Suspicious ones, then. Anyone who asked you for a drink, for instance.”
The image came to me from Toads and Diamonds of the old lady at the well asking the pretty girl for water. Is that where she was going with this?
“Why are you asking? We’re not part of some fairy tale.”
“I think you are, sweetie,” Dad said.
What had gotten into them? I glared at the stupid Hendrix counter, glowing now with nothing more than the sunlight streaming in the sliding glass door. If I hadn’t seen that shining all pink and red I’d think they were both smoking something funny.
“Who did you see on the weekend?” Mum asked. “This is serious, girls.”
CJ glanced at me. I could feel an I told you so, bigger and uglier than any toad, trying to burst from
my mouth. That stupid party. Why couldn’t she have asked them about it? Maybe you should have asked them yourself, came the guilty little whisper. Imagine the tantrum if I had, though, and they’d said no. CJ wouldn’t have talked to me for a week—and she would still probably have gone. So you took the easy way out even though you knew better.
To her credit, CJ didn’t try to hide the truth. She might have broken the rules now and then, but she was no liar.
“We went to a party on Saturday night. Half the school was there.”
“Really?” Dad’s eyebrows drew together in a scowl. “Did you know about this, Janey?”
Mum shook her head, such a look of disappointment on her face that my heart sank. “No, I didn’t. Was this your idea or Violet’s?”
“Mine.” CJ lifted her chin, but I knew she hated that look of Mum’s as much as I did. Being yelled at was far better than earning that reproachful but I thought I could trust you look. “Vi said we should ask but I didn’t think you’d let us go, so …” She shrugged. “I just really wanted to hang out and make some new friends.”
Ooh, low blow. She knew how guilty Mum felt about dragging us around the country all the time.
“Never mind,” said Dad. “We can discuss your choices and their consequences another time. Right now we need to know about that party. The truth, CJ. Did anyone ask you to give them something? A drink, a kiss, a lock of hair, anything?”
“No.”
“What about gifts? Did anyone give you both something?”
If you counted drunken boys offering to show us a good time, yes, but I didn’t think that was what Dad meant. There was Josh Johnson, of course, giving CJ absinthe, but I hadn’t had any, so that didn’t count either. Although …
“Josh Johnson talked about giving us presents, but he never actually did.”
“Josh Johnson? Who’s he?”
“The school captain,” CJ said, shooting me a quick why-did-you-have-to-mention-him? glance. “The party was at his house.”
“What sort of present?” Mum asked.
This was tricky. I didn’t want to mention the absinthe.
“He didn’t say. I just assumed he was … umm … you know, being suggestive.” And if saying something like that to your mother isn’t awkward, I don’t know what is. It had been pretty awkward at the time, too. There’d been something almost frightening about that moment in the bedroom. Josh had seemed sharper, harder somehow than his usual look at me, I’m God’s gift to the world self.
And also …
“I don’t know if it means anything, but something kind of weird did happen. I saw Josh in the spa with some girls one minute, and the next minute I saw him somewhere else, fully dressed.”
“That’s right,” said CJ, clearly relieved to turn the conversation away from absinthe territory. “And when we came outside again, he was back in the spa, as if he’d never left. I wondered how he could have changed and got there so quickly.”
Dad frowned. “That does sound odd. What does this Josh boy look like?”
“I can show you a picture of him,” I said.
The look on CJ’s face was priceless. I almost laughed, despite the seriousness of the situation. She didn’t know I’d taken two photos that night—the one of the two of them lying back on the bed, and then another straight after of the look on Josh’s face.
“I’m pretty sure you deleted that photo,” she said, her eyes boring into me. Take the hint or I swear I will kill you, those eyes said.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “No, it’s still here.” I flicked through the photos until I found the right one, and held it out to Dad. “This is him.”
Dad took the phone and showed it to Mum. “Why is he pulling that face?”
“He has red eyes,” Mum said.
“That’s just the flash.”
“I don’t think so. Not if you saw him in two places at once.”
She shared a troubled look with Dad. I was getting sick of this whole unspoken conversation they were having without us.
“What do you mean? Sure, it was weird, but maybe he got changed really quickly.”
Mum sighed and handed the phone back. “They rely on that, you know—that people will talk themselves into disbelieving the evidence of their own eyes. That person in the picture—that’s not Josh Johnson.”
“Sure it is,” said CJ. “No offence, but you haven’t even met him.”
“I don’t need to meet him to know that that creature’s not human. That’s a Sidhe.”
“He’s a she? What are you talking about?”
A hint of a smile flickered across Mum’s face. “Not she. S-I-D-H-E—it’s pronounced shee. The Sidhe are—well, I suppose you’d call them fairies.”
“I think it’s time we told you two what we do for a living,” said Dad.
I was too busy boggling at Mum to look at him. Did she really just say fairies?
“You work for the military,” CJ said. She looked pretty dazed too.
“No. That’s just what we tell people. It’s easier than the truth.”
“Which is—?”
“That we’re really prison wardens.”
I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but it wasn’t that. Prison wardens didn’t sound too magical. What was the big deal?
“For a very special kind of prisoner,” said Mum. “Actually, it’s a special kind of prison too. To keep the Sidhe from our world. To keep their magic locked away where it can’t do any harm.”
Whoa. Okay, that was a pretty big deal. I wanted to say I didn’t believe it, but those frogs weren’t my imagination. Magic was real. And my parents knew all about it. I didn’t know which one was crazier.
“Only now, magic is leaking through the walls, appearing in our world as pieces of fairy tales,” Dad said. “The girl in the glass coffin was the first—Snow White in the middle of the Australian bush. I knew something was terribly wrong the minute I saw it on the news. That’s where we’ve been the last two days, trying to get to the bottom of it.”
I knew that was Dad’s face I’d glimpsed on TV!
“We actually know her. I thought I recognised her on the TV. She’s the sister of one of our colleagues.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“We don’t know. We’ve never come across anything like this before. There’s been no change in her condition since we found her.”
“And now you two.” Mum’s face crinkled into worried lines. “This changes everything.”
“How do you mean?”
“Before it might have been an accident. Now it’s starting to look like an attack.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
At least we didn’t have to pretend to have laryngitis any more. Dad spent the next morning running experiments on us. Most of them involved bits and pieces of weird gadgetry like the Hendrix counter, that beeped or spat out incomprehensible printouts while Dad muttered to himself.
The only test that made any sense was when he was trying to establish just how connected CJ and I had to be to nullify the Frog Effect. He tried us holding the ends of all kinds of things: a length of steel chain from the garage, various items of clothing, glass bottles (both empty and full), jewellery of gold and of silver. None of them worked. We had to be in direct contact.
Pretty early in the experiment we moved outside. Frog production was in overdrive with all the talking I was doing, and the little devils were hopping everywhere.
“Why don’t you just make CJ talk?” I complained. “At least diamonds are worth something.”
“To address your first point,” Dad said, looking up from his laptop, “what kind of scientist only tests one side of the equation? One of these things might stop the frogs without affecting the diamonds. We’d never know if CJ is the only one talking. And secondly, I hope you girls aren’t dreaming of riches, because these diamonds aren’t worth anything.”
CJ looked crestfallen. She’d most certainly been making big plans. “What do you mean? They’re
real diamonds, aren’t they?”
“Oh, they’re real enough to fool any jeweller, all right. They just won’t last long. There’s not enough aether in the world any more to sustain them.”
“I should have taken some to a jeweller on Sunday, before they got home,” CJ whispered to me. “They would have lasted long enough to make me rich.”
“Oh, that wouldn’t have looked suspicious at all,” I whispered back. Honestly, sometimes I wondered about my sister. She was smart enough, but had no more common sense than a flea. “A teenager wandering into a jeweller’s with a handful of massive diamonds. You would have got yourself arrested.”
To Dad I said, “What’s aether?”
“Aether is the raw material of magic. There’s barely any left in the world any more. Or at least, there shouldn’t be. Only enough to power some of our devices, like the Hendrix counter, and we keep that safely locked away. There’s aether in the tube, and when a current is passed through it, it reacts to the presence of aether in the vicinity. That’s why the tube glows when it’s near you two.”
I couldn’t believe this was my father talking. He looked the same as always; kind of balding, a bit daggy. But apparently he was an expert on magic.
“Were you ever planning on telling us any of this?” An expert on magic, but all these years he’d let us think he worked for the military.
He frowned at his computer screen and said nothing.
“We’re not kids any more, you know.” I could understand keeping secrets when we were little, but now? Considering the sacrifices we’d made for their careers, it would at least have been nice to know why.
“It would depend entirely on the results of your tests.”
“What tests?”
Dad sighed and ran a hand over his face. “Everyone with the blood is tested in childhood, and again at eighteen. If they have enough latent affinity for magic, they become a part of our organisation. We have a web of people all over the world. Web …” He broke off, and I could tell from the look on his face that his mind had veered off down a completely different path. “Spider-silk’s a marvellous conductor of aether. We should try regular silk.” He bounded inside and came back with an old scarf of Mum’s. “I should have thought of that before. Most of the High Sidhe’s garments are made of silk.”
The Fairytale Curse (Magic's Return Book 1) Page 7
