“They want to leave. The elementals and everyone, they’re working with the Seelie faeries. They asked me to make a gate. It doesn’t matter now, nothing matters now. Maybe I should make them a gate so I can burn myself into oblivion.”
“Don’t say that! Don’t you ever say that. Your soul is worth more than any of them can ever understand.” She pushed back and took my face in her hands to glare into my eyes. “You hear me?”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t be stupid, Evie. It always matters. Now, listen: Did she kill him?”
“I—No, I don’t think so. She just took him. He…he changed into me. She thought she was taking me.”
Vivian laughed, a short, mirthless sound. “Go, Lend. Bet she’s not happy when she figures out she dirtied herself with the mortal realms to bring back the wrong person.”
“You don’t think he’s dead?” I whispered, not daring to hope.
“No, he’s too interesting a prize. The faeries who raised me talked about the Dark Queen all the time. She loves collecting pretty things, and if she’s going up against the Seelies and all the elementals, she’s not going to throw away the son of a water spirit. She’s too smart for that, too cunning. She’ll cut her losses and figure out how to use him to gain an advantage.”
I let out another sob, thinking of Lend in her clutches, remembering what she had done to those poor people I saw when I was in the Faerie Realms with Jack. She’d done more than break their bodies—she’d stolen everything that made them human. The thought of what she could do to Lend…
“Deep breaths, Evie. This is good. I promise. She’s not going to hurt him. Yet.”
“Yet?” Gee, thanks, Viv. That was really reassuring.
“Exactly. Yet. Which means that you had better get your butt in gear and figure out a way to save him and take her down.”
“How am I supposed to do that? She’s the freaking Dark Queen. Have you ever seen her?”
“No.”
“Well, I have! And both times it was all I could do not to throw myself at her feet! Around her I’ve never…I’ve never felt so nothing. I’m nothing compared to her. Not even a grain of sand in eternity. She’s everything.”
Vivian rolled her eyes. “She’s totally overrated. And she has your Lend. You can do this. You have to.”
I wiped my tears away, clenching my jaw. I could do this. I had to. Lend was the only choice I’d ever wanted to make, and as long as he was alive, I wasn’t about to stop fighting.
“I love you, Viv,” I said, needing her to know that it was true, that someone could love her in spite of everything she’d done. I might never get a chance to see her again. Oh, who was I kidding—I was about to take on the Dark Queen. I was definitely never going to see Viv again.
Her face lit up in a smile that almost made her glow. “Ah, stupid, you know I love you, too.” Vivian held up one hand, palm out, and I put mine flat against hers. Her smile shifted, a vicious slant to her eyes. “Magic hands, remember?”
I nodded. “Magic hands.”
“Find the Dark Queen. Take it all.”
I woke up to the skeletons of trees framing the sky. Someone was crying softly and I turned my head to see Donna, cradling a seal in her arms, stroking its fur and whispering to it. Next to her Grnlllll lowered Nona halfway into a hole in the ground, then motioned with her pawlike hands; the dirt filled in around the tree spirit and Grnlllll sat heavily, staring at Nona’s body with half-lidded eyes.
I wanted to feel sad, wanted to find out if Kari would be okay and if Nona could somehow fix herself by being planted like that, but I couldn’t. There was nothing I could do to help them right now, and if I let myself mourn, it would take time and energy. I didn’t have room left to worry about anyone except Lend. I wouldn’t lose anyone else to the Dark Queen. It’s what Nona and Kari would want; they loved Lend, too.
“Where’s David?” I sat up in Reth’s arms, then pushed out of them and stood. We were on the banks of Cresseda’s pond; he must have brought me here while I was asleep.
“I believe he’s trying to secure help. Cresseda should be here shortly, along with most of the elementals. Including that rather distasteful dragon and those horrid, depressing banshees.”
“Doesn’t matter. Take me to the Dark Queen. Now.”
“I may be wrong, but I don’t believe your boy sacrificed himself so you could get killed.”
“I’m not going to get killed. I’m going to kill her.”
Reth laughed.
I punched him.
It hurt.
Me, not him, unfortunately. He just stared at me with those depthless golden eyes, and had the nerve to look sad. I waved my hand back and forth, trying to shake out the pain. “You think I can’t do it?”
“I’ve no doubt you think you can. But, Evelyn, my love, I’ve fought to protect you for years now. And, unlike you, I won’t so lightly disregard your Lend’s last wish that I keep you safe.”
“I’m not yours to keep safe! And if you had done something instead of just sitting there holding me back, Lend would be with us right now.”
“Yes, but you would be lost.”
“Are you going to help me or not?”
“Of course not.”
“Fine. I’ll get there myself, then.”
I turned and stomped up the path toward the house, mushy dead leaves muffling my steps. Lend’s car was still here; I could figure out this driving thing well enough to get myself back to the diner. I needed Tasey, and my cell phone, and Raquel.
I was out of faerie names now that Reth had a new one, Fehl would kill me at first sight, and my creepy alcoholic faerie father was banished to the Faerie Realms forever. Raquel, however, had a whole bunch of faerie names at her disposal. And if I had their names, I could control them. And if I could control them, I could get to the Faerie Realms. Too bad I’d given up my communicator. Raquel would help me—all I had to do was get in contact with her.
I broke out of the woods at the house and nearly ran into two tall, broad-shouldered men in suits. Frowning, I looked at their faces. Yellow wolf eyes beneath their blue and brown ones. Werewolves. Must be here to help Lend’s dad.
“I think everyone’s meeting at the pond with a bunch of elementals,” I said, hoping that maybe together the werewolves and elementals would come up with some miraculous plan, but not counting on it. I didn’t have time to wait for them to decide on a course of action; in fact, I seriously doubted anyone besides David would be willing to risk themselves to save Lend. It was up to me.
“Evelyn?” one asked.
“Yeah,” I said, waving a hand dismissively and moving to walk past them. Lend always hung his keys on a ring near the door. I’d get those, and—
“You’re under arrest for violating statute one point one of the International Paranormal Control Charter.”
I stopped. “Wait, seriously? Seriously? You guys are here to arrest me?” I started laughing. “Wow, you so picked the wrong day. Come back next week, okay?”
Before I could move one of them shoved a shiny silver Taser at me; the last thought that went through my head before I collapsed, shaking on the ground, was that, bleep, being tased really sucked.
NEW JEWELRY
Oh. My. Galloping. Gremlins. My head hurt so bad that when I opened my eyes, everything was the same shade of blinding white. My tongue felt thick and dry and too big for my mouth, and my entire body ached. I squeezed my eyes shut and then opened them again, trying to blink away the whiteness.
Which was when it hit me. The white wasn’t in my eyes. It was outside—and all around me. I sat up from my small cot and stared in horror at the seven feet by seven feet cube of a room I was in. My hand went immediately to my neck. My necklace, with the iron heart that Lend gave me, was gone.
My heart raced, panic setting in. No, this was wrong. They just brought me in to chew me out, or demand I work for them again, or—
I reached a hand down to my ankl
e and was immediately sick to my stomach over the small bulk beneath my jeans hem. No, no, no, no, no.
I’d been bagged and tagged. The ankle bracelet I was wearing was as familiar to me as Tasey; I knew exactly how it worked, and even then it was all I could do to keep my fingers from trying to rip it off.
I’d only get electrocuted again.
I stared at the open doorway, tormenting me with a free pass to freedom—or at least, freedom for anyone who hadn’t been tagged. And if I had to guess, I’d say I wasn’t in Containment or the normal cellblock. If they had any brains, they’d have put me in the Iron Wing.
Which wasn’t to say I thought they had any brains at all, because the second one of them came in the room, he was going to get the surprise of a lifetime. I didn’t think they knew what I could do besides seeing beneath glamours. They never knew that Viv and I were the same. Raquel wouldn’t have told them; I had to believe that.
Which meant that I was armed, and they had absolutely no idea.
Normally I wouldn’t even consider using my abilities on a werewolf, much less a human. Their souls were already so fragile, everything about the idea felt wrong. Even Vivian never sucked a normal human dry. But there was no way I was going to sit around in lockup while my boyfriend was being held prisoner. I didn’t care what it would take to get out of here.
“HEY,” I shouted, walking barefoot right up to the doorway. “HEY. I wanna talk to Raquel.”
No response. I went back to my cot and tried to pry it up to throw out in the hall, but it was bolted to the floor. Figured. I grabbed the scratchy gray blanket and tossed it out into the hall, followed by the thin mattress.
“HELLO! You better get whoever’s in charge the bleep in here or you’re going to regret it! People know I’m missing! And by people I mean paranormals the likes of which you can only imagine in your worst nightmares!”
Well, that was probably a lie. I’d walked out on them. And why would they think to look for me here? Still, I was going to play every card I could. “You think last April was bad? Wait and see how many of you are left standing if you keep me in here, you bunch of—”
“Evie,” a gruff voice said and Bud, my old trainer, came into view. He looked older than the last time I’d seen him, and much sadder.
“Bud! Listen, you have to let me go. This is a huge mistake.”
He shook his head, the heavy creases in his grizzled face deepening. “Sorry, kid. Things have changed around here.” He looked both ways down the hall, then leaned in closer. “And not for the better.”
“Bud. I just—I have to get out of here.” Tears of desperation pooled in my eyes. “My boyfriend, he’s been kidnapped by faeries and I’m the only one who can help him. Please, Bud, they’re going to hurt him. Help me. Where’s Raquel?” I wasn’t trying to manipulate him by crying, really I wasn’t, but the second I wasn’t angry I was overwhelmed with fear and hopelessness.
He looked torn, then shook his head. “I’ll tell them you’re awake. I wish there was something more I could do for you, I really do.” Frowning, he walked out of my vision.
I cried harder. Then I straightened and wiped my eyes. I was not going to cry in front of anyone else here. Ever. They were screwing with the wrong girl.
I paced my room—one-two-three-four-five-six-seven, turn two-three-four-five-six-seven, turn two-three-four-five-six-seven, turn two-three-four-five-six-seven.
One. Get out of the bleeping Center.
Two. Get to the Faerie Realms.
Three. Kill the Dark Queen.
Four. Save Lend.
Five. Make IPCA pay.
Six. Help the paranormals figure out another way home.
Seven. Finish plans for the Winter Formal.
Simple enough.
One. Get out of the bleeping Center, assuming anyone ever came to talk to me.
Two. Get to the Faerie Realms, assuming I could somehow get a faerie name and then control that faerie even though half the faeries wanted me dead and the other half wanted to use me.
Three. Kill the Dark Queen, assuming I could get within twenty feet of her without falling under her thrall and also somehow drain her before she snuffed me out of existence.
Four. Save Lend, assuming he was still…
“Get me out of this freaking white cell! Come on!” I screamed. “Get. Me. Out. Now. If my boyfriend gets hurt because of this, I swear I will come back here and BURN THIS PLACE TO THE GROUND!”
“Now, now,” said Anne-Whatever Whatever, stepping in front of my doorway but just out of arm’s reach. “Calm down, Evelyn.”
“Let me go. You have no right to do this, and you have no idea what you’re messing with.”
“Actually, we have every right. You’ve violated enough sections of the charter to qualify for lifetime lockup.”
“I’m not a member of IPCA anymore!”
“No, but you’re not a person, either, not legally. You remain a Level Seven paranormal of unidentified origin. Which means that I have final say in any and all containment policy.”
My insides turned to ice, and I stood straighter, glaring at her. “What do you know about being a person?”
She sniffed primly. “We have a lot to discuss. This would all be much easier if you’d cooperate. Wouldn’t you rather be useful, make a difference to humanity, than be locked up in this cell for the rest of your life?”
I laughed. “Don’t talk to me about humanity. I know a pair of freaking seals that have more humanity in their flippers than you do in your whole organization. You want to talk about protecting humanity? If you don’t let me out, the best person I have ever known will get hurt. If you have any shred of human decency in you, you’ll let me go right now so I can save him.”
She raised an eyebrow, and I continued, desperate.
“Let me go right now, and I swear I’ll come back. I’ll work for you however you want me to, whatever you want me to do. You want me to come back full-time to the Center, I’ll do it. You have my word. But please, please, please, let me go. Please.”
She cocked her head. “What I think you fail to realize is that you’re not in any position to bargain here. You’ll do what I want you to because you have no other choice. Think about that, and we’ll talk again tomorrow.”
She started to walk off and I felt like I was going to explode. “Stop! Stop! I want to talk to Raquel! She’s a Supervisor—you have to let me talk to her.”
Anne-Whatever Whatever stopped and looked back at me with a small smile on her face. “Was a Supervisor. Have a good night, Evelyn.”
SPARKS FLY
You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, lying spread-eagled in the hall with only my ankle inside the room that kept me prisoner here. They really should have thought of that and tagged my neck or something. Judging by the looks the tall, annoyed werewolf guard was giving my ankle, he was thinking the same thing. And still staying out of reach, dang it all.
“Please confirm.” His voice was low and terse. “Werewolf or not?”
He had a woman by the elbow. Her shoulders were hunched inward, her face terrified, eyes darting every which way avoiding mine. Her corkscrew-curly brown hair was wild and unbrushed, but her clothes seemed nice.
See, with werewolves, unless it’s a full moon there’s really no way to tell. Silver only affects them when they’ve wolfed out, and no one else can see their true nature like I can. And since the full moon had just passed, they had no way to confirm what she was until the next one. Somehow they thought I would do it for them.
I looked up into her yellow wolf eyes and felt nothing but compassion and pity. “Actually, you’re way off.”
“Oh?” the guard asked.
“Yup. She’s not a werewolf, she’s a chupacabra. Have you noticed a lot of missing goats lately?”
He growled his frustration. I bared my teeth back at him in a smile. “Tell Anne to come see me.” It had been at least six hours. Or twelve. Or a hundred, for all I could tell, and I was ready to rip
my hair out.
He turned, and the wolf woman finally made eye contact with me. “Hey,” I said, “it’s going to be okay. And if you see a faerie, any faerie, tell them IPCA has the Empty One.”
“Ignore her,” the guard said, pulling on the woman’s elbow roughly.
“What’s your deal? I mean, come on, why are you working with them?” I sat up, ankle still safely in the room. “Don’t you get it? I can help you! Get me out of here and I’ll take you with me.”
His face turned a peculiar shade of red as he turned and loomed over me. “Help me? You’ve already helped me plenty. You know who bit me, who turned me into a monster? One of the werewolves that you set loose on the world, doing your little good deeds and ‘rescuing’ them from IPCA. I’m here because of you. Now get back in your room and rot, or so help me I will come back here with more than a Taser.”
He stalked off down the hall and around the corner out of my sight, dragging the wolf woman in his wake.
“Well, that’s just great,” I muttered. “I make friends everywhere.” While I had to admit that his situation did totally stink, and I could see why he would want someone to blame, I wasn’t going to feel guilty about it. A) I didn’t have time, and B) freeing all the Center’s werewolves had freed Charlotte, my tutor, reuniting her with her family. I couldn’t hold myself responsible for the actions of every paranormal I’d ever come into contact with one way or another.
Okay, maybe I could have done more to make sure they were all accounted for and had plans in place to control themselves at full moons. I banged my head back against my doorframe. Not my fault. Not my fault. Not my fault.
A voice from one of the other cells I couldn’t see into drifted toward me. “Leibchen, are you still sad? I could help.”
Yeah, because being trapped with no way to get out and save Lend and all IPCA against me wasn’t bad enough, my block mate was the creeptastic uber-vamp stalker I partially drained on Halloween. He kept trying to start up a conversation, but even his voice set my teeth on edge. And then there was the matter of the part of his soul I was carting around inside myself.
Endlessly (Paranormalcy) Page 5
