"You're alright. You were having a nightmare."
She rubbed her fingers on her eyes and sat up against the headboard. "How long have I been out?"
"Two days."
As she tried to remember the recent events, her eyes filled with tears at the painful memory of her grandmother's death.
"Iris…" He put his hand on her shoulder but she jerked back.
"Grandma… Where is she now?"
"At the funeral home."
"What's the cover-up story?"
"She had a heart attack at the funeral. We made sure no one would question the cut on her neck."
Iris nodded, trying to shake away the memory of the horrible moment when Vincent slit Elizabeth's throat. A new set of tears fell to her chin. She wiped them off with the back of her hands and got out of bed. Connor sat up and tried to touch her but, again, she backed away.
"I want you to go."
"Iris—"
"Go! I don't want to see you. I don't want to see any of you. Not you, not your family, not Dorian, no one. I wish that damn memory spell would work on me so I could forget all of you. Actually, no. I wish you would have never come to Forest Hills. I wish I'd never met any of you. Now get out!"
"Iris—"
"Get out!"
He turned around and left the room. As soon as he was gone, Iris fell on the floor and started crying again. With every moan and sob her chest got heavier. Her vision blurred by the unbroken streams that flooded her eyes, she gathered herself in a fetal position in the middle of the room, one arm wrapped around her waist, the other pressed against the cold, wooden floor. Gasping for air, just like in her nightmare, she surrendered to the darkness of the deep.
29
Mission
The living room looked like a military warehouse. There were weapons everywhere, from bows and arrows to swords of all shapes and sizes, throwing stars, chains, whips and even a few boomerangs. His sister was nothing if not thorough, Connor thought.
The girl was sitting in the middle of the room, dipping the tips of her arrows in a small jar.
"What's in there?"
"A mix of sleeping water and belladonna," the girl replied matter-of-factly.
"Lorelai, that's poison."
"I know. But, as you very well know, sleeping water is not as effective on some people."
"You mean Iris?"
"Yes."
"So you're going to poison her instead?"
"Not her. Hopefully, she will spare us of her presence tomorrow night. But she might not be the only one the sleeping water has a slower effect on, and I don't want to take any chances. Besides, I used a small dose of belladonna, enough to paralyze you but not enough to kill you. Speaking of Iris, how is she?"
"Do you really want to know?"
"Not really, but since her state of being affects yours, I want to know you'll be at the top of your game tomorrow. 'Cause if you're not, we need to take extra precautions."
"How very considerate of you." He walked back into the foyer. "Where's Grandma?"
"Out back, checking the warding spell. You still haven't answered me."
"What?"
"Iris."
"You're finally getting your wish."
"What do you mean?"
"Iris wants nothing to do with Fae anymore. Us included."
As soon as she opened the door and saw Marion standing in front of her, Iris broke into tears again. Marion walked in and hugged her, and they both stood there for a while, Iris sobbing on her friend's shoulder. When she calmed down a bit, they moved into the living room. Iris felt guilty at the thought that when Marion went through the same thing, she was too busy trying to help the Elwoods to find time to comfort her friend. What good that did her. She looked at Marion through her tears and tried to apologize for her stupidity but the words died in her throat, in between sobs.
"It will get better, you know," Marion said, taking Iris' hands in her own.
Somehow, the girl's comforting words had the opposite effect and Iris' cry worsened. She was out of breath and her chest hurt. She felt responsible for Sarah Young's death and her grandmother's death and every life lost since she'd found out that she could control the hellhounds. And the fact that Marion was trying to make her feel better, instead of blaming her, only added to the guilt. Not to mention that she'd lied to Marion that whole time. Elizabeth's words emerged from the darkness of her mind. Tell Marion the truth. She's your best friend and she deserves it.
"Marion, there's something I have to tell you."
The phone started buzzing before Iris could continue. She looked at the display, then rejected the call and set the phone next to her on the couch.
"Aren't you going to answer?"
"No."
"Is it Connor?"
Iris shook her head. "Dorian."
"Let me guess. Tall, silver hair, leather jacket…"
Iris' eyes widened. "How did you—"
The phone buzzed again. Iris rolled her eyes and rejected the call. A second later the doorbell rang, Marion style.
"You better get that."
"No. I don't want to talk to him."
Marion got up and headed towards the door. "Maybe you don't, but I'm pretty sure he wants to talk to you. He's been standing in front of my house staring at yours for two days now. I have no idea what he said to my dad to convince him not to call the cops but I figured it might have something to do with you. If you don't want to talk to him, that's fine, but at least tell him to go away."
Iris sighed and followed her friend into the foyer.
Marion opened the front door just so the doorbell would stop ringing. "Hey there, stalker. She's all yours."
For a second, Dorian and Marion stared at each other then Marion turned to Iris and hugged her. "I'll call you to reschedule that talk." She smiled and headed down the front steps.
Iris watched her friend cross the street then shifted her eyes to Dorian. "When someone doesn't answer the phone and/or door it means they don't want to talk to you."
"Yet here you are. What changed your mind?"
"I came to personally ask you to go away."
"Why?"
"You're creeping out the neighbors."
He smiled and reached into his jacket, pulling out a bottle. "Be so kind and get us a couple of glasses, love."
"I just said I didn't want to talk to you."
"One glass and then I'm gone. For good."
"No."
"Think of it as a favor to your lovely neighbors."
Iris sighed and went inside. When she returned he was sitting at the table on the porch, in the same seat as a few days before when Elizabeth had invited him to join them for dinner.
Iris remembered the story he'd told her grandmother about his past. She was coming downstairs, drying her hair with a towel, when he started talking. She didn't have the courage to step on the porch so instead she sat on the living room couch and listened to him speak about all the horrors that he'd had to go through. When he was done, she ran back to her room and cried.
Now, she herself an orphan, she understood his need for revenge. She may not have been tortured, but she too had been robbed of everyone that she'd loved most in her life. She fought back tears and sat down next to him. He opened the bottle and poured some of its contents in each glass, then handed one to Iris.
She took a sip and started coughing. "What is this? Poison?"
"Raven's secret recipe for homemade moonshine."
"It's disgusting. Also a health hazard. I think my throat is corroding."
"That's because it most likely is. In about ten minutes you'll go blind as well."
"It's nice to know you care about my wellbeing."
"I do, actually. This is exactly what you need right now."
Iris didn't speak. Instead, she took another sip. For a few moments neither of them said a word. She waited for him to say he was sorry for what had happened. He was the only one left who hadn't said that to her.
He didn't. Instead,
he refilled the glasses. "So what's next?"
"What do you mean?"
"Last we spoke, you wanted to find out what you are and how you're connected to the Fae world."
"I'm done with that. I wish I'd never known about Fae. Ever since I found out about your kind my life has been nothing but a never-ending sequence of death and suffering."
"So that's it, then."
"That's it."
"You're just going to pretend none of this ever happened."
"That's my plan, yes. My only ability was to control the hellhounds but with them gone, I don't see a reason why I would ever have any contact with the supernatural world."
"Perhaps that's best." He got up and reached into his jacket. He took out a small leather pouch and handed it to her.
"What's this?"
"Just in case you change your mind."
As he walked away, she emptied the contents of the pouch in her hand. A golden key sparkled in her palm. She looked up and watched him go down the front steps. "What's this?"
He stopped and looked at her through two sets of long, dark eyelashes, hidden behind the usual rebel strands of silver blue hair. "It's one of Yorr's—our God of Blacksmiths—seven golden keys. Raven nicked it from an artifact dealer in Egypt. It's supposed to open any lock known to man. And Fae. Use it wisely, though. It self destructs once it's done its job."
Iris slipped the key back in the pouch, although she had no idea if and where she would use it. "What are you going to do now?"
"Carry on with my mission. You see, unlike you, I never give up."
A wave of heat came over Iris and she wasn't sure whether it was the alcohol or just pure anger. "How dare you say that to me? Your kind dumped their most dangerous criminals into our world, the human world, where every inhabitant is at least ten times weaker than you, and you have the nerve to judge us for giving up? In a prison the guards are usually stronger than the prisoners. Humans are at a disadvantage next to Fae."
"You're wrong. You—humans—are considerably stronger than us."
"Really? How do you figure?"
"Because you can do anything with no magic at all."
As he walked through the front door of the Millers', Dorian was still thinking of Iris. Raven was right. Humans really were amazing creatures.
Raven was bent over the round table in the living room. "How's Iris?"
Dorian thought of her eyes, red and swollen. "Heartbroken."
"Understandable. She's been through a lot lately. You think she'll be okay?"
"I know she will."
"How?"
"I just do."
It was true. Dorian couldn't explain how he was so sure that Iris would get through it all. He didn't know her that well and yet he felt a strange connection between them that was both disconcerting and comforting at the same time. It was because of that connection that he knew she wouldn't give up her quest and it was because of that connection that he'd given her Yorr's golden key.
"Here." Raven threw a small vial at Dorian. "It wasn't easy to get. Apparently every bloodsucker in town went into hiding inside the Underground Society and, as of our last visit there, you and I are on the blacklist. But then I remembered the girl in Max's lair. As always, my intuition didn't fail me. It looks like she wasn't so special to them after all because the bastards cleared off and left her behind."
"I trust you left a note to Max in case he comes back."
"Are you kidding me? We have a reputation to uphold."
Dorian smiled and flipped the vial between his fingers, then slipped it in his pocket and joined Raven at the table.
"You think this will work?"
Dorian looked at the plans spread all over the table. "It must."
30
The Beginning of the End
Iris opened her eyes and immediately closed them back, blinded by the light coming in through her bedroom window. It was an unusually bright day for that time of the year and the normally gloomy weather of Forest Hills. Plus, she was terribly hungover. She never should have let Dorian convince her to drink that damn moonshine. Now the room was spinning and every muscle in her body ached worse than if she'd been beaten with a rolling pin.
After the headache settled down a bit and she could hear herself think again, she realized that the night before had been the first in a long time when she actually got some sleep. Not the kind of sleep where you wake up from a nightmare six times during the night and eventually you give up trying to fall asleep anymore because it's pointless and you'll be just as tired as you were before you went to bed. No, it was the kind of deep sleep without dreams or interruptions.
She looked at her phone, face down on the nightstand. Ten o'clock. She'd been sleeping for sixteen hours. I must be making up for the past couple of weeks.
Her throat was sorer than the day before, after hours of constant crying and sobbing and screaming at invisible enemies that she would have wanted to blame for every horrible thing that had gone wrong lately. She sat up and waited for the headache to subside enough to allow her to stand. She went into the bathroom and had a glass of water. Then she half filled the glass again and dropped an aspirin tablet inside. As she waited for it to dissolve, she thought about the day before. Was she really going to stop her identity quest? Was she really going to give up? Unlike you, I never give up, Dorian's words kept playing in her mind.
She drank the aspirin and returned into the bedroom. She reached into the pocket of her hoodie and took out the key that Dorian had given her the day before. She turned it on all sides and wondered where she could possibly use it—if she were to resume her search, of course. But why? Why would she do that? What was the point? She'd lost everyone. She had no family left. Who cared what she was anymore? I always knew you were destined for great things. Your father must have known it too, which is why he tried so hard to protect you.
Ten minutes later she was driving into town with her grandmother's words still ringing in her ears. Her head was still pounding, despite the aspirin, but it didn't matter. The world seemed dark and depressing, partly because of the sadness and guilt that she still carried on her shoulders, partly because of the dark shades that she was wearing to reduce some of her eyes' sensibility to light. Still, she decided not to let that stop her. Maybe no one cared what she was anymore but she still owed it to her grandmother and her parents to find out. She owed it to them not to let their deaths be in vain.
As luck would have it, she found an empty spot right in front of the entrance to Agatha's apartment building, on the other side of the road. She jumped out of the car a bit too fast and was nearly run over by a Vespa driver as she crossed the street, because, focused as she was on the front door, she'd forgotten to check the traffic. She apologized and went on her way.
As expected, the front door was locked. She didn't even bother to ring the doorbell. Agatha wasn't going to return to Forest Hills before the Harvest Supermoon, which was precisely that night. Iris looked around to see whether someone was watching her and then took out the golden key. She inserted it into the hole, still incredulous as to its actual magic properties. She turned it, almost expecting for it not to work. And yet it did. The lock clicked and the door opened. The key turned into sand and spread on the ground at her feet.
Iris went inside and darted up the stairs. This time she didn't even flinch when the town bum hiding underneath a blanket of newspapers under the stairs grumbled. And, as she ran up two steps at a time, she barely took a few breaths, let alone stop to analyze the air quality and odor.
When she reached the landing on Agatha's floor, instead of stopping she used the momentum to make up for the extra strength that she assumed Aeryn had to use to open the door the last time they were there. And indeed, the force of the contact sent ripples of pain through her shoulder but did its job. As she walked inside, Iris rubbed her shoulder and pictured the huge, swollen blue patch that she'd have to cover the next day, but somehow it didn't bother her. All she cared at the moment was t
o find a way to get in touch with Agatha.
She stopped in the middle of the living room and looked at the bookcase in front of her, trying to clear her head. She took out the book that she'd seen Aeryn use the last time and opened it. As expected, all the pages were blank. Clearly, a question had to be asked for an answer to arrive. And then it came to her—what if the book was a two-way street?
She grabbed a pencil from the tea table to her left and wrote a message on one of the blank pages—Why did you ask the Elwoods to protect me? Who or what am I really? She waited for a while, and when nothing happened she threw the book on the couch. It landed on the edge and, as it rolled to the floor, a golden quill fell from its binding. Iris clapped and picked up the book and the quill. She sat on the couch and scribbled the message again, this time using the quill. Like before, she waited and, like before, nothing happened. However, this time, instead of throwing away the book in frustration, she stopped to think. There had to be something she was missing—another step maybe. And then she remembered that when Aeryn got the message from Agatha, a page dislodged from the book before the message was revealed. Iris ripped out the page she'd written her message on and, as soon as she did that, the page lifted in the air and lit up in flames. Iris closed the book, set it on her knees and waited. After a few minutes that seemed longer than a thousand years, the book opened itself, just like it did in Aeryn's hands, and a message appeared. Your destiny is to save the Fae. Your identity lies with the Fountain of Truth.
Iris realized that it was time to accept the fact that, no matter how many times she'd swear off Fae and decide to live her life like a regular human, like she had until that fatidic morning when she met the hound for the first time, she couldn't do that anymore. It was clear to her now that her life was tied to that of the Fae, to the Elwoods and to all the supernatural things she wanted nothing to do with. The sooner she accepted that, the better.
When she got in the car, the message was still imprinted on the back of her eyelids and, although she didn't know Agatha or what her voice sounded like, the words rang in Iris' ears over and over again, whispered by a rasp, old voice that her brain created in the absence of the original. Your identity lies with the Fountain of Truth. What did that even mean? Was she supposed to ask the Fountain of Truth what she was? It was, after all, an entity capable of answering any question known to man. If so, she only had tonight, the night of the Harvest Supermoon. If she didn't do it now, she would have to wait two decades for another chance. She shook her head. No, she couldn't do that to the Elwoods. That would mean condemning them to a painful and shameful death. There had to be another way. Perhaps Aeryn's Book of the Past. Yes, she would ask the Elwoods to let her search through their books. If they'd let her. After the way she'd left things with Connor…
The Fountain of Truth (Tales of the Dark Fae Book 1) Page 27
