by Emma Savant
“Stuff,” I said. “A ring, a goblet, and something else I don’t want to get into right now.”
The something else was enough to make a tiny scowl appear between her eyebrows. But instead of asking about it, she tapped her fingertips on the table and said, “What kind of goblet?”
“A gold one,” I said. “The queen said it belongs to a sprite named Brooke.”
Isabelle’s fingers tapped harder against the table.
“Brooke?” she repeated.
“Yeah,” I said.
She slammed her hand down. “Can I come? I owe that little nightmare a visit.”
Somehow, the idea of having an irritated Isabelle on hand didn’t make me feel better about this mission.
“You’re probably needed here.”
She groaned, but we both knew I was right. She pointed at me. “Scare the fountain water out of her for me,” she said. “That’s an order.”
“You got it, sergeant,” I said.
“That little water devil stole that goblet from Haidar,” Isabelle said. “Half the magic of this manor is locked up in that cup. Any chance he’ll get it back when Amani’s done with it?”
Haidar strode back into the room, a small chain of keys in hand.
“Get what back?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Isabelle said. She folded her arms across her chest and scowled. The air seemed to crackle around her. I peered over my glasses. A storm cloud had begun to form over her head.
“Sleeping Beauty here did not get her eight hours,” Haidar said dryly. He ignored Isabelle’s indignant look, and so did I.
She may have been grumpy, but Isabelle was no Sleeping Beauty. I couldn’t imagine her napping through her Story in a hundred years.
Haidar handed me the keys. There were three of them, all looped on a silver ring with a keychain shaped like a blooming rose.
“What about you?” I said.
Lucas didn’t wait for more of an invitation. In a second, he was by my side.
“Liv?” Daniel said. “Be safe.”
I wanted to hug him, but I knew he’d never put up with it. Instead, I sent him a push of grateful energy. He offered a smile in return.
Haidar led us to the garage.
The opulence of the house should have prepared me. But somehow, I hadn’t expected to find four cars there. One was a blue Honda Accord. Another was a Porsche. I didn’t recognize the other two, but it was clear that the insurance alone on those things probably cost more than my college tuition would.
“Whoa,” Lucas said. “Is that a Ferrari?”
“FF model,” Haidar said. “You’re driving the Honda.”
Lucas ogled the cars. I felt the fascination that drew him toward the machines.
“We’re risking our lives here,” I said.
“Honda,” Haidar said firmly. He handed me the keys. “Drive safe.”
I wasn’t sure if his concern was for the car or our safety, but I nodded. I held out the keys to Lucas.
“Can you drive?” I said. “I need to be able to fight off any sprites that notice us.”
“You should definitely handle the fighting sprites thing,” Lucas said.
His fingers closed around the keys. I met his eyes, and for a moment, we just watched each other.
He shouldn’t have been pulled into all this. In other circumstances, he would be going about an ordinary day right now, maybe sitting in class and listening to ludicrous rumors about gang wars or UFOs.
Instead, he was here with me, and I couldn’t bring myself to be sorry about it.
The garage doors jolted into movement with a loud creak. I jumped and felt myself blush. He smiled halfway and nodded toward the car.
We climbed in. He started the engine, and it purred to life. Even Haidar’s most boring car was the nicest one I’d ever sat in. Judging from the new car smell and spotless carpets, he’d never actually used the thing. Why bother, when a dresser full of magic rings would take him wherever he needed to go?
Anyway, I wanted Lucas with me.
Lucas shifted the car into gear. The tone of the engine shifted just slightly.
“Okay,” he said, as if the word alone was a pep talk. “Where to?”
I buckled my seat belt and felt the magic in my body gather into my fingertips, ready to fly out just in case.
“I need you to take me home.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
I couldn’t believe how normal everything felt.
Somehow, the regular Humdrum traffic and cloudy sky unnerved me more than a whole horde of sprites would have. At least with sprites, I could see what I was up against.
The necklaces Amani had given me glinted around each of our necks. We drove in near silence. Magic crackled in my fingertips, and I scanned the world around us for signs of sprites or the Oracle, on the off chance the necklaces weren’t enough. Whatever Kelda had planned, though, didn’t—or couldn’t—involve us being attacked on the way to my house.
It was almost worse this way: The tension of waiting for the hammer to fall was unbearable.
My neighborhood looked ordinary, except for an overturned trash can that could have been knocked over by a raccoon as easily as a sprite. I looked in the window of every fancy house we passed, expecting to see faces watching us, but there was nothing.
Not that Kelda would need to hide in windows. The puddles from an early morning rain gave her enough of a view.
“Stay here,” I said. “I need to talk to my mom alone.”
“Someone should probably keep an eye on the car,” he said. He lifted the necklace that dangled from his neck, then let it drop again.
I nodded and climbed out of the car. I allowed myself one last look at his familiar face before I slammed the door shut and ran into the house.
The door was doubly secured. I unlocked it with my key, then held out my hand to let the enchantment verify that I was allowed to be here. White light pulsed around the door, and then the handle clicked loose and the door opened.
“Mom?”
I shut the door behind me and stepped cautiously into the entrance hall.
Within seconds, she was there, wand drawn. As soon as she saw it was really me, half the tense lines on her face melted in relief. She hugged me. An instant later, the lines were back.
“Where’s Daniel?” she said.
I put a hand on her arm. “He’s safe,” I said firmly. “He’s with friends.”
It was hard to tell whether she believed me, but then, I wouldn’t have believed me either. Anyone who had any clue about what was happening knew no one was really safe in this city today.
“I can only stay for a minute,” I said.
“Olivia—”
“Mom,” I said.
She fell silent. She wasn’t used to hearing that much authority in my voice.
Neither was I.
“Mom, this is important,” I said. “Things are bad out there. Like, bad, bad.”
She pulled me in for another hug. “I know, sweetie. I’m so glad you’re okay.”
We didn’t have time to be glad. Because right now, my being “okay” was a temporary and totally uncertain thing.
“I’m trying to help,” I said. “I’m working with someone to try to fix this, but I need something from you. I need your ring. The rose quartz one.”
Mom pulled back. She held me by the shoulders and looked at me. Her gaze darted back and forth between my eyes, then into every corner of my face. I waited. I couldn’t hide anything from her. I was a faerie, and faeries were terrible at hiding things.
More than that, I was her daughter, and she was worried. Her attention was on me with the kind of focus that would put a laser to shame.
“This is really important,” I said.
“I can tell,” she said. She tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
She let go and walked down the hall toward the kitchen. I followed her.
“Have a seat,” she said. She gestured toward the island.
I sat on one of the stools. The tips of my shoes rested on the bar beneath the seat and my knees bounced up and down. Impatience to be gone crept and tingled down my arms. I could tell she felt it, but she pulled two mugs out of the cupboard. Her movements were slow and measured. I tried to force my breathing to an even rhythm.
“Lucas is waiting in the car,” I said.
“Would you like to invite him in for tea?” she said.
I drummed my fingertips on the sharp edge of the counter.
“No, that’s okay,” I said.
She dropped tea bags in the mugs and tapped the faucet three times. When she turned the water on, it poured hot and steaming into the cups. She set the full mugs on the counter and came around to sit by me.
I blew on my tea to cool it.
What was I doing here? There was literally an evil faerie bent on destroying our world, and I was sitting in my kitchen, drinking chamomile-peppermint with my mom.
“You going to tell me what’s going on?” she said.
She sipped and watched me over the edge of the mug.
There was too much to tell, and nowhere to start.
I tapped my fingernail on my mug. Each tap clinked softly.
Mom let out a sigh that sounded like she’d been holding it for years.
“Do you really not feel like you can trust me?” she said.
“It’s not about trusting you,” I said.
Though of course it was. No one in my family trusted anyone else. I’d even been glad to leave Daniel at Haidar’s place, not because I didn’t trust him to be on my side but because I didn’t trust him to keep himself safe.
Our whole family was nothing but the things we chose not to say.
Mom set her cup down hard onto the counter, then picked it back up.
I didn’t even need to feel her frustration to see it there, in the faint wrinkles between her eyes and the tension in her fingers as they wrapped around the mug.
The tea slipped down hot into my belly. I could almost feel the moment it splashed into my stomach. The warmth should have relaxed me, but I was too deep in this for relaxation.
“Your grandfather was never really there for your dad,” Mom said.
I tapped my toes against the bar and resisted the urge to ask what that had to do with anything and could I please take her ring and go, please?
“I always promised myself my children wouldn’t feel abandoned like that,” Mom said.
Were we really going to have this heart-to-heart now?
“I don’t feel abandoned,” I said.
“Neither did your father,” she said. “Haven’t you ever wondered why he pushes you so hard?”
“He’s Dad,” I said. “It’s what he does.”
My fingers twitched. Every second here was another second the Oracle’s sprites were loose on the city.
“Your grandpa always pushed him too hard, too,” she said. “Grandpa Edgar wanted your dad to be perfect at everything. When he was perfect, Edgar saw that as the bare minimum. When he wasn’t perfect, Edgar didn’t consider him worthy of attention.”
“Sounds like a jerk,” I said.
Grandpa Edgar had died before I started kindergarten, but I had a few fuzzy memories of a reserved man with silver hair. I hadn’t liked him or disliked him. He’d existed, there in the world of the grownups, and it had never occurred to me that he was my business.
“He was a jerk like your dad’s a jerk,” Mom said.
I raised an eyebrow. It was obvious to anyone who paid attention that my mom didn’t exactly think my dad was a teddy bear, but I’d never heard her actually call him names. Not when she knew I was listening, at least.
“I mean Edgar couldn’t help himself,” Mom said. She set her mug on the counter and waved her fingers over it, letting them take in the heat. “He was busy and he’d never been raised to show affection. He was the kind of person who expressed his love by criticizing.”
“That’s not how you express love,” I said.
“For some people it is,” she said. “If you’re criticizing, that means you’re at least paying attention, right?”
I kept the eyebrow up.
“That took its toll on your dad,” Mom said. “It’s taken its toll on you and Daniel.”
“Mom,” I said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but why are we talking about this?”
Mom propped her elbow on the table and rested her head in her hand.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Never mind. What did you need my ring for?”
I didn’t answer. She looked sad—sad and lost. Too late, I realized I probably should have been listening instead of counting the seconds to getting out the door.
I stilled the impulse to text Lucas and let him know I’d be a few minutes.
“Sorry,” I said. “Um, are you okay?”
It was clearly the most insightful and empathetic comment in the world.
“I’m fine,” Mom lied.
I pushed my mug away.
“I know when someone’s faking it, Mom.”
A faint smile tugged at the corner of her lips.
“Of course you do,” she said. “You fake it all the time.”
For a moment, I remembered that she was my mother. Not just the woman who’d birthed me and reminded me to do chores, but also the woman who still remembered my first words and had continued to stick my artwork on the fridge even after I was way too old for that kind of thing.
I crossed my ankles and pressed my hands between my knees.
“I need the ring because Queen Amani needs it to stop the Oracle,” I blurted.
The words floated in the air, hanging there like something I’d let escape from a cage and couldn’t put back.
And for some reason, she didn’t look surprised.
“Okay,” she said.
I blinked.
“Okay?”
“The ring’s upstairs,” she said.
She slid off her stool and walked out of the kitchen. I stared for a second, then hopped down and scurried after her.
“You’re just going to give it to me?” I said, jogging up the stairs behind her.
“No offense, sweetie, but you really couldn’t take it by force,” she said over her shoulder.
“I was thinking, like, pleading or bad excuses,” I said.
I followed her into her bedroom. She’d been sleeping there alone for months; when he was home, Dad lived in his office or the guest bedroom down the hall. Her marble jewelry box sat on her dresser on top of a pale cream doily. She waved her hand over the box, releasing the locking charm that held it closed, and lifted the lid.
It took only a second of rummaging to find the ring. It was easy to find. Though it didn’t look much different than the other gold and silver pieces in the box, it gave off the unmistakable zing of magic.
Mom held it out to me.
I wrapped my fingers around it.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?” she said. She closed the box and locked it again.
“Why are you not freaking out?”
“Do you want me to?”
“No,” I said. “I just…”
I just what? I didn’t know what I had expected. Panic, maybe. Or stern orders to go get Daniel and bring him home. Or maybe at least just a shred of resistance.
“I do divination,” Mom said. She stared at me, not like she was trying to figure something out but like she already had. “My visions have been telling me not to underestimate you for a long time.”
I felt my eyebrows crinkle. “You do divinations about me?” I said.
“Yes, Olivia,” Mom said, in an overly patient voice. “I’m your mother. Most of my divinations are about you and Daniel.”
“I thought your divination was for work,” I said. “And, you know, your whole ‘finding yourself’ thing.”
Her eyebrow went up. It occurred to me that I'd probably inherited that exact expression from her.
“My ‘finding myself’ t
hing?”
“You dyed your hair red and started flying to Argentina,” I said.
She rested her palm against the edge of the dresser and leaned in, putting her weight on it.
“I did that for you and Daniel too,” she said. “And for me. Do you know how many years it had been since I touched my scrying mirror?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “A while.”
“Thirteen years,” she said. “I put it away not long after Daniel was born, because your father thought it wasn’t appropriate for me to spend so much time on my craft. He thought I’d be neglecting you.”
Anger flared in me. How dare he try to stop her from pursuing her magic, just like he’d tried to stop me from pursuing my goals of studying in the Humdrum world?
How dare she let him?
“Dad’s a moron,” I said.
“Your dad tries his best,” Mom said sharply. But then her face softened. “Reginald didn’t understand that I could do more than one thing at a time. Reginald isn’t good at complexity.”
“Reginald is a control freak,” I said.
“That’s true, too,” Mom said. “I decided I needed to take some of that control back. And I think you deserve a chance to do that, too.” She nodded toward the ring. “Whatever you’re doing, it’s your choice. I’m not going to stand in your way.”
I frowned at her. Even though her face was as familiar to me as my own, I felt like I’d never actually seen it before. I looked at her big dark eyes, her tidy noise, her thin lips softened by years of applying beeswax every night before bed, and her weird auburn hair. I’d taken all that in before. But beyond all that, just behind her eyes, I saw fire.
“Thanks,” I said. “Wish me luck.”
“With that ring you won’t need too much,” Mom said. “It’s been in my family a long time. It’s seen adventures no one even remembers anymore.”
Somehow, I didn’t have to ask which great-great-grandma had owned it first.
“I’d better go,” I said.
Mom nodded. The lines of her face tightened, but she didn’t stop me.
Instead, she followed me out of the room and down the stairs.
“Olivia?” she said.
I turned around. She stood on the bottom step, looking intently down at me.
