by Dean Murray
Chapter 21
I went through the next few hours in a daze. We made it back to camp with the firewood and then Jace started a roaring fire so that we could roast marshmallows. Dinner was frozen lasagna that was actually pretty good, but which contained absolutely no ambrosia. We washed it down with soda, and then stayed up talking about nothing until Ari finally started to nod off, at which point Kat and I helped her into the RV and put her to bed back in the master bedroom.
"I was really looking forward to sleeping on that bed tonight, but I never did the dishes, and if I don't do them now I'm going to have a complete mess on my hands tomorrow."
"Don't you have some cool effect that makes cleaning dishes effortless?"
"Nope, not even the Awakened can just make dirty dishes disappear. It's a good thing that dishwashers were invented."
"You know, when you tell me that kind of stuff it kind of ruins my desire to join your exclusive little club."
"Sorry, it's too late, you're already in the club. I think you're just going to have to deal with the downsides."
"You guys are rich, why don't you just hire a maid?"
Kat shrugged. "I'd be all for it, but Jace isn't a big fan. It's never a great idea to let anyone who's not part of your pantheon into your house—there's too much chance that someone will use the help to get at your journals."
It made sense, but it also eliminated one of the main benefits to being rich. That was a pretty big bummer in my book.
"Well, if there are no other options, let me give you a hand."
"Don't be silly, Selene. Filling up a dishwasher is definitely a one-person job. You should go out there and spend some time with Jace while Ari is asleep and unable to spy on you. After all, for you that's one of the main benefits to being in our little club…"
Something about the way she said it told me that she knew we'd kissed. I wanted to play it cool, but I just couldn't do it. I immediately went bright red.
"I knew it. You practically floated back to the RV after picking up the firewood. How was it? That was your first kiss, right?"
If anything my blush got even brighter, but I nodded. "Yeah, it happened while we were picking up firewood and it was my first kiss ever. As to how it was—I can't even begin to describe it. Jace was perfect. Considerate when I wanted him to go slow, and then super-hot when I wanted that."
It was a miracle that I managed to get that much out. I was strangely reluctant to tell Kat about what had happened. She was the closest thing I had to a best friend, and first kisses were definitely the domain of female best friends the world over.
All I could come up with was that I was ashamed. Not of kissing Jace, or even how we'd kissed. Everyone had kept their clothes on, and we'd both kept our hands mostly to ourselves. We hadn't actually done anything, but in some ways that didn't matter as much as the fact that I'd so completely lost control that I wasn't sure I could have told Jace no if he'd pushed for more than just a kiss. It was nice to know that Jace was that much of a gentleman, but I wasn't used to feeling so enslaved to my hormones.
Kat sighed. "I know that you didn't do any more than kissing, Selene. You were never the kind of girl to go in for casual intimacy, even back in the day when you were a heck of a lot more experienced than you are now. What's the problem? Were you hoping that it would go further than a kiss and now you're disappointed?"
"No—well, I mean I didn't go into the kiss hoping for more. Earlier today I wasn't even sure that I was ever going to kiss Jace because I knew he'd be silently comparing me to the old Selene. It's just that once we started kissing things were a lot more…intense than I was prepared for."
"Ah, I think I see."
There was a twinkle in her eye, but I could forgive her for that as long as she didn't make me spell everything out for her.
"Listen, Selene. You and Jace were together for a long time. He knows you incredibly well, and that includes turn-ons that you don't even know about yet. Normal kisses with guys you haven't been married to aren't going to be like that. In a lot of ways, Jace just ruined you because you just skipped past all of the awkward kisses with guys who don't know what they're doing."
"Wait, I'm married to Jace?"
Kat flinched. "Crap. I've got to learn to keep my big mouth shut. Don't tell Jace that I told you this, but yes, you are—I mean you were. Things can get a little complicated in our world. In the human world it's just until death do you part. For us death isn't a permanent condition, and you also have to worry about what happens if one of you burns away all of your memories."
"Wow, I never even thought of that. So what are the rules for those situations?"
"Well, it varies a little from one pantheon to another, but generally once you die or are memory-wiped, the two of you cease to be married. Back in the day the world was a lot bigger than it is today, so if someone died there was a decent chance that you wouldn't see them for decades or even centuries."
I found myself nodding. "And for most of us, that's long enough that you wouldn't remember them when you did finally see them."
"Yeah."
I looked away from Kat while she continued to scrub away at the worst of the mess in the sink.
"I don't even know what to think about all of this. I mean, things were already complicated enough as it was. Just knowing that he knew me from before and that we dated felt weird. This is a whole new level of craziness. How am I supposed to act around him now that I know?"
"Just act like yourself, Selene. I don't know how so much of you came through from the last incarnation to this one, but you're still the girl he fell in love with in every way that matters. Besides, Jace is a romantic at heart and he believes in a higher power. That makes him more patient and willing to roll with the punches than most of us.
"He may have said the same words as everyone else, but he believes that there is more to life than this endless cycle of death and rebirth. He believes in eternity and he wants to share it with you, but he won't push you into anything that you don't want one hundred percent. In fact, if I know Jace at all, he's probably feeling guilty for using his experiences with the previous you on the unsuspecting schoolgirl you are now. That wasn't fair to you."
My mind was whirling. I wasn't certain of much anymore, but I was positive of one thing—I wanted to spend time with Jace, wanted to see where things were going with him.
"Thanks for letting me know all of that, Kat. I think I'm going to take your advice and go spend some time with Jace while Ari is asleep. I guess the whole no-sleep thing is starting to happen for me—I don't feel even a little tired yet."
I was almost to the door when Kat spoke up. "Selene, promise me one thing. Don't sleep with Jace yet. I don't think he'll let it happen, not until after the two of you are married again—assuming that's what you decide to do—but if he does lose control of himself, then you need to be the one to hold strong."
She'd tried for casual, but something about her tone set alarms off inside of my mind.
"What aren't you telling me about Jace?"
"What? Nothing important. Why?"
The alarms cranked up in volume by a few decibels. "You've made it pretty apparent that you and Jace aren't on the same page when it comes to the stuff that happens after kissing. Given that, I can't help but think that there is something you're not telling me. Otherwise you'd be cheering me on rather than telling me to slow down."
"Did you ever think that I might just be worried about you two, that I might be concerned that you're navigating into treacherous waters given the history between the two of you and the fact that he remembers most of it but you don't?"
It was a good explanation, but I wasn't sure it was the full truth. Still, Kat seemed like she was going to just get her back up if I got all confrontational about it.
"Okay, Kat. That makes sense. I'm sorry that I doubted you—if you say that's all there is to worry about, then I believe you."
Kat sighed. "Even Jace can't get away with laying a g
uilt trip on me—at least not very often—but you come back from the dead, lose all of your memories, and still manage it like a pro."
"There's something else."
"Yes, there's something else, but I promised Jace I wouldn't bring it up yet. It's not anything about Jace, but it's relevant. Honestly, I wouldn't even care except that I know the old you cared. I wish I could convince myself that you wouldn't have minded. I'd love nothing more than to be egging you and Jace on, but I can't do that and still be a good friend to the girl I used to know."
"Do you have any idea how cryptic that is?"
"Yeah. Believe me when I say that I wish I could just tell you."
"Were Jace and I not happy together? Did he…did he cheat on me?"
"No, don't be silly. Jace is practically perfect and the two of you were ridiculously happy together. I'm sorry, I just can't tell you more. Now go enjoy your time with him."
It wasn't a very good answer, but I chose to just focus on the fact that Jace and I had been happy and leave it at that. If it had been someone else stringing me along like that I wasn't sure I could have left things alone, but despite her sometimes bipolar behavior, I really did believe that Kat was my friend and that she had my best interests at heart.
I slipped out of the RV and walked over to the fire, but there wasn't any sign of Jace. I considered going out into the darkness to find him, but I knew I'd probably just get lost if I did that so I just sat down next to the fire and threw some more wood on it.
It took a few minutes, but pretty soon I had three-foot-high flames which chased the darkness back almost twenty feet. It was a good thing too because I was starting to get a little freaked out. I could have counted the number of times I'd been out camping on one hand.
Mom had never been much of a camper—especially back when we'd been younger. Once she'd left us Dad had been too busy working to take us on any camping trips.
The little hollow where we'd parked the RV had looked welcoming and open during the day, but now that night had fallen it felt like the trees were starting to press in on me. Even worse I didn't recognize most of the sounds filling the air around me. The insects, with their two-part humming chorus were especially discomforting, and I had to fight the urge to go back to the RV and take refuge behind the heavy vehicle's locked doors.
I was fighting a losing battle, but Kat was perceptive enough to figure out why I'd flee the great outdoors, and she'd never let me hear the end of it. I just needed to gut it out for a few more seconds, maybe a minute or two tops, and then either Jace would return or Kat would finish doing the dishes and come out.
The sound of buzzing wings brought me around to the left, but when I looked there wasn't anything there. Based on the way the wings had sounded, I'd half expected to see some kind of massive white moth. Moths had always freaked me out a little, but even a moth the size of my fist would have been better than turning to find nothing.
The insect buzzed past me again, now on the other side, and I spun around again. I was acting like a crazy person, but I couldn't help myself. The feeling of someone being out here, watching me was just too strong to do anything else.
I spun around again, and this time I caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye. I'd only thought that being strafed by a fist-sized insect would be preferable to not knowing what it was that was circling me.
It wasn't a moth, not as fast as it was moving, but it was fist-sized, which meant it was the biggest insect I'd ever run into. My skin had started crawling a few seconds before, but that glimpse added a chill to the uneasiness I was experiencing. My skin now felt like it wanted to get up and run away.
I started back towards the RV, wanting to run, but afraid that I would trip on something and that whatever it was would attack me before I could get back to my feet.
Something came at me from the right and I slapped out blindly, trying to swat my attacker out of the air. The edge of my hand connected with a glancing blow against something, and then things happened almost too fast for me to follow.
The buzz got louder and deeper as my attacker came directly at my face, and then the night lit up with a glittering green glow that scared me so badly that I tripped over my own feet and fell down.
It was the same bug that had knocked me over in Jace's bathroom, only it was way bigger. My fall had gotten me out of the line of attack, but it looped around, flying erratically and much faster than I could have possibly run.
Escape wasn't an option, but my desperately seeking hands found one of the heavy branches that we'd gathered to use as fuel for the fire. I grabbed the improvised weapon as the insect streaked forward, dive-bombing me in an unmistakable attack.
I swung the stick with all of my might, hoping to knock the glowing menace out of the air, but it just juked down…and landed on my chest.
I'd been expecting to be stung, or bitten, but it wasn't an insect at all. It was a miniature, perfectly formed girl who was about an inch and a half tall. Oh, and she had glittery green wings.
"Why are you such a hater?"
I was speechless. Her voice had a tiny, high-pitched quality, but other than that it was perfectly understandable.
When I didn't immediately respond she jumped up and down on my breastbone. She wasn't heavy enough to hurt me, but the sensation was still uncomfortable. She obviously wasn't an insect, but my instincts hadn't caught up to what I was actually seeing yet and having her bouncing up and down was still making my skin crawl.
"Can you at least see me now? I've been buzzing around your head for days now and getting nothing. Back then all I wanted was for you to be able to see me. Now that you can see me, you're trying to smack the crap out of me. So much for progress."
"I can see you."
She zipped into the air so fast that she was nothing more than a solid green line. Apparently me finding my tongue was an even bigger shock to her than it had been for me.
"Wait, come back!"
For a second I thought she hadn't heard me, but then I saw a shimmering trail working its way back towards me, zigging and zagging as though to make sure that I wouldn't be able to hit her. I finally realized that I was still holding the branch that I'd been using as a club, and set it down—although not without reluctance. She was too fast to hit, and I wasn't going to be able to make it to the RV before she could land on me again, so all that was left was hoping that she wasn't going to hurt me.
"Are you going to try to hit me again?"
"No! What are you?"
She darted to a stop just in front of my nose and frowned. "Isn't that just the way that it always works? People are all too caught up asking what someone is to even care what a person's name is."
I forced myself not to sigh, but it was hard. Even my dad couldn't usually get away with talking to me like that. The last thing I wanted was to be lectured by this little diva.
I pulled myself up into a sitting position. "Hold on there, Tinker Bell. Don't try to act like it wasn't you who strafed me the other day in Jace's bathroom. I nearly cracked my head open because of you. Also, that led a pretty embarrassing incident involving Jace seeing me in nothing more than a towel. Before you go off acting like some kind of Miss Manners diva I think you at least owe me an apology."
She looked a little crestfallen. "I am actually sorry about that. It was the first time you'd ever seen me. How was I supposed to know you'd pick that moment to react when you hadn't noticed me the hundred other times I ran into you?"
"Wait, you used to run into me on purpose?"
She shrugged. "Do you have any idea how boring it is to be invisible? People talk like it's awesome in the movies, and it kind of is, but not so much when everything is built to a scale two hundred times your size and you can't ever turn the invisibility off. Then it kind of sucks."
"So you decided to take your frustrations out on me? What's your name by the way?"
"Bethany—my name is Bethany. But as long as we're pointing fingers, it's your fault that I w
as in the situation at all. You created me and then you disappeared just like you said you would, but you never told me it was going to take so long for Jace to find you again."
"Wait, I created you?"
Bethany gave me a look that seemed to say that I was being dense. "Of course you created me. Where else would I have come from?"
"I don't know, Bethany, this is all new to me."
I could hear footsteps, but they were coming from the wrong direction to be Kat. Either Jace was coming back, I was about to be murdered, or my hallucinations had just gotten worse.
"Selene, who are you talking to?"
I looked at Bethany, who had just settled on my knee and dropped down to sit cross-legged, and then shrugged in response to Jace's question.
"Honestly, I'm not sure. She says that her name is Bethany and she's about two inches tall and has shimmery green wings. Oh, and she says that I created her."
Jace's eyes went wide. "Is this the first time you've seen her?"
"No, she charged into me in your bathroom yesterday, but she was a lot smaller then. That's why I fell down. I thought she was just some kind of exotic beetle. I take it that you can't see her? Do you have any idea what she is?"
"An unexpected complication."
Bethany jumped back to her feet and shot Jace a dirty look. "I can hear him, you know."
"She doesn't like being called a complication. She's glaring tiny little daggers in your direction."
Now it was my turn to get the stink-eye. "I'll have you know that a person's importance has nothing at all to do with their size."
Jace made a calming gesture in the direction of my knee—apparently he'd figured out at least roughly where she was.
"I'm sorry, Bethany, I spoke without thinking. And Selene doesn't know any better."
"I don't?"
Jace nodded at me. "Apparently not."
"Well whose fault is that, Teacher Smarty-pants?"
That earned me a wince. "Mine, but in fairness I had no way of knowing this was going to be an issue. There are a hundred different things that I need to tell you, and only time to get to one or two of them on any given day."
Bethany seemed to be considering his response. "I'm inclined to allow it. Of course it means I like Jace even less than I did before, but that's no great loss. He's been such a bore. Going on and on about missing you anytime he thought there wasn't anyone around to listen. Like he was the only one suffering because you were gone. I spent eighteen years invisible and dodging flies the size of houses."
"She says that she doesn't like you very much and that you're a whiner. Do either of you want to start filling me in?"
Bethany waved airily in Jace's direction. "He can do it. It's way past time for him to start earning his way back into my good graces."
I gave Jace an expectant look. He ran his fingers through his hair. "So your Greek mythology books didn't just talk about gods, they also included legends about monsters that either helped or hindered the gods and heroes."
"Like Perseus' Pegasus?"
"Yeah, or the Minotaur, or any of a few hundred other creatures."
Bethany sputtered. "I am not a creature!"
"She didn't like being called a creature—I think you just lost a few more popularity points."
Jace was looking a bit like he was wishing he could put his hands on an industrial-sized fly swatter, but he managed a strained smile.
"All of the stories have some kind of mythical beings that aren't gods or heroes, but the legends about fairies are the ones that seem to have gotten the most details right."
It was my turn to wince. "Hey, I'm sorry about calling you Tinker Bell."
Bethany shrugged. "It was an honest mistake. Besides, I've seen her on television and she's really quite pretty and it appears that her favorite color is green too. Tell him to hurry up and get to the part about me being Seelie."
"Hey, Jace, what's a Seelie fairy?"
"Can you please ask Bethany if it would be okay for me to explain where fairies come from first?"
I looked back at Bethany, who gave me a resigned nod. "She says go ahead."
"Okay, so Kat explained to you that there are three types of emotions that can power our abilities, right? Well, as nearly as we've been able to tell, not all of the memories that disappear from inside of our heads are actually consumed by whatever effect we are putting into place."
"That doesn't make sense. Why would we lose more memories than we need to? That doesn't sound very efficient…"
Jace shrugged. "This is more your area of expertise—or at least it was—than it is mine. The best way to think of it though is like a fire. When you burn a log a lot of it is converted to heat and light, but you always end up with some ash left. You can't just put in less wood and avoid getting any ash out, no matter how much or little wood you burn there is always going to be some ash."
Bethany looked like she was getting impatient, but I made 'settle down' gestures at her and she sat back down and started using her wings to spin herself around in circles.
"Okay, so every time an Awakened creates an effect they end up with a bunch of magical ash."
"Sort of. The amount of ash is proportional to the size of the effect and how many of their memories went into powering it. Fairies seem to be nature's way of addressing the 'wasted' memories. Any fairies who are around when an effect is powered automatically absorb some of the unused memories."
"So they are para…I mean symbiotes."
"Yes, exactly. Younger fairies tend to be more than willing to help 'their' Awakened out in return for being allowed to feed on the 'wasted' memories. As fairies age, they tend to be less and less attached to their creators. Once they hit a certain size and power, they can absorb baseline memories from nearby humans, and the most powerful of both the Seelie and Unseelie courts have even been known to attack Awakened, taunting them into using effects so that they can feed."
I was suddenly nervous at having Bethany sitting on my knee. I tried to keep that off of my face, but she looked up at me and shook her head.
"I'm not going to attack you."
"Really? Because you kind of already did in the bathroom and then you were dive-bombing me just a couple of minutes ago."
"Look, I already explained that. I was just bored, and touching you makes me feel more solid. I'm a Seelie fairy."
Jace gave me an expectant look, obviously frustrated by the fact that he could only hear half of the conversation, and ready to be filled in.
"She said that she didn't mean to hurt me and that she's Seelie—whatever that means."
"Yeah, sorry, I'm getting to that part next. So nobody is exactly sure where fairies come from, but your working theory according to your notes was that fairies exist all around us at all times, and occasionally when an especially large measure of power is expended, it is enough to give one of the embryonic fairies a form that lets them interact with the rest of our world."
"Wait, so when she says that I created her…"
"You must have expended enough power in your faceoff with Sandra's last incarnation to allow her to manifest the form you see right now. Honestly, I'm surprised. To hear Kat tell it, the fight didn't last very long, and the damage to the surrounding area was pretty contained. It's pretty rare for a new fairy to be born without an extended, devastating fight."
I started to respond, but something that Bethany had said earlier was tickling the back of my mind. "I don't think that's what happened at all, Jace. Bethany said that I told her to follow you around because you would eventually lead her back to me. Could I have told her that in the middle of a fight like that?"
"No. Usually fairies don't appear until at least an hour or two after the expenditure of power occurs."
"So I created her before then—probably six or seven hundred years ago the last time that I died."
I looked at Bethany to see if she wanted to weigh in, but she seemed completely engrossed with studying her nails now. Jace was pacing.
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"No, Selene, that's not how it works. Fairies only stay invisible like that for the first little while. Once they unite with their creator they lose their invisibility pretty quickly."
"So, she spent the last six or seven hundred years looking for me and never found me?"
"No, fairies are really good at tracking down their creators. Their ability doesn't work until we are Awakened and actively creating effects, but once we are, it usually only takes them a few days to find us. You must have created her a short time before you were killed."
My head was starting to hurt again. "That doesn't make sense. Why would I have burned up a huge chunk of memories just before going into a fight for my life where I was probably going to need all of those memories?"
"I don't know. Kat didn't know anything about what you'd done, and that means you had to have worked the effects while she was asleep, to keep her in the dark."
"Maybe that's not it at all, Jace. I'll bet that Kat and I burned through a ton of memories while we were running away from Sandra and the rest of her pantheon. Maybe our combined expenditure of power—along with whatever Sandra and the rest were burning up—was enough to bring Bethany into existence. Doesn't that make a lot more sense?"
Jace stopped pacing and dropped down onto a log next to the fire. "Yeah, except there's never been any record of something like that happening. It's always one Awakened who creates a given fairy. If multiple people expend a ton of power at the same time, then you just get multiple fairies."
"So it's never happened before—that doesn't mean that it's impossible though, right?"
Bethany shook her head at me. "No, he's right. When we first start out, we can only feed off of magic powered by one specific emotion. Everyone's emotions are subtly different—not by much, but just enough that we can't feed on them until we've had a chance to grow. That's why I'm still this size despite having followed that dolt around for eighteen years. He's burned a ton of memories up, but nothing that I could use."
I looked back over at Jace. "She says you're right, that they can't feed off of anyone other than their creator until they've had a chance to mature."
"Right, all of which indicates that you created her just days, or even hours before you died."
"Okay, so we just have a ton of questions that we don't even begin to have answers for. What's up with this Seelie thing she keeps talking about?"
"The fairies are divided roughly into two groups, the Seelie and the Unseelie courts. Fairies who are born from a massive expenditure of memories being consumed under a positive emotion, all go to the Seelie Court. Fairies who are created by a negative emotion, all eventually end up as part of the Unseelie Court."
The nervousness inside of me amped up to eleven. "What about fairies who are born under the auspices of neutral emotions? What do they go on to become?"
Jace seemed to understand what I was getting at. My old self had been big on anger, which felt awfully dark to me. If Bethany had been born while I'd been using anger to help power my effects did that mean she was going to be Unseelie? I didn't even know what it meant for a fairy to be Seelie or Unseelie, but something was telling me that I didn't want to be around one that belonged to the Unseelie court.
"There isn't a third court, so the fairies created under a neutral emotion end up joining either the Seelie or Unseelie courts depending on their temperaments."
"And the Unseelie court is…"
"It's not very pleasant, Selene. Unseelie fairies take what they want and don't worry about what they have to do or who they have to hurt to get it. They don't have much if any moral code other than just greed and a lust for power."
"What about the Seelie fairies?"
Bethany jumped to her feet and then took flight, twirling around in the air. "We are kind, honorable and loyal. The perfect companions and the staunchest of allies."
"Never mind, Jace. Bethany just filled me in. The Seelie fairies are all sunshine, roses and wet puppy kisses."
Jace cleared his throat. "Actually they are most of those things, but they are still occasionally pranksters, and they aren't usually very big on the concept of mercy—justice seems to wield a big trump card where they are concerned."
"He's right to be nervous. He deserves a severe punishment for ignoring me for so long."
"Chill out, Bethany, seriously, he couldn't see or hear you. It wasn't like he wanted to ignore you, he didn't have a choice."
"Fine, just remember that I don't entirely approve of your choice in boyfriends."
I sighed. The last thing I'd been looking for was a self-righteous Jiminy Cricket to ride around on my shoulder and tell me everything she thought I was doing wrong.
"So how do we figure out whether Bethany is actually Seelie or Unseelie?"
She landed back on my knee and stomped her foot again. It was an impressive display of frustration—I didn't have the heart to tell her that I couldn't even feel her foot through my jeans.
"I told you already, I'm Seelie!"
"No offense, Bethany, but isn't that exactly what you'd tell me if you were Unseelie?"
"Hmm. I guess you have a point. What does your dull, self-righteous boyfriend think?"
Jace waited until I looked away from Bethany before responding. "If you come across a fairy in the wild, so to speak, one who is big enough and old enough to absorb memories from anyone, then there isn't any good way to know for sure whether they are Seelie or Unseelie."
"So you just have to treat them like normal people and hope that if you give them your trust they aren't going to screw you over?"
"Yeah, but with the added complication that it is always possible they've screwed you over in the past and you just don't remember any of it."
"Wow, that's lovely. I'm beginning to understand why you and Kat are such big fans of journaling."
"Yeah, it comes in handy. You'll also get pretty good at sketching things out. Just because a fairy tells you their name, doesn't mean they are telling the truth."
Jace looked off into the distance for a second before continuing. "There are some fairies who are generally known to be part of either the Seelie or Unseelie courts. The Lady of the Lake, for example, is generally considered to be the leader of the Seelie court, and Fenrir is as dark an Unseelie fairy as has ever existed."
I'd only thought that my head was starting to hurt before. The Lady of the Lake was from the story of King Arthur—she'd been the one to give him Excalibur—but I was having a hard time remembering who Fenrir was. The best I could come up with was that he'd been some kind of giant wolf from Norse mythology who was fated to help destroy a bunch of important gods in the final battle when the world ended or something.
I was kind of proud that I'd remember that much, but mostly I was just still struggling with the idea that so many figures from mythology weren't just based on real people, they were actually still alive and running around.
One thing for sure, it was becoming very apparent to me that fairies weren't all bite-sized Tinker Bell clones. They might all start out that way, but the ones that had been around for thousands of years sounded like they could be as big as an SUV.
"But nobody really knows, right? I mean the Lady of the Lake may have been super awesome for the last two hundred years, but if she's actually Unseelie, then she could just be playing a really long game waiting for the perfect chance to screw over everyone who's ever trusted her. Gah! This all sucks beyond belief."
Jace was obviously trying not to laugh at me, but the corners of his lips turned up in just the slightest of smiles.
"It's not quite as bad as that. Firstly, the fairies aren't like us; they don't lose their memories over time, and they don't age physically. That means that the Seelie court is quick to kick out anyone who turns out to be Unseelie, and they are happy to make sure any Awakened who asks knows which fairies can or can't be trusted."
"So they can still screw you over, but they'll only get to do it once."
"Yeah, and it means that even an
y Unseelie fairies masquerading as Seelie fairies are still going to tell you the truth about who is officially part of the court. Since they are only going to get one chance to betray their supposed friends, they aren't going to blow their cover over something small."
I frowned at him. He was right, and that was better than worrying about an endless cycle of betrayals, but it still wasn't reassuring. Frankly I was thinking that I'd just be better off telling Bethany to hit the road—she wasn't worth the risk that she was lying about being Seelie.
"What's the other thing you mentioned?"
"Well, if a fairy grows in response to effects that are being powered by positive emotions, then the creator at least knows that they are Seelie fairies."
"All of which doesn't do us any good since I created Bethany governed by a fit of rage."
"No, you didn't."
I looked back at Bethany. "Beg your pardon?"
"You weren't using anger as your driving emotion when you created me. You were using a sense of happiness."
A chill worked its way up my spine. Kat had been so convinced that my default emotion had been anger, just like hers had been for so many decades. Had I started to change right before I'd died? It didn't make sense, but it had happened to Kat and it strained belief to think that I'd ended up picking my current default emotion simply by chance.
Jace was off of his stump and at my side a second later. "What's wrong, Selene?"
"Bethany just told me that she was created by a positive emotion. All I can assume is that I must have started changing my default emotion at some point before the end."
Jace looked like he'd been hit between the eyes with a hammer. "No, that never would have happened, Selene. I mean it happens, but only to Awakened who have undergone something traumatic, something life-changing. You weren't in that kind of place; you were at the top of your game.
"There is another explanation though. Sometimes one of us can be overcome with another emotion that is actually stronger than our default feeling. It usually only happens under unique, trying circumstances, but when it does, it's usually so strong that the only limit on the effects that can be worked while in its grip is the amount of memories the Awakened in question has available to them. It's the stuff of legend."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean things like continents shifting, new volcanoes suddenly appearing out of nowhere, or tidal waves that are more than fifteen hundred feet tall. We Awakened worry a lot about how fast we are consuming our memories, but the truth is that in most confrontations it isn't the person with the most memories who wins, it's the person who can immerse themselves in the strongest emotion while still being able to function. Most of us would have to fight all-out for hours in order to burn up even just a few decades' worth of memories. That's the kind of thing that is required to birth a new fairy."
"So you're saying that I didn't die with most of my memories untapped, I burned up most of them the night before and created Bethany while working on something. But none of us have any idea what that something might have been?"
"No, one of us has to have an idea what you were working on that night. Ask Bethany what you were doing."
I cocked my head at her. She gave me a lazy shrug. "Yes?"
"You heard Jace, we'd like to know what it was I was working on when you were created. You know, right?"
"Yes, but I'm not going to tell you."
"Hello, I'm your creator, don't you owe me some kind of debt of gratitude?"
"Yes, I owe my creator an immense debt. My creator sacrificed more than I can imagine to bring me into existence—and unlike a lot of her kind, she did it with the intent of giving me life—but you aren't her."
"What do you mean I'm not her? I've just spent two days with Jace and Kat telling me that I am her."
"No, you look like her, you act like her, you even think like her, but you aren't her. Usually that is enough, but not this time, not when my real creator asked me to keep it a secret for her."
"She says that she's not going to tell us. She says that the old me asked her to keep it a secret and she cares more about the old me than she does about the new me. Is there anything we can do to make her tell me? Can't I just refuse to feed her if she's not going to be any help?"
Jace shook his head. "No, you're eventually going to start working effects, and when that happens she'll naturally feed off of the excess energies that are released. The only way to stop it would be to kill her, and neither of us wants to do that."
Bethany gave me a knowing look that tapped into the anger that I'd spent so long nursing. It was nearly enough for me to tell Jace that he was wrong, but I knew I'd just be making a hollow threat. I wasn't a killer—didn't want to be a killer, when you really got down to it.
"Fine, I guess she can keep her secret. I wish I knew what it was that I was working on though. If I had access to that kind of power, shouldn't I have just blasted my way out of the trap we were in? I mean, even if it had cost me most of my memories, wouldn't that have still been a better way to go than getting myself killed a few hours later?"
"I don't know, Selene. You weren't the kind of person to make many mistakes. If you decided to burn through decades of memories the night before a big battle then there was a very good reason. I just don't have the foggiest idea why you would have done it."
