“What are you talking about?” I demanded, staring at him sickly. “What’s happening downstairs? What did you do?”
“My dear Pet, if you would allow me to complete a sentence—”
“I don’t actually care what else you want to tell me,” I said. “I just want answers to my questions!”
I heard footsteps on the stairs; bounding, swift footsteps that boomed across the top landing and then hurried around the corner toward the doorway of my parents’ room. JinYeong, his face as pale as anyone of his complexion could be, darted through the doorway with a wild look and seized me by the elbows, his eyes running over me as though to make sure I was really there.
Daniel, his face ridiculously haggard for someone of his age, caught himself in the doorway behind him and said, “Pet! You need to get downstairs!”
“The heck is going on down there?” I demanded. “Look, Zero just disappeared, and Athelas won’t tell me what he did with him. You’re going to have to deal with whatever it is yourself.”
“Morgana is gone!”
I stared at him, caught between sickness and rage. “Gone how?”
“She disappeared—one second she was there, the next she was gone. I don’t even—did someone know her name? I didn’t think that worked on humans!”
“Morgana isn’t human,” I said mechanically, allowing myself to be hugged tightly by JinYeong, who was speaking a nonsense of Korean that was too fast for me to comprehend and he was too overwhelmed to translate for me.
“Yes, but that’s a fae thing! It doesn’t work like that for all of us!” snarled Daniel.
“Get Sarah and Ralph,” I told him over JinYeong’s shoulder, cold obstinacy sinking into my bones. “We’ll see about this. If Athelas has—”
“My dear Pet—”
“No, you don’t understand,” Daniel insisted. “They’re gone. They’re all gone.”
“All of who?”
“The heirlings,” he said, wiping a shaky hand across his eyes. “It’s not just Morgana: Ralph and Sarah have disappeared, too. There isn’t an heirling left in the house except you.”
In the buzzing silence, I heard Athelas’ faint exhale; it bubbled a bit where it shouldn’t have bubbled.
“Ah,” he said. “The king really does have them, then. It seems as though it’s all up to my lord now, after all.”
Between Family: The City Between: Book Nine Page 27
