Merry & Bright: A Christmas Anthology (Nocturne Falls Universe)

by Fiona Roarke

  “So what have you been up to while I was away?” He folded his legs on the blanket beside her and offered her one of the Cokes he’d brought with him. “I expect a full report.”

  “Aye aye, captain!” She bounced a little in her excitement. Bright forced himself not to laugh, but he really, really wanted to. “I actually came up with two things. One is a surprise for later, but you’re going to love it. Trust me.”

  In his whole life, no one had ever given Bright a gift that wasn’t obligatory. Merri had no clue what a godsend she was to him. She was clever and talented, and she thought outside the box. She knew the limits of her own magic, but only because she was constantly testing them. The more adept she became, the more she inspired Bright to challenge himself.

  “Whatever it is, I’m sure I will love it,” he said. “And the other business?”

  She sipped her Coke and relaxed a bit. “The other thing is all set to go, but I do need your help cementing the deal.”

  Bright allowed himself to grin this time. Merri had the chops to invent complex pranks on her own, but it felt nice to be needed. “Go on.”

  “I need you to officiate the marriage of two ghosts.”

  Bright chuckled into his Coke bottle. “Never a dull moment with you, is there?”

  “Oh, but you’ll like this one.” She brightened up again, like sunshine on snow. “I’ve convinced a ghost mariachi band to follow Dean Zuru around for Dia de los Muertos.”

  “Because doing something like that on Halloween would be too obvious,” said Bright.

  Merri waved her hands. “Every copycat in Harmswood will be planning some lame trick for Halloween. This prank has so much more class.”

  “I agree,” said Bright. “It’s definitely worthy of the Mad Bandits. But…who is it that wants to get married? One of the ghosts in the band?”

  “The lead singer’s sister, Bianca,” said Merri. “She’s fallen in love with a Chinese soldier from the Han dynasty.”

  Bright shook his head. Only Merri. She always did have more ghost friends than live ones. “I assume the feeling is mutual?”

  “Oh, yes. They’re a wonderful couple. Met in the biography section of the library over a mutual love of flowers and poetry and sword fighting.” She waved her hands again. “But that’s beside the point. They want to get married, and I can’t be the one to do it.”

  “Why not?”

  Merri sighed. “Because, despite all their differences in time and space and culture and religion, they can only agree on one thing: that they have to be married by a man.”

  Bright burst out laughing—something he only ever did around Merri. “I promise to fulfill my manly duties.”

  Mari smirked at him. “Don’t get me started. But the trade-off will be so much fun! The band will follow Dean Zuru from sunup to sundown, except for lunchtime, when they’ll perform a full concert in the cafeteria. Bianca taught me some dances—I’m hoping to get up enough courage to ask Samson to dance with me. Bianca can teach you too, if you want, and then maybe you can ask Taylor.”

  Bright set his Coke aside. There would be no better time to bring this up. “Speaking of Taylor and dances…”

  “Yeah? You come up with something new?”

  “Sort of,” he said. “Taylor asked me to play a prank with her during the Midwinter Masquerade.”

  “Wow,” said Merri. “You mean while your crew was up at the lodge this past weekend?”

  When Merri said “your crew,” Bright knew what she meant was, “all the popular rich kids.” Even if he’d been able to acknowledge their partnership, Merri wouldn’t have fit in with that crowd. Heck, he didn’t fit in, and he belonged there.

  “Right out of the blue,” he said. “She just walked up and asked me.”

  “Wow,” Merri said again. “Do you think she suspects…?”

  “No,” Bright said before she could finish. “She asked me because I’m apparently the last person anyone would ever suspect.”

  Merri lifted her bottle in salute. “Second-to-last,” she said. “So does this mean you’re going to the Midwinter Masquerade with her?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “She’s going with my little brothers and a bunch of other people. Besides, I assumed you’d be going with me.”

  Merri froze with the Coke bottle halfway to her lips. “Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose? Isn’t the whole point of our partnership that we can’t ever be seen together?”

  Bright shook his head. “I don’t mean ‘go-with-me’ go with me, I mean…ugh, how do I explain this?”

  “Polaris Brighton,” she said pertly. “Are you inviting me to not go to the Midwinter Masquerade with you?”

  He blew out the breath he’d been holding. “Thank you. That’s exactly what I mean. It is our last year, after all.”

  “I was thinking about that,” said Merri. “You know, all the Harmswood alumni are invited to the Midwinter Masquerade. Maybe we should come back every year and pull a prank. Just for old times’ sake.”

  “You can,” he said as he unwrapped his sandwich. “I know one thing for sure—our shenanigans have been the only good thing about my time here. Once I leave Harmswood, I never, ever want to come back to this school again.”

  He wore a silver bowtie with his tuxedo because he knew Taylor would be wearing silver. His brothers did the same. He and Thuban and Alrai looked like three versions of the same black-haired, fair-skinned elf: the athlete, the journalist, and the CEO.

  He may have been the youngest, but Alrai’s shoulders were almost twice the size of his brothers’. Thuban’s fingers were, as always, perpetually stained with ink. And Bright was…perfect. Pressed, polished, and not a hair out of place. Just like his father. Just as he was supposed to be.

  He’d bought a wrist corsage for Merri. He wasn’t sure why. She’d said she had a surprise for him, though he still didn’t know what it was. Maybe he just wanted to return the favor. When he’d walked into Enchanted Garden and seen the black-eyed Susans—Merri’s favorite—surrounded by miniature black roses, he knew the corsage was supposed to belong to her.

  Taylor and the rest of her friends met them in the courtyard. She spotted the box right away and assumed the flowers were hers. She gave Bright a perfunctory kiss on the cheek as she took the box from him, didn’t even stop talking to his brothers as she slid the corsage onto her wrist. It clashed with her silver dress, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  Bright was too stunned at the kiss to take it away from her. He simply pulled the silver mask down over his eyes and joined the party.

  The low-level prank Taylor had asked him to do for her—she’d never planned to help, he should have known—was set up and ready to go. A mesh canopy of white and silver balloons had been rigged to drop idyllically upon the guests once the masquerade had started. It hadn’t been too difficult to fill one of those balloons with ink. It would be tougher guiding the balloon to its target once the canopy collapsed, but the gymnasium was kept cool enough for Bright to manipulate a few icy drafts with no problem.

  Bright looked forward to watching Samson get his just desserts, so much so that he forgot to be afraid of Taylor. As soon as the alma mater was finished, he pulled her into his arms for the first dance. Taylor laughed and danced with him, her red-gold hair shining in the dim lights.

  But all she could talk about was Samson.

  Taylor pulled Bright close and whispered in his ear. Her breath was sweet. The feathers of her mask brushed his cheek. “Do you see him yet? They’ll pull that canopy at any second. We need to find that no-good two-timing elf before it happens.”

  Bright had already located the target. Samson was dancing on the opposite side of the gym. His partner was some tall, curvy fae girl. Her floor-length gown only had one shoulder, and a line of ruffles down the back. Between the golden dress, golden mask, and her short golden pixie cut, she almost looked like an award statue come to life. Samson Sol and his new Trophy Girlfriend. It was all too perfect.

 
As the song came to a close, Taylor dragged Bright closer to their victims. They had a front row seat when the ink balloon came crashing down on Samson’s tawny head. His partner got just as splattered as Samson, from golden hair to the toes of her golden shoes.

  “What the…” Samson sputtered as he and his dance partner pulled the masks from their faces. “Taylor?”

  Taylor’s evil laugh turned to a shriek. “That’s what you get for dancing with another girl, you selfish jerk!”

  “I didn’t ask her, baby, I swear. She asked me. It was just one dance…” Samson continued to plead his case to Taylor, but the words melted away in Bright’s ears the moment he realized exactly what fae girl Samson had been dancing with.

  Merri.

  She’d cut her hair…and where had she gotten that dress? She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. Those kaleidoscope blue eyes glowed against the blue-black mess, staring him down. Even splattered with ink, she was the most beautiful woman in the room. Was this supposed to be his big surprise?

  Oh, gods. His heart sank.

  “Merri,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”

  At Bright’s declaration, Taylor raised a hand to shut Samson up. Merri caught sight of the corsage on her wrist. The black and yellow of the black-eyed Susans mocked them both. A look of…pain?…crossed her face, but it was gone in an instant. Merri’s bright eyes moved from the corsage, to Taylor, to him.

  “Goodbye, Polaris,” was all she said before she turned and walked away. The crowd parted to let her leave.

  Taylor finally noticed the corsage as well, the plain wildflowers and black roses that had no business on her wrist. They matched the black and gold vision of the girl now walking away.

  “This was for her,” she whispered. “Oh my gosh, Bright, I’m so sorry. I never would have interfered if I’d known.”

  “Known what?” Bright asked in a daze.

  “That she’s in love with you, you idiot.” Taylor pulled the flowers off her wrist and shoved them back into Bright’s hands. “And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll go after her, right this second.”

  Bright stared at the flowers in his hand. The black-eyed Susans stared back. Taylor was spouting nonsense. Merri wasn’t in love with him. Oh, she was plenty mad at him, sure, but she wasn’t in love with him. That was ridiculous. It wasn’t what their partnership was about.

  “What are you waiting for?” Taylor asked.

  “Taylor’s right,” said Samson, dripping ink on the gym floor like a fool. “You should go, man.”

  Bright grimaced. The last thing he wanted was unsolicited advice from surfer-boy Samson. “She’ll be fine,” he said. “She just needs to cool off. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  But there was no tomorrow. Merri wasn’t in class the next day. She wasn’t in the library, or the courtyard, or in the woods by the hollow tree. Not even the ghosts knew where she’d gone. By winter break, he heard a rumor that she’d gotten her equivalency diploma and gone back to South Carolina to help her mother with the new baby.

  She didn’t call him. She didn’t write. Merri had said her goodbye. He just hadn’t realized it would be the last one. Like he hadn’t realized she’d loved him all that time. Like he hadn’t realized how much he loved her back.

  The last semester of school was torture. Without Merri, it was painfully obvious just how alone he was in that place. So he went back to quietly not caring about anything or anyone. Not caring made everything hurt a little less.

  Taylor and Samson got back together, and broke up, and got back together again, and Bright didn’t care. He took his midterms, and then his finals, and he didn’t care. He interned at his father’s investment firm and sat in on conference calls and board meetings and he didn’t care. He assembled in the gym and marched with his fellow classmates down to the athletic field to rehearse graduation, and he didn’t care.

  As the seniors crested the hill, Bright began to hear whispers, then giggles, then shouts of joy. He pushed through the crowd so he could see the sight for himself. Within the pristine, spring-green athletic field had been planted another sort of grass, but much darker green. From their vantage point at the top of the hill, the students could read the giant words it splashed across the field as plain as day:

  CLASS OF MB

  “Class of the Mad Bandits!” someone cried out, and everyone in the senior class cheered again. Everyone, that is, except Bright. Because he knew that M and that B didn’t stand for “Mad Bandits.”

  This had been the surprise she’d kept so secret. Merri’s gift, just for him, fashioned by her own flower-fairy hand. Her last prank, immortalizing them both. The last secret shared between them.

  And he wished to the heavens that he didn’t care.

  Chapter Three

  Four years later

  It was autumn again. Merri could tell because the pine needles were falling, everything was flavored with pumpkin spice, and Cassiopeia was talking to dead people.

  Mother had named the thirteenth Larousse baby Cassiopeia Merrisandra. An exquisite, complicated, and possibly doomed name, but she’d grow into it. For now they just called her Cass, or Sippy, or whatever else they felt like that day.

  Cassiopeia had pointed ears and those telltale Larousse eyes, but her curly locks were black where her siblings had fair hair. This was a trait shared among many fae thirteenth children, Mother explained, because their spirits were closer to the veil. Especially the ones born between All Hallows and Midwinter.

  Merri kept watch over her littlest sister at the Nursery-Nursery, where she’d taken a job after leaving Harmswood. At the Nursery-Nursery, young ones played in a natural, greenhouse-type environment. The idea was that being surrounded by flowers and trees and natural light was more conducive to education than being cooped up in tiny rooms with no windows. It was also a better place for paranormal children who might accidentally burp acid, or set fire to their paper, or turn a friend into a toad, or walk up to Merri and say, “Bianca has a message for you.”

  Merri blinked at her little sister and pulled the strands of hair out of her mouth. “Bianca who, Cassafrass?”

  “Bianca from Harmswood,” Cassiopeia said, and then stuck her thumb in her mouth instead.

  Right, thought Merri. Ghost Bianca. Merri helped her sister make a better choice about where to put her fingers. “What did Bianca say, sweetheart?”

  “She says you havta come to the dance ’cause Bellamy needs your help,” she said quickly, and then promptly ran away to join her friends beneath the apple tree.

  Bellamy needed help? That was almost as odd as a ghost friend delivering a message through her baby sister. Bellamy was the happiest and most generous of all the Larousse siblings. If life gave Bellamy lemons, she opened a lemonade stand that saved the world. Merri couldn’t imagine what predicament Bellamy could be in that required any sort of help, never mind her meddling oldest sister’s.

  But Merri loved her crazy fairy family and would do anything for them. Windkin fae might be flighty flibbertigibbets, but they would never abandon one of their own in a time of need. Bianca knew that.

  Merri let out a great sigh. She hadn’t planned to attend Harmswood’s Midwinter Masquerade this year. Or ever again.

  The first year, she’d gone back to the dance just to prove that she could. She wanted to remind herself that she was still a Harmswood alumna, despite not participating in the graduation ceremony with the rest of her class. Admittedly, a small part of her also wanted to see if Polaris Brighton stayed true to his word to never come back.

  He did.

  She wasn’t sure if she was happy or sad that her former partner-in-crime was nowhere to be found on the school grounds. The emotional confusion didn’t last long. She decided that she wanted to pull one more prank, all on her own. Nothing big or drastic or showy, just a small thing. To reclaim her territory. To remind herself that she didn’t need Bright to get away with mischief. To remember that she was still capable of having fun.r />
  That year at the Midwinter Masquerade, every bathroom in Harmswood sported an “Out of Order” sign. It led to a little confusion, a lot of chuckles…and Professor Beketaten running off with the custodian. Apparently, Mr. Zimmer had spent the last ten years secretly memorizing his way through the poetry section of the library, a trait that swept Merri’s former English teacher right off her feet, once she was satisfied that all the toilets were functioning properly.

  The year after that, Merri’s prank once again made a match. And again the year after that. Yup, she still had it. And yet, she was forced to admit that her schoolgirl stunts didn’t amuse her the way they once did. Laughing alone wasn’t quite what it used to be.

  This Midwinter, she planned to save the money she would have spent on the periwinkle dress in the window of Glinda’s Closet and stay at home. Except now, Bellamy needed her.

  Leave it to family to throw a wrench in your plans, thought Merri. Well, at least she already had the dress picked out. Besides, without family, who else would stand up for her?

  No one, that’s who.

  She kissed Mother and all the little ones goodbye, caught a bus down to Georgia, and arranged for one of her brother Asher’s coworkers to pick her up at the station. It was sweltering. When she arrived at Harmswood, she made a beeline for the restroom closest to the library. She figured she could at least catch up with Bianca while she got ready.

  Bianca was thrilled to see her old friend. She told Merri about the rest of the library ghosts, the mariachis, and wedded life—afterlife—with Xiao Wu.

  “He’s strong and wise and calm, which is so strange for me,” said Bianca. “My family is full of singing and dancing and yelling and flying.”

  “Sounds a lot like my family.” Merri fixed her lip gloss in the mirror. She wondered if her own temperament would follow her into the afterlife. If she became a poltergeist, she could continue playing tricks on people…