by Jessica Grey
Alex loved gems. She loved minerals of all kinds. Even the possibility that there was a whole side of them that she may have missed—a nonscientific, elemental, and possibly frightening aspect of them that she had just never been aware of, was electrifying. She cautiously approached the footboard of the bed, reached out and gingerly ran her hands across it, pushing cobwebs off of the metal.
Her fingers traced the tangled vines. The artistry was stunning. The vines appeared to writhe and stretch right in front of her eyes, but remained cool and solid to the touch. Alex ran her fingers up a vine, over the thorns—surprisingly sharp—and over the emerald leaves clustered around a fully opened rose. The emeralds were unusually cold to her touch. The room was a comfortable temperature, and the stones should be about the same, but these felt cool and oddly sleek. Alex stared into their deep green depths for a moment. Her eyelids began to feel heavy and she let them drift shut. The image of verdant leaves dripping with dew filled her mind as her fingers trailed over the emeralds, feeling the small spines and the slightly rough edges that contrasted with the smooth, waxy feel of the top of the leaves. Alex’s eyes flickered back open and she contemplated the emeralds. They were remarkable specimens, without any visible inclusions, but they weren’t anything other than emeralds.
“What are you?” Alex whispered to the gems. “Are you magic?” She slowly slid her fingers onto the petals of the rose. This rose was in full bloom, its heavy garnet and ruby studded petals giving the appearance of drooping under their own weight, the deep red and wine of the gems giving the rose a depth and dimension that was amazing.
Then she noticed the scent. As her fingertips moved fully onto the flower, the heavy perfume assaulted her senses. The pungent odor tickled her nose and the taste of roses danced on her tongue. The perfume was so heavy it hung in the air around her, pressing against her skin. Almost against her better judgment she let her eyes drift closed again.
She was sitting in a garden, her bare feet digging into the dirt. The entire garden was a riot of roses, each a different shade—running from the palest pink to the deepest crimson. There were petals everywhere, covering the walk that twisted through the garden, scattered in the dirt around her feet, trailing over the heavy wool of her long, white skirt. The sun shone almost painfully bright, beating down on the flowers and twisting vines that climbed a double row of blindingly white stone columns that stretched in a curved colonnade at the front of the garden. She could hear the distant humming of bees as they busied themselves among the flowers, and she could still smell the roses.
A heavy laziness invaded Alex’s limbs, as if she’d been sitting in the sun too long. It was almost as if the perfume of the flowers was acting as a drug, dulling her senses and lulling her to sleep. Her fingers idly curled into a pink and red mottled flower on the bush in front of her, the soft petals caressing her fingertips.
The sun made her so sleepy and the flowers smelled so lovely that she wondered if the petals on the ground would cushion her head if she just laid down for a moment to sleep. A new sound added itself to the humming of the bees, a low, amused laugh, as if the garden itself were sharing a joke with her. So sleepy, she thought as her fingers stroked the petals in a lazy rhythm.
A cool breeze swept through the garden, picking rose petals up from the walk and scattering them in the air like confetti.
“Alexandra!” Luke’s voice called out urgently to her.
Alex’s eyes snapped open. The weird elusive fire she had seen in the other gems was snapping and crackling in the depths of the rubies and garnets of the stone flower under her fingertips. She yanked her hand off the stones, stumbling back from the bed several feet. The scent of roses quickly faded. Alex held her hand, which felt like it was slightly vibrating, against her chest and tried to calm her breathing.
She had no other explanation for what she had just experienced: the gems of the bed were most definitely magic.
Alex glanced at the screen of her phone, and then did a double take. She’d been alone in the room with Luke for over thirty minutes. Which meant she had been in the mysterious rose garden, whether it was a dream, a hallucination, or vision, for almost twenty-five minutes.
The loss of those twenty-five minutes was quite possibly the most frightening thing Alex had experienced all day and, she thought wryly, she’d experienced a heck of a lot that was out of her normal daily routine. Even through the raging storm outside, the enchanted princess nearby, and her childhood friend laying on a magic bed, his hair growing like some out-of-control chia pet, Alex had managed to hang on to a thread, no matter how thin, of rationality. Now that thread had snapped. Everything she knew told her that what she had experienced was not possible. But somehow in the depth of her being she knew that a power that was far from natural had somehow pulled her out of herself.
Alex heard voices coming down the hall. As they came closer she could recognize Nicholas’s voice. It was raised slightly, and definitely sounded agitated, although she couldn’t pick out what he was saying. Someone replied, but the person spoke in a much lower tone, so she wasn’t sure if it was Becca or not.
Alex opened the door that led out into the hallway and slid through it, firmly closing it behind her.
Nicholas was hurrying down the hallway, with Becca trailing in his wake. She looked both relieved and concerned when Alex stepped out into the hallway. As soon as Alex saw him, she realized just how close to the breaking point her frustration level with Nicholas was.
“For Pete’s sake, Nicholas, I’ve called you at least twenty times this morning. Where in the hell have you been?” she broke off as she took note of his disheveled appearance and bloodshot eyes. “Have you been drinking?”
Nicholas laughed a little wildly and, from behind him, Becca flashed Alex a worried look.
“I think so, I am not sure. I don’t remember much. Don’t look at me like that Alexandra.” He ran his hand through his dark hair, making it stand even further up on end, then gestured to the storage room door. “Did you see it? Isn’t it the most amazing thing?”
Alex and Becca shared a sharp look at Nicholas’s use of “it.”
“You mean the bed?” Alex asked slowly.
“Yes, of course the bed. It’s absolutely breathtaking isn’t it? The workmanship and the size of those stones. This is really going to put us on the map.”
“The bed is pretty spectacular,” Alex agreed. “Um, Nicholas, what about Luke?”
Nicholas looked surprised. “Luke? Oh…that’s right, Luke. He was helping me uncrate things last night. What about him?”
Alex shifted into a protective stance in front of the storage room door. There was something about him that made her uncomfortable—something that was just slightly off about his voice and manner. He didn’t give the impression that he knew Luke had been enchanted and Alex was suddenly not sure she wanted him to know.
“What happened last night?” she asked instead of answering.
“Like I said, Luke helped me uncrate the first few items, I realized the magnitude of the find, and I called you so you could help me catalog things this morning. Of everyone here,” Nicholas cast a sidelong glance at Becca who was slowly making her way to stand next to Alex in front of the door, “you’re the most qualified to help with this kind of find.”
“Basically he’s flirting with you because he wants you to do his work for him,” Becca muttered to Alex under her breath, as she sidled up next to her. Alex flushed, hoping that Nicholas hadn’t heard her.
Either he hadn’t heard, or he chose to ignore.
“I take it you’ve both been in to see the bed?” he said. “You didn’t touch anything did you?”
Alex’s fingers burned slightly where they had rested against the stones. “We didn’t disturb anything,” she said. “Everything is just how we found it this morning.”
“Alexandra, what aren’t you saying? Is something wrong with the artifact? Has something been taken?”
Alex and Becca both jumpe
d out of the way as Nicholas pushed his through them and flung open the door. The door slammed shut behind him and Alex winced. She figured she’d give him about a minute before she went in after.
“Where’s Lilia?” she asked quickly.
“I left her in the front office and told her to stay there and be quiet,” Becca answered in a low voice, “Nicholas just seemed really off when he came in.”
“No kidding.”
The storage room door slammed back open and Nicholas stormed out, if it was possible he looked even more wild and disheveled then he had a moment before. “Why in the hell is there a person sleeping on my artifact?”
“It’s not just a person, it’s Luke Reed,” Alex informed him.
“Luke Reed?” he exploded. “What? How can it be Luke? He’s covered in hair! He looks like he’s been there for years.”
“Nicholas, wasn’t there a person sleeping on it last night?” Becca asked.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“What do you mean am I sure? I think I would have noticed a hairy Rip Van Winkle on the biggest find of the century!”
“This makes less and less sense,” Alex said. “I don’t know why you couldn’t see her, but I am pretty sure there was someone on that bed last night—a girl who’d been there for hundreds of years, enchanted like Sleeping Beauty. Luke apparently kissed her, but instead of breaking the spell, he seems to have transferred it to himself.”
Nicholas stared at her in shock before bursting into laughter. “That’s crazy. There’s no such thing as an enchantment. I’m sure Luke is playing some kind of prank on you. I wouldn’t have expected you to fall for it though.”
“Nicholas, we’re being deadly serious here. Both Becca and I have seen the girl; she’s here in the museum. And I can tell you for sure that the stones in that bed are magic.”
“Perhaps he could not see me because he could not see past how he could use the bed and the jewels for his own ends,” a quiet voice came from down the hall.
All three turned toward the sound. Lilia stood a few yards away from them, looking every inch a princess. Nicholas looked stunned. Alex didn’t blame him, remembering the reaction both she and Becca had the first time they saw Lilia’s smile. Except Lilia wasn’t smiling at Nicholas; she was giving him a hard, cold stare, and even though he was several inches taller than she, the tilt of her head gave the appearance of her looking down at him.
“I had a feeling she wouldn’t stay put,” Becca sighed in resignation.
“And you are?” Nicholas shot at Lilia.
“I am the Princess Lilia de la Fôret of Arraine. You may address me as Princess Lilia, or Your Highness, whichever you wish.”
There was something about Lilia, poised in the hallway with a centuries-old dress flowing from the bottom of her Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, royal disdain dripping from her voice and blue fire sparking in her eyes that made her utterly believable.
Alex could see Nicholas’s expression change, and the wheels in his head start turning as he eyed the princess more closely.
“Alexandra,” he said turning toward her. “This is truly spectacular.” A new gleam had come into his eyes, one that Alex wasn’t sure she liked. “We must, of course, call Dr. Gagnon and see what he knows about the matter, and we have to immediately contact as many of the top experts on the region and folklore as we can. And while we are getting that all together, I think we should put out some feelers with some contacts I have in the media. This is going to be the best thing that ever happened to GeMMLA.”
Alex’s vision blurred for a moment as pure panic rolled over her. Whatever help she had been expecting from Nicholas, she hadn’t thought his first reaction would be to exploit the situation. She could see her horror mirrored in Becca’s face at his mention of the media.
“Nicholas, no! That’s a horrible idea. We have to figure out how to help Luke, not just display him like a museum piece.”
“He won’t just be displayed, I am sure that scientists and doctors will want to run tests on him, as well as on Princess Lilia here, to find out what we can about this ‘magic.’ Think of it, this could alter how we look at the world, it could change everything we think we know about science!” Nicholas’s eyes were becoming more and more glassy, and he was gesturing wildly with his hands.
“But what about Luke?” Alex could her the desperation seeping into her voice and she fought against it. “Shouldn’t we be focused on helping him, on breaking the enchantment? He’s only eighteen—”
“Alexandra, it doesn’t matter how old he is,” Nicholas said coldly. “He’s the one who got himself stupidly involved, although I wouldn’t have expected much more from someone like him. I can’t believe he just saw the girl and kissed her as if he’s some knight of old. Obviously he didn’t stop to think about the scientific implications. Typical jock, act first, ask questions later.”
Alex had a sudden urge to throw up. “Please rethink this; his mom doesn’t know where he is. We can just quietly figure out a way to fix it all. He’s supposed to play baseball, to go to the majors—oh god,” she broke off on a sob, “he’s just supposed to be Luke!”
“Your concern is touching, but like you said, he is eighteen; he made his own choices and now I think there is a bigger benefit to the scientific community. We can’t just hide such a huge discovery.”
“Scientific community, my ass!” Becca burst out crossing her arms over her chest. “You’re only concerned with your own career and how it can benefit from this.”
“Of course my career will benefit from this,” Nicholas said in exasperation. “And so could both of yours, if you would just be calm and think through this rationally. By being involved in the discovery and research you both could write your own ticket to any university and any graduate program you wanted.”
“He’s crazy,” Becca said helplessly.
“And this is the man you thought would help us?” Lilia asked Alex. She had walked the rest of the way down the hall and joined the two girls across from Nicholas. The three of them stood in a huddled group and Alex wondered briefly if they all jumped him at the same time if they’d have a hope of restraining him.
But Alex was fully aware of her lack of height and weight. Becca wasn’t much bigger than her, and Lilia, though tall, was slender and most likely fragile. She probably hadn’t gotten into too many physical altercations as a pampered princess in Arraine. Not that Alex was any more prepared. She was pretty sure her last physical fight had been a wrestling match with Luke when she was nine.
Nicholas pulled his cell phone out of his back jeans pocket, and Alex thought, This is it. There is nothing I can do to stop him. She considered calling Luke’s mom to tell her what was going on, better to hear it from her than Nicholas, or a doctor, or even worse on the eleven o’clock news.
Alex could feel Lilia shift next to her, and she wondered if she’d had the same thought about trying to take Nicholas. She glanced over at Lilia and shook her head, trying to dissuade her from any action. The last thing they needed was for someone to get hurt.
Lilia didn’t see Alex’s gesture because she was looking at Nicholas. Looking was the wrong word. Her eyes were trained in his general direction, but their icy blue depths had become unfocused. There was a fierce concentration on her face that made her features seem more pronounced and almost unearthly beautiful. Her lips were moving, as if she were forming words, but there was no sound.
“Lilia?” Alex asked, concerned.
Lilia didn’t acknowledge her, but continued to stare toward Nicholas, her lips still moving silently. Abruptly she spoke, very loudly—a short phrase in a language Alex had never before heard. The words had a lilting, musical quality to them, as if they should have been beautiful, but instead they felt dark and ominous. As Lilia uttered them they hung in the air for a moment—causing both Becca and Nicholas to look up in surprise.
And then Nicholas crumpled to the floor.
~ Chapter Seven ~
THERE WAS COMPLETE silence for a full minute. Alex stared in shock at Lilia. As soon as Nicholas had hit the deck she’d stopped speaking and her eyes snapped back into focus. Alex had no idea how she had done it, but Lilia had felled him right where he stood. She supposed that she should be concerned for him: he could, after all, be dead. But the relief washing over her was so strong that she didn’t have much room for other emotions.
The silence was finally broken by a shriek from Becca. It came out sort of strangled and half-formed as if she’d try to bite back on it, but it had forced its way out.
“Mother of everything pure and holy!” Her voice was almost at the same tenor as her shriek. “What the heck just happened? Did she kill him?”
They both turned questioning eyes on Lilia, who was standing complacently next to them. Alex noticed with dark humor that neither she nor Becca had even moved a step in Nicholas’s direction. The night before, or even earlier that morning, she would have probably reacted by rushing to his side to see if she could render aid. But that was then.
“Of course I did not kill him,” Lilia answered. The look Becca leveled at her made it clear that there was no “of course” about it. “It is merely a disarming spell.”
“He wasn’t armed exactly,” Alex pointed out.
“I may have added a bit of a sleeping charm, just to make sure he was no longer a threat,” admitted Lilia.
“Oh great, another sleeping spell; that’s just what we need.” There wasn’t any real bite in Becca’s voice. All three of them understood that Nicholas had been going to do whatever he wanted, without paying a scintilla of heed to their protests. “But what the hell, Lilia?” Becca burst out. “Since when do you do magic?”
“I have been able to spell-weave since I was three,” Lilia answered calmly. “I had basic lessons in all the magical skills as a child, as would anyone with my heritage. I am Lilia de la Fôret after all.”
“What does that even mean? Is your family genetically magical or something?” Alex asked only half sarcastically.
