Rebel Faerie

by Rachel Morgan

“Probably just Dash,” Perry says. At my raised eyebrows, he quickly adds, “And in case you were wondering, it is absolutely forbidden for us to simply watch a human when it’s inappropriate to be watching them. If Dash happened to see something he wasn’t supposed to see, it would have shown up on his tracker band and his mentor would have severely reprimanded him. Then he would have been replaced with someone—”

  “Holy heck, you mean he could have been hanging around when I was changing or showering or—”

  “No! Absolutely not. That’s what I’m trying to say—”

  “Okay!” Calla says, loudly enough to be heard over both of us. “That house over there.” She points past the lone wall. “That’s where we’re going. I’ll open a doorway and direct us. Keep your minds blank.”

  I think of nothing but the darkness while we’re inside the faerie paths. We exit on the other side—and walk straight into a coffee table. Perry grunts in pain as the table screeches against the floor, and Calla and I grab hold of each other to regain our balance. “What was it you said about not breaking anything?” I ask Perry as he bends to rub his shins.

  “The table is completely fine,” he informs me.

  Calla walks across the room and into the next one, saying, “I’m just double-checking no one’s home.”

  I look around at the well-worn couches, the scratched wooden floor, the desk and computer in the corner, and the TV and picture frames on the wall. “It’s so weird just walking into someone else’s house.”

  “Do you want to sit?” Perry asks me, gesturing to one of the couches.

  “No, of course not. That would be even weirder.”

  “Looks like we’re alone,” Calla says, striding back into the living room. “Perry, can you turn the TV on?”

  Perry picks up the remote control from where it’s sitting on the table we bumped into. “Okay, uh … how exactly do I find the news?” Perry frowns at the remote. “This doesn’t look the same as the one my sister has.”

  “Here, this’ll be faster,” I tell him, moving to the desk and computer in the corner. “Most people only have streaming services on their TVs these days.” I slide into the chair, tap a random key on the keyboard, and wait for the screen to come to life. Fortunately, there’s no password required to log in. Instead, I find a browser window displaying an email inbox. “We’re totally invading someone’s privacy right now,” I mutter as I click to open a new tab. In the search bar, I type the name of the first news broadcaster that comes to mind. After clicking through to their website, my eyes dart across the home page, looking for words like ‘magic,’ ‘apocalypse,’ and ‘end times.’ It seems utterly absurd. This is one of the biggest and most reputable news names across the world. They wouldn’t sully their home page with words like—

  But there it is: a link labeled ‘Live Coverage on the Supernatural Attacks.’ My heart thunders as I click the link. A video pops up showing a woman with perfectly styled blonde hair standing in a park with tall buildings rising above the treetops in the background. For a moment, it appears there’s nothing unusual about this scene—until I notice the bright sparkling light whizzing around the top of the tallest building in the background.

  “… in Central Park, where less than an hour ago, the brand new Haverton Tower Hotel was attacked by what many are describing as—” the woman hesitates, her mouth twisting slightly, as if she can’t bear to say the word “—supernatural forces. Guests of New York’s tallest hotel have been evacuated after three men appeared in the penthouse suite and attacked the occupants with what appeared to be electrical discharges emanating from—from their hands.” Her own hand clenches around a section of her purple pencil skirt as she says this. “Dozens of eyewitnesses have reported seeing the same unexplained electrical activity as the men made their way down the upper floors of Haverton Tower, and many claim to have been knocked down by invisible forces. The penthouse suite occupants managed to escape with minimal injuries, though Haverton Tower management declined to confirm their identity. The number of casualties is unknown at this time.

  “The three suspects, one of whom has repeatedly been called a ‘demon’ by eyewitnesses due to his dark red eyes and red and black hair, vanished upon reaching the hotel’s foyer. His two accomplices are reported to have hair dyed green. Police are on the lookout for men matching this description and have requested that anyone who happens to see them maintain a safe distance after informing authorities.

  “This is the sixth in a series of unexplained incidents that have taken place across the world since the sudden appearance of an opening in the air above Rhiningsville, almost forty-eight hours ago. Cell phone video footage of the event depicts what appears to be a battle between human-like figures on the other side of the opening. The video, which has since gone viral, was initially assumed to be an elaborate hoax. But the disappearance of a section of land containing seven homes and a barn housing livestock, along with five other unexplained events taking place across the world, suggests otherwise.”

  “Holy fudge,” I murmur as the reporter mentions a theory about aliens from a parallel universe while in the background, the sparks of magic move steadily downward, encompassing more and more of the Haverton Tower Hotel. I risk a glance away from the computer screen to check Calla’s reaction.

  “What is Roarke doing?” she whispers. “What is he doing? It must be him, right? And he’s breaking, like, the most important rule. Everyone plays by this rule, even the Unseelies. What the hell is wrong with him? Doesn’t he care that he’s exposing us to the entire human realm?”

  “Even Draven didn’t go that far,” Perry says, his tone grim.

  “Well, I think he planned to,” Calla says. “Eventually. He was just making sure he had the entire fae realm under his control first. But this crazy young prince?” She gestures at the computer screen. “Who knows what his plan is.”

  “Or if he even has one,” I add quietly. “He could just be letting us all know how royally pissed off he is that I ruined his plans to make the shadow world bigger.”

  “Whatever his reasons,” Calla says, “someone has to stop him. I hope the Unseelie King is already on his way to deal with this mess.”

  “I don’t think we can count on that,” Perry says.

  “Well, the Guild and the Seelies then.”

  “Not you guys?” I say to her, only half-joking.

  She shakes her head. “I’d love to, but this is too big for us. This isn’t the kind of thing we do. We operate undercover, helping out where we can. We don’t take on armies, even if they’re only half-sized armies. Especially when more than half our number is currently in Guild custody.”

  A crackling sizzle and a scream draw my attention back to the computer screen. Bright light blocks out the image for several moments. When the park comes into view again, it’s at an odd angle with grassy ground filling half the screen. The news reporter and her purple skirt are visible in the other half. She manages to push herself up, leaving us with a view of her ankle, one purple high-heeled shoe, and the silvery sparkles of magic drifting around her leg. She lets out another shriek and a string of curse words that would make Dash’s mother whip out her soap spell immediately. “Dammit, get up!” the reporter shouts at someone. “Leave the camera!”

  Her leg disappears as she runs away. The camera remains still. The only movement filling the screen is the dancing and swaying of bright sparkles amidst glowing light.

  “Holy frikkin’ moly,” Perry murmurs. “I didn’t think anything could be worse than Lord Draven taking over our world. But this? This is gonna be worse.”

  Five

  “I hope the Guild has sent guardians to monitor every news station in existence,” Calla says to Perry as we walk through the media crowd again, listening in on snippets of conversation. “If your Seers aren’t Seeing all these things before they happen, then the news is probably the best way to stay up to date on all the trouble Roarke’s causing.”

  “They must have Seen someth
ing,” Perry says. “But perhaps their visions didn’t contain enough details for anyone to stop these incidents. And I guess no one connected them to the Unseelies until after they’d happened.” He pulls his amber from his pocket as it hums again. “Aaaaand people are wondering why I’m not at my job right now. I’d better go.”

  Once Perry’s disappeared, Calla says, “We should go too. We can’t do anything about what’s happened here in Rhiningsville, and we can’t help with that huge mess in New York City either. We need to get on with freeing our team, and let’s hope the Guild and the Seelie army can do enough to fix all of this.” She raises her stylus to the side of a van and writes a doorway spell.

  “It kinda feels like there’s no way back from this,” I say quietly as an opening forms on the side of the van. “Like … the world has changed forever now.”

  Calla reaches back and takes my hand. “Maybe it has. Maybe magic will never be a secret again.”

  We cross the desert sand and head for the oasis. We’re barely through the dome layer when I see someone hurrying toward us. “Chase! You’re back!” Calla calls out, running to greet him.

  I hang back a few steps as Chase pulls her into a tight embrace. “You’re okay,” he says.

  “I’m okay? Of course I’m okay. What about you? I never heard back from you after I messaged you from Velazar, and then I lost my amber.”

  “Yeah, I had a similar problem. Both my amber and mirror ended up cracked after I, uh, landed on a rock. I can’t get either of them to work.”

  “Someone threw you onto a rock?” Calla exclaims. “But the Argenti elves’ ruler asked you to be there. Didn’t he tell everyone you were assisting with the Petran negotiation?”

  “We didn’t get that far,” Chase says as I cross my arms and try not to feel awkward. Should I leave? Should I wait for them to finish talking? “We didn’t even reach the meeting point with the Petrans,” Chase continues. “Everything went to hell after the Unseelie Prince pulled his stunt at Velazar II. Seems he has supporters among the Argenti. He called on them for help—told them all about what had happened and sent them to attack all the glamour magic around those old elf manor houses in Wales in the non-magic world. Apparently he thinks the humans in that area should know about the fae that have been living in secret alongside them.”

  “That idiot prince!” Calla hisses.

  “So half the Argenti ran off to do his bidding. I followed, of course, hoping to stop them. I could have done with some backup, but I didn’t have any means of communication, and I didn’t want to waste time coming back here. I couldn’t keep them from breaking the glamours, so I set up a storm around the manor houses. Hopefully it’ll keep humans away long enough for someone to get the glamours back in place or for the occupants to leave.”

  “And when did you get back here?”

  “About twenty minutes ago. Gaius just told me what happened with Vi and Ryn and everyone else.” At that moment, Chase’s gaze moves past Calla and comes to rest on me. “Oh. Em. Hi.” A smile breaks out across his face. “Welcome to the family.”

  I blink at him, then take a few steps forward. “You know who I am? But you haven’t seen Calla since she found out. Or …” I look at her. “Did you send him a message while you were waiting to sneak into my cell in the shadow world?”

  “I did. But Chase knew about my suspicions already.”

  “And the first time I saw you,” Chase adds, “I had the strangest feeling I’d met you before. You reminded me a little bit of Vi when I first met her.”

  I’m silent for a moment, my mouth hanging open, before I’m able to speak. “Wait, really? Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I figured I was imagining things. We all believed Victoria was dead. It never crossed my mind you might actually be her.” He laughs. “I’m still having a hard time believing it. It’s just … incredible.” He gives me a smile that’s almost as wide as the one plastered across Gaius’s face last night when he heard the news of who I am. But after a moment, it fades to a more serious expression. “I wish there was nothing else wrong in the world right now, and that we could catch up on decades of family history. Unfortunately, we first need to plan how best to break into The Noxsom Facility.”

  “Does that mean Kobe is back as well?” Calla asks.

  “Yes. Gaius said he returned about an hour ago.”

  A thrill of nervous anticipation rushes through me. This rescue is finally happening. It’s real. I’m going to get Violet and Ryn back.

  As we head away from the dome layer, Calla asks, “Any news from Elizabeth and Tilly?”

  “Elizabeth’s on her way,” Chase says. “She’ll be here tonight. But Tilly’s in the middle of another expedition. Gaius can’t get in touch with her, though he’s left her numerous messages.”

  “Let’s assume she won’t receive those messages in time. That leaves us with seven people to work with.”

  “Seven?” Chase asks.

  I raise my hand as Calla says, “Em wants to help. From a distance, of course. We won’t let her anywhere near the inside of that facility.”

  For a moment, it looks as though Chase might argue that point. But Calla shoots him a glance, and after another a few seconds of silence, he nods. “Okay. Let’s start planning.”

  Our rescue party is an interesting combination of fae. Calla and Chase are faeries, but their friend Elizabeth turns out to be part siren. She has magical powers of influence, which I suppose will come in handy if a guard needs to be convinced to leave his post. Only after I ask why she’s wearing gloves does she mention, with a serene smile upon her face, that her siren abilities include the power to suck the life out of people.

  Kobe, a guy with narrow vertical pupils and no hair, tells me he’s a drakoni. He doesn’t speak much, and if I hadn’t been watching closely, I would have missed the fact that his tongue is forked. I’m interested to know whether drakoni are related in some way to actual dragons, but with our conversation focused solely on how to get in and out of The Noxsom Facility, I decide to save that question for another time.

  The next two members of the team are Krystal and Carter Millingjay, a faerie couple who fled the Guild at the same time Ryn and Vi did, years ago when someone came up with a way to visually identify Griffin Gifted fae. They were from a different Guild, though, so Vi and Ryn didn’t meet up with them until about a year after they all went into hiding. Like Vi and Ryn, the Millingjays’ guardian markings were never deactivated, meaning they still have access to their guardian weapons. Krystal’s Griffin Ability is something random and unhelpful to do with flowers, and Carter isn’t Griffin Gifted. I’m sure they’ve both got kick-butt fighting skills, though.

  And then there’s me. A faerie with only one skill to offer: the Griffin Ability I’ve recently gained tentative control over. It ‘recharges’ itself twice a day, about twelve hours apart, and if I focus hard enough when it appears, I can reserve that power to use at another time, either in a single command that requires a large amount of power, or in numerous minor commands. It’s a power that will definitely be useful to our team—as long as I don’t lose focus.

  When introducing me to the rest of the team, neither Calla nor Chase mention my connection to their family. “It’s too much to explain right now,” Calla said earlier. “Let’s get Vi and Ryn back first, and they can tell people whatever they want to tell them.” So after she explains to everyone that I’m involved in the rescue mission because of my Griffin Ability, we get on with our initial planning.

  Over the course of the evening, we discuss different options for exactly how to break into Noxsom. We can’t make definite plans until we know the internal layout of the facility—information we’ll hopefully get our hands on tomorrow, Calla tells us—but in the meantime, we plan as much as we can, including which powers to borrow from Gaius’s Griffin Ability vault and how to magically communicate with each other.

  I use the term ‘we’ loosely, of course, since I keep my own mouth shut mos
t of the time. Partly because I have zero experience in this area, and partly because I’m worried that if I draw too much attention to myself, everyone will decide it would be safer to leave me out of this.

  Despite the fact that I should be less agitated now that we’re finally doing something to rescue Vi and Ryn, a barrage of thoughts bombard me when I try to fall asleep that night. Front and center is the unsettling reminder that no one has any idea where Dash is now. I try to settle my anxiety by telling myself we need to take one step at a time. First, rescue everyone from Noxsom, then find out where Dash is and do the same for him.

  I turn over yet again, hug Bandit against my chest—he’s in the form of a half-grown leopard—and finally drift toward asleep.

  The following morning, Calla leaves the oasis to meet Perry so he can hand over the Noxsom floor plans he stole during the night. When she returns, we reassemble inside the house everyone calls ‘the mountain.’

  “You know what?” Elizabeth says as Calla drops the rolled-up drawings onto the oval table at the center of the room. “I’m finding the Guild less and less impressive as the years go by. They don’t even know when their own people are stealing from them.”

  “Architectural plans aren’t actually stored at the Guild,” Calla tells her, “which made it even riskier for Perry to steal these ones. He had to sneak into a records department he had absolutely no reason to be in and hope they have far fewer surveillance bugs flying around than the Guild has.”

  Elizabeth takes a seat at the table and crosses one leg over the other. “He should have worn one of those disguises he loves fooling around with so much.”

  “He did. There was a wig involved. And some form of fake facial hair. But still.” Calla leans across the table and spreads the blueprints open. “I worry we’re going to land him in serious trouble one day.”

  “Then we’ll do exactly what we’re doing right now,” Chase says, tilting his head as he examines the plans. “Save him from whatever trouble he finds himself in.”