“That doesn’t feel so good, does it?” Ada says. “Hard to concentrate on your magic when you’ve got an ear-splitting headache.”
The sound of splintering glass reaches my ears. I force my eyes to focus for long enough to see Ada’s glass racing around us to form a circle. I don’t see Val anywhere, which makes me hopeful she got away. “You like to … enclose people … in circles,” Calla manages to say.
“I do,” Ada says. “I guess I’m unimaginative that way.”
I rub my fingers against my temples and mumble against the white stuff.
“Sorry, Em, I didn’t quite catch that?” Ada says, her tone taunting. I manage to raise my eyes enough to see her twisted smile before she adds, “Dani says hi.”
I feel a sick lurch in the pit of my stomach. Despite the pain ricocheting through my head, I try to yell at her, but of course, I can only make muffled sounds. Calla breathes deeply before answering for me. “No she doesn’t.”
“You’re right. She doesn’t,” Ada replies. Her eyes return to mine. “She’s screaming at me to leave you alone. She’s wailing, tormented and trapped, all because you decided to force the two of us back into one body.”
I grit my teeth as Calla says, “Stop lying. Daniela lost her mind … a very long time ago … and we all know that Em … had nothing to do with it. Aargh, dammit!” She presses one hand against her head.
I wish I could believe Calla, but what if she’s wrong? What if Dani has been perfectly sane ever since the changeling reversal spell, except now she’s trapped and screaming inside the body she can no longer control? What if—ugh, what if this damn headache splits my entire being in half?
My body vanishes for a moment, then flickers in and out of view, before finally remaining visible as Calla groans beside me. Ada laughs. “Can’t handle the pain, huh? You guys are pathetic.”
“What are you … doing?” Calla asks her. “Do you like to … play with your food … before you eat it?”
The small part of me that can still pay attention to my surroundings notices Ada pacing slowly in front of her glass circle. “Oh, I’m not going to eat you. Or, you know, kill you. I assume that’s what you meant. Well, you I might kill,” she says to Calla. “I’m still trying to work out whether Roarke would appreciate it or not if I brought you back to him. But Em I’m definitely not killing, unfortunately. Roarke specifically asked for her, and if I’m hoping for him to keep his side of our agreement, I’m going to have to bring her back alive.”
“What … agreement?” Calla asks, leaning forward on her knees and breathing heavily.
“Hmm, let’s see. How did that initial conversation go? ‘Ada, I see you’ve got one hell of a powerful Griffin Ability there. Killing people with glass left, right and center. How about you work for me? You can be part of my group of elite personal guards. Come to my aid whenever I call you. In return, I’ll give you whatever you want.’” Ada swings her arm lazily back and forth, letting tiny glass shards sprinkle onto the ground at her feet. “It sounded like a great offer, so what did I say? ‘I want the Guild brought down. Completely. That’s always been my goal, and it remains my goal to this day.’ And he responded with, ‘How interesting. That sounds like a goal that aligns perfectly with my own plans. And hey? Wanna ruin some human lives too?’ To which I said, ‘Yeah!’” Ada pumps her fist, releasing a small spray of glass into the air. It rains down over her, seeming to have no effect on her whatsoever. “Pretty simple agreement,” she says. “And no, it doesn’t bother me that I’m telling you all about it. It’s not as though you didn’t already know my ultimate goal. I’ve always been after the Guild. Guardians and their families are the ones I’ve been turning into glass since I began my little crusade.”
“You’re so … full of yourself,” Calla mutters.
“Yes. I am. And now I need to decide whether—”
Calla throws both arms forward, magic flying from her fingers and words leaving her lips as a groan. A burst of flames shoot straight at Ada, and as she throws both hands up to form a shield, the splitting headache finally releases its hold on me. “Thanks for monologuing,” Calla says. “I needed a bit of time to gather my strength.”
With the flames having vanished, Ada drops her shield and hurls magic forward without pause. Calla diverts the continuous assault of what appear to be glowing stones flying at us one after the other.
Then suddenly, we’re invisible again. But Ada continues her attack, shouting, “I know you’re still inside my circle.”
I mumble incoherently, infuriated by the magical gag I still can’t unstick from my face. “Fine then,” Calla mutters as she continues fighting off Ada’s magic. “We’ll go with something different.” A grating snarl reaches my ears, and in the air behind Ada, a winged beast with curved, ridged horns and fangs protruding from its overly wide mouth appears. A gargoyle, I realize as it hovers jerkily above Ada and grasps at her with its clawed hind legs. She ducks down, unaware that the gargoyle isn’t real, and flings a handful of glass at it. She doesn’t stop her attack on us, though, and glowing stones continue to fly from her other hand.
I try again to pry the sticky, white substance from my face while Calla throws up a shield and keeps the gargoyle illusion going. “Can you open a doorway?” she says to me through gritted teeth. “Quickly. I can’t—damn, this woman has stolen power from somewhere. Her magic’s definitely stronger than it should be. She’s going to—argh! I can’t hold this up much longer on my own!”
I reach with one hand inside my jacket, fumbling among the various weapons for my stylus. With my other hand, I direct a spark of magic at the white stuff, hope desperately that I’m not about to burn a hole into my face. Instead, I hear a sizzle as my magic eats into the sticky gag. Abandoning the stylus search for a moment, I tear at the substance again, ripping through it and finally managing to pull the horrible stuff off my face.
And right then is when a dragon swoops down and hovers above us. Blue-green with the occasional shimmer of purple, along with giant red spikes running along part of her back and tail. I would have assumed it was part of Calla’s illusion if not for the girl sitting atop the dragon in a dress far dirtier than anything I’ve ever seen her wear. Aurora leans down and beckons.
“What the—where did you come from?”
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she shouts. “Come on. I’ll explain, but we should probably get out of here first.”
“Who are you?” Calla gasps as she throws all her effort into maintaining the shield and the gargoyle that Ada’s still trying to fight off.
“Roarke’s sister,” I hastily tell Calla. “She’s the one who warned me about what Roarke was planning to do to me.”
“Sister? And you trust her?”
“Yes. I think so.” Wiping my sticky hands on my pants, I add, “You climb up first. I need to say something to stop—”
Imperia roars and sends a blazing inferno straight through Calla’s shield. Ada abandons her offensive magic and throws up a shield of her own. “Or Imperia could just burn her to a crisp,” Aurora says, a hint of pride in her voice. “Now hurry up!” she adds, looking at us again.
“No, a doorway will be better,” Calla says, reaching into her jacket.
I shake my head, then bend my knees, push against the ground with an extra spurt of magic, and leap free of the glass circle.
“Em—”
“I have to find Val,” I tell her.
“What?”
“I need to make sure she’s okay.”
“She’s fine. She was running toward the school. I’m sure she’s far away by now.”
“I have to, Calla!” I call back to her, already moving away from the circle. “You said you understood.”
She groans loudly, as if trying to protect me is fast becoming the bane of her existence. “Fine,” she shouts above the sound of Imperia’s roaring flames. “I’ll project something. An image of you climbing onto the dragon with me. We’ll lead Ada away. Get Val to safety
, and we’ll meet you at her house. And if you’re not there, I swear I’ll—”
“I’ll be there,” I shout, racing away and trusting Calla’s ability to keep me hidden from Ada. I head for the wall surrounding the school’s staff parking lot, my arms pumping back and forth and my feet slamming against the grass. I launch myself at the wall, momentum helping me to pull myself up. After swinging my legs over, I drop down on the other side, bending slightly before straightening and running forward. It’s a maneuver I’ve performed many times, usually with Val at my side. I take the same route now that we’ve always taken together. Past the squash courts, up the stairs outside the IT building, onto the railing, one foot on a windowsill, and finally up onto the ridge of the roof. We used to come up here to watch the rest of the town below us and the main road into and out of Stanmeade. Sitting together in one of the shallow window wells set into the roof, we’d talk about all the people wasting their lives in this dead-end town, and we’d dream of the day we could finally leave.
For a moment, as I pull myself onto the highest point of the slightly sloped roof, I wonder why on earth I let my feet carry me up here. Val wouldn’t hide in a place that’s mostly exposed. She’s probably inside a dark closet somewhere in the school where neither Ada nor I will ever find her.
But there she is, huddled in the same spot we’ve sat in so many times. “Val!” I call out to her as I pick my way across the roof ridge. “Val, I’m so relieved you’re okay.” I climb around the side of the window and onto the flat part in front of the glass. After lowering myself beside her, I wrap my arms around her shaking body. “It’s okay. You’re okay. I’m so, so sorry I brought this nightmare here, but you’re okay.”
She shakes her head and sobs harder—which is highly disconcerting. I’ve only seen Val cry once or twice before. She’s tough. She’s a survivor. She is not a crier. She leans away from me, and it’s then that I notice the glowing light leaking out between the fingers of her clenched fists. “Val,” I say carefully, a silent warning already knocking at the edges of my mind. “What are you holding?”
She shakes her head and stutters. “I—I’m sorry.”
I reach for her hand and manage to loosen her fingers. She spreads them apart, like the petals of a flower opening to reveal—a stone. A glowing stone. My breathing quickens. I swallow. “Val. Is this … something magical?”
She nods and whispers, “Yes.”
“Where did you get it? How long have you had it?”
She sniffs. “About … about five years.”
Cold drenches my body. “Five years?”
“Yes.”
At the back of my mind, I’m already beginning to guess the answer to the question I’m about to ask. But I have to ask it anyway: “What does it do?”
“It communicates with someone.”
“With someone,” I repeat, my words almost too quiet for me to hear. I remember returning to Chelsea’s backyard with Dash a few weeks ago after taking an unintended trip to the shadow world with Roarke and Aurora. Not long after we got back, Ada appeared—and that was after Dash heard someone on the other side of the fence. I think of the glowing light I saw in Val’s dresser drawer earlier—too bright to be a cell phone screen lighting up—and how Ada arrived here in Stanmeade not long afterward. I remember what Ada herself said to me some time ago: I’ve always had someone watching you.
“Ada,” I whisper. “You were communicating with Ada. You told her I was here.”
“Em, I am so, so—”
I pull away from her. “I don’t understand. How could you do that? I … I just told you everything. You know she tried to kill me, and you still called her here?”
“I didn’t know she tried to kill you, Em.” Val’s eyes are wide, desperate. “I used the stone before you got back to my house. Before you explained everything to me.”
“Why?” I grab her shoulders and give her a good shake. “Why the hell would you do that? How do you even know her?”
She pushes my hands away and shouts, “I knew her before I knew you!”
“What?”
“I …” She rubs the tears from her face and sniffs. “Dammit, I never asked for any of this.”
“Any of what, Val?”
“She appeared out of the blue years ago, okay? She showed me things that should have been impossible. Magic things. And she told me about a new girl who’d just moved to town. A new girl who was like her. Magical. But this new girl didn’t know she could do magical things, and she might never know she could do magical things. But this woman—Ada—told me I had to befriend you. She said I had to know everything that happened in your life so I could report it back to her when she came to check on things every month or so. She promised me that if I did this until you either moved away one day or until you managed to access your magic, then she would make sure my family would never want for anything else ever again. She said she’d fabricate some kind of inheritance and make it seem legit. I wouldn’t need to ever worry about my brothers and sisters and my mom.”
“I can’t believe you’d say yes to someone like—”
“Then she showed me what else her magic could do. How it could hurt and kill. And she asked if I would ever want anything like that to happen to my siblings or my mom. So what was I supposed to do, Em? Choose you—someone I’d never even met—over my own family? Of course not. No one would do that. You wouldn’t have done that.”
Perhaps she’s right, but I don’t want to try to understand her position when I can barely see past the shocking revelation that the most important friendship I’ve ever had was based on a lie. “I can’t believe this,” I whisper, staring past her. “You’ve been spying on me throughout our entire friendship. This is why you weren’t mad at me for leaving.” I look at her. “You should have been mad, Val. That’s what I was expecting. We did everything together. We told each other everything. And then one day I ran away and didn’t answer your calls or return your messages, and you should have been furious with me. That’s how I would have felt if you’d abandoned me with no explanation.”
“Em …”
“But you weren’t mad. You had your own guilt to deal with instead.”
“Yes! I did. Doesn’t it mean anything to you that I felt guilty about what I had to do?”
I don’t answer her. I push myself to my feet. From among the many straps and pockets attached to the inside of my jacket, I finally find my stylus.
“Wait, Em, where are you going?”
Still, I say nothing as I bend and write on the roof.
“Em, I’m sorry. Don’t you understand? I had to keep my family safe. What other choice did I have?” She grabs my wrist, but I twist my arm out of her grip. It’s difficult with my mind so distracted and my emotions tugging me in every direction, but I manage to open a doorway to the faerie paths. Without looking back at Val, I climb hastily into the darkness. I have to remind myself to think of a destination. I remember at the last second that I’m supposed to meet Calla and Aurora back at Val’s house, but before that thought, there was an image of the cemetery that flashed through my mind.
Dull light materializes around me. I’m disoriented as I step back into the human world, unsure for a moment where I’ll find myself.
The cemetery.
That’s where the faerie paths brought me.
I take a few steps forward, my stylus still clutched in my hand. I try to shove Val and her betrayal from my mind and replace her with an image of Chelsea and Georgia. I wanted to say goodbye to them, so I may as well do it now that I’m here. As rain begins to patter lightly onto my head, I scan the dozens of headstones around me. I don’t know where to begin looking for them. I have no idea which section they’ve been buried in. I squeeze my eyes shut—Go away, Val, go away, Val, go away, Val—and though I know they can’t hear me, I mutter, “Goodbye, Chelsea. Goodbye, Georgia. I’m sorry for … for …” I’m sorry for leading Ada here.
The same Ada who threatened Val’s family. The s
ame Ada who definitely would have followed through on her threats if Val had disobeyed her. I squeeze my hand around the stylus and let out a wordless cry. I’m supposed to be here for Chelsea and Georgia, but my mind can’t focus on them. They’re gone. But Val … Val is still alive. Val is my best friend. Val is sitting alone on a rooftop hating herself for the very thing I’ve spent my whole life focused on: looking out for the person I love most.
I clench my jaw. “Dammit,” I hiss, raising the stylus. I turn, looking for something to write on, and see the pillar on one side of the cemetery gate. I hurry to it and raise my stylus. Moments later, a doorway yawns before me. I walk into the darkness, picturing the school roof. On the other side, as I step carefully onto the ridge of the roof with one arm reaching back to keep the doorway open, Val is still there. She’s standing now, her arms wrapped tightly around her body as rain runs down her body.
“Em!” she cries out when she sees me. “You—you came back. I …”
“I want to be mad at you. I do. I am mad at you, dammit!” I suck in a breath between my teeth, willing myself not to cry. “But I know that … that I would have done the same thing if I’d been in your position. I would have done anything for my mother, and if someone came along five years ago and offered me everything we could ever possibly need in exchange for befriending you and reporting information about you, I would have said yes. And then, after we became friends, I …” I shake my head and sniff. “I don’t know, Val. I like to think I would have refused at some point. I like to think our friendship would have meant too much for me to continue going behind your back like that, but I don’t know. I probably would have kept lying to you. Because no one ever meant as much to me as my own mother.” I bite my bottom lip to keep it from wobbling, but my voice is a whisper now, barely audible above the pattering of rain on the school roof. “And then she turned out to be the biggest liar of all.”
“Em, I’m so, so sorry.” Val moves as if to climb around the window toward me, but she stops when I hold my hand up.
Rebel Faerie Page 14
