by D. R. Perry
“Cool!” Hope bounced, those rainbow wings fluttering but not enough to lift her off the ground.
“Hey, can you fly with those?”
“Nah, not yet.” She shook her head. “Well, I haven’t tried yet. But the knight says I shouldn't fly around in the queen’s castle without her permission, anyway.”
I glanced back over her shoulder where her dad stood. It was hard to think of Sir Al as someone’s father, especially to a kid just a year and change younger than me. He wasn’t much older than my brother, Fred. Al’s eyebrows scrunched close together, which meant that her calling him “the knight” instead of dad bothered him. But I couldn’t help with that.
“Well, let’s go.” The grin I tried to give her only covered half of my mouth.
To make up for being a sour apple, I gave her my hand. I missed my dad, Mama, too. Dad could visit any time, but Mama was locked up without bail. Her last ghostly partner made her do awful things and I wouldn't see her for years.
Hope was in the same boat with me, except her mom had done nothing wrong. When Richard Hopewell threw down something shiny, Hope Tolland had pounced on it without thinking. I would have, too, though it wouldn’t have affected me. Because she got born in the Under and her aunt was a bird shifter, Hope had bonded with the thing, turned into a Seelie creature. Her mom was Unseelie.
The poor girl could look at her mother, maybe talk to her on the phone. The Faerie queen and king had split up ages ago, and now the fae courts had to be separated. Even a handshake'd get a faerie executed. At least the mortal laws allowed family visits complete with hugs when the kids got taken away.
I turned my head as we walked, watching Hope’s bright hair and brighter wings bob along just ahead of me. Kasa had spent weeks whispering about all the guilt and sadness behind the smiles in this castle. And in that moment, my mission from Josh turned personal.
I had to help Hope Tolland. Maybe if I did, if I was honestly kind and good to her in her hour of need, someone would reach out and help me, too, in mine.
Chapter Two
Albert
I let the kids go, pacing down the hall at a distance that gave them privacy while I could still see them. Maintaining tactful distances was second-nature for me, to the point where coming within an arm’s length of most people got my nerves humming like live wires. This distance was freer for me, easier, more my speed. Until the voice came from somewhere near my shoulder.
“Who knew we had parenthood in common, Sir Knight,” the voice purred. I recognized that rusty-nails-on-satin voice.
“Lady Harcourt.” I nodded even though I knew she wouldn’t pass or even pace me. Newport’s dragon lady liked keeping most people off-guard, even her own son. But I knew plenty about overbearing mothers, even if mine hadn’t stabbed her husband in the heart like Hertha had done to Wilfred. “What brings you to the queen’s demesne?”
“You must have gotten the invitation, too.” A rustle of thick parchment met my ears.
Sidhe hearing was second to none, even better than a vampire’s. This had its drawbacks but for now it only announced the fancy card’s presence in Hertha Harcourt’s hand. A rasp of paper on metal meant she’d clutched it against the queen’s amulet, which allowed her to remain in human form during her visits here.
“I’m afraid not.”
"It’s waiting for you at your round table seat.” Hertha’s chuckle sounded like an upended bottle of poison gurgling its contents into a world without antidotes, an apt analogy considering her dragonish magic type.
“I’ll check there as soon as I am able, then.” I jerked my chin toward my child and her playmate. The latter had a determined expression on his face as though their interaction carried an unusual gravity to it. “I’ve got to get them settled.”
“In the nursery.”
“Yes, that’s where I was told to house them.”
“So young Ed is also your charge. Sir Frederick must be on an errand.”
“Something like that.” Omitting Bianca’s plight was easy. Ms. Harcourt couldn't be trusted even though her son, Blaine, was a more than occasional ally of mine.
“You probably won't ask me where I’m headed.”
“I’d hardly dare to make any assumption about you or your plans, Lady Harcourt.” While the title was honorary, using it couldn’t hurt. The dragon lady was old and powerful in her own right.
“Good idea, Sir Knight. But you ought to know this. I’ve been charged with watching over the nursery while you knights and courtiers go about your business during these strange times. Your magical girl will be under my wing. The young medium, too.”
We continued walking that way. The presence of a venomous dragon matron outside my field of vision should have caused a sense of dread or at least tweaking anxiety. Add in the fact that the woman in question had married two otherwise immortal dragons killed under violent circumstances, and I should have been quaking in my greaves.
Calm bobbed in the distance like an untethered buoy in a choppy sea. Fathers of small and impetuous children find little calm outside of sleep, even in newly discovered paternity. Peace was a land so distant, its presence lingered undiscovered on the furthest imaginable horizon. The last time I’d attained it utterly had been in Gemma’s arms. I’d lived on the dull edge between misery and dread ever since my family dragged me before the queen and forced me to tithe Seelie.
The dragon at my back conveyed an unexpected sense of security. Hertha was so protective of her children, she’d killed to defend them. She’d slay me where I stood if it meant the kids stayed safe. I blinked, startled at the knowledge that I’d do much the same thing if our roles reversed.
“Did the queen give you this charge, Lady?”
“No, and I’m not at liberty to say who, either so don’t ask again.”
“Understood.”
After a statement like that, Hertha probably expected me to burn internally with unabating curiosity. I didn’t. Logic, deduction, and I had been close compatriots for most of my life and those old friends didn’t fail me now. The way I saw it, three possibilities and one long shot existed.
The Goblin King. While the Harcourts seemed unconnected to the Unseelie monarch, Hertha or Blaine somehow getting indebted to him was not outside the realm of possibility. She hated the queen’s suitor, Richard Hopewell, so she had little reason to get out of such a debt. But unless said favor was centuries old, I knew of nothing on record to imply one.
Headmistress Thurston. Henrietta’s family, and the Harcourts went back as far as Rhode Island’s Colonial days. Hertha had funded Phillip Thurston’s westward oil-seeking expedition at the turn of the 20th century. She was also a Trustee at Providence Paranormal College, with a dorm named after her late husband, Ignacius. The two ladies were long-time friends and their bond had likely grown stronger after Henrietta claimed her birthright as the first Kitsune to walk the earth in an age.
Finally, there was Delilah Redford, young Ed’s mother. The senior medium awaited trial for the attempted murder of Professor Nate Watkins. Hertha’s name was in the jail's visitor records on the day before we’d all ended up in this mess. Some of Delilah’s ghosts had been precognitive in their living days, so they might have seen a situation where Ed would need a dragon's protection.
There’d been another name on that visitor log the same day: Joyce Watkins. I’d looked her up in the Registry because of the surname she shared with Delilah’s would-be victim. She was in there, listed as a Psychic, type undetermined, flagged as missing. I’d filed the information away in case it mattered later. I had to include it in my ruminations.
Those ended as we reached the corridor’s termination. A brightly colored door opened all on its own, the hinges creaking with the musical creepiness that porcelain dolls and monkeys in wind-up boxes shared.
Hope rushed in, Ed fast on her heels. I followed, but before I made it through the door Hertha brushed by me. I let her pass. A blanket-wrapped something or other rested in her arms, swaddle
d and cradled like the quietest baby in the history of this universe. For the record, the Under is eons older than the mortal realm.
Inside the queen’s nursery, the first thing I noticed was the decor. Plush benches and alternating tables with rounded edges lined all the walls. Beneath each lay a nap cot. In the center, stretching between the floor and vaulted ceiling, was a replica of the tree outside. Magic hummed around it, and a quick inspection revealed magical wards that would slow and cushion any fall.
The tree had ample hand and footholds but also contained nooks for perching and resting, vines for swinging, and even cubbies stocked with toys and picture books. A trio of arched doorways stood to one side marked for girls, boys, and neither/either/or. I pictured a Sprite nursemaid and smiled. No such creature existed.
Hope
I charged the tree like it was Grandpa. Even he wasn’t that big. That room and everything in it were the coolest things I’d seen since the feather I shouldn’t have touched. My wings trailed out behind me like anime hands. They lifted my feet from the ground, too, and I changed my mind about the feather. I was meant to have wings, knew it in my bones, deeper than all Seven Seas stacked on top of each other.
Everything would have to work out somehow. I’d be with Mama again, Grandpa, too. It’d just take time. In the Under, faeries had lots of that. Kids like I used to be, kids like Ed, they still grew. My body would stay the same size here like Peter Pan’s did in Neverland. Later, I could go back to the mortal world and get bigger. If I even wanted to.
The top of the tree was mine in ten seconds flat. Wings helped, but I’d forgotten about Ed’s ghosts. Kasa gave him a boost, launching him up through the wards that only worked on the way down. He was like a whooping rocket, about to crash into me. I ducked.
“Quack!”
“Huh?” Ed hit the top branches face-first, getting a mouthful of magic leaves.
He spat them out, which was icky because of spit, not because he was a boy. Ed looked like one of those kids who washed his hands and brushed his teeth three whole times a day. No wonder someone as fussy as the queen didn’t mind having him around. Ed was too neat and tidy.
“Yaah!” I reached out and mussed his hair on purpose, pulling it up between both hands the way Mama did when she put my hair in mohawks.
“Aaay!” He shook his hands at me, palms out. Of course. He was half Italian. “Not the hair!”
“’Kay.” I shrugged and looked away from him. That meant down, right about where the poison dragon lady stood. My mouth dropped open, and I didn’t even care whether any flies flew in.
The dragon lady had an egg. It was big as a boulder but I knew better because it looked like leather and had blue and green spots I’d never seen on rocks. It wasn’t round like a turtle egg. Instead, it was an oval like eggs in the crocodile nest I’d found when Grandpa brought me to Disney World in Florida. The Captain Hook jokes I got to make were awesome. But anyway, I couldn't believe it.
“Ed, guess what?” I leaned in, hissing a whisper into his ear.
“What?” He tried patting his hair back down, but it was about as effective as an electric attack on a ground Pokemon.
“We’re sharing a room with a real live dragon egg.” I stopped myself from clapping my hands by pressing them together. “Can you believe it?”
“Yeah.” Ed just shrugged.
“Why you gotta be like that?” I shook my head.
“It’s just, I’ve already seen the newest Harcourt.” He sighed, looking like meeting a baby dragon egg wasn’t one of the coolest things in either world.
“Really?” I blinked.
“Yeah.” He made one nod, like guys in action movies do.
“You think she’ll let me get a closer look?” I twiddled my thumbs so he wouldn't notice how much I wanted to see the dragon egg.
“You want me to ask her?” Ed blinked, then held his hand in front of his face and butted his palm with his forehead.
"Hah! Three questions!" I clapped my hands, then rubbed them together. "You owe me!"
“Okay. If I ask her to let you say hi to the egg or whatever, will that get rid of the debt?” He frowned at his shoes. “Crap.”
“Yup. Doodoo. Cacka. Poopie. Fewmets.” I hardly ever talk about number two that much but frowning stinks more than dirty diapers and I wanted Ed to stop doing it.
Ed stared at me, then blinked. He shook his head, blinking again. His lips pressed together, tighter than my hands had before. And his cheeks got redder than the funny-smelling Mall Santa’s breath. He wasn’t going to laugh, or really, he wasn’t going to let himself.
I reached out, goosing him under his arms. After that, he giggled himself straight out of the tree, taking me with him.
The magic wards slowed us down. We drifted like snowflakes even though I used my wings to make sure we landed on our feet instead of our butts. I felt like a shooting star or maybe a rainbow. If I’d made Ed Redford, the Mama’s Boy laugh, I could do the same thing for my father someday.
But he’d left the room already, off on his errand to the stupid Queen. I settled into staying on the floor for now. It made sense, especially if I wanted to meet a baby dragon still in the egg. I’d make that sad knight smile someday, though. I had all the time in the Under.
Chapter Three
Gemma
“Again.”
Tails waved as the Headmistress of Providence Paranormal College clapped her hands. I let my eyes roll on their way up to peer at her. No one should sweat as much as I did that October. The fatigue that comes after running a marathon set its edge against my bones, mostly in my hips, though trying to work this magic hadn’t engaged any muscles around them. Since my labor with Hope, I carried more pain there than any other part of my body.
“Tell me how you think I’ll get a different result this time and I’ll call you insane.”
“Routine helps with spells like this, Gemma.”
“I don’t have time for habits. That’s a thirty-day project, not a seven-day one.”
“All the same, try it again.”
“No. This is bullshit.”
“Understood.” She grinned. “But you signed a contract. Once more.”
“Your contract and your CLEP intensive suck.”
“Thank you for expressing your honest opinion. Pissing me off won’t let you off this hook. Again.”
The pit of anger that lived in my chest blossomed, fueling a growl that might have shamed a Great Dane. I opened my mouth to let the sound have its way, my sweaty hand gripping the length of wood in it so tight I thought it’d either crack under the pressure or eject.
A blast of air, frigid as the force behind Lake Effect snow, rippled out from the business end of the wand. Instead of going in a straight line as I’d expected, the cold went everywhere, even fanning out to slap me in the face.
Exhausted from the effort of generating that big a temperature change, I let the wand drop. The energy's absence didn’t take away my anger, either. But I had no one to blame besides myself for all these maddening exercises.
“How do you feel?”
“Fracking exhausted. Also grouchy and hangry, like a shark.”
“Good. Now you can take a break and hit those books over there.” Thurston pointed at a bare table.
I knew the tablet resting on its top held several stacks of books on extrahuman history but it still looked heavy. Trudging over there felt like shuffling out of bed at zero dark thirty in the morning to change a dirty diaper. Had it already been almost six years? Would I ever even see my daughter’s face again?
The thoughts knocked all my anger flat on its back, turning it turtle until I felt its flip-side, despair. I sat and ran one hand down my face. When I looked at the table again, a plate hovered near my elbow, then drifted left until it came to rest near my right hand. Four frosted donuts and a napkin sat before me, like an undiscovered shore. I stormed the plate.
Keeping the jelly from sticking to my lips and tusks was easy. I vanquis
hed the donuts soundly, their remains fueling this next challenge to my concentration.
I hit the virtual books, figuratively. Each of the volumes Headmistress Thurston had compiled had a pretest at the beginning. About three hours later, I'd whipped some CLEP butt.
It was just Multiple Guess and True or Fake exercises, but the piddly little quizzes opened my eyes. I knew more than I thought I did. If the info in those questions reflected the CLEP’s content, I’d be golden in extrahuman history. I stood up, resisting the urge to stretch or show any other sign that the chair had made my entire backside fall asleep.
“Is that all you got, Thurston?”
“Of course not.” She raised an eyebrow. “If I’m not tough enough for you, I could send Professor Watkins here early instead.”
“Um, no. Sorry.”
I’d heard stories about Nate Watkins, that he’d endured a coma for almost six months. When asked how he held on, the Professor only said he needed to hand out more failing grades to first-year students under the impression they knew extrahuman anything. His reputation looked worse on paper than any other faculty member at the school, but the students who liked him defended his methods like fanatics.
“Don’t be sorry, be studying.” Henrietta Thurston produced her wand from nowhere and tapped my tablet with it.
The screen flared, then shut off and on again, as though it had widened one flat eye and then winked. The display now showed more material, again stuff that wasn’t new.
“Extrahuman Faerie Ecology?” I snorted. “Don’t make me laugh.”
“Lynn Frampton finished the same intensive on this subject in two hours.” The Headmistress smirked. “Think you can outdo a mundane Freshman?”
“Great Garters, yes!”
I raced through, barely needing to spend over five minutes per twenty-page unit for the Unseelie sections. The Seelie ones took longer. I knew more about Grims and Gnomes than Sprites, brownies, and Pixies. Imps were a total mystery, to the point where I missed almost all the pretest questions about them.
