Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception

by Maggie Stiefvater

  I was starving. Normally after a late gig, my designated driver and I would head to the Sticky Pig to grab some quick fries and a sandwich, paid for with my brand-new bucks. This time there was no gig, and I’d forgotten my money. Stupidly, after everything we’d been through, I didn’t want to ask Luke to buy me dinner. And I didn’t want to ask him to stop and let me get the private-chef cookies out of the trunk, because that would be like a sneaky way of asking him to buy me dinner.

  So I just sat in the passenger seat, stomach silently pinching, thinking about how Mom had gotten the date of the party wrong. The more I thought about it, the more troubling it seemed; Mom, the human computer, failing at an easy sum. Other people’s parents messed up on details. Mom lived for them.

  Both of us jumped when music sang through the car; I realized after a second that it was my stupid phone. Probably Mom. But the number was unfamiliar. The name above it, however, wasn’t: Sara Madison.

  I looked over at Luke. “It’s Sara.” I opened it gingerly and held it to my ear. “Hello?”

  “Deirdre? This is Deirdre’s phone, right?”

  She was really loud. Somehow it was weird hearing her voice without seeing her in person—I felt kind of lost, without the image of her busting out of her shirt to anchor her personality. I held the phone an inch from my ear. “Yeah, this is Dee.”

  “This is Sara.” Without waiting for me to say anything else, she said, “Okay. You gotta tell it to me straight. Like, seriously, were you two playing a prank on me at Dave’s? You have to tell me, because I’ve just been—like—spazzing over it since I got home and I have to know.”

  I wasn’t going to lie to her. Not when Freckle Freak might just try to pull something on her if he couldn’t get to me. “No prank, Sara. I wouldn’t do that. You know I wouldn’t.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s true. I didn’t think of that. Duh, right? It’s just so hard to, like, wrap my head around it. I mean, he turned into a—God! I’m never going to look at rabbits the same ever again!”

  Luke didn’t exactly smile, but the side of his mouth tugged up and I laughed in spite of myself. “Look, Sara, you’ve got to be careful around Them. I don’t know what They want. Maybe you won’t see any of Them again, but maybe you will. I’d keep something iron around just in case. It keeps Them away.”

  “Yeah. I got that, with the whole shovel thing. That was, like, seven different kinds of awesome. So what, are They all sketchy-looking guys?”

  My stomach growled, and I coughed to cover it up. “Um, no, not all of Them. Some of Them are drop-dead-gorgeous-looking girls.”

  “Right—they look like me,” Sara said.

  There was too long of a pause before I realized, she made a funny. I laughed, finally, and Sara said, “Okay, I was totally joking. But—They’re real. I don’t need to check myself into the crazy hospital and start taking Prozac and crap, right?”

  “Right,” I said, shocking myself a bit with my own certainty. “They are real … the rest is up to you.”

  There was another pause, and then Sara laughed. Was it a sign we were on different planets that it took light years for either of us to get the other’s jokes? “Okay. Right. Thanks. I feel better now.”

  I glanced at Luke. “Um, call me if you see another one, will you?”

  “Yeah. Totally.” We hung up and I looked down at the phone for a long moment. Had the world gone mad? Sara Madison calling me and asking about faeries like it was school gossip. I think the Sara calling-me-on-the-phone bit was even more shocking than the faerie bit. I felt like my high school invisibility was wearing off, just as I’d started to find it convenient.

  The car slowed and bumped into a parking lot. I looked up and blinked at the sign, which bore a glowing neon pig with a glowing neon smile. The Sticky Pig.

  “This is where you always go, right?”

  I looked from the sign to Luke’s face, which was pensive. “Uh. Yeah.”

  He made a face. “I saw it in your memories. I recognized the sign. Are you hungry?”

  I nodded and made the understatement of the year. “I could eat.”

  He looked relieved. “Thank God. I’m starving. C’mon, I’ll buy you dinner.”

  Guilt nagged at me: me eating out, Mom sitting at home getting dates wrong. “Maybe I should call Mom.”

  Luke paused, his hand on the door. “Why? She thinks you’re at the gig still, and if you call her, you’ll have to tell her why you’re not. Do you want to have that conversation right now?”

  “That,” I said, climbing out of the car, “is a very good point.”

  He came around the front of the car, his face lit red by the smiling-pig sign, and held out his hand. I took it, wondering if I’d ever get tired of the sensation of his fingers holding mine. We crossed the empty parking lot and walked into the freezing air-conditioning of the restaurant; the hostess (not the James-bedazzled one) led us to a booth.

  Luke slid into one side and I stood at the head of the table for a long moment, tapping my fingers against my legs, torn between bold Deirdre and normal Deirdre.

  He raised an eyebrow at me. “What?”

  I made my decision and slid into the booth next to him, slamming myself up against him hard and fast enough that his breath escaped in a short puff. “Steamroller!” I said.

  He laughed, his face mashed up against the window, and shoved me back. “Weirdo.”

  “Look who’s talking!” We sat arm to arm, staring at the same grubby plastic menu, like we were a normal couple, not a telekinetic freak and a soulless faerie assassin. I let my imagination run wild with the idea of us dating—Luke an ordinary teenage boy, me an ordinary girl. We’d eat the same old barbecue sandwiches we always got, then he’d pull me out of the booth by my hand and we’d go out to his car. He’d let me drive because he knew I liked to, and we’d do things normal couples did when they dated. We’d go to the Smithsonian and try to interpret modern art. We’d go to the movies and watch stupid action flicks and laugh at the melodramatic lines. We’d go hiking at the state park and watch summer disappear over the horizon; I’d lose my virginity while the trees shed their leaves all around us. When winter came, he’d hold my frozen hands and tell me how much he loved me, and that he’d never leave me.

  My eyes ran down the same old menu ten times without seeing a single word.

  “Is this how it would be?” Luke asked softly, and I knew he was thinking the same thing as me.

  I nodded. “This would be our place.” I gazed at him, distracted by his proximity and by the darkness outside the window. I could feel that part of me—the part that had escaped into Luke during the mind-reading—all electric and charged.

  He shifted so he could look at me properly. “Your …gift. Is it stronger after dark?”

  Was that why I felt so alive right now? “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Hers is strongest while the sun is setting, so I thought maybe yours was similar.” Luke cupped his hand over the top of mine and pulled it toward him. “And I’m getting the most peculiar feeling off you right now. Like someone put fresh batteries in you.”

  Again, there was that comparison with the distant Queen who had made him her slave—I wasn’t sure I liked it. My voice was only a little frosty: “Do you get a ‘most peculiar feeling’ off her when her power is its strongest?”

  “Not at all. But I didn’t swap brains with her, either. You’ve infested me.”

  I looked over to find him grinning, and I finally affirmed it. “I do feel weird. And I haven’t been doing much sleeping at night recently. Do you think that has anything to do with it?”

  Luke shrugged. “It sounds plausible, doesn’t it? It—” He broke off when the waitress arrived to take our orders. Neither of us had read the menu, so I ordered my usual pulled pork sandwich for both of us and she whisked off to the kitchen, probably eager to be rid of the last customers of the night.

  Then Luke said, “I want you to work more on your gift.”

  I swallow
ed a mouthful of tea in a hurry. “I thought you didn’t want her to know what I could do.”

  He spoke slowly, as if unsure of what he was suggesting. “That was because of what she was doing to me. Nothing’s supposed to be able to stop it except her; she’d know it was you if the fire had gone out. If you practice your telekinesis discreetly, she won’t know about it until it’s too late.”

  “Too late for what?”

  “Too late for her to realize that you’ve learned to take care of yourself, and that she’d better just leave you alone.”

  Somehow I didn’t think a few extracurricular telekinetic classes would secure my safety. “Do you think that can really happen?”

  Luke leaned over and brushed his lips on my cheek; the feeling of his breath on my skin was intoxicating. “It’s what I want to happen.” I closed my eyes and leaned my face toward his. I couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t mentioned his own safety. How long did we have together? If the Queen really did send his soul to hell, what happened to the part of me that was tied to him?

  “Start my car,” Luke whispered in my ear.

  My eyes flew open. “Tell me you didn’t just whisper ‘start my car.’”

  Luke’s smile was crooked. “You want me to lie to you?”

  “I don’t suppose you’re going to give me the keys,” I grumbled. “That is, if you meant it literally and not as a dirty innuendo.”

  Luke’s grin widened and he pointed out the window. “Look, it’s easy. It’s even in direct line of sight.”

  “This counts as discreet? What’s indiscreet? Strangling Eleanor?”

  He considered. “That would be indiscreet. Tempting, but definitely indiscreet.”

  I stared out the pane-glass window at Bucephalus, crouched in a lonely parking space across the lot, dimly lit in the dull circle of a floodlight, the glowing face of the sticky pig reflected on its windshield. “You do know, the most I’ve really done is move plant life around.”

  “You’ll never know until you try.”

  I sighed, feeling stupid as I leaned forward on the table to get a better look at the car. I frowned, trying to remember the warm feeling I’d gotten between my eyes when I’d screwed up our memories in the cemetery.

  The night pressed against the glass, invading my eyes, and I saw a ghost of Bucephalus somewhere inside my head. I was there, in the car. But how was I supposed to start the damn thing? Mentally, my eyes ran over the gear shift and up to the ignition, noticing strange details I’d not noticed before, like the Jethro Tull tape inside the cassette player and the dark, worn prints on the steering wheel where Luke always held it. I tried to imagine a key, but the image slipped away from me, intangible.

  If I’d known anything about how car engines started, I could have come at it that way, but all I could remember was something about explosions. I could just imagine that, with my luck, I’d blow up his friggin’ car. Maybe I was just being too complicated. Start, I willed furiously. Start.

  This was pointless. Nothing was happening. The image of the car was slipping away, replaced by the red vinyl of the booth seat across from me.

  Luke whispered in my ear. “Name it.”

  Bucephalus, I thought. Instantly, the image of the car strengthened again, forming solid lines around me as if I sat inside it and around it and over it all at once. I could see a line of pistons, the brake line, the gas pedal, the ignition, the seats, all at the same time. Bucephalus, start.

  Across the parking lot, headlights flicked on and blinded us both, but not before I saw the car jerk sideways as the engine turned over and roared to life.

  The waitress set down two plates in front of us.

  “Have a sandwich!” Luke said, glowing brighter than the headlights.

  “Can I get you any sauce?”

  I blinked at her. “I think I need to get sauced.”

  The waitress blinked back.

  “She’s fine,” Luke said. After the waitress had gone, he looked at me, the corners of his mouth quirking, and said, “Are you just going to leave it running? Now that my salary’s not being paid by supernaturals, I have to worry about the price of gas.”

  I tried to convince the engine to turn off, but it remained running. Eventually, I had to let Luke out of the booth to go switch off the ignition. I watched him out the window, his lanky form trotting to the car and getting in, fumbling behind the wheel for a few minutes, and then popping the hood open and fussing under it. He shut the hood, climbed back into the driver’s seat, and in a few seconds the car lurched forward, the lights finally going out.

  He returned and slid back in next to me, a little out of breath. “You’re a bit of an atom bomb, aren’t you? I had to stall the engine to get it to stop.”

  A smile broke out across my face; I couldn’t help it. It was just so crazy. And instead of feeling shaky, like I did whenever I moved stuff in the daytime, I felt great. I felt like that great mass of night pressing in the windows was pulsing through me, huge waves of energy pumping like a wicked bass line. I felt like whooping, but when I found words, it was just an ordinary question. “How did you know I should use the name?”

  “They think names are very important, remember? And so they are.”

  I frowned. “Is that why no one can remember your name?”

  He nodded, mouth full of barbecue, and mumbled past the food. “Names are a way of keeping someone in your head. Most people don’t remember me very well, either.”

  “But I do. I can say your name: Luke Dillon. And They can too. At least, Brendan could.”

  “They see things differently. I guess you do, too. Big shock there.” He poked the corner of my mouth where my smile ought to be. “Eat your food.”

  I remembered my hunger, and we both ate our sandwiches in silence. When we were done, Luke put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close to him. Resting my head on his chest, listening to oldies music playing overhead, feeling the cold touch of the vinyl booth on the back of my arms, I thought, again—despite the Sticky Pig looking the same as it always did—that this night wasn’t like any other night.

  Luke leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I wish I could have this with you.” Something about his breath against my skin as he spoke, his fingers brushing against my neck, and the unfamiliar, exciting night pressing in against the windows made my stomach turn over. I sat up and grabbed his hand, tugging him out of the booth with a sort of urgency. “Let’s go outside.”

  I waited slow minutes while he looked at the check and counted out a tip, and then I pulled him out of the restaurant and back into the dull red light of the parking lot. With every step I took into the night, the pale moon looking down from overhead, I felt like I was shedding a skin; a weighty slab of flesh that peeled away to reveal a brilliant, light creature inside. All around me was a wall I’d spent sixteen years building, and with every thud of my heart, pieces crumbled from it. I was practically shaking by the time we reached the car, and before he could get his keys out, I kissed him. Crazy, out-of-control kissing, my mouth pressed against his, my arms linked around his neck.

  Caught off guard, Luke took a moment before he wrapped his arms around me and kissed back, his fingers crumpling my shirt. There was something honest and raw in our kisses; a gasp of fear or impending loss that we couldn’t or wouldn’t acknowledge in conscious thought. He held me tightly, lifting me off my feet and sitting me on the hood of his car so I wouldn’t have to stand on my tiptoes to reach him, and I tasted the skin of his neck and his face and his lips until I had no more breath, and then I linked my legs around him and kissed him some more.

  Inside the car, my phone rang, quiet but clearly audible. I didn’t want to get it. I didn’t want this night to end, because I didn’t know what tomorrow would look like. But Luke’s hands dropped to his sides and he rested his face against my neck, out of breath. “You have to get that, don’t you?”

  I wanted to say no. But while I tried to imagine how I could justify ignoring it, Luke lift
ed me from the hood of the car and got his keys out of his pocket. The phone had stopped ringing by the time he retrieved it from the passenger seat, but my parents’ number was still displayed under the words missed call.

  Standing outside the car, shivering for no reason, I punched the redial button and pressed the phone to my ear. Luke stood behind me and crossed his arms over my chest, pressing his cheek against mine while I listened to the phone ringing.

  “Deirdre? Where are you?” Mom’s voice had a strange edge to it that I didn’t recognize.

  “At the Sticky Pig. We—”

  “You need to come home. Right now.”

  I hadn’t expected that. Maybe her chastity radar had gone off. “We just finished getting dinner. The party—”

  “Deirdre, just come home. It’s important.”

  The phone clicked and I stared at it for a few moments before relating the call to Luke. He released me abruptly. “Okay. Get in.”

  I got into the passenger seat, unhappy with the turn of events. “I don’t want to go.”

  “I don’t either,” Luke said. “But something’s happened. We need to go.”

  We made the short drive from the Sticky Pig to my parents’ dark driveway in record time. Every light in the house was on, and I saw silhouettes in the kitchen window. Luke took my hand tightly and we went in together.

  Mom was inside the dim yellow kitchen, pacing as restlessly as a caged tiger, her face curiously mottled. Beyond the kitchen door I could see Dad talking on the phone. Mom froze in her steps when she heard the door open, and her eyes fixed on me. “Deirdre.” Her eyes traveled down my arm to the hand that Luke held and then stopped, hardening. She took two steps across the room and snatched my hand out of Luke’s.

  “Mom!” I snapped.

  But Mom kept my hand in a pincer grip, lifting it to stare at my fingers. “You’re wearing Granna’s ring. This is her ring.”