by Jenna Grey
“Hardly,” Lily said. “I’ve seen your master’s plans for mankind and this isn’t it,” Lily hissed. “He hasn’t won yet.”
“It’s never going to happen,” Connor said. “We’ll find a way to stop him. He should have killed us when he had the chance, because I swear, we won’t rest until he, and all of your kind are dead.”
There was a real laugh this time, its head thrown back.
“Brave words indeed from one who has already been beaten by my master. You are nothing but an annoying gnat to him.”
Connor pulled back his shoulders and stared the creature straight in the eye, a soft smile on his lips.
“Or perhaps it’s that when it came to it, he couldn’t kill us,” Connor said. Lily glared at him and sent rankled thoughts in his direction.
Do you really think it’s wise to piss him off?
And then she caught a glimpse of the Djinn’s thoughts, so fleeting that it barely registered, but she felt it all right. That was the truth. The Black King had wanted them dead, but for some reason he hadn’t been able to kill them. Connor’s smile broadened.
“Your thoughts betray you, Djinn. I can see the truth, and I don’t think your master’s going to be very pleased with you when you go back to him,” Lily said, a smug grin on her face.
Lily wasn’t sure that a Djinn could grow pale with fear, but she was fairly certain if they could, then this creature would be as white as driven snow by now.
“Go back to your master and tell him that we are Tuatha Dé Danann, the old race, true King and Queen of the four Seelie courts and all of Elphame. We don’t give way to his kind, or to threats. Go, before I test out just how much power it takes to kill a Djinn,” Connor said.
The creature snarled at him, a terrible sound from deep in his throat, shoulders hunched, half crouching as if he were about to attack.
“Bold words from a snot nose whelp in rags. I will enjoy watching your world burn.”
And with that parting comment, the six shadowy forms slipped further into shadow, until they became part of the mist and were gone.
Lily let out her breath and sagged.
“That was quite a gamble,” she said. “What if you’d been wrong?”
“I somehow knew that the Black King wouldn’t have bothered to send those creatures with any kind of message unless he needed to cover the truth.”
Lily thought about it for a few moments, and things did begin to make sense. The Djinn could only have physical contact with this world when their victims were in that half place between sleeping and waking. In that twilight world they could touch and injure with impunity, as long as their victim didn’t fully wake up. Lily had found that out the hard way. She felt a terrible empty sickness in the pit of her stomach as she remembered the dreadful form of the Black King over her, inside her. He had violated her, taken her virginity, her self respect and left her broken. But even after all that, she knew that he couldn’t touch or harm a human when they were fully awake, not without help.
“Surely he could have killed us if he really wanted to?” Lily said. “Even if he couldn’t touch us himself, or get his Djinn to touch us, he only had to possess a human and have them cut our throats while we slept.”
“But he didn’t,” Connor said, and he looked as troubled by it as she was. “And I’d really like to know why.”
Lily found this new conundrum extremely disturbing. They had both already witnessed first hand the Black King’s ability to possess humans to do his dirty work for him. He had taken control of three of Lily’s school... well, not friends exactly, but enemies... to kidnap her, throw her into a deep, water-filled hole in the ground and leave her there to rot. It had been a miracle that she’d managed to escape.
“There must be some kind of charm or enchantment protecting us, I can’t think of any other reason we’re still alive,” she said. “Connor, I’m so afraid.”
Connor tilted her face up and pressed his lips to hers. He was a foot taller than her and she had to stand on tiptoe for him to reach her without craning his neck. His lips were cold, trembling, but still soft and welcoming. She let him take the kiss and she kissed him back, savouring those few precious moments.
“We’ll find out the truth, don’t worry. For now I think we’re safe enough. We need to find your holdall. I think I can track it down.”
“You can do that?” Lily asked. There was so much about Connor she still didn’t know or understand. In many ways he was a stranger to her. She loved him, of course she did, more than her life, but sometimes he scared her just a little bit. He was so different to the Connor that she had first met, a poor soul tortured by a befuddlement curse, that made reality a perpetual nightmare to him. Now he was so self-assured, so confident in his own abilities. It made her feel just a little bit inadequate sometimes.
“So can you...” he said, taking a hold of her shoulders and making her face him. “You can do everything I can do, you’ve just never tried it. The grimoire is heavy with age-old magic. It will be easy to track. Give me your hand.”
Lily did as she was told and slipped her trembling and cold numb fingers into Connor’s.
For a moment she felt nothing, and then there was the familiar tingle she got whenever they touched. She suddenly knew which way they should go. She didn’t know how she knew, except there was a slight buzz, a tingle in the air, as if someone had left a door open far, far away and she was feeling just the faintest draft from it.
They began walking, Lily letting her intuition and Connor’s hand guide her; it was only a few minutes before they almost fell over the holdall. Lily said a prayer of thanks and unzipped it, pulling aside the clothes and stroking the mellowed brown cover of her mother’s Book of Shadows.
“Thank Hecate it’s safe,” she said. “I could never have forgiven myself if I’d lost this.”
Connor squatted down beside her and gazed down at the ancient tome.
“It would be nice if there was something in it that could help us now. We’ve got hardly any money, no food, no phone to call for help.” His stomach gave a growl of protest as if to emphasise his point.
“We’ve got your iPad,” Lily said, pulling it out and waving it in the air. Connor just gave her the look. Lily tightened her lips and gave him the look back, with interest. “Well, it might help if we can piggy back from someone’s wi-fi. We can get information, at least.”
Connor raised an eyebrow.
“And what kind of information will help us get back to Elphame, find the Black King, get Liam and Sarah back and kill the bastard?”
Although his voice held its usual calm gentleness, the words stung.
Lily felt hot tears prickle the back of her eyes. She pushed the clothes back over the book and zipped the holdall up with impressive violence, standing up and turning her back on him.
“I’m doing my best here. If you’ve got any better ideas...” she snapped, over her shoulder.
Connor came up behind her and slipped his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I think we both need to find somewhere quiet to get our breath back and work out what we’re going to do next ‒ how we’re going to get the kids back.”
Lily slipped her arms around Connor’s waist and pressed her face to his soggy chest.
“I’m sorry I’m such a pain, I’m just so worried about them.”
She felt ashamed that she’d let little Liam and Sarah’s plight slip from her mind for even a second. They were still in terrible danger, and at the mercy of that monster. Now that Connor and Lily had thwarted him, he was bound to take out his frustration on them, wasn’t he? She couldn’t bear to think of what he might be doing to them.
“I’ve told you, the kids are safe for now, stop worrying about them,” Connor said, his voice quietly insistent now.
She grudgingly let it drop, but despite his best reassurances she still couldn’t believe they weren’t in any danger. She knew the Blac
k King too well to believe that.
“I’m so hungry,” she said, wrapping her arms over her stomach as it gave a terrible rumble.
“Me too. Isn’t there anything left?” Connor asked.
“A packet of extra strong mints,” Lily said, rummaging in the side pocket of the bag. She handed the packet to him. Connor took the packet and popped a mint in his mouth.
“Well, it will freshen up our mouths if nothing else, I feel as if I’ve swallowed a sack of horse shit.”
Lily laughed ‒ it sounded so funny, when Connor, who rarely spoke above a serene whisper swore, but her laughter was just sham; the last thing she felt like doing now was laughing. Here they were, stranded in the middle of nowhere, wringing wet, hungry and exhausted, with little prospect of changing their circumstances any time soon. She looked up at the sky, at the dull grey blanket of cloud that covered them, and shivered. She wasn’t sure what it was, but there was definitely something ‘not right’ about those clouds. She’d never seen a summer sky like that before.
“Why is it so cold?” Lily asked. “I know we’ve been lying in damp all night, but it feels more like winter than the middle of July. I’ve never seen clouds like that in summer time.”
Connor frowned, gazing up at the vast grey expanse.
“Unless we were unconscious for longer than we thought.”
Lily blinked at him and felt a little tight knot in the pit of her stomach.
“For months? I don’t think so. Our clothes would have gone mouldy.”
“I think we would have gone mouldy first,” Connor said, without a trace of humour in his voice.
Lily bent down and rummaged in the holdall, pulling out her spare jeans and sweat shirt. She was chilled to the bone, and just wanted to get warm. She stripped off hurriedly and changed into them. Just getting into something warm and dry made her feel better.
“Sorry I don’t have anything that would fit you,” she said, giving an apologetic and truly pathetic smile.
The skimpy clothes Connor wore were borrowed from Lily’s teenage brother, Kieran, and hung on him like rags. They were covered in mud, sopping wet and just about as useful as a chocolate teapot.
“That’s okay, but I’d kill for a hot bath right now,” he said.
“We need to find shelter of some kind. There must be a barn or farm outbuilding around here somewhere.”
Lily slipped her hand into his and they began walking, Lily stumbling and wobbling on her numb and shaking legs, until they finally came out to a narrow lane, overhung with sparsely foliaged trees. They didn’t even look as if they wore the healthy golden brown of autumn; the leaves looked as if they had been dragged screaming towards winter, protesting every step of the way. Even the roadside grass and small bushes around were dead or dying. The mist still hung heavy over everything, pregnant with damp and decay, but it seemed to be clearing now. Lily could at least see the surface of the road, and off into the distance for several feet. She didn’t recognise where they were, most of the country lanes in this part of the world looked the same. For all she knew they weren’t even in ‘this part of the world’ any more. Reality seemed to be slipping away from her and all of this felt like some kind of surreal dream.
“Connor, look at the trees ‒ the leaves are dying and dropping. I don’t understand what’s going on,” Lily said.
“There’s dark magic at work here,” Connor said, peering into the shadows that might be hiding any kind of danger from them. “You can smell it in the air.”
Lily drew in a breath and realised he was right, there was a terrible smell of decay in the air, a stench of death. And all the time, there was that terrible feeling that they were being watched. Lily found herself looking over her shoulder, peering into the darkness and dreading what she might see. There seemed to be no kind of life at all, not birds or insects, no woodland animals, rustling in the undergrowth. Surely they couldn’t all be dead? Perhaps they were deep in their burrows, hiding, waiting for this all to be over so that they could come out again in a world that hadn’t gone entirely insane.
Lily bent down and touched the sorry looking fern, running its delicate tips through her fingers. It was brittle and lifeless, barely any life force there at all. She poured a little magic into it and it seemed to revive a little, but then wilted again. Whatever magic this was, it was powerful.
“Do you remember what happened to my garden – to all the gardens in the village, just before we left? Everything in them died. Perhaps the Black King has extended his curse to the whole village.”
A look of abject fear clouded Connor’s usually tranquil features.
“Or the whole world.”
Lily shook her head, a cold chill running down her spine.
“No... is that possible?”
But it was possible, wasn’t it? Lily remembered the recent news stories telling of blights and plagues that were happening all around the world; entire crops were being lost, acres and acres of grain decimated, cattle and other life stock dying from terrible diseases. Some crops had been entirely destroyed or so rotten they could only be used for fertilizer and were being ploughed back into the ground.
“We’ll soon find out if he’s responsible,” Connor said. “In the meantime we have to take care of ourselves.”
Connor let out a long sigh, turning and looking back up the road. There was an old, crooked signpost that looked as if it had been there a hundred years, one way pointing to home.
“Little Ostrey is that way, Helmsford that way. Which way do we go?” Connor asked.
Lily looked in both directions and didn’t have a clue, but as she let her gaze scan the countryside around, Lily still had that dreadful sensation of being watched. She wondered if she should say something to Connor, but if there was anything hiding in the mist, he would have felt it before she did. She decided just to forget it. After all, what could there be that was worse than Djinn?
Chapter Three.
Connor slipped his hand into hers and gave her a sad little smile.
“We need to get to a village of some sort,” he prompted, giving her fingers a little squeeze to bring her back to him. “We need food and shelter and we need to find out what’s going on. As long as we keep a glamour around us, there’s no real danger of us getting caught. We can be who we want to be.”
Lily snapped out of her reverie with a start and realised what he’d just said to her. She had only just learnt to use her fey glamour ‒ up until recently she had had to resort to a common, rather clumsy disguise to hide her feyness. Now, at least she could cloak herself with someone else’s appearance and mingle anywhere without anyone suspecting who she was, she could even make herself appear ‘invisible’ using a kind of perception filter, that blinded her to anyone looking in her direction. Quite handy that when you were wanted for questioning by the police for a gruesome murder and child kidnapping.
“I’m so tired I don’t think I can walk any more, whatever direction we go in,” Lily said, giving a little whimper.
“Come on, let’s sit down for a few minutes and rest. My legs won’t hold out much longer, either,” Connor said. He did look so dreadfully tired, and she was sure she looked just as bad.
They went and perched themselves on a fallen tree, huddling together against the cold. Connor constantly scanned the deep shadows, looking for signs of danger.
Lily, even though she tried desperately not to give in, kept letting her mind drift back to home, to the warmth and comfort of her nice squashy bed, to her little room up in the attic under the eaves, and the reassurance of familiar things around her. She would have given anything to be back there now, not just back there, but back in time to before all of this nightmare started. It suddenly all seemed to much to bear. She knew that Connor could read her thoughts, and she felt his arm slip around her shoulders and the gentle pressure of his fingers on her arm.
“We can’t risk going back to Hale Hall, as tempting as it sounds, sweetheart,” Connor said. “I’d kill for a
hot shower, some food and clean clothes, but it’s just too dangerous. You understand that, don’t you?”
Lily did understand, of course she did. They would be putting not only themselves in danger but her family as well. The Black King had already killed too many times for her to believe that anyone or anything was safe from him.
“But I do need to see Kieran, to tell him that we’re okay,” Lily protested feebly.
When Connor saw the misery on her face he gave a sweet little smile, that made Lily’s heart melt.
“I didn’t say you couldn’t visit Kieran ‒ I just said we can’t go back there in person. You can still get to see him and tell him whatever he needs to know.” Lily raised an enquiring eyebrow. Connor gave her his best smile, and it was like watching the sun coming out from behind a cloud. It was a secret smile, an ‘I know something you don’t smile,’ and Lily knew that whatever came out of Connor’s mouth next was going to make her feel so much better. “You can dream walk there. He’ll see you, at least a version of you, and it will seem real to him, but you won’t actually be there.”
“You mean the way that evil cow Virginia did when she visited my house before? A sort of hologram?”
“Exactly that.”
The Korrigan, Virginia, had somehow been able to create a version of herself, a doppelgänger, that could travel out of her prison realm and visit Lily’s home, to pass on a message to her. According to Kieran she had seemed so real that they would never have guessed she was illusion. She had used the same trick to lure her male victims to their deaths, and God knows there had been plenty enough of those.
“But I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how to do any of it,” she said, thoroughly dejected.
