She felt Sonny’s arms and legs twisting about her and she realized that Sonny—mortal, human Sonny—was trying to turn them around in the air so that when they hit the ground, he would bear the brunt of the impact. With his arms wrapped tightly around her, Sonny cradled Kelley against his chest. She looked into his storm-gray eyes and saw that he stared serenely back at her, happy. Content to die if there was the smallest chance it could save her.
“No!” She struggled madly in the vise of his embrace. “Sonny—no…”
Behind Sonny’s head, far below, she could see the blackness of the unforgiving ground rushing up to meet them.
She remembered when they had danced. He had called her his Firecracker.
Kelley squeezed her eyes shut, tears of effort freezing on her cheeks, and called upon that image. At first, there was nothing—just a terrible emptiness—and then she felt her skin start to tingle. Electric sparks, drawn from the charged and stormy air around her, raced up and down her arms and legs. The wind screamed in her ears; bone-crushing impact with the earth was only moments away. Kelley gripped the front of Sonny’s shirt and opened her eyes to see him smiling gently back at her.
“You dumb-ass,” she muttered through clenched teeth. “You can’t break my fall.” She imagined her spine as if it were a lit fuse and—straining with an effort so intense it felt as though she would split her own muscles and flesh—she willed the firecracker to explode.
Her shoulder blades burned with sudden, dark fire, and Kelley’s cry of triumph ripped through the sky.
“Not when I can fly!”
The ground beneath them—mere inches away—blazed with sudden purple fire as Kelley’s wings unfurled, delicate as gossamer, yet strong enough to catch at the air and sweep her and Sonny back up into the sky.
She could see out of the corner of her eye as she flew that her wings were no longer silver. Those lacy, lustrous things were gone—taken by her father. These wings unfurled behind her as though she were an exotic butterfly, dark and sparkling, like an indigo starburst. The world around her shone amethyst, bathed in the deep violet light of her newfound wings.
Kelley was a Faerie princess.
In defiance of the Faerie king, she had taken up her destiny on her terms.
An expression of something that was almost awe suffused the features of Sonny’s face, and Kelley kissed him quickly before he had time to say anything. She felt his arms tighten around her as they spiraled up, borne aloft on wings that were dark as the night, bright as a new star.
XXXVI
S onny’s boots touched lightly down on the solid ground. They crunched in the frosty grass, and so he knew he wasn’t dreaming. But the nightmare, it seemed, was over. He released Kelley from the crush of his embrace and gazed down at her lovely face. She dimmed the radiance that flowed from her, and the darkling wings flickered and faded from view. Putting a finger under her chin, he raised her face to his, bestowing another lingering kiss on her lips. Tyff’s beautiful dress was tattered and stained, and Kelley’s legs and arms were covered in mud and scratches. But her cheeks were flushed from the wind and her green eyes sparkled. Sonny had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.
Over her shoulder he saw the wooden carousel horses back in their proper places, painted eyes empty of fury, saddles vacant.
The sound of languid applause reached their ears, and they turned sharply to see Auberon standing on the path.
“Well done, Daughter,” he said. “I was not certain that you would find the strength necessary to defeat the Hunt.”
Sonny put out a protective arm, but Kelley stepped in front of him and walked proudly over to meet her father halfway. She held out a hand for the war horn that the Faerie king still held.
“Of course.” Auberon’s lips twitched, and he handed it to her.
Grasping the long bronze horn in both hands, Kelley snapped it in two over her knee and threw the broken pieces to the ground. Then, wordlessly, she turned her back on her father and returned to where Sonny waited.
In the distance, they could still hear sirens.
Sonny opened his arms. Kelley walked into his embrace and looked up at him. Her gaze was still a little wild, and Sonny couldn’t help but shiver at what he saw there now.
“Are you afraid of me?” she asked quietly.
“No,” he said without hesitation. “Afraid for you, maybe.”
Mabh’s power was a fearsome thing to have to master, but Kelley didn’t need to hear that just then. Tears rimmed her eyes, shining and unshed, and Sonny held her in his arms and kissed her. “My Firecracker…my heart.”
“If you are quite finished here, my Janus, I require your presence in the realm.”
He didn’t need to turn to see that Auberon still stood behind them.
Kelley made a strangled sound of denial.
“You can require whatever you like,” Sonny said coldly. “But I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Mabh has been driven back to the Faerie lands but she won’t stay hidden there long,” Auberon said impatiently. “She will return to threaten not only my realm, but this one as well, unless she is contained again. You will help me accomplish that.”
“No.” Sonny gripped Kelley tightly. “I do not work for those who have betrayed my trust.”
“Is that what you think I have done?” Auberon’s voice was polite. Inquisitive.
“I know it.” It hurt Sonny deeply to say such a thing. “You were as a father to me….”
“And you were as a dutiful son. So you will be again,” Auberon said, and his eyes went absolutely black. There was a sharp pain in Sonny’s chest, right beneath his iron medallion, and he clutched at it, unable to breathe.
“Stop it!” Kelley screamed. “No! You can’t take him with you!”
“Of course I can,” Auberon said flatly.
“We had a deal!”
“Which in no way included Sonny remaining in this realm if you were successful in restoring him unto himself.” The king lifted a shoulder in eloquent disdain. “He is a member of my Court. He must obey.”
Sonny fell to his knees.
“Besides. I need him to undo his mistake.” The lord of the Unseelie stepped toward him, holding Sonny’s gaze with his own. “Is that not right, Sonny? It was, after all, your error that set Mabh free. So is it your obligation to help me mend that situation.”
“No,” Kelley said furiously.
“And it was your request of me, Daughter, that I see to it Mabh stays away from this place. You didn’t specify how.”
A neat trap, Sonny thought. Faerie tricks.
“No!” Kelley screamed at her father, but Sonny knew in his heart that Auberon was right. Mabh was free again because of him. And there was something else that Auberon hadn’t said: Kelley remained in danger because of it. It was up to Sonny to put things right.
The fiery pain in his chest ceased abruptly as he made his decision.
“Kelley.” He climbed to his feet and grabbed her by the shoulders to make her look at him. “Kelley…” He shook her a little, and the tears dashed down her cheeks. “I won’t be gone forever. But he’s right. I need to do this thing.”
“But—”
“Shh…” He pulled her in tight to his chest and whispered into her hair. “Just like Pyramus and Thisbe in your play—I will find the hole in the wall. I will find a way back through.”
“You know that story ends horribly, right?” she said, choking on a sob.
“Ah, my heart. What did Shakespeare know?” Sonny hugged her tighter. “He probably would have rewritten that bit if he’d thought about it. I will come back to you. I promise.”
As Auberon stepped toward them, Sonny felt Kelley stiffen with cold rage. She pushed away from him and turned to her father, her green eyes flashing dangerously.
“Do I even need to tell you how unhappy I will be if anything bad happens to him?”
“No, Daughter,” Auberon said softly. “You do not.” The king
gestured with one hand like a blade, and a crackling gateway opened into the Otherworld. “Come, Sonny. It is time to go.”
Kelley met Sonny in one last embrace, and they kissed each other as if, in that moment, they were the only two people in all the worlds. Then he turned and stepped through the rift. Auberon lingered for another moment, looking back at Kelley, and Sonny heard him say, “You really do have your mother’s eyes.”
OPENING NIGHT
November 1
I t was just over an hour to curtain, and Kelley should have been nervous. Instead she was numb.
Opening night. Magic time. The peak of her childhood dreams reached…
And none of it mattered.
Sonny wasn’t there to see it. She sat in front of her makeup mirror, listlessly toying with a mascara wand, staring at the mess of powder she’d spilled earlier and hadn’t bothered to clean up.
Outside her dressing room she could hear the bustle of the other actors—the boys tromping by, the whisper of crinolines as the dancers flitted past. She heard the almost constant murmuring of cast and crew still gossiping, exchanging theories over what had really happened in Central Park on Halloween—gangs, mass hallucinations, aliens. Speculation had been wild and endless.
At least all of the excitement had served to draw some of the fire away from Kelley’s disappearance. Even so, it had taken forty-five minutes of solid apology and Quentin’s grudging admittance of the fact that he really had no other options before he agreed to let her back onstage.
But now? Kelley couldn’t care less. Even the sound of the quartet of musicians warming up in the wings did nothing to stir excitement in her.
She looked up at the sound of a knock on her door, which swung open. The glamour Bob had cast over himself nicely covered up the bruises he’d received at Auberon’s hands, trying to keep her safe.
She smiled wanly at the boucca as he held out a hand, her four-leaf-clover necklace dangling from one long finger.
“Figured you might want this back.”
Kelley held up her hair and turned so that he could slip the chain around her neck and fasten the catch.
“Can you make it so that this never comes off, Bob?” she asked quietly. “So that my power stays hidden forever?”
Behind her, she felt him hesitate. “I could…. Are you sure that’s what you want?”
Kelley stared at her reflection in the mirror and thought she saw her mother staring out from her own eyes. She imagined the surging, tantalizing energy singing through her veins silenced; the strength and power gone, and with it, the whispering malice that accompanied it. The simmering lust to do harm. The callous disregard for consequences…
“Power is power, Kelley. It’s what you do with it that matters,” Bob said. “I should know. And, if you want my advice, I’d keep all the power I have for the moment, if I were you. You just might need it….”
“To get Sonny back,” she finished the thought. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Come with me,” he said. “I have something to show you.”
He took her by the hand and led her out onto the stage, which lay dark and waiting for the curtain to lift. Kelley could hear the murmur of the audience in the house beyond. Bob led her to the center of the deck, where the two curtain halves met, and held one open a tiny crack for her to peer through.
Kelley gasped. Sitting in the center of the front row were Tyffanwy and Aunt Emma. And sitting on Emma’s other side, holding her hand, was a smiling Sonny Flannery.
“It’s just for the show,” Puck whispered at her side. “He won’t be able to stay to see you afterward, but he asked me to give you this.”
It was an envelope, made of pale parchment with gilt edges. ~ Firecracker ~ was written on the outside; inside was a single wrinkled sheet of paper: page 26 of her script.
Sonny had circled three words in gold ink: I love thee.
Kelley hugged the piece of paper to her chest and turned gratefully to Bob. “How did you do it?”
“’Twasn’t me—the Winter King gifted Sonny with enough of his own power to cross over.”
“And how did you convince my father to do that?”
Bob ducked his head in mock modesty. “A little wheeling, a little dealing…”
“What did you have to give up in return?” she asked warily.
“Oh, I didn’t really give up anything.” He waved away her concerns.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing much.” His eyes glinted. “In fact, I’ve found myself a bit of steady employment. After closing night, it’s back to the Unseelie Court for me. Auberon’s been lacking a decent henchman, it seems, ever since I left.”
“What? He beat the crap out of you, Bob.” Kelley eyed him in astonishment and gratitude. He’d done this for her. And for Sonny. “Are you sure about this?”
“You know what they say, Princess: Keep your friends close—enemies closer.”
Bob winked and left her standing on the dim stage.
Kelley turned back and put her eye to the gap in the curtain, drinking in every line of Sonny’s face, smiling with delight at the way he and Emma talked and laughed and couldn’t seem to look away from each other even for a moment. She watched them until she heard the musicians start up the overture. Kelley blinked away happy tears.
Everything was going to be all right. She had her mother’s power. But, more importantly, she had brains and guts, and now she knew enough about the Fair Folk to try to beat them at their own game. Tomorrow Kelley would start seriously planning how to get Sonny back for good. But not tonight.
Tonight was opening night.
Magic time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe a debt of heartfelt gratitude and affection to a lot of people. To Jessica Regel and Laura Arnold—my agent and my editor, two of the most awesome women I have ever met: They conspired brilliantly to get me to write this book in the first place and then went far above the call of duty to make sure they took care of me while I did! Thank you to Jean Naggar and the staff of JVNLA for welcoming me into the fold, and to the wonderful crew at HarperCollins: Editorial Director Barbara Lalicki for her keen insight and support; Maggie Herold, my terrific copyeditor, for making me look much smarter than I am; and Sasha Illingworth, my stellar designer, for making the whole thing look so damn good! Thanks to editor Lynne Missen and everyone at HarperCollins Canada for the warm welcome. Thank you, Mark and Danielle, for your friendship, your New York hospitality, and all the long walks through the Park—especially the ones at night! Thank you, Adrienne, for all the support. Thank you, Cec-monster, for keeping me going for all these many years. Huge love and gratitude to my family—especially my mom—for somehow understanding that I would wind up here, even if it was in spite of myself. And most of all…to John—for so many reasons, not the least of which is, without you, I never would have even made it past “what if?”
About the Author
LESLEY LIVINGSTON is a writer and actress living in Toronto. She has a master’s degree in English from the University of Toronto, where she specialized in Arthurian literature and Shakespeare. She is a principal performer and founding member of the Tempest Theatre Group. wondrous strange is her first novel.
You can visit Lesley online at www.lesleylivingston.com.
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Credits
Jacket art © 2009 by Amber Gray
Jacket design by Sasha Illingworth
Copyright
WONDROUS STRANGE. Copyright © 2009 by Lesley Livingston. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic o
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