The Last Changeling

by Chelsea Pitcher

“Thank you, Principal,” Alexia said into the microphone, breaking whatever spell Brad had on us. “Thanks, Brad.”

  Brad, too, seemed like he was under a spell. But he managed to lumber off the stage, to the crowd’s disappointment. Then it was just Alexia up there.

  She’d already taken off her crown.

  “This is such a beautiful gift,” she said. “I know just where I want to stick it.” She glanced at the crowd and we stared back, transfixed. “But I don’t really deserve this. There’s only one person in this school who does. She’s the only reason I’m here tonight. She’s probably the only reason I’m alive.” She shifted her gaze, searching the crowd of faces. “Kylie Angelini, you’re the love of my life. Would you please join me on stage?”

  The crowd stared, speechless, as Kylie rolled up the ramp. When she reached the center of the stage, Alexia placed the crown on her head and kissed her lips.

  –––––

  “Are you ready?” Lora laced her fingers through mine, pulling me against the crowd. All around us, people stood like zombies, staring at the couple on stage. The vast confusion, which had reached the chaperones as well, allowed for a moment of lax security, and Lora and I were able to slip out of the door unnoticed.

  The wind grabbed at our hair as we ran across the grounds. Within minutes we’d reached the outskirts, sheltered by clusters of trees. In a way, it reminded me of the area where we’d first met: the swing-set hidden by trees.

  I didn’t want to think about what that meant.

  Lora pulled herself onto a low branch. I knew that if I stood right in front of her, she could wrap her legs around me.

  But would she?

  “I don’t believe it,” I said, taking a step toward her. “I really thought you were going to win.” I meant it as a compliment, but the second it was out of my mouth, I realized it might hurt her.

  Her laugh surprised me. “Maybe I did.” She took hold of my tie and pulled me closer. “I’m here with you, aren’t I?”

  I removed the jeweled crown from my arm and placed it gently on her head. “Are you having fun?”

  “Surprisingly, yes.” She reached out her arms like a child. When she spoke, the words were too wonderful to believe. “Come closer.”

  I stepped between her thighs. And then I was staring at her blatantly, at all that skin above the binding tightness of her corset. The tops of her breasts were smooth; her neck curved like a reformed vampire’s kryptonite. I wanted to trail my lips over the nape of her neck, inhale the woodsy scent of her, but instead I tilted my gaze up, to her eyes.

  “I feel like you’ve drugged me,” I said. “Put me under a spell.”

  She leaned toward me, gripping a branch above her head to keep from falling. Our lips were inches apart.

  “Definitely a spell of some kind,” I murmured.

  “Do you doubt the authenticity of your feelings?” Lora let herself slip down, dangling that much closer to my mouth. She was playing with me, the way a kitten toys with a combative mouse, but I couldn’t stop leaning into her.

  I wasn’t kidding about feeling drugged.

  “No,” I told her. “But there’s something about you … ”

  She shook her head. “It is you who have enchanted me, ensorcelled every inch of my being. But … ”

  “What?”

  She gripped the branch above her head with newfound conviction. “I must not succumb to it.”

  “Hasn’t anyone ever broken the rules?” I brushed her cheek with my hand, refusing to give up. I wanted to see if she would lean closer.

  She did. “With affairs of the flesh, certainly. But affairs of the flesh do not last.”

  “What about love?”

  “On occasion. We thought them mad.”

  “Is that how you feel?”

  “I feel as though I am seeing clearly for the first time. And yet … ” She searched my eyes. “What is the fate of the perennial blossom who gives her heart to the ephemeral butterfly?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We are beyond star-crossed. We are fatally mismatched. Even if we could delude ourselves into chasing fleeting moments of joy, we are destined to lose—”

  “How can this possibly be losing?”

  “I would be leading you into danger. Infringing upon your free will—”

  “I choose this.”

  “It goes against my nature.”

  “I choose you.” I wrapped an arm around her waist.

  “We could lose everything—”

  “I’ll take it.”

  “—and compromise the future for both of our families. Taylor, you don’t know what you are playing with.”

  Using my free hand, I trailed up her arm, toward the branch that she was holding. “I’m not playing with anything.” I tried to push my fingers into the palm of her hand, to loosen her grip. She held tight. “You can doubt your feelings all you want. But don’t ever doubt mine.”

  The air between us stilled. I lifted my face until I could taste her breath. “Let go.”

  Lora fell into me. Her hand slipped from the branch, tangling with my waiting fingers, and she wrapped her legs around me. I caught her mouth with mine. I wanted to drink from her forever and never seek another form of sustenance.

  She tasted so sweet.

  Loosening the hand that held hers, I slipped both hands beneath the folds of her skirt. My fingers crackled with electricity as they slid over her skin. I was running them over the tops of her thighs when she broke away, barely, leaning against the tree to create distance.

  Her movements didn’t faze me. I lowered my lips to her ear, listening to the sound of her breath to discern what brought her the most pleasure.

  I realized I was straining to see clearly. The sky, which had been mostly clear all day, had in the past few minutes grown increasingly dark, and I looked up to see purple clouds gathering. Then the clouds began to spill warm rain.

  Lora gasped as lightning streaked the sky, and she pulled my hands from her thighs. It seemed like she’d taken the darkening sky as a sign, a warning against our closeness.

  Again, she’d found a way to pull away from me.

  My heart cracked. I lifted my hand, my body panicky with want, and let the pads of my fingers linger half an inch from her cheek. “Please let me touch you.”

  “Taylor.”

  “I won’t hurt you,” I promised.

  “My sweetest salvation,” she said with a smile. “I don’t think you could.” She smoothed the hair from my face. Her touch was like white heat, like crackling lightning, and my body lurched forward, pulled in by the feel of it.

  She realized what she’d done. As she slid down to the ground, I stepped forward, pressing her against the tree.

  “Do you want me to back up?” I asked.

  Her gaze traveled down my body, to where my leg slid between hers. I got the distinct impression she could slip out of my grasp with the tiniest of efforts, but I waited, in reverent silence, for her reply.

  As she spoke, she closed her eyes. “No.”

  I waited another minute, wary of angering her or giving her a reason to pull away. “Do you want me to kiss you?”

  “Always.” She looked at me, and the urgency in her eyes mirrored my own feelings. “And you don’t even know it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All this time, you have revealed yourself to me. In spite of pain, and terror, you have revealed yourself to me. And still I keep myself hidden.”

  “But I know you.”

  “You can’t,” she said, smiling sadly. “I haven’t let you.”

  “Lora.”

  “I haven’t told you the true ending of the story. Please … ” She slid out of my grip, just as easily as I’d thought she could. One second she was there, pressed so close t
o me, and the next she was gone. Her gaze darted about fearfully, reminding me again of the day we’d met. Was it a sign that things would begin and end the same way? Would she now disappear as quickly as she’d arrived?

  “Come with me,” she said. I took her hand, and she led me across the grass to the hotel. We climbed two flights of cement stairs and followed the outdoor hallway to our room.

  Lora stepped inside first, letting me pass her as she locked the deadbolt and latched the chain. Slowly, as if barely awake, she lowered herself to the edge of the bed. I knelt on the floor in front of her.

  She was shaking. “My body, spirit, and heart are drawn to you, almost as if bound. But my mind is in turmoil. How can this be, my greatest desire? How can that which is against nature feel to me like a force of nature? Nothing has ever felt so right. Nothing.”

  I watched her intently, aware that something had changed. Maybe everything.

  “I have always trusted myself without question,” she said. “So now, when my spirit moves toward you with every breath, who am I to let some story keep me from trusting myself? You are a force of nature, and I know that in spite of my efforts to keep my distance, nothing in this world can change the way I feel about you.”

  “What are you saying?”

  She leaned back, fumbling with the pouch around her neck. I waited for her to pull out the blood-spattered dandelion. But the object she removed was fuzzy and green, coiled tightly like a cocoon.

  “I’m saying our story isn’t over yet.” She held out her hand.

  21

  ElorA

  My hand shook as I clutched the riddle. My entire body shook, wracked with the fear of how much he could hurt me now that I had admitted to needing him. I had never needed anyone before. Now I felt I would wither and die if he rejected me. But he had kissed me, held me, maybe even loved me … could I really risk all of it by revealing my true self?

  I looked into his shining, leaf-green eyes.

  Yes.

  I had no other choice. If he rejected me, I would know his adoration had been an illusion. But if I did not give him the chance to see me fully, he would not have the opportunity to truly love me.

  We cannot love that which we do not know.

  I had to risk it.

  “Taylor,” I began, my fingers tracing the edges of the Queen’s riddle.

  “Lora,” he said, and I started to shake.

  “Elora.” I closed my eyes to match my clenched fist. Even as I said, “My name is Elora,” I couldn’t open my hand. “I told you a name that would seem common to you, to hide my difference. Every deception, I made to hide my difference. To keep myself safe from you.”

  “Why?” Taylor placed his hand over my fist, as if to soften my grip.

  “Because to admit that we can be … together, without breaking some great universal law, is to leave behind the person I was and the person I’ve been pretending to be. It is to become something else entirely, and that, more than anything, is what scares me. I do not so much fear my world changing as I fear changing myself, admitting that everything I’ve believed about myself is untrue. I would have to become something previously unimagined to make room for this one, unbelievable truth. The truth of how I feel about you.”

  “How do you feel about me?” All this time, his eyes had never left my face. A lesser being might have let his gaze stray down, thinking of the earthly delights he was sure to receive when I finished talking. But this story—the first completely honest story I had given him—was all he cared about. I could see it in his unflinching gaze, feel it in the way his fingers kept gliding over mine. Soothing me. Guiding me.

  He is so kind. The Seelie Court would love him.

  I opened my mouth to tell him the feelings I had kept guarded, even from myself.

  His phone rang.

  Is it a sign?

  “Sorry,” he said, fumbling to pull the phone out of his pocket.

  I watched in silence as he rejected the call.

  “My mom,” he said. “Probably just checking in.”

  “She loves you.”

  He dropped his gaze.

  “I know you don’t believe that, but she does,” I said. “Taylor?”

  “Hmm.” He kept his gaze down, trying to ride this moment out. Waiting for me to invite him back into my thoughts, and maybe my embrace.

  The Seelie Court would love him, I thought again. But why would the Unseelie Court hate him? Especially enough to consider him their bane?

  The phone rang again. Again, he silenced it.

  It is a sign, I realized as his hand explored the spaces between my fingers. The riddle had already been solved. I was just trying to twist its meaning to get what I wanted.

  I cannot have him.

  “Taylor. Look at me,” I said, taking advantage of the opportunity created by his mother’s call. His eyes glistened, hopeful. “I know you believe that your family’s abandonment means they don’t love you, but I believe there is more to it than that. They kept their distance for their own reasons, not because of you. Do you understand that?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this now.”

  “You need to talk about this now. Now is the only time we can talk about this.”

  “Why? I’m coming with you. I already know that.”

  “Taylor. My sweet.” I kissed him because I could. Because I needed to. And because, as I had told him, our time was running out. “I’m not telling you the truth because I need you to come with me. I’m telling you because you need to understand that sometimes, when people leave you, it isn’t because they don’t love you. It’s because they are trying to protect you.”

  “What are you saying?”

  His phone rang a third time. This time he just looked at it, forcing me to talk above the sound.

  “If things remain as they are, you will not understand why I must leave,” I said.

  “You can’t be serious. I—”

  “Taylor.” I spoke over him. I had to get this out before I caved and convinced myself I could be with him. “I cannot have you thinking that I’m leaving because I don’t care for you.”

  The phone rang and rang, and he just stared at it.

  “It’s because I care too much. I will not risk your life by bringing you into danger. And I will not let you live as someone’s plaything—”

  “Stop.” His harshness startled me.

  My heart jostled around in the sea of my chest without his sweetness to anchor it. “Please, understand—”

  He lifted the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

  His mother’s voice exploded on the other end.

  “Mom?” he said, trying to get a word in. “Mom, calm down. Are you okay?”

  Another pause. I leaned in. In the midst of her hysterical crying, I made out the words found, body, and Lora.

  Me.

  My heart thundered so loudly I could hardly gather my thoughts. Still, over the hammering, I realized what had happened. I had lingered in the human lands too long. My glamour had worn off. And Laura Belfry, the girl whose life I’d borrowed, had been found.

  Her body, that is.

  And now Taylor’s parents believed I was dead. His poor mother had been assigned the task of informing him.

  I touched my fingers to his lips, closing my eyes for only a second. A moment later, my arms were wrapped around him, stifling his efforts to listen to his mother. He didn’t hug me back.

  He didn’t hold me or kiss me or tell me he loved me.

  My foolishness had stripped him of the chance.

  “I am so sorry for all of this,” I whispered, moving toward the back balcony. “I’ll give you some privacy.”

  Taylor tried to protest, but I would have none of it. Opening the sliding glass door, I slipped into the dark, delicious night. Brad’s balcony was merely a
leap away.

  I closed the door behind me.

  22

  TayloR

  Beneath Mom’s muffled sobs, words were hard to distinguish. I could only make out the bones of it: girl, missing, dead, and something I didn’t understand: clothing. But the trigger word, the one that made me want to pick up my things and run, came hard and fast:

  Police.

  “What do you mean, Dad called the police? Mom, calm down. You’re not going to help me if I can’t understand you.”

  “Help you? I can’t help you!” Mom shrieked. “Why did you do this?”

  “What did I do?” I strained to see through the glass door to the balcony. The darkness swirled like a mirage, teasing me. The curtain was partially closed. I would have gotten up to open it and bring Lora back inside, if only my legs worked.

  Mom’s voice was a whisper spoken through fabric. “Your father was watching the evening news. There was a special about a girl—a girl who went missing. They’ve just found her body in the woods outside of town.”

  “That’s terrible, Mom. But what does it—”

  “Laura’s body. Your friend.”

  What?

  “It’s a mistake.” It couldn’t be Lora. Elora. She was sitting right in front of me a minute ago. And now she was out on the balcony. I could prove it.

  I tried to stand.

  “Honey, tell me you didn’t do anything,” Mom said frantically. “Please tell me you didn’t hurt that girl.”

  “Hurt her? Why would I—” My legs buckled. “Oh my God. You think I killed her?”

  “It must’ve been an accident. An argument, or maybe she fell.” Mom was babbling, talking to herself in a way that only sounded like she was talking to me. My mind was babbling, too, telling me to stop thinking about that picture I’d seen on TV.

  The picture of Lora.

  At least, I’d thought it was Lora. The girl had her face. Her name, with a different spelling. But it couldn’t have been—because that girl was dead, and Lora was here with me. I’d seen her. Talked to her. Kissed her. And you can’t kiss a dead person. Well, you can, but it’s pretty messed up, and—Oh God. What had they found?