“Oh.” He scraped his hands down the sides of his face as though trying to wake himself up.
“I told her she could stay as long as she needed. I hope it’s okay.”
“Of course it’s okay.” He squeezed my knee. “I like Lily. She’s a sweet kid. Plus, it’ll be nice to have another person in the house.”
“Am I not enough for you anymore?” I teased him. “Are you bored out of your mind?”
Dad’s mouth quirked into a smile. “I dare anyone to say living with you is boring.”
I grinned.
“You cannot get bored of someone who makes you want to tear your hair out.”
“What? Me?” I teased.
“That tattoo…” He shook his head, but at least he wasn’t scowling anymore.
The first week I’d lost the scarf, he couldn’t look at me without glowering at my neck as though it had wronged him.
“You can’t get bored of someone who feeds you too much good food. Who fills the fridge with your favorite beer. All my clothes are getting tight, by the way.”
“Good.”
Dad smiled. “You can’t get bored of someone who takes such good care of you. How do you even have time to do all you do, what with your new job—which everyone is telling me you’re amazing at.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not that great—”
“George’s wife raved about your strawberry jam cupcakes. All night.”
I linked my hands together, rubbing my knuckles. I wasn’t a fan of compliments. I didn’t know how to deal with them. I was the same way about presents—awkward. “Just following Astra’s recipes,” I said softly.
“Are you leaving me?”
“What?”
“Is that why Lily’s coming to live with us?” He air-quoted the word us. “Because you don’t trust me to be on my own?”
“No, Dad. Lily’s coming to live with us because she really does need a place to stay. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You’re allowed to, you know.” His gaze was on his bare feet, on his long narrow toes that were paler than the rest of his skin. Like me, he’d tanned. Unlike me, he tanned red; I tanned brown like my mother. “Cat, living with my baby girl is a dream come true, but it’s my dream. Not yours. You need to go back to your life. Conquer that world you’ve been so adamant about conquering ever since your granddaddy taught you the definition of the verb at the ripe old age of four and a half.”
Funny the things Dad remembered and I didn’t. I leaned against him. “Daddy, I’m happy to be here with you. Truly, I am.”
“I’m just saying…I’m okay now.”
“I’m glad you’re okay, but I’m still not going anywhere.”
He stroked my shoulder. “I noticed you took the wind chime down again.”
“The noise bothers Lily. But I didn’t throw it out this time.”
A long beat passed. “I’m sort of happy you took it down.”
“Really?” I pressed away from the big, solid man who’d unfalteringly loved me for the last nineteen years.
“Yeah. Even though I’m not trying to erase your mom, I am trying to heal, and that thing tore me up each time I heard it chime.”
“I thought you wanted it there.”
“I didn’t like that you’d thrown it out, but”—he swallowed—“I’m glad for the silence.”
For a long while, we both stayed quiet. Then Dad said, “Did you watch the new Bloodlane episode without me?”
“No.”
“Want to watch it?”
I nodded, unmuted the television, and burrowed against my father. But then I looked at the closed door and sprang toward it. Knocked. A couple seconds later, Lily peeked out, dressed in the leggings and T-shirt I’d lent her. They were baggy on her.
When she saw my father, her eyes widened.
A warm smile curved his lips as he signed something.
She smiled. Signed something back.
“Want to come and watch TV with us?” he asked, using his voice instead of his hands.
Lily was probably used to fancy dinners and glamorous parties—watching TV with us on a worn couch was probably not her thing.
Surprisingly, though, she trailed me into the living room and sat rigidly on one end of the couch.
Dad glanced at me. I bit my lip. I didn’t think telling her to get comfortable would make her comfortable, so I didn’t say anything. Before the episode started, Dad filled her in on the plot of the show. She listened with such rapt fascination you’d think Dad was explaining the mechanics of black holes. When I pressed play, she leaned a little further back into the couch.
I glanced at her screen-lit profile. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined I would be living with Lily Wood, and I’d had some pretty wild dreams. Most of them about her brother and the hunters buried in our backyard.
Another hunter had starred in my dreams a couple nights ago. A squat man discussing the terms of Jacobiah’s accords with Negongwa. The voice of the man I inhabited was loud, his words cutting, his legs short, hairy, and ropy with muscle.
Fog and the strong, spicy scent of male had assaulted my senses, making their disagreement hard to concentrate on. When I’d woken up, only a single word came back to me: nockwad. The rest had remained as fuzzy as the air inside the sweat lodge.
I’d looked up nockwad in Ley’s dictionary.
Nockwad meant mist.
Mist reminded me of the Night of Mist—the one night in a Neverra month the Unseelie could come out of their underground home and revel with their Seelie brothers and sisters.
I sighed and burrowed deeper into the fluffy cushions behind me, dragging my legs up against me. I swear I was certifiable—believing spirits could really visit my mind.
I felt Lily glance at me. If she could see inside my mind, she’d probably hit the road. I looked at her and offered her a smile. She spun her head away and blinked at the TV.
Ace trusted me, which still rattled my mind, but not Lily. And I understood. I’d kissed her ex-fiancé, broken up with her brother, cozied up to Kajika. How dire had her options been for her brother to suggest living with me?
19
The Castes
The following morning, I was supposed to train with Kajika. I wasn’t quite sure if it would be kind to leave Lily alone on her first morning, but I didn’t call to cancel. He needed to know that Lily was living with me. He needed to warn the other hunters to stay away. Not that any had dared come up to my house since they’d attacked me with rowan wood arrows.
When the pickup rumbled into the graveyard at nine o’clock, I hooked my thumbs through my jeans’ belt loops and ambled down my porch. Kajika frowned when he noticed I wasn’t wearing exercise clothes, but then his frown turned into a nod of approval.
“Good thinking, Catori. You will not always be in elastic clothes.” I must’ve jerked in surprise, because his eyebrows slanted. “Was learning to fight in stiff clothes not your intention?”
If his eyes hadn’t set to a place over my shoulder, I might’ve teased him about his stiff clothes comment.
Dad had gone to have breakfast with Bee, and Milly hadn’t shown up yet to determine the cause of death of the newest cadaver in our basement, so that left Lily. She stood in the open doorway, her thin hand clutching the side of the door like her balance depended on it.
I turned back toward Kajika to explain.
His gaze slammed into mine with the force of a punch. “What is Lily Wood doing here?”
I rested my forearms on the truck. “Lily Wood is living with me.”
“What?”
“She called off her engagement to Cruz.”
“I do not understand the connection.”
“Breaking that sort of bond gets you kicked out of Neverra,” I said in a low voice. I didn’t think Lily needed, or wanted, to relive the horror of her decision.
He glanced behind me again, but Lily had retreated into the shadows of the house. “For how long?”
�
��For as long as she has left,” I whispered.
He frowned. “I do not understand.”
So I explained it to him. And then I told him to warn his new clan that she was off-limits.
“Are you certain she has not been sent to spy on you?”
I recoiled, lowered my arms. “That’s—” I was about to say ludicrous, but was it? A chill oozed through me as wetly as a creeping slug.
“You did not even consider the possibility? Faeries love to trick people. Especially hunters. It is their specialty.”
“Hunters are so hung up on that tiny trait of our personality.”
In slow motion, I rotated toward the voice.
Ace stood on the porch steps, hand on the balustrade, buzzed hair glinting gold in the white sun. His gaze skidded over me, then skidded off.
“Is he also living with you, Catori?” Kajika asked.
My neck pivoted back toward the hunter so fast it cracked. “No!” I said, but my stupid face flushed.
“I just came to drop off some clothes for my sister. Can’t have her running around naked. Don’t want her to be mistaken for a hunter.”
Kajika’s lips pressed so tight his upper lip vanished into his lower one. “Was that meant as criticism, pahan?”
“Nope. Just an observation.”
Testosterone zinged through the air as loud as the birds chirping in the leafy rowan trees.
“Ace, do you swear Lily’s not here to spy on me?”
His face shuttered up. And then he snorted. “I knew you disliked me, but now, at least, I know how much.”
I bit my lip to stop it from wobbling, then disguised the sting of his words with annoyance. “Just answer the question, Ace.”
“Would you even believe my answer?”
“Yes. I would believe your answer.”
“You should not believe anything faeries—”
I flung my hand up to shush Kajika.
“Lily is not here to spy on you.”
For a long minute, we stared at each other. I was pretty certain it was the most loaded stare in the history of humankind.
“What about you?” I finally asked.
“You think getting her to live here is my way to spy on you?” His upper lip curled in disgust. “Cat, I’ve moved on.”
I sucked in air. That’s not how I’d meant it. But now that I knew…
Crap…it hurt.
While I still pined for him, he’d replaced me. I wondered if he’d even waited a day to choose someone else. And I didn’t mean a Neverrian day, I meant an Earth day.
“If you’ve got some place to go with your boyfriend”—he gestured to the car—“I’ll stay with Lily.”
“Kajika is not my boyfriend,” I bit out, “but we do have somewhere to be.” I hopped into the cab and slammed the door shut. “Drive,” I hissed when Kajika still hadn’t put the car in gear.
We didn’t talk about Ace or Lily the entire way to the barn. We didn’t talk period. I sulked while Kajika remained steeped in that pensive silence of his.
That morning, I was a tigress.
I fought harder than I’d ever fought, ran quicker than I’d ever run, and sent arrows flying straight into the heart of my targets with such velocity that if those targets had been faeries, they’d all have died.
Ace wasn’t there when I got home, but Lily was. She was reading one of my grandmother’s books on Gottwa history.
“Brushing up on your enemy’s history?” I asked drily.
She blinked at me and closed the book. And then she took her phone out of her silk vest pocket, typed, and angled the screen toward me.
It read, You are not my enemy.
I raked my hand through my hair, matted with sweat from my strenuous workout. “Is Ace still here?”
She shook her head. Then added to the message on her phone, I promise I am not spying on you. Living with you wasn’t my first choice.
“But someone turned you down?”
She bit her lip. Typed again. My first choice was death, but Ace wouldn’t kill me. And you can’t kill yourself with your own dust.
My heart knocked into my ribcage, which made my brand flare. It wasn’t the first time today—it had been lit up like a Christmas tree all morning.
He’s still hopeful he can get me back inside Neverra.
“Is there a way?”
She shook her head gently. If Lily had been anyone else, if I had been anyone else, I would’ve hugged her, but she was Lily and I was me—both of us guarded and reserved.
I did sit on the arm of the couch, though, curling one leg beneath me.
Lily typed again. I read over her shoulder. I met Milly. She seems nice.
“She is.”
She didn’t recognize me.
“Why would she recognize you? You haven’t been back to Rowan— Oh. You mean because you’re famous?”
Lily shrugged.
“You’re that famous, huh?”
She nodded, then pulled up a search page and typed in her name. Articles flooded the screen. The first one was titled “No Double Wedding for the Wood Children.”
My eyes widened. “It’s in the news?”
She didn’t answer. Not that my question required an answer.
“You think reporters will come to Rowan?”
They might. She raised her large silver eyes to me before returning her gaze to her screen. If you want me to leave, I—
I laid my hand on her bony shoulder and shook my head. “If anyone tries to approach, I’ll kick their asses back to wherever they came from. I’m strong now.” I flexed my arm, which was toned and possessed a slight bulge.
Is that what you do with Kajika?
“Yes. I make him teach me to fight. We meet twice a week.”
What has he taught you?
I hesitated to tell her.
Sensing my hesitation, she wrote: You don’t have to tell me anything. You don’t even have to talk with me if you don’t want to.
“I don’t mind talking with you, Lily. I’m sort of surprised you want to talk with me. What with what happened between me and your brother.”
That’s between him and you.
I nibbled on the inside of my cheek. “Kajika is training me to use a bow and arrow—very 1800s of him. He insists it teaches me accuracy and develops muscle strength.”
Lily wrinkled her nose. Her grandfather had lost his life to that weapon centuries ago.
“He’s also coaching me on my running. I don’t run as fast as he does, but I run fast. Like Olympic-medal fast.”
If faeries and hunters ever made peace, and medical school was no longer an option, I could make a career as a professional runner. It was far from what I dreamed for myself, but it would pay nicely.
“He’s also trying to help me tap into”—I pressed a fingertip against my forehead so as not to say the word out loud. I didn’t think Milly could hear anything, but better safe than sorry—“but that’s a bust.”
You mean, move things with your mind?
“I managed twice, three times. Well, four if you count the storm, which may have been me or may have been mother nature…”
You made a storm?
“I’m not sure, but I seem to be able to control”—I dropped my voice to a mere whisper—“water.”
Aren’t you a hunter?
I shrugged. “Why? Can’t hunters manipulate water?”
Lily shook her head.
“I thought they could move anything with their minds.” To hell with keeping my voice low.
Not water.
What did Lily mean?
The blonde faerie tapped the Gottwa history book on her lap. Only Daneelies can move water.
“Daneelies?”
A long time ago, there was a third caste of faeries. I must’ve looked deeply confused because Lily added to her message: The Seelie: us. The Unseelie: the Forma. And then the Daneelies. They were the smallest caste. Instead of fire, they had water mixed with blood in their veins. They were t
he ones who created the mist on my grandfather’s orders. Once he no longer had use for them, he got rid of them.
“Got rid? You mean banished them here?”
Lily stared at me gravely. I mean massacred them.
My saliva thickened, soured.
Although I never met my grandfather, he was considered the most ruthless Neverrian leader.
More than ever, I believed that if one positive thing came out of the Dark Day, it was Maximus Wood’s death.
“And you think I could be a Daneelie?” I asked in a quiet voice.
I have no idea, but if you can move water, then maybe. If you are though, then you can’t tell anyone, because Daneelies are everyone’s enemies. The forma detest them for imprisoning them and the Seelies fear them because Daneelie magic can undo the mist.
“Do the hunters hate them too?”
The caste became extinct around the time hunters were born, so hunters never encountered Daneelie. At least that’s what I thought. The extinction part. Her gray eyes skimmed my face. The fact that you’re here makes me think otherwise.
I linked my hands together.
But I could be wrong.
But she could also be right.
To answer your earlier question, if hunters encountered a Daneelie today, they would probably hate them. Daneelies, like Seelies, had dust. Hunters hunt everyone with dust. I think your people—she erased the last two words and replaced them with: the hunters called them Mishipeshu.
I’d heard that word before. I racked my brain to locate the memory. Had my grandfather told me stories about them? The knowledge of where I’d heard it spilled like an injection into my veins, cold and slow-moving. “I read about them in the book you—” I was about to say stole, but substituted it for the word, “lost. They were shapeshifting faeries who lived underwater.”
She pushed her hair behind her ear. They didn’t really shapeshift, but their skin coated in scales under water. A diamond the size of her lobe twinkled in the ray of light slanting through the window. Can you breathe underwater?
“I never tried.” Goosebumps prickled my forearms. “Oh my God, you think I could?”
She shrugged a shoulder. Daneelies could, so maybe.
“This is all so insane.” I rose from the couch and paced the living room. Without pausing, I asked, “Why would Holly tell me I had a choice between hunter or faerie if I was something else entirely? Plus, her twin sister, she drowned, so I don’t see how— Unless she didn’t drown? You think Chatwa faked her death?” I stopped pacing.
Rising Silver Mist Page 10
