“Did you know that could happen?”
Her gaze still cemented to the swimmers, she shook her head.
I scanned the beach for Kajika, but the hunter was long gone. “Do you think he can still hear you?”
She hoisted her shoulders.
No wonder Kajika was pissed. The bond had opened a direct line of communication between his mind and Lily’s. “Can you hear him?”
She shook her head.
“Wow. That’s going to be weird. Wow.”
Lily winced.
“Maybe it’ll stop tomorrow.”
23
Sign Language
Kajika showed up at the crack of dawn the following morning. Dad wasn’t awake yet and neither was Lily. I was only up because I started work at that time.
He got out of the pickup, slamming the door so hard the car shook. “I need to see her.”
The checkered navy curtains of Lily’s room were closed. “She’s not awake.”
He stared at the unmoving curtains. “She is.”
“You can hear her?” I asked, partly astonished and partly worried.
“Do you think I am lying?”
“No.” I pulled my denim jacket closed and started toward my car, but stopped in front of Kajika. “Look, she didn’t know this could happen.”
“I cannot have a faerie inside my brain, Catori. I will go insane. Already I have Blake’s memories, now Lily’s voice!”
“Calm down.”
“How can I calm down? My head”—he tugged at his hair so hard I thought he would pull it out—“my head no longer feels like my own!”
I placed both my palms on his shoulders to calm him down and to hold him back. I feared he would barge into my house and strangle Lily. “Can you hear her when you’re far away?”
“No.”
“Then just stay away.”
“Can she hear my thoughts?” His gaze was as wild and unfocused as his manners.
“No.”
“Are you certain?”
“She said she couldn’t, and I believe her.”
He snorted, backing up so that my hands fell away. “You still trust faeries after they spy on you.”
“Lily had no idea.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Kajika, even if Lily knew, she’s not the one who asked him to spy on me, okay? That was all Ace. And trust me, I’m mad. Really mad, but I’m also exhausted right now, and I don’t want to think about last night. Not right now anyway. Now you should go, because I need to go.”
“I want to talk with her.”
“Come back tonight.”
“Now.”
“Kajika—”
He stalked past me toward her window and knuckled the glass so hard I expected it to shatter. The curtain fluttered, and then Lily appeared, a ghostly apparition against the darkness of her room. Seconds ticked by in wary silence, seconds during which the hunter and faerie watched each other. I advanced toward Kajika, laid a hand on his forearm.
He shoved my hand off, then moved away at that lighting speed of his, lips curled into a snarl, palms sandwiched around his skull.
I stalked after him. “Wait.”
He lunged into his truck.
I held on to his door so he couldn’t slam it shut. “What was that? What just happened?”
“Let go, Catori.”
“I won’t let go until you tell me what she said.”
“She said…she said. It does not even matter what she said. What matters is that she can speak inside me!”
“Maybe she can learn to control it.”
He rubbed at the brand that flared on his wrist, rubbed it as though trying to erase it.
“Promise me you won’t hurt her while I’m at work.”
“I do not make promises I cannot keep.”
My pulse thrummed underneath my skin that suddenly felt icy. “If anything happens to her, Ace said he would kill me.”
Kajika snorted. “The faerie would never harm you.”
“He killed Alice last night.”
“He did what?” Kajika’s gaze slammed back against my house, against Lily’s curtains that were luckily closed. I didn’t want her to be at the receiving end of that look.
“I tried to stop him.”
“Sure you did. You did not even like Alice.”
My fingers tightened around the cool metal doorframe. “Just because I disliked her doesn’t mean I wanted her dead. You know me better than that!” My words, or perhaps my delivery, made the hunter’s scowl falter. “Kajika, you kill Lily, Ace kills me. And then it becomes an all-out war, and innocents will get hurt in the crossfire. Is that what you want?”
A vein pulsed in the hunter’s temple. “I would never have killed Lily,” he muttered, staring daggers at his wrist.
“So I can go to work and not fear she’ll be gone when I come back?”
Kajika raised his eyes back to mine. They were tinged red from lack of sleep. “She protected me last night.”
I startled. “You believe her now?”
“I know how faerie brands work. It does not mean that I appreciate being branded or that she will not kill me if she desires me gone.”
“I would never let her, Kajika. Besides, she is dying. So your brand, it’ll fade.”
Unlike mine.
I released his door and curled my fingers into a fist. My nails bit into the soft flesh of my palm.
“Did Alice attack Ace?” Kajika asked after a long beat. He sounded tired, drained.
He sounded like I felt. “She taunted him. From what Lily tells me, Pietro was one of Ace’s closest friends, and from what I’ve gathered, Ace doesn’t have many friends.”
Motes of pollen glimmered in the pink dawn. It reminded me of gassen, or what I could see of it. Apparently, it was fluid, but not to hunters. Hunters saw through dust.
“Where is Alice’s body?”
I swallowed, and my throat felt coated in thorns. “I asked Lily to burn it.”
“You did what?” He slapped his steering wheel. “We do not burn our dead!”
The tips of my ears flamed. “Kajika, I was alone with Lily last night. I couldn’t exactly drag a dead body down the beach. Not in front of the town. Imagine how many minds you would’ve had to wipe this morning.”
“I would rather wipe hundreds of minds than have one of my people turn into ash like a fucking faerie.”
I flinched. “I’m sorry.” A breeze kicked up my hair. I ripped my hand through my loose strands, dragged them off my face, and coiled them beneath my collar so they would stay put. “I didn’t do it to offend you.” Tears pricked my tired eyes. “It was a shit night. A really shit night. So forgive me for Alice.” I closed my eyes. Inhaled deeply.
For long seconds, silence entrenched us. I waited to hear the car door slam shut, the motor rumble. When neither happened, I cracked my lids open.
Kajika’s bronzed skin was mottled with livid red splotches. “I must inform the others. And I need to speak to Gwenelda.”
Annoyance lifted off his skin and turned the air acridly pungent. He was vexed he’d been left out of his clan’s dealings, which I could understand. I wondered about Gwenelda’s reasons for going behind his back. Had she stopped trusting Kajika because he was friends with me?
He shut his car door, and I jumped.
“Are you angry with me?” I asked.
Head bent over his steering wheel, he said, “I am angry with the world right now. I am angry with myself for not realizing what my people were doing. I am angry with Lily for marking me. With Ace for killing one of our own”—he looked up at me—“for threatening one of our own.”
Relief coursed through my veins as powerfully as the wave had rolled over the beach last night. I suddenly wanted to tell Kajika about it, ask him about the Mishipeshu, pillage his mind for any fact he could have gleaned about this supposedly extinct caste.
“Are we training tomorrow?”
I blinked at him. “You’ll still train me?
”
“Yes.”
I smiled, and my heart lightened a little. “Nine o’clock?”
He nodded, turned the key in the ignition, then drove away, tires spraying gravel on the emerald grass.
A breeze brushed through the rowan wood trees and lifted particles of dry dirt that plinked against the headstones of my ancestors. I never approached the rowan wood circle, never dared walk over it for fear of one of my ancestors sticking their hand out and seizing my ankle. It was a stupid fear, of course. To awaken, they had to be unburied and a spell had to be read. And there was no way in hell I would plant a shovel in that part of our background. Not that I would shovel any other place in our backyard. I might’ve been born to parents for whom death wasn’t creepy, but to me, death was chilling.
Our front door swept open, jolting me out of my macabre thoughts. Lily was dressed in skinny jeans, a silky white shirt, and her starry sneakers. I cocked an eyebrow. She held her arms out in front of her, then with both forefingers extended, she bent her arms, and pointed at herself, then at me, and finally at my car.
“You want a ride?” I asked.
She joggled her head. Not a nod, but also not a no.
“Kajika promised not to hurt you.”
She flipped her hand palm-side down toward her chest and drew a circle. I wasn’t sure what that meant. She walked toward me, typing at the same time. When she arrived next to me, she propped her phone in front of me. On it was written, please.
I flattened my hand and made a circle. “This means please?”
She smiled and nodded, her golden rope of hair swinging around her slender neck. And this means come. She repeated her earlier sign.
“How do you sign yes?”
She made a fist and flicked her wrist twice.
I mimicked her, which earned me another smile.
As we walked to the Honda, she showed me how to sign the word car. Learning something that had nothing to do with faeries and hunters kicked some of the dread out of my bones. As I manned the bakery, Lily taught me more words. By the end of the day, I could make a couple sentences.
I was so proud, I displayed my new talent over dinner. Dad beamed, then insisted on being taught more phrases. We spent the rest of the meal attempting to make sentences and laughing when those sentences went awry.
Although I didn’t want to go to bed that night, the second my head hit the pillow, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
No.
That was false.
I did dream.
I dreamed of Ace.
I dreamed he’d asked me to marry him.
I woke up before giving him an answer.
24
Devil Incarnate
While I worked on improving my aim, movement caught my attention. I turned my bow and arrow toward the spot that had shifted, finding it was a person and not a wild bird.
I lowered my bow. “Lily?”
She combed her fingers through her hair that had snarled from her flight. In seconds, the strands were separated and rested smoothly against her flushed cheeks.
Kajika stepped in front of me. “What are you doing here, little pahan?”
With her fingers inverted, she pressed her palms together, then slid her hands slowly out. I didn’t know that sign, so was thankful when Kajika said, “Peace?” He spit out the word. “I do not care if you come in peace. You should not be here at all.”
“Kajika, it’s okay. We have nothing to hide.”
His shoulders tightened. “You will stay quiet?” He made a noise that sounded so savage, Lily stepped back, tripping on an old beer can. She fell, eyes wide in surprise.
I shot out from behind Kajika and extended my hand. Once she latched onto it, I hoisted her up. The back of her white shorts was stained brown.
I’m not sure why I laughed—it was incredibly childish—but I couldn’t help it. Lily’s cheeks flamed as she took in her mud-spattered shorts.
“I’m sorry.” I pressed my forearm against my mouth to throttle my out-of-control giggling.
Blue flames engulfed Lily’s right hand.
Kajika, who must’ve thought Lily was about to lash out at me for making fun of her, rammed into me and hauled me back. The corners of Lily’s lips turned down as she loosed the fire on the stain. In seconds the brown was all gone, but not her frown.
“That is what you say,” Kajika hissed.
“What does she say?” I shoved him off me.
“That she was not going to burn you.”
I twirled and glared at Kajika. “Of course she wasn’t going to set me on fire!”
“You are mad at me?”
“You think the worst of people.”
His jaw set.
“But thank you,” I conceded. “For having my back. You okay, Lily?”
“Are we going to have a tea party, or are we going to work on improving your skills?”
“Did you just make a joke, Kajika?” I grinned.
The hunter scowled at me, and then he scowled at Lily. I’m not sure what she said through their bond to earn her a scowl, but considering she smiled, it must’ve been something that pricked Kajika’s ego.
“Catori, get in position.”
Still smiling, I flicked two fingers against my forehead. “Yes, sir.”
“Her target is that tree.” Kajika pointed it out to Lily.
For the past half hour, I’d been squinting at the squat, flowery tree that looked, from where we stood, no bigger than a pink-haired troll figurine. It was ridiculously far and out of my reach. I nocked an arrow, closed one eye, then raised my bow. I let it fly in the right direction, but it fell far, far from its mark. I didn’t have the strength to power that shot.
“It is not impossible,” Kajika grumbled.
“Well it’s not easy.”
“I was not talking to you, Catori.”
“Oh.” I glanced at Lily who had her arms crossed over her chest.
“Catori, give me your bow.”
I handed him my bow.
“The pahan doubts my skills.”
“Kajika’s really good, Lily.”
She fixed her gaze on Kajika’s hands that fit a feathered arrow against the bow string. He pulled his right arm back, sinews and tendons shifting underneath his sun-browned skin. He closed one eye, raised his hands. His chest lifted slowly, fell even slower. I held my breath.
He released the arrow. It ripped through the blue air, a sharp white blur that shrank until it was barely visible. A white dot on brown bark.
“Told you,” I whispered to Lily. I hadn’t doubted he would hit the tree, but that didn’t lessen my awe.
Kajika pressed the bow back into my hands, a bead of sweat trickling down the side of his smug face.
Suddenly, he looked up at Lily, the smugness gone. “Yes, it was static, but we do not train on moving targets.” A beat passed during which Kajika’s brow, in turn, creased and smoothed. “Are you volunteering?”
Lily’s eyes didn’t leave the hunter’s face.
“I have a few store-bought ones made of bamboo.”
I gasped as I made sense of their one-sided conversation. “Absolutely not! We are not shooting at Lily.”
“Bamboo will not poison her.”
“But iron will.”
“The tips are not made of iron. And they are blunt.”
“Still,” I said, heart knocking around my ribcage. “I’m not shooting at Lily, and you’re not either!”
Lily placed her hand on my arms and tipped her face down.
“She is telling you that faeries move fast and that if you train on unmoving targets, all of it will be for nothing. You will not stand a chance.”
“But—”
“Why would you help us, Lily?” Kajika asked. “What do you get from this?”
Her face colored. She dropped her gaze to a patch of yellowed grass.
“Why must Catori improve fast?” Kajika cocked an eyebrow. “Danny? Who is Danny?”
Lily
soared toward the tree Kajika had hit.
“I can still hear you,” he said, but it was so low that she wouldn’t hear him. “Daneelie. Who is this Daneelie person, Catori?”
Cold sweat stuck my T-shirt to my suddenly rigid spine. “Maybe…me.”
His frown deepened.
I spun my mother’s ruby ring around my finger. “The Gottwas called them Mishipeshu.”
“Mishipeshu?” His amber eyes widened. “Mishipeshu?” He stared at me as though I’d somehow morphed into a scaly monster.
“Part. I’m still part hunter. I might be. Lily doesn’t know for sure. Besides, you hate Seelies, so shouldn’t that make you happy?”
“I do not know what to make of this. I have never encountered a Mishipeshu, but I have heard stories. Stories that would give you nightmares.”
I shivered.
“Can you shapeshift?”
“They don’t really shape—”
“Can you?”
“No.”
“What about breathing underwater?”
“I haven’t tried.”
“Oh, Gejaiwe,” he murmured.
If only imploring the Great Spirit could answer our questions, but the Gottwas’ Great Spirit was an Unseelie stuck in the dormant body of Negongwa, not an actual divinity that could solve problems. Of course, Kajika didn’t know this. He believed hunters had been created to kill faeries. He didn’t know hunters were made from a caste of imprisoned, bodiless faeries. That conversation needed to happen soon.
Lily was back. She signed the word sorry to me. I signed back, it’s okay.
“I’m actually relieved he knows. Now he can tell me everything he’s learned about Mishipeshu.”
He was still observing me through narrowed eyes.
“I’m still me, Kajika.”
“Mishipeshu were pure evil, because their magic was tremendous and dangerous, and their use of it cruel.”
Great. So now I was part devil, part useless hunter, and part frightened human. And possibly part faerie. I hadn’t gotten Ley’s DNA results back.
“I realize that, Lily. I realize Catori is not malevolent, but power changes people. And most often, not for the better.”
“I’m not going to turn into some monster, you guys.” I repeated, “I’m not,” because Kajika didn’t seem convinced.
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