Uneasy Alliance

  Part Two

  Leena

  15 September 2014

  Her twin sister, Caitlin, and their father were sitting at the dining room table when Leena came downstairs.

  “Look who’s up,” her father said jovially as he glanced up over the top of his morning paper. His wife and daughters might prefer to get to get their news digitally, but Donovan Wallace refused to give up his daily paper. Leena liked that about her father. He was a man of traditions. He was predictable and unsurprising. That was somehow reassuring. Especially now, when everything else in her life had been turned upside down.

  “Morning,” she mumbled as she plopped down into a chair. She had stayed up way too late the night before trying to figure out how she was going to get enough magic together to wake her boyfriend, Barry, out of his enchanted sleep.

  Caitlin had been doing something on her phone, but she put it down to give her sister a look of surprise. “You’re up,” she said. “And dressed. Where are you going today?”

  “School,” Leena said as she reached across the table and grabbed a dish of scrambled eggs. She spooned some onto her plate, grateful that her mother had set a place for her.

  Leena hadn’t been down to breakfast in over a week, so maybe she should have been surprised about that. But she wasn’t. Her mother was also predictable. Not because Aileen Wallace was a traditionalist like her husband, but because she refused to accept that things might be other than she wanted them to be. If she wanted her daughter to get up and go to school, she would naturally act as if that was exactly what was going to happen.

  And of course, now it had. Things had a way of turning out like her mother wanted them to eventually.

  “Really?” Caitlin stared at her sister. “Why?”

  “Now, now, Caity,” said their father. He smiled at Leena. “Education is very important. Leena knows that. Right, honey?”

  As she buttered a piece of toast, Leena made herself smile and nod at her father. She wasn’t actually going to school for the education. She probably knew everything that the teachers at Seelie High had to teach. She had already graduated High School. Not to mention college. Or at least Aillie Ansel had and Leena had her memories.

  The problem with reincarnation was that sometimes your outsides were a lot younger than your insides.

  “You’re crazy,” Caitlin said. “If I could get away with staying home, I wouldn’t be taking Mr. Maclain’s chemistry quiz today.”

  “There’s a quiz today?” Leena groaned. Chemistry had never been her strong suit and she hadn’t studied. Oh well. Hopefully, Aillie Ansel’s memories would be able to help her remember the periodic table of elements.

  The door to the kitchen swung open and their mother walked in, holding a plate of bacon in her hand. “Good morning, Leena. Is that the only shirt you have to wear to school? I’ll pick out some of your nicer tops from your closet and have them altered today so that you’ll have something more appropriate to wear tomorrow.”

  Mrs. Wallace set the plate of bacon on the table and sat down across from Leena, carefully laying a cloth napkin on her lap.

  Leena looked down at the t-shirt she was wearing. It was one she had gotten for volunteering at a fundraiser for the local animal shelter over the summer. It had a big paw print and the caption, “Pet Pal,” stamped across the front. She had hastily cut two slits in the back for her wings to stick through.

  “Okay,” she said. “I mean, thank you, Mom.”

  Kira

  4 October 2014

  “Do I have to go?” I ask as I watch my suitcase disappearing into the x-ray machine.

  “No, honey. You don’t have to go, but your father will be very disappointed if you don’t,” Mom says as she squeezes my hand.

  “I don’t want to meet her,” I say.

  “You might like her.” Mom is trying to be diplomatic. She was as surprised as I was to find out that my father was engaged to another woman less than two months after their divorce had been finalized. Even though she wouldn’t admit it, I knew that she was hurt. But she was trying her hardest to hide all that from me, to pretend like what Dad did no longer had any effect on her at all.

  “I won’t like her,” I promise and Mom smiles a little.

  “You’ll never know unless you get on the plane.”

  Sighing, I set my purse in a plastic bin and then slip off my shoes and toss them in too. “Can I come home early if I hate her?”

  Mom laughs at that. She gives me a little hug. “You can come home whenever you want, sweetie.”

  I hug her back, take a deep breath, and walk through the security gate.

  Leena

  October 9, 2014

  Leena had been surprised to discover that going back to her daily routine had made it easier to hold onto herself. Since she had started going to school again she had been having fewer relapses into former lives. The busier she was with normal, everyday stuff, the easier it was the focus on being Leena. She was able to just push away her memories of being Aillie and all the others until she wanted them.

  Fortunately, she had plenty to keep her busy. When she wasn’t in school, doing homework, or trying to figure out how to wake her boyfriend up from his magical coma, she spent most of her time with the Five, taking turns guarding the door and discussing how they might be able to gather enough magic to hide it again someday. It was going to take a long time, she knew. This world had magic, but it wasn’t nearly as plentiful as it was in the Otherworld and even there it had taken her years and years to store up all the magic she needed to hide the doors.

  It was going to take a long time, but she would do it because she had to. She had to keep her people—on both sides of the door—safe. In the meantime, she was trying to lead as normal a life as she could.

  Which is why she was letting Caitlin do her hair while she finished up an essay on Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene that was due in first period.

  “Do you think Ms. Brannon would care if she knew that the last time I read this poem was during World War II?” Leena asked as she hit the print button.

  Caitlin laughed. She had just finished braiding Leena’s long, unruly hair into a French braid and, deftly twisting a hair band around the end, she said, “It’s so weird to hear you say stuff like that. Who were you back then again? Our great-aunt, right? What was her name?”

  “Aunt Aileen, of course,” Leena said. Aileen was actually her real name now, too. The name ran in the family, as did the tendency to give birth to a reincarnated fairy every few generations. She liked to keep herself in the family.

  Grabbing her essay from the printer tray, she grinned at her sister. “I went by Aillie, though. I was a history teacher at the high school, which was pretty easy since I’ve been around for so long.”

  “You taught at the high school? How weird is that?”

  Before Leena could answer, her phone rang.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Leena, it’s Gideon. Annie’s in the hospital. She’s okay, but Dr. Berne says he wants her to stay here for a day or two.” Gideon sounded like he was trying hard to keep his voice steady.

  Gideon Hogan and Annie Jacobs were two of the five. Despite the glamour that made them both look sixteen they, like Leena, were not quite what they appeared. They were actually about four hundred years old, for one thing. And instead of being a couple of kids who had accidentally gotten themselves pregnant, they were married and had been trying to have a baby for centuries.

  “What happened?” Leena asked. The pregnancy had been a bit rocky for the last couple of months, with Annie having early labor pains on and off. That was why the couple hadn’t been guarding the door when Barry tried to go through. They had been at the hospital, thinking their baby was about to be born two months premature.

  “She had some contractions this morning and then passed out. Culhwch isn’t sure what happened. He can’t find anything wrong, but thinks it would be better if she stayed here so he can watch her for a while.?
??

  “Of course,” Leena said. “Is she still having contractions?”

  “No. They stopped when she passed out. She says to tell you she’s fine and that everyone is just making a big fuss over nothing. It’s not nothing, babe. You fainted.”

  Leena could hear Annie saying something in the background and then Gideon telling her that she needed to listen to the doctor and rest.

  “Gideon? Gideon!” she yelled into the phone to get his attention.

  “Oh, sorry, Leena. I’m here. Anyway, I was calling because Sionann is on guard duty, but she has a bunch of meetings lined up with students this morning and I was supposed to take over in about twenty minutes. I don’t want to leave Annie here alone, though. I know, babe, but what if you go into labor? Someone should be here with you.”

  “I’ll come over, Gideon. I can miss school today.”

  “Mom won’t like that,” Caitlin whispered, but Leena shrugged. Things had been easier between her and her mother since she had gone back to school, but her days of doing exactly what Mrs. Wallace wanted were still over. Some things were just more important than school.

  “Thanks, Leena,” Gideon was saying with relief. “I hoped you would say that.”

  Caitlin

  9 October 2014

  School had been weird for a few weeks after Leena’s transformation. Caitlin still had a hard time believing that her sister had wings and memories of past lives. She didn’t really understand it herself and hadn’t enjoyed all the questions that she had been pestered with