“You mean, like the kind of heart you carve into a tree?” His other eyebrow quirked up too. “With initials inside of it?”
“Um. Yeah.” Mason bit her lip. “Like that.”
“Were there initials inside it?”
“There were before you punched it, yeah.”
Fennrys grinned, but instead of teasing her, he just went on to unravel the clue that Mason seemed to think they’d found. “Okay . . . so what’s the significance?” he said. “I know why we were in the loft—Safe Harbor, right?—but what was the deal with the elevator? And . . . now that I think of it . . . why did it smell like this place?”
“You could smell that too?” Mason asked. “Pine trees and water and fresh air?”
“And apple blossoms.”
“Right! Just like here!”
“Yeah . . .” He sat up then, working through the puzzle. “And I also think I was here—a different version of here—just a few minutes ago. Before I wound up in the lake, that is. Only there was no lake, just a river down there. And nothing but trees where that mansion is.” He waved a hand in that direction.
Mason glanced over her shoulder. “You mean my house?”
“You live there?
“When I’m not at Gosforth,” she said sourly. “Yeah.”
Fennrys whistled. “I’ve seen Faerie palaces that that place would make look shabby.”
“It’s okay.” She hated the estate, with its conspicuous opulence, but she could understand why it was impressive. “As for where it is? It’s in Westchester county. North of New York. On the shores of a lake—well, it’s really more of a man-made reservoir—called Kensico.”
“Man-made?”
Mason nodded. “They dammed a river to create it.”
“Maybe that was the river in my dream.” Fennrys frowned in thought.
“Maybe,” she said.
“So what’s the significance of this place?”
“Beats me.” She shrugged, frustrated. The connection to what was happening to them in the real world wasn’t appearing to her. The estate was miles and miles away from Manhattan. She glanced back at the house. “I’ve never really felt particularly at home here, even though the land the house is on has belonged to the Starlings since the days when we were still calling ourselves the Sturlungars.”
“Wait. What?”
“That used to be the family name,” she explained. “One of my ancestors anglicized it at some point, I guess.”
“Right,” Fennrys muttered. “I remember now . . .” When Mason looked at him quizzically, he just gestured her to continue.
“We’ve been living on this same plot of land since way before they built the dam in, like, the 1800s or something,” Mason said. “In the early 1900s they displaced an entire town to create the reservoir, and I guess we were just lucky that the Starling estate was on high enough ground. All the flooding did for us was increase the land value. Instant lakefront property. Lucky, huh?”
“Maybe.” Fennrys squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Although I kind of doubt it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I don’t usually consider Faerie bargains ‘lucky.’”
Mason cocked her head and looked at Fennrys, waiting for him to explain.
“Do you remember—and I only phrase it that way because it seems like it happened a million years ago, but—do you remember when I didn’t know who I was?” he asked. “Where I came from?”
“Yeah.” She grinned. “I actually do have a vague recollection of those days.”
And those nights . . . on the High Line. In your loft . . .
“Well, I spent some time trying to find out back then and the only clue I came up with at the time sort of turned out to be a dead end.” Fenn shrugged. “I probably should have mentioned it to you earlier. But I didn’t and then . . . well, things started to happen pretty fast and I found out who I was and I kind of forgot about that one little piece of information.”
“Which was?”
“Back in my loft, on the mechanical certificate in the elevator, I found the registered name of the property owner—Vinterkongen Holdings—only it didn’t ring any kind of bells. But then I found out that the same party was involved in a land transaction, in the early 1800s with another party by the name of Sturlungar.”
“What?” Mason blinked. That wasn’t what she was expecting to hear. “Seriously?”
“Yup. Your ancestor bought a piece of land off my landlord.”
“Mr. Vinterkongen,” Mason said skeptically.
“Or,” Fenn’s voice turned a bit brittle, “as he’s more commonly known, Auberon the Winter King. Of Faerie.”
She blinked. “The guy you used to work for?”
“Yup.”
“And you think it was the estate land that a . . . um . . . a Faerie king sold to my family?
“I think it makes sense.” Fennrys shrugged. “Don’t you?”
“Seems to.” Mason frowned, trying to shake the puzzle box in her mind so that pieces fell together. “But why did a . . . Faerie own it in the first place? And what makes it so special?”
“No idea. Other than the fact that I think I might have been born around here.”
Mason blinked at him, thoroughly confused, until he explained to her what his mother, Sigyn, had told him earlier in the dream-vision.
“I think we should go here,” she said finally.
“We are here.”
“I mean when we get back there. The real world.”
“Right. Okay. Why?”
“I guess we’ll find out when we get there.”
“And how are we going to do that?” Fennrys frowned. “In the real world, we’re currently stuck in your high school. And when the fog wall falls, there will be no leaving Manhattan. Not for a good long while.”
He was right. There was no earthly way for them to move around freely.
But then a picture flashed into Mason’s head—something she had seen carved into the door lintel above the entrance to the cavern Fennrys had gone down into—and she realized that they didn’t need an earthly way.
She pictured the image, twisted and knotted, of a fantastical creature . . . and knew, with certainty, what they were going to do. She turned and kissed Fennrys for as long as she thought she could get away with and—before the vision faded and she found herself back in Rory’s dorm room—she pulled away from Fennrys and said, “I have an idea.”
“I do too,” Fennrys said, and drew her back toward him. “My idea is that you should keep doing that.”
She grinned and put a finger to his lips. “Saving the world first, kissing after that.”
“The world had better appreciate my self-control,” he said, and sighed languidly.
“If it ever finds out about it, I’m sure it will.”
Even though here in this place, it felt like they had all the time in the universe, Mason was starting to feel the real world pulling insistently at her.
“You go find Toby and tell him to meet us back here,” she said. “I mean, back in the catacombs. Where you are now. Don’t tell anyone else. Not even Rafe. I’ll meet you, but there’s something I have to do before we go.”
And with that very thought, a sudden slash of lightning, bright and pale, forked down out of the clear blue, and Mason found herself alone again in Rory’s dorm room.
Mason gasped painfully at the sudden loss of Fennrys’s presence and struggled against the surge of chaotic emotion that flooded back into her mind, displacing the peace she’d felt in the dream-vision. Outside the window, the afterimage of the lightning strike that seemed to have sent her to that place—or triggered the vision of it within her, or however it had happened—was just beginning to fade. She’d been “gone” for only a moment.
But how she wished she could have stayed there forever.
She looked back down at the photograph with its missing corner.
“I promise,” she said. “I’ll find
you, Mom.”
She folded the thing carefully and slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans.
XVII
When Heather finally awoke from the effects of the Miasma, it was to a splitting headache that was overshadowed by an even greater heartache. She found herself stretched out on the neatly made bed in Calum’s dorm room back at Gosforth.
For a long moment, she let herself imagine that she was back in the days when she and Cal would study together lying side by side on the narrow bed. They’d called it “studying” but, of course, it had been mostly goofing around and making out. Back in the days before the world had come crashing down.
Reality sucks, Heather thought wanly. Especially when it’s so unreal.
She groaned and rolled over, squinting in the dim light from the bedside lamp. Cal was sitting in the reading chair at the foot of his bed, staring at her. He held a glass of water in his hand and when he saw Heather open her eyes, he stood up and warily held it out to her. The look in his eyes said that he thought she might throw it in his face, but she just took it and said, “Thanks.” It was warm and she wondered how long he’d been sitting there holding it.
She must have grimaced, because he said, “Sorry,” and reached out to touch the side of the glass, which turned suddenly frosty in her hand. Heather took another sip. It gave her an instant brain freeze and she gave up, putting the glass on the bedside table and pressing the heel of her palm into her forehead.
“So . . . that Miasma thing?” she said groggily. “That really sucks.”
“I know . . .” He paused and took a breath as if to say something.
“Cal—”
“I’ve been a complete ass. I know that.”
“Uh, okay.” Heather struggled to sit up. “I was actually just going to ask you for an aspirin. . . .”
He sighed and shook his head. “Sorry.”
“No, actually, you’re right. You have been a complete ass.” She gazed at him for a few long moments before relenting. “Okay. Are you going to tell me what happened to you over the last couple of days? Or am I just going to have to make up stories to tell myself?”
“I tried to save Mason. On the bridge.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “I saw. You—”
“I failed. And I fell. And I almost died.” He shrugged one broad shoulder. “And then I found out that’s easier said than done for someone like me.”
“How did you find that out, exactly?” Heather asked.
“My dad told me.”
Heather blinked, startled. “Oh,” she said, and fumbled for what to say next.
She and Cal used to talk about his absent father sometimes, back when they were dating. About what he might have been like and why he left. Heather guessed why he must have come back, of course. Word of an impending mythological apocalypse must have gotten around. She said as much to Cal, but he shook his head.
“Actually, that was before we really knew what was happening,” Cal said. “A bunch of mermaids went and tracked him down after I smashed my head on that girder and fell into the East River. I guess he was worried about me. Or something.”
“That’s . . . well, I don’t actually know what that is,” Heather said. “Is it good? I mean, is he . . . nice?”
“He’s a god,” Cal said flatly.
“You mean . . .”
“A real one. Yeah. At least, he’s part god.” Cal shook his head in frustration at trying to explain the unexplainable. “Jury’s out on whether he’s nice or not. Seems okay, but of course my mom hates him.”
“Why?” Heather asked. “I mean, I never really understood that.”
“Neither did I. Until now,” Cal said, and uttered a brief laugh. “Turns out, she hates him for the same reason she hates me. She thinks that the gods—her gods, at least—are there to be worshiped. Served. Not, y’know, ‘partied’ with.” He shrugged awkwardly. “And that the results of any such ‘partying’ are . . . unnatural.”
Heather’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment as she struggled to find something to say to that.
“I’m a freak, Heather. And according to my very own mother, I shouldn’t even exist.”
There. He’d said it. And from the look on Heather’s face, she understood exactly what he’d told her. But Cal couldn’t be sure what she thought about it. What he was sure of was that he could feel the sudden chasm that had opened up between them.
She thinks I’m a freak too.
And why not? His mother always had. Mason certainly did . . .
Only, he hadn’t expected it to hurt so much, coming from Heather. He didn’t think anything coming from her could ever hurt him again—not after the night she’d left him standing alone in Sakura Park across the street from Gosforth, as the cherry blossom petals drifted down like snow, so white against the night sky, and told him she was cutting him loose. He was wrong.
He shook his head to chase away the memory of that night. “Mom didn’t know who—what—my dad was when they first got married,” he continued. “But it turned out that was the deal. He’s—I’m—descended from Triton. Y’know . . . the sea god with the three-pronged spear.”
“So it’s a family heirloom,” she murmured. “Nice to know.” From the look on her face, the implications of what Cal had told Heather was beginning to make her head spin and—apparently—throb. “Oh boy.” She put a hand to her temple. “Seriously . . . aspirin?”
“Right, sorry.” Cal got up and rifled through a desk drawer.
He pulled out a little white plastic bottle and shook a couple of gel caps into the palm of her hand. She picked up the frosted water glass with her other hand and tapped a fingernail against it.
“Is this ice-maker added feature something that comes with the whole Super Friends thing you’ve got going on now?” she asked, raising an eyebrow, clearly trying to remain sanguine and Heather-esque about the truth of what Cal had just told her.
“I guess so.”
“And the remote, godlike, very un-Calum demeanor?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged his shoulders, uncomfortable. “Is it a cop-out if I say maybe?”
“I don’t know,” she echoed him. “Are you serious?”
Cal tipped his head back and he sighed, staring hard at the ceiling. “Heather . . . until you told me something was wrong between us, I honestly had no idea. I actually thought we were good together.”
She paused, obviously taken aback by the sudden topical tangent.
“We were,” she said.
“I didn’t know you were unhappy.”
She laughed a little. “I’ve told you before. I wasn’t. You were.”
“And I told you that I didn’t know I was unhappy.” Cal shook his head and gazed out the window. The view used to be screened by the branches of the Gosforth oak. Now it was unobstructed and the empty sky frightened him. It wasn’t the only thing. “I’ve been thinking a lot about it,” he said. “About you, and about . . . Mason. About how I really, truly feel. And it terrifies me.”
The waves of Heather’s blond hair fell over her shoulders and it struck him how absolutely beautiful she was. And how easy it should have been to love her.
“What does?” she asked quietly.
“All of it. Everything that’s happened over the last few months. I know the way I’m acting—the way I’m feeling—is wrong. But I can’t help it.”
“Yeah, well.” Her lips twisted in a bitter smile. “Love sucks sometimes.”
“It’s wrong and it’s hopeless!” he exclaimed. “And it’s not something I even want. And you wanna know the really crazy part? I actually feel like one of those ridiculous characters in one of those stupid old myths!” A bubble of anguished laughter strangled his throat. “I feel like Apollo chasing Daphne through a meadow or Orpheus scrambling down into Hades after Eurydice—like one of those guys who just loses his freaking mind over some girl and then pursues her until he’s dead or she’s dead or some other god takes pity on them and turns s
omeone into a tree or a flower or they get ripped apart by crazy nymphs—something just to put an end to the stupidity.”
Heather frowned. “Maybe you are.”
Cal paused. “What?”
“I’m serious,” she said. “Maybe you are one of those guys in one of those old tales. Maybe this—this whole thing with Mason?—maybe it really isn’t you.”
Cal watched as her frown grew deeper and she stared sightlessly down at the glass in her hands and he wondered if she was right. Maybe what he was feeling really weren’t his feelings, after all.
Maybe . . .
And then he realized that it didn’t matter. It wasn’t something he could change, even if he wanted to. A wave of dull gray despair washed over him and he said, “It doesn’t change anything.”
She looked up at him, a sudden shine of tears on her lashes.
“I wish I could love you, Heather,” he said as gently as he could. It sounded about as gentle as a gunshot to his ears. “I wish I could hate Mason.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Okay. Maybe not hate. Maybe . . . un-love. I really do, but I think it would actually kill me to try,” he said, shrugging helplessly. “And that—I fully realize—is the stupidest thing that’s ever come out of my mouth.”
“I’m not gonna deny that,” Heather said, with a stab at her usual wryness.
“Why don’t you hate her?” Cal asked suddenly.
“What?” She looked at him. “Why would I?”
“Because you love me,” he said, dropping his gaze to his hands clasped between his knees. His fingers were twisted around each other like a nest of newborn snakes. “And I love her.”
“I dunno. Do you hate Fennrys?” Heather asked.
The look Cal gave her was so bleak that it was comical. She laughed, and then felt instantly terrible that she was making fun of his pain but, at the same time, she almost couldn’t help herself. Everything about the whole situation was so horribly wrong and yet, here she was, back sharing Cal’s bed—technically—with him, teasing him, alone with him . . . When Heather had broken up with Cal, she’d thought she was doing what was best for both of them. In hindsight, she probably should have just shut up and never let him know that he was in love with Mason . . .