I throw my hands up. “Wonderful. You’re my flipping babysitter.”
“Uh, I think detective might be a more accurate comparison.”
“Stalker, maybe?”
“I mean, it was like this ongoing puzzle, trying to figure out what was wrong with you and how you ended up in that awful little human town.”
“Perhaps mad scientist would be more fitting. Highly offensive mad scientist.”
He folds his arms over his chest. “I think we should stop the comparisons. You clearly don’t understand the importance of what I do.”
“And you clearly think far too highly of yourself. But then, I’ve always known that, haven’t I.”
“I think, Emerson,” he says with an annoying smirk, “that we should focus on the great many things you haven’t always known.”
His words bring home the seriousness of the situation. I try to tell myself yet again that I’m dreaming or high or drunk, but it’s a weak lie I have no hope of believing. I shut my eyes and press my fingers against my temples. “So I’m not crazy after all,” I murmur. “The strange things I’ve seen—creatures that shouldn’t exist—they’ve actually been real.”
“Yes. Well, unless you really are seeing things that aren’t—”
“Wait. Wait, wait, wait.” I open my eyes, step closer, and grasp his T-shirt as hope comes to life inside me. “Does this mean my mother was never crazy either? The voices, the hallucinations … her mind didn’t make them up? They were actually there? Because, I mean, if I have this … magic—” it still sounds so odd to apply the word to myself “—then she must have it too.”
“Actually,” Dash says carefully, removing my fists from his T-shirt, “the Guild sent someone to Tranquil Hills to check on your mother after the third time you showed up near an assignment. They couldn’t sense any magic in her.”
“So … she’s …”
“Yes. I’m sorry. She’s always been sick.”
I turn away, not wanting him to see the crushing disappointment. I remind myself not to be surprised, though. Of course it was too much to hope that Mom might actually be sane. That’s the way life works, right? You hope for something, and then life kicks you in the face and laughs at you.
I clear my throat. “So it must have been my father then. The loser I don’t know at all. He must have been—you know—like me.”
“Well …”
When Dash doesn’t finish, I turn back to look at him. “Well what?”
He screws up his face, then says, “Please don’t hit me.”
Dread stirs in the pit of my stomach. “Why would I hit you?”
“Because … Okay, look. You’re not a halfling. We know that for sure. You’re a faerie, and that means you must have had two faerie parents. So … therefore … the woman locked up in Tranquil Hills Psychiatric Hospital isn’t your mother.”
I stare at him, unable to speak. His words seem to echo around my head. Isn’t your mother … isn’t your mother … isn’t your mother.
“Silence?” Dash says eventually. “I guess that’s better than screaming and hitting and telling me I must be—”
“Shut up.”
How can Mom not be my mom? For some reason, this is harder to comprehend than anything else. She’s my mother. She raised me. Everything was great until her crazy moments started becoming a little harder to hide. Everything went to hell soon after that, but before, when she was normal, life was good. It was just me and her against the world. We were a team.
I bend over, my hands pressing against my knees, and breathe deeply. “It can’t be true,” I manage to say past the nausea. “There must be some other explanation. Something you people have missed. I don’t know what, but … something.”
“Emerson …”
“I think I might be sick again.”
Dash pats my back briefly. “Well, at least we’re outside.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“There’s a very effective tonic for nausea. We can go inside and get some.”
“With my life, you idiot.” I straighten. “Everything is completely screwed up. I’m a magical freak, my aunt wants to get me locked up somewhere far away, my mother is apparently not my mother, and—and these damn spark things won’t get off me!” I shake my hands as flickers of light dance about them once more. “Not to mention there’s video footage of the whole disaster at the Masons’ farm. It’s probably online already, and soon the entire world will know that I’m—”
“Hey, calm down. The world isn’t going to know anything. Do you honestly think this is the first time we’ve dealt with something like this? Of course it isn’t. We’re not amateurs. Most people’s memories of last night had been altered by this morning, although we missed a few who still need to be dealt with, including whoever took that phone to the cops. But that footage will have vanished within the next few hours, I can promise you that.” He gives me a reassuring smile. “No one will remember that you were involved, and the top story on the news will be about the unexpected earthquake that ripped through Stanmeade.” He tilts his head. “Speaking of which, can you tell me what actually happened? Why did the ground tear open like that?”
“Why?” I stare at him. “Because apparently I have magic that suddenly decided to—and I quote—explode all over everything. Those were your words, right?”
“Yes, but I thought I heard you say something before it happened, and that’s not—”
He cuts himself off as he looks over my shoulder. I swivel around and see a young woman walking toward us. “Well,” Dash mutters. “That was terrible timing.”
“Oh, because our alone time is up now?” I return my gaze to him. “Boohoo. I’m devastated.”
His eyes narrow slightly. “You should be. There’s something very important we need to—”
“Dash, we gotta go,” the woman says as she reaches us. “One of the Guild Councilors is waiting to see the girl.”
I’d like to point out that ‘the girl’ has a name, but I’m more concerned by what this woman just said. “A Councilor? Why?”
“Because you’re a faerie who’s been living in the human world,” Dash says as the woman bends down and writes on the grass with a pen, “and now that your magic has appeared, you have no idea how to use it. There are protocols in place for this kind of situation.”
“Protocols?” That sounds far too clinical for my liking.
“Yes, of course. They’ll put you into their special program for people like you. Other fae who, for whatever reason, grew up in the human world without knowing how to use their magic. They’re mostly younger fae, but every now and then someone older turns up, like you. It’ll be fun.”
No it won’t. It doesn’t sound fun at all. I don’t want to meet strange people and learn how to become a member of their stupid magic club. I want to get back to my real life and pretend none of this happened. Or perhaps hide in a corner and fall apart because Mom isn’t even my—
Don’t go there, I instruct myself. I don’t fall apart in front of other people. Especially not Dash.
“Shall we get going then?” he asks, gesturing to the ground where a dark hole has appeared beside the kneeling woman. A dark hole not of earth or rock, but of … nothing. My brain tells me I should be shocked, but I think I’m beyond that point now. Nothing seems impossible anymore.
“Em? Ready to go?”
Ready to go? Such a simple, ordinary question. The kind of thing Val might say when she arrives at my place before school. Or Chelsea might say to Georgia when they’re on their way to the shops. Or Mom used to say, with her hand reaching out for mine, when we’d finished playing at the park in the afternoon and had to walk home.
Mom.
An image of her flashes before my eyes again. A little house, wild roses in the garden, number twenty-nine on the old wooden gate. Mom pruning the bushes, and a young version of me dancing around her and singing while our new puppy chases butterflies. Mom who isn’t my Mom. My heart cracks a lit
tle. I shove the pain aside. Later, I tell myself. Deal with that later. Fall apart later.
I take a deep breath that sounds as shaky as I feel. “Yeah. Let’s go. Just … can you get me that anti-nausea tonic first?”
Five
Dash runs into his house to fetch the anti-nausea tonic, leaving me alone with his guardian colleague who makes it clear with her long sighs and deep frowns that she’s annoyed by this waste of time. The hole she opened in the ground closes up, and she stands there with her arms folded over her chest, staring past me.
Fortunately, Dash doesn’t take long to return. He hands me a small bottle made of brown glass. It’s suspiciously similar to the bottles Chelsea packages her herbal remedies in. I remove the lid and sniff the contents. “Jeez, Em, it isn’t poisonous,” Dash says. “Just drink it.”
I’m feeling horrible enough that I’m willing to risk the possibility of Dash playing a trick on me, so I tip the little bottle back over my mouth. The liquid doesn’t taste like anything, but I instantly begin to feel better.
“Great,” says the woman who’s been giving her face a good workout by switching between sickly sweet smiles for Dash and irritated frowns directed at me. “Can we get moving?”
“Yes. And let’s open an upright doorway instead of one on the ground,” Dash says. “It’ll be easier for Em to walk into and out the other side, considering she doesn’t have much experience with faerie paths.” He removes a pen and starts writing in the air. “If I could just … get it to …”
“Dash, this is a waste of—”
“Ah, there we go. Easy peasy.” He gives the woman a dazzling smile, but I’m distracted by the growing patch of darkness appearing in mid-air. It spreads rapidly until it’s roughly the size and shape of a door. It must be the same thing as the hole the woman opened in the ground. The same thing that appeared on the balcony earlier when Dash took me back home.
“Is that … some kind of teleportation hole?”
“Faerie paths,” Dash says, holding his hand out to me. “Although they’re not really paths at all. It’s this dark empty space that exists somewhere outside of our world and yours, and it can be accessed by opening magical doorways. All you have to do is think of your destination or say the name of the place you want to go to. So much easier than cars and planes.”
Easier, perhaps, but far more foreboding. Reluctantly, I take Dash’s hand and walk forward. On his other side, the woman happily loops her arm through his. I look over my shoulder as the edges of the doorway spread toward each other, closing the gap, and then we’re in complete and utter darkness. “Can people get stuck inside here?” I whisper as we walk forward, which is an odd thing to do when I can’t feel anything beneath my feet.
“No. I’ve never heard of anyone getting stuck. Although I think, if you know the right magic, you can stay here for longer than usual. I’ve heard of people hiding inside the faerie paths if they’re trying to get away from someone.”
“Stop thinking,” the woman mutters. “I’m trying to direct the paths, and they’re not going anywhere with all our thoughts tugging in different directions.”
I clamp my mouth shut and try to not think, but light appears up ahead before I’ve figured out if I’m doing it correctly. We walk forward into a small room, sparsely furnished with a mirror, a sideboard displaying painted plates, and a rug covering the wooden floorboards. I pull my hand free of Dash’s and step away from him. “This is your Guild?” I was expecting something bigger and more … magical.
“Nope. This an old house in a deserted area beside a tropical beach.”
I turn my withering gaze back to him. “Why is it always so hard to get a straight answer out of you?”
“He’s telling the truth,” the woman says, rushing to Dash’s defense. I notice she hasn’t bothered to introduce herself, so I decide not to bother either.
“The Guild can be a little intimidating,” Dash explains, wandering over to the sideboard. “It’s enormous and busy, with loads of people around at this time of day. Faeries, mainly, but other fae as well. Sometimes criminals are brought in, or stray magic escapes from the training section of the Guild. And the fact that you can’t see any of it from the outside, and then you walk through a grand entrance that transforms itself from a tree, and you’re greeted by all this sudden activity … well, it can be overwhelming at first.” He flips the plate over and examines the back before returning it to its stand. “So we take fae who are new to our world to this halfway house first.”
“Oh. Okay.” My brain catches hold of what is probably the least important piece of information I’ve heard all day. “So … if we really are near a beach, then the ocean must be close by?”
Dash gives me a quizzical look. “Not too far from here.”
The fact that I might get to see the ocean for the first time is far easier to focus on than anything else right now. I walk to the nearest window and look out, but all I see is a forest of palm trees.
“I need to get back,” the woman says as I try to peer between the trees. “No message on the plate?”
“Nothing yet,” Dash says.
“Well, she’ll be here soon, I’m sure. She sounded in a hurry when she sent me to fetch you. Anyway, I hope it doesn’t take too long to hand the girl over. I know your team has far more exciting stuff going on at the moment.”
I look around in time to see her brush her hand from Dash’s shoulder down to his elbow. With a half-smile, she turns away, and I resume my examination of the landscape outside, muttering, “Seriously?” under my breath. She doesn’t look that much older than us, but surely there are plenty of guys in this world who are both more age-appropriate and more mature than Dash.
“Thanks,” he says. Then: “Em, what are you looking for? Actually, never mind. That isn’t important.”
I give up on my search for the ocean and fold my arms as I walk back toward him. “Of course not. Nothing could possibly be as important as whatever it is you’re about to tell me, right?”
“Right,” he says, but the front door opens at that moment, and in walks a short blonde girl with orange stripes in her hair and fiery orange eyes to match.
“Oh, Dash, you’re here.” She gives him a bright smile.
“Uh, yes. I am. Why are you here?”
“Just checking you made it.” Her eyes slide to me. “Is this Emerson?”
Dash lets out a sigh. “Yes. Em, this is Jewel. She’s a member of my team at the Guild.”
Jewel? They have weird hair and eyes and weird names? “Hi,” I say uncertainly.
“Hey.” Jewel gives me a smile that’s way too friendly considering we just met. “Oh, hang on.” She slips her hand into one of her pockets and removes what I first assume to be a phone because of the shape, but turns out to be semi-transparent and orange-gold in color. She looks at the surface, and I do a double take as tiny gold words melt into view.
“Is that a Guild-wide memo?” Dash asks. “I think my amber just pinged as well.”
“Yes.” As Jewel peers more closely at the honey-colored rectangle, I notice dark swirling patterns tattooed on the inside of her wrists. “A Griffin attack on a small village near Twiggled Horn. Five dead.”
“Five dead from a Griffin attack? They don’t normally kill people.”
“Yeah, well, they’re dangerous outlaws, so what do you expect.” Jewel swipes her hand across the amber thing, and the words disappear.
“Griffin?” I ask. “Like the mythical creature?” Nothing would surprise me at this point.
“No,” Dash says. “Although yes, griffins do exist. But in this case we’re talking about people with extra magic. Abilities most normal fae don’t posses. Griffin Abilities. You’ll learn about them soon enough.” His expression darkens. “They’re pretty much a law unto themselves.”
Jewel rolls her eyes before giving me a sweet smile. “Dash doesn’t always explain things particularly well. These dangerous fae used to live out in the open, doing whatever they p
leased, without anyone knowing they were different. But it’s hard to hide a Griffin Ability these days. Testing is mandatory. The Guild just wants to keep an eye on them—understandably—but they’re always going on about how they’re discriminated against. So in recent years, those who managed to get away from the Guild without being tagged have banded together. Formed some kind of secret organization. And now they take out their Guild-directed anger on innocent people just to get attention.”
“Unacceptable,” Dash mutters.
“Exactly. So you can understand why the Guild wants to keep a record of all Griffin Gifted, right? They need to be held accountable for their actions.”
She seems to be waiting for me to respond. I consider telling her I don’t give a crap about faerie outlaws and politics, but decide to change the subject instead. “What’s the orange rectangle thing?”
“Oh. This?” Jewel holds up the honey-colored device.
“Amber,” Dash says. “Faerie cell phone.”
Behind him, one of the plates on the sideboard emits an abrupt shriek. I let out an involuntary gasp and take a hurried step backward. “What the fu—”
“Seriously?” Dash says, interrupting me mid-curse. He picks up the plate and turns it over. “The situation really doesn’t warrant that kind of language, Em.”
I gape at him as my pattering heart rate returns slowly to normal. “You’re kidding, right? What’s the big deal with the no-swearing thing? I don’t see any little kids around, unless you’d like to count yourself in that category.”
“Very funny,” he deadpans, looking up from the plate. “And if you’d had your mouth cleaned out with soap spells as many times as I have, you’d understand my automatic response to bad language. Super unpleasant spell, that one. The taste hangs around for hours afterwards.”
I stare at him. “I’m trying to figure out if you’re joking.”