Then I freeze, completely lost for a moment as to where to go or what to do.
Mom wants me to kill people? What the freaking hell?
The picture I have in my head of the perfect life the two of us are supposed to have now has suddenly become as brittle as the glass ornaments Mom and Ada love so much. It’s balancing on the edge of knife tip. About to fall. About to shatter.
No. Everything will be fine. This is merely … a hiccup. A misunderstanding. Ada’s influence, most likely.
With a snap of my fingers, the candle is alight. I close my eyes and concentrate fiercely on the one place I know we can still be happy: the home I grew up in. Number twenty-nine Phipton Way. Bright light flashes beyond my eyelids. As it slowly fades away, peace begins to soothe the shivering fear in my heart. Soon, I’ll be home. Soon, everything will be okay.
When I feel solid ground beneath my feet, I open my eyes. I’m standing outside number twenty-nine in dim light that reminds me all too much of the shadow world. The wet road and the smell of damp earth tells me it recently rained. Pushing the remaining piece of the candle into the front pocket of my jeans, I take a step closer to the wooden fence. It’s tangled with bushes, just as it was before. More overgrown now than I remember, but that’s okay. My heart thumps uncomfortably against my ribcage as I walk toward the pedestrian gate. The crunch of my shoes against the damp road seems overly loud in this quiet neighborhood.
Bandit twitches, climbs out of my pocket, and scurries up my arm to my shoulder. I reach the gate and find its hinges rusted with age. The number twenty-nine painted onto a block of wood and nailed to the gate is so faded I can barely read it, and the wood itself is split in various places. Not right, my mind whispers to me. It isn’t supposed to look like this.
I swallow the painful lump in my throat before stepping forward and pulling the gate open. It screeches on its rusty hinges. Once inside, I look around as my heart continues to sink lower and lower. “This is all wrong, Bandit,” I murmur. The setting sun should cast warm light across the garden instead of being hidden behind grey clouds. The grass should be cut short, not growing wildly out of control. The rose bushes should be neatly pruned, not choked to death by weeds. This nightmare of a garden is nothing like the perfect home from my memories.
But then, with slow and horrible clarity, I begin to realize that it never was.
I push my hands through my hair as the rosy memories begin to crack and darkness appears in the gaps. I remember now that it wasn’t always sunny, and Mom wasn’t always happy. I’d find her outside at night, brandishing a broomstick or garden shears, shouting at no one. She wouldn’t come inside, so then I’d start crying. Eventually she would drop her weapon, tug me inside, and lock every door. We’d huddle together, and sometimes she’d cry too, and she’d swear to protect me from the bad guys. The first few times, I was terrified along with her, but I soon grew to realize there was no one there. The things that frightened her existed only in her mind.
I drop my hands to my sides. As if in a daze, I walk back to the gate. I turn and face the house once more, realizing finally that it was never the safe place I thought it was. And it was never ours. This was Macy Clarke’s home. This was the home Dani stole. This was the life Dani stole. This is where the real Macy Clarke and the real Emerson never got the chance to live their lives. The only thing I see when I look at it now is loss and misery.
And I don’t ever want to see it again.
My feet turn me around and carry me out through the gate and into the road. I keep walking, though I have no idea where I’m going. I think I want to cry—I feel like I need to cry—but I’m too empty even for that. I walk to the end of the road. Then I place my butt down on the hard wet curb and rest my head in my hands.
I must have been in a dream the past few days. A silly happily-ever-after kind of dream that could never exist in real life. How could I have let myself get caught up in it? I should have known better than to believe it. I drag my hands down the sides of my face and try to picture my future now, but where there used to be a solid goal to work toward, there now exists a void where my life should have been. The life Zed took from me when he stole me from my real parents and my real home.
Zed.
I look up as the tiniest glimmer of hope lights the darkness in my heart. Zed stole my life, which makes him the one person who might be able to give it back to me. He doesn’t think he can do anything else to fix the mess he made, but he hasn’t told me the one thing that could make a difference: who my real family is.
I have no coherent plan. I don’t know what I’ll do with the information Zed gives me. I don’t know what I’ll say to Dani when I get back to the shadow world. I can only think of one step at a time. And the current step is this: find Zed and ask him who my real parents are.
I stand and return Bandit to the shelter of my pocket. My sleeve slides back a little, so I check the ruby. I estimate it’s about an hour or two away from being fully colored in. I probably should have brought some elixir with me, just in case I need to get out of a sticky situation before returning to the shadow world, but I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly when I left the castle.
I pull Aurora’s stylus out and remind myself what Zed told us just before he left. Orangebrush Grove, I think. That was all. No street name, no number. Well, here goes. I open a faerie paths doorway on the sidewalk. I don’t know what to think of, so I try to think of nothing as I slide into the darkness while repeatedly whispering, “Orangebrush Grove, Orangebrush Grove.” It almost becomes a tongue twister, but I don’t stop saying the words until the darkness begins to melt away around me.
I find myself on a piece of land containing a few scattered houses amidst tall trees, with rolling hills and horse paddocks in the distance and a setting sun bathing the scene in rose-gold warmth. If I’d had the time to formulate some kind of expectation before getting here, this would not have been it.
I approach the nearest house, looking around as I go and seeing no one else. I avoid the front door; I’m not going to knock when I don’t know if this is the right house. Instead, I edge around the side and peer in through a half-open window. An unmade bed stands on one side of the room, and clothes are strewn across the floor, but none of it tells me whether this house belongs to Zed or not. I move to the next window, but the living room furniture doesn’t give away much either, aside from the fact that it’s worn and outdated. I’m about to move on to the next house when I see it: formal Unseelie clothing draped over the back of an armchair. The clothing Zed was wearing when we escaped from the Unseelie Palace.
Yes! I mentally congratulate myself for finding the right house. Then I head back around to the front door and knock. After waiting a few moments, I knock again. When it becomes clear that Zed isn’t home, I walk around to the half-open window, hoist myself up, and swing my body inside. Trespassing isn’t cool, I guess, but I’m not waiting outside the front door. Not when I have no idea who else lives around here. And why did Zed leave his window open anyway? I thought magical homes had better security than this. Although, now that I think about it, I have no idea if I’m in the magic or non-magic world.
I walk through the bedroom and into the living area. Still wary of the types of neighbors Zed might have, I choose a chair that can’t be seen from the window and sit down.
And I wait.
And I try not to think about my mother, because dammit, I don’t know what I’m supposed to think anymore. I spent so many years wanting her back the way she used to be, only to discover that that person never actually existed. It was all a facade. She was a faerie pretending to be human. She was two people pretending to be one. And, worst of all, she was pretending to be my mother.
Crap. This not thinking about her thing isn’t working out well. I lean forward in the chair and dig my fingers into my hair. “Dammit, dammit, dammit,” I mutter. Why did someone have to invent a changeling spell in the first place? What a seriously messed-up idea.
Bump.
br /> My head jolts up. I freeze. I’m sure it’s only Zed, though. But I wait a few seconds, and no other sound reaches my ears. No door opening, no footsteps. Holy crap, I whisper silently to myself. What if someone else is here? What if Dani was right about the Guild having other ways of tracking me down, and now that I’ve left the shadow world, they’ve sent someone after me?
I rise silently from the chair, tiptoe across the room, slip behind a curtain, and flatten myself against the wall. My blood rockets through my veins, and my hand moves to the candle in my pocket. How quickly would I be able to light it if someone came into the room? And could I get away before setting the curtain on fire?
Then I hear the sound of a key in a lock. A door opens and closes. Footsteps cross the wooden floor. Surely this must be Zed? But the person or thing that caused the bump must still be in the house somewhere. Or perhaps it was nothing more than a bird or a squirrel or some other animal on the roof. Or maybe it was one of those noises that old houses make sometimes.
I risk moving my head a few inches to the side so I can peek out beyond the curtain. When I see Zed shrugging out of a jacket and tossing it on top of the Unseelie clothes, I almost wilt with relief.
“Don’t. Move.”
I freeze.
So does Zed.
“Raise your hands,” a woman’s voice says from the direction of the bedroom.
Again, I don’t move an inch. Zed, however, does as he’s told. “Who’s there?” he asks, twisting his head to the side as he tries to see over his shoulder.
“You’re an exceptionally difficult person to find, Zed,” the woman says, stopping in the bedroom doorway with a shadow across her upper body and light illuminating a knife in one hand and a throwing star in the other. “I didn’t think I’d have this much trouble locating you.” She moves fully into the light of the living room, and finally I see who she is.
“Calla,” Zed says, turning to face her.
What the actual heck? I demand silently. Even if I wanted to reveal myself right now, I don’t think I could. My body is too shocked to move.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Zed adds. “I’ve been hidden recently. Magically hidden. Against my will.”
“Yes. At the Unseelie Palace.”
“You know about that?”
She narrows her golden eyes at him. “Why are you surprised? You know I can find out pretty much any information I want. All it takes is the right illusion.”
He nods as he slowly lowers his hands. “True. I guess I’m not surprised that you know exactly where I’ve been recently. But I am surprised it took you this long to come looking for me. I thought you’d catch up to me years ago. Or, at least, I thought someone from your family would.”
Calla crosses the room in about two seconds. Her knife flashes through the air and comes to rest firmly against Zed’s neck. “Someone from my family almost did. Someone from my family wanted to rip you to shreds for what you did. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to do the same thing.”
Zed makes no move to get away or fight back. “Then why haven’t you?”
Calla steps back. She spins the knife in her hand before pointing it again at Zed. “What did you do to Victoria?”
“I suspect you already know, or you wouldn’t have come looking for me after all this time.”
“Tell me what you did!” she shouts.
His exhale of breath is slow. He swallows. “A changeling spell.”
I watch as her breathing becomes shallow and she slowly lowers her hands to her sides.
“I took the baby and replaced her with a human one,” Zed continues. “Victoria grew up in the human world.”
“So it’s true,” Calla whispers, turning slightly away from Zed. Almost in slow motion, she drops onto her knees. Her weapons clatter to the floor beside her as she stares unseeingly past Zed.
“I’m so sorry,” he says, showing emotion for the first time since she appeared. “I’m so, so sorry for what I did. But I can show you—”
“Stop talking.” Calla takes another shuddering breath, almost a gasp this time. She runs her hands through her hair, then leans forward and presses her palms flat against the floor. “I can’t believe it. When I saw the birthmark, I knew. But I wanted to be sure. I had to be sure. She didn’t die. All this time … all this time, and she was actually alive.”
As she repeats the same thing over and over, I push the curtain aside and step forward. I’m fairly certain—unless Zed is some kind of serial changeling creator—that the baby they’re talking about is me. But they still haven’t said enough for me to understand who I am and how Calla knew me back then. “Please explain,” I say.
Zed whips around to face me. Calla’s response is slower. She freezes, her palms still flat on the floor, before slowly raising her head. She stares at me between the golden strands of her hair, her eyes wide and red, her cheeks tear-stained. Then she stands and rushes toward me. Her arms are wrapped around me before I can move away, and she hugs me tightly, crying into my hair. “You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive.”
“Um …” I don’t know what else to say.
“We saw your note, and Vi tried to find you, but she kept seeing a shadowy place she couldn’t get to, and we still haven’t heard from Dash, and … holy flip, you’re ALIVE.”
“I … I am. Yes.”
“And you!” she hisses, lurching away from me suddenly and advancing on Zed. “How could you DO THAT? How could you KILL A HUMAN CHILD?” Her words are punctuated with sparks of magic that fly from her fingers and tongue, striking Zed.
“Hey, I did what I had to in order to stay alive. I didn’t—”
“You didn’t what?” she spits as magic skitters across the floor all around her. “Have a choice? So you decided to go ahead and ruin two families?”
“I made the best of a bad—”
“You COWARD!”
I don’t know who moves first, but suddenly they’re fighting. Bare fists and blinding sparks, flying furniture and grunts of anger, dodging and ducking and punching. Calla spins around and lands a kick directly in the center of Zed’s abdomen. He crashes to the ground. She grabs a chair, swings it toward him as he tries to get up, and whacks him solidly across the head.
He slumps to the floor and doesn’t move.
“I’ve been wanting to do that for years,” she breathes as she lowers the chair. Then she twists around and pulls me into another hug. It only lasts a few seconds, though, before she pulls away from me, wipes at a few stray tears on her cheeks, and smiles. “I’m sorry. You must have so many questions.”
“Only one, really,” I say in a shaky voice. “Who the hell am I?”
Her smile stretches even wider. “You are Victoria Larkenwood. Violet and Ryn’s daughter.”
Forty-Two
Victoria Larkenwood. Violet and Ryn’s daughter.
I have to repeat the words several times in my head before they can begin making even the tiniest bit of sense. Calla is saying something, and I’m staring dumbly at her, and still the words are trying to sink their way into my brain.
Victoria Larkenwood. Violet and Ryn’s daughter.
I have parents. I have a brother. I have an aunt who’s once again hugging me tightly. And the weirdest part is that I’ve met them all already. I’ve talked with them, shared meals with them, tried to figure out my past with them, and not once did I ever imagine I might belong to them. I’m probably supposed to be happy. Overjoyed. But I’m too stunned to feel much of anything.
Except … sick?
I pull away from Calla and press one hand against my stomach. “Em?” she says. “What’s wrong?”
“I feel … squeezed? I think?” I double over as nausea overwhelms me. Dizziness spins my brain around. I throw my arm out to steady myself against something.
“Em, what is it?” Calla catches hold of my hand. “Oh … shoot.”
“Dizzy …” I manage to mumble.
“I think someone’s us
ing a summoning spell on you.”
“Everything is … pressing in on me.”
“Resist,” she instructs. “It’s a difficult spell to get right. You can resist it. Just be strong. Root your mind and body firmly here. Resist, Em!” Her hand tightens around mine.
Then everything goes dark and I’m squished, squeezed, and tossed around through nothingness. The force pressing in on my body is almost unbearable. Just when I think I’m about to explode, the pressure releases. Everything finally stops moving and the nausea begins to ease—but Calla’s grip on my hand is gone. She isn’t here.
And where is ‘here’?
I’m kneeling on the ground, my hands pressed into grey grass. Tendrils of inky blackness rise between my fingers, giving me my answer: I’m back in the shadow world. I pat my front pocket—but Bandit isn’t there. “No!” I whisper. If that summoning spell did something to him, I’m going to have to hurt the person who cast it. I push myself to my feet and turn around—and find myself faced with dozens upon dozens of men and women in Unseelie uniforms.
My heart jolts. I take a step back.
Unseelies. In my shadow world. How did they get here?
“Em, I see you decided to take a little trip.” My eyes dart to the side at the sound of Dani’s voice. “Let’s make sure you can’t do that again.” My hip is tugged forward as the candle flies from my pocket. I steady myself. Then, looking up, I see Dani raise her hand toward me—
Flames fly across the ground, racing to form a blazing circle around me. I shy away from it, but I have nowhere to go. Then a glistening ripple rushes through the air, forming a layer just inside the fire circle. The indistinct ripple spreads upward, enclosing me completely in a hemisphere. She’s imprisoning me in magic.
But on the other side of the magic layer and the waist-high flames, Dani looks confused. She narrows her eyes at me. “When did you learn a shield spell?”
I blink at her as something suddenly becomes painfully obvious. “When did Ada become the one in control?”