And then she launched herself at him.
Bellamy’s arms circled his neck as she hugged him tightly. It surprised Tinker so much that he side-stepped, fumbling a bit, not quite knowing how to hug her back. He settled on placing one arm around her waist and letting the other stretch up between her wings. The skin of her back was so soft; the muscles beneath, incredibly defined. Tinker knew that Bellamy was strong—he’d watched her perform all those crazy gymnastic stunts for her cheer routines. He’d considered the biology of a fairy’s wings, the physical power required to lift a body and fly, but he’d never imagined he’d feel it firsthand.
He never wanted it to end.
Her hair smelled of warmth and wildflowers. All around them, the globe’s magical glitter snow continued its perpetual fall. Tinker could feel her laugher against his chest. At least, he hoped it was laughter. He didn’t want to stop hugging her, but he had to know… “Bellamy? Are you laughing or crying?”
“Both.” Her breath caressed the curve of his neck and Tinker’s knees felt weak.
He chuckled a little. “I know how you feel.”
She arched her back enough so that she could see his face, but her arms never left his chest, and her feet still seemed to have no desire to touch the ground. This close, at this height, Tinker got a good look at her odd necklace.
“Is that… Bell, are you wearing a piece of the Goblin Mantle?”
Bellamy’s hand flew to the heart-shaped bit of tin around her neck and she blushed. Tinker’s suit suddenly felt unbearably warm. “I know you told me to throw them away, but I just couldn’t. Kai had already fixed them, and…well…this one was my favorite.” Her eyes twinkled. “One goblin’s trash is another fairy’s treasure.”
He wished he’d had the means to give her something more appropriate to remember him by: diamonds or pearls or precious gems. But he could see how much it meant to her. Bellamy didn’t care that it was a tiny scrap of metal. She cared that it was a part of him.
“On me, it was worthless,” said Tinker. “On you, it is the most priceless treasure in the goblin kingdom.” And it was. Because that was just the magic of Bellamy.
Tenderly, she touched his cheek. “I totally know how this happened,” she said with complete sincerity.
“You mean my magical, hypo-allergenic upgrade to Tinker 2.0? Pretty sure it was the Mantle of Meshugenah. At least, that’s my and Hubble’s best guess.”
A grin spread across Bellamy’s face as she shook her head. Two more white flowers fell from her hair, but Tinker let them go. “It was the fairy dust.”
“What?” He had no idea what she was talking about.
“In the Bean. Before your goblin brothers arrived. I accidentally dosed you with dust and you sneezed like crazy.”
“I remember that part. But I don’t remember…”
“You had just asked if I could turn you into a super-strong chick magnet.” She smacked his shoulder playfully. “Looks like it worked.”
Unable to contain his joy, Tinker spun them both around. Bellamy threw her arms in the air, spread her wings, and turned her face up to the magic snow. When she came back down to him, he could see tear streaks in the glitter on her face. He reluctantly moved one of his hands from around her so that he could wipe them away.
“Don’t cry, fairy girl.”
Bellamy closed her eyes and turned her sparkling cheek into his palm. Tinker felt ill. Not because he was a goblin touching a fairy, but because at some point he would have to stop touching Bellamy, and it was going to hurt more than he’d ever hurt before.
“No matter what happens,” he said, “no matter where I go or how long I’m gone, always remember how much I love you.”
She nodded, ever so slightly. “Remember that I love you too.”
And then he kissed her, because he refused to waste one more minute of his life not kissing her. Her lips were soft beneath his…and then hungry. Her hands clutched at his arms and then slid up into his hair. He kissed her once, twice, three times…over and over again…making up for lost time. Bellamy did the same, meeting his fervor with equal enthusiasm. There, happily trapped in that perfect crystal ball, they lost themselves in each other.
And then the world exploded.
A bright light split the sky, blinding him. Bellamy’s body was ripped from his—or he from hers. Tinker fell through a dark, freezing chasm of nothingness. He blinked several times, unable to tell if his eyes were open or closed. He screamed but no sound emerged.
When light finally began to return, Tinker found himself kneeling on a stone floor. His body shivered uncontrollably. His stomach revolted and he gagged with sickness, but nothing came out. He stared at that floor for a few deep breaths. He knew where he was. He knew what he would see when he finally looked up: Maker Deng, staring down at him from his great tin throne.
“I got tired of waiting,” said the Goblin King. “Welcome back, brother.”
7
One minute Bellamy was kissing Tinker, the boy she loved with all her heart, and who loved her right back. It was the best minute of her life.
In the next, she was falling through the air in an explosion of light and crystal. She managed to spread her dustless wings, barely catching herself before she faceplanted into the icy dance floor. Unearthly sirens sounded from every direction, howling through the gymnasium so loudly that even the ghost students covered their ears. Bellamy doubled over as the chaos whirled around her, spitting out mouthfuls of glitter and snow that had once fallen inside the globe.
“Everyone, please exit the gymnasium in an orderly fashion,” she heard Professor Van Zant’s voice call out above the din. “This is not a drill.”
Bellamy wanted to search the rubble for Tinker, but she couldn’t seem to get her legs to obey her. Nor could she stop trembling. They’d been together when the explosion happened, and Tinker didn’t have wings. But she didn’t see his injured body in the immediate vicinity, so he must have been well enough to walk away from the blast…
“Kwasi, if you please,” she heard someone else say. Natalie?
Two dark arms ringed with gold bands lifted Bellamy off the floor and carried her out of the gym. She might have protested if she’d been able to find her voice. Where was Tinker? Where was Kai? Where was her sister? What had happened?
There must have been a glitchy spell in the snow globe. Or the pillar. Bellamy had been too distracted to triple check that all the spells and wards the teachers had woven into the decorations were safe and sound.
This is all my fault, she wanted to say, but couldn’t.
Kwasi carried her all the way into the courtyard. Sirens echoed off every ancient stone facade. Snow was still falling all around her.
The heat wave had broken.
Try as she might, Bellamy couldn’t find the will to be excited about the weather. This sky had no stars. This snow didn’t have glitter in it. She was cold. So very, very cold. Her bare wings didn’t help with their lack of insulation.
“You can put her there, thank you,” said Natalie.
Bellamy was lowered to a low stone wall. “She’s shaking like a leaf.”
Natalie looked at Kwasi’s sleeveless kaftan and wrinkled her nose. “Hubble!” she called out into the night.
Bellamy didn’t want Hubble. She wanted Kai, if anyone. And Tinker. Above all, she wanted Tinker here beside her. He would put his arms around her, now that he could. He would hold her close and tell her that everything would be all right.
But it wasn’t all right. Ear-shattering alarms didn’t go off when everything was all right.
Bellamy wanted to ask where Tinker was, and if he was safe, but she knew.
She knew he was gone.
Bellamy lifted her hand to the heart-shaped piece of tin at her throat and clung to the cold metal, as if somehow it could tell her otherwise.
A short figure in black emerged from the shrubbery. “I’m here,” Hubble’s voice said from behind the sharply-pointed mask.
&nb
sp; “Hubble, give me your cloak. She’s in shock. Kwasi, see if you can find Kai. Or Bellamy’s sister.” Natalie paused. “Preferably Kai.”
Only someone as strong-willed as Natalie could get a natural trickster like Kwasi to obey her command with no funny business. Paranormal or not, Natalie was a good person to have in a crisis. Bellamy felt the cloak settle over her shoulders, flattening her wings down her back. It did little to stave off the chill. She remembered Tinker’s warm hands on her skin, pulling her to him. The pressure of his lips on hers…and then nothing but cold. She shuddered again.
Natalie crouched before Bellamy. “Tinker was with you in the snow globe, wasn’t he?”
Bellamy was glad that Natalie had asked a question she could answer, and not something silly like, “Are you okay?” But before Bellamy could find her voice to reply, Hubble answered for her.
“Yes,” Hubble said, with a mouth that was his own now, and not some ibis-beaked skull’s. “They were up there together. But it wasn’t supposed to end this way.”
Bellamy studied Hubble’s silver-skinned face, now ashen gray. The only reason he would have said such a thing was if he had orchestrated any—or all—of tonight’s events. The drama club’s entrance. Natalie and Kwasi leading a waltz. Merri and Brighton, matchmaking them right into that snow globe. That romantic Victorian costume Tinker never would have chosen on his own, the artistic goblin mask, and…
“The dress,” Bellamy whispered through chattering teeth. “You sent the dress.” That answered the question of the strange handwriting.
“You sent her a dress?” Natalie grabbed the shimmering white material of Bellamy’s overskirt in both hands. “This was the thing you had Ausrinne toiling away on? I thought her plate was full because of our festival costumes. What are you, some kind of fairy godmother now?”
“I am a director,” Hubble said with a flourish that would have been a great deal more dramatic if Natalie hadn’t requisitioned his cape. Bellamy pulled the cloth tighter around herself. She wanted to ask Natalie and Hubble to stop yelling at each other, but yelling seemed to be the only way to communicate over the sirens.
Natalie waved at the gymnasium, with its alarms still blaring. All the witches on hand—staff and chaperones included—circled the building, chanting and recasting spells of protection. “So what did you plan for the final act, director? A dragon to show up and burn the school down?”
“They were supposed to live happily ever after,” Hubble snapped back at her. “The rip in space that pulled Tinker through, the explosion—that was all the Goblin King’s doing.”
The Goblin King. Bellamy blinked. It wasn’t her fault?
“Are you kidding me?” Natalie snapped. “He just magically reached in and yanked Tinker out of Harmswood like that?”
“The Goblin King has a ton of magic at his disposal,” explained Hubble. “Goblin City sits on a hotspot of crossing ley lines. The goblins have been using it as a natural source of energy for as long as anyone can remember.”
“I didn’t mean ‘where did the magic come from,’” said Natalie. “I meant the part where an outside force managed to pluck a student right out of the gym of a secret school full of extremely powerful paranormals. I didn’t know such a thing was possible.”
“It’s not supposed to be.” Professor Blake’s voice reached them over the howling alarms. “Harmswood has layers of spells in place to protect from such an event.”
The Head Witch of Harmswood accompanied Kwasi and Kai—and what appeared to be most of the rest of the school—to Bellamy’s resting place. Her fellow students looked none the worse for wear, beyond confused expressions and a coat of glitter from the snow globe’s explosion.
Kai sat down on the stone wall and put an arm around Bellamy. Finn and Owen stood on either side of them, ever the guardsmen. Safe now, Bellamy turned her head into Kai’s shoulder…and somewhere, a dam broke. All the sadness that had been building inside her burst forth in an uncontrollable wave. She tried her best to stifle the sobs, but she couldn’t stop the tears.
“Ohmigosh, Bell. You’re freezing.” Bellamy felt additional pressure where Kai was holding her. Warm magic seeped into her skin, relaxing her muscles and thawing her bones. Having a Fury as a best friend was a definite perk for anyone in danger of hypothermia.
“A spell like the one we just witnessed requires massive amounts of energy,” said Professor Blake. “It can leach that energy—often heat—from its immediate surroundings. I suppose we should be thankful it wasn’t worse.”
Now that she was warming up, Bellamy calmed down. She found the presence of mind to consider how the situation could have been worse. Instead of heat, that massive spell could have taken her life. Or Tinker’s. Or someone else’s. Multiple someones.
This time when she shuddered, it wasn’t from the cold.
“Now, now. There’s nothing that a nice, hot cup of tea can’t fix.” Mamori Zuru, Dean of Harmswood, waddled up to Professor Blake. He was a short, doddering old man, with flyaway hair on his balding head and a great round belly. Bellamy had always felt a special kinship with Dean Zuru. He was undoubtedly one of the most powerful people in Nocturne Falls, but he typically solved most of Harmswood’s day to day problems with a pleasant demeanor and a drink from his never-empty teapot.
Bellamy’s body gave one last shiver. A soothing cup of tea sounded really nice right about now.
“Can we do something about the…?” Dean Zuru pointed to his ear and waved his arm about in the air.
“All we need is your authorization,” Professor Blake said patiently.
“Yes. Of course.” The dean held his hand in the air, palm flat, and closed his eyes. Within a few seconds the alarms stopped. Everyone except Bellamy breathed a collective sigh of relief.
“Are you all right, my dear?” Professor Blake asked Bellamy.
Thanks to Kai, Bellamy at least felt well enough to answer that dreaded question. “I will be,” she said. She might have been lying. She wasn’t sure. “What about Tinker?”
“The Goblin King will be taken to task for his actions,” Professor Blake said sharply. “One does not remove students willy-nilly from this Academy! There are proper sign-out procedures that every guardian is expected to follow.”
But the dean was shaking his head. “I’m afraid we will have to let this one slide, Professor.”
“Excuse me?” said Professor Blake.
“Excuse me?” Natalie echoed.
“The Harmswood Handbook does include a clause wherein a parent or guardian may withdraw a student, unannounced, in the event of an emergency.”
“Yes, but—someone could have been hurt! Never mind the disruption of this week’s classes and the last remaining midterm exams…couldn’t the goblins have waited until winter break like everyone else?”
Dean Zuru continued as if he hadn’t noticed Professor Blake’s interruption. “It seems that there were several previous missives from the Goblin King requesting Mr. Tinkerton’s presence, but they all went astray.”
Bellamy’s gaze met Hubble’s, but he quickly looked away. No one else seemed to notice their brief exchange.
“A note got to you, apparently,” Professor Blake said.
“One arrived earlier today,” replied the dean. “I underestimated the impatience of the sender, thinking it would be safe to send Mr. Tinkerton on his way first thing in the morning. Apparently, it was not. The fault here, I’m afraid, is mine. I will make the appropriate apologies.”
Bellamy wanted to yell and scream and cry. She wanted to run away and hide, but she had promised Kai that she would stay, no matter what. As it was, she only had enough energy to shake her head slightly. None of this was anyone’s fault. It was a terrible situation, and sometimes terrible situations just happened. No one was to blame. Not her. Not Dean Zuru. Not even the Goblin King.
The only question now was: Where did they go from here?
Bellamy wasn’t exactly sure of the answer. But she didn’t want to g
o on without Tinker.
Professor Blake’s lips became a thin line of dissatisfaction. She clapped her hands three times and addressed the crowd. “I’m afraid the dance is over, children. Boarding students, please return to your rooms. Local students, if you need assistance with transportation, please see Professor Van Zant.”
The dean reached up and placed a gnarled hand on Professor Blake’s considerably taller shoulder. “Give our young people a moment, Theodosia. No need to rush. They’ve been through a lot tonight.”
“We all have,” muttered Professor Blake. She let the dean lead her back through the crowd, toward the administrative wing. Where, presumably, they would share a nice, calming cup of tea.
Bellamy expected the rest of the students to disappear with the professors…but none of them did.
“They’re not going to do anything,” Natalie said in the teachers’ wake. “They’re really not going to do anything.”
“Are you surprised?” asked Sam.
“I suppose not, but…” Natalie growled at the sky in frustration.
“My parents are going to freak when they find out about this,” said one of the fae girls.
“Mine won’t,” said one of the gargoyles.
“At least you have parents,” Owen added with great condescension.
“Don’t worry,” said Kai. “Dean Zuru will smooth things over with all the teachers and parents. It’s what he does best.”
“Great,” spat Hubble. “But Tinker will still be gone.”
“Boo hoo.” The crowd parted to reveal Heather Hayden, fellow cheerleader and the most popular—and meanest—girl at Harmswood. Even the snow seemed too frightened to land on her black silk dress. “Tinker’s daddy stole him away so he could go be a king. My heart weeps for him.”
“Yeah,” said one of Heather’s cronies.
“Boo hoo,” repeated the other.