creepy hollow 03 - faerie war

  “I suppose the potion got confused,” he says. “You didn’t love those creatures, so you shouldn’t forget them. But you were performing a guardian duty in fighting them, and you’ve always loved the life of a guardian.”

  “I must have really loved it if I’ve forgotten so much about my life,” I say quietly. Did I love it too much? Was I obsessed?

  “You did, but only because you had nothing else. And I think the reason you’ve forgotten so much is because nothing in life is isolated. Everything is interlinked somehow. The things we care about are always mixed up with things we don’t care about.”

  I close my eyes. “Getting all philosophical on that side of the wall, are you?” I tease.

  “Well, there isn’t much else to do on this side. You telling me your side’s more exciting?”

  “Totally. I’ve got loads of entertainment here. A pink troll riding a unicycle and juggling fire sprites.”

  “Hmm. Sounds like you need some sleep, V.”

  “Now that you mention it, I could do with another nap. Turns out worrying about people is more exhausting than I thought.”

  “Oh? And why were you worrying about me?”

  My eyelids spring apart. Oops. He wasn’t supposed to know just how scared I was that he hadn’t survived that lightning strike. “Come on, Ryn,” I say quietly. “You got blown across the room by lightning. What do you think I was worried about?”

  Instead of answering me, he goes quiet. I start to feel uncomfortable. Dammit, what happened to there being no more awkward silences?

  “V?” he says. “I need to tell you something.”

  “Uh, okay.” I shift a little closer to the hole.

  “And it would be great if you didn’t get mad.”

  “Why would I get mad?”

  “The last time I told you this, you kicked me out of your house.”

  “Well, I can’t exactly do that this time, so you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  “I’m more concerned about the part where you might get upset and stop talking to me. I imagine it could get quite lonely in this cell with no one to talk to.”

  I pause, then say, “Is what you have to tell me really that bad?”

  “Not exactly. I just . . . should have told you a lot sooner last time. I don’t want to make the same mistake this time around. I didn’t want to freak you out with too much info when you first got to the base, but I really don’t want to keep it from you any longer.”

  “Okaay,” I say.

  “So . . . you know how you have extra magic that helps you find people?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I have extra magic too. And my extra magic makes me feel whatever people around me are feeling.”

  I open my mouth, but I honestly can’t think of a single thing to say to that. My first thought is to try to figure out what I’m currently feeling and whether it’s telling him anything embarrassing about me. Oh, crap. Each time he’s given me that smile that’s made my stomach flip over weirdly, did he know that? Did he feel it because I was feeling it? I try to remember how many times it’s happened, but I seem to be freaking out a little too much to come up with an answer.

  “Yeah, I know, most people would freak out and feel like I’m invading their privacy,” Ryn says, “which seems to be what you’re feeling now. That’s why I don’t generally tell people. But I had to tell you because you knew everything else about me before, and I couldn’t keep it from you any longer. And now I’m telling you again because I don’t ever want you to feel like I’ve lied to you.”

  I still don’t know what to say. Even though there’s a wall between us, I feel as exposed as if Ryn were looking into my soul. But it can’t be that bad, right? I mean, how much can he really know just from a person’s feelings? It’s not as though he can hear thoughts. That would be highly embarrassing.

  “And . . . now would be a good time for you to say something.”

  “Um . . .” I stare up at the ceiling. “Well, I’m not mad.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Right. Of course he does. “And I’m not going to kick you out of your cell or stop talking to you.”

  “Wow.” He sounds impressed. “You know what? I think the new you might be less inclined to overreact than the old you.”

  “Then aren’t you lucky you’re locked up with the new me instead of the old me?”

  “I’d be lucky either way.”

  I roll my eyes and mutter, “Such a suck-up.”

  “I learned from the best,” he says, and I can imagine his smirk.

  I ignore the jibe and say, “So tell me something no one else knows about me.”

  “Finally,” he says. “We’ve reached the part of the conversation where I get to share embarrassing stories about you.”

  “You know that’s not what I meant.”

  “And you know it’s going to happen anyway.”

  We launch into a discussion that feels something like a weird first date, where I ask questions for both of us, and he answers for both of us. Our favorite foods. Our best and worst assignments. The best tricks we ever played on each other. Our secret fears when we were little.

  Hours later, when my head is slipping to the side and I’m starting to fall asleep, I force my eyes open and ask the question I’ve been avoiding since our conversation began. “Ryn? Does my father know about me? Does he know that you found me and took me back to the base?”

  “No. I didn’t know how to contact him. He’s with the Seelie Queen, and no one knows where she is.”

  So it isn’t that he didn’t care enough about me to come and see me at the base. He just didn’t know I was there.

  Obviously picking up on my relief, Ryn adds, “He cares about you, V. A lot. It broke his heart to leave you when he had to fake his death and go undercover. But he did it to keep you safe. It’s a long story, but . . . just know that he did it because your life was in danger and it was the only way he knew how to keep you safe.”

  I definitely want to know more about that story, but maybe another time. Ryn needs to rest to keep healing, and for some strange reason, I seem to be sleepy too. It could be from all my worrying about him earlier, but my last thought before I slide away from the wall and onto my mattress is whether the bounty hunters spiked our soup with something.

  Something to relax us . . .

  Something to keep us from getting too violent . . .

  Something . . .

  “How are you feeling today?” I ask Ryn after he taps on the wall to let me know he’s awake. “Less like you had a hole in your chest?”

  “Yeah.” He makes a noise that might be him stretching. “I’m not in so much pain anymore.”

  Guilt attacks me at the realization that he was in pain the whole of yesterday and didn’t say a thing about it. And I didn’t think to ask.

  “Stop it, V,” he says. “It’s not like you can do anything about my pain, so guilt is pointless.”

  I really need to keep in mind that he can feel what I’m feeling. It keeps catching me off guard.

  Footsteps sound in the passage. I tell Ryn to keep quiet before pulling my mattress to the other side of the cell and sitting on it. I don’t want to be moved further away from him just because we’ve been talking. I’m not sure if they have more than two cells here, but I don’t want to take the chance. The footsteps stop next to Ryn’s cell, and a few moments later, they move to mine. The same tattooed faerie who delivered the soup slides a bowl of lumpy white stuff—porridge of some sort, I’m guessing—under the gate before heading back down the passage.

  I wait for his footsteps to disappear before scooping up the bowl and resuming my position beneath the tiny hole in the wall. I dip the spoon into the bowl and try a mouthful. Just like the soup, it tastes better than it looks.

  “At least they’re feeding us,” Ryn says from the other side of the hole.

  “Yeah, so that Draven can have strong, healthy guardians on his side.”

  “That’s n
ot going to happen. The last thing I’ll do is fight for him. I’d rather be dead.”

  “Ryn,” I say quietly. It feels a little too soon for him to be saying things like that when he was almost dead yesterday.

  “I’m serious, V. Think of all the awful things he could make us do if we were brainwashed. He could make us hurt people we care about, just because he can. I’d never forgive myself if I somehow got out from under his brainwashing influence and realized what I’d done.”

  “So . . .” I push my bowl of porridge aside, no longer hungry. “Are you saying you’d rather your mother was dead than working for Draven?”

  My tentative question is met by silence. I hear the scrape of his bowl as he pushes it across the floor. The seconds tick by as I wait. I start to regret my question. Eventually I hear Ryn’s quiet voice. “I don’t know. Of course I don’t want her dead, but I don’t want her to have to do things so terrible that if she ever gets through this she won’t be able to live with herself.”

  I nod, even though I know he can’t see me. And because I seem to be incapable of coming up with any words that are actually comforting, I say, “I’m really sorry she was captured.”

  More silence, and then Ryn says, “Okay, this is far too depressing, V. You’re supposed to be entertaining me, not trying to get me to cry.”

  “What? I’m not trying to—”

  “Tell me a joke.”

  “I . . .” haven’t the first clue how to tell a joke.

  “Don’t worry, I was kidding. You’re not really the joke-telling kind.”

  I frown. “Why not? Did I take life too seriously?”

  “Yes. Definitely.”

  That sounds rather depressing.

  “And then we stopped hating each other, and life became a whole lot more fun for you.”

  “Of course it did.” I roll my eyes. “Fine. If I can’t entertain you with a joke, then let’s play a game.” Which means I now have to think of a game that can be played inside a prison cell with the participants separated by a wall. “Uh . . . you tell me three things about yourself, two of which are true, and one of which is a lie. I have to guess the lie.”

  He laughs. “I have to say, V, that doesn’t sound like the most thrilling game ever.”

  “If you want something thrilling, you’ll have to come up with it yourself. I’m the serious one, remember? So it’s either two truths and a lie or you tell me more trivial details about my life.”

  “Hey, the details I tell you don’t have to be trivial,” he says. “I mean, I could tell you about the first time you realized you were in love with me. I just thought that might make you a little uncomfortable.”

  I freeze with my mouth half open. Yeah. Definitely uncomfortable.

  “Sorry,” he says, sounding serious now. “That wasn’t fair. I said I didn’t want you to feel awkward, and I meant it. So . . . just ignore that. The two truths and a lie game, the trivial information game, whatever. I really don’t mind.”

  “No, wait,” I say, hoping I’m not going to regret going down this path. “I . . . I loved you?”

  After a pause he says, “Yes.”

  I place my hand on the wall that separates us. I’m glad we’re not in the same room right now. “Did I tell you that?”

  A longer pause this time. “No. You were too scared.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say softly. I don’t know why, but I feel the need to apologize for my younger self who was silly enough not to say the words she should have said when she had the chance.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “I knew what you really felt.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut and wish with a sudden, fierce intensity that none of this had happened. That Tharros’ power was still locked away, never to be found by anyone, and that no one had to die. I wish that instead of being locked inside a prison and unable to do a damn thing to fix our broken world, Ryn and the Violet I used to be could have had their happily ever after instead.

  But wishing is so pointless and useless that it makes me want to cry. And the tears wouldn’t be tears of sadness. They would be hot tears burning with the rage boiling up inside me. Anger at myself for the selfish choices I made that led us all up to this point, and intense frustration at being able to do absolutely nothing about it right now.

  “Hey, are you okay over there?” Ryn asks. “What happened? You’re hurting my chest with all that anger.”

  I suck in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Nothing. Nothing happened. I was just . . . thinking about stuff.”

  “Okay.” His voice moves away from the hole. “Things are obviously getting far too serious on your side of the wall, so . . . I propose a competition.”

  “Okay.” I sniff back the tears that never fell. “I like the sound of that.”

  “I knew you would. And since you’re a fitness freak, you’ll like it even more when you hear the details.”

  “I’m a fitness freak?”

  “You are. You’ve spent a gazillion more hours in the Training Center than anyone else who’s ever set foot in our Guild.”

  I cross my arms. “That sounds like a bit of an exaggeration.”

  “I don’t think it is. So. Competition number one is this: most push-ups in two minutes wins.”

  “Ryn, you had a hole in your chest yesterday. Push-ups probably aren’t the best idea.”

  “That’s exactly why you might stand a chance of winning. If I were fit and healthy, I’d leave you so far behind you’d be choking on my dust.”

  I raise an eyebrow and lean closer to the hole. “And you expect me to believe I’m the fitness freak?”

  “Come on, V.” I hear something that sounds like his hands rubbing together. “Are you going to forfeit before we even begin?”

  My competitive spirit jumps up. “No way,” I say. “Bring it on.”

  *

  By the time our fifth day—I’m guessing it’s our fifth day—in captivity rolls around, I find that push-ups and other exercises are a great way to blow of the steam rising from my frustration at still being locked up. We’ve discussed everything under the sun, ranging from things I never would have guessed about Ryn—like the fact that he can recite poetry—to crazily insane plans for how to escape our tattooed captors. But we can’t just talk every minute of the day, so that’s where the games come in.

  Ryn beats me at most of the fitness competitions we come up with, which sucks but makes sense considering he’s a whole lot stronger than I am. When he beats me at riddles and guessing games, though, that’s when I start to get really annoyed.

  Yes. Riddles and guessing games. That’s how bored we’ve become.

  “Uh . . . six,” Ryn says.

  “No. Wrong again. That’s another ten sit ups for you.” Every guessing game has a different penalty for an incorrect answer. Five push-ups, ten sit ups, fifteen star jumps. Whatever the questioner feels like. At this rate, Ryn is going to have killer abs by the time he reaches the correct answer for this question.

  I wander around my cell and try not to imagine the muscles hiding beneath Ryn’s T-shirt while he carries out his penalty. “Really?” he says when he’s finished. “More than six reptiscillas tried to kill you after you woke up there?”

  “Threatened,” I remind him as I return to the hole and lean against the wall. “They threatened to kill me. Only a few of them actually tried it. So, what’s your next guess?”

  “Give me a clue,” he says.

  “If I give you a clue, will you tell me the answer to Guessing Game Number Twenty-Four?”

  “Nope.”

  Guessing Game Number Twenty-Four is the only guessing game I haven’t found the answer for yet. What item of yours did I lose and then find seven years later? I did eleven backflips off the cell bars last night before giving up.

  “How about this?” I say. “I’ll give you a clue if you give me a clue.”

  “Hmm. No. I’ve decided I’d rather wait until you remember Number Twenty-Four’s answer for yourself.”


  “And if I never remember?”

  He goes quiet. This is one of the few things we haven’t spoken about. What if I never regain my memory? What if there’s always this big void between us where all of our past shared experiences have disappeared? Although, after all the things we’ve talked about in the past four or five days, I have to admit the void feels a whole lot smaller.

  Ryn is spared from answering me by the thud of boots in the passage. I quickly pull my mattress to the back of my cell and lie down. I figure if I pretend to be sleeping, I’ll seem like less of a threat. I’ve just curled up with my face to the back wall when I hear the clang of something hard against Ryn’s cell bars. I sit up immediately, all pretense of sleep gone. If they’re about to hurt Ryn, I’ll do whatever I can to stop them.

  The clanging moves to my cell, and I see Lightning Guy—without his cylinder this time—dragging a piece of metal across the bars. “Time to get going,” he says.

  I stand up. “What? But you haven’t caught ten fae yet. You haven’t caught anyone since you locked us up.” And Ryn and I haven’t decided which escape plan to go with.

  He shrugs. “Times are tough. There aren’t many unmarked fae left out there, and we need to get paid.”

  “O-okay.” I should be glad we’re finally getting out of here. I just hope Ryn and I can coordinate our attack without actually talking about it. I start gathering power so I’ll have enough when it comes time to stun someone. I won’t miss this time. I’ll be the passive, easy prisoner until the right moment comes.

  “So.” Lightning Guy produces the key to my cell and inserts it into the lock. “We won’t be having any trouble this time, will we, sweetheart?”

  The way he says ‘sweetheart,’ with a disgusting leer on his face, makes me want to spit on him. But I clench my teeth together and shake my head.

  “That’s right.” He pushes my gate open. “And I won’t be taking any chances.” He lifts his hand as if holding an invisible ball above it.

  Oh no.

  I jump to the side and try to divert my magic into a shield as he throws his power at me. For a split second I think it’s worked, and then—