“Yes. It’s a long story. I can tell you all of it—if you want—when we have time.”
“So Calla knows? And everyone else at the oasis?”
“Not everyone, but all the people I work with and everyone in our family—aside from Jack—are aware of my history.”
After one last moment of hesitation, I reach for his hand and let him pull me up. He finds a stylus somewhere inside his jacket and opens a doorway. Then we walk into the darkness and head back to the Guild to fix my mess.
Twenty-Five
After going back to the Guild with Chase and telling every person there that they can disregard all the commands I gave them—and then making a hasty escape—we walk out of the faerie paths into a stylishly furnished living room. I’m reminded for a moment of the scene I walked into inside Dash’s nightmare: a high-rise apartment with blurred city lights beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. But this is definitely a different apartment—the floating gold timer in the corner is a giveaway—so as I walk forward, I push the disturbing memory aside.
I see the back of a couch, and a golden head resting on a cushion. But as our footsteps sound against the glossy floor, Calla looks around. She jumps up, rushes around the side of the couch, and pulls me immediately into a hug. “Are you okay?” she asks, her arms remaining tightly around me. Images of blood and Dani’s head come to mind, and I find I can’t answer.
Calla whispers something to Chase, and his reply is just as quiet. The Chase says, “She thought Vi and Ryn were … were dead.”
Calla pulls away from me. “I was afraid of that.”
“You probably should have mentioned your concern to me before I went to find her,” Chase says. “Our, uh, conversation—” he looks at me with a small smile “—would have been a lot shorter if I’d started with the fact that Vi and Ryn survived.”
“I can hardly believe it,” I say. “Blades through the heart, and they survived?”
Calla leads me out of the living room and along a passageway. Quietly, she pushes open a door. Inside the bedroom, both Vi and Ryn are asleep on the bed. “See?” Calla whispers. “They’re fine. Or at least, they will be soon.”
I walk quietly to the bed. I don’t touch either of them, but I watch for long enough to make sure I see their chests rise and fall. Then I return to Calla’s side. As I pause in the doorway and look back, a startling idea appears suddenly in my head. An idea I must have been too shocked and heartbroken to think of earlier. Blood pounds through my veins as I consider it: If Vi and Ryn had died—truly died—could my Griffin Ability have brought them back to life? It worked for Chelsea and Georgia.
Or did it?
They died for real soon after my Griffin Ability reversed Ada’s glass power, and Dash said it was because they were human and their bodies couldn’t handle magic. But what if that wasn’t it? What if it was because no one can truly be brought back from the dead? I never saw them again after it happened, but maybe they weren’t normal anymore. Maybe they had become …
My stomach turns as I think of certain supernatural horror movies I’ve seen. I struggle to push the images from my mind.
Ada, Dani … If I could somehow find out what the Guild did with her body and—it sickens me even further to think it—her head, could I undo her death? But there would be no magic to undo this time. It was my actions that killed her. Could I undo those? Could I tell time to reverse?
I press my hand against my brow, my disturbing thoughts making my head spin.
“Em?” Calla asks, and I realize I’m still standing in the doorway of Vi and Ryn’s room.
“Yeah. Sorry.” I turn away, and she closes the door.
It all has to start somewhere, Chase warned me earlier. For you, Em, it could be starting right now.
No. I’m not starting anything. I’m not going down that path. I won’t experiment with time and death.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Calla asks.
“Yes.” I give my head a small shake. “Um, what about Dash?” I ask as we walk back to the living room. “I assume he’s okay too, or Chase would have said something.”
“Yes. Dash is also asleep. He was quite weak after using so much magic—carrying so many people out of Reinhold, and then fighting those guardians—and he had a few wounds that needed to heal, but he’s fine. He should wake soon.” We sit on the long couch facing the window, and Calla adds, “Aurora’s here too. And Imperia’s on top of the building.”
“And everyone else?”
“All over the place. Some of them are resting in the other rooms here, or they’re out somewhere else in the world taking care of personal matters. Chase and I told them to be as brief as possible if they need to go to the oasis. We assume they’ve all been tagged with the same tracking spell you and I have.”
I play with the tassels along the edge of one of the cushions. “So we’ll all have to leave this apartment soon then. Whose place is this anyway?”
“A friend of Chase’s. He’s out of town at the moment—as are many people who live in this area, considering how close we are to Central Park. But we’d be leaving this place soon anyway. Things are happening quickly now that the summit is over.”
Before I can ask about the summit, Chase walks back into the room holding two glasses. “Nothing fancy, I’m afraid,” he says as he hands us each a glass. “Just water. But I’m going out now to find something to eat.”
“Bagels?” Calla asks.
He smiles. “Yeah. Hopefully. Then once Dash is awake, we can tell him and Em what’s happening next.”
“Cool,” Calla says. I’m too busy downing my glass of water to respond. I didn’t realize until Chase put it in front of me just how thirsty I am.
“Looks like you need some more of that,” he says.
“Yes, thank you.” I’m about to hand him my glass when I see that it’s already refilled itself. “Oh. Thanks.”
He opens a doorway against the large window and disappears through it. Calla drinks her water, and we’re quiet for a few moments. Though I’ve been distracted by our conversation, I can’t stop the horrifying images that come rushing back to fill my head now that my mind has a chance to wander. I lean forward and stare into my glass. I take a shaky breath and say, “I … I killed someone.”
She’s quiet for a moment before answering. “I know.”
“When I think back on it, I don’t know how it happened. It just … did. She was coming toward me, and I had a sword in my hands, and then … it was done.”
“It was self-defense. I saw it, Em. At that moment, it was either you or her.”
“Yes, I needed to defend myself. But did I need to kill her? Surely I could have stopped her in some other way?”
Calla puts one arm around me and pulls me closer. “Don’t do that to yourself. It won’t help.”
“And the part that makes me really sick is that … in that moment … I wanted to kill her.”
“Well, you definitely wouldn’t be the first person to have felt that way about someone who’s murdered loads of innocent people.”
“It’s just … I don’t know how to feel about any of it except sickened and horrified and guilty.”
“So, uh, one of the many people who’ve joined the oasis over the years is an elf with a background in counseling.”
I pull away and look at her with one raised eyebrow. “Counseling?”
“Yeah, I know, I figured you’d look at me like that. But I think, when this is over and we get back to the oasis, that maybe you should talk to her.”
I sigh and push myself to the edge of the couch. “I guess. Maybe. As long as she’s nothing like the counselors at Tranquil Hills Psychiatric Hospital, I should be okay with that.”
“She’s cool. I think you’ll like her.”
I stand and walk to the window. Dim light in the lower part of the sky suggests it’s early morning, but the city is still a sea of tiny lights. Except, I realize as my eyes travel across the cityscape, for the large area consu
med by twisted vegetation. “Holy flip,” I murmur. “There’s so much of it. What happened?”
“It’s apparently all across Central Park again,” Calla says, joining me at the window. “And it’s spread even further on this side. Roots and vines and things have been pushing through buildings, destroying them. In most cases, people have been able to get away in time. The enchanted plants don’t move that quickly. But there have been wide-scale evacuations, so hopefully this city won’t see too many more casualties before the Guild kicks Roarke’s ass out of here. Human soldiers have been trying to get into the enchanted area, of course, but there’s a shield around it. I heard a news report about bullets rebounding off an invisible layer around the forest.” As she speaks, I see a bright orange-white flash over part of the forested area. “Clearly that hasn’t stopped them from trying with various forms of explosives,” Calla adds. “So, yeah. Roarke’s making sure the armed forces from this world can’t stop him. And the Guild’s going to have to fight through that shield too when they get here. Chase said he couldn’t get to the other side through the faerie paths.”
I swallow, still stunned by what I can see from here. “Sometimes I wonder if I’ve been inside an endless dream since the moment I spoke to the ground and it tore open at my feet. The things I’ve seen are just beyond belief. I mean … this?” I gesture toward the enchanted overgrown disaster zone. “I never, ever imagined anything like this would happen in my world.”
“I know. Every time I look out there, I can barely believe it. It’s no less shocking than the sun suddenly choosing not to rise, or the sky and the ground flipping the other way around. It’s a fundamental part of life: the two worlds have always been separate. That’s just the way it is. So to see so much of one world spilling into the other is just … almost too much to comprehend.”
“Em?”
I look behind me and see Dash walking out of the passage where the bedrooms are. Warmth floods my chest. “Hey, you’re okay.” I cross the room, and the moment I’m close enough, he pulls me into his arms. I bring mine up around his back and hold on tightly to him. He doesn’t say anything else, and neither do I, and we simply stand like that for a long time. Long enough for Calla to leave the room. Long enough for me to wonder if it would be acceptable for me to fall asleep against Dash.
Eventually, he says, “You told me that once I got out of my nightmare, I could hug you all the time. I took you seriously.”
I laugh against his shoulder. “Does that mean you’re planning to never let go?”
“I guess I can let go. For short periods at a time.” As if to demonstrate, he gently pulls away from me.
“Are you okay?” I ask. “I mean, really okay? Since the nightmare.”
“I think I am.” He scrubs one hand through his hair. “I was afraid to fall asleep earlier. I was convinced I’d end up back there. But I was so tired, I don’t think I dreamed of anything. And now, being awake, it’s getting easier to push those memories to the back of my mind where they belong. But what about you. Are you okay?” He shakes his head before I can answer. “Sorry, stupid question. Of course you’re not okay. I saw what happened. Before you left.”
I swallow and say, “I killed Ada. Which means I killed Dani.”
Dash doesn’t say anything else. Instead, he wraps his arms around me and we stand in another hug for a while. “Is it okay,” I say eventually, “if we don’t talk about her?”
“Sure. Whatever you want.”
We walk to the window, and Dash says, “I assume you know that Vi and Ryn are going to be fine?”
“Yes. I’m still a little shocked about that. Shocked in the best possible way, of course.”
“Yeah. Faerie healing magic is pretty amazing.”
We stare out the window together. His fingers find mine and slowly intertwine with them. “So,” he says after a while. “Victoria, huh?”
“I know. Weird, right?”
“It’s crazy. I suspected, you know. When Zed told us about the changeling spell and that your parents were a talented guardian couple, I thought of Vi and Ryn and their little girl who died. But it seemed way too farfetched.”
“It is far-fetched. It just happens to be true as well.”
“You know, if things had been different, you and I would have grown up knowing each other. We might have been very good friends. We might have been …”
“Exactly where we are now?”
“Yes. Well, without all the other … stuff. Stanmeade, Ada, Zed, you almost winding up married to an Unseelie prince. But we might still have been standing here together, preparing to fight Roarke—because he would have tried to tear the veil open further with or without you—and feeling semi-awkward because we kissed each other before both worlds got turned upside down, and now we really want to kiss each other again but it’s so not the appropriate time.”
I press my lips together, but my laugh escapes me anyway. “Oh, is that what we’re feeling?”
“Yes.” He gives me an innocent look. “Isn’t that what you’re feeling?”
I rest my head against his shoulder as I continue to smile. “It’s actually a crazy kind of comforting to think of it that way. You know, that we’re meant to be here right now, in this moment.”
“Yeah.” He presses a brief kiss against the top of my head. “It is.”
Twenty-Six
Chase returns with a collection of bagels, and he, Calla, Dash and I eat quickly before sitting around the dining room table to discuss what was decided at the summit.
“Why is no one else here for this meeting?” I ask before Chase begins.
“I’ve already reported back on the summit to everyone else,” he says. “They know what their next step is. You were at the Guild, Em. And Dash was asleep.”
“I prefer the term ‘recovering from extreme exhaustion and overuse of magic,’” Dash says. “Makes me sound less lazy.”
Calla rolls her eyes. Chase says, “Okay, let’s get through this quickly. Cal and I need to leave in about twenty minutes.”
“Leave for where?” Dash asks.
Calla tells him to be quiet. Chase opens his mouth to speak again, and at that point, a spider scurries across the table, transforming into a mouse before it reaches me. Bandit runs up my arm and onto my shoulder. “Sorry,” I say to Chase. “You can carry on now.”
“Right, here’s what’s happening. The fae world’s army of joined forces will be marching on Roarke and his followers this afternoon.”
“So soon?” Dash asks.
“The situation is urgent. No one wants to waste any more time. And Roarke’s army is small. It’s half the Unseelie army, if that. So if we take the other half, plus the Seelie army, plus all the guardians, it should be easy enough to defeat Roarke. Once that’s done, the Unseelies will deal with Roarke and the Unseelie defectors.
“Next, a small force of guardians will remain behind to remove the enchanted forest, while the rest of the guardians and Seelie soldiers will split between the three areas of the fae world where humans have invaded. Guardians have tried repeatedly over the past few days to push the human forces back, but the humans keep returning with more weapons. However, with additional Seelie support, the Guild thinks they’ll be successful now. Once the humans are back in their own world, guardians will reinforce the glamours and add additional protection to those three openings into the fae realm so they’re properly hidden.
“Lastly, as soon as the previous goal has been achieved, every single guardian who can be spared will be sent to locations all across the human world to spread a vaporized potion the Guild has been working on for the past week. It contains a memory-altering enchantment with all the specific details of the story the Guild would like the human world to believe. This enchantment will be spread by magical winds, and the Guild and other leaders are hopeful that the majority of people will breathe it in. Once they’ve all forgotten that our world actually exists, the Guild will then send out smaller teams over the next few weeks t
o fix up areas of damage and alter specific memories related to those areas of damage.”
“I can see some serious flaws in that plan,” I mutter.
“What is this story they’re hoping the humans will believe?” Dash asks. “I didn’t think it would be possible to make everyone forget our existence, given the amount of destruction Roarke has caused.”
Chase sighs. “The story sounds rather implausible to me, but all the leaders agreed on it. They want the humans to believe that a whole host of natural disasters across the world are responsible for all the damage that’s actually been caused by Roarke and his followers.”
“They want to blame this all on natural disasters?” I repeat. “Seriously? You think people are going to believe that a gigantic forest growing in the space of a few days and pushing its way through buildings and roads is a natural disaster?”
“I think they’ll find it easier to believe that,” Calla says, “than to believe in the existence of a magic parallel world.”
“And the forest itself will be gone by then,” Chase adds. “Only the damage will remain.”
“And Rhiningsville? Can they blame the disappearance of an entire section of land on a natural disaster?”
“A special team has been assigned to Rhiningsville,” Chase tells me. “That’s part of the long-term plan.”
“But what about all the news footage and the photos and videos?” Dash asks. “Surely those aren’t going anywhere?”
“The enchantment includes the belief that those videos were all hoaxes put together by a special effects team as part of a publicity stunt leading up to a major film releasing later this year.”
I tap my fingers on the table and say, “You know what? That might actually work. Calla’s right that people would choose to believe any explanation other than a magical or supernatural one.”
Dash leans back and folds his arms over his chest. “What about all the people who don’t breathe in the memory-altering enchantment?”
“They’ll be the minority,” Chase says, “and they probably won’t say anything once they realize the rest of the world believes a completely different story. And it’s not as though it’s a new thing for there to be some humans who know about our existence. It’s always been that way.”