Calla's Story

Chapter 16

Sixteen

Gargoyle riding is a terrifying experience. Jarvis’s wings flap and heave, making for an exceptionally bumpy flight, and I constantly feel as though I’m clinging to the side of something rather than sitting on it. Chase hangs onto a harness fixed to the gargoyle’s back, and I keep my arms wrapped tightly around him and my head buried behind his back. He complains several times about having trouble breathing, but I don’t loosen my grip for a second. I could probably slow my fall if I tumbled off Jarvis, but I’d still have to hit the water at some point, and who knows what could be lurking beneath its dark surface.

After what feels like an excruciatingly long time, Jarvis drops through the air and lands clumsily on a ledge far above the base of the mountain. I let go of Chase and slide off Jarvis’s back. My shaky legs almost deposit me flat on my backside, but I manage to remain standing. Chase climbs off the gargoyle and pats its back. “Wasn’t that fun?” he asks.

“That was horrible. There’s got to be an easier way to get up here. We live in a world of magic, for goodness’ sake. Riding on the back of a gargoyle can’t be our only option.”

“Well, I’m sorry my pegasus and magic carpet were unavailable today. I’ll make sure they’re around next time. Or perhaps you’d prefer a dragon? You seem to have a certain fondness for those.”

“Your sarcasm isn’t helping.”

“Neither is your brattiness.”

My mouth drops open.

“Yeah, you heard me. Now come inside before we both freeze. You can apologize to Jarvis on the journey home.”

I try to come up with a snappy response, but part of me recognizes that Chase has a point. He’s going out of his way to help me, so I should probably stop complaining about the unorthodox means of transportation.

Chase puts a hand inside his jacket and pulls out a slim square of metal with patterns etched into it. He walks across the ledge and presses the metal against the rock face. When he steps back, an arch-shaped outline glows for a moment before disappearing, leaving an open archway in the side of the mountain. “After you,” Chase says.

I walk into an entrance hall with wooden floors and walls painted cream. A clear glass orb containing a collection of glow-bugs is attached to the center of the ceiling, lighting the room. The aroma of a hearty meal hangs in the air. “What exactly is this place?” I ask, turning to look at Chase.

“Uh, a friend of mine lives here,” he says as he uses the metal square to close the archway. “This is his home.”

“He must be a good friend if he gave you a key to the front door.”

Chase smiles and walks past me toward the staircase. “Come. He’ll be up here.” I follow Chase up the stairs as he calls, “Gaius? It’s me.”

On the next floor, we walk down a carpeted passage and, after a brief knock on an open door, we enter a study. It’s far more chaotic than any I’ve seen before, and it isn’t just because of the books, scrolls and bits of machinery piled everywhere. It’s because of the plants. Plants on every surface, spilling out of glass bowls, draped over bookshelves, and twisting around the desk legs. Amidst the chaos is a skinny man with unkempt hair, flipping through the pages of a book as he paces.

“Gaius?” Chase says.

The man looks up. “Chase, dear chap! Well done for finally wrapping up the—” Chase interrupts him with a loud cough, then looks at me. Gaius follows his gaze. “Ah. I see. Well done for the, uh, that tattoo business.”

I want to roll my eyes. It’s so obvious they’re not referring to anything tattoo-related.

“And this is?” Gaius asks, crossing the room with a wide smile. “The young lady with the time traveling problem?”

With an uncertain smile, I say, “That sounds like me.”

“Gaius, this is Calla,” Chase says. “The Guild girl I mentioned to you. Calla, this is Gaius. He’s—well, as you can probably tell—a botanist. He actually worked for a Guild once, about two centuries ago.”

“Yes. London Guild.” Gaius nods. “I was there for four years before they, uh, restructured my department. Seems they restructured my job too. Gave it to someone else.”

“Oh. I’m sorry about that.”

“Not to worry. It was a long time ago.” He snaps the book shut. “So, young lad. Shall we get this girl fixed up, and then you can both be on your way?”

“Young lad?” I smother a laugh.

“Yes, he’s—what?” Gaius turns to Chase. “Thirty-something?”

“Twenty-something.”

“Twenty-something?” I repeat, turning to Chase. “And here you are calling me ‘Miss Goldilocks’ as if you’re somebody’s grandfather.”

Gaius chuckles. “I think I’m the only grandfather in this room. Now, let me just clear a space for you to sit.” He leaves the book on his desk before moving things off an armchair and piling them on the floor.

“So, Gaius, do you ever leave the mountain?” I ask.

“Well, most of the time I’m happy to stay here—I’ve got plenty to keep me occupied—but I do leave occasionally.”

“And how do you enjoy gargoyle riding?”

“Gargoyle riding?” Gaius laughs as he gathers some papers from the armchair and crumples them up. “No, no, the gargoyle is Chase’s. I use the faerie paths.”

“Is that so.” I cross my arms and turn to Chase, who’s regarding me with an innocent expression.

“Yes, well, one of those faerie doors,” Gaius continues. “You know them? Where there’s a set destination on each side.”

Anger rises inside me as I glare at Chase. “So you made me ride that thing when we could have walked straight out of your tattoo studio and into this mountain?”

“It’s not a thing. It’s Jarvis.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Hmm. For fun?”

“Chase!”

“You’re right. It really wasn’t that fun.” He puts his hand into his back pocket and pulls out a twisted gold key. “Gaius, I may have accidentally melted my key for the faerie door—” he gives me a pointed look “—leaving Jarvis as my only travel option. Could you possibly make me another one?”

It happens quickly this time. The vibrations, the blurring, the shockwave rippling away from me. Fear grips me. I throw my hands out toward him. “Chase—”

But I’m gone.

I’m jolted into a familiar Underground living room. Chase stands nearby, his hands pushed into the pockets of his hoodie, the hood pulled over his head. “What do you think?” he asks. He can’t be talking to me, so there must be someone else here. Still breathless and dizzy from the time-travel shock, I take a moment to pause and breathe before looking over my shoulder. A woman stands there, dark-haired and dressed for winter: elegant coat, thick scarf, high-heeled fur boots.

“It isn’t really my style,” she says, running her gloved fingers through the tassels of the old lampshade, “but it’s a vast improvement on the hovel you were living in before.”

“I wouldn’t quite call that ‘living,’” Chase says quietly. He picks up a decorative, lacy cushion from the desk chair. “This isn’t exactly my style either, but … well, it was a gift. I’m grateful.”

This is fine, I tell myself. This is fine. This is fine. I’ve landed in the past several times now, and I always manage to get back to the present after a few minutes. I just need to remain calm and wait for—No. Hang on. I’m supposed to remain calm if I don’t want to time travel. So I need to … make myself emotional?

“I didn’t know you could draw,” the woman says, walking to the desk and lifting a sketch from its surface.

“Oh, that’s nothing.” Chase plucks the paper from her hand and slides it into a drawer. “Just a … recent hobby.”

My mind turns to Zed and his girlfriend. That’s usually a pretty upsetting thought. I purposefully imagine him making out with someone else—and find that it doesn’t elicit much reaction from me. “Darn,” I murmur. It seems I’ve finally managed to get over the crush I’ve had for the past two years. And at the most inconvenient time.

“But, darling, it’s so good,” the woman says to Chase. “Don’t hide it away.”

Darling? My attention reverts to the scene I’m standing in. I walk closer as the woman snakes her arms around Chase’s neck. Something seems different about his face, but I can’t figure out what. Perhaps it’s the shadow cast by his hood, or the fact that he’s most likely younger here than the Chase I know in the present. “Fine, don’t show me your pretty pictures,” the woman says. “But can I convince you to come with me tonight? We can go dancing like we used to. It’ll be fun.”

He leans closer to her. For a moment I wonder if he’s going to kiss her—a thought that makes my insides squirm with awkwardness—but then his lips stretch into a grim smile. “Sorry,” he says. “Not working.”

She gives him a quick kiss on the cheek, then steps away from him with a laugh. “It’s always worth a try.” She sashays across the room to the door and pulls it open. “I need to go. Keep well, darling.” She walks out, then looks back over her shoulder. “And … I’m glad to see you’re doing so much better than last time. Try to stay focused on the good things, okay? Everything will be all right.”

He nods, and she closes the door. The moment she’s gone, he lowers himself onto the desk chair and places his head in his hands. With his shoulders stooped and his face covered, he breathes out a slow, shaky breath. “Nothing will ever be all right,” he murmurs.

My heart aches for him. Even from behind this weird green-tinged veil that separates the two of us, I can feel his pain. How could I not? Only the hardest of hearts could fail to empathize with the despair and—

Vibrations and ripples. A whoosh. The jolt slams nausea into me with such force that I almost throw up the moment the plant-filled office reappears. Dizzy, dizzy, spinning. Reeling and swimming and why can’t the room keep still, dammit?

“Calla?” I feel hands on me.

“Sick … gonna be sick, gonna be sick.” I feel the floor beneath my knees. A bin is thrust in front of me. I grab hold of it as my stomach heaves and loses its contents. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, and then there’s more spinning and tossing until I’m finally lying down on something.

I close my eyes and wait it out.

When the world has stopped spinning and the nausea is gone, I blink and find myself lying on a four-poster bed.

“Feeling okay?” Chase asks.

“That was so gross,” I mumble. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s a bathing room through there,” he says, pointing to a door. “If you want to clean up.”

“I do.” I’m a little shaky still, but I need to get rid of the awful taste in my mouth.

When I’ve cleaned my hands, rinsed my mouth, and splashed water on my face, I walk back into the room and sit on the bed.

“I’m sorry,” Chase says quietly. He pushes away from the wall and comes to stand by the bed. “That one was my fault. I was … provoking you. And I should have been able to hold you back, but I didn’t reach you in time.”

I pull my legs up and wrap my arms around my knees. “I saw you,” I tell him. “In the past. In your home.”

“What?” His hand tenses around the bedpost. “What did you see?”

“Don’t worry, it wasn’t anything inappropriate. You must have just moved in. There was a woman there. She said the furniture wasn’t really her style, and you said it wasn’t yours either.”

“Oh, that home.” Chase sounds relieved, but his grip on the bedpost hasn’t changed. “What else did you see?”

“Nothing. That was it.” I can’t tell him what else I heard, what I saw. It’s too personal. He wouldn’t like the fact that I witnessed a moment of such despair.

“That was eight or nine years ago. No wonder you felt so sick when you got back.” He swings around the bedpost and sits beside me. “When I was experimenting, trying to figure out if I could control this power, I ended up watching the moment my parents met each other. That was almost thirty years ago.”

“Wow. That must have made you really sick.”

“I was in bed for a full day. The world wouldn’t stop moving.”

I look up at the sound of footsteps and see Gaius in the doorway. “All better?” he asks. “I’m sure you’re ready to get rid of that ability now.”

“Definitely.” I stand. “So how does this work? Do you have some special plant concoction for me to take?”

“No, no.” He waves the idea away as if it’s a ridiculous one. “Nothing nearly as complicated as that.” He holds his hand out to me. I eye it, then look at Chase.

“Don’t worry, he won’t bite,” Chase says.

“Okaaay.” I raise my hand and grasp Gaius’s.

He closes his eyes, then opens them a moment later. “Oh. I didn’t expect that.”

“Expect what?”

“Two Griffin Abilities. One is your own, I assume?”

I snatch my hand away from his as a chill crawls up my spine. “How do you know that?”

“Because, my dear,” he says gently, “that is my Griffin Ability. I can sense, absorb, and transfer other abilities.”

I look from Gaius to Chase. Chase nods. “So you’re also one of the Gifted,” I say to Gaius. “Does that mean that the time traveling ability in the bangle once belonged to another Gifted person?”

“It belonged to Saber,” Chase says. “The man who’s been trying to steal it back.”

“But then—”

“I know, I know. What right do we have to take his own ability away from him? Well, after he kept using his power to learn important secrets that ended up getting a lot of people hurt, we decided everyone would be better off if he couldn’t visit the past anymore.”

“But that isn’t your decision to make. The Guild should arrest him.”

“They did. They’ve arrested him twice over the past year. Nothing short of drugging him will contain him.”

“So then—”

“Then what? Drug the man for the rest of his life? How is that any better than killing him?”

I place my hands on my hips. “This is the part where I should probably ask how you know all this, but I doubt you’d answer me.”

“You doubt correctly,” Chase says.

I shake my head and turn back to Gaius. “When you absorb the time traveling ability, will that affect my own ability in any way?”

“No,” he says. “I won’t touch what’s yours.”

“Okay.” I hold my hand out. “Then please take this time traveling problem away from me before I wind up in the past again.”

He takes my hand and closes his eyes. I feel rather stupid as I stand there, waiting for something to happen, wondering if it will hurt when it does. I find Chase watching me, and I manage to hold his gaze for several moments before looking away. Doesn’t he know it’s rude to stare?

Gaius releases my hand and says, “All done.”

Surprised, I ask, “Are you sure? I didn’t feel a thing.”

He chuckles. “Yes, I’m sure.”

Chase puts his hand into his coat pocket and removes a shape wrapped in cloth. The bronze bangle. “You can put the power back in here,” he says to Gaius, handing him the enchanted jewelry. “Then I’ll destroy it. I should have done that the first time around instead of experimenting with it.” He crosses his arms and looks at me. “It’s been on quite a journey since then. Someone was waiting for a tattoo and overheard me talking about it. She stole it after coming in for a second tattoo. The Guild got wind of it after that, which is how it wound up in their artifacts collection. It was there for several months before Saber got hold of it. I stole it from him, and then you stole it from me.”

“And now you’re going to destroy it.”

“Yes.”

There’s something that doesn’t feel entirely right about snuffing out another person’s magic. But I have to admit that Chase is right. If this guy is dangerous and the only other option is for the Guild to keep him drugged for the rest of his life, then he’s better off without this ability. “Is it straightforward to destroy this bangle? No long, complicated ritual that will provide the bad guy with plenty of opportunity to steal it back?”

“We don’t have to journey to Mount Doom, if that’s what you mean.”

“Mount Doom?”

“Never mind,” he says with a sigh. “Let’s go. We can use the faerie door this time. I know how fond you are of Jarvis, but it’ll be faster this way.”

I follow Chase and Gaius along the corridor and downstairs to the entrance hall. He stops in front of one of the doors, and I notice that it’s slightly different from the others leading off this room. The patterns covering its surface are more intricate. Gaius produces a gold key similar to the one Chase handed him earlier—although this one doesn’t appear to have been twisted into an odd shape—and unlocks the door. It melts apart and vanishes, leaving darkness beyond. “You can take my key,” Gaius says, handing it to Chase. “I’ll make another one.”

“Thanks.” Chase gestures for me to go ahead of him.

“Am I supposed to hold your hand?” I ask. I’ve never used a faerie door before; I don’t know if they work the same way faerie paths do.

“No. This path has only one destination on the other side. It isn’t possible for you to end up anywhere else. But,” he adds with a smirk, “you can hold my hand, if that’s what you want.”

I swat his raised hand out of the way and walk ahead of him. I keep walking, through the weightlessness and through the utter darkness pressing against my eyes. A rectangular outline of light appears up ahead of me. I walk toward it—then smack right into a hard surface.

“It’s a door, Calla,” Chase says. “You have to open it.”

“Thanks for the warning,” I mutter as I feel for a doorknob. I twist it, push the door open, and walk into the back room of Chase’s tattoo studio. Convenient. Clearly Chase visits Gaius quite often. I’d love to ask him what that’s all about—if only he’d give me a straight answer.

“Well,” I say, turning to him, “thank you for helping me, Chase. I appreciate it.”

He inclines his head. “It’s been a pleasure meeting both you and your illusion magic.” He slides his hand into an inside pocket of his coat and pulls out his amber. He holds it toward me. “In case you need help again.”

Right. Because sending him an amber message will be a lot simpler than showing up unannounced inside his home and dangling upside down. I pull my own amber from my pocket, reach forward, and brush it against his. The two rectangular devices glow briefly as their amber IDs connect. Now, when I write a message and think of Chase, the message will show up on his amber. I return mine to my pocket and clear my throat. “I guess I’ll be heading home then.”

“Okay.” He opens a cupboard on the other side of the room and removes a stone urn. He lowers it to the floor with some effort. “You’ll be back for your tattoo, of course.”

“Of course,” I say absently, curiosity distracting me from coming up with a smart reply. Chase lifts the urn lid, and I lean forward so I can see the contents. An orange glow emanates from the opening. Taking a step closer, I see flames burning. I feel their heat.

Chase looks up. “I thought you were going home.”

“Um, yes.” I hesitate before turning away. I place my hand on his arm. “Remember. As long as my secret stays secret, so does yours. I’m just a regular faerie, and you’re nothing more than a tattoo artist.”

He considers me with bright eyes I wish I could paint. I wonder if I could ever get the color right. The perfect mix of storm grey, palest green, and moonlight. As I watch him, his expression changes. He frowns, his eyes taking me in as if for the first time.

“Is something wrong?” I ask tentatively.

“No,” he says slowly. “I just … remembered something I was told a long time ago.” He blinks, shakes his head, then extends his hand toward me. I grasp it. “Agreed,” he says.

I walk away from him. I open the door, wondering if I might possibly be brave enough to make a real appointment for a real tattoo. I’m saved from having to make that decision, though, because on the other side of the door, leaning against the counter with a crossbow in one hand, is Saber.

“Ah, you’re back,” he says. “It’s about time.”