I Wish

Chapter 65

I tried not to rely on Ivy as we’d climbed up the tree. There was something wrong with that sentence, and I brushed it off as stubbornness. Usually I would have had no problem accepting her help, but I don’t know. Maybe it was about how I’d begged to go up. Maybe I’d thought that if I asked for help then maybe she’d con me into quitting. It didn’t feel like the reason though, it felt like an excuse. We did not make good time, and if Ivy had been given the same advice as I had she didn’t care one whit whatsoever. Either I was getting played or… I wasn’t sure, but Ivy wasn’t stupid. Situationally stunted, and prone to making bad decisions over hightened emotions, but not stupid. If I didn’t know better I would say that she was trying to slow us down, or stall us. There was no way we were just wandering about like this, as if there were no end destination or need to keep time. It was slow going, and she kept wanting to stop.

I didn’t understand that either, was she not allowed in the Winter court’s territory because she was the Queen elsewhere? From what I understood, they weren’t allied. In fact they allied with others, as to better work at destroying each other, and they didn’t even really like those allies. Shouldn’t she be more… more… on guard? Weary? I wasn’t sure of the right way to describe it, but this was off. Ivy shouldn’t be wandering around without a care in the world like this, not if this was somewhere that she couldn’t come. That begs the question, if she could be here… My brain blanked out for a moment, the pieces resisting being put together, and I quashed a sigh into something that could be played off as unhappiness about my fitness levels. This was her world? Why she was so fascinated by everything here was beyond me. It was starting to feel less like an exciting adventure date and more like dragging one of my little brothers around the shopping centre while they wanted to touch everything. Ivy had the worst case of sticky fingers, and I was about ten seconds away from barking at her to put her damn hands behind her back before she broke something. There wasn’t even any delight the way there would be if Ivy had been simply trying to mildly inconvenience me for her own amusement, and yes. That is indeed a thing that she does. There was no stopping her. The best I could do was get her back for it on a later occasion.

Everything and anything had to be stopped and checked out. Every new thing that we came across she had to come screeching to a halt, and try to get me to come and inspect it too. I think the hardest part about all of it was, between you and me, were all the genuinely interesting things she was trying to show me.. The trouble was it was all so astoundingly epic that this wasn’t hard for her to pull off, and sooner or later I was going to wind up touching something that I shouldn’t have. I was told clearly, and unmistakably, don’t get distracted. Either that had been bullshit, or this was a… nah, couldn’t be. I was reading too much into it.

“Look at these things,” she urged excitedly, and pulled me towards one of the fillable glass ornaments with a grip that was far too tight to feel natural, “They made massive spell jars. You wouldn’t believe what these things are responsible for.” I would be able to fit in these things, comfortably and easily, and no. Nuh-uh let’s not go there with that thought, because it could only end badly. My toes literally curled with curiosity so I found myself next to her examining it. Spell jars? If that was anything like the pretend potions that I used to make as a little girl, but actually functional, then colour me intrigued. I wonder if that was something I could pull off. It would be nice to have a small trick or two up my sleeve, you know for the next time that I got kidnapped. At the rate I was going it was bound to happen again. Although, random abductions by supernatural creatures that want to kill me or keep me as some kind of bizarre human pet? It was less scary than the wellness quarantine camps that they were building in Queensland. I didn’t care what they said they were for, hard no. I banish the thought from my mind, because I didn’t have time to deal with it appropriately. The thing is, in this world, kidnapping was starting to feel normal, and that was such bullshit that I shut the line of thought down immediately.

“Okay, I’ll bite. Impress me,” I told her in a somewhat uglier tone than I had intended, and she laughed. It set the hairs on the back of my neck on their end. Was I asking for trouble, or was my subconscious simply making it’s best attempt at freaking me out? It was just Ivy laughing, I’d heard more laughter out of that woman since I’d met her than some people did in their entire lives… and yet, I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong with it. Make no mistake though, there was definitely something wrong with it.

“Salt for protection, chillies for fire, black pepper, power crystals, and roses. It’s a very aggressive protection spell,” she said, eyeing it almost hungrily, reaching a hand out like she was going to touch it, before stopping just short and curling her fingers closed. As if to stop herself. It bubbled with colours contained by what I was starting to doubt was glass, because glass would have broken against that kind of oomph. They sparked like fire, and popped off the glass. The wax on the top was a mix of black and white, a two candle seal swirling over the top. Protection spell? I believed it. I knew nothing about magic, but the vibe it gave off. Like you were standing next to a bus as it rolled past, and if you stepped wrong then it had no problem in helping you to be run over by it. Considering it was an inanimate object, it sure had plenty of attitude.

“It’s pretty, but protecting who?” I asked her, the question picking away at the back of my head uncomfortably, and she smiled again. I didn’t like it, it felt like there was something rotten hiding behind it, and then she shrugged. That nagged at me. What exactly did this thing protect, or perhaps even who, and why did it feel so important? Her ignorance didn’t sit well with me either, another little thing that just refused to add up any way, let alone the way that they were supposed to.

“I don’t know, but it’s neat huh? Let's see what else we can find,” she says perkily, brushing past me and expecting me to follow. I was ashamed to say that I almost protested on principle, because no. This? No, just no. Ivy was the one that followed me. That was how this worked, and I disliked this so intensely that I almost threw a raging b***h fit in response. No. No. No. No, that was not how I was treated, and whatever it was that she was trying to do here, Ivy needed to be careful because she was going to be in for a great big ‘What the f**k woman?’.... And didn’t I just spell entitled with a capital E?

“We can’t afford to be wasting time, I’ve got to,” I started without knowing how I was going to finish that sentence, or bothering to hide how irritated I was with the situation before she cut me off with a snort. Her top lip curled up in an ugly look that I’d never seen across her face before. The urge to curl my fingers into a fist and punch it off of her face hard enough that she took a nice little nap was violent, and enough for the penny to drop. It was enough because there was no irritating little voice in the back of my mind telling me that I would regret it, and I suspect that was because I wouldn’t.

“What? Find me? You already have, why can’t we take out time and explore? It’s not like you didn’t drag me up this death trap for no reason other than to check it out, so why don’t you?” She argued with me and the amount of whine in her tone was astounding, “We could call it a date.” Now see the last date we’d been on had gone so well that the immediate must puke now feeling was confusing, and that was it. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I was done with all of this, and I had no intention of playing along now that they weren’t even trying not to be obvious anymore. She hadn’t reacted normally, in any of the time that had passed since she’d gotten here. Hadn’t acted like Ivy, beyond looks and the sound of her voice. Her reactions to things, her facial expressions, and the feeling that I just couldn’t get rid of all equaled up to somebody trying to trick me. Not to mention… None of this felt right. We’d climbed up, getting tangled in tinsel as we went, and I had a close call with one of the floating lights. Touching those things? It just seemed like a dumb thing to do. Which was why I didn’t do it. She didn’t seem overly upset about it. Ivy would have gone ballistic by now.

“Probably because I was saving this for Ivy. If I’m going to wander around here with the missus, it should at least be my missus and not someone that’s done a good job of looking incredibly like her,” I say with sarcastic disdain dripping from the words like poisonous honey. This was not my mate. I was bone deep in my certainty of that fact. She looked like Ivy, and she talked almost like Ivy but it had become quickly apparent that whoever this girl with me was, it wasn’t my girl. Supporting this theory was piece of evidence A, this was a girl who hadn’t actually grown up by the end of childhood cut off date, and Ivy was a woman. Petulant at times, but very much a grown ass woman, capable of ruling as queen. This whiny cheap copy that thought she could fake it was enraging. It wasn’t even a decent copy. That brought up feelings of genuine disgust, and anger. Oh, there was so much anger.

“That’s hurtful. Who else do you expect me to be?” she squawked in offence, but her eyes darted around nervously and refused to meet mine. I smiled at her as the sound hit my ears, because the possibility for non-existent doubt arose and floated away in a haze of proof. I’d heard that sound before. I heard it recently enough that I could pick it now.

“Well I wonder?” I said, choosing to continue going heavy on the sarcasm, “It was a cool fake fight, but Ivy would have done worse and you know it. If you want to fool people then you’ll have to try harder.” Her eyes widened, and shifted back. Nothing else did, so maybe it was just panic making the magic fail a little bit. Either way, she didn’t seem to notice. I appreciated the slight change, no matter how minute.

“What did they do to you?” Mira asked me, still wearing Ivy’s face and willing to play this hand to the hilt, “Actually, how long has it been since you’ve seen me last? I’m me, you don’t have to be so on guard.” Okay… so that was impressive, because at no point had she outright said that she was Ivy, but she was still doing a fair job of convincing me that it was true. Fair because it was a decent effort, but not fair enough because I still wasn’t buying it. It occurred to me that if she wasn’t really Ivy, and she was some kind of enemy, then that urge to punch her was no longer domestic violence. I was going to go ahead and call it a skirmish. I’d still prefer for her not to be wearing Ivy’s face if I had to make an attempt to cave it in, and look at me talking like my last physical fight with a fae had gone so well. The tone I’d replied to her dramatic with was so over it that she flinched.

“Mira, pull the other one. There’s bells on,” I said in a deadpan voice. Her face shifted, to something like a black rage and wasn’t that just unnerving to see painted on Ivy’s face while Mira was looking at me. At least she had her own eyes now, the slight difference enough to help me avoid pulling punches when and if necessary. Stupid as it was of me... Please, please be necessary.

“You never did know what a good thing you had when you had it,” she snarled nastily, giving up on the ruse entirely. Okay, so maybe I didn’t think this part through well enough, because I was starting to think that I was looking at a fight… and not just getting caught up in the opportunity to hit her. Did anyone know what the odds of a Fae-human fight was? I was thinking that it was about to become super relevant. I looked at her furious face, throwing the kind of five year old temper tantrum that you would have seen if a thirteen year old was trying her absolute best at regression. f**k it, maybe it was going to be a fight but this b***h had pushed her luck far enough that winning may be futile, but I was going to get an A for effort.