Rebel Faerie

Chapter 11

Eleven

We step out of the faerie paths into the alley between Tygo’s Diner and the abandoned library. The intense familiarity of it—the graffiti on the walls, the stench of garbage, the damp, gritty ground beneath my shoes—is disorienting. For a moment, it feels as though I never left. It could have been yesterday that I stood here selling one of Chelsea’s homemade herbal remedies to Slade Murphy after my shift in the diner’s kitchen. Yet at the same time, it feels as if a lifetime has passed between then and now.

“Em? Come on.”

I blink, shake my head, and follow Calla to the end of the alley, pulling the backpack’s second strap onto my other shoulder as I go. It’s brighter out in the main street, but still difficult to tell what time of day it is. Clouds gather in the sky, darker along the horizon and lighter directly above us, along with that odd greenish tinge that signals a storm is brewing. “You know,” I say, “it would be great if amber devices could automatically update to reflect whatever time zone we’re in, the same way cell phones do.”

“Some ambers have that capability as part of their enchantment set,” Calla says. “As Perry pointed out to you, mine’s a little simpler than that. The one we bought you yesterday probably can’t do it either.”

I turn onto the sidewalk and walk to the diner’s nearest window. “We should be able to see the clock inside.” I squint through the dirty window at the clock on the wall behind the counter. “It’s ten past four. I hope we’re not too late.”

“Where’s Bloomberry Cafe?”

“This way,” I answer as I turn and hurry along the street. It isn’t far. We reach the corner, turn left, and the cafe is across the street on the right. I can tell before we reach it that it’s unusually busy. The tall stools lining the counter tops along the windows are full, and as we cross the street, a bunch of kids run past us and straight into the cafe. I don’t understand it until I notice the writing on the large chalkboard standing outside the door. The board tells everyone that Bloomberry Cafe is celebrating its fifth birthday with ‘un-blooming-believable discounts’ on everything. “Well, at least we’re not too late. If something had already gone wrong, this place would be a disaster zone, right?”

“Right.” We pause outside the cafe, and Calla glances up and down the street.

I peer in through the window, my eyes traveling across the patrons seated at tables and the kids crowded around the ice cream counter choosing flavors. I’m relieved when I don’t see Val anywhere. I turn back to Calla and ask, “Are we going in? Or are we hoping to stop this Unseelie guard—or guards—before they get inside the cafe?”

“We don’t actually know where they’re going to appear, but yes, that’s the idea. If we can keep them from getting inside the cafe, then none of the occupants of this town need ever know anything was wrong. We can stun them, tie them up, and take them through the faerie paths to somewhere near the Guild. Which reminds me, I need to start gathering stunner magic.” She turns her right hand palm up. “And I’ll only be able to stun one of them. We’ll have to take the others down in a different way.”

“Right. Okay. I’ll be ready to say whatever’s necessary to stop them.”

“Do you still have Griffin power left after all those commands you gave the weapons?” she asks.

“Yes. I don’t know how much, but it doesn’t feel like it’s about to run out. It didn’t take much magic to direct the weapons. Just a lot of concentration.”

“Okay.” She watches the cafe door as a woman walks out. “You need to keep your distance, though. I don’t want one of the Unseelies grabbing hold of you and vanishing through the paths before I can stop him or her.”

“How will they see me, though? Aren’t you going to make us appear invisible?”

“Yes, but I’d rather not have you anywhere near the action. Although,” she adds with a frown, “I don’t want you out of my reach either. Anyone could show up and abduct you—including a guardian, since we don’t know if the Guild assigned someone to deal with this situation.”

“But—”

“And I know you think you can handle these things because your voice has more power than anyone else’s,” she adds sternly, “but I don’t think you understand how quickly things can get out of hand.”

“Hey, I successfully helped you with the other three incidents we’ve got involved in, remember? I’m not as useless as I once was, so you don’t need to get all overprotective now.”

“Those weren’t Unseelie guards we were dealing with,” Calla argues. “They were random Unseelie fae that Roarke was using to cause mischief. But if the details of this afternoon’s vision are correct, then several Unseelie guards—trained to fight, to kill, to abduct—could appear at any moment. I think my overprotectiveness is justified.”

I doubt I’m going to get anywhere by arguing with her, so I give in with a sigh. I hook both thumbs beneath the backpack’s straps and ask, “Okay, then what do you want to do?”

She pauses for a moment before continuing. “We’ll go with an invisibility illusion, and you can stay here on the sidewalk with me. But keep your glamour in place in case I have to stop projecting the illusion. That will at least keep the humans from seeing you.”

I nod as I consciously probe at my glamour magic to make sure it’s there. I’m never entirely sure I’m doing the glamour thing correctly, but I think I can sense an extra layer of magic hovering just above my skin.

Behind us, the sun peeks through a gap in the clouds, sending shafts of orange light through the cafe windows. The table and chair legs cast long shadows across the checkered floor. A chill creeps up my spine at the memory of the Seer’s words: Shadow length and quality of light suggest late afternoon. I’m about to mention it to Calla when I notice tiny spots of water marking the pavement. I feel a few on my hands and cheeks. Casting my gaze beyond the nearest building, I notice the way the heavy purple-grey clouds are drawing in around that one spot where the sun refuses to be blotted out. “The perfect dramatic backdrop,” I say to Calla.

She smiles, though her gaze remains trained on the pavement in front of the cafe. “I have a certain fondness for storms. Even the dangerous magical ones.”

I look at the sky once more with a frown. “I thought this was just a normal storm.”

“Oh, it is.”

“What’s the difference between a normal storm and—”

“Em, someone’s here,” she whispers.

My gaze darts back down in time to see a uniformed man step out of a doorway in the air. The two young boys walking out of the cafe stumble back against the door in fright, one of them losing his ice cream cone in the process. “Crap, no glamour?” I murmur.

“Obviously not,” Calla replies as a second Unseelie guard exits the faerie paths. And behind him—a brownish green creature roughly the size of a person, with bulging orange eyes, hairy arms, and long, pointed ears.

“Holy heck,” I whisper. “What is that?”

“That,” Calla says, “is a goblin.” As the two men and the goblin move toward the cafe door, she adds, “Quickly. I’ll stun one of the Unseelies. You stop the other two.” She hurls her magic forward without pause. My mind races, almost causing me to stumble over my command, but as the first guard falls unconscious to the pavement, I manage to successfully tell the other guard to drop down and stay there. The goblin swings around, his orange eyes searching for any sign of a threat. “Goblin, you—”

Screams erupt from inside the cafe. “Shoot, there are two more guards inside,” Calla says. “They must have come through another doorway.” I rush to the window and peer inside, forgetting the goblin for a moment. The people in the cafe are more important. I have only a moment to see the man and woman in Unseelie guard uniforms before every table and chair explodes into the air. Screaming people fall to the ground, crashing into those who were already standing or rushing for the door. The furniture breaks apart in the air, and splintered chair and table legs fly around. As the two guards vanish into the faerie paths and uninjured people race for the door, the goblin moves into the doorway and spreads his hairy arms, blocking the way.

“Stop!” I shout out, but my thoughts are so scattered that my Griffin Ability has no idea what I’m yelling at. “Tables and chairs, stop moving and remain in the air,” I say. Every item of furniture freezes. At the same time, Calla throws a handful of sparks at the goblin’s back, then kicks him so hard he stumbles forward into the cafe. As people shriek and scramble out of his way, she draws a knife from each boot.

“No human is injured,” I say. “They can all stand up and leave the cafe.” They obey my command almost instantly, standing, hurrying for the door, and climbing over the two Unseelie guards. The goblin turns and lurches after them. Calla throws a knife above the heads of the escaping humans just as I say, “The goblin is—Oh!” I gasp as someone grabs my arm and spins me around.

“Who are you and what are you doing?” the unfamiliar man demands. It takes only a second for me to notice the dark patterns on his wrists marking him as a guardian. Crap, crap, crap. Calla must have lost hold of her illusion. “Get off me!” I shout, already looking away from him and at the large hairy creature rushing out of the cafe. “The goblin is unconscious!” I yell, finally getting my command out. An invisible force knocks the guardian away from me just as the goblin falls forward across the two Unseelie guards.

“Well, look at that,” a voice says behind me. “Some guardians have come along to ruin our fun.” I spin around and find the Unseelie man and woman who were inside the cafe standing in the middle of the road.

“I’m the only guardian here,” the guardian says, jumping up from where my magic threw him onto the pavement. He brandishes two glittering swords, pointing one at Calla and the other at the two Unseelies.

“The Unseelie man and woman can’t move,” I say immediately, hoping I still have enough Griffin power left. They freeze in place a second later, and the guardian whips his head around to look at me. I think he might be about to say something, but at that moment, wild whooping and calling and the sound of hooves beating against the ground reach my ears. From around the corner on the other side of the Unseelies, dozens of horses—no, centaurs?—come racing down the street. The startled guardian points both swords at the centaurs as they gallop past the motionless Unseelie man and woman.

With absolutely no idea what I can say to stop this stampede, or if I should stop it, all I can do is stare. Calla grabs my hand and pulls me further along the pavement, away from the guardian, the Unseelies and the centaurs. Together, we slip around the side of the building at the end of the block. When we’re out of sight, Calla stops and looks back. After the last centaur disappears around a corner at the end of the street, she quietly says, “I just want to make sure the guardian can handle all those Unseelies and the goblin.”

“What on earth?” I gasp. “Centaurs? Freaking centaurs? In Stanmeade?”

“Illusion,” Calla answers. “Distraction. You can’t believe everything you see around me, remember?”

All I can do is gape at her.

“He’s tying them up,” Calla says, looking around the edge of the building again. “He should be able to get them all into the faerie paths if he ties them together.”

“I—you—” I shake my head, still trying to come to terms with the fact that the centaur stampede never existed. I suddenly become aware of the fact that rain is pattering down on us, and probably has been throughout the whole encounter. “Um, can the Unseelies move at all?” I ask, wiping my hand over my face and peering carefully around her. “Or do you think my magic’s going to keep them frozen forever? Maybe I should say something else. If I have any power left, that is. I think my it’s almost depleted.”

“Yes, okay, just let the guardian finish tying them all up. And the goblin.”

Once the guardian is done with his glittering rope, I say another command telling the four Unseelie guards and the goblin they can move again. “That’s gonna give the poor guardian a fright,” I say, “but at least he’s—”

“Em?”

I whip around at the sound of the voice, accidentally knocking the backpack into Calla. I mentally grasp for the glamour magic that’s supposed to be concealing me from human sight—and realize abruptly that I completely forgot to keep that magic in place.

“Is it really you?” asks the girl standing in front of me. Dark frizzy hair frames a face as familiar as my own, and her eyes are as wide and scared as the last time I saw her, when my magic almost sucked her into the ground.

“Val!” I hesitate for only the briefest of moments before flinging my arms around her. I’m sure she’s mad at me for leaving, but she can shout as much as she wants once I’ve hugged her. I forget about Calla standing behind me, about the goblin and centaurs, about the terrified humans whose memories will now have to be altered, and simply cling to my best friend.

But after several moments in which Val stands almost as still as the Unseelie man and woman I magically paralyzed just minutes ago, I pull away and take a step back. She blinks at me. “I just—saw—what did you just do?” she stammers.

Words tumble from my mouth. “I can explain everything. I promise. And I’m so, so, so sorry about that night at the Masons’ farm. I know you think I ran away after that, but I swear I didn’t. I’m going to tell you the truth. I’m going to tell you everything.”

“Actually, we need to go,” Calla says from behind me. “If either the guardian or the Unseelies recognized you, this place will be swarming with Guild members within the next few minutes.”

“She’s … gold,” Val whispers, staring at Calla.

I turn back and find that Calla’s already raising her stylus to the wall. “The guardian didn’t recognize me, and I don’t think the Unseelies did either. They thought you and I were guardians at first.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that we need to go.” A doorway opens up, causing Val’s mouth to drop open even further.

“No,” I tell Calla. “I’m not going anywhere. I need to explain things to Val.”

“Em—”

“I have to!” My gaze flashes once toward Val, standing completely still with her wide-eyed gaze stuck on the faerie paths doorway, before returning to Calla. “You know what happened that night my magic broke out,” I continue, my voice lower now. “How would you feel if you’d done something like that to your best friend and then vanished with no explanation?” Calla’s expression softens a little, and her gaze moves to Val. “Please!” I add, seeing her wavering now. “Remember what you said about past mistakes and fixing them if I can? Well I need to fix this. I need to make things right with Val.”

After another moment’s hesitation, she gives in with a nod. “Okay. Val?” she says, but Val’s eyes are still trained on the gaping hole in the side of the wall.

“Val,” I say, gently placing my hand on her shoulder. Finally, she looks at me.

“You need to go straight back to your house,” Calla tells her. “Em and I will go a different way. We’ll meet you there. And don’t tell anyone what you’ve seen or that we’re coming.”

I squeeze Val’s shoulder. “Are you okay? Can you get back home?”

She breathes in deeply, blinks a few times, and starts looking a bit more like the self-assured Val I remember. “Yes. I’m fine. It’s all just … a bit shocking.”

Calla looks over her shoulder again. “Seriously, Em. We need to go.” Without waiting for an answer, she takes my arm and pulls me into the faerie paths.

“I’ll see you at your place,” I call back to Val. “Run!”