The Aetherfae (5 page)

I drew in a deep breath and tried to steady my trembling hands. “So, what do I need to kill her? Aether?”

“Yes,” Gavin whispered.

A chill rattled through my body, causing my shoulders to shudder. “Well, that’s just great. Where can we go until then?”

“We will hide your fate as long as possible. Your home washed into the sea. For a while, no one will know whether you survived—that is an advantage. Listen carefully to me—do not worry about Mara. There are a few Fae she fears. Three of them are with you now. If madness brings her to us, I will personally treat her to a long overdue ending.” Wakinyan smiled.

“And if she is the Second?”

Wakinyan’s face went blank.

“What about your family?” Gavin asked.

“What do you mean? What about my family?”

“I mean, how much do you want them to know?” he asked.

I shook my head and closed my eyes. “I don’t know.”

Billy’s voice rang in my head from the front of the truck, “
You do know. Trust your gut.”

“Billy, can you please come back here and—”

He flashed across from me before I finished asking. I wrapped my arms around him the instant he was solid.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Full disclosure, remember?”

My stomach knotted. “They’re going to hate me for this, aren’t they? The lies, Dad…I’m going to be sick.”

“I can make it stop,” Gavin offered.

“No. I freakin’ deserve it—I deserve everything coming to me.”

“Heaving and gagging isn’t going to change anything,” he said, forcing the convulsions away. “Right now, I think you need to be with them, with your Dad. I suggest we let them grieve, keep them calm for the time being.”

I nodded. “I will tell them, I just can’t do it right now. Later, please?”

Billy nodded.

I got to my feet and went to them.

FIVE

SHROUDS FALL

F
or hours we drove through the Appalachia Mountains, from Georgia across the Carolinas, never stopping. In Georgia, Tse-xo-be altered the vehicle from a freight truck to an oil tanker. In South Carolina he changed it back into a semi-trailer, covered in logos from a major retailer. We were trying to blend in. The Ohanzee provided no clues as to where they were taking us, and were satisfied to merely reiterate that we were still in danger.

Wakinyan speculated that by now the Second was probably aware I was on the run. Those working for her were undoubtedly combing through the rubble and searching the water for bodies—I say “her” because my gut told me the Second was female. My stomach knotted. It was only a matter of time before Naji’s absence would alert the Second that he, and the nine who had come with him, were dead.

The Ohanzee were still unaware that I could listen in to their silent conversations, so I swallowed my fear when they began talking about trackers—Fae who could detect scent, my scent—a thousand times more easily than a bear or even the best bloodhound. It was unnerving and, apparently, there was no way to completely eliminate it.

Tse-xo-be thought our best option was to continue moving under a Clóca barrier. Tse-xo-be, Wakinyan, and I could create Clóca—so could the Second. I’d seen that much when I visited the Seelie Council at the Weald. For all I knew, she could be hovering just outside, or sitting next to me.
Don’t think about that, stupid.

Billy and Tadewi compelled Mom and my grandparents not to ask questions. I allowed it for the time being. The questions would come soon enough, and my stomach knotted when I thought about it.

Sometime while I slept they’d altered the vehicle again, transforming it into a large bus like the ones that crisscrossed Florida with tourists. I awoke to a swaying motion and the sound of the diesel engine clattering as the driver shifted gears while we drove up steep grades and wound through what I guessed was a curvy mountain road. None of my elemental gifts told me where we were, but I could sense trees beyond the blacked out windows and miles of forest punctuated by an occasional town.

Gavin caressed the side of my face with the back of his broad hand, silently telling me, “
We are close to our first destination. We’re in Vermont.”

“Vermont?” I whispered. “Why Vermont?”

“
I don’t know anything, except that Tse-xo-be is determined to put as much distance between you and South Florida as possible. Until we know it’s safe, I believe he wants to keep a distance from the Weald. Tse-xo-be is making the decisions.”

There was manufactured calmness in his voice. “What’s wrong? What are you keeping from me?” I asked.

Gavin pressed his temple gently against the top of my head. “
Maggie, it is remarkable we made it out of South Florida—remarkable in that we faced so few rogue Fae. The plan to kill your family seems, well, reckless. It was too poorly conceived in my opinion
.”

I thought about it—about the intricate plan to abduct my brother last year, about the diversion at the lake last year, and how the Second had sent Rogues to occupy the Seelie while they started an earthquake in Alaska. “Gavin,” I whispered, “there is something that none of you know yet.”

He pulled his head off of mine and stared at my face. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Billy, Faye, and the Ohanzee were staring as well. In my mind, I played back my memories of the Second’s attack on the Council, the blasts of Aether, the dead guards from both clans. They were silent, each apparently contemplating what I’d shown them.

* * *

The bus slowed. I left my family sitting in the darkened room, my mom staring at me with swollen red eyes, and made my way to the front. The driver, a human, sat beyond the Clóca shield, with Tse-xo-be behind him. The low light of dusk seemed soft and rich against the maple trees of the unfamiliar forest. The headlights cast a weak beam on the blacktop road that ringed a grassy field.
How
picturesque
. The wooded hills reached up and over rounded peaks, and beyond them a mountain range stretched out much taller than the Ozarks.

The driver turned off the pavement and took us down a narrow gravel road, past an isolated and weathered red barn with a cupola in the center of its gable roof. The trees were quite tall, and the branches formed a tunnel over the narrow lane. “Where are we?” I whispered to Tse-xo-be.

His baritone voice rumbled in my mind. “
The Fae call it Shéibhte Glasa. Your people call it Vermont. Your family will be safe here for the time being
.”

I was hoping for a little more, but I could tell by the tone of his voice that was all the information I was going to get.

The bus stopped. Wakinyan wrapped himself in Clóca, and disappeared through a gap in the door. “
Proceed,
” he said a minute later.

Tse-xo-be gently compelled the driver. We moved a little further and then stopped near a slate blue two-story farmhouse. My gut tightened with a spasm. It was time to disembark. In a few minutes Billy and Tadewi would stop compelling my family. Then it would be time to confess.

Sweat beaded up on my forehead and I felt clammy all over. A sick feeling swirled in my stomach.
How do I tell them? How do I tell them Dad’s death is my fault? Oh god, how do I tell them any of it?

I did tell them the moment Billy stopped compelling them. When I finished, they stared at me with unveiled eyes. I felt small and dirty. Wounded expressions, horror, fear, and then diverted looks met me as they absorbed it all. The elegant features of Mom’s face turned harsh and cold. She never spoke. The initial shock of learning about the Fae, of learning about me, turned to fury. Her brown eyes flashed and the muscles in her jaw tensed as she stood as erect as I’d ever seen her. She walked slowly to the stairs.

“Mom, I’m…” I started.

“Magalena Sophia O’Shea! Not now,” she snapped, lifting her hand out flat, fingers shaking.

Using my given first name was bad enough, but whipping out the middle name…that had only happened twice in my lifetime. Grandma Sophie shook her head at me in a silent warning to let Mom go. I did. Outside on the porch, where my family wasn’t watching, I threw up in a shrub.

* * *

The deep orange Vermont sunset gave way to cool darkness. Chilled just slightly, I walked past the cream-colored trim surrounding the porch and tried to clear my head. Dad’s green eyes and dimpled smile flashed through my mind, stirring my pain. A vision of Mom’s eyes followed. Her beautiful brown irises swam in pools of puffy red, shadowed under her furrowed brow. She was furious with me—she had every right to be. The ache in my stomach turned to physical pain. Tears began to fill my eyes. I didn’t want to cry again, but preventing it seemed impossible.

Two arms wrapped around my stomach, startling me. I hadn’t heard anyone walk up.

“Mags, please talk to me,” Mitch said, sniffling his runny nose.

His voice pulled me out of the stupor. It gave me something to focus on, and I desperately need that. I hugged him tight for a minute or more. He wanted to know everything. We walked to the woods beyond the small pasture just behind the red barn. I tried to say something, but I had nothing. Instead, I just followed him. Mitch climbed into the branches of an enormous sugar maple that rivaled the size of the oaks at the Weald. I followed him—it seemed the thing to do at the moment.

In Mitch’s young face I saw my father’s eyes, his square jaw, and his handsome brow. The resemblance was bittersweet. Leaning back against the trunk, his legs straddling a large branch, Mitch again asked me to tell him everything. I settled against an adjacent branch and spilled my guts. By now he knew about the Fae, and he knew I was different. The cold night settled around us as I answered every question and offered up things he hadn’t thought to ask. I told him the truth about the Unseelie, the changeling, the Second Aetherfae, and what it meant to be a Maebown—all of it.

I’m not sure how much time passed, a few hours at least, when he asked if I was afraid.

“Yes,” I said in a whisper. It was the truth.

“You’re leaving us, aren’t you?”

“I have to.”

He looked away as tears spilled over his lids. “Can I learn to do what you can do?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I want to help you…help you beat them…hurt them for hurting Dad.” His chest heaved and he clenched his hands into fists. His lower lip quivered.

“I know you do, but I need you to look after Mom when I leave.” I expected him to huff and roll his eyes, but he didn’t. “She needs you more than anything else in the world. I don’t think I can do what I need to unless I know you’re safe with her.”

“Mags, are they ever going to stop hunting us?”

“Mitch,” I waited until he finally looked back at me. “I will see to it they do. I promise. Until then, you’re going to have to hide.”

“Like witness protection?”

“Yes, something like that,” I said.

He smiled for a few seconds, and pressed his eyebrows together in thought. “Are our friends safe?”

“I’m sure…” The words melted in my throat as I fully considered his question. They weren’t, and I knew it.

“They’re probably worried that we’re dead from the hurricane,” he continued. His words sent a chill through my body.

“Mags, what’s wrong?” he asked, studying the terror on my face.

I took a deep breath and lied to him, “Nothing, I was just thinking about someone…”

Grieving for my father, worrying about my grandparents, Mom, Mitch, I’d not thought of what would happen to Candace, Doug, and Ronnie when the Second discovered I was alive.
Oh my god… she can’t get to my family, but she can get to them.

“Mitch, do you mind if we go inside?”

He studied my face as I started scrambling for the ground. “No, that’s okay, I’m getting cold,” he said.

“You know, Mom doesn’t really blame you,” he said as we walked to the porch. “She’s just sad, and mad you lied.”

“I know. I know.” I hoped he was right that she was only mad about the lie. She could easily blame me.

The living room was dark, except for one small lamp glowing in the corner. Grandpa wrestled with the logs in the fireplace, cursing in Spanish, trying to get them to light. He looked up, and underneath his bushy white mustache, he smiled.

“Can ya help me with this? Kindling won’t burn,” he said.

Mitch nudged me. I reached out with my mind and set the logs on fire.

Grandpa jumped back, “Aye, yai, I meant bring me some paper or something.”

“Sorry,” I said.

Mitch whispered, “That’s so cool.” He hugged me and then headed upstairs. I doubt he’d sleep a wink. Except for what exhaustion forced on us, nobody in my family had been able to sleep since Dad died.

I pushed the bedroom door closed and climbed on the lumpy bed. The Ohanzee kept their distance just like I asked, concealing themselves under a Clóca barrier. My eyes closed, my body relaxed, and I felt the floating sensation for a split second before I concentrated on Candace. In a dizzying flash, I found her curled up in the darkened back seat of Doug’s jeep. Doug concentrated on the road—an interstate somewhere. Ronnie slept with his head against the window. I sensed no Fae nearby—a huge relief.

I didn’t know where they were heading until I noticed one of my journals on the seat next to Candace. The others were probably packed somewhere in the Jeep. Doug drove past a road sign that said Interstate 40. Just ahead was an exit for Jackson, Tennessee, and Hollywood Boulevard.

With a lurch of my tether, I flashed back into my body. As quietly as I could, I grabbed a coat and headed for the front door. Wakinyan met me there, encircling me in Clóca. He escorted me to the center of the field. I wanted to talk to the Ohanzee, and apparently they wanted to talk to me, as well. My senses spread out, finding nothing but an empty field shrouded in darkness. Passing through Tse-xo-be’s Clóca barrier, however, I found them waiting. They were all in human form except for Amadahy. She was curled up in the grass in the form of a red fox, and ignored me. Seated on stone stools that formed a wide circle were Gavin, Billy, Tadewi, and next to her, Tse-xo-be. To his left, Wakinyan took a seat. Nodin, Pavati, Enapay, and Sinopa, continuing the circle, each turned their heads to acknowledge me. Taking the last stool between Faye and Drevek, I channeled the night air, pulling energy from it, so that I could hear the entire conversation.

“Maggie,” Tse-xo-be said in a deep but quiet whisper, “I am sorry about your father. I know this must be a very painful time for you.”

I nodded, trying not to think about it. I knew they had their own motives for the meeting, but I needed their help first. Doug, Candace, and Ronnie were driving to Florida to find me, at least I thought. They were headed toward danger regardless of their motive. “I need your help.”

“What do you need?” Tse-xo-be asked, apparently willing to wait to discuss anything else.

“My friends are driving to Florida, I think, and if the—”

“Of course,” Tse-xo-be said, interrupting me. “Do you want to bring them here?”

“
Bring them here?”
Amadahy protested, unaware I could hear her. “
Are we to guard more humans? Protect them all? We have exposed ourselves already.”