The Fairytale Curse (Magic's Return Book 1) (12 page)

“College Street!” said Dorian, a note of panic in his voice. “Get a containment team down there
now
.”

“No!” said Mum. “I’ll go with them. Let’s see if we can catch them this time. We need some answers.”

Dorian opened his mouth to object, but she was already out the door, running like Usain Bolt going for gold.

The room exploded into action. Half of them suddenly had urgent places to be, including Dad.

“I’ll have to rig something up in the vault,” he said. “You three, come with me.”

Three rather startled technicians obediently followed him to the door. I thought he was just going to leave us there, but at the last minute he stopped.

“Gretel, can you set up a video feed from the vault back to Jane’s office? No sense all of us being exposed.”

She nodded, so she must have understood what he was talking about. Then his eye fell on us and he frowned, as if he’d only just remembered we existed.

“Take the girls to the library on your way, would you? I’ll see you later, girls. Just try to stay out of everyone’s way for now. There’s plenty to keep you occupied in the library.”

“Bet they don’t have wi-fi,” CJ muttered as we followed Gretel out.

“Or TV.”

Not that I didn’t like reading. I did. But there probably weren’t going to be any of my kind of books in an office library, even if it was a very peculiar kind of office.

“What was all that about?” I asked as Gretel hurried us out into the corridor. “Where’s Mum rushing off to in such a hurry?”

“That big red spot on the map,” she said. “It was moving. Aether doesn’t move in big clumps like that—unless it’s contained in something. Or someone.”

I frowned. “People can have aether inside them?”

“No.” She looked worried. “Not normally. Only Sidhe. Looks like we have an escapee out there.”

CJ was frowning too, but it turned out her mind was running down a different track altogether.

“I’ve never met any identical twins before,” she said, as if she hadn’t even heard that there was an escaped fairy loose on the streets. Possibly she hadn’t. She was like Dad in that way, very single-minded.

“Really?” Gretel seemed eager to change the subject to safer ground. Bet she wished someone else had scored babysitting duties. “There’s another set working for the Council, but they’re stationed in Perth. We have quite a lot of twins, of course.”

“Why ‘of course’?”

Gretel looked a little surprised. “Well, because twins tend to run in magical families.”

It took me a minute to follow that to its logical conclusion. “Do you mean that everyone here is from a magical family? Not just the warders?”

Now she looked almost shocked. “Didn’t you know that?”

“Until yesterday we didn’t know any of this existed,” CJ said. “Mum and Dad never told us anything about their jobs. I bet they still wouldn’t have if we hadn’t managed to get cursed somehow.”

She sounded sulky, like a child who’d just discovered a wonderful playground that everyone else had been playing in for years.

“I’m sure they had their reasons.” Gretel seemed uneasy now, and she picked up the pace. With my shorter legs I had trouble keeping up.

CJ looked like she wanted to argue, but all she said was: “Who else is a twin here?”

“Umm … who have you met? There’s Katie, on reception. She has a twin brother in operations. Darrell and Hamish—they were the two guys sitting next to Ronnie. Oh, and Simon—but don’t tell him I told you that.”

“Why not?”

“His twin didn’t make it. He doesn’t like to talk about it.”

“You mean he’s dead?”

“No! God, no. He just can’t work for us.” She looked uncomfortable. “You should ask your parents. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this stuff.”

Not if they hadn’t told us themselves. She didn’t need to add it; I could tell that was what she was thinking. I guess no one wants to get into trouble with their bosses.

“Here’s the library!” She smiled brightly. “Make yourselves at home.”

She opened the door to a large, comfortable room and waved us in. It felt reassuringly familiar after the strangeness of the monitor room, just like the library at school. Books were still books, whatever the subject, and they had that wonderful, slightly musty smell of old paper that promised hours of wonder lost in other lands and strange stories.

There were comfy chairs scattered about, and big arched windows on one wall that let the sunshine stream in. Opposite the door was a glassed-in room.

“That’s the restricted section.” Gretel indicated the glass room. “It’s locked, though. You can read anything you like out here.”

“Are there spell books?” CJ asked, with visions of Hogwarts dancing before her eyes, no doubt. She’d been a big Harry Potter fan when she was younger.

Gretel smiled. “No. Most of this is more of a historical collection—the works of regular humans concerning the Sidhe world. Some of them are surprisingly accurate. We even have Shakespeare.”

“Shakespeare?” CJ looked like she’d swallowed something nasty.

“You bet. He had quite a lot to say about witches and fairies in his works. Ever read
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
?”

CJ groaned. “Yeah, we’re studying it at school. Are you saying that stuff is true?”

“Not gospel truth, no. But a lot of the basics are there.”

My opinion of fairies went way down. “But all they seem to care about is sex and wife-swapping and messing around with love potions.”

“The High Sidhe are often very focused on affairs of the heart.” Obviously this information wasn’t classified; she’d lost that harried look. “Or at least the body. I’m not sure they have hearts, the way we understand them.

“Anyway—” She checked her watch. “I’d better run. It’s been so long since anyone’s had dealings with the Sidhe we have to rely on our records to get a feel for what they were like. And I’ve got to tell you, some of those old mages were dry old sticks. At least with Shakespeare and people like that, you get more than just lists of attributes and known haunts. I’ll see you a bit later!”

She headed back out, shutting the door behind her in a rush, as if she was relieved to escape. Shame she’d realised we knew nothing and clammed up; she’d dropped some interesting info before that. Seekers and magical artefacts; twins in magical families.

CJ looked at me. “I don’t know about you, but
I
sure ain’t reading Shakespeare to pass the time, whatever she says.”

She flopped into the nearest chair and pulled out her phone.

“Who are you texting? Ashleigh? I’m surprised your thumbs aren’t bleeding yet, you’ve been texting so much today.”

I leaned over, trying to see the screen, but once again she tilted it away from me.

“Get off. Go find a picture book that won’t strain your intellect too much.”

“Be anti-social then. See if I care.”

I slipped out of our scarf and wandered off, but I wasn’t letting go that easily. I had more than a sneaking suspicion that there was a boy involved. With CJ, there usually was. But who? The only guy she’d shown any interest in at all was Josh Johnson, but I refused to contemplate the horror of my sister going out with that waste of space.

I pulled a book off the shelves at random. Ironically enough, it was a picture book, though not intended for children. More like a field sketchbook, full of whimsical drawings of “the fae and other ungodly sprytes”, with notes on their behaviours. Some of the pictures were quite striking, but I pretended to be more engrossed than I was as I circled back to CJ’s chair.

I needn’t have worried; she was so caught up in what she was doing I could have stood behind her blowing The Last Post on the trumpet and she mightn’t have noticed. I peered over her shoulder and my heart sank.

When u coming back 2 skl babe?

Y? U miss me?
CJ texted back.

Ill show u how much …

I stood there for a couple of minutes, watching them flirt, until I was certain. It had to be Josh. I was going to have to disown my sister.

She giggled at his latest attempt at flattery—or maybe she was just laughing at his spelling, who knows?—and then she finally realised I was standing behind her.

“What are you doing?” she snapped, spilling diamonds on the floor. “Spying on me?”

“What are
you
doing? Why are you encouraging that jerk?” At least I had the sense to grab the scarf before I opened my mouth.

She tossed her beautiful black hair over one shoulder. “Who says he’s a jerk?”

“Ah—
you
did, the first day we met him.”

“He’s not so bad once you get to know him.”

“I don’t think I have a strong enough stomach for that.”

“Nobody’s asking
you
to go out with him.”

“Oh, but
you
are? Since when? This has come on pretty fast, hasn’t it? You hardly even spoke to him on Saturday night, and you haven’t seen him since.”

She clasped her phone protectively against her chest. “We’ve been texting a lot, and we skyped last night for hours.” Her face glowed with the memory. “He’s actually quite a sweetie.”

I dropped into the chair beside hers and gave her a stern look. “So basically, ever since he found out you’ve got diamonds coming out of your mouth he’s been hot to trot. You don’t see anything suspicious about that?”

She gave me a glare that could peel paint. “If you do, it’s because you’ve got a nasty mind. We have a lot in common.”

“Right. He likes diamonds, you’ve got diamonds …”

Couldn’t she see he was just like the prince in the stupid fairy tale?
Oh, look, this girl is a walking diamond vending machine. Let’s get together!

“Oh, for God’s sake. Is it so impossible he might like me for myself?”

Of course not. There was a lot to like in that pretty package, and she knew it. What else could I say? I didn’t trust him, and she was determined to ignore me. I guess time would tell who was the better judge of character.

“You just don’t like him because of that whole scene in the bedroom with the absinthe.” She leaned forward, intent. “But
that wasn’t him
, remember?”

True. There had been something very unsettling about that guy, but if that hadn’t really been Josh … Maybe I was being too harsh. If Mum and Dad were right, that had been a Sidhe pretending to be Josh, presumably so he could get close enough to dump this stupid curse on us. Was that what he’d meant when he said he had a gift for us? Creepy bastard.

A swell of noise in the corridor distracted us both. Raised voices were coming closer. Footsteps ran past the library door.

Quarrel forgotten, we looked at each other. “Do you think that’s Mum back?”

We hurried to the door. I paused with my hand on the door handle. What would we see when I opened the door? A real live fairy?

“Come
on
.” When I didn’t move, CJ yanked the door open and stepped into the corridor.

Six big guys in dark clothes escorted two people towards us. One was Mum. The other was a short, very ordinary-looking young guy in a scruffy T-shirt and faded blue jeans with a hole in one knee. If
he
was a fairy I wanted my money back. What a let-down.

He looked up and his bright green eyes flashed when he saw CJ.

“Hi there, babe. Fancy another drink?”

Gretel looked up from the computer as we came into Mum’s office. “Are they back already?”

“Uh-huh.” CJ slumped on to a couch, looking surly, as well she might. Mum hadn’t been amused, to put it mildly. She paused only long enough to send one of the men to show us to her office, then stormed off with a face like thunder. The scruffy guy had winked at CJ as he was hustled away.

“And? Did they find anything?”

I shrugged, perched uncomfortably on the arm of the couch next to CJ. “Just some guy.”

“A guy?” She shook her head in wonder. “They really did it. They captured a Sidhe.”

She turned back to the computer. Her hand on the mouse was shaking. “I’ve got to see this.”

CJ had her phone out again, pretending she wasn’t interested. From where I stood I could see over Gretel’s shoulder. She’d set up a video link, and the screen showed part of a room where Dorian Kincumber paced back and forth past the camera. Dad stood in the background, leaning against the wall.

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“The vault,” she said.

“As in, where they keep the money?”

She grinned. “No.”

“That’s right, you said that’s for the artefacts the seekers find.” I couldn’t see anything that looked like a magical object, just desks and computers and typical office-type stuff, but the camera didn’t show a very big slice of the room.

“Among other things. It seemed like the obvious place to take a Sidhe prisoner.”

“Sorry, you’ve lost me. Obvious how?”

“The Sidhe have an aversion to iron,” said Mum, closing the office door behind her. “And the vault is lined with it—walls, floor, ceiling, even the doors. To contain the aether.”

Gretel sprang up from the chair and held it out for her.

“All ready for you, Warder Winters.”

“Thanks, Gretel.” Mum glanced at CJ, who carefully didn’t look up from her phone, but clearly she had more important things on her mind now than ferreting out what the Sidhe had meant by his comment. Not that she would forget. That look promised a thorough interrogation to come—once the interrogation on screen was done.

Gretel left the room. On screen Dorian stopped pacing and looked up like a bloodhound quivering on point. The group we’d met in the corridor came in. Two of them handcuffed the prisoner to a chair, while the others took up stations around the room. Were those handcuffs made of iron too?

An odd boxy contraption stood on a tripod next to Dorian. There was no lense, so it wasn’t a camera. It looked a little like those things surveyors use. I could see the leg of another one on the other side of the screen. The way Dorian rested his hand on it and stared at the Sidhe man, it looked almost threatening. I wanted to ask Mum what the thing did, but Dorian had started speaking.

“What is your name?”

The Sidhe laid a hand on his chest, pretending shock. “Why, don’t you know me, Warder Kincumber? I’m hurt.”