The Fairytale Curse (Magic's Return Book 1) (13 page)

“How should I know you? Your kind hasn’t been seen in the world since the incursion of 1920.”

“By reputation, then. I flatter myself I was quite well known at one time. Even your great Shakespeare wrote of me.”

“I’m afraid my memory of Shakespeare’s a little rusty. Tell me your name.”

He shrugged. “I’ve been called many things. Call me Robin, if you wish.”

Mum leaned forward and spoke into the microphone on her desk. “Robin Goodfellow?”

The Sidhe looked up, directly into the camera, and performed a mocking half-bow. “The very same.”

“Otherwise known as Puck,” said Dad.

Puck? I’d heard that name before—he was one of the fairies in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. The one who spent all his time playing tricks on people.

Dad was still leaning against the wall, arms folded. If he’d been about forty kilos heavier that might have looked intimidating, but when you’re shorter than nearly everyone else, it’s hard to be taken seriously. I should know. Puck only glanced at him, then turned his attention back to the more imposing Dorian.

“What were you doing near the Cathedral?” Dorian asked.

Puck leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other. There was a hole in the knee of his jeans. “Just going for a stroll. Working on my tan, you know.”

“How did you escape the Sunlit Land?” Dad asked.

Puck glanced over at him again. I sensed he was enjoying himself, despite the presence of the threatening contraption. He seemed perfectly at ease. Maybe he didn’t know what it did either. “Ah, well—you have your internet to thank for that. It’s a wonderful thing, you know. Brings the world closer together.”

“What are you talking about?” Dorian sounded exasperated, but Dad was looking thoughtful, and Mum leaned on her intercom, one step ahead of both of them.

“Katie, get Gretel in here, would you?”

Gretel appeared in the doorway so quickly she must have been lurking outside. “What’s up, ma’am?”

“Get me an analysis as fast as you can on the spread of that YouTube video. Who’s watching, how many, where they’re located, where’s the heaviest traffic, everything you can.”

Gretel nodded and ducked out again. She didn’t ask which YouTube video Mum meant. They’d probably all watched it multiple times already, seeing those frogs explode out of my mouth, and the mad scramble for diamonds when CJ spoke. In this place there was only one YouTube video worth mentioning.

“I’m talking about the connectedness of the world these days,” Puck was saying on screen. “We could have done a lot with a reach like that. We still could, in fact. They say it’s never too late, don’t they?”

Dorian’s face grew red. The Sidhe man was a hard person to get a straight answer out of. Dad laid a hand on his fellow warder’s arm just in time to stop an angry outburst.

“Tell me this, then. Why did you curse my daughters?”

“Your daughters?” He looked at the ceiling and tapped one long finger on his lips, pretending to think. “Oh, you mean the pretty girls I saw in the corridor. That dark one does like a tipple, doesn’t she?”

Mum stiffened. Oops. CJ was going to cop it.

“Are they
your
daughters? What a coincidence.”

Dad’s lips tightened. He rarely lost his temper any more, but when he did it was like fireworks going off. It was the red hair. Something else I’d inherited from him.

“Don’t play games with me, Sidhe.”

“But that’s like telling a fish not to swim, mortal. Playing games is what we
do
.”

“Which is why we want you out of our world! Humans are not your playthings.”

“Poor helpless warder. You don’t even know what game we’re playing yet, do you?” He smiled, that same unpleasant smile he’d worn as Josh Johnson. “Such a shame. It’s a
very
good game. And this time, we’re playing for keeps.”

“What did that creature mean by another drink, Crystal?”

There’d been a lot more to the interview, but the men never got any straight answers out of Puck, and in the end they gave up and left the vault. With the interview over, Mum took the opportunity for a little quality time with her eldest daughter.

CJ tried playing dumb. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before.”

Mum wasn’t having any of it. “Crystal Jane, don’t act any stupider than you have to. How many Sidhe do you think are walking around out there? He was wearing the appearance of Josh Johnson last time you saw him. Now cut the crap and tell me what really happened.”

So the whole sorry absinthe-soaked story came out, and Mum’s face grew blacker by the moment.

“Well,” she said as Dad and Dorian entered the room, “it looks like Violet will be going to the Year 12 formal on her own.”

“Mum, no!” we cried together.

“I’ve already got the dress!” CJ said. “And you’ve paid for the tickets.”

“I don’t even want to go!” I added.

“This is not open to negotiation,” she hissed. “Now sit there and be quiet.”

Dorian paced, while Mum sat behind her desk scowling and Dad slouched in a visitor’s chair, apparently at ease. Only the jiggling of his leg as he tapped his foot double-time on the carpet gave away his true feelings.

“We may as well condense him,” Dad said, breaking the long silence. “He’s obviously not going to tell us anything. Leaving him loose in the world is just asking for trouble.”

“He’s hardly loose,” Mum said. “He’s surrounded by iron, under constant watch—what is he going to do?”

“I don’t trust him,” Dad said.

“Of course,” she said. “Nobody trusts him—he’s a pookah. They live to cause trouble. But let’s not do anything rash because we’re
afraid
of him. He’s contained as well as he can be for now. I think we should call a full Council meeting and let the others have a chance to see him before we decide.”

“Jane’s right.” Dorian stopped his pacing. He’d literally worn a track in the carpet—the nap of the carpet where he’d paced was laying in the opposite direction to the rest. “We need as much information as we can get. What are the Sidhe doing?”

“More importantly, how are they doing it?” Dad rubbed tiredly at his stubble. “I think
what
they’re doing is fairly clear. They’re attacking warders. First Bryan’s sister with the Snow White thing, now our girls.”

Three pairs of worried eyes rested briefly on us, still parked on the couch in the corner of Mum’s office.

“And what did he mean about the internet?” Dorian looked as if he were about to start pacing again, but Dad nudged a spare chair toward him and he sank into it instead. “What does technology have to do with magic?”

“It’s not the technology so much as what it can do,” Mum said. “I’ve got Gretel compiling a report for me now. I’m afraid he was referring to the spread of belief. You know they thrive on it. Because of that one YouTube video, belief in magic is spreading again, and there’s nothing we can do to call it back. The genie is out of the bottle.”

“But that’s got nothing to do with it,” Dad objected. “Yes, lack of belief weakened them to the point where our ancestors could trap them, but that doesn’t mean that restoring belief is enough to free them. As long as the anchors hold, those walls are not coming down.”

“That’s right.” Dorian nodded in relief. “Look at how much belief there was around the Cottingley affair—and that made no difference. The walls were still rock solid.”

That was about the third time I’d heard somebody mention this Cottingley affair. It must have been big, whatever it was. I would have to find out soon.

“I don’t know.” Mum still looked worried. “The reach of the internet is vast. Maybe now it’s enough?”

Dorian shook his head. “No, there’s got to be more to it than that. Some extra step. What was that creature doing in College Street, so near to the Cathedral?”

“It couldn’t be the spear. How could he get in?” Dad sounded like a man who was trying to convince himself and failing badly.

“Maybe he’s just trying to fake you out,” I said.
Playing games is what we
do
, he’d said. If this was the same Puck guy that Shakespeare had written about, he’d shown a fine talent for misdirection, impersonating other people and tricking half the cast into falling in love with someone else.

They all jumped, as if they’d forgotten we were there.

“Fake us out?” Dorian repeated, as if I were speaking some weird foreign language.

“Yeah, you know—pretending to go after this spear to distract you from whatever he’s really doing. What’s the big deal with the spear?”

Mum frowned, but before she could say anything there was a knock at the door and Gretel poked her head in. “I’ve got that report you wanted, ma’am.”

“Excellent. Bring it in. Girls, go with Gretel. We’ll be here a while.”

Okay, so no one wanted to tell me about this spear. Gretel held open the door and we filed out. Well, I filed. CJ more stalked. The door was barely shut before she whirled on me.

“How could she do that to me?” she demanded. “The Year 12 formal! I’ve been looking forward to it all
year
.”

I said nothing. I was crankier about getting kicked out like little kids as soon as things started to get interesting, but CJ had different priorities. The way she was glaring at me, you’d think it was all my fault. I’d been looking forward to the formal too—back when we lived in Townsville. Then it would have meant something, going with our friends. Now I truly wasn’t interested. And if I went and CJ missed out, I’d never hear the end of it.

“I won’t go,” I offered. “I’ll stay home with you.”

“I am
not
staying home,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Uh … girls?” Poor Gretel looked uncomfortable. “Why don’t we head down to the kitchen and I’ll get you something from the snack machine?”

“No thanks. I think I want to go back to the library.”

The lift pinged as we walked past it, and Simon stepped out.

“Hi, Simon!” Gretel said brightly.

He nodded and strode off. She watched him until he turned the corner. She must have it
bad
.

“Gee, would it have killed him to say hello?” CJ said.

Gretel flushed a dull crimson. “When you get to know us a bit better you’ll see what a traditional focus this place has. It’s all built on who’s got the most status, and latency is the currency we trade in. It’s not exactly a meritocracy. Seekers don’t tend to have much to do with us lowly technicians.”

Wow. Bitter, much? We both stared at her, and she laughed self-consciously. “Umm … you were saying? The library?”

“I just want to check a few things.”

“Oh? Like what?” She led the way, following in Simon’s footsteps.

“Like what’s this Cottingley affair everyone keeps mentioning?”

“You haven’t heard of it? It’s pretty well known, even in the non-magic world.”

I shook my head.

“It was a big deal, back when photography was first getting started. Two girls in Cottingley, in England, produced some photos of themselves playing with fairies in the garden.”

CJ snorted. “And people believed them?”

“Oh, it was true, all right. A photographic expert examined the photos and declared them genuine. A lot of people were convinced—including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.”

I stared. “The guy who wrote
Sherlock Holmes
?”

“Yep. It caused big problems for us when he went public on it. See, it was only when the Industrial Revolution started that we managed to get the upper hand over the Sidhe. The age of science and machinery—and the huge rush to the cities that went with it—turned people away from them. Things that had seemed real when you lived in a cottage in your little village in the countryside, with nature all around you, started to seem more like dreams, or stories for children, when you worked in a factory and lived surrounded by bricks and steel. That weakened their power.”

“Is that why Mum and Dad are so worried about that stupid video going viral?” I’d felt guilty enough before, but now I felt a hundred times worse. What if the Sidhe got back into the world all because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut?

She nodded. “They feed on people’s belief. It makes them stronger. We were lucky; the Industrial Revolution not only weakened belief in them at a time when some of our greatest mages were alive, it provided the means for us to chase them from the world forever.” She frowned. “Or so we thought. And then to have belief surging again, only a century or so later—it was a great worry. Would the spells hold? Or would the Sidhe break through again?”

“So what happened?” I asked. Gretel seemed perfectly happy to talk about history, so I was going to find out as much as I could. We’d reached the library door, but even CJ looked interested now, though she still had a scowl on her face.

“Our technicians managed to replace the original photographic plates with ones that had been altered ever so slightly to make the fairies look less real. That was huge! They invented three new photographic techniques in the process. These days, with Photoshop, it would have taken someone five minutes, but it was a big deal back then. And then we had to get those photos into circulation, and get rid of the original ones. It was a big operation.”

“Didn’t anyone notice the change in the photos?”

“They were very subtle changes—and reproduction techniques were pretty primitive. Most people had only seen a grainy print in the first place. And of course we had people in the newspapers saying it was all a load of rubbish, but we couldn’t get the girls to budge. It wasn’t until one of them was an old lady that we finally pressured her into saying it was all a fake. Anyway, here’s the library. I’ve got to run.”

Wow. I felt kind of sorry for the old lady. Fancy seeing real fairies, and even getting photographic proof, and then having to tell the world it was all a scam. No wonder she stuck to her guns so long. I wondered how they’d managed to persuade her in the end, but Gretel was already gone, so I couldn’t ask.

We went inside and sat in the same chairs. We had the place to ourselves again; the quiet had a relaxing weight to it. Not just a temporary absence of noise, it was a purposeful silence, a place to get lost in study and contemplation.