“I’m sorry,” she said. “We’ll help you get through this. I promise.”
“Thanks,” I said, but I didn’t have a lot of heart right then.
Then I remembered something else that had happened earlier and looked up at her. “If it’s okay for me to ask, why aren’t you talking to your mom?”
She grimaced. “That’s complicated,” she said. “My relationship with my mother has never been easy, and we fight a lot. I’ll never be her equal because I’m not a full-blood Fae, but she still wants me to hold myself higher than anyone else who doesn’t have Fae blood.”
On her far side, I could see that Glen was holding her other hand. “It’s always hard to stand up to your parents,” he murmured.
There was a sudden crash, and I looked up with a start. I didn’t see Lavender anywhere in the room. I looked around and saw a door standing open that I hadn’t seen before. Just how big was this house?
I stood up and walked over, peeking through. “Is everything okay?” I called.
The doorway led into a room that looked completely different from the first one. It was a plain workroom with no elaborate decorations or bright colors—just four white walls and a simple wooden table. On the table was an array of jewels, jars, bowls, dried herbs, and a small cast iron cauldron. The cauldron was tipped on its side and something was spilling out of it. I didn’t stop to look at it too closely.
Lavender was on the floor. As I rushed over to his side, he struggled to sit up and clutched his head. “I must have gotten something mixed up,” he said.
I knelt beside him, looking him over. “Be careful! Don’t try to move too quickly. Are you hurt anywhere?”
He turned his head to look at me and smiled. “Rosamunde!” he said. “How sweet of you to be concerned. No, I just took a spill. Something was wrong in my approach. Help me up?”
I gave him my arm and let him lean on me as he got back to his feet. He tried not to put too much weight on me, although for someone who was nearly seven feet tall, he wasn’t as heavy as I expected. When he got part of the way up, he leaned against the table with his other hand and let go of me.
“Ah, thank you,” he said. “Now, let me see. No, none of this will do at all. I’ll have to start over.” He began sorting through his assortment of objects on the table again.
I looked over the things he had, half of which I didn’t even recognize. “Can I help with anything?”
He looked at me and his face lit up. “Oh, of course! That’s a great idea, since it’s for you, after all. Hm, I’ll have to make some adjustments so that you can be useful.” He changed his sorting pattern and started muttering to himself.
I tried to figure out what he was doing. “How is this going to work, anyways? Is it like an immunity of some sort?”
Lavender shook his head. “We can’t really make you immune to one spell and not the others. I’m thinking of something like a block, or maybe something that reflects it back without affecting it.”
I mused for a moment, then picked up a thistle, careful not to get pricked. “Like how you turn a hex back on someone?”
“That’s it—” He looked around and frowned. “We could use a mirror, if I could find a spare.”
There are some situations that a girl was always prepared for. I reached inside my purse and pulled out the tiny compact mirror that I carried with me and flipped it open. “Will this work?”
“Of course!” He looked over the table and then picked up a small, cobalt blue glass bottle. “This is water that’s been charged by moonlight,” he said as he unscrewed the lid. “We’ll anoint the mirror with it first, and then we can put it with the thistle so you’ve got protection behind the reflection. We’ll add a few other herbs to nullify the effects—”
We picked over what he’d assembled and ended up putting together a little pouch of several herbs and a silvery black hematite stone, then tied the whole thing closed with a black thread and fixed the mirror to the outside. Both of us used our magic to charge it. When it was finished, he handed it to me.
“Keep this on you at all times, but especially when you’re at home,” he said sternly.
I nodded and swallowed hard, feeling a little nervous because I’d never seen Lavender look so serious. “I will. Thank you.”
He broke into a smile. “Now, for my payment.”
I’d almost forgotten about promising to kiss him. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and stood up on my tiptoes, craning to reach his lips.
Lavender swept me up in a hug and leaned me over backwards. I opened my eyes in surprise and put my arms around his neck to keep from falling. He winked at my startled look and then gave me a very chaste peck on my cheek.
When he returned me to standing up on my feet, I took a step back from him. I turned my face away to hide my blush.
“I would never force you to kiss me, my dear,” he said. “I know in your mind, I’m too old for you. I have my hopes that I may win your heart someday, but I’ll not take it from you against your will.”
“Th-thank you.” The workroom suddenly felt very small. “I don’t know if I have anything else to offer you in payment, though.”
Lavender politely turned away from my embarrassment to pick up the unused components from the table. “That’s alright. You can just owe me a favor someday.”
“Okay,” I agreed readily. I trusted him not to ask for any favor that I wasn’t willing to give. “Um, what should I do about the rest of my family? Could we make charms to help block the spell from them, too?”
Lavender stood still for a long moment, then resumed his work. “I don’t know,” he said in a voice filled with regret. “It’s hard to say without them here. Also, the spell was already weakened on you—maybe from when you realized what it was? You did something to break free of its control on your own. The charm we made will just keep it from reasserting its hold on you.”
I looked at the pouch, turning it over in my hands. What would be a way to help my dad and Akasha break free of the spell? They didn’t have much magic of their own—just enough to be able to use everyday magical objects, like locked doors—and I didn’t know if they’d even be able to tell that there was a spell on them. I had to find the source, and break it there.
I lifted my head. “What will the source of the spell look like? I think it’s at my house, but that doesn’t give me a lot to go on. I need to know what I’m looking for.”
“Well, it could be anything, almost,” he said slowly. “It has to be something that your mother has made by hand, and if your suspicion about how long this spell has been going on for is true, then it’s something that has been in your house for a long time.” He glanced at me over his shoulder. “How long have you lived there?”
“My whole life. When my parents got married, my mom said she’d inherited the house from her family and she wanted to move here. Otherwise they wouldn’t have picked this town, because my dad’s not really a woodsy type of guy, and the hospital where he works is so—small and rural.” I’d heard this story several times before.
Lavender looked thoughtful. “Then it could be anything that has been there your whole life. Since we know that your mother relies pretty heavily on her plants from her garden, it would probably be something that incorporates those. Maybe there’s a wreath or something hanging in your house?”
I shook my head. “Not that I know of. I’ll have to look around and see what I can find.”
“Good luck.” Lavender finished at his work table and turned around. “Well, I would love for you to stay and visit longer, but you’re on a deadline. We need to get you three back to the other side. Next time I see you, you’ll have to tell me all about how it went and if that charm worked.”
“I will—wait.” I stopped short and stared at him. “What do you mean, if it worked? You don’t know?”
He held out his hand to me like he had earlier, and I took it. Lavender used his little trick to make the spells around me appear again. The thorn
y vine was still there, but now I could see that the mirror blocked it, preventing it from wrapping all the way around me.
I let out a large sigh of relief. I thought, for the first time, that maybe I had a chance to pull this off. It wasn’t going to be easy to go up against my own mother, but maybe I could do this.
We went back out to Ashleigh and Glen. They still looked at Lavender warily, but they were pleased when they saw the charm. “I don’t know that we could have found any better solution,” Glen admitted.
I thanked Lavender again and we said our good-byes.
We found our way down the path. This time it looked a little different than before; the trees weren’t as close together, and I saw little flowers growing next to the path that I hadn’t seen earlier. I glanced at the sky and saw that the amount of light was the same as before, as if no time had passed at all. But it must have been at least an hour since we arrived. I began to see how it would be easy to be tricked into staying longer than you meant to here.
Ashleigh led us again, hurrying us along. “If we don’t get back before dawn, then the Veil may be too strong for us to pass through again.”
I craned my head to look up the path. “Aren’t we nearly there? We didn’t go very far.”
“It’s a little more subjective than that,” Glen said. “Just keep walking and try not to worry about it.”
I was starting to wonder what he meant when we came to a fork in the path.
I turned and looked around in surprise. “We didn’t follow any forks before. Did we go back the wrong way after the house? But we didn’t cross the stream.”
Ashleigh didn’t even slow down. “Always turn left,” she said. She headed down the left-hand path.
“But, are you sure?” I looked behind us, but now the path had twisted when it looked straight before, and I couldn’t see anything that I recognized. Now the flowers were gone. Did that mean something?
Glen, behind me, moved forward, forcing me to follow Ashleigh. “Yes. Always turn left. Don’t think, just go!”
We turned left at the fork, and then again at another one later. We kept going along the path at a quick pace. Then, abruptly, we turned left again and I suddenly saw the stables at Doe’s Rest Castle loom up ahead of us. We stepped out of the trees and into the grass.
I looked up at the sky and was blinded by the rising sun. I winced and shaded my eyes with my hand.
“We made it,” Ashleigh said, letting out a sigh of relief.
Glen came up next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. “You did it,” he murmured. “Good work.”
“Thank you,” I said. Then I yawned. I realized that I’d just stayed up the entire night, and I didn’t have time to get any sleep. It was going to be a long day.
Ashleigh yawned, too, then looked at me and grinned. “Do you need a ride to school?” she asked. “I think we might be driving today instead of taking Sweetie.”
I shook my head. “Thank you, but I have to go home and face my parents first. They’re not going to be happy that I disappeared all night.” I looked from one to the other. “You guys aren’t going to get in trouble because of me, are you? Did you tell your dad that we were leaving?”
Ashleigh smiled at me reassuringly. “Thanks for asking, but it’s not a big deal. My dad accepted years ago that a Fae’s daughter is just going to wander off sometimes. He knows that Glen is with me, so he’s not very concerned.”
I looked at Glen, who also smiled. “My parents know that I have a lot of responsibilities now as a knight. As long as we don’t miss too much school or disappear for a long time, we won’t really get into trouble.”
“Wow. You guys are really lucky.” I stretched. “I’m going to need all my energy to handle mine. I don’t think that I should tell them where I was, but I don’t have another explanation, either.”
Ashleigh rested her hand on my arm. “Maybe the less you say, the better. Let’s just stop in the castle for a bite to eat and a little coffee. That will wake us up.”
That sounded even better. I rubbed my face with my hands and suppressed another yawn. “Okay. Let’s just hurry. If I’m late to pick up Akasha, that will just be one more thing that they can hold over my head for being out all night.”
After a breakfast of fresh bagels and coffee at the castle, I felt better. I said good-bye to my friends, thanking them one last time, and flew home on my broom.
I flew up to my bedroom without being seen and quickly got my things ready for school. I glanced at the clock and saw that I still had an hour until Akasha and I had to leave. I considered hiding up in my room until the last minute, but in the end, I decided that it was better to get it over with. After all, what was the worst that could happen? When I’d gotten in trouble in the past, for minor things, the punishments had never been worse than staying home for a weekend or having to help my dad clean out the garage. I braced myself and headed downstairs.
Akasha wasn’t out of bed yet, but my mom was sitting at the kitchen table. She had the phone and the school’s contact list in front of her, dialing the number of one of my classmates, no doubt. When she looked up, her face was red and there were bags under her eyes, like she hadn’t slept all night; she looked at least ten years older. I’d never seen my mother look old before: she always looked so polished and put-together. Now her haggard face twisted into a cold look of anger.
“Where have you been?” She shoved her chair back, making it creak along the wood floor, and crossed the room to stand in front of me with her arms folded. “We’ve been looking and calling and worrying all night over you! And then you just come in here without a word, as if nothing has happened? Where were you?”
As she spoke, her voice got louder, filling the kitchen. I heard my dad’s study door bang open from upstairs, and moments later he was down in the kitchen too, staring at me. Dad looked just as tired and ragged as Mom, but his face lit up with a smile of relief and he threw his arms around me.
“Rosamunde, thank God! Are you okay? What happened?”
My heart sank when I saw how upset he was, and I was afraid that I was going to start crying. I shook my head and kept my mouth closed.
Mom snapped, “You can see that she’s fine. Don’t give her any sympathy. She needs to start explaining herself and there had better be an apology with it, young lady.”
Dad let go of me and took a step back. His smile disappeared, but he didn’t look angry yet, just waiting to hear what I said.
“I’m sorry,” I said, spreading my hands out. “I was too mad to call.”
Mom’s eyes widened. “Oh, this is still about the boy you were yelling at me about yesterday? I thought that our discussion was final! So where have you been off sulking? Did you go to his house?”
I shook my head. “I was at a friend’s.”
“Liar!” Mom snatched the phone list off of the table and waved it in front of me. “I have called everyone that you know at school and no one has seen you!”
I flinched away from her, but didn’t say anything.
Dad put his hand out and made her back off. “Whoa, calm down. Just let her explain what happened.”
But I was done talking. If Ashleigh’s dad had lied about seeing me at his house for whatever reason, that made things complicated for my parents, but it meant that I didn’t have to name her as the friend who I’d gone to see. I was afraid that if I told them, they wouldn’t let me see her anymore. I folded my arms and shut my mouth.
They both started yelling eventually—my dad was angry that I couldn’t tell him what had happened, and for making my mom so worried—and I just stood there, letting their words wash over me. Mom threatened to ground me until my eighteenth birthday, to take me to the hospital and have me checked for STDs, to have me tested for drugs and alcohol, but I stood firm.
“I was not with any boy last night,” I repeated again. “I was with a friend. And if you don’t believe me, then just cast a spell to find out if I’m lying.” I gave her a look.
/> Mom went silent when I said that. She pursed her lips together and glared at me.
Dad held up his hands. “You know that your mother would never use her magic on you that way. If you won’t tell us anything more, then we’re going to have to punish you for your behavior. You know that it’s wrong for you to stay out all night without telling us where you are, and there are going to be consequences.” He glanced at Mom. “Maybe we should go upstairs to discuss what those should be. Calmly.”
They went up to their room and shut the door.
I sat down at the kitchen table and waited, but I had a hard time sitting still. I watched the clock—if we didn’t leave in the next fifteen minutes, then we were going to be late for school—and jiggled my foot to pass the time. All the coffee I’d drunk earlier was not helping my nerves now. I wondered where Akasha was; probably hiding in her room.
Ten minutes later, my parents finally returned. Dad told me shortly that I was going to be grounded for the rest of the week: no car, no phone, no broom. I couldn’t have any contact with my friends outside of school. If it happened again, he emphasized, the punishment would be much more severe the next time.
I nodded to accept their terms and said nothing. I tried not to show how relieved I was. A week was not that long, and I could find a way to talk to my friends at school if I needed more advice from them. Staying at home all the time would just give me more of a chance to find Mom’s spell and figure out how to break it.
No car meant that Mom had to drive Akasha and me to school. I felt like everyone was standing around watching as she dropped us off at the front door. I also found out that everyone had gotten my parents’ frantic phone calls when they were looking for me. Normally I liked having a small school, but not when everyone knew that I was in trouble with my parents. All day I was stuck in a small room with the same people while they talked about me and tried to ask me what had happened.
Heather passed me a note that read, “Sorry about the gossip! Ashleigh and Glen told me everything. Don’t worry, it was private and I won’t tell. If you need help, just ask!”