I screamed all the way down.
I could imagine, in that moment, my broken body on the pavement below. The last thing I would hear would be my own hysterical screaming and the mocking half caw, half laugh of the crow-people.
I fell for a long time.
There was a hand gripping the back of my shirt, the one Mom embroidered for me, and I didn’t know if I should be trying to shake it off or praying it held on tight. I didn’t feel like I was dreaming, but I clearly couldn’t be awake either.
Especially when I landed.
I didn’t break apart into a hundred pieces, I didn’t even break my legs, though my ankles felt the impact.
And I wasn’t on the sidewalk outside our building. Instead, I was in a long room that looked like it belonged in one of those medieval movies Jo was always making me watch. Candles flickered next to painted oil lamps and beaded floor lamps. Hand-knotted rugs were piled on the dirt floor, and all the furniture was carved out of mahogany and ridiculously ornate. The ceiling was a tapestry of tree roots, hung with lanterns.
People in bustled gowns, leather pants, and jet jewelry drank pale pink liquid from champagne flutes. Their faces were angular and powdered with glitter; some necks were too long, movements too fluid. I really hadn’t thought I had such a good imagination.
“The girl, my Lord Strahan.” The crows were behind me, each down on one knee, heads bowed.
Strahan wore a lace cravat and silver at his forehead, like a crown. Three women, diaphanous and gray as mist, floated behind him. Everything about them was as pale as pearls: hair, skin, eyes, mouths, clothing. Their tattered gowns undulated in a wind only they could feel. They emanated a glacial sadness that made me shiver.
Strahan was slender and sharp, like a sword. And he was circling me like I was prey. “Dreadful hair,” he said. “I’ll never understand the modern penchant for cheap fabrics and short hair.”
When he reached out to touch my short brown hair, I slapped his hand. I’d seen Mom do it countless times when she tended bar down the street. “Hey, back off.”
He paused, as if I’d shocked him. I guess he didn’t get smacked a lot. The crows muttered behind me. The silence stretched, like a thread pulled too taut. Adrenaline fizzed through my blood. I wondered briefly if I was going to be sick on his polished boots. Harp music was soft all around us, incongruous in its gentle lilting.
I really, really wanted to wake up now.
He shook his head. “And the pattern of that embroidery is pitiful. Did you really think it was enough to hide you from me? And that tattoo is a pathetic charm.” He clicked his tongue. “The glamour that kept you hidden from us is gone, child. Nothing can hide you from me now.”
Everyone looked at me, mostly with an odd kind of hunger. There was a girl chained to the wall beside us. She was too thin and looked away when I noticed her. Her wrists were covered in blisters and the translucent wings lifting gently from her spine were mutilated.
Wings.
Because this wasn’t weird enough.
She looked terrified, even more so than me. But if this was a dream, and it had to be, I didn’t have to just stand around, wringing my hands. I could be brave in a way I might not have been in real life with all those inhuman eyes devouring my every movement.
I bolted for the nearest doorway.
It was stupid. There were too many guards and I knew I’d never make it, but I had to try. Terror had my legs moving before my brain could come up with a better plan. Strahan just reached a hand out and caught my hair, yanking me to a vicious stop.
“Eloise Hart.” His voice was silky, menacing. Beautiful.
And then he smiled, slowly, as if I were a pet monkey who’d amused him. My knees went weak. His entourage laughed, clinking glasses together.
“Lovely,” he murmured. “The others broke with such lamentable swiftness. You might be entertaining after all, and I could use the diversion.” He stroked my cheek and it tingled, as if I had a sunburn. “And I’ve such a fondness for diversions.” He squeezed, his fingers bruising me. “I’m tired of these games, you see, and I’m tired of Antonia.”
“What does this have to do with my aunt?” I suddenly remembered the way she refused to sit with her back to a window or a door, the way she rigged her van with door alarms. Was Strahan the person she was running from? And why?
“You’re very like her.” There was something in his eyes at odds with his bored tone. “And you’ll tell me where she is, little fawn, won’t you? And give me what I want.”
He yanked the ribbon out of my hair. Welts rose at my nape from the scrape of the material. He looked at the ribbon, dropped it in disgust. “That’s not the one.”
He was looking for a ribbon? I was being bruised and manhandled and, oh yeah, abducted, for a ribbon?
I tried to pull out of his grasp. “Is Lucas here?”
His eyes narrowed suddenly, dark as flint, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if sparks had leaped from his eyelids. He was stunning, all pale hair and lightning. “You would speak the name of a Richelieu whelp to me?”
Chains rattled as the winged girl shuddered. I would have taken a step back if there hadn’t been so many crow-guards behind me. I had nowhere to go, and the air felt thin, distant. This wasn’t a dream, after all.
It was something else, something much worse.
“You’ll lead me to your aunt or she’ll come to fetch you,” he drawled. “Either way, you are of some use to me. I suggest you remain that way.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, you wouldn’t, would you? But you will, soon enough.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Take her away.”
• • •
I was taken to a narrow room with a sloped ceiling, also made of braided roots and hung with oil lamps. There was a huge bed, a washstand, and a narrow table with a single candle and a box of parchment and quills. The outer door stayed open. The inner door was thick filigreed metal, like vines curling over themselves. The lock clanged shut. Two of the crow-guards stayed outside, their eyes yellow above sharp noses. A few giggling women joined the guards, clearly tipsy on whatever that pink stuff was they were drinking. They wore matching pink dresses with ornate bustles in silver wire cages.
“She doesn’t look like much, does she?” one of them said in an exaggerated whisper. “Her aunt was much prettier.”
“Hsst, mentioning her. Do you want Himself to hear you?”
She sniffed. “I’m not scared.”
Her friend shook her head. Icicles dripped from her hair like a crown. “Then you’re as foolish as you are reckless.”
“Oh, Poppy, you never let me have any fun. We haven’t had a human in ages.”
They stumbled away, still bickering. I didn’t like the way she’d said human, as if it implied some sort of delicacy, like caviar or Belgian chocolate.
Yet another reason I had to get the hell out of here; I didn’t want to end up as dessert.
But I still had no idea where I was or how to get home.
I was distracted from the rapid and distinctly downward spiral of my thoughts by some sort of commotion in the hallway. There was scuffing of feet and whimpering. I went to the glittering cage door and looked out. Two men and a woman were dragging the winged girl, her wrists bloody, her feet bruised and dirty. I felt small and scared and sick. They passed by close enough that I could smell her sweat: cotton candy and pond water. I gagged.
The crow-guards advanced suddenly, swinging the heavy wooden outer door shut in my face. I jumped back to avoid getting my fingers and my nose crushed as the fairy girl was muscled into the room next to mine. I pressed my ear to the wall, the silk paper smooth against my skin and patterned with swans holding fish in their beaks.
“Hello?” I called out, wondering how thick the walls were. They felt uneven, like plaster or mud. “Hello? Can you hear me?”
I slid down to sit on the floor in the corner, my mouth close to a swan eye, painted with far too much realisti
c detail. My mother would have loved it; it was surreal and delicate. I was half-afraid it was going to drop its fish in my lap.
I might have heard a sob, but I wasn’t sure. I leaned closer to the swan, could have sworn I felt its warm breath. I blinked, pulled back slightly. The paper was cracked, and if I turned my head at just the right angle, I could make out a tiny glimmer of light, barely bigger than a watermelon seed. “I know you can hear me.”
There was a muffled gasp, a pause. I wiped my damp palms on the carpet. “I’m Eloise.”
“I know.”
I was a little heartened that she’d at least answered me. “What’s your name?”
“My speaking-name is Winifreda.”
There was a long pause and I would have thought she’d gone away except that I could see small glimpses of her hair, which was knotted and cornflower blue.
“Please talk to me,” I tried again.
“I’m not supposed to. We’re not allowed to talk to the other displays.”
“Displays?” I echoed, insulted. “I’m not some party favor.”
“Of course you are,” she said softly. “All of us are.”
“What? That can’t be legal.”
I heard a rustle, as if she was shrugging. “He can do as he wishes until Samhain binds him, though it never really does anymore. It’s worse now, so close to the holy days. It makes him peevish.”
“Peevish?” I thought of the burns and blisters on her pale skin and swallowed. “That’s just great. Where are we, anyway? His country house or something?”
“You’re at Strahan Hall. They’re a traditional family, still keeping to the raths as the ancients did. There aren’t many like this. Most have been abandoned.”
“Um, can you say that again in English?”
“A fairy rath, under the earth, near Rowanwood Park.”
“Rowanwood Park? There aren’t any houses in the park.” I pressed my eye closer to the gap, saw only a flutter of bloodied wing.
“We’re under the park, in the west hill.”
“In the hill.”
“Of course, where else would a rath be? The fey have always lived close to the earth. Some say we were driven underground while in the old country.”
“Oh.” Like I was the weird one for not thinking people lived inside hills. “Wait, fey?”
“Fae folk,” she explained. “Surely you’ve heard the stories of the Good Neighbors.”
“Uh-huh.” I had vague recollections of reading Keats’s “La Belle Dame sans Merci” in English class last year, about a knight enslaved by a Fae princess. “Do you know how to get out of here?”
Winifreda’s voice was small. “You’ll never get out of here.”
My stomach tumbled. “I have to.” I pushed my shoulders back. False confidence was better than none at all, according to Mom, anyway, even if she did deal with drunks and grabby bikers instead of megalomaniac Fae lords. When I sat back, my pendant fell out of my sweater.
Winifreda made a small sound. Light filled the hole when she scrambled away from the wall. “Don’t let him see that.”
I touched the iron stag, frowned. “Why not?”
“We can’t abide iron.” I thought of the chains on her wrists, the way Lucas’s hand had been blistered when he handed me the pendant. “And he especially cannot stand the Hart insignia.”
I slipped the chain off, took a closer look at the spiraling antlers. “This is my family insignia? I didn’t even know we had one.”
“All the old families do. So you are the one,” she added in such a soft whisper, I didn’t think I’d been meant to hear her. She didn’t come back to the wall, and she didn’t say anything else.
I wondered what an old family was and what that even meant. I thought about Mom wondering where I was, about Jo and Devin, and about Lucas left behind on the roof. I rubbed the stag pendant and wished it were a magic lamp so I could transport myself home.
Chapter 4
Jo
I checked for a message or a text from Hot Guy a hundred times. I checked it so often my chem teacher confiscated my phone until the last bell rang; then I knocked over the janitor in my rush to get it back. Eloise was working and Devin had his nose in a book, so I went back to the café. I was hoping Hot Guy would drop by again. I could pretend to be surprised he was there, pretend I hadn’t thought about him all night and all day, pretend I didn’t tingle just remembering the way he’d crowded me against the car.
No one was that good at pretending.
I ordered an iced cinnamon latte and tried to read my novel. It was about Eleanor of Aquitaine and dead interesting, but I couldn’t stop glancing at the door every time it opened. I was probably being pathetic. I’d never see him again, but until I was too old to even remember my own name, I’d remember the way he held my hand in the fields. Or else I’d run into him in some faraway city, Paris perhaps, on the night before his wedding and he’d weep. Or at least look devastated and kiss me as rain fell around us and the Eiffel Tower lit up the sky. I was still weaving very melodramatic daydreams when a shadow fell over me.
It took me a moment to realize I wasn’t imagining him.
He looked down at me, his smile slow and wicked. Butterflies fluttered pleasantly in my belly. “Hello,” he said in his whiskey voice, in that strange accent that was faintly British and yet not.
“Hi.”
“I was hoping to see you again,” he admitted softly.
“Same here.” I put my book down. “Do you want to sit?”
He didn’t look away from me. “How about a walk in the park? It’s rather . . . crowded here.”
“Okay.”
We stepped out into the late-afternoon heat, but I barely noticed the weight of the humidity this time or even the heat coming off the melting pavement. The trees circled us like dancers, shaking brittle leaves like castanets. And then the world around us receded, faded to meaningless noise and gray shadows until there was nothing but the nearness of his body, the confident, nearly arrogant, way he walked, and the set of his jaw.
“You don’t come from Rowan, do you?”
He half smiled. “My family’s from the area.”
“Oh, yeah. You have a cousin here, right?”
“Yes. And you? Do you live at your grandparents’ farm?”
“Not really, but I spend most of my time there. I want to run it once I graduate.”
He gave me the once-over, noting my long lace skirt and gypsy-style sleeveless top. “You don’t look like a farmer.”
I grinned. “I want to write books too.”
“Ah, that explains it,” he teased. “You have the look about you. They used to say that poets and madmen brought stories from the other worlds.”
Was it wrong to just grab him and kiss him?
I restrained myself, but only barely. “What do you want to do? After school?” I slanted him a considering look, just as he’d done to me. “Are you in college?”
“I’m in the family business,” he replied, his voice suddenly bland.
“Is is worm farming?” I felt a need to make him smile again. Clearly he felt the same way about the family business as my mother did. “Or degreasing french-fry machines?” I added with mock horror. “Knitting? Making doilies?”
He chuckled. It was a rusty sound, as if he wasn’t used to it. “Yes, we’re a family of doily makers.”
“I’d stick to water witching, then. Much sexier.”
“Duly noted.”
A crow gave a raucous call from a nearby tree, like a smoker’s laugh. He tensed, shooting it a warning glance. He stepped a little closer to me. His arm brushed mine as we wandered toward the pond and the woods behind it. There was no one else around; it was just the two of us, like in Granddad’s field. Until three more crows landed on the path in front of us. I frowned, thinking of Eloise’s story about the crows.
“That’s weird,” I said. “They must getting bold because of the drought. Maybe they’re hungry.”
H
e snorted. “They are at that.”
A few more crows descended, strutting around us in the grass.
“I’m not sure I like the look of those birds,” he said. There was a teasing smile hovering at the corner of his mouth, but his eyes were serious. He slipped his arm around my waist, walking me backward as if we were moving to music only we could hear. He didn’t stop until my back rested against a tree and there was nowhere left to go. He pressed against me as if he really did mean to protect me, as if I were something precious.
And when he kissed me, I felt as substantial as sugar. Everything went sweet, went fiery, went sharp as lightning. He wasn’t just kissing me, he was tasting me. And I wasn’t just kissing him back, I was breathing him into my lungs, into my pores. It was a short kiss, more of a branding than anything else. It shouldn’t have affected me like that, shouldn’t have made me fist my hands in his shirt or made his breath rough when he pulled away, as if he’d been underwater.
There were crows all around us, perched in the trees and standing in the grass.
He kissed me again, roughly, before casting a dark and hateful glance at the birds.
“I have to go,” he said harshly. He looked angry, wild. My lips were still tingling, and I felt as if even my bones were on fire, but he stalked away, without looking back.
• • •
I floated all the way home, stopping only long enough to call Eloise, but she wasn’t answering. I sat in my room and grinned at the dark computer screen.
He’d kissed me.
Seriously kissed me.
I was surprised the entire park hadn’t caught fire around us. I replayed it in my head, still smiling.
Then I yelped and fell right off my chair.
Because it’s not every day your best friend’s face flashes onto your monitor.
When it’s not even turned on.
“El? Crikey!”
“Crikey? Isn’t that Australian, not British?” Cole, my annoying younger brother, paused in my doorway. “And are you talking to yourself, lamebrain?”
“Get lost, git.” I reached out and kicked the door shut in his smirking face.
“Jo?”