“How are you?” Kelley asked, leaning close to the mirror.
Her father nodded. “Better. But you know it will not last. You saw. You felt it—the curse.”
“Yeah. I did.” Kelley swallowed thickly. “I’m sorry.”
“There is nothing for you to be sorry for.”
“We both know that’s not true. It was my fault you were even vulnerable to this thing in the first place. My anger—”
“My fault,” the king interrupted her. “I have not done right by you, Daughter. I am sorry.” He held his hand up to the mirror again, and Kelley touched her fingertips to the glass. The icy chill of Winter cooled her skin, soothing away the sting of the iron’s burns.
She looked into her father’s dark eyes. “Call me Kelley, okay?”
Auberon hesitated for a moment and then smiled. “Kelley,” he said.
“Mom, Dad . . . I gotta go. And don’t worry. I’m going to find a way to fix this. I promise.” As the image faded from the stained surface of the glass, Kelley stood and turned toward the empty middle of the room. “We’re getting out of here,” she said to Bob.
Concentrating, she formed an image of a rift in her mind, poured all of her heightened emotion into creating it, and slashed her hand through the air like the blade of a sword. The air in the middle of the room tore open with a sound like screaming and Kelley flew back, wide-eyed and horrified. Within the dark, swirling space beyond the opening, Kelley saw a horde of nightmares crowding to pour through the rift, all tearing claws and foaming, screaming mouths full of teeth.
“Close it!” howled Bob. “Close it! Close it up again!”
Frantically, Kelley struggled against the thrashing and, imagining the rift was a giant zipper, yanked it shut. She collapsed forward onto her hands and knees, exhausted by the effort.
“Oh yeah . . . ,” she panted. “Right . . . rifts bad. . . .”
“Especially here!” Bob agreed emphatically. “Why else d’you think they use that bloody carriage to get to and fro? There are more wraiths surrounding this island than almost anywhere else I’ve ever seen.”
Fine, Kelley thought, staring at the broken windows. I’ve got wings. I’ve got all my wings! I can fly out of this place.
She raised her arms in the air and called the dark, fiery wings of her Autumn Court heritage into being.
Nothing.
She tried the silvery ones that sprang from her Unseelie power.
More of the same.
She imagined herself a kestrel falcon.
Less than nothing.
Well, now I just feel kind of stupid, she thought. She dropped her outstretched arms to her sides and turned back to Bob, who was smiling kindly, politely not pointing out the uselessness of her efforts.
“It takes a lot of magic to even just conjure a scrying,” he consoled her. “And what you just did there? With the king? That was . . . something. You’re probably just a little tapped out. You’re new at this, remember. And there are all sorts of inhibitor enchantments on this island, I’m sure.”
Kelley knew Bob was just being nice. But she had to admit, she did feel like she’d just been hit by a truck.
“What about you, Bob?” Kelley asked, swaying a bit on her feet. “You have more power than most. Can’t you get out of here? Do that sparkly disappearing thing you do?”
“If I was operating at full capacity, perhaps. Sadly, I am not.”
“What do you mean?”
Bob grimaced and said, “They used an iron chain to bind and bring me here. Forged by your father’s own blacksmith—just another disgruntled defector, it seems.” The boucca lifted the edge of his leaf-green tunic, and Kelley gasped at the sight of the livid blisters that had risen in the shape of links in strips around his rib cage.
“Oh, Bob . . .” Kelley reached out a hand but did not touch the marks. Bob lowered the tunic edge gingerly, wincing. The ancient Fae must have been in pure agony.
“All of my power is otherwise occupied in healing this. I simply don’t have enough spare magick left in me even to perform card tricks, Princess. Sorry.” The boucca sighed. “The only ones using magick in this place, it seems, are the masters of the island.”
Who at that very moment, apparently, required Kelley to attend on them. She knew that because Bob’s eyes suddenly rolled in his head and he clutched at his temples.
“All right!” he muttered, when the pain appeared to have subsided. “No need to yell. . . . Showtime, Princess. I’m sorry,” he said, struggling to make the words come out of his mouth. The compulsion might be fading, but Bob wasn’t free from the Faerie queen’s will yet—not by a long shot. “I really am sorry, Kelley . . . but you must come with me now.”
Kelley didn’t like the sound of that. As the door to the cell swung open, she put a hand on the boucca’s arm. “Bob—tell me something, quick. Mabh told me that if you are in possession of something that is magickally connected to another person, you can use that—whatever it is; person, object—as a conduit. Right?”
“Yes.”
“That smith guy you said used to work for my dad—did he make the Janus medallions?”
“He did.”
“Would he have incorporated my father’s magick into them?”
“Yes. That’s where the Janus get their power from. Blood magick. It’s very powerfully tied to the king.”
Kelley thought of Fennrys and the iron charm that all of the Janus wore around their necks. His had been conspicuous in its absence, as had Sonny’s. Sonny had told her he’d lost his while fighting alongside the Wolf.
“Why do you ask?”
“I think I know what’s really wrong with my father,” she said. Her anger might have made Auberon vulnerable in the first place, but somebody else went and cast a real-live curse on him. Kelley was pretty sure she knew how—if not who.
Oh, Fenn . . . , she thought, as Bob led her out of the cell and through the hospital pavilion’s back doors, out into the night.
Chapter XXVII
It was the smell that woke Sonny. Sharp and acrid in his nostrils—like a bouquet of lilies left too long in a vase and gone to rot.
“And here I was worried you were gonna sleep through all the fun. . . .”
At the sound of that voice, Sonny struggled instinctively to raise his hands into a defensive posture but found that he couldn’t move. It took him a moment to realize he was lashed to the trunk of a hawthorn tree by thick, woody vines wrapped so tightly around his arms and chest that he could barely breathe. His head was swimming badly—he could barely hold it up—and his eye wouldn’t open all the way. Probably because it was crusted shut with blood.
He must be a ghastly sight to behold, Sonny thought.
The moon came out from behind a cloud and shone down, illuminating the Wee Green Man, who crouched on the stump of a tree in front of him.
“Oh . . . ,” Sonny mumbled a bit deliriously, “I guess I don’t feel so bad then.”
“What’s that?” the creature asked in his ravaged voice.
“I was just thinking how rotten I must look right now. But it’s probably nothing compared to you.” Sonny shook his head to try and clear his vision. “I mean . . . you really look like hell.” He hissed in pain as the vines tightened sharply around him, cutting into the flesh of his bare arms and torso. Sonny looked down in detached, concussed bemusement. “Where’s my shirt?” he asked.
“Shut up,” the Wee Green Man snarled.
“I liked that shirt. . . .”
His short swords and his weapons satchel were, of course, also gone. His boots were gone, too. Sonny could feel the thick cushion of moss and decaying leaves beneath his feet. He thought he could sense an almost seismic vibration traveling up through his soles, as if the island quivered with anticipation.
Sonny glanced up again. Hooligan-boy didn’t look the same as he had the last time Sonny had seen him. It wasn’t just that he seemed the worse for wear; rather that his appearance was . . . transformed. Revi
ved now by the life-force of the Old Shrub, he could have almost doubled for a swamp creature in one of those old horror movies Maddox was fond of watching.
The leprechaun’s long, shaggy hair had darkened and taken on a greenish tinge, as if mosses and leaves grew there. In places along his browridge and the sharp angles of his cheekbones, there was a roughening to his skin—a patchiness—that made it seem almost as if he were growing an outer casing of bark. Sonny could see the arteries on either side of his neck pulsing with dark greenish blood. The soles of his silver-buckled boots were caked with swampy mud.
In the hollow at the base of his throat, there was a dark, angry-looking scorch mark in the shape of a four-leaf clover.
The leprechaun’s venomous gaze raked over Sonny.
“You think I’m a sight to behold, pretty boy? I can tell you, when I’m done with you, there won’t be anything left of you to look at that won’t send your girlie screaming. Maybe she’ll run screaming straight to me, and I’ll have a bit of fun with her.”
Fire burned in Sonny’s head, behind his eyes, at the thought of that. He felt the Green Magick ignite. The ground beneath the hawthorn tree began to tremble.
The leprechaun grinned his terrible grin. Sonny felt poison ivy tendrils snaking over the bare skin of his ankles and around his wrists. Like manacles made of acid, they burned his skin on contact. His hands knotted into fists—how he wished he had his sword. His satchel lay on the ground in front of the leprechaun’s tree stump. Hooligan-boy bent down and picked the satchel up when he saw Sonny glance at it, lazily flipping open the top.
“What do we have in here, now?” he said as he started to dig through the contents. He plucked out the spell-disguised bundle of three branches. “Sticks,” the leprechaun sneered. “How quaint.” He tossed them over his shoulder. Then he drew forth the compact crossbow pistol, holding it daintily by the carved oak grip, and glared at Sonny. “Cold iron. Naughty boy.” He threw that over his shoulder, too, along with the leather quiver full of short iron bolts.
Next, he pulled out a crumpled sheaf of paper held together with two brass fasteners. He turned it over in his hands, looking at it. Then he stood and walked toward Sonny, fanning the pages.
“‘Kelley’s Script’?” he said in a simpering tone. “‘Please return’?”
Sonny tensed as the leprechaun held the pages up in front of his face.
“A memento, is it?” the leprechaun asked. “A love token?”
Sonny ground his teeth together and strained against his bonds. “Put that down, you piece of filth,” he snarled.
“Now, now. What are you worried about? You’re not going to be returning to that lass anytime soon. And certainly not intact. I’m gonna rip you apart, boyo. Just . . . like . . . this . . .”
Hooligan-boy smiled and tore the script to pieces.
Sonny roared in protest and thrashed against his bonds. Blood from his wounds spattered the torn white pages as the leprechaun laughed and threw the ragged bits of paper into the air like confetti.
A raging wind sprang up and whirled them up into the darkness.
The fire in Sonny’s heart kindled to a blaze, and tree roots, like sharpened staves, suddenly thrust out of the ground all around Hooligan-boy’s feet—but he leaped nimbly into the air, screaming, “That’s it! Pour it on, little fleshling!”
The tree to which Sonny was lashed groaned and shifted. Blackberry canes studded with brambles snaked out of the undergrowth, whipping through the air, chasing the leprechaun as he bounded toward an oak and swung himself up into its branches.
“Is that all you’ve got?” he taunted Sonny. “No wonder she ran straight into the arms of the Wolf the minute you left! Girl needs a real man!”
White-green light burst in Sonny’s brain like an exploding star. The ground beneath his feet was shaking now, responding to Sonny’s fury, feeding on it. But not controlled by it. Not controlled by him. North Brother Island had too long been under the sway of Gwynn ap Nudd. And even though he possessed the Greenman’s magick, Sonny Flannery was not himself the Greenman.
The magick poured out of him nonetheless, rousing the spirit of the forest all around, awakening it. The Wee Green Man howled with wild laughter and leaped from the tree. He charged at Sonny, sprinting across the bucking ground. He reached for Sonny’s throat and, in one swift motion, fastened the silver chain with Kelley’s clover charm around Sonny’s neck.
Sonny screamed in agony as the Green Magick boiling out of him was suddenly, violently forced back under his skin.
“Now . . . ,” murmured the leprechaun in the sudden stillness. He was so close that Sonny could feel the creature’s too-hot breath on his cheek. “We can’t have all that power blowing hell outta the place, can we? That would be counterproductive. So you just take it easy. One drop at a time, boyo. Just like brewing fine whiskey. One drop at a time.”
The leprechaun stepped back. Clawing at the air with his fingers, he wove a spell of twisted, knotted magick. The branches of Sonny’s tree bent and folded down around him, braiding together into the tangled bars of a cage made of thorns. The thorns grew unnaturally long. They bit into Sonny’s flesh, and his blood began to flow, dripping down onto the thirsty earth below.
The charm pulsed icy-hot on his skin.
Sonny closed his eyes and pictured it back where it belonged—fastened around Kelley’s graceful neck, the green-amber clover nestled in the hollow at the base of her throat. In the picture in his mind, she was smiling at him, her green gaze sparkling.
When Sonny opened his eyes again, he saw that a rose had unfurled in a froth of peach-colored petals on the thorn branch beside his face. And another below that one, and another . . .
Then the ground beneath him shivered and heaved again. The roses grew larger, overblown, their petals changing color from peach to blood-red. Then dark purple. Then black. The island knew its masters, and Sonny was not one of them. His head fell forward in despair. The flow of magick was leashed in, confined to a trickle.
But inside Sonny, the dam had burst and there was no way to stop what was happening to him. The Greenman’s power gathered and roiled like an electrical storm. Sonny would bleed out every ounce of it, along with his life, into the soil of this forsaken island. Then Gwynn and Titania would take it and shape it to their own twisted ends.
Sonny had only just discovered who he and Kelley had been up against all along.
And their enemies had already won.
Chapter XXVIII
Above the door of one of the clustered outbuildings, a rusting sign declared that this was the facility’s recreation center . . . and theater. Bob led her around to the stage door, and Kelley got a cold, uneasy feeling in her guts.
She stepped through the door into what had once been the backstage area of the little playhouse. This whole place is like one big nightmare. As if in answer to those unspoken words, she heard the voice of Gwynn ap Nudd echo from the back of the darkened auditorium.
“And what are nightmares but dreams, Princess?” he said. “Just bad ones.”
The Faerie Lord of Dreams. King of the Court of Spring. The one monarch who had seemed to Kelley as if she could relate to him. Like him, even. He’d been kind to her. Generous.
Deceitful beyond measure.
Suddenly, the houselights in the auditorium blazed up to full. The “houselights” were chandeliers dangling in rows from the ceiling, illuminated not by candles or electric bulbs, but by dozens of tiny fire sprites. Of course, the fixtures themselves were a Fae illusion—just like everything else beautiful in that room. It seemed as if Kelley stood in a grand circa-1900 theater palace, complete with ornate decoration and velvet seating banks and brocade curtains over high windows. But if she looked hard enough, Kelley could still see the night sky through the gaping hole in the roof and the torn curtain that hung over half of the collapsing proscenium arch at the front of the dinky stage.
Only four of the original chairs remained upright and intact in the
very back row, where Gwynn ap Nudd sat with Titania. The other two seats were empty, of course—Auberon and Mabh had been left off the guest list.
Kelley’s heart couldn’t sink any lower. “You,” she said. “All this time, it was you.”
Gwynn spread his hands and nodded graciously, as if accepting a generous compliment. “Me,” he said. “With the help of my dear Queen Titania, of course.”
Of course. How else would he have come into possession of Mabh’s war horn in the first place? How ironic that it was the one Faerie monarch Kelley had actually come close to trusting who had put her life and Sonny’s and the fate of New York City on the line.
The two faerie monarchs were surrounded by a few dozen “courtiers”—painted and pretty young things, girls and boys. They laughed and lounged all over one another in a revelry of bacchic abandon. Kelley realized with a shock that some of the partygoers were human—patrons of the River, Titania’s midtown nightclub, judging by how they were dressed.
She saw Gwynn stroke Titania’s temple. Then he reached for a crystal decanter to refill the glass in her hand. The Summer Queen, Kelley saw, still smiled dreamily. Whatever it was—enchantment or intoxication, or both—that afflicted her, Titania was as much in thrall as the mortals that sprawled at her feet. Kelley wondered if most of them even realized that they weren’t in Manhattan anymore.
At her side, Bob made an apologetic noise as he stepped forward with a flourish to introduce Kelley. She recoiled in sudden horror when she realized what was happening. She was going to be made to perform like a trained animal. She tried to resist but, pulled along by Gwynn’s magick—like a puppet on strings—Kelley’s feet moved her downstage center against her will. What was it she had so recently thought, back at the Delacorte Theater? That she would find a way to get back onstage soon . . . that it was where she belonged . . .