I slipped into my candy corn costume. Well, it wasn’t so much a costume as a stained seersucker dress the church ladies had let me dye using their supplies. I had never been more festive. Just as I reached for my nail on the nightstand, I felt a thin hand slap onto mine.
“This hurts you now,” Marshmallow insisted.
“Not as much as it hurts Unseelies,” I said, pulling the nail out and slipping the lanyard it now hung on around my neck, careful to keep the iron on top of the dress, well away from my skin. It definitely ruined the whole cute candy corn aesthetic, but my iron-toed boots probably didn’t help, either.
I didn’t fit in here, anymore, not like I was supposed to. Was I becoming a yellow jacket myself? And if I was, could I find my way back? Or did I just have to move forward until I found a beehive to ruin?
I hesitated, perched on the edge of my bed. When I left this room, everything would change. Had I been wrong in all of this?
“Marsh. You said you and the shadelings know Mab.” I hadn’t dared speak about the dream since that night. Even Jasika and Dom didn’t know. It had all felt like a big jinx, like Bloody Mary in the mirror. Say it aloud, and it would come. But she was coming tonight, whether I liked it or not. “Morgan promised us to Mab. Do you know anything about the deal she made?” Or, more specifically, how to find a loophole.”
“Lots of Fae lay claim to human bloodlines,” Marsh murmured. “But Mistress was the first of yours we met.”
I sighed, running my fingers through my hair.
“What was it like for her there? With the Unseelie.”
“She was lonely, Missy.” Marshmallow pulled her spindly knees to her chest. “And trouble. Always trouble for the nasties. Too human to fit with them.”
Too human. I rubbed my fingers together. I had always been pale, but I didn’t look like Mab or the prince or, God forbid, one of the drones. I was human. And a human belonged in a Fae court like a yellow jacket in a beehive.
“Right.” I rose, shaking out my skirt. “Lie low. Take it easy. Stay in the church tonight, okay?”
“Missy…” Thin fingers tugged at my skirt. “Please be careful. Come back.”
“Of course.” I turned back, rubbing my hand over her purple head. “And you be safe, too. Stay here. Watch after the boys. Gooding’s got every corner of this place protected. You’ll be okay.”
Marshmallow nodded and wrapped her spindly arms around my leg. I smiled and knelt down, pulling her to my chest. I hoped she felt the “thank you” I wasn’t allowed to say out loud.
I left her safely in my room as I slipped out to find Gooding. The golden light of early dusk washed over everything, and parents escorted their princesses and angels and space aliens in, chattering in eager anticipation of a night of good, clean fun. Not a single one of the children was over the age of eight. Father Gooding greeted each of them at the door, complimenting every costume. I could see how pointedly he was ignoring the two killer clowns sitting in the back row of pews, sulking their hearts out. Looks like Ash and Jake couldn’t get any friends to come over. I almost went over to talk to them, but thought better of it. Right now, I’d probably only make things worse.
I just hoped, when the night was over, they understood what had happened.
I adjusted the strap of Gooding’s duffel on my shoulder and took a deep breath. Gooding gave me a little nod on my way out, but said nothing. He had the church, tonight. I had the fight.
THE WHOLE SCHOOL had transformed into a near-manic testament to Halloween, alive with the promise of taboo, even if it was well-behaved taboo. The lockers were papered over with tasteful Halloween greetings like HAPPY HAUNTINGS and HAVE A PHAN-TASTIC TIME! Volunteers patrolled the halls dressed as zombies, armed with markers to scribble out any less-than-tasteful Halloween greetings anyone tried to add. Lining the hall, all manner of fake or real psychics offered to read your palm, your tarot, your runes, or your tea leaves. A table was stuffed with every jack-o’-lantern imaginable for judging. Another with scary cakes. And another inviting everyone to sign up for the spooky costume contest that would take place at nine. And overhead, “Werewolves of London” played, the soundtrack to a perfect Halloween.
I checked my phone.
Jasika: Finished securing all entrances. Extra protection at cardinal points.
Dom: Laid rowan and salt along all unopen doors just in case.
I shot back a quick text.
Bryn: Halls secure. Spread Saint John’s wort and salt around classrooms.
Hopefully the janitors wouldn’t arrive until well after the festivities were over. Though I could only imagine what they would think.
I pocketed my phone and clutched the duffel bag. I’d probably have to stash it. Sooner or later I was going to run into someone who knew I wasn’t a volunteer, and they were bound to ask why I had a bag filled with random herbs and bottles of holy water. Somehow, I doubted “The priest gave it to me” was going to keep me out of trouble.
I hung by the gym entrance trying not to look too suspicious. When I was sure nobody was watching, I pulled the bare necessities from the duffel, folded them under my arms, and slid the full bag under the raffle table. Thankfully, the shimmery black-and-purple tablecloth hid it beautifully. Then I leaned against the wall, arms crossed as I tried not to make eye contact with the partygoers.
Before nine, the gym was filled mostly with the junior-high-school kids chugging down diabetes-in-a-can off-brand soda, but a few of my own peers made early appearances, all with pretty much everything that Easterton’s one-rack Halloween store had to offer. Slutty nurse, slutty firefighter, werewolf, slutty cop, superhero, slutty lumberjack … Wow, Dennis Holtzmann was really stepping up his game this year. I sort of expected to see Brooke Tanneman following the crowd in a slutty anything, sauntering in late as the tweenies headed home, but here she was, bright and early, dressed as a hot dog. Much as I hated to admit it, it was impressive. She’d even glued on what looked like homemade foam sesame seeds. I crossed my arms and glanced away, waiting until her bun-covered bum slipped into the gym before I turned back to the hall.
Dom found me, half a dozen socks bouncing from where they’d been pinned to his shirt.
“All right. We should stick close to the gym windows. That’s how they’ll try to get into the—what?” He glanced down at himself.
I bit my lip and forced myself not to smile. “That’s, um … an interesting costume. Are you where the missing socks go when they get lost in the dryer?”
“Static cling.” He tugged at one of the socks. “But I guess that works, too. And what are you, the looming horror of cavities?”
“Har-dee-har. Anyway, here.” I held out the necessities for him—a little vial of rowan ash, a flask of holy water, and Gwen’s fairy stone. “I can see through glamours all right. But you need to be able to look after yourself.”
Dom reached out, but hesitated, eyes darting up to mine. “Are you sure? This thing’s pretty useful.”
“I’ve got years of experience seeing past glamours. You’re still a beginner. You need it more than I do.”
Dom’s lip twitched, but he plucked the stone from my fingers, sliding it into his pocket.
“Well, thanks. I guess now I can definitely see them. And I can throw stuff at them. Keep the ash; I wouldn’t know how to use it. Too bad our lady in the lake didn’t have a sword to give you, too. I feel like I’d rock Excalibur.”
I smiled, my chest tightening as I tucked the packet into my boot. “I doubt Gwen would think of her pond as a lake.”
“All right, I think we should be set,” Jasika called as she pranced up to us, all done up with delicate deer makeup and a flower crown. The illusion was only slightly marred by the oversize, green tote that bounced on her hip, but even that had been pinned with silk flowers and leaves. I grinned at her, but before I could offer a slightly more genuine compliment, Dom groaned and rolled his eyes.
“Get a room, you two!”
“Sure.” Jasika planted one hand on her hip and arched a brow. “I’ve got three siblings and Bryn lives in a church. So obviously we should just take yours.”
“Real cu—” Dom broke off, going stone-still as he stared down the hall. “Did you see that?”
“What?” I turned, but all I saw were the quasi-fortune-tellers and the throng of eager tweenies and bored teens probably waiting until midnight to go smoke in the graveyard.
Dom narrowed his eyes. “Something just went down the hall…”
I caught my breath and checked my watch. 7:32. Twenty-eight minutes until my dream said the Fae would attack … but what if a couple of them had already gotten into the school? We could stop them before the bloodbath.
“One of them might have snuck in early,” I murmured.
“They went down the science hallway.”
Right. I took off first, and by the thump of their shoes against the tile, Jasika and Dom followed close behind. The science hall had been marked off with novelty plastic tape that read CAUTION: ZOMBIE BIOHAZARD. I ducked underneath it and darted off into the darkness. Right up until the light from the main hall no longer offered any help. I skidded to a stop.
In seconds, Jasika and Dom slowed next to me.
“Shit,” Dom hissed. “Which way did it go?”
Jasika turned and rummaged through her tote bag. “Here,” she said. “That nail’s not gonna do much.”
Without looking, I reached out. And yelped as the wasp sting shot an electric current straight up my arm. I started back as something clanged loudly on the floor.
“What the hell, Bryn?” Dom snapped, scooping up a … frying pan. An actual frying pan with a rubber handle and what looked like the charred remains of breakfast caked into it. Jasika had literally stuffed an iron frying pan into her tote bag and lugged it around for this very purpose.
“Sorry.” I rubbed my aching hand against my arm and winced. It still felt hot and not as smooth as it had been a second ago. A sour taste filled my mouth, but I swallowed it back down. Later. There would be time to deal with this later. “Caught me off guard. Don’t worry about it. I’m fine with my nail.”
Jasika watched me out of the corner of her eye as she pulled an iron pipe out of her bag.
“I say we go right,” she said. “Left and they’ll just circle back to the main hall. This way we can cut them off outside the science rooms.”
I nodded and followed her into the dark of the hall. There were no Halloween decorations here. Just bulletin boards packed with student work and Fun Facts About DNA, unreadable in the dark. I could only make out Jasika’s form when it moved. My heart jumped into my throat, and not for the first time, I wished the other shadelings were here, that it wasn’t so hard for Marshmallow to move in and out of the church, that …
That this hall didn’t slam into a dead end.
Jasika froze. I slid behind her, painfully aware of that pipe in her hand. A dozen science fair trophies glinted behind a glass case, almost mocking in the dark.
“Guess we were wrong,” Dom remarked, turning around. “We should just—”
Something scuttled in the dark. Black against black, its edges fluttering against the shadows like something deeper, eating away at the hall. And it was coming closer. My breath caught in my throat. My hand twitched and almost went to my nail, but I stopped myself. No. Too soon and I’d only hurt myself. It could be a distraction. I needed to be at the ready. Why hadn’t I grabbed Gooding’s duffel before running off into the hall? How stupid was I?
Dom scrambled with the fairy stone, holding it up to his eye.
“It’s too dark, I can’t see!” he whispered.
As the dark thing gathered close, everything went hazy at the edges, something new swam to the forefront of my mind. A spell I’d skimmed over a dozen times, looking for Knowledge or Healing or Dream, but I’d never said it aloud before.
Hurt.
I didn’t know the words. Not consciously, but the first line gushed out from between my lips like a faucet turned on high. Somehow, it was coming out and I was just a mouthpiece. I couldn’t stop it. Not until a hand slapped onto my wrist, startling me out of it. The edges of my vision sharpened back into reality and I heard the faint hssssssssss!
Oh God, what fresh hell? Were these snake fairies or …
“Ash, we’ve got to go.”
“I told you, you didn’t have to come.”
“You’re vandalizing school property. You seriously don’t see anything wrong with that?”
“I thought you wanted this to stop.”
“I wanted you to stop. This is crazy! It’s sucking the life out of you!”
Boys?
Ice and iron raced through my veins, freezing and burning all at once. I stepped forward, eyes wide. The dark thing split into two forms. Another step. Two forms a little shorter than me. Twin clowns, their costumes stained with red dye. One of the clowns held a can of spray paint in one hand, two crumpled vellum pages in the other. The missing pages from Mum’s book.
“You’re supposed to be at the church,” I said.
Jake stiffened, eyes going wide in the dark. Ash turned to face me, his white-painted face set in a dark scowl.
“So are you.”
“Bryn, this isn’t what it looks like,” Jake said, snatching the spray can from Ash’s hand and staggering back a few steps. “We were just going back, I swear. We should all go back together.”
This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. Every inch of my skin crawled as I forced myself to step forward, glancing from Ash to Jake and back again, heart hammering until, at last, I forced myself to look at the wall.
A scribble of bright yellow paint. Marked here and there by ogham and futhark runes. It looked an awful lot like the crude carvings Dom and Jasika had peeled off all the trees they could find.
Every step of the way I’d fought to learn who she was and how to push her away. Every cursed spell from that awful book, every scar on my back, the burn of the iron on my skin. All of it to protect them, and …
“You’re trying to draw her out,” I whispered.
The hall returned in an explosion of noise.
“It wasn’t me, I tried to stop him!” Jake shouted.
While Ash screamed, “She’s after our family!”
Jasika and Dom joined in.
“You have no idea how dangerous this is—”
“What were you thinking—?”
“Could get everyone killed—”
“Why didn’t you come to someone—?”
My hands shook. The symbol shifted, runes shimmering against the painted concrete, tendrils of heat reaching out to me. I wasn’t the first one to find the book. It was Ash. He’d torn the pages out. My own brother had been doing this to himself. To me.
“Go back home!”
The words escaped before I even knew I’d opened my mouth. Fire and ice burned around me. The hallway flickered, going blurry at the edges. Hot tears stung my eyes.
“You have no idea what you’ve done and you’re still doing it. These things took Mum and you’re bringing them back into our lives!”
“It’s no different than what you’re doing,” Ash pushed back, but his words came out muffled.
I swiped at my ears and grabbed the pages from his hand. “I’m not inviting them here. I’ve been trying to send them away.”
“So, they can keep coming back again and again?” Ash jerked his chin up. “Don’t you want to stop them for good?” In the dim light, I could make out how drawn he looked. How tired. He wasn’t sick. He was paying a price for magic he didn’t understand. How much longer until it killed him?
“Don’t you dare. You have no idea.” I clenched my stinging hand.
Jake edged closer to the wall and began swiping at the red paint with his sleeve. Dom joined him, sprinkling a bit of holy water onto the wall to loosen the paint up. After a moment, Jasika tugged a rag out of her bag and started helping, too.
“You think I don’t? I know you’ve been running out to fight them for years. You think we’re so ignorant. But we’re not! The only difference is that I’m willing to go after the head.”
“The head?” Shit. “Mab came to you in a dream, didn’t she?”
“She said she’d make a deal with me.”
“That’s fairy-speak for kidnap you, dumbass!”
“I wasn’t actually going to make a deal with her. I’m not stupid.”
“Oh, really?” I gestured at the painted blob the others were eradicating on the wall. “That doesn’t look smart to me.”
Ash reached into one of the oversize pockets of his costume and pulled out what looked like a rusty old railroad spike.
For just a moment, the world blurred. Everything went muffled and hazy, like I was underwater, then it snapped to again. I blinked. It was like looking at myself a month ago. Arrogant. Stupid. Itching for a fight he didn’t know how to win.
And because that’s where I’d been, I knew just as well there wasn’t a thing I could say to talk him out of this. He wouldn’t understand until I made him. My throat tightened. I thought back to the book, still newly buried behind the church. I’d have to teach him my own bitter lessons.
“We’ll talk about this in the morning,” I snapped. “This is not the time—”
“What’s wrong with your eyes?”
What?
My hands flew to my face, just touching the corners of my eyes. For a fraction of a second, they felt too big, stretched out on a face not designed for their size. But a blink later, they were normal.
“Nothing’s wrong with my eyes,” I gasped.
“What are you talking about?” Ash bit.
“Bryn, nobody said anything.”
I whirled around. Jasika’s brows were furrowed. She looked at me like someone might look at a rabid dog.
“What’s wrong with your eyes?”
I turned back, my eyes darting to the boys.
“Which of you—”
And then I saw her, resplendent in her glittering gowns, shining like a beacon in the dark.
“What’s wrong with your eyes?” she purred.
Chime … Chime … Chime … Chime …
My heart leapt into my throat. There it was, the clock chiming in the exact tone and timbre of the one in my dream. Oh God. This was it.
I yanked the nail from my neck, hissing as it burned my palm, but I didn’t let go. Humans didn’t mind a little iron on their skin. I could take it. I stared at the entrance, just in case.
Chime … Chime …
“Boys, get behind me,” I commanded. “Whatever you do, don’t talk to her.” The burning in my palm grew worse. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes.
“Talk to who?”
“Bryn, there’s nobody there,” Dom pressed.
“Use the fairy stone!”
“I have.”
Chime …
I took a deep breath and straightened. Okay. Just me then. “When the clock chimes eight, you two get the boys out of here.”
“Bryn, there’s no clock.” Jasika reached for my shoulder but I shrugged her off. I couldn’t drag her into this.
“Then look at your phone. Just get them out of here!”
Mab smiled and took one dainty step toward me. Then another. I held my breath. The last, distant song from the gym faded, replaced in an instant by “I Put a Spell on You.”
Whatever came next, it would be all right. The boys weren’t here. Mab would fail. Something hot seeped between my fingers.
“Bryn, are you sure you—” Jake’s voice hitched behind me. “Bryn, your hand!”
Chime …
Morgan shimmered to life in the hall, her dark hair blowing in an invisible breeze. She held her hand up, pointing into the distance, but when I turned, there was nothing there. Nothing but my brothers, their eyes wide in the dark.
“Bryn?” Dom rested a hand on my shoulder.
I turned back, but Morgan was gone. The moment had passed. The Fae weren’t here. Mab must have been counting on Ash opening the door for her. Without that, she didn’t dare enter a place as iron-filled as a public building. But I couldn’t bring myself to believe for a second that she was going to give up.
A hand closed around my wrist. I jerked away, but not before Jake pried three of my fingers free from the nail. Blood dripped onto the linoleum. Ash swallowed.
“Why’s your hand bleeding?”
My palm burned in the open air, and I could feel four pairs of eyes settling on me. The silence settled between us like heavy black rainclouds ready to burst. But tonight wasn’t the time for it.
“My hand’s bleeding for the same reason you’re not doing well, either,” I muttered.
“You promised!” Jake shoved at me. I stumbled back a step. My heart lurched in my chest.
Dom jumped between us, arms out. “Hey! The last thing we need is to start fighting each other.”
“Look at her hand,” Ash shouted. “The iron burned her. She’s been screwing with the Fae, too!”
“Bryn.” Jasika’s voice was so full of something in that moment that I couldn’t stand to think about it. Later. If we all made it out of tonight, I’d stop to consider whether it was love or fear or just plain old disappointment.
“Yeah. I have.” I eased past Dom and stared down at Ash. He looked so furious. He looked so much like me it hurt. I swallowed and shoved the nail into his hand. “And I regret it more than you could possibly know.” I turned to Jake. “I am stopping. I buried Mum’s book because all it does is create a straight path from Mab to us. I’d rather fight this fight as a human and come home at the end of the day.”
“You buried the book?” Jake’s voice sounded a bit lighter.
I nodded. “Didn’t you want me to be safe? Same as I want for you?”
Jake’s lips twitched into a small smile rendered only a bit disturbing by his clown makeup. Ash’s fingers curled around the nail.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “But we should fix you up after we kill the queen.”
“I agree, but I don’t think she’s coming.” A queasy feeling rolled through my gut. Mab hadn’t come to the school. Something was wrong.
“Then where will she be?” Jasika asked. The boys stared up at me expectantly. Dom crossed his arms. They all looked at me like I had all the answers. If they had any idea how desperate I was, they’d probably all collectively wet themselves.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. But let’s find out.”