Running into the forest didn’t seem particularly heroic, but it was the only way Evie could think of to stop the Fel and Dr. Cleat from trapping Cecily. So she ran, trying to stay out of sight. It wasn’t until a wind like the one that had pushed her toward the robbers’ den began to rustle the trees around her that Evie began to execute her plan.
The trees’ knobby branches were like claws reaching for her when she started running back toward the robbers’ house. She didn’t stop until she found an orange brokenheart blossom waving in the wind.
Her stomach twisted when the trees began to shift again, but this time it wasn’t because of them bending toward her. Up in the branches, a dark shape slid through the tree canopy and crept down a tree trunk not more than ten feet away.
The Fel was here, but it was the wrong shape. He wasn’t a crow any longer.
Still and silent, Evie clutched the knife as her chest began to thrum, the Fel’s presence crawling through her insides and batting against her ears. She watched as the creature sidled out from behind the tree. Down on four legs, its movements seemed uneven and jerky, coming too quickly toward her as if it meant to attack. But when it drew near, it stopped and slowly drew itself up onto two legs, taller even than she was. Fel were supposed to be trapped as crows, trapped in the forest, but here was something different yet again.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please help me. I’ll set you free if you tell me how. Both me and Max think the Fel King being stuck in the castle is wrong—we can help you with that.”
The thing’s shadowy-nothing head cocked to the side, and it took an abrupt step closer, making Evie’s chest convulse and pound as her heart made to fight it off, but she didn’t back away.
Moonlight touched the Fel’s face, brushing across two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. Though the nose and mouth were birdishly beaky, eyes black as two shiny buttons, it was a humanish face. His hair was black and long, and he seemed to be wearing a cloak of feathers from his shoulders down to the ground. It might not have been a cloak at all, but plumage lining his back and arms like a suit of armor. He shivered, his knees buckling as he walked toward her, as if changing into a human had drained him dry.
The buzzing rose to a tremor that shot straight through her. She took her first step in the direction Cecily had gone, toward the orange brokenheart just visible through the trees.
The Fel made another sudden jerk toward her, and Evie scolded herself back into breathing when she realized her lungs had stopped. The Fel couldn’t touch her. Not while she gripped the hartelismi knife in her apron pocket.
“Did you save the tart for me, Evie Baker?” The Fel spoke with his human mouth, jagged teeth peeking out from his bluish-black lips. Every word rasped in her ears, crowish and harsh. “The Robber Lord wants your recipe and then he wants me to get rid of you. I don’t want to do that.”
“You’re human. Sort of.” She pulled out the squished raspberry tart and held it out to him.
“No, I’m Fel through and through. Even if I do look a little like you.” He took it, carefully opening the package with dainty fingers. When he took a bite, he smiled. “He never would share with me when he brought them to the house. The Robber Lord said we’d fix everything, but he made me a prisoner just like the king, like he forgot how to be a Fel.”
“Why is he letting you speak to me?” Evie squinted at the Fel, wondering what he would look like under the sun, those black feathers washing down to his ankles. Could he fly, in between crow and human shape the way he was? If being a crow wasn’t being a Fel and neither was a human shape, then what were Fel really shaped like? she wondered.
The door of the cottage slammed, too far away to see. “He’s coming. And he wants you to be frightened.” The creature looked down at himself. “Am I not frightening?”
“You’re very frightening.” Evie swallowed, her mouth drier than if she’d tried to swallow a teaspoon of salt. “But would you mind terribly if I was frightened over there?” She pointed to the next bit of orange smudged in the darkness.
The creature fell into step beside her, walking toward the brokenheart flower. As he did so, some of the feathers seemed to fall away, shadows pulling back to leave his face like a boy near her age, dark-haired and a bit birdish about the nose. But more human. He followed her past the first bloom, cringing when the forest behind them came alive with twigs and branches snapping. The witch doctor was close behind them.
Evie began to run, the creature only a pace behind her when Dr. Cleat started calling her name, his voice still like dusty ink. “Evie! I know you’re there!”
The grass seemed to pull at Evie’s every step, every branch whipping across her arms and face. The Fel had his orders. He couldn’t touch her with magic, but he could touch everything else in the forest, even the light. She gasped as a branch caught in her hair, catching in her braids.
A tree root lifted, tripping her. And then the doctor was there, towering over her.
“What is so hard about giving me the recipe?” he demanded. “After I stopped the robbers from hurting you when all they wanted was to drag you out here and leave you for the wolves? I argued with the Fel King himself to save you! You like talking to me!” He seemed quite determined on that point. “Especially in Reinstadt, after I got my Fel to magick your arm better. He said you liked that I was there. We are friends! Humans like sharing things with their friends!”
“Friends don’t try to steal things from each other. Friends don’t kidnap people! When you came to visit me, you smelled like home. I missed my parents.” Evie scurried backward and tripped again. She landed on her knees, in a huge clump of orange blossoms. “You took my best friend. You told me my parents were kidnapped. You were going to hurt Max and his whole family. You might know a lot about how the world works, but none of it matters because you know nothing about what it means to be a friend.”
The doctor wrenched the knife from her hands.
“You’re nothing but a dried-out explanation of a person, Dr. Cleat, not the real thing.” She pulled herself up slowly from the ground, the clusters of blooms making her a skirt of orange. “You learned all the wrong things to make you human.”
“I hope you have a plan, Evie Baker. And that you start it right now.” The Fel’s thought barely had time to stick in her mind before a terrible screech filled the air around them, so loud and inhuman it was as if Evie were swimming in the sound as it poured straight into her skull.
Before she could claw at her bleeding ears, the Fel rushed out of the darkness, a half-bird, half-human nightmare. His beaky mouth stretched wide and his feathers stood up straight like a bristling cat as he lurched toward her. He can’t kill me! she thought. He can’t, because Fel can’t.
The blooms were all around them, their orange petals bright in the darkness as if they could somehow protect her from the Fel’s magic or the hartelismi knife in the witch doctor’s hand. They weren’t much protection, though. There were only so many flowers here because she’d dropped all her seeds earlier.
Because of the amberticks.
Her plan would keep Mum and Pop safe. Cecily. And Max would live long enough to grow out his ugly straw hair and become as stuck-up as Roary by the time his brother became king. But at least he wouldn’t be dead.
The doctor pushed away from Evie, holding the knife close to his chest. The Fel hovered just behind them as if he didn’t want to hold her still any more than Evie wanted to be rooted to the forest floor. There was an amber-ish glow in the air behind the doctor, little points of light massing up from the trees. “Shame, Evie.” Dr. Cleat shook his head. “It wasn’t just the raspberry tart I wanted. I always did like your cranberry cake.”
Evie raised her voice to answer, yelling as loud as she could. Amberticks were attracted to sound. “Cranberries are the worst berry, Dr. Cleat!”
The doctor blinked when the first ambertick flew into him, the creature burrowing into his neck. When the second landed, his eyes went wide, and he slapped at the ticks as more and more clambered for purchase against his skin.
The little creatures whipped toward Evie, digging into her hands and arms. A great cloud of glittering amber followed, dulling the night as it swallowed the doctor, ticks lighting all over his body. Evie couldn’t close her eyes, though she, for once, was not even the least bit curious. She didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t even blink as the doctor began to yell. The lights danced across her eyes, the swarm blotting out everything else.
“Help me!” the doctor yelled toward the Fel, but it stood there, eyes glued to the black blade still clasped in the doctor’s hand. The insects were crawling down toward Evie, a thousand needle pricks across her skin.
What will it feel like to be sucked clean, down to my bones? she wondered, as if her mind had already left her body, wanting to watch rather than feel it. Nothing left, even for a ghost.
Dr. Cleat seemed to fold in on himself in front of her, feathers bursting out of his arms and hands, his nose turning to a beak. He was changing back into a Fel.
Or maybe he wasn’t. Evie wasn’t sure whether she was awake or dreaming, or perhaps the world moved in shadows and glittering lights when you were dead. She could hear shouting, voices like Max’s, Gisa’s, and Cecily’s all rolled together and calling for her. But they were far away, they were safe, and that was what mattered the most.
Hopefully being dead wouldn’t be boring.