13 Secrets (42 page)

“He’s alive,” she sobbed, shaking him gently. “Sparrow, please wake up. Please be all right!” She pressed her face against his chest, hot tears leaking from her eyes and soaking into the fabric of his shirt. His heart thudded dully, slowly, pulsing against her cheek. Then a groan escaped his lips.

“Red? Is that… you?”

“Yes! I’m here.” She lifted her head and threw her arms around him. He was now shivering, as well as groaning. His lips drew back over his teeth in a grimace. “I’m cold, Red. I’m so c-cold. My head—”

“Shh,” she told him, holding his hand and smoothing his hair. “I know. But you’re going to be all right now.” She pressed her lips against his brow, her tears running onto his face.

“Here,” said Fabian, pulling off his jacket. “Let me put this around him.”

Rowan stood back, biting her lip against the pain as she put weight on her injured foot, and allowed Fabian and Gredin to tend to Sparrow. Together they lifted him to his feet, supporting him as he swayed. His face was ghastly white, his lips blue with cold.

“Get inside the house.” Raven circled their heads. “Quickly, now. He needs to be warm.”

“And I need to stop Suki,” Rowan growled, wiping the last of her tears away. She limped out of the way as Gredin and Fabian edged past her, Sparrow between them, to the foot of the steps.

Gredin led the way up the narrow staircase. The stone tunnel was flooded with light and warm air as he pushed the secret doorway open, motioning for caution as they came through one by one. Rowan kicked the book of matches out of the base of the doorframe, then moved aside for Tanya and Oberon, and finally Raven, who had shed her bird form to become a woman. The doorway to the tunnel closed, leaving them standing in the stifling room. The fire still danced in the grate as it was tended to by the hearthfay. She squeaked as they came nearer, and vanished from the room.

“Put him by the fire,” Rowan said anxiously. Fabian and Gredin eased Sparrow into the armchair by the hearthside. She tucked Fabian’s jacket, inside out, around Sparrow’s shoulders, then threw the fox-skin coat around her own and fastened the catch. She shrank back into a fox and turned away from the fire. “Let’s finish this.”

“Most of the windows are camouflaged or protected with salt,” Tanya whispered to Gredin. “You won’t be able to pass them.”

“How do we get through the door?” asked Fabian, but Gredin had already moved to it. With a flick of his fingers they heard a low click as the door unlocked, and then he reached out and quietly opened it.

Rowan stood by Tanya, fury overriding the throbbing of her injured paw. She saw Fabian grab a sturdy wooden candlestick from the desk and noticed that Tanya held the magical scissors aloft. They were ready.

They stepped into the cool, dark hallway—and met with an awful sight.

Victor’s lifeless body lay below the window, his sword to one side of him, covered in blood. Samson clung to his body, racked with silent sobs. He did not look up as they approached, but lay there, utterly defeated. A short way from them, the dead garvern was sprawled, one of Victor’s knives jutting from its corpse. Another one, injured but alive, was in a cage of iron under the watchful eyes of Brunswick and the tea caddy brownie, who sat nearby. For the first time the brownie was without his walking stick, but then Rowan spied it. It was embedded in the imprisoned garvern’s neck.

Looking over the scene was Tino, his swarthy face contorted with horror. A long cut sliced the side of his face from the edge of his eye to the corner of his mouth. He looked up sharply, raising his knife as
they approached and eyeing Gredin and Raven with suspicion.

“They’re with us,” Rowan said. “Tino, I can explain everything, but you’ve got to listen to me—”

“Rowan?” Rose’s voice echoed from above. “Is that you?”

All hell broke loose upstairs as a scramble of footsteps fled across the landing. Florence’s face appeared, haggard and drawn, as she called out for Tanya and Fabian.

“They’re safe,” Gredin yelled. “Stay where you are!”

Warwick thundered down the stairs to join them at the same time as Suki skidded into the hallway, blanching as she took in the new arrivals.

“Bet you weren’t expecting to see us again, were you?” Rowan spat.

Suki glanced at Tino wildly. “I just saw Crooks. He left through the back, covered in blood—he must have hidden after he attacked Victor and then escaped!”

“
Liar!
” Rowan shrieked, springing at Suki, but her injured back paw jarred as she leapt, throwing her off balance. She hit the girl clumsily, snapping and snarling, aiming for her throat, but Suki was fast. She caught Rowan in a headlock, lifting her off the ground and shaking her until her teeth rattled. A second later, a sharp blade was pressed to her throat.

“One move from anyone and I’ll kill her,” Suki hissed. “Lower that gun.”

Warwick had raised his rifle the instant Suki’s knife had appeared. “I mean it.”

Reluctantly, Warwick lowered the weapon.

Tino’s face drained of color. “
Suki?
What are you
doing
?”

“She lied about everything!” Fabian yelled. “She was working with Eldritch all this time—she planned to let him in through the tunnel to help her finish you all off!”

“The tunnel?” Tino’s face fell. “But Sparrow’s down there—”

“He’s in the library,” said Tanya. “Eldritch knocked him unconscious and left him for Suki to kill.”

Tino roared in rage and flung himself at Suki, but Warwick grabbed him.

“Back off!” Suki yelled. She lowered her lips to Rowan’s ear. “You should be dead by now. Why aren’t you?”

“Because Eldritch is.” Rowan squirmed in Suki’s grasp. “Your little plan backfired—he ended up at the bottom of one of the catacombs, where he planned to leave me!”

“I can’t say he wasn’t useful,” Suki sneered. “Although I’d have preferred it if he’d just finished Sparrow off. Desperate times, and all that.”

Tears of rage sprang to Rowan’s eyes once more. “You evil—”

“Shut up!” Suki shook her, and she felt the sharp sting of the blade as it pierced through her fur.

“Let her go, Suki,” Tino said, his mouth slack. “Just let her go—you don’t want this. Why would you do this? We’re your friends—we
trusted
you.”

“
Don’t tell me what I want!
” Suki screamed, waving the knife in the air. “I’m sick of you controlling me!” Her normally pale face flooded scarlet with rage.

“Controlling you?”
Tino’s face screwed up in disbelief. “I gave you a chance! I gave you the choice! And this is how you repay me, you ungrateful little traitor!”

“You ruined my life.” Suki spoke through gritted teeth, every syllable dripping with hatred.

“
I saved you!
” Tino cried. “When the fairies took you, I brought you back—”

“Yes, you brought me back! But to what? Did you ever ask yourself that? Did you stop to consider my surroundings when you found me? No—you just did your little do-gooder act and stuck your nose in where it wasn’t wanted. I never wanted to go back to my parents! I hated them—HATED THEM!”

Tino took a step back in shock, but Suki’s tirade had only just begun.

“For the first time in my life I was happy, wanted. I’d never known that before. Every day I’d been told I was stupid and useless. My mother never wanted me and she made it clear.” She laughed bitterly. “She thought more of the dogs than she did of me. I used to sleep in the shoe cupboard with them… cuddling up to them was the only bit of affection I ever got.
Until one of them had puppies. Then I was bitten. Rejected, even by them.”

“But they were so glad to have you back,” Tino stuttered. “We watched you, made sure the fairies never came back for you—”

“And why were they glad? Well, firstly, it got them off the hook with the authorities—no changeling was left in my place and by all accounts I’d just vanished. But secondly, they were glad of my return because of what I’d brought back with me.” Suki tapped her temple. “The sight. Oh, yes, Tino. You got
that
wrong as well. I wasn’t taken because I was gifted. I was taken because I was unwanted.
Because I wouldn’t be missed.
I was
given
the sight—I never had it before then. The second sight too—I couldn’t even see
fairies
before then! As soon as I returned it was evident that I was different.”

“That’s why you had no guardian,” Tino said, understanding at last. “You weren’t born with the second sight.”

Suki ignored him. “At first, it earned me a few more slaps and the odd night in the cellar. But then they noticed that what I was saying came true. They saw how it could be used—my mother set up a fortune-telling scam. While customers waited in the kitchen I sat by them, quietly getting flashes of their lives to feed back to her before she took them to the room for their readings. With a few true facts that I picked up, she was free to add on any old nonsense of her own and they swallowed it all. Suddenly, I was
useful to her… her and my lazy, good-for-nothing stepfather. But still that couldn’t make her love me. And being useful wasn’t enough.” Her eyes narrowed. “Sometimes I refused to tell them things, or gave them the wrong information on purpose. They called me a freak. One evening we argued… and something snapped in my head. I knew I couldn’t take it anymore. I wondered… if they were gone, would the other mother—the mother from the fairy realm—come back for me?” She smiled. “So I said I was sorry, like a good girl. Made them a bedtime drink laced with a sleeping draught to knock them out.”

“No,” Tino murmured. “No, you didn’t… you can’t have…”

“My mother was the hardest,” Suki said dreamily. “Even after everything, I still loved her.
He
was much easier.”

“There was no fairy…” Tino whispered, horrified. “You did it. You killed your parents.”

“And then you came along, offering your sympathy and a position with the Coven,” Suki said sarcastically. “Like a fairy godfather, weren’t you, Tino? How could I refuse? How could I possibly turn down the chance to ruin more lives? Only I saw the chance I was being given. Unlike any of you, I knew I’d be able to make the right choices, despite the ‘no exceptions’ rule. If a child was better off where it was, then I could leave it.

“I was happy enough with that for a while, until one day when I’d just completed a switch in the fairy
realm. I’d done it as a favor to Merchant—he’d hit some trouble and needed to lie low for a while. Anyway, I came across a little cottage. It looked familiar, and in my mind’s eye, I saw why. I knocked. When the door opened, I recognized the woman instantly—she looked exactly the same as she had when she’d taken me all those years ago. She invited me in to sit among the animal pelts and the bones…. I didn’t remember those….”

“The Hedgewitch’s cottage,” Rowan gasped, but was silenced by another jab of the knife.

“She’d been an outcast too, she told me. That’s why she was there, alone. That’s why she’d stolen me, for a child of her own. But even that was taken from her.”

“You’d have ended up more crazy than you are now if you’d stayed with her!” Rowan braced herself for another shaking, but it didn’t come.

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Suki sounded sad. “Perhaps, if I’d stayed with her, we’d both have been saved. That’s when I first knew I wanted revenge. I had the chance to stop you all, for good. She promised to make the fox-skin coat for me and to have it ready for the next time I went back. It would make my work a lot easier and it was better than any glamour Tino was capable of.” Her voice hardened. “Only the next time I went back, she was dead, wasn’t she, Red? And not only had you killed her, but you’d taken my coat!”

“I didn’t mean to kill her.” Rowan fumbled with
the catch on the coat. If she could undo it while Suki was talking, maybe there was a chance she could escape. “I didn’t even know what I’d done until I found out the truth about my name!”

Suki sighed, tightening her hold on Rowan’s neck. “I’m only sorry I didn’t get to display more of my handiwork before the game was up. I had so much more planned.” She glanced at Tino, a cruel smile curving her lips. “A special mask for you.”

Tino’s mouth dropped open. “What kind of mask?”

“An iron one that would ensure you spent the rest of your life disfigured. You have so many masks that I thought you might want to put them to good use. And for Merchant, a cauldron large enough to boil his bones in—I was especially looking forward to
that
.” She stared toward Samson scornfully. He had not moved from his brother’s body. “He was the dullest. I knew he’d be beaten as soon as Victor was dead.” She smiled. “I could’ve killed him, I’m sure. But I knew that for Samson, death wasn’t the worst thing. And I must say, there’s something… satisfying about breaking a strong man’s will. Still, I can get creative with Red, although really she was promised to Eldritch. And when all’s said and done, nine out of twelve isn’t a bad effort.”

“You’re delusional if you think you’re leaving here with Rowan,” Warwick told her.

Suki tilted her head. “And how do you propose to
stop me? If any of you take a single step in my direction, I’ll gut her like a fish.”

“I’d rather die than let you escape after what you’ve done!” Rowan yelled. She wriggled, catching her claw on the clasp a second time, but failing to free it. Suki did not notice. “Just do it, Tino! Someone go for her, now!”