A Faerie's Curse (Creepy Hollow #6) (2 page)

Shoot.
I had hoped this would be as easy as taking the invitation from Brynn and leaving. How am I supposed to get the baron to give it to me? I focus hard on keeping the image of the baron covering me as completely as a second skin. I allow my folded arms to fall to my sides as I say, “I'm still not happy with you, Brynn, but it's late now, so we'll speak tomorrow.”

“Okay, but please just think about—”

“Tomorrow, Brynn.” I leave the room and pull the door closed. I release the image of Baron Westhold and switch back to invisibility as I hurry downstairs to his office, hoping he hasn't gone to bed yet. Reaching his office doorway, I see him standing at a gap in the curtains with his back to me, staring out at the night. I step away from the door and press myself against the wall beside it, giving myself a moment to clear my mind. I need to take more care with deceiving the baron than I did with his distraught teenage daughter.

I focus hard on picturing Brynn, on seeing her in my place. I don't move until I look down and see her slippers instead of my boots. Then I tell myself that I
am
Brynn, and I walk into her father's office. “Father?” I say, relieved that the voice I hear sounds more like hers than mine.

He turns and frowns at me. “You should be in bed, Brynn.”

“I know, but I just wanted to ask if you've changed your mind about … about the party.”

“We don't need to discuss it now,” he says, returning to his desk and sinking into the leather chair.

“But … didn't we say we would attend? If you've changed your mind, then we need to let the palace know.”

“Fine. I will inform the palace tomorrow.”

I allow myself to look appropriately devastated. “Please, please don't do that. I've been looking forward to it for so long. This was just one mistake, and it will
never
happen again.”

The baron folds one hand over the other and leans forward. “You allowed your sister to be kidnapped by a pirate. It wasn't just a
mistake
, Brynn. Can you even begin to imagine how devastated your mother would be if she were still alive? No, my decision is final. We will not be attending that party.”

I wobble my lower jaw before pressing my lips tightly together. I imagine tears forming in Brynn's eyes. “Can I at least have the invitation as a memento?”

“You don't need a memento of an event you won't be attending.”

I bite my lip, clench my fists, and prepare myself for a teenage tantrum. “You know what? I hate you. I
hate
you for ruining my life like this! I'm going to find that invitation when you're not around, and I'm going to that party without you. I don't care that I can't find the palace on my own. I'll find someone who knows how to get there.”

Baron Westhold looks thunderstruck. I turn and flounce from the room before he can respond. I stop just outside. Picturing myself as empty space instead of as Brynn, I look into the office once more. The baron slowly shakes his head, clearly shocked at Brynn's outburst. He leans back in his chair with a weary sigh, covering his brow with one hand. I start to consider what illusion I can use to get him to leave the room, but then he opens one of his drawers and removes a rosebud the color of champagne. He places it on the desk and the petals slowly open. Gold words appear in the air above the rose. I tiptoe into the room to get a closer look, but the baron brushes his hand against the petals, causing the words to vanish and the petals to curl closed once more. He stands, carries the rosebud to the fireplace, and—

No!
My hand stretches out automatically, but I'm on the other side of the room, and the rose is already in the fire.
No, no, no!
I need a distraction—something—a noise—

The first sound that comes to mind is a child's scream. I go with it, clinging desperately to my invisibility as the shriek pierces the still night. The baron's head whips around. “Elsie?” He dashes from the room as I lunge for the fireplace. I drop to my knees, shove my hand into the flames, and grasp the flower. I breathe in sharply against the sudden, burning pain, scramble to my feet, and plunge my hand into the tall vase. I search the room with desperate, darting eyes for my escape. I need a way out, I need to think, and the vase's contents isn't providing nearly enough relief for my burning hand. I squeeze my eyes shut and hold in the groan of pain I would
really
like to release.

At the sound of running footsteps, my eyelids snap open. I pull my arm from the vase and rush onto the balcony, trailing drops of water behind me as my hand BURNS LIKE A FREAKING INFERNO. Below, the white sand gleams in the starlight. It isn't too great a distance to the ground, so I should be fine if I jump. I don't want to crush the rosebud, though, so I form a bubble of shield magic around it. Breathing heavily against the pain, I coax the bubble into the air and watch it drift down toward the sand. Then—

“… didn't imagine it,” a voice says from somewhere inside the house. Distant, but quickly growing louder. “If neither of my daughters screamed, it means someone else did. Search everywhere.”

I climb hastily over the balcony railing. I look over my shoulder, and as the curtains flutter and a dark shape enters the room, I jump. I hit the ground a second later and roll to a halt. Sand shifts around me as I climb to my feet, making me slower and clumsier than I should be. Fortunately, my twisted ankle is almost fully healed. I imagine myself as invisible and shoot a glance behind me, hoping I don't find someone looking down from the balcony. I don't. In fact, I don't see any balcony at all. The glamour is once again hiding the enormous home, and all I can see are several palm trees and clumps of coarse grass here and there amongst the sand. Which means someone could be watching me, and I wouldn't know. Best to keep myself concealed.

Gritting my teeth against the pain that threatens to distract me from my illusion, I look around for a surface to write on. My eyes land on the nearest palm tree. I hold the bubble in my non-burned hand and run as quickly as the sand will allow. I've almost reached the tree when something strikes the back of my right boot. I stumble to the side and look behind me. A spark of magic shoots toward me, narrowly missing my arm as I dodge out of its path.

My footprints
, I realize. Someone must have noticed the shifting sand as I ran for the tree. More magic flies in my direction, and then suddenly—shouts greet my ears and three figures appear almost exactly where I landed just now.

“Crap.” Keeping myself concealed, I rush for the palm tree. Sand flies up around me as sparks strike the ground. I swing myself around the side of the tree and retrieve my stylus with my burning hand. I instruct myself—uselessly—to ignore the pain and the panic as I write a doorway spell onto the tree trunk. The rough surface melts away, revealing a dark space just wide enough for me to fit through. Holding the thought of Chase's lakeside house in my mind, I hurtle into the faerie paths.

C
HAPTER

T
WO

Seconds later, I rush through the lake house living room to the faerie door, pulling the key from one of my pockets. DAMN, MY HAND IS BURNING. Then I'm in another dark space, and then through a door into the foyer, and finally I'm back at Gaius's mountain home.
My
mountain home, seeing as nowhere else is safe for me anymore. I fled the Guild after they discovered my Griffin Ability, and they've been watching the homes of my family and friends ever since.

I hurry upstairs to Gaius's study—burning, burning,
burning
hand—and find him bent over a spider-like contraption that appears to be shooting sparkling dust from one spindly leg and ink splatters from another. “Mission number one complete,” I announce, marching across the room and managing to feel immensely pleased with myself despite the horrendous pain scorching across my hand. “Here's the payment for the job.” I remove the wooden case and the gold flower from my pocket. “Plus a bit of gold, because little Elsie felt like making it on the spot for me. And—” I lower the translucent shield bubble onto a pile of books and allow it to pop, revealing the rosebud “—the all-important invitation.”

“You got it!” Gaius exclaims, standing so quickly his chair falls over behind him.

Despite my pain, a laugh escapes my lips. “I got it.”

“And gold? You said she
made
it? And—your hand. That looks terrible.”

“It's fine, I'll treat it in a moment. Open the invitation so we can see—”

“You haven't opened it yet?” Gaius asks as he rummages through one of his drawers and pulls out an emergency kit.

“No, I had to get out of there without getting caught. I didn't want to ruin the good reputation you and Chase have worked so hard to build among certain circles of fae.”

“Ah, yes, probably a good idea.” Gaius removes a small tub of burn healing gel and hands it to me. “Here you go. Fix your hand up while I open this thing.”

As Gaius clears a space on his desk for the rosebud, I scoop some gel from the tub and smear it across my hand. The relief is instant as the gel's magic diminishes the burning to little more than a whisper of pain. With my attention fully on the invitation now, I lean over the desk and watch closely. Gaius touches a petal with one finger that shakes ever so slightly. The petals begin to unfurl. “This is it,” he breathes. “Our ticket inside the Seelie Palace.”

“Well, if we can find out how to actually
get
there,” I remind him.

“Details,” Gaius says with a wave of his hand. “We'll figure that part out.” He squints at the gold letters that appear in the air above the flower. “Cordially invited … blah, blah, blah,” he reads. “Princess Audra's birthday … masked ball … on the fourteenth day of … oh, goodness, that's—”

“Nine days away,” I say, my heart sinking. “Nine whole days. How is Chase supposed to last that long?”

Gaius stares at the invitation, chewing on his bottom lip. “Well, this is our only option, unless you know how to get us in and out of the palace on a regular day without being caught.”

“My ability—”

“Might not be enough. This is the most well-guarded place in our world. There will be magical protection everywhere. The easiest way in is during an event like this. Security will still be high, of course, but not impossible for us to get past.”

I grip the edge of the desk. “Fine. But if … if there's even a hint of something happening to Chase before this party, then we have to go immediately.”

“Of course. Which means we need to hurry up and find someone who knows how to get there.”

“Yes.” And that's something that someone else on the team will have to figure out, because my one and only potential contact is someone who never seems to leave the Seelie Court. I hold my rapidly healing hand out. “May I have the ring back? We need to update Chase.” And I need to hear his voice. I've gone a whole day without hearing it, and it feels as though a piece of myself has been missing.

“Yes, of course.” Gaius removes a book from one of his shelves and opens it. From a carved space in the center of the pages, he removes the telepathy ring I've been using to communicate with Chase since he was imprisoned. A ring imbued with a Griffin Ability someone didn't want. Fortunately, Chase was wearing the corresponding ring when he was captured. “I'm sorry I took it, but I didn't want you distracted by anything today.”

“I understand, but I wish you'd trusted me to simply leave the ring in my bedroom. You didn't need to hide it from me.”

“It isn't that I didn't
trust
you, Calla. I just wanted to be certain you wouldn't take it with you.”

I raise an eyebrow as Gaius places the ring, a simple silver band with a green stone, on my palm. “So you didn't trust me.”

He ruffles his already mussed up hair. “Fine. I'm sorry. It was your first mission for us and … well, it was very important.”

“I'm fully aware of that, Gaius. I want to get Chase out of the Seelie Queen's clutches just as much as you do.”

“Of course, I know, I'm sorry. I promise I'll trust you next time. Oh, you probably want your amber back too.”

“You hid my amber as well?” I demand, curling my hand around the ring.

“It was a potential distraction.”

“It's old and oversized and the only person I can contact is Ryn, so I definitely wasn't planning on taking it with me. You know that.”

“Just taking precautions,” Gaius says, handing me the antique piece of amber with a guilty smile. “Which I understand now were unnecessary. Won't happen again.”

I shake my head in frustration as I tap the amber's surface. Gold writing fades into view. I tell myself I'll look at it properly just now, after I've spoken to Chase, but I see the words ‘mom' and ‘trial just finished' and I can't stop reading. A chill rushes across my skin. I feel faint, as if the blood has been drained all at once from my head. “The trial's over,” I whisper, pulling my eyes from my brother's message and looking up at Gaius. “They—they're sending my mother to prison.”

* * *

Chase, are you there?

I call his name once more as I sneak into the Guild just before midnight. I've been trying to get hold of him since I left the mountain, but all I can hear are my own thoughts. I tell myself not to worry. He's sleeping, that's all. He's fine. Well, he isn't
fine
. He's imprisoned in a dark, dirty cell with magic-blocking chains attached to his arms and legs. But he isn't dead. He can't be. The Seelie Queen wouldn't keep him alive for a week only to suddenly finish him off with no fanfare. No, she's keeping him alive for a reason, which means he's just sleeping.
You're just sleeping, right?
I whisper in my mind.

I swallow, trying to rid myself of the nausea in my stomach, and walk confidently across the Guild's great foyer. Moving around under the illusion of invisibility has become second nature to me. Still, it's a risk to come here so late at night when no one else is around and a surveillance device—which isn't a living being and can't be influenced by my projections—could so easily spot me. I casually pull my hood further over my head. I may look suspicious to anyone watching me on a recording orb right now, but no one would ever suspect me of being Calla Larkenwood, the runaway Gifted faerie who supposedly killed one of her classmates before making half the Guild sick with a disease-causing Griffin Ability.

I climb the stairs to Ryn's office, but I walk straight past his closed door. I stop near the end of the corridor and lean against the wall. I lift my hand, as if examining my nails while waiting for someone or something. In reality, I'm scouring the corridor with my eyes for any sign of a surveillance bug. I flinch when the door beside me opens, but my projection is intact, and the guardian who walks out does nothing more than lock her office and leave with a bag slung over her shoulder.

I examine the corridor for another few minutes. When I see no movement and hear no buzzing, I push away from the wall and walk back to Ryn's door. I open it, slip inside, and shut the door. “They're sending her to
prison
?” I say as I drop into the empty chair beside Dad and across from Ryn. “That's absurd. She was only a child when she broke her contract and fled the Guild. What happened to them fining her and leaving it at that?”

Dad, who looks sicker than I feel, shakes his head and covers his face with both hands.

I turn to Ryn instead. “She did receive a fine,” he says. “For manufacturing high-strength potions without a permit. For breaking her Seer contract, the Guild has taken into account the seriousness of the vision she chose not to tell them about. They also seem to want to make an example of her so that other Seers don't make light of their contracts, which is why she ended up with six months in prison instead of a second fine.”

“Six months? Your message said two years.”

“The rest is for the other charge: keeping your Griffin Ability secret. Considering the mess at the Guild recently—the murder and the dragon disease and the big display you put on when you fled—they're taking failure to register Gifted persons very seriously. Apparently we're supposed to be
grateful
they only gave her a year and a half for that one.”

“But—that's—” I struggle to put my thoughts together into a coherent sentence. “The mess at the Guild was my doing, not hers. She had no control over what I might use my ability for. And Dad didn't register me either, but they're not throwing him into prison.”

“They've opened an investigation on me,” Dad says quietly. “And it isn't just about failing to register you. It's … well, they want to know how we kept it quiet for so long. Given the stories surrounding the departure of every school you've been at, they find it hard to believe that no one else knew about you.”

Icy apprehension fills my veins. If Dad is under investigation, there's no way he can continue to hide what he's done. “They're going to find out, aren't they,” I whisper. “They're going to find out about the bribes.”

Dad pulls back slightly as confusion creases his brow. “How do you know about that?”

“I overheard you and Ryn speaking.” I leave out the fact that this eavesdropping took place during an accidental trip into the past while I was wearing a time-traveling bangle.

Dad watches me for several moments before saying, “Do you understand how serious this is?”

“Yes. What are you going to do?”

Dad takes a deep breath. “Well, as your mother said earlier, it's time to face the consequences for what we've done.”

My throat tightens as I try to hold back tears. “That's what she said?”

“Yes. And she's right. We've broken the law.
I
, especially, have broken the law. Your mother doesn't even know the lengths I went to in order to keep your name off the list.”

“Dad, I'm so sorry I—”

“I broke the law, Calla,” he says firmly. “
I
did that. If I have to face the consequences, then I will.”

“But—”

“We don't even know yet what will happen to me. Right now, our concern should be for your mother. She's the one being carted off to Barton Prison tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” I gasp. “Where is she now? Can I see her?”

“No, of course you can't see her!” he says, his voice rising. “She's in the detainment area downstairs. Is your ability going to get you past all those guards? Probably not. And then you'll end up in the cell next to hers when you're caught.”

Dad's lack of faith in my ability stings, but now isn't the time to argue. Not when he's clearly close to cracking from the pressure of Mom's trial and the devastating news of her sentence.

“I … I need some space,” Dad says, standing. “I'll be outside in the forest.” He places a hand on my shoulder and adds, “You've found yourself in enough life-threatening situations recently. I just want you to stay safe now.”

The door closes behind Dad and I pull my feet up onto the chair. I wrap my arms around my legs and press my face against my knees as the weight of what I've done to my parents becomes almost too much to bear. “This is all my fault.”