A Faerie's Secret (Creepy Hollow Book 4) (34 page)

“So it was just bad luck that you happened to be here at the same time they came to take your mother,” Ryn says.

“Yes. They were going to get rid of me, but when Amon heard about my Griffin Ability, he told them to—” I freeze. Like a heavy stone sinking to the pit of my stomach, a realization weighs itself down on me. “It’s gone. My Griffin Ability. I don’t … I don’t have it anymore. I thought Gaius had taken all my magic, and I was so relieved to discover I still had some left that I didn’t realize I no longer had
that
magic.” Tears spring up in my eyelids. My Griffin Ability is the one thing that’s made my life more difficult than anything else, but right now it’s the one thing I want most. It’s
mine
. It’s part of me, and I’ve never wanted to be rid of it, no matter how much easier my life would have been without it.

“Hey, it’s not that bad.” Ryn leans closer and takes my hand. “This man, Gaius. Do you know if he can give Griffin Abilities back once he’s taken them?”

I nod and sniff as I whisper, “Yes.”

“Then it isn’t gone for good. We’ll find him, and you’ll get your ability back.”

I continue nodding. Ryn is right. Even if no one at the Guild comes close to finding Gaius, Chase will. I have no doubt of that.

I hear hurried footsteps outside my curtain, and then Vi walks in. “You’re awake!” She rushes to my side. “I have good news. I just heard that the guards who patrol the forest outside the Guild have found your mother. She was lying near the Guild entrance, still asleep. No one saw who left her there.”

Chase
, a voice inside my head says immediately. I’m sure it was him.

“Wow, that’s … suspicious,” Ryn says. “Who would bring her back? Where is she now?”

“They’re bringing her into the healing wing as we speak.”

“Oh thank goodness,” I lean back against my pillows in relief. “Will there be someone to guard her in case Saber and Marlin come back for her?”

“Yes, there will be more than one guard,” Ryn says. “And those men hopefully won’t be able to get back into the healing wing, at least not the same way they did yesterday.”

“How did they get in yesterday?” I was wondering about that. It’s supposed to be impossible to get into the Guild if you’re not authorized to be here.

“Remember that party you were at the other night?” Ryn says. “Lucien de la Mer? Well, since he and his wife spend so much time at various healing institutes because of her illness, they each have access pendants to all of them. And guess what he reported missing this morning.”

“His access pendants,” I say slowly. So that’s what Saber was doing at Lucien’s party. “But access pendants have names written on them. Whoever scanned those pendants should have seen that the names didn’t match up to the people wearing them.”

“That’s what should have happened,” Vi says. “But the entrance for healing wing employees isn’t as carefully guarded as the main entrance to the Guild, and if a guard isn’t paying attention, he can miss details like that.”

“That’s what Dad is currently yelling at the manager about,” Ryn says. “Incompetent guards.”

“Perhaps someone should tell him that Mom is back.”

“Probably,” Ryn says. “And you should—”

“—rest. I know. I’ve heard that one already.”

After several more hugs and hand squeezes, Vi and Ryn leave. I open the drawers of the bedside cabinet and find my belongings in a neat pile inside one of them. I search through my clothes until I find my amber and stylus. Then I write two words to Chase:
Thank you
.

* * *

After a few hours of boring rest, Gemma arrives unexpectedly. “I don’t think I’m supposed to know you’re here,” she says. “I mean, none of us were told anything. We just know that people were looking for you yesterday. Saskia told everyone you probably decided to skip a day or two because you’re soft and can’t handle the way your mentor pushes you. Anyway, my mom overheard that you were here, so she told me.”

She asks what happened. After hesitating for too long, trying to figure out what’s safe to tell and what isn’t, I end up saying, “It was to do with my mother. Some men came for her, and I happened to be visiting at the time, so they took me as well. That’s all I’m allowed to say.”

Gemma stays for a while, filling me in on the lessons I missed yesterday and today and telling me all about Perry’s triumphant defeat of Blaze in the Fish Bowl yesterday afternoon. The setting was a circus tent, and Perry used stilts and a spinning metal hoop to bring down his opponent.

Not long after Gemma leaves, I hear a “Well, well,” coming from the gap in the curtain. I look up in surprise to see Olive standing there. “So,” she says. “You couldn’t wait until after your graduation before getting involved with the big league criminals. Oh no. Once again, you had to skip ahead of everyone else.” She crosses her arms. “Velazar Prison. You don’t mess around, do you?”

Fabulous. My friendly mentor has obviously spoken to Ryn, otherwise she wouldn’t know any of this yet. “I didn’t
choose
to get involved with a dangerous man who spied on the Guild for both Prince Zell and Lord Draven,” I say. “But since I did wind up having an involuntary audience with him, we now know what information he’s after, and we know he doesn’t have it yet. That’s a
good
thing, right? And the Guild also knows they should be going after Marlin and Saber, the two guys who are still out there doing Amon’s dirty work.”

Olive shakes her head slowly. “You think it’s as simple as that.”

“Yes, I do. Why shouldn’t it be? Someone points out the bad guys, and guardians go out and get them.”

“There are processes, procedures, laws. There are time constraints. There are many problems the Guild is dealing with, in both this realm and the human one, and this case doesn’t require immediate, urgent attention just because one trainee thinks it should.”

“But this is important!”

“That’s what everyone says about their cases. And a case where the ‘bad guy—’” she mockingly repeats my words along with air quotes “—is already locked up for life isn’t high on anyone’s priority list.”

“But … you guys are supposed to fix stuff like this. That’s what the Guild is for.”

“What’s there to fix? You’re alive, and your mother’s been found. Yes, the two men who captured you are still out there, but as long as no one is in immediate danger, and as long as the Guild asks to be alerted as soon as they attempt to visit the prisoner again, there isn’t too much else to be done at this point. The investigation will remain open, but any guardian working on it will dedicate his or her time to more important cases first.”

I try to reel in my frustration, but it’s difficult. “I expected more from the Guild.”

Olive throws her head back and laughs. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s the way things work around here and at every other Guild. If you were hoping for something different, you are more than welcome to leave.”

She’d love that, but there’s no way I’ll give her the satisfaction. Besides, the Guild is still where I want to be, even if the whole system doesn’t work as perfectly as I thought it would. I stare defiantly back at Olive, and she leaves after letting out a sigh of disappointment.

After she’s gone, Dad shows up and convinces the healers to let me rest at home instead of here. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve had enough rest to last me a full year of training. And speaking of training, I’ve missed out on almost two full days of it and I’m anxious to get back to work. Dad won’t listen to my protests, though. He sends me straight to bed when we get home. I spend the remainder of Wednesday afternoon sitting in bed sketching pictures of stormy skies and turbulent seas and trying not to look at my amber every two seconds to see if Chase has replied.

The next day, I meet with the guardians working on Mom’s case so I can repeat my story to them, leaving out the part where I had a Griffin Ability stolen from me and adding in the alternate ending. I have to pay attention so I don’t lose track of exactly what I’m allowed to tell who. Chase will get the whole story, Ryn and Vi get most of the story, and anyone else at the Guild gets whatever they need to know about the bad guys and not much else.

After that, I go back to classes. I endure spiteful looks from Saskia and questions from other trainees. I spend the afternoon in the training center.

And then I get a message from Chase.

Old Guild ruins? 5 pm?

CHAPTER

TWENTY-NINE

I smile for the remaining fourteen minutes of my final training session. When I get to the old Guild ruins, it’s raining there. I was hot from an hour of arm strengthening exercises, but the air out here has a chill to it. I remove a hoodie from my training bag and pull it on over my head. A wide moss-covered archway stands not too far away. It’s crumbling in places but still intact enough to provide shelter from the rain, so I wait beneath it, leaning against one side.

Chase arrives through a faerie paths doorway. He looks around, then walks toward me with his hands pushed into his coat pockets. He reaches the archway and leans against the opposite side. Droplets of rain cling to his hair, and his eyes appear brighter than usual in the strange light brought on by the rainy weather.

“You look like you’re back to normal, Miss Goldilocks,” he says. “Didn’t I tell you you’d be fine?”

“You saved me,” I say simply. “That’s why I’m fine.”

He looks away for a moment, an indefinable expression on his face.

“You found my mother.”

“I did,” he says, returning his gaze to me.

“How?”

“I’m aware of some of the locations that Amon, the prisoner I assume you were there to see, has been using. One is a house on an estate behind Thistle Orchard in Eilemor. It’s secluded and surrounded by mulberry bushes. That’s where I went first, and, sure enough, there she was. It’s protected, of course, so it took me some time to get in.”

Based on only the words ‘mulberry house,’ it would have been almost impossible for the Guild to find Mom. Chase did it in under a day. “I don’t know how to thank you. Without you, I’d be dead and my mother would still be missing. My family would be broken.”

Chase smiles. “I would say it was luck or chance that I arrived in time to catch you, and that I know the location Amon refers to as the ‘mulberry house,’ but I don’t entirely believe in either luck or chance.”

I’m starting to think I don’t either. No one’s that lucky, are they? “You were there looking for Gaius,” I say.

“Yes. He was taken from Wickedly Inked where he was waiting for me. I keep my day job separate from my night job, so the tattoo shop used to be a safe spot until Saber discovered I work there.”

“And you could track Gaius because of his watch?” I was a little overwhelmed by pain and dizziness by the time Chase started transferring healing magic into me, but I think I remember him saying that.

“Yes. I knew he was at Velazar Prison before the tracking signal disappeared. It reappeared as I got closer to the island, so I knew he must have left. I began circling the area with Jarvis, hoping to see him somewhere on the water or on the island outside the prison, but then the signal disappeared. That’s when I saw you with Saber. I couldn’t get to you because of the protective layer around the island that keeps magic in and out. So, if you think about it, the best thing that could have happened to you was Saber throwing you over the wall.”

“And the reason I fell through the protective layer,” I say as I remember the flash in the air around me, “is because I had no magic.”

“Well, you had very little magic. Probably too little to be detected.”

“How, though? Amon told Gaius to take everything.”

Chase shakes his head. “Gaius can’t have taken everything. If he had, you wouldn’t be here. Taking magic from someone … most people can’t do it, and most people have never seen it done, so they don’t know what it looks like. Most people don’t even know it’s possible. Gaius can do it because that’s his Griffin Ability. The only other way is to use dark magic. Dark spells. If it’s done properly—if every bit of your magic is drained from you—it kills you.”

I feel my eyebrows jump up. A tendril of nausea twists around my stomach. “It
kills
you?”

“Magic is part of who we are, Calla. We can’t survive without it. Amon obviously doesn’t know that, or he would have known that Gaius didn’t do the job properly.”

“It sure felt like he did the job properly,” I murmur, remembering the sick, hollow feeling as I lay on the prison floor. “Have you found him?”

“No. He wasn’t at the mulberry house. I’ve sent people to check the other locations I know of, but so far no one has found him.”

“I’m sorry.” I feel partly responsible. If Chase hadn’t come to my aid, would he have been able to find Gaius in that time?

“There’s no need to be sorry. I will find him.” He pushes a hand through his hair. “Now that you’re no longer at death’s doorstep, can you tell me what happened yesterday? Amon is the dangerous man I was telling you about, the prisoner Saber has been reporting to. He’s planning something, but I haven’t been able to figure out what.”