Brightly (Flicker #2) (41 page)

When Jason returned to the living room with a cup of coffee in each hand, he looked as tired as Alice had ever seen him. Davis had gone to bed an hour ago, but he’d looked so anxious that she doubted he was getting much sleep.

Alice was afraid to sleep. She was afraid of what she might dream, of walking into the sea, and she knew Jason had fears of his own. They’d decided to stay awake together.

Jason sat beside her on the couch, his posture stiff and his expression grim. Alice knew the feeling. Since they arrived on Siren, there had been many moments when she felt at ease in this house, when she had smiled and laughed—but there were also moments when she abruptly remembered that she didn’t belong here. As much as she had grown to like Clementine, Davis and Henry, as much as she understood why they’d done what they did, she wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for them. She wouldn’t be cursed.

“I wish they hadn’t gone,” she muttered, taking a drink and setting her cup on the coffee table. “I’d rather turn into something else than have them go.”

“Maybe,” Jason said, “but if this had happened to anyone else, I know where you’d be right now. You would do the same thing as any of them.”

“That’s what Filo said.” Alice clasped her hands in her lap, staring down at the bruise darkening the back of her hand. At the thought of Filo, the old tightness came over her heart. It hurt, but it was a good hurt. She’d learned to live with it.

“Alice—” Jason started.

She looked up, and when he opened his arms, she didn’t hesitate. She never did, not when it came to Jason. Being with him was easy. She didn’t have to think about it.

She buried her face in his shoulder and let him slide his arms around her. Alice was always cold now, the curse crawling under her skin, but Jason was warm. Her head fit neatly beneath his chin. As he held her, for a moment, she felt almost all right.

“Do you think they’re okay?” she asked, her voice muffled.

“Of course they are. They have to be.” His voice was steady, but she noticed how he held her tighter. “It’ll be over soon.”

She wanted to believe that, but it was hard. More and more, it was even getting hard to visualize the world beyond Siren, on the other side of the sea. Siren was such a strange little place, a dot on a map, but she was entangled in it now, more deeply than she’d ever wanted to be. She was sinking into it, drowning. “What’ll we do when it’s finished?”

“We’ll go home,” he said, “and sleep for a few days, and think about things other than barnacles and merfolk.”

“And what else?”

“We’ll go dancing.”

“At Chimeric?”

“Sure. Or someplace else. You pick.”

She found herself smiling against his shoulder. The first time Alice went to Chimeric was a few months after she left Flicker, when she was fifteen. She’d been working at Sandpiper since the third morning after she left, brewing potions and packaging spells in the workshop and sleeping on a cot in the back room. She worked herself to exhaustion, not because Conall expected her to, but she couldn’t think of another way to show him how grateful she was for the kindness he’d shown her.

Conall and Tipper lived in the apartment above the shop. They were a mystery to her then. She’d never been upstairs. All she knew was that they shared that place, and that, almost every other night, Tipper came downstairs in a short dress and breezed through the shop, on her way to places Alice couldn’t imagine. One night, Tipper convinced Alice to join her.

She hadn’t expected to see Jason there. She froze up when she spotted him in the crowd, surrounded by people she’d never met. It had been so long since she’d seen Nasser or Jason, but when he saw her and he smiled that smile she knew so well, she went to him without having to think about it. The winter had been long and lonely and filled with unfamiliar things, and when he swept her up in a hug, she felt truly warm for the first time in months.

That was the first time she’d ever been dancing. Tipper melted into the crowd, but Alice didn’t mind, because Jason was there. Since that night, they’d met at Chimeric once or twice a month. It was something they did together, just the two of them.

On those nights with Jason, she felt like another person. She was a girl who only existed at night, with multicolored lights sliding over her skin and music leaping in her veins. In the morning, she tucked that other Alice away, but at night, she was all energy and impulse, brimming with fierce joy. Jason was the only one who ever saw her like that.

“Alice,” Jason beckoned, softer this time.

When she lifted her face, he was looking at her the way he sometimes did at Chimeric, between flashes of faerie light. He looked at her like she was something undiscovered. She’d never understood that.

Alice felt herself go perfectly still. Her eyes never left Jason. She heard his intake of breath, but before he could speak, the front door burst open.

Clementine stumbled into the living room. She was covered in blood.

Huge, dark bloodstains soaked her shirt and pants. Her hands and arms were streaked with half-congealed blood, so thick that it looked like she was wearing red gloves. There was blood even in her white-blond hair, matting the pale strands together. A gouge on her right arm oozed. Her forehead was cut and bleeding, rivulets streaming down the side of her face. Droplets spattered her cheek and throat. One of her eyes was nearly swollen shut.

At the same moment, Alice and Jason bolted to their feet. She rushed to Clementine, while Jason grabbed a blanket off one of the chairs and screamed for Davis.

“What happened?” Alice asked shrilly, as she steered Clementine into the kitchen, where the light was better. Her mind was filled with images of torn-off limbs and explosions. “Did the spell go wrong? Where is everyone?”

Clementine just kept shaking her head. She looked numb.

When Davis tumbled down the stairs less than a minute later, Jason was still trying to drape the blanket around Clementine’s shoulders. She pushed him away, leaving a sticky red handprint on his arm.

“What’s—” Davis started, but his question died in his throat when his eyes landed on Clementine. He surged into the kitchen. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head, once, and sank into the nearest chair. Under the bright kitchen lights, beneath all the blood, her skin was shockingly pale and her eyes were electric.

Davis retrieved a first-aid kit from under the sink while Alice grabbed handfuls of dish towels from a drawer, her heart pounding. She gave Clementine some of the towels immediately, and ran others under hot water before bringing them to her.

For a long minute, the house was silent as Davis helped Clementine wipe the blood from her face and arms and hands. When enough blood had been cleaned off, Davis began to examine her injuries.

“What happened?” Davis asked. He taped a wad of gauze over the cut on her forehead to keep the blood from running into her eyes while he tended to her arm.

“The troll,” Clementine said finally, her voice thick. “It attacked us right before the spell was complete. The portal snapped shut before I could get there. Everybody else got through, but I didn’t make it. The troll was still there when it closed, and it was angry, and… I killed it.”

“You
what?
”

When she looked up at Davis, Clementine’s eyes were both wild and helpless. “I killed it,” she repeated. “It was going to kill me.”

Davis was shaking his head. “How?”

“My fire couldn’t hurt it,” she said slowly, “but I found Lee’s knife in the grass. I had it in my hand when the troll picked me up. It lifted me close to its face. When it opened its mouth, I stabbed through one of its cheeks and ripped the blade straight through. When it started howling, I stabbed it in the throat. It dropped me. It fell and started crawling after me, reaching for me. It was so fast. I made it stop grabbing at me.”

As she spoke, Clementine squeezed one of the used dish towels between her hands, twisting it so tightly that pinkish water streamed from it, onto her lap. She didn’t seem to notice.

“You’re sure?” Jason asked in a low voice. “You’re absolutely sure it’s dead?”

“I’m sure,” she whispered.

A strangled sound wrenched its way out of Clementine’s throat. At first, Alice thought she was laughing, but as the moment stretched, Alice realized that Clementine was sobbing—great, choking, screaming sobs that wracked her whole body. Davis tried to touch her shoulder, but she swatted him away.

“Should we—” Jason started, but Davis just shook his head and mouthed,
“Go.”
That was all the instruction they needed.

Alice grabbed Jason’s hand and pulled him out of the kitchen. As they retreated upstairs, they could still hear Clementine sobbing.

“We should probably stop for the night,” Henry said, glancing over his shoulder at Lee, Filo and Nasser. “However long night
is
here, anyway.”

The sky was beginning to darken and the air was getting colder. As evening swept across the cavern, the forest lit up. The fruit trees glowed, casting pale circles of illumination. Certain patches of moss flared white-green when stepped on. Even the riverbed was lined with shining crystals, all pulsing with ruby light that turned the water red.

For most of the day—or what passed for a day in Otherworld—they had used the crystal as a sort of compass. When Nasser tied it to a string, the crystal moved of its own accord, swinging gently. Each time it swung forward, its glow intensified. It was resonating with the other crystals, just as the Maiden had said it would. The four of them walked near the banks of the river, which ran more or less parallel with the movement of the crystal. The river was fairly narrow in some places, maybe ten feet across, and much wider in others.

The water rushed in a powerful current, fast and loud. Even now, she could hear it and see its glow, radiating from the bottom of the steep, sloping bank nearby. Lee wondered if it emptied into a lake somewhere in this cavern, or if it flowed even deeper into the caves.

Now and then, they passed wooden bridges that crossed the river, covered in moss and winding vines. They looked sturdy, which suggested to Lee that someone or something was keeping them in good shape. She tried not to think about the beings that might be behind the upkeep of the bridges.

“If we find a flat area, we can set up some wards,” Filo said. “Just a simple circle to keep things out, so we don’t have to sleep in shifts.”

Nodding, Henry pushed several heavy branches aside. As soon as he saw what was hidden by the dense trees, he froze and spread his arms, trying to usher the others behind him.

The smell of blood hit Lee first. It was heavy and metallic, nearly overpowering, and undoubtedly emanating from the ripped-open deer carcass that lay in the clearing—but none of that was what stopped her in her tracks. It was the bear that lifted its bloodstained muzzle from the carcass and looked directly at them.

The bear looked much like a grizzly, but its coat was an earthy blend of dark brown and deepest green, resembling grass more than fur. Along its back sprouted a carpet of ferns and strange, scarlet flowers with curling petals. The bear was more than five feet tall at the shoulder.

With one heavy paw, the bear raked the ground, and it cracked its jaw at them.

“Don’t look it in the eye,” Henry said in a low, calm voice. His arms were still spread, keeping them behind him. “Back away—
slowly
. Don’t run. If you run, it’ll chase you, and you cannot outrun a bear.”

Lee’s heart was beating so hard that she was dizzy, but she dropped her gaze to the bear’s feet—to its long, pale claws and the bloody mess on the ground. Her insides heaved, but she took a tentative step backward, seeing Nasser and Filo do the same from the corners of her eyes.

When they moved, the bear rumbled. Lee wondered why Henry wasn’t enchanting the bear, getting it to turn around and leave. Then she remembered that he and Filo had poured most of their magic into a spell just hours ago, and much of the time since then had been spent hiking and climbing over rocks, not resting. If he had any magic left, it was precious little.

The bear was still growling. She risked a glance up, avoiding its eyes. It advanced one step, then another. Henry flung one hand out, and Lee thought she felt the barest shiver of magic in the air. The bear ignored it.

Henry tried again. His face twisted in pain, but nothing happened. Lee knew that he was scraping the very bottom of the barrel, reaching down inside himself for the last wisps of magic he had before he was completely and truly exhausted. He wasn’t strong enough, she realized with a start. He couldn’t send the bear away.

“You guys go ahead,” Henry said, his gaze fixed on the beast that was clicking its jaw and pacing toward them, blood still glistening on its muzzle. “I’ll stay here.”

“Like hell you are,” Filo snapped.

“It won’t hurt me.”

“You didn’t think the sea serpent would hurt you, either.”

Henry opened his mouth to protest, but stopped short when the bear snarled and rushed them. Lee, Nasser and Filo all scattered, darting in opposite directions. Henry stood his ground, and the bear ignored him, twisting its path to follow movement.