Authors: Ruth Vincent
“My father gave this to me,” he said quietly.
“It’s quite a piece,” I said, admiring it.
“Yes, well, every gentleman had one back then.”
Something in his words gave me pause.
“My father is dead now. Everyone in my family is dead,” Obadiah continued.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to reach out to him, to put my hand on his shoulder in sympathy. But I didn’t know if he would want that. So instead I just stood there, awkwardly, with my hands in my pockets.
“Do you know why everyone in my family is dead?” he asked. The volume of his voice was slowly rising.
I shook my head. I felt afraid to know what he was about to say.
“Because when I finally escaped my captors and came back to New York City, two hundred years had passed.”
My mouth gaped open. It all made sense—his old-fashioned way of speaking, all the antiques in the club, the fireplace instead of modern heat . . .
“Walking through Times Square, I might as well have been back in Fairyland,” he said, his voice full of bitterness. “It was certainly no longer home . . .”
The gulf of the tragedy was too much to even comprehend. I reached my hands out towards him. It was all I knew to do. But his eyes were flashing warning signals that screamed “don’t touch me,” and I could only gaze at Obadiah, my heart aching for him. There was so much pain in his eyes as he looked at me—and yet, I was scared too, because I could tell he didn’t want comfort. He wanted revenge.
“Time is so strange down there,” he said. There was a faraway quality to his voice, as if he were talking to himself, not to me. “When you’re inside their enchanted cocoons, you don’t know if you’ve been there an hour or a week, a year or a hundred years. And even though it’s been decades since I escaped, still, time never sits quite right with me.”
“You were held captive in the Vale! But by who?”
Obadiah’s jaw tightened. “I think you know the answer to that.”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t. Really, I don’t.”
“The fairies.”
The expression in Obadiah’s eyes as he said it was terrifying. It wasn’t anger. It was hate. Every muscle in his body, from the sinews of his shoulders to the smooth lines of his face, was taut with contained rage as he spoke of them. His fists were tight beneath his immaculate cuffs, as if at any moment he could slug someone.
But he didn’t. Instead, he proceeded to walk slowly and calmly through the aisles to the back of the room. There was another marble-topped bar back there, on the other side of the fireplace. It was of the same design as the bar on the dance floor, but this was bare and empty of bottles.
He ran his fingers slowly over the marble, then gripped it; his knuckles white.
“So now you know why there’s a trap in the floor, triggered by the green light that’ll kill any fairy that comes in here,” he said with icy quietness. “I will never fall for fairy tricks again.”
I was silent. I knew something about fairy tricks—my anger still burned white-hot when I thought of the Queen and the life she’d stolen from me.
“But you.” Obadiah turned to back to me. “You’re not quite a fairy, but you’re not quite human either. I don’t know what the hell you are. Believe me, I’ll find out. But I don’t think you’re one of
us
.”
One of us?
What was he talking about?
“Oh my god, are you one of the Shadows?” I asked, breaking the heavy silence that had fallen between us. “Why did you come back? I’ve never heard of a Shadow child who wanted to return.”
It was the only explanation for why a human like Obadiah would have spent so much time in the Vale. He must have been one of the human children we rescued and replaced with a Fetch. We’d take the ones they were hurting, the ones they didn’t want—and give them for adoption to fairy families who’d lost a son or daughter in the Elixir drought. But Obadiah didn’t seem like those abused, neglected children—he was part Fey, and when he’d talked about family, it sounded like he missed them terribly. Then again, my own Shadow had been a happy little girl. But she’d been the exception . . .
“Yes, I was one of the Shadows,” he said.
“But Shadow children are adopted, not kidnapped. No one held you hostage . . .” I protested.
He frowned, his expression changing from surprise to disgust.
“You think the Shadows stay because they want to?”
“Why, of course, they’re free to leave at any time. Everyone knows that.”
He slowly shook his head in disbelief, gripping the bar top with hardened knuckles.
“Are
you
free to leave?” he asked me.
“Free to leave the human world? No, of course not.” A lump rose in my throat. “But that’s because the Fairy Queen . . .” My voice trailed off, the old anger flaring.
For a moment, Obadiah said nothing. He leaned back against the bar.
“Well, I think the Fairy Queen tricked you twice, Mab,” he said at last, his voice icy, “if you really don’t know the fate of those stolen children.”
“But, I thought . . .” The words died on my lips.
What had happened to the children we’d rescued? Weren’t they with the fairy families who’d adopted them? I felt afraid. If the Queen had lied to me about being able to return, what else had she lied to me about?
“What happens to the Shadow children?” I asked, the fear rising in my stomach.
He set the glass down with so hard a clink I feared that it would shatter.
“Do you truly not know?” he asked. “Are you really so ignorant? Or are you playing ignorant to make me like you?”
I turned away, my pride and heart smarting. I wasn’t going to let him speak to me like that, no matter who he was. Grabbing my coat and pocketbook from the bar stool, I began walking quickly towards the door.
“Good god, you really don’t know.”
I stopped, but I didn’t turn around.
That was when I heard him say, soft and low, from behind me:
“She kills them.”
“T
hat’s not true!” I said, whirling around to face him. “Why would you believe such a horrible rumor?”
“It’s not a rumor.” He looked at me coldly. “It’s a fact.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t believe what he was saying.
“But if it’s true, wouldn’t you be dead?” I shot back at him. “The Fairy Queen didn’t kill you. You came back. And the other children—they must still be with their adopted fairy families.”
“Have you ever met any of these adopted families?” Obadiah asked me.
I was about to retort something, but his words stopped me.
“No, I haven’t,” I admitted, “but I’ve heard a lot about them. When I was younger, I used to help the Queen on rescue missions, before she lied to me . . .”
“I don’t think that was the first time the Queen lied to you,” said Obadiah. “I don’t think there are any such adoptive families.”
“What do you mean?” But my mind was whirling, a sick dread filling my gut. I thought of the children we’d led out of those hellish homes, their big, hollow eyes—I thought we were saving a human child and comforting a grieving fairy family at the same time. I saw my own Shadow in my mind’s eye, happy and cooing in her crib. The only way I could bear what we’d done to her was to think that somewhere in the Vale, she was growing up with loving fairy parents. Was it not true?
“I think the Fairy Queen tricked you twice,” Obadiah said again.
I felt like I was going to vomit. But why would she kill the children?
“Look, I have no love for the Fairy Queen. I’ll never forgive her for what she did to me—trapping me in this human body, severing my powers. She betrayed me!” I said, my voice hot, fists clenched. “The Queen is evil. But what reason would she have for kidnapping and killing human children?”
Obadiah frowned. “I don’t know why she kills them,” he said at last. “I just know that she does.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Because I’ve seen it,” he said, a darkness passing over his face. “I’ve seen her dragging them away to her secret room. I’ve heard them screaming. And when they go into that room, they don’t come out again . . .”
My whole body felt cold as he said it. I knew he wasn’t lying. In my head, I could see the baby I’d switched places with—her tiny face turning purple as she cried, the Goblin shoving her little kicking feet into the sack. Was she . . . ? If the Queen killed her—
it’s your fault
, the little voice in my head whispered.
“She’s killed all the children . . . ?” I asked, dread in my voice.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I managed to escape. I don’t know what happened to all the others.”
My shoulders slumped. So there was a chance my Shadow was still alive.
“Do you know what the Shadows used to whisper to each other in prison?” Obadiah asked, his voice devoid of emotion.
He stepped closer to me, arms crossed, a cold fire burning in his eyes.
I shook my head numbly. The iciness in his voice terrified me more than if he had yelled and cursed. I didn’t want to know what he was about to say. I just wanted to run—run to someplace where I could be alone and think clearly. But there was nowhere to go.
“Tell me,” I said, my voice almost inaudible.
“If a changeling dies in human form, its Shadow can return to the human world.” His eyes sparkled darkly. “If you kill a changeling, its Shadow is freed.”
A sudden dread filled my stomach.
“That’s not true!”
“How do you know?” he asked. “Have you ever tried it?”
The cold logic of his words cut into me. I opened my mouth to protest, but—how did I know? I’d lived my whole life believing a version of reality I’d gotten from the Fairy Queen—and what a reliable narrator she’d turned out to be.
The gleam in Obadiah’s eyes frightened me.
Surely he wasn’t going to put this crazy theory to the test? Surely, he wouldn’t try to hurt me?
I tried to gauge whether or not I should be afraid. His dark eyes were menacing, but he hadn’t made a move towards me. Not yet.
But we were inside a secret room. No one else knew how to get in here except him and whatever lucky customer he chose to bring inside. Why had he taken me here? He’d said it was so that we could talk in private, and I believed him. But if something were to happen to me here in this secret room, no one but Obadiah would know.
Now I was starting to panic.
Think,
I told myself.
I watched him. There was a change in his eyes. Beneath the hard, cold anger, I glimpsed for a moment a young, scared boy who’d clung to any rumor he heard in captivity, if it resembled hope, because what was the alternative? I saw the wild desperation in him, and I trembled at what he might be capable of. I could see the deep hatred he had of all fairies in his eyes, and I understood where it came from, after what the Queen had done to him. But still, I didn’t think he was going to hurt me. There was something else in his eyes too, something that held that hatred in check. When at last I opened my mouth to speak, I tried to speak to that other part of him.
“Obadiah, listen to me,” I said, moving closer to him, my fingers brushing his forearm. “I know I’ve been wrong about a lot of things. I know the Queen lied to me. But what you heard from the Shadows—it can’t be true. The fairies rarely put a changeling in a Shadow’s place. My mission was the exception. The rest of the time, we just left a Fetch—a piece of enchanted wood bespelled to look like the child that would wither and sicken and ‘fail to thrive.’ I’m sorry if you thought that was a way to free your Shadow friends, but it’s just not true.”
Obadiah studied me, his arms folded tight over his chest; I could see by the subtle change in his expression that he was considering my point. He walked over to the fireplace and threw another log on the blaze, sending up sparks. I could see both sides of him battling it out. There was a demon in him, but there was an angel too that held it back. I decided to hold my ground.
He turned to me and his eyes grew narrow and cold.
“You know what the Shadows also say?” he said, his voice low.
I shook my head.
“They said there’s a test to see whether or not a fairy is lying.”
My heartbeat quickened. He went on.
“If a changeling is in mortal danger, they regain their magical powers in time to save themselves, so long as the last word they spoke is true. So, for example, if I were to hold you over this fire . . .”
“I really don’t like the sound of this,” I interrupted him, but he continued, the wild light growing in his eyes.
“ . . . if you’d been honest with me, you’d be able to fly and save yourself. But if you had lied, you’d burn like any mortal.”
“Obadiah, that is ridiculous!” I was yelling, but I didn’t care. “I don’t care what century you were born in, I can’t believe you would believe nonsense like that. Changelings don’t retain any of their magical powers in human form. I’m human now, and humans can’t do magic.”