The Lost Queen (13 page)

Her eyes slid to a block of writing underneath the picture.

“What's pro bono?” Tania asked.

“I think it means she'll represent people for nothing if they can't afford the fees,” Edric said.

Tania reached out and touched Titania's face with trembling fingertips. “We've found her,” she said dazedly. “We've really found her.”

“Yes, we have.”

“We have to let everyone know,” Tania said. “We have to go into Faerie right now—we have to tell them all! Edric, they'll be so happy! Can you imagine their faces when we tell them? Can you
imagine
?”

Despite her burning desire to pass on the wonderful news about Titania to her Faerie family, Tania wasn't about to walk between the worlds in the middle of a busy street. Even in the persistent drizzle there were still plenty of people about, and it was a few minutes before she and Edric managed to find a secluded spot.

They came to it by following a narrow alley that led them to the riverside. There was a paved slipway alongside a tall white public house. The river was flowing slowly, its gray-blue surface stippled with rain, its farther side darkened by the reflections of the trees that lined the far bank. To their left, about two hundred yards away, they could see the pale, multiarched span of Richmond Bridge, busy with traffic.

They walked arm-in-arm toward the bridge, following the riverside walkway under the bridge and coming to an area bordered by sloping lawns and overhung
with trees. On a sunny day Tania felt sure that this place would be packed with people, but in the fine penetrating rain the only people they encountered were a few hooded cyclists and the occasional hardy jogger.

They paused under a spreading green oak tree. Here the rain gathered itself into huge drops that fell heavily from the branches. They waited until a solitary cyclist passed and dwindled into the distance.

Tania took hold of Edric's hand.

She closed her eyes and pictured Faerie in her mind.

She walked forward, aware of Edric keeping pace with her.

She took the side step……and opened her eyes to find that nothing had changed. They were still in the Mortal World.

Edric was standing beside her, still holding her hand.

“That was weird,” she said. “I'll try again.”

She closed her eyes, summoning up a very firm vision of the Faerie Palace. Gripping Edric's hand, she took one pace forward and one to the side.

This time it hurt.

The air about her stung like electricity and a taste of rusty iron came into her mouth. Gasping from the shock, she opened her eyes.

“What happened?” Edric asked, his voice concerned.

“I don't know,” she said. “It's not working for some reason.”

“Okay,” Edric said, drawing his hand out of hers. “Try again without me. Perhaps I'm the problem.”

Tania frowned. “You can't be.”

“Just try it.”

She took a deep breath and filled her mind with Faerie images for the third time. Wincing a little in anticipation of another blast of sizzling air, she sidestepped.

There was no electricity this time and the taste of iron was gone from her mouth. But something wasn't quite right.

She opened her eyes. The distant sound of traffic on Richmond Bridge had stopped abruptly—and Edric was gone from her side.

 

The sky was slate gray and the rain fell steadily around her, making the swollen river jump and sputter. A wind whipped the puddles of standing water on the path. The branches of the oak tree rustled and creaked above her.

Tania let out a gurgling laugh and ran, stamping through the puddles, her arms swinging, her booted feet rising and falling like pistons as she kicked up fountains of spray.

“Gracie!” called a shrill, pinched voice. “Gracie! You come back here this instant or I shall give you such a smack!”

Tania turned, her arms outstretched, the water dripping off her bonnet. “No!” she shouted to the thin-faced young woman who stood under the tree. “Shan't!”

“You'll catch your death of cold and your mama will be so angry, Gracie.”

Tania laughed again, opening her arms and spinning around, stamping and cavorting in the rain, openly defying her new nanny. Nasty Nanny Perks with her silly pointy nose and her eeky-squeaky voice and her skinny little body.

“Come out of the rain or you'll get no supper!”

“Don't care!”

Nanny Perks stamped her foot. “You are the naughtiest little child that ever there was!”

Was she going to cry now? It would be such fun if she did. It would serve her right for thinking she could take the place of Nanny Bobbins. Lovely, soft Nanny Bobbins with her big bolster arms and her baking smell and her lap like a Chesterfield sofa. Nanny Bobbins who looked just like those magazine pictures of Queen Victoria when she was a young woman. Poor Queen Victoria. She had died last year. Everyone had been so sad. Papa had worn a black armband for ages and ages.

Nanny Perks pulled her coat tight around her scrawny body and came marching out from under the tree with her face all screwed up and angry.

Tania turned and ran toward the river's edge. She pranced along the brink of the swollen river, lifting her legs high like the riding horses in Richmond Park.

“Gracie! I shan't tell you again!”

“Good!”

Her foot came down on a loose stone. It fell away under her, turning her ankle and making her cry out as a searing pain shot up her leg.

She stumbled, her arms flailing. The sky wheeled. The rain fell sideways. She screwed her eyes tight as the river rose up to smack her and to pull her under in a dark, chilling embrace.

“Gracie!”

 

“Tania?”

With a gasp Tania opened her eyes. She was back on the path and Edric had his arms around her. Her legs felt weak; her whole body seemed to be falling away from her like a thing made of water. If Edric hadn't been holding her, she would have crumpled to the ground.

She panted, clinging onto him, her forehead on his shoulder.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Drowned…” Tania gasped. “The poor thing….”

“You're all right now,” he said. “I've got you.”

“It happened again,” she said. “Like at the theatre. But it was a different girl this time.” She looked around. “It was here, and things were almost the same. It couldn't have been all that many years ago, but
when
? Oh, wait…. Queen Victoria had just died. That means I must have gone back to the start of the twentieth century.” She pointed toward the river. “She was there—acting up, you know? Being naughty. And she fell into the water.” She screwed up her eyes. “Is
this going to keep happening to me now? Am I going to keep reliving scraps of all my past lives?” Her voice shuddered. “And my deaths?”

“I don't know,” Edric said. “I don't understand why this is happening. Maybe Eden will be able to explain it, or maybe the King will be able to stop it.”

“But I can't
reach
them!” she said. “I can't get into Faerie. My gift doesn't work anymore.”

“Perhaps this is a bad place to try,” Edric said with a reassuring smile. “It might be like those places where you can't get a proper signal on your cell phone. You're just not getting a good signal here, that's all.”

She looked at him, wanting to believe him. “You think?”

He nodded. “We should try somewhere else. Listen, let's go back to the station. We can get an over-ground train to Hampton Court. You're bound to be able to get through there.”

“Yes, I'm sure you're right,” she said. “Come on.” She glanced uneasily at the spot where Gracie had fallen into the river. “I want to get away from here.”

 

The day was beginning to brighten up, and to the west the sky was showing blue under the ragged trailing hem of the departing clouds. Tania and Edric stood side by side on a lawn that sloped down to the river. The tall red-brick Tudor towers and walls of Hampton Court Palace reared up behind them, with their white stone windows and their ornate
decorations and gap-toothed battlements.

It had taken them three-quarters of an hour and two changes of train to get here, and so far as Tania could see, it had been a complete waste of time. Faerie was still barred to her. She had tried six times: three times with Edric, three times without. All she had got for her effort was a foul taste in her mouth and a fierce stinging sensation that swarmed all over her body like a painful rash.

She stared moodily into the river, aware of Edric watching her in strained silence.

He didn't know what to say. Neither did she.

At last she spoke, her voice hardly audible over the swirl and swish of the moving water. “Why can't I get through? That's my gift, isn't it? The ability to walk between the worlds. So what's gone wrong?” She looked at Edric in sudden alarm. “Eden and Sancha told me that one day I'd have to choose where I wanted to be: Here or in Faerie. And if I chose to be
here
then the Faerie part of me would die. What if that's already happened? What if I can't ever get back?”

When she had first gone to Faerie she had been told how there were certain places in the Realm where the skin that divided the two worlds was at its thinnest, places where the membrane that separated them was as fine as a dragonfly's wing. Hampton Court was one of those places: If even a shred of Tania's Faerie self remained, then she should have been able to step into Faerie here.

And yet she couldn't.

Edric took her hand. “You still have Faerie alive inside you,” he said. “I can feel it. There has to be some other reason.”

“Something strange happened last night,” Tania said. “After I'd spoken with my parents, I went upstairs to call you. The next thing I remember is waking up on the floor in my bedroom.” She stared at him as the full memory came back to her. “I had a taste of iron in my mouth when I woke up. The same taste that I'm getting now.” Her eyes widened. “The same taste I had in the fortune-teller's booth. Do you think Gabriel Drake has something to do with this? Is he stopping me from getting into Faerie?”

“I don't know,” Edric said. “Does he have that much power over you?”

Tania swallowed hard. “Perhaps he has,” she said. “Perhaps this is just the first stage of something bad he's planning to do to me.” She gave Edric a haunted look. “First he makes sure I can't escape into Faerie, then he comes for me.”

“He can't harm you if you fight him,” Edric said gently. “You proved that in the fortune-teller's booth. You got free of him.”

“Yes,” Tania said breathlessly. “But only just.”

“Listen, you're exhausted,” Edric said. “Let's go home. You shouldn't wear yourself out trying to get through anymore, not for a while, anyway. And it might not be Drake at all. It might be some kind of mental block you've got because we're so close to finding the Queen. And even if it is Drake, you're going to
be a long way from here soon. You just have to be strong for a couple more days, then he won't know where you are.”

Tania wasn't comforted by this. “And what about when I come back?”

“When you come back, we'll find the Queen and she'll know what to do.”

Tania felt a surge of desperate love for him. She put her hands on his cheeks, staring into his face. “Promise?”

Edric smiled. “Promise.”

“But what if I can never get back?” she asked. “You'll be trapped here as well. You won't ever be able to get home.”

He gave a half-smile. “Home is where the heart is,” he said quietly. “And my heart is with you.”

They stepped into each other's arms and for a long time they stood there by the flowing river, clinging to each other while the clouds crumbled apart above their heads and long raking beams of sunlight shone down on them.

Tania lay on her bed, her eyes closed, her arms thrown up over her face. The taste of iron in her mouth was so bad that it was almost making her retch, and her skin was still stinging from her last attempt to break through into Faerie.

It was early Sunday afternoon. Outside her window lay a bright, rain-washed day of scudding clouds and warm summer breezes—not that Tania got any pleasure from it as she lay stiff and tense on her bed and tried to smother the panic that was growing inside her. She dreaded that she would never get into Faerie again, that Gabriel Drake had somehow stolen her gift from her, and that this was just a prelude to an attack on her. The only shred of relief was that he had not come to her in her dreams. She had slept badly last night but the few moments of sleep she had managed to snatch had been blessedly free of nightmares.

She had done what Edric had suggested: She had made no more attempts to enter Faerie on Saturday. She hadn't even succumbed to the urge to test herself as soon as she got up this morning. She had waited and waited with growing impatience and anxiety.

And then she had gone for it—with only a mouthful of rusty nails and a crawling skin to show for her effort.

She could hear muffled bumping and banging noises coming from along the landing, the sounds of her mother yanking suitcases down from the top of wardrobes and opening them on the floor ready to be packed.

She heard footsteps along the hallway and the soft creak of her door being opened.

“I'm fine,” she said without uncovering her eyes. “It's just a headache, that's all.”

“Did you try again?” It was Edric's voice.

Tania sat up. “Oh, sorry. I thought you were Mum.”

Smiling, he came in and sat next to her on the bed. She took his hand, her dark mood clearing a little just to have him near.

“Did you try again?”

She nodded. “There was nothing! I still can't do it.” She looked at him. “How did you get in?”

“Your dad was outside with his head under the hood of the car,” Edric said. “He said it was okay for me to come up here. Mind you, he didn't exactly look overjoyed to see me.”

“Think yourself lucky,” Tania said. “A couple of days ago he'd have chased you off with a tire iron.”

“There is that,” Edric said. “But listen, I've been thinking. You mustn't get yourself into a state about this thing. Even if Drake has put some kind of spell on you, the Queen will know how to break it; I'm sure she will. All we have to do is sit tight till she comes back from China. She'll know how to get your gift back for you.”

“But if she knew how to get into Faerie, she wouldn't still
be
here.”

“She may not know how to get
herself
back,” Edric persisted. “But you already have the gift. You've just lost it temporarily, or you've had it stolen. She'll know how to help you find it again.”

“But—”

“That guy from the law firm said Lilith Mariner would be back within a couple of weeks,” he said. “And you're about to go away for two weeks. She'll be in London by the time you get back.”

Tania looked dubiously at him.

“You trust me, don't you?” he said.

“With my life,” she said softly.

“Then stop worrying, or you'll get wrinkles.”

She laughed. “Excuse me! I'm sixteen and I'm an immortal Faerie princess, so don't bother threatening me with wrinkles, thank you very much.” She stood up, feeling a new hope rising inside her. “Okay,” she said, going to her window and throwing it open. “Let's get some fresh air in here. And then…” She
turned around and looked at him. “Since you're here, you can get my suitcase off the top of the wardrobe and then you can help me to pack.”

He looked at her in surprise. “You're not leaving till Tuesday,” he said. “You don't need to start packing yet, surely?”

She arched an eyebrow. “Edric,” she said, “for a boy who's been around for five hundred years, you don't know much about girls, do you?”

 

“Drive carefully!” Tania shouted, waving as the car headed off down the road. Her father tooted the horn and her mother's arm appeared out of the passenger window, waving back. Tania stayed there until the car rounded the corner and was gone.

She looked at her watch. It was four o'clock on Monday afternoon. Her mother had told her she should go to bed early that night—eight o'clock at the latest—otherwise she'd be good for nothing in the morning.

“That's all well and good, Mother dearest,” she said aloud as she went back into the house. “But sleeping is the last thing I want to do right now.” In fact, she wasn't planning on going to bed at all. She had slept fitfully last night, unable to rest for thoughts of Gabriel Drake, and now she was beyond the point of tiredness, wide-awake in a strange, unnatural, and light-headed way.

She went up to her room. Her suitcase was still open on her bed, ready for last-minute toiletries to be
squeezed in before the lid came down and the zipper was dragged shut. She smiled, remembering Edric's disbelieving face as he had been introduced to the stark realities of helping a teenaged girl pack for a two-week holiday.

“Poor Edric,” she said fondly. “He'll learn.”

She picked up her phone and began to text him.
HI THERE
,
GORGEOUS
.
I'M MISSING YOU ALREA
A shaft of pain seared into her head as if a bolt of lightning had pierced her skull. She screamed with agony, staggering, dropping the phone, her hands coming up to her pounding head.

The room shook around her, the floor shuddering under her feet, the furniture rattling and vibrating. She heard a ghastly howl above her that was like the fabric of the universe being torn open.

It was Drake! It had to be. He had stripped her of her gift—and now, when she was truly alone for the first time, he was coming for her.

She fell to the floor as the brain-shredding noise echoed and re-echoed in her ears. And now there was a hissing and a roaring like a firestorm, and as she stared up with terrified eyes, she saw the ceiling glow a fierce, fiery red; then it began to swirl, faster and faster, gathering speed like a blazing wheel, spitting out sparks and flecks of darkness.

There was a loud crack, like a mountain splitting open, and Tania saw three figures come tumbling out of the wheel of fire: Three figures in long dresses, three figures that plunged through the ringing air
and came crashing to the floor.

A split second later a white crystal sword came plummeting point down in their wake, narrowly missing the sprawling figures and coming to a thrumming halt, hilt uppermost, its point embedded in the carpet.

And then with a rush and a hiss the furious circle of flame was gone and Tania was left, stunned and breathless, staring at the three girls who lay stretched out on the floor in front of her.

Cordelia.

Sancha.

Zara.

Sancha was the first to scramble to her feet. “Eden!” she screamed, staring up at the ceiling.
“Eden!”
She turned her frantic, tear-stained face to Tania. “They have caught Eden!” she cried. “They will kill her! They will
kill
her!”