A Faerie's Curse (Creepy Hollow #6) (5 page)

C
HAPTER

F
IVE

I dash into the meeting room on one of the lower levels of the mountain and drop into a chair, noting that I'm the last person to arrive. The other five members of Chase's team are already seated.
Meeting time
, I tell Chase.
In case you want to add anything.

“Late again,” the elf girl with the spiked hair mutters from across the table. “You know some of us have actual jobs to be at in, like, ten minutes, right?”

I open my mouth to ask when last I was late, but Gaius gets in first. “Oh, did you find a new job, Ana? How wonderful.”

She absently twists one of the piercings in her left ear. “Yeah, well, we might be busy cooking up the biggest mission of our lives, but I've still got bills to pay.”

“You know you're welcome to stay here if you—”

“Thanks, but no,” Ana interrupts. “I like my own space. Besides, Chase taught me well, so it wasn't too hard to find work.”

“Oh, you're also a tattoo artist?” I ask, working hard to keep my tone polite.

“Of course I'm a tattoo artist. Did you think I was just the receptionist?”

Darius, the blue-eyed faerie slouching in the chair beside Ana, snorts. “Receptionist,” he grunts in amusement. She flicks his arm with a tattooed finger.

“Perhaps we should begin,” Lumethon suggests, focusing her gaze on Gaius. With her perfectly white hair and colorless eyes a stark contrast against her dark skin, she might be a faerie with particularly exotic coloring or some other being entirely. I thought it too rude to ask.

Beside me, the drakoni man named Kobe who never says very much, nods in agreement.

“Right,” Gaius says. “Quick updates.”

I told you Ana doesn't like me
, I say to Chase as I fold my arms and focus on Gaius.

Give her time. She takes a while to warm up to new people.

The spider-like contraption I noticed on Gaius's desk last night climbs onto the table. Lumethon snatches her hand out of the way as the device made of cogs, wheels, various pieces of metal, magic, and needle-thin sticks for legs moves past her toward Gaius. One spindly leg holds a scroll and another holds a quill. “Excellent, very good,” Gaius mutters with a smile.

Ana shakes her head and whispers, “Ridiculous.”

The spider raises the scroll and allows it to unroll, the bottom edge of the paper hitting the table and unfurling another few inches. Gaius leans forward to read whatever notes are on the scroll. “All other projects have come to an end, so we're now focusing solely on Chase, the Seelie Court, and this terrible veil-splitting vision that Amon and Angelica are so interested in.” He looks around the table. “You'll be pleased to know I've found some information on the prison beneath the palace. Most people don't even know it exists, but it turns out an old friend of mine had a brother locked up there at some point, and he was allowed to visit before they, uh, carried out the sentence. And before you ask,” Gaius adds quickly, “he does not know how to get there. He was both stunned and blind-folded.”

“Seems excessive,” Darius comments.

“Indeed. Anyway, this friend of mine has agreed to put together some drawings of everything he remembers. We can examine the drawings in depth once I've got them.

“Next …” Gaius examines the scroll again. “Darius and Kobe met with the mer king last night and confirmed that the monument involved in the veil spell is under heavy guard. The king is still refusing to have it moved, though, and destroying it isn't just out of the question, it's apparently impossible as well.”

“I wish he'd at least let us
try
,” Darius says. “That would be fun.”

Kobe frowns, his reptile-like eyes narrowing at Darius. I see a flick of his forked tongue as he says, “Do you have no respect?”

“You know I have no—”

“What's so magical about this trident monument anyway?” Ana asks. “I know the witch in the vision said something about magic of the heights and magic of the depths. And we all know the full moon can have a powerful influence on spells, so that's the height part. Obviously the mer statue is for the depths part, but what's so special about it?”

“As the name suggests,” Gaius says, “it's been around since the time of the very first mer king. That was … oh, centuries and centuries ago. Every king and queen since then has added their magic to the monument in some way. That makes it a very powerful statue. Probably the most powerful object beneath the ocean's surface.”

“Okay.” Ana sits back. “I guess that makes sense.”

“Right then,” Gaius says. “Lastly, we now have an invitation to Princess Audra's birthday party at the Seelie Palace, so that's our way in. It's nine days away, including today, which means we still have time to find out how to actually get there. Ana and Lumethon, any luck with that?”

“Nothing yet,” Lumethon says as Ana shakes her head. “As we're all aware, it's a well-kept secret.”

“I think I can help there,” I say tentatively. Everyone's attention focuses on me. “I know someone who works for the Seelie Queen.”

Ana's hand slaps down on the table as her mouth drops open. “You didn't think to mention this before?”

Patience, I remind myself. She's a friend of Chase's and I need to make an effort with her. “I did think of it,” I explain to the group, “but I decided there was no point in mentioning it since he hardly ever leaves the Seelie Court. It's been months since I last saw him and we don't have that kind of time where Chase is concerned. But I just found out that he'll be visiting my brother and sister-in-law on Friday evening, so we have until then to come up with a way to get the Seelie Court location out of him.”

“Can't you just ask him?” Darius says.

I try to keep my frustration in. “He's a close advisor to the Seelie Queen. I am one hundred percent certain he won't approve of a group of outlaws breaking into the palace to rescue the man who enslaved our world a decade ago.”

“I wasn't suggesting you tell him
that
,” Darius says. “Just, you know, say that you're curious.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Curious?”

“Okay, you have a point,” Darius concedes. “He's definitely not going to just tell you.”

“I wonder if it might be possible to follow him,” Lumethon says. “You can keep yourself invisible so he doesn't know.”

“I could, but what about the faerie paths? I assume they'd be involved for at least part of the journey, so I'd have to touch him in order to wind up at the same destination on the other side. How will I get away with that without him noticing?”

Lumethon looks at Gaius. “There are ways to follow him without being in physical contact.”

Gaius nods, and I remember Ryn telling me something similar once. “Yes, there is magic that will allow you to follow him through the paths without touching him. One of those unstable spells that relies on precise enunciation of every word—and if I remember correctly, there are many words involved. It can easily go wrong, which is why it isn't taught in schools. I'll have to look it up.” He nods at his contraption, which lifts the quill in one spindly leg and makes a note on the scroll.

“Does Chase have anything he might want to add to this meeting?” Ana asks, looking across the table at me. “Is his situation still the same? Would you even tell us if something changed?”

“Of course I would tell you. Why wouldn't I?”

“You seem to be mighty possessive of that ring that doesn't even belong to you. I just hope you're not hiding anything from us.”

Breathing in deeply, I manage to refrain from crawling across the table and punching Ana. Instead, I tug the ring off and send it spinning across the table. She slaps her hand down over it, glares at me for another moment, then picks it up and swivels her chair around to face the wall.

I look at Gaius and mouth,
What did I do wrong?

He shrugs. “Well, that's all for now. Some of you have work commitments, and Lumethon and Calla have a training session. I'll see you all tomorrow morning, unless something comes up before then.”

Everyone except Ana stands and moves toward the door. Darius complains about his boring day job and Kobe tells him to get over his laziness. Then they agree to meet later for a training session in the gym room next door. Lumethon greets me at the door, but before she can say anything further, Ana pushes her hand between us, the ring sitting on her open palm. “He says you shouldn't wear it during training,” she tells me as I take the ring from her. “He doesn't want to distract you.” Without waiting for a reply, she slips past me and out of the room.

“I know she can be … difficult,” Lumethon says, “but give her a chance. She's had a tough life so far, and she doesn't trust easily.”

I push the ring into my back pocket. “What happened, or shouldn't I ask?”

“Well, it isn't a secret,” Lumethon says as we leave the meeting room. “She lost her whole family a year or two before The Destruction in an accidental fire. She lived with friends for a while, but … well, I won't go into details, but it wasn't a healthy situation. A few years after Draven's defeat, at the age of eleven, she ran away. She survived on her own for three years, becoming particularly skilled at stealing and even more skilled at evading guardians. When someone eventually caught her, Chase rescued her and gave her a choice: join his team or face the Guild.”

“And she chose you guys, of course.”

“Yes. She lived with me for a few years, then announced on her seventeenth birthday last year that she wanted a place of her own.” We head upstairs toward the mountain's entrance hall. “I was a little worried in the beginning that she would simply run away,” Lumethon continues, “but she's been fiercely loyal to us since the moment Chase took her in. And a valuable addition to the team. Exceptionally stealthy. The places she's snuck into would blow your mind.”

Right, and here I am using invisibility to sneak into places. No wonder Ana looks at me with such disdain. “So she would have done a great job with last night's mission.”

“Yes, she probably would have done that one if you hadn't joined us, but since last night's mission involved stealing from one of our own clients, we needed to be absolutely certain that whoever we sent wouldn't be caught. Anyway, enough about that,” she says as we cross the entrance hall and stop by the faerie door. “It's desensitization time.”

I shudder inwardly at the thought of the systematic desensitization I've been forced to endure every day since I admitted to the rest of my team that I have a phobia of confined spaces. “Yeah, I know. Let's get it over with. Where are we going this time?”

“Back to Rosenhill Manor Art Gallery.”

“Oh, I love it there.”

Lumethon smiles. “That's why we're going back.”

I follow her through the faerie door to the lake house, where I place my hand on her shoulder as she writes a doorway spell on the wall. Moments later, we walk into the exquisite gardens of Rosenhill Estate. Green lawns, rose bushes and weatherworn statues surround us as we walk uphill toward the old manor house that was once the home of a Seelie Court lord. Now it houses room after room of magnificent art.

Luna, the old elf lady who saved Chase from his own misery and despair in the months after he ceased to be Draven, knew about this place. She never had the opportunity to visit the manor house herself, but she'd heard tales of the breathtaking artwork contained within and told Chase all about it. After she died and Chase found himself with her artistic ability, he came here for inspiration.

Lumethon and I walk through the grand entrance of the manor house and pay for a ticket each. Wooden floorboards creak beneath our feet as we walk toward the first room. A kaleidoscope of color drips from every inch of all four walls, the pattern continuously changing as the enchanted paint shifts again and again into a seemingly endless series of designs. It's mesmerizing, but not exactly relaxing. This isn't the room we came here for.