Brightly (Flicker #2) (28 page)

When he spoke, Henry’s voice was quiet and sort of numb. Lee thought of what they had all seen in Merrin’s mirror. It was one thing for him to know the bare bones of what happened to his parents, she thought, people he probably couldn’t remember. Seeing it happen in front of his eyes, watching his father die in agony while sitting in front of the woman who had taken pleasure in his death, was quite another.

“But Maggie was kidnapped there before,” Alice said. “Why would she ever want to go anywhere near it?”

“You have to understand,” Henry said. “The first time she came back from Faerie, she didn’t remember much. She stumbled into a campground after being missing for two months, with huge chunks of her memory just blacked out. She didn’t know where she’d been all that time. She wrote off anything she
did
remember as nightmares, her imagination. When they stopped at Deception Pass, she didn’t realize how dangerous it was. She didn’t know.”

“So when she found out what happened,” Nasser said, “Anna asked for another favor.”

Henry nodded. “She went to Neman and Morgan again, hoping to talk to them before Maggie’s husband got himself in too much trouble. But her wording was off. She was in a panic. She wasn’t clear enough about who she wanted to be brought back—so Neman and Morgan used their own judgment. By the time she realized her mistake, it was too late. It was already done.”

By then, they had reached the campground.

“They took the one they thought was worth saving and left the others behind,” Henry said bitterly, as they approached the van. His shoulders were taut. “That was also when they started collecting on the debt.”

Lee frowned. “How?”

“They were owed three favors,” Henry said, pointing to Davis, Clementine and himself in turn. “One. Two. Three.”

“They wanted Anna to look after their apprentices,” Clementine said. “Teach us as best she could. Keep us safe somewhere Neman and Morgan could find us, in case they ever had a use for us. That was the deal.”

“Siren Island is like storage for them,” Davis said darkly. “It’s just one place where they keep the toys they’re not ready to play with.”

Henry stopped at the van. In the shivering magical light, he looked bone-tired and sick—sick of everything.

“We’re all experiments,” he said. “To them, everything we do is just killing time until they decide they want us for something. They might never come for us—but if they ever do, I doubt there’s much we could do about it, on Siren or anywhere else. As far as they’re concerned, we belong to them. Anna was just looking after us for a while.”

He pulled the keys out of his pocket and went to unlock the driver’s side door, but his hands were shaking. He fumbled with the keys and dropped them. Swearing under his breath, he bent to fish them out of the puddle at his feet, but Lee beat him to it.

“I’ll take care of it,” she said quickly, shaking water from the keys. “I can drive. I have my license and everything.”

At least, she used to have her license, before the revel. She
did
know how to drive. Henry didn’t have an actual license, either. He’d said as much on the trip from Seattle. As long as she didn’t get pulled over, Lee thought it didn’t make much difference.

For a second, Henry hesitated. Then he nodded. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Lee unlocked the van and swung up into the driver’s seat while everyone else piled into the cargo area and shifted around.

A moment after Lee started the van, Clementine opened the passenger door and stuck her head inside.

“Davis and I were just talking,” she said, in a low voice, “and we don’t think Henry’s up to the operating the boat tonight. Either of us can handle
Eudora
well enough during the day, but at night, in this weather… I’m not sure how safe it would be. Also,” she whispered, “between you and me, I’m way too tired to react well to the very real possibility of Filo puking all over the cabin. I’d probably drag him onto the deck and pitch him over the side.”

“Duly noted,” Lee said. “I’d like to put a few miles between us and Deception Pass first, but we can stop at a motel and hit the road again in the morning. We could all use some sleep.”

“Sounds good. I’ll let them know.”

Soon everyone but Clementine had settled in as best they could for the drive, using backpacks and one another’s shoulders as pillows.

When Clementine climbed into the passenger seat and buckled her seatbelt, Lee said, “You could try to get a little sleep before we stop.”

“I’m all right. Besides, I’d feel like a jerk if I left you up here all by yourself.”

Lee smiled. She turned on the radio for background noise, keeping the volume low. “I could use the company.”

They drove in silence for a while. In the back, nobody stirred. Lee and Clementine stared at the stream of brilliant red taillights ahead of them, glowing in the rain like faerie lights.

“You weren’t bluffing back there, were you?” Clementine whispered, glancing at Lee. “When you said you know the Summer King.”

“No,” Lee said, “I wasn’t.”

Clementine shook her head—not disbelieving, but astonished. “How does something like that even
happen
? I mean, if you don’t mind me asking…”

“I don’t mind,” Lee said, and she didn’t, not really, even though her heart thumped when she thought about it. She couldn’t keep it shut up inside forever. She had to be able to talk about it. “The summer before my junior year of high school, I was kidnapped by the fey living in the woods outside my town. I ended up in Umbriel’s traveling revel, painting for the courtiers, so magic-sick I couldn’t remember my own name. I was very lucky, as far as human captives go. Umbriel liked my paintings. I think he felt sort of sorry for me, too, like I was a stray kitten or something, so he sort of took me in. I was one of his favorite pets.” She glared at the road. “I would’ve been trapped there forever if it weren’t for Nasser.”

“Nasser?”

“Last fall, he ended up in that revel for a completely different reason. He saw me there, painting. He didn’t want to abandon me, so he traded a spell book and his name for me.”

“Which name?”

“The important one.”

“His
true name
? Jeezus. There are easier ways to get a date.”

Lee snorted. “Probably. But that’s Nasser. He hardly does anything the easy way. Anyway, after that, he brought me to Bridgestone with him… and the rest is history, I guess.”

“How long were you in that revel?”

Lee’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “Seven years. It didn’t feel that long. In the revel, time stood still. Nothing ever changed. But in the human world, everything did.”

Clementine let out a breath. “Oh, hell.”

“So that’s how I know Umbriel,” Lee said. There was no need to get into Byrony, the coronation revel, the duel. She didn’t think she could handle that right now. “In a nutshell.”

“What’s he like?” Clementine asked. “The Summer King?”

Lee was quiet. For seven years—for a sliver of one eternal summer—Umbriel had been everything. She didn’t know how to describe him. She didn’t know how to explain what it was to look into his eyes, to be warmed by his sunlight, to tremble before his endlessness.

“He’s kind,” she said at last. “He’s kind when he doesn’t have to be. And he’s
young
. I mean, I have no idea how old he is in human years, but in faerie terms, he’s barely old enough to rule. Everything about him is new. He loves the revels—the music, the dancing. He’s always laughing. Umbriel is…” Lee paused, searching for the words. “He’s a perfect day in summer, the first time you step outside and everything is green and beautiful and alive. That’s what he is. There’s nobody like him, in this world or the other.”

“And Nasser traded his true name to get you away from him.” Clementine shot Lee a little grin. “That’s some guy you’ve got.”

“Yeah.” Lee could see him in the rearview mirror, slumped down a little, dozing. Jason had fallen asleep against his shoulder. Looking at him made her heart go tight—not with sadness, but with fullness. “Yeah, he is.”

In the distance, lightning flashed like a tangle of veins. Lee kept her eyes on the road. “What about you?” she whispered.

“Me?”

“How’d you end up on Siren?”

Clementine shifted in her seat. “My whole life, I’ve been seeing things I wasn’t supposed to. Faeries, not that I knew it when I was a kid. I never talked to anyone about it but my older brother, Jeremiah. He had the Sight, too.”

“You have a brother?”

“Not anymore.”

“Oh.”

“I was terrible in school,” Clementine went on. “I could never pay attention. I was twitchy and distracted all the time. Teachers couldn’t stand me. I had zero friends. By the time I hit thirteen, I was sick of it. I started skipping school, but my parents caught on pretty quick. They sat me down one night and asked what was going on. I was going to lie to them. I was all ready to lie. But I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I spilled my guts. Told them everything.”

“Really?”

“Really.” She sighed. “Completely stupid, I know. They sent me to bed without saying anything. I didn’t know what to think. The next morning, my mom told me she was taking me to a psychiatrist. I freaked out. I ran to Jeremiah, begged him to tell our parents I wasn’t crazy, that he could see the creatures, too. But he lied. He apologized to me later, in private. I understood why he did it, but the damage was done.”

“I’m sorry.” Lee’s gaze flickered back to the rearview mirror, to Nasser and Jason sleeping in the back. She knew there was no situation in which Nasser wouldn’t protect his brother, no matter what it cost him. Sometimes she forgot that not all brothers were like him.

Clementine shrugged, but she looked out the window for a long moment, hiding her face. “I saw the psychiatrist,” she said finally. “I didn’t tell him anything. I’d learned my lesson. But it didn’t do much good. After that, I wasn’t just the weird girl. I was the
crazy
girl. Nobody talked to me. My parents thought I was delusional. My brother lied through his teeth to save his own skin. I couldn’t deal with it. I felt like I was dying all the time. And then, one day, while I was walking home from school, I saw them.”

“Who?” Lee asked. But she thought she already knew.

“Neman and Morgan. They were standing by the roadside, watching me. I just kept my head down and kept walking. For two weeks, I walked past them every day. Finally, they spoke to me. They called me by my name, like they already knew me. They told me what the Sight was, and what they were. They said they could take me where I could be with people like me. Where I would be wanted. I only had to do one thing first.” She smiled a strange smile. “All I had to do was die.”

“They
asked
you?” Lee sputtered.

Clementine nodded. “It wasn’t hard to decide. By then, I was ready to die.”

Lee felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Nasser, Jason, Filo and Alice had all been stolen by their former masters, spirited away. Clementine had
chosen
to walk away from her life and go with them. She had been invited. Lee reached to adjust the heater, even though she knew she wasn’t chilling because of the cold.

“They even let me choose how,” Clementine went on. “I told them I wanted to drown, so they enchanted some stock to look like me and they threw it into the river. When the stock washed up the next day, everyone thought I had drowned—and I was free, nobody looking for me. After that, Neman and Morgan took me to Siren Island.”

“Did they just leave you there?”

“No, they left me with Anna,” she said. “She was amazing. From the moment I stepped into that house, she treated me like I’d always been there, like I was
supposed
to be there. I’ve never felt like that anywhere else. It hasn’t been the same since she died.”

For a long minute, the only sounds were the rhythmic thumping of the windshield wipers and the murmuring of the radio.

“Do you miss them?” Lee asked. “Your family?”

Clementine looked away. She began tracing a nebulous shape on the foggy window. “I loved my family. I still do. But I wasn’t meant to be with them. Maybe that’s terrible, but I always felt like I belonged somewhere else. Turns out, I did.” She smiled sadly. “Having magic separates you from so much. Magic takes things away. But sometimes, it gives you things, too.”

“Like what?”

“Friends,” she said simply. “Friends who understand completely. Friends who see one another as they are, every part of them, without fear. That’s what it gave me, anyway. I would do anything to protect that.”

A few minutes later, a glowing VACANCY sign caught Lee’s eye. The motel didn’t look too seedy, so she pulled into the parking lot and twisted around to nudge Filo, who was the only person within reach. He and Alice were wedged in the corner between the back of the driver’s seat and the side of the van, curled into each other. Alice’s face was half-buried against his shoulder. He’d draped his jacket over her.

When Lee touched Filo’s shoulder, he gave a strangled little gasp as he jerked awake.

“We’re here,” Lee whispered. “We’re going to stop for the night.”

For a second, he just stared at her blearily. Then he nodded and scrubbed one hand across his face. “Alice,” he murmured, gently shaking her shoulder. “Alice.”