Elixir (18 page)

We were almost at the top.

At last I saw the edge of the roof and I grasped on to it with my hands, giddy to hold on to something solid. But Obadiah silently pointed upwards, and I raised my eyes to the pole that rose from the roof, with the ball balanced on top. We had to get all the way up there. It took all my courage to let go of the roof railing and keep flying. I brushed against the pole with my hand as we soared higher—frigid in the winter air. The metal pinged and groaned in the wind.

And then I saw the ball. It was huge this close up, an enormous geodesic sphere, the panels made of crystal with rows and rows of tiny LED bulbs. All the lights were turned off now in the daylight, but the crystal panels themselves glimmered in the cold afternoon sun.

I grasped with my hands, trying to find something on the sphere I could cling to. My fingers wrapped around two LED bulbs, but I felt like the wind was going to lift me off and blow me away into the air above Times Square at any moment. Obadiah had landed on top of the ball and was busying himself with a screwdriver on one of the panels. It came loose with a pop, and he hoisted himself into the triangular hole in its wake, then waved for me to follow him.

I carefully made my way across the ball, lightbulb by lightbulb, towards the opening. Flying had felt so natural as a fairy, but now it was weirdly disorienting—if I didn’t keep my grip on the ball, I thought I’d go sailing away like a piece of confetti into the crowd.
What if the magic wore off now? The lightbulb would crunch under my grasping fingers, and I’d go falling, falling . . .
I couldn’t think about that right now. Just a few more inches. Obadiah’s head stuck out of the opening, waving encouragement.

At last I made it. I pushed myself in as Obadiah pulled me gently from inside, then screwed in the panel behind me.

I blinked, adjusting to the dim light.

Obadiah was seated inside the hollow core of the ball, making himself at home amidst the colorful electrical wires. I crawled over to him and he grinned at me. A segment of the metal pole bisected the interior of the ball, but there was still enough room for the two of us, as long as we stayed sitting down. It wasn’t exactly comfortable seating—but at least it was warmer in here than out there, sheltered from the wind.

We sat quietly for a moment. I couldn’t believe we were inside the ball. The afternoon light filtered through the thick panes of crystal, making it seem like twilight inside. With the panel now closed, our body heat was quickly filling the small space. Obadiah put out more heat than me. I could feel it—his warmth radiating outwards.

He must have felt my eyes on him, because he turned to me.

“Get cozy,” he said, “because we’re going to be in here awhile.”

“Better in here than out there.” I smiled.

I pressed my face to the round wall, trying to see down to Times Square below. I could just barely make things out—the thick crystal made everything slightly blurry.

The crowd was huge now. From up here they looked like no more than a swarm of colorful ants. We could hear them, the dull roar of thousands of human voices blended together as one.

I reached out to stretch, my legs having gone to sleep, trying to find a comfortable position. As I did so, my hand accidentally brushed against Obadiah’s. I hadn’t meant to. It was just the shape of the ball. His body stiffened slightly and then slowly his arm wrapped round my shoulder.

We were very close to each other, sandwiched between the backsides of lightbulbs and the steel pole. It wasn’t a bad feeling, being so close to him. I just didn’t know what do with my hands.

“So,” I said, trying to make conversation as we huddled together inside the geodesic sphere, “how many times have you done this?”

“Since they launched the second ball, in 1920,” said Obadiah nonchalantly, trying to stretch out his legs.

I gaped at him.

“You’ve been around that long?”

I remembered his story about coming back to New York and finding out so much time had passed. But I didn’t know he’d returned such a long time ago.

“Why haven’t you aged?” I gasped.

Obadiah was silent for a moment.

“I told you I’m part Fey,” he said. “It’s made me a little bit immortal.”

“I didn’t think you could be ‘a little bit immortal,’ ” I said, shaking my head. “I thought that was like being ‘a little bit pregnant.’ ”

Obadiah shrugged. “I don’t know how else to explain it.”

I slowly shook my head as the band below us struck up a pop song, the base booming over the roar of the crowd. I realized I didn’t understand him at all.

“But what about your parents, were they normal humans?”

Obadiah chuckled. “
Normal?
Not exactly. My father was a pirate.”

“Really?”

“Well, it was a bit more common of a profession back in the late eighteenth century,” he added.

“What about your mom? Was she a pirate too?”

A dark cloud seemed to pass over Obadiah’s face.

“She was what you’d now call Native American. I don’t know much about her. She didn’t exactly stick around long enough for us to become close.” There was a hard edge in his voice. “She left us when I was seven. Never even said goodbye. Only took an old sealskin cloak, and disappeared one stormy night.”

He said these last words lightly, as if telling an anecdote at a cocktail party instead of sharing a deep wound. But I knew better—I could see the rage behind his casual expression, and I knew this memory devastated him, even after all these years.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

A silence engulfed us, and he stared out the translucent panes of the ball at the crowd below.

Slowly I stretched out my hand, careful of the wires, and leaned closer to him.

“So your mother was a Selkie,” I said quietly.

Obadiah rolled his eyes. “Yes. Fat lot of good it’s ever done me.”

“But you’ve got magic in your blood . . .”

He shook his head. “Nah. I can do a few tricks when I’ve guzzled enough Elixir, that’s all. I can’t do
real
magic, not like a fairy.”

“But . . .”

“If I could really do magic, I’d have been able to find her, wouldn’t I?”

The anger in his voice made me quiet. I reached my hand out awkwardly and took his. He was silent, but he gave my hand a little squeeze.

At last he spoke.

“I tried to do a spell once as a boy, before I even knew what Elixir was. I was trying to bring her back. Let’s just say it didn’t end well.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“I failed, obviously. And I nearly blew myself up. I don’t even remember what happened. All I remember is coming to, and there was a big hole burned through the wall of our cabin. My father gave me a beating I won’t soon forget. Oh, don’t look at me like that—it was the way things were done back then. Truth was, I think it scared him—he was afraid to lose me too. He told me if he ever caught me trying to do ‘magic’ again . . .”

His voice trailed off, and he shook his head, shaking away the memory.

“I guess I didn’t inherit my mother’s fairy genes, only my father’s penchant for piracy.” He laughed, but only with his mouth, not his eyes. “It’s probably for the best.

“How about you?” he asked, changing the subject. “Do you think your human parents suspect? That you’re a changeling?”

I sighed, staring out through the window of the ball.

“I don’t think they have any idea,” I said sadly. “I wish they knew. I tried to tell them once.”

His eyebrows rose.

“I was four. I hadn’t been around the human world long enough to learn that no one believes in fairies. I came downstairs one morning for breakfast and told them I wasn’t their real daughter, that their real daughter had been kidnapped by the Fairy Queen, and that I was so, so sorry.”

I laughed to hide how much it still pained me and swallowed hard. I could feel Obadiah’s eyes on me.

“What did they say?” he asked.

“My mom said, ‘Our little girl has such a great imagination!’ and Dad said, ‘Kids really do say the darndest things!’ And then they went right back to eating their cereal. They didn’t understand why I started crying.”

“There’s no way to tell people, is there?” Obadiah said at last, breaking the silence that had fallen. “They never believe us.”

“I wish I could tell my parents the truth, though—I mean—they’re my
parents!
”

“They’re you’re
human
parents,” said Obadiah. “What about your fairy parents—do you miss them?”

I shook my head. “I’m an orphan. I never knew my fairy mom or dad. They died of the Elixir drought.” I was silent for a moment, staring out the crystal of the ball. “I think that’s why the Queen chose me to help her on her missions to take the children. I didn’t have a family who’d miss me.”

I looked over at him.

“It feels good to talk about this stuff. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to honestly talk to anyone about my life. I mean, without having to edit out all the supernatural parts.”

“Me too,” he said quietly. “I’ve tried to tell these stories to the Wolfmen and the Sanguinari—but they don’t understand the
human
parts. You understand
both
,” he said to me.

A silence settled over us, but it didn’t feel so awkward now.

H
ours later, we were still huddled up together, the crumbs of the snacks Obadiah had brought spread on our laps. They’d turned the LED lights on and the colors splashed in strobing rainbow patterns across Obadiah’s face. It was getting late. I checked the time on my phone.

“Oh my god, it’s nearly midnight!” I gasped.

How was it that we had been talking for over six hours and not even realized it? Time did magical things around Obadiah.

He pulled out his pocket watch and examined it. It was funny, seeing the old-fashioned timepiece while inside this high-tech steel-and-LED time contraption.

“They’ll be activating the ball soon,” he said.

A roar went up from the crowd below.

I peered through the shifting colors of the ball to Times Square hundreds of feet below us, and I shuddered. I’d never thought I was afraid of heights. Then again, I’d never been up this high before—well, not in a clear bubble where I could see just exactly how high up I was. What was going to happen at midnight, when we fell?
It’ll be like going on a roller coaster,
I told myself. Then again, what the hell was I thinking? I hated roller coasters; I was always the one screaming my head off in terror while everyone else was going “whee!”
Relax,
I told myself,
don’t think about it; remember, it’s the only way to get to the Vale.

I could hear shouts and yelling and faintly what sounded like drunken singing coming from the street below.

Times Square was completely packed now. The crowd extended all the way down the side streets for as far as I could see. The sound of the crowd had become a low, rumbling roar, like the sound of the ocean.

After dark, they’d started the “entertainment.” In the center of the square below, some teenage boy band belted out pop songs from a big stage. I recognized one of the songs. I’d heard it on the radio dozens of times and never really liked it, but somehow it sounded better tonight. Maybe it was because there was magic in the air—literally.

Obadiah checked his pocket watch.

“Five minutes!” He grinned.

I could tell he was getting excited.

“You enjoy this, don’t you?”

Obadiah looked up, surprised.

“Oddly enough, I do,” he said. “You wouldn’t think I would enjoy going to visit the place of my former kidnapping”—he shook his head—“and yet these little bootlegging trips are the highlight of my year. I suppose I just like the traveling, the being in between. And that sense of danger . . . maybe it’s the pirate in me.”

There was a lurch; my body fell forward and I stopped myself with my hands against the crystal as the ball moved under our feet. My breath caught in my throat and my body tightened with terror. Then I heard a loud metallic squeak and we stopped moving.

“They just pressed the button for the drop,” said Obadiah.

“What happens at the end of the countdown?” I asked.

“The spell takes effect. The veil between the worlds becomes permeable and we cross into the Vale. Reality opens up for a split second. Nobody even notices because they’re so busy cheering and kissing and blowing whistles. We exit the ball, it goes back to human Times Square, and no one is the wiser.”

The ball gave another jolt under our feet and I felt my stomach drop. Panicked, I looked up at Obadiah, but he was calm as could be, waving at the crowds below who couldn’t see him.

And then we started descending.

I screamed, my stomach lurching as we started moving. But I wasn’t flying now—we were going down.