The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (101 page)

Sam swallowed hard, looked down at the floor. “That’s crazy, Bee.”

“Why do all that research, then? Why write all that stuff down?”

“Because I believe that whoever is behind this—
they
believe that the fairies are real.”

“So you don’t believe?” Phoebe asked.

“No,” Sam said firmly, but he wouldn’t look her in the eye. He reached out and put a hand on Phoebe’s belly. “Our baby is going to be fine. No one’s going to take her.”

“The O’Tooles have fairy blood in their veins,” Lisa said. “That’s what Teilo says.”

“Oh my God,” Phoebe said, slumping down into a kitchen chair. She’d had enough. Enough of all this. She didn’t care anymore if the fairies were real or not. She just wanted it to be over.

“Call it a blessing, call it a curse,” Lisa said. “That’s what the guardians say.”

Sam gave Lisa an astonished look, as if she’d just opened her mouth and let a flock of birds fly out.

“Grab the keys,” Sam told Phoebe. “We’re gonna take another little road trip.”

CHAPTER 39

Lisa

JUNE 20 AND 21, FIFTEEN YEARS AGO

M
aybe Sleeping Beauty was in a coma.

Maybe that’s what a coma was, a magic spell some evil witch casts. She waves a wand, makes a potion, pricks you with a needle, hands you a poison apple all shiny and red that you can’t help but take a bite of.

But a spell can be broken.

Da could be saved. Lisa knew this deep in her heart even as she listened to her mother and Hazel talking about how the doctors thought it would be best to turn off all the life-support machines. Even as they said Da was gone, Lisa knew he wasn’t. Not really.

Lisa had been fasting for days. She cleverly hid food in her napkin at dinner. Evie, who was always watching, spying, caught her and scowled but never said a word. Lisa had to be careful with her mother and Hazel too—they’d been watching her like sister hawks. And though she was staying out of the woods, she’d seen her mother and Hazel going in and out of the woods several times, often at night, with flashlights. It was just plain weird. It was like seeing sharks living life on land, breathing air, drinking piña coladas.

Following the recipe in
The Book of Fairies
, Lisa made tea from foxglove flowers and stems and honey and kept it in a mason jar under her bed. She’d scoured the neighborhood looking for the flowers and finally found a patch in the badly neglected garden behind Gerald and Pinkie’s house. She’d picked them all, doubting anyone would notice. The tea was sweet but bitter and burned her mouth and stomach, giving her horrible cramps and diarrhea.

She remembered what Sam said when they found the first foxglove flower:
poison
.

But she trusted Teilo. And she wanted so badly to go with him, away from this place, these people. To see what it was like on the other side.

“Lisa,” Evie said when she caught Lisa sneaking a sip of the tea. “I know what you’re doing. I read the damn book. Do you have any idea what that stuff does? I looked it up. Digitalis. They make heart medicine out of it. It can kill you, Lisa. You’ve gotta stop.”

But Lisa wasn’t speaking to Evie, Evie didn’t exist to her anymore, so she put the lid on the jar, turned, and walked away. Evie didn’t understand. And besides, she was just jealous, really. Pissed off that she wasn’t the one chosen by the King of the Fairies.

“What has he done to you?” Evie called after her. “Is he screwing you? Telling you you’re his queen?”

Lisa froze, then turned and looked at Evie.

“He’s not who he says he is,” Evie said.

Lisa squinted her eyes, making Evie smaller and smaller, until she was all gone.

L
isa crept down the hall to Sammy’s room. The fasting and tea were making her light and floaty, giving everything a fuzzy look and sound. It was like being underwater. She felt as if she were swimming through a green sea into her brother’s room.

“Lisa?” Sam said, blinking, sleepy. “What time is it?” He squinted at his digital clock—11:35.

“I’m going to cross over,” she told him. “To save Da.”

“What?”

“I’ll be able to fix things from over there. They have special medicines, plants and stuff. And magic. I’ll be able to use magic, Sam. But the thing is, if I go, I won’t be able to come back, not ever.”

Sam blinked his eyes, not sure if he was dreaming. “You’re not making any sense,” he said at last. “And your eyes look funny.”

She smiled, handed him the bracelet. “You have to hide this, Sammy. Promise. Never tell anyone you’ve got it, okay? And you can’t follow me, understand? You can’t go where I’m going.”

He nodded. Lisa leaned down to kiss him. She was going to miss her logical, Mr. Science, everything-can-be-explained brother. And maybe, just maybe, once she was gone, he’d finally get that there were some things that couldn’t be explained so easily; that there was more to this world than meets the eye.

“Think of me,” she said because it seemed like something a girl in a fairy tale might say. Think of me. Remember me. Love me. Turn me into a story you tell again and again. The sister who was good as gold and became a queen.

Lisa crept down the stairs, through the dark kitchen, out into the night. She flew across the yard, stomach cramping, body light.

What would they think when they found her gone? Or would she be gone? Would it be like Da in the coma? Her body left behind, resting in a glass coffin, while her spirit goes to live with the fairies. Or would they put a changeling in her place—some unkempt sullen girl who won’t comb the leaves out of her hair, who growls instead of speaking?

She turned to look back at the house one more time before heading into the woods. It was only a black silhouette, two lights on like eyes. Then one went out with a wink.

Think of me.

S
he entered the woods, crept along the path. Her stomach was clenched into a fist. So tight and hard, she imagined a baseball-size rock down there—a knuckleball straight to the gut.

She and Sammy dissected a baseball once. They peeled back the carefully stitched, smooth white skin and found a tight ball of yarn inside. Must have been close to a mile of it. And then, at the very core, a rubber ball. They sliced it in half with their mom’s best filleting knife and found a perfect circle of cork inside.

“It’s like the earth,” Sammy told her. “All these layers. The white leather is the crust, then the mantle, the outer core, and the inner core.”

Lisa snorted, then smiled at her little brother. “Maybe you’re right, Sammy. Maybe the earth is full of secret string and a red rubber ball that no one knows is there.”

T
he hunger was gone. Her body was empty and clean.

She’d been throwing up for days. And sitting crouched over on the toilet, feeling like her guts were spilling out from one end or the other.

“Your body is a vessel,”
The Book of Fairies
told her. “You have to empty the vessel to come to our world. Once you cross over, you can eat and drink all you wish. Sugar cakes. Sweet dumplings made from violets, honey, and morning dew.”

She’s tired. So tired. Light and floaty. Like if she took a deep breath, she might just leave the ground.

The world had a fuzzy edge. Everything radiated with halos of pale green. Her eyes and body were adjusting, getting ready for her new life in the fairy realm.

She gathered rocks as she walked, filling her pockets, balancing a pile in the crook of her left arm. When she got to the cellar hole, she crawled down, laid the stones out in a careful circle.

She crouched in the dirt in the bottom of the old cellar hole—the place where it all began—a circle of thirteen stones around her. Cold sweat beaded on her forehead, and her heart was playing a crazy rhythm she felt from her chest to her throat—fast, slow, fast, like a horse that didn’t know if it wanted to run or limp. Her stomach was cramping. She’d swallowed a secret world of string.

Secret world.

Secret. World.

A body was a vessel and a vessel was something that could be full or empty. It’s also something that can travel. A vase or a boat.

Which was she?

Both and neither.

The only thing she was sure of was that it was time to go.

“Teilo,” she called, voice shaking. “I’m ready.”

She waited. Silence. The forest was holding its breath. She inhaled deeply through her nose. Smelled dirt. Worms. Something damp and rotten.

Then she heard footsteps. Was it just one person walking or more? She closed her eyes. Listened. They were coming her way. Quickly at first. Then slowly.

“Teilo?”

“Do you come willingly?” Teilo asked, his words floating somewhere out in the darkness above her. He sounded out of breath. Anxious. The words had a strange rasp to them that she didn’t remember from her first meeting with him.

“Yes,” she told him, her heart pounding up into her throat. “Yes.”

“Then come,” he told her. “Come be my queen.”

A gloved hand reached down and took hers, and keeping her eyes clamped tight, she let herself be lifted out of the old cellar hole. Her left shoe came off, and she smiled because it didn’t matter. Back in the human world, it would matter because they were her favorite pair of pink and silver Nikes, which she wore laced but not tied, and the left one had a purple lace and the right one was pink. But she was leaving all that behind. It was a symbol, the sneaker. Her English teacher, Mr. Milne, would be impressed that she’d thought of this. Especially now, as she traveled to another world.

She was floating, being pulled into the world she’d dreamed of visiting since Teilo first came to her three weeks ago.

When her feet were back on solid ground, she gripped the hand tighter and opened her eyes and was sure, at first, that they were playing tricks on her.

She had not crossed over at all, and the face that looked back at her was all too familiar.

“What are
you
doing here?” Lisa demanded, trying to pull away, but her hand was being held in a viselike grip. Everything was glowing greener than ever. She twisted and pulled, slamming her bare foot down on a sharp rock. The pain radiated up through her leg, centering in her stomach. She was sure she was going to throw up.

“No!” she yelped. This was all wrong. This was not what was supposed to happen.

“Teilo!” she cried, knowing he couldn’t be far, desperate for him to come rescue her, take her the rest of the way.

She could hear her heartbeat in her ears, feel it in her throat. And there, somewhere far off behind that sound, someone was calling her name. Someone was moving through the woods, down the hill, calling “Lisa! Lisa! Lisa!”

“I’m here!” she started to yell back, but the other gloved hand covered her mouth, pressing hard. She gagged on the taste of dirty leather. The inside of her lip was jammed against her front teeth. Her mouth filled with blood, warm and metallic, sharp as a blade on her tongue.

The greenish face moved closer to her, blurred and scowling. “Shh!” A whispered hiss as her hand was pulled and twisted, jerking her forward. “I’m going to take you to Teilo, but we haven’t got much time.”

PART IV

The Fairy Kingdom

From
The Book of Fairies

It is true that sometimes we may take a human over to the fairy world and leave a changeling in his place. How do you know a changeling? Dark eyes and pale, yellowy skin. It will be a sickly child who seems to eat and eat but gains little weight. Often, they die in childhood. But sometimes they survive and adapt to the world of humans. Sometimes so much so that they don’t remember who they truly are. Until we call on them. When they’re around their own kind, they remember. They always remember.

CHAPTER 40

The Girl Who Would Be Queen

T
he room he brought her to was green and pink and smelled like sweet flowers, but there was something acrid, tangy, and biting just underneath.

“This is your home now,” he said.

The walls were made of flowers. Hundreds, thousands of blooms bursting with color. It was like living inside a valentine.
X
’s and
O
’s. Hugs and kisses. I love you. You love me. Soon we’ll be married under a cherry tree.

There was another girl in the room. She guessed the girl was her age, maybe a little older. Her hair was also dark and wild. She had tattoos up and down her stick-thin arms. There was a bump on her belly.

She didn’t know much about pregnant girls, but this one looked like she could have the kid any second. If she watched for long enough, she could see the baby moving around inside its tattooed mama. Pushing on her belly, making the skin bulge and ripple, like a monster that couldn’t wait to get out.

She tried to leave the room, but the door was bolted on the outside.

“Hey!” she shouted, pounding on the door. “Come back. You can’t just leave me here like this!”

She turned to the tattooed girl in desperation. “He can’t do this! This is against the law.”

“They’re keeping us safe,” the girl said.

“From what?” she asked.

The pregnant girl laughed.

“Who are you?” she asked.

The pregnant girl looked up, her eyes two black holes. “I’m Queen of the Fairies,” she said.

“But Teilo told me
I
was going to be queen.”

“He lies.”

CHAPTER 41

Phoebe

JUNE 13, PRESENT DAY

T
hey’d been driving for over an hour and were within five minutes of Aunt Hazel’s house in the far northeast corner of Vermont. Phoebe was hunched over a map with a flashlight. Lisa rode silently in the backseat.

Sam had already explained the impetus for the trip.

“That
call it a blessing, call it a curse
thing Lisa said one of the guardians used. It’s a saying Hazel used all the time.”

“So what? Now your kooky old aunt Hazel is supposed to be the one who took Lisa? It doesn’t make sense.”

“I’m just following a lead here, Bee. And Hazel’s the one person from that summer we haven’t talked to yet. I think it’s high time we paid her a visit.”

Now, studying the map and seeing how close they were, Phoebe was getting nervous. “Shouldn’t we call or something? Let her know we’re coming?”

“If she knows anything, she’d be more likely to talk if she’s caught off guard. Give her time to prepare and she could make up just about anything. Or get so completely blotto on booze that she’d be out cold by the time we got there.”

“Okay,” Phoebe agreed. She turned to Lisa in the backseat. “So tell us about these guardians. Who were they? What was their role?”

“The guardians kept us safe.”

“Who is ‘us’?” asked Sam.

Lisa didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “One of the guardians, she’d tell us stories. Lessons, she called them. About the fairies. About how important what we were doing really was. How special we were. How lucky.”

“Lucky,” Sam mumbled through clenched teeth. “Right.”

“Stop!” Lisa cried from the backseat.

Sam hit the brakes hard, sending all of them jolting forward, straining their seat belts. He scanned the dark road in front of them, then turned and scowled at Lisa. “What?”

There was no deer, no kid on a bicycle. Phoebe saw nothing but the dirt road ahead of them and trees on either side.

Then Lisa was out of the car, running across the dirt road and into the trees. She’d left the car door open. The dome light was on and a repeating chime dinged over and over, warning them about the open door.

“Jesus!” Sam muttered. “Lisa! Get back in the car.”

He pulled over to the side, and he and Phoebe got out and hurried off in the direction Lisa had run.

“Lisa?” Phoebe called. Sam broke into a run, Phoebe right behind him, following a narrow path through the trees. The moon had risen, big and bright, casting the woods in a cool blue glow.

The path opened up, and they found themselves in a grove of wild, sprawling trees with branches like gnarled hands and fingers. The branches were heavy with sweet-smelling white flowers. Some of the petals fell, drifting through the air like magic snow.

Phoebe was no nature girl, but she recognized apple trees when she saw them. They were in an old, abandoned orchard. The overgrown, unpruned trees were spaced evenly apart in neat rows.

Lisa was sitting on a stump, rocking and humming. Her arms were wrapped tightly around herself and she was smiling.

“Sometimes we’d dance here,” Lisa said, eyes closed, a blissful smile still on her face.

“Who would? You and Teilo?” Phoebe asked.

Lisa nodded. “On full moon nights. He’d take us here.”

“Wait,” Sam said. “You mean right here, to this place?”

Lisa was up off the stump, walking, dancing through the trees, touching the branches, laughing. It was the first time since Phoebe had met her that she actually seemed happy.

Sam and Phoebe followed. The branches from the overgrown trees reached out and scratched their faces, caught on their clothing. Sam was right behind Lisa, but Phoebe was exhausted and having a hard time keeping up. It seemed to Phoebe that she’d spent entirely too much time running through trees this past week. She’d had enough of dark, creepy forests and was thinking that she’d much prefer wide-open spaces. When this was over, she wanted to go to the ocean. Or the desert. Someplace with endless horizons where you could see what was coming for miles. No surprises. No trees with branches like claws reaching for you. No place for shadowy figures to hide behind.

Up ahead, Lisa and Sam had stopped and were looking down at something on the ground.

Lisa turned and continued on, singing a song just under her breath.

Say, say my playmate, come out and play with me.

Sam stayed frozen, eyes fixed on the ground. Phoebe came up behind him, saw that there, under a great, gnarled apple tree, were four wooden crosses inside a large circle of rocks.

I cannot play with you. My dollies have the flu.

A crude cemetery—something a child might do for pets. The earth above one of the markers was freshly turned. And it was a huge rectangle, way too large to be anyone’s pet.

“What is this?” Phoebe asked, a chill working its way from the ground, up through her feet and legs, settling finally deep and low in her belly. Sam shook his head slowly, not taking his eyes from the ground.

“Lisa,” Phoebe said, turning to see that the other woman had disappeared into the darkness. She listened but couldn’t hear the singing anymore. Sam stepped away from the circle of graves.

“This way,” he called back. “I see lights through the trees.”

“I’m right behind you.”

The orchard ended abruptly and they found themselves at the top of a hill in a newly mown field. Lisa was running down it toward the house at the bottom. Sam and Phoebe chased behind.

The lights in the house were blazing, casting the yard around the house in a welcoming glow.

“It’s Aunt Hazel’s,” Sam said. It was an old white farmhouse with a metal roof and sagging porches. There was a circular gravel driveway with one old car parked in it—a big, boxy Cadillac.

Lisa reached the house and got down on all fours to peer into a low, rectangular basement window. Phoebe and Sam raced to catch up with her. There were broken, rusty nails hammered here and there around the edges of the basement window, like someone had tried to keep whatever was inside from coming out.

But it hadn’t held them.

Sam reached forward, pulled the window open, and, feetfirst, lowered himself through it until he was gone.