To Catch a Queen (21 page)

The other big difference from Sophie’s palace was the number of people present. Granted, Emily had only been at the real palace immediately after it was reawakened by Sophie taking the throne and in the aftermath of a war, so she’d hardly seen it at its best, but she couldn’t imagine that a palace occupied by an absentee queen would ever be the site of such a revel.

Every court in the Realm appeared to be represented. There were a few fairies in the midcentury Doris Day attire that had been favored in Maeve’s old court. A lot of fairies were dressed in medieval finery right out of a fairy-tale book. There were also some dressed in 1930s glamour, in Regency attire similar to the costumes in Emily’s show, in Victorian finery, and in elaborate Georgian confections. About the only thing missing was the austere look of the Puritans. Emily allowed herself a moment of amusement from imagining that as the look for Sophie’s court, but then there wouldn’t be nearly enough pastels or floral prints for her.

All of these people were talking, dancing, or availing themselves of the food tables. Even if they’d been brought there against their will, they didn’t seem to mind too much now. They’d forgotten whatever protest they might have made while indulging in the party.

“I don’t see anyone who might have been at the real palace,” Amelia said as she craned her neck to scan the crowd.

“They would have locked them up,” Emily said. “They wouldn’t want them giving up the game.” She searched the crowd for a familiar strawberry blond head, but the throngs were too dense for her to spot any one person who would have been shorter than anyone here. Where was Sophie? She needed to have those rulers free and able to denounce the false queen.

“Do you think something happened to Sophie?” Emily asked Eamon. “You’d think there’d have been a sign of her by now. Like an explosion or a riot.” A thought popped into her head. “We should go looking for her now that we’re inside the palace.”

“Is this that compulsion again?” he asked.

“No. It’s different.” Actually, it came from the same place in her head, but she knew it was the right thing to do, and if she told him it was at all like the compulsion, he wouldn’t let her go. Could she help it if she was being forced to do something she’d want to do anyway?

She started to head off to the other end of the throne room, but something held her back. The resistance was linked to her hand, and she looked down to see that she was holding Beau’s leash, and the dog had stubbornly planted himself on the floor. “Come on, boy,” she said, but Beau just glared at her. She tried handing the leash over to Amelia and Athena, but they shook their heads.

“I believe your dog is sending you a message,” Athena said with a smile.

“But we need to find Sophie!”

“What good would you be able to do for your sister, who is an enchantress with the power of the entire Realm at her beck and call?” Amelia asked.

“Whatever drew her into the palace is drawing her in deeper,” Eamon said.

She shot him a glare to let him know she thought he was a traitor, but he was looking at her with such tender concern that it stunned her. He really did care. For a moment, she forgot about the urge pulling her elsewhere in the palace. “Do you really think I might be in danger?” she asked him softly.

“You’re in the Realm. Anything you can’t explain is a potential danger.” She started to protest, but he distracted her by putting his arm around her shoulders. He was probably trying to keep her from going anywhere, but it made her feel cherished. She wasn’t sure what to make of all this. Maybe it was part of whatever spell was being cast on her.

Just as suddenly as the compulsion had come upon her, it was gone. The feeling was so surprising that she might have lost her balance if Eamon hadn’t been holding her. “Wow, that’s weird,” she said. “It’s gone, like that, just like the last time.”

“Do you still think it’s a good idea to head deeper into the palace to look for Sophie?” Amelia asked, a slight smirk on her lips.

“No, not really. But I do wonder where she is.”

“She knows what she’s doing,” Athena said with a reassuring pat on her arm.

“But we should be doing
something
. If Sophie hasn’t freed the other rulers to come discredit the impostor, maybe we can.”

“What do you mean?” Eamon asked.

“I don’t know, maybe a whisper campaign? See if we can raise some doubts, get people to question the situation?”

Athena grinned and clapped her hands with great enthusiasm. “Oh, that would be fun!”

“But we should be careful,” Amelia put in with a tiny glare at her sister. “We don’t want to get hauled away as subversives.”

“Keep moving,” Emily suggested. “Don’t hang around in one place too long.”

“You and I should join the dancing,” Eamon said. He sounded very sincere, but there was a glint in his silvery eyes. Without a word, she handed Beau’s leash and her bag over to Athena and let him sweep her onto the dance floor.

The dancing reminded her of the Regency dances in her show, which meant the pattern wasn’t too hard for her to figure out. Even better, it allowed her to interact with every man in the line, and Eamon could do likewise with the women. In the first section, while they were still dancing together, she said, “You know what to do, right?”

“Raise doubts.”

“But keep it subtle.”

The section finished, and she moved down the line to her next partner, who bowed to her as she curtsied. “I’m a little surprised by all this pomp, aren’t you?” she said when she stepped toward her partner and took his hand. “Obviously, the queen’s been on the throne for a while, so why a coronation now?”

The dance took them a step apart for a moment, and when they rejoined to walk in a circle he said, “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what use would the real queen have for all this? Isn’t the throne won through trials and blood?” With that, she was handed over to her next partner, where she started again. It was hard to tell if the whispers were having any effect, but at least she felt like she was contributing something to the effort.

When she rejoined Eamon, she asked, “How did it go?”

“They are a bunch of empty-headed ninnies who care little about who is on the throne as long as they are invited to a big party,” he said with great disgust.

“So, not so great?”

“Perhaps I have planted the seeds of doubt, but I’m not sure they’ll remember anything for long.”

“I don’t know how things went for me, either. Would they even care if there was proof that this was an impostor?”

“Not as long as it doesn’t interrupt their fun.”

He sounded so bitter that it was almost funny. She grinned as he spun her in a circle. “Why don’t you tell me how you really feel?”

“I thought I did.” Before she could explain that she was being sarcastic, he smiled and said, “Now you see why I like humans.”

“We’ve got our share of empty-headed ninnies. More people vote for TV singing competitions than for Congress, so maybe we’re not too different.”

The dance ended, and they joined a different group, repeating the same process with similar results. “I wonder how the A-sisters are doing,” Emily asked when they finished that dance. “And I wonder if it’s doing any good at all.”

The sound of trumpets rang through the throne room, and Emily figured they’d find out soon enough.

The Borderlands

Immediately Afterward

It took Michael a moment or two to realize he didn’t have anyone left to fight. He spun around, looking for enemies, but the soldiers were gone, and it seemed like the little fairy creatures had driven away the Borderlands things.

He was surprised to see how far Sophie was from him. He’d thought they were fighting back-to-back, but she was a good thirty feet away, sitting on the ground and looking stunned.

“Sophie, are you okay?” he asked, running to her.

She turned toward him, her eyes wide with shock and horror. “They got the crown.” Her eyes flashed with anger. “I knew this whole thing was a bad idea.”

He knelt next to her and squeezed her shoulder. “There’s always the chance that the crown won’t do anyone any good. It wasn’t the fake queen who took it from you, so I don’t see any way she’d be able to wear it. She wasn’t the one to defeat you.”

She leaned into his hand for a moment, as though taking comfort in the touch, then abruptly flinched away. “Maybe, but the fact remains that I was sent to get the crown so I could prove my position to the fairy rulers, and now I don’t have it. What do I do?”

“It looked to me like you were doing a good enough job of playing queen, regardless of what you had sitting on your head.”

“I hope you’re right.” She blinked rapidly, fighting away tears. After a couple of deep breaths, she seemed to have herself more under control. With a frown of concern, she asked, “Are you hurt? I thought I saw you get hit, and you were hit when we were coming here.”

“
Something
hit me,” he said, craning his neck to see the back of his shoulder. “But while it’s sore, it doesn’t feel bad, not like a gunshot.”

She moved to inspect his back. “I can’t even find a rip in your coat.”

“Well, it is waterproofed. Maybe that repels magical spears, too.”

“Maybe. You can move?”

He moved both arms and wiggled his fingers. “It’s not at all like the elf shot.” She was still frowning, though. “Okay, what are you worried about?” he asked.

“I don’t know enough about their weapons. For all I know, something magical did penetrate your clothes and your body without leaving an external mark.”

“So I’ll be turning into a frog pretty soon?” When she didn’t even smile at that, he got a sick feeling in his stomach. “Or is that the best-case scenario?”

She rubbed her temples like she was fighting off a bad headache. “I don’t know. I don’t know what any of this means. I’m afraid I’m way out of my depth.”

That was something he’d never thought he’d hear from Sophie Drake. She didn’t strike him as the sort who’d ever be willing to admit weakness. Either he’d won her trust in a huge way or she was at the end of her resources. Or perhaps both. “Is there anyone who could help?”

“I’ve already talked to Tallulah, and she hasn’t been at all helpful. Your wise woman might know what to do about whatever it was that hit you, but she wouldn’t know anything about a fairy crown.” She rubbed at her temples again, then abruptly gasped softly and looked up at him, a smile spreading across her face, so bright that it almost lit the dark Borderlands. “You’re a genius,” she breathed.

“I am?”

“You asked earlier about my grandmother being the rightful heir. She had to have learned all the same things she taught me, and she’s one generation less removed than I am. There’s a chance she might know something I don’t.”

“How much would she remember?”

“She might be clearer on fairy lore than she is about what happened last week. She’s still singing that song she taught me that helped me take the throne, and she doesn’t miss a word. If we bring her here, she might revive enough to tell us something.”

“Do we have time? They’ve got the crown already.”

“I should be able to do the same trick with time that I do when leaving our world to come here. We can come back to the time we left.”

He stood and extended a hand to help her up, but she sprang easily to her feet. Now that she had a plan, she looked a lot more like her usual self, which was reassuring. He didn’t want to face the trouble that had Sophie shaky and shocked. “What about your mother?” he asked as he followed her out of the Borderlands. “I guess you can do the time thing so you can get your grandmother back before she notices anything’s different.”

“Just in case, I’ll leave a changeling.”

“Isn’t a changeling another fairy left in a person’s place?”

“Not always. It can also be an enchanted object that looks like the person. That’s what often happened when people thought their missing loved one was actually dead or in a coma.” Sophie smiled and shook her head. “Funny, not too long ago I was frustrated because my fairy knowledge told me how to make a changeling but not how to free a captive.” She reached for his hand. “Ready?”

Instead of answering, he squeezed her hand, and they stepped off together. They came out in what smelled like a pine forest. It was still night, or perhaps very early morning. A soft glow appeared nearby, and he saw that Sophie had conjured up a light. “Ah, that’s just what I need,” she whispered. “Could you please pick up that log there?”

He bent and lifted a log about eight inches in diameter and nearly five feet long. He rested it on his shoulder, and Sophie nodded in approval before dousing her light. She moved forward confidently, apparently in such familiar territory that she could find her way even in the darkness.

They went another ten or so yards before they were on the edge of the forest, where it gave way to a lush lawn that was still rather wooded, though the trees were more widely spaced. On the other side of the lawn stood a large white house. Michael couldn’t see details in the darkness from where he stood, but he got the impression that the house was old and stately. It looked very settled in its surroundings.

“I’ll go make sure the coast is clear,” Sophie whispered. She ran lightly across the lawn and up onto a small rear porch that looked like it must lead to a service entrance. She easily turned the door handle and slipped inside. He was just starting to worry that she’d run into trouble when she reappeared at the door and beckoned to him.

He focused on stealth rather than speed as he made his way to the house. The last thing he needed was to wake Sophie’s mother by stepping on a twig at the wrong time. He’d heard enough of her mother’s voice over the phone that he didn’t want to have to face that woman.

He entered through a mudroom. Sophie led him through the kitchen and dining room into a large central hall. The faint light from a street lamp outside, coming in through the transom window over the front door, was reflected in highly polished wooden floors. He followed Sophie into what must have once been a formal parlor. Some of the delicate, feminine antique furniture was still in the room, but it had been shoved aside to make room for a hospital bed.