Violet's Story

Chapter 11

Eleven

I tear back through the tunnel, shouting Nate’s name. I send my mind out, searching desperately. I don’t need one of Nate’s belongings in order to find him. I know him; the connection is already there. But for the first time ever, my mind comes up with nothing. Nothing.

It terrifies me.

I’m well and truly lost now. Ahead of me, the tunnel divides into two paths. A mirror hangs on the wall between them. Without looking into the mirror, I follow the path on the right. It curves slightly, then turns sharply to the left. It continues straight for a while, slopes uphill, then down, then a sharp turn to the right—and I’m standing in front of the fork with the mirror again.

Wait. That doesn’t make sense. How did I walk in a circle? I choose the path on the left this time. I walk in a straight line for what feels like ages before the path disappears around a corner—and ends up at the fork with the mirror.

I go left again, running now, and the path is completely different, and within minutes I’m back where I started.

“Stop it!” I scream out loud. “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” I turn around and run back the way I came. I keep going. Going and going and going, and there’s no mirror anymore, just the light that bobs a few feet in front of me, and a voice singing somewhere in the distance.

The voice is deep and rich, like velvet to my ears. I follow it, hoping that at the source of the voice is someone who knows what happened to Nate. The ball of light ahead of me never dims, which is strange. I spent a considerable amount of energy holding the water back earlier, and I used up magic to fight Angelica. And, of course, it took immense power to stun a creature as big as that troll. I should be exhausted now, my strength waning, my power diminishing.

I come to a complete stop as something registers in my mind. The griffin disc. Angelica must have told the truth about it containing power. How else would I still have strength? I continue forward once more, my mind ticking over the events of this evening. I think of the books I sent colliding into my shelf, and the glass ball I exploded in Tora’s library, and the light that nearly blinded Nate when we first arrived in this tunnel. All because I didn’t realize I had a booster pack of magic in my pocket.

My feet stop at the edge of a bare cavern. I’ve found the source of the voice: a centaur. The bottom part of his body is covered in sleek, copper-colored hair. It matches the hair on his head, which is tied neatly at the nape of his neck. He’s standing in the center of the empty space, facing a large stone that leans against the other side of the cavern. A shield is slung across his back.

“Excuse me,” I say, loud enough to be heard above his singing.

The abrupt silence rings in my ears. The centaur turns to me, and I see he’s carrying a sword in his hand. “Ah, you’ve answered my call,” he says. “I’ve been looking for you ever since you arrived here.”

“What?” I’m distracted, but only for a moment. “No, I need your help. It’s urgent. Have you seen—”

“You will come with me now.” He walks toward me, the clip-clop of his hooves echoing in the cavern.

“Stop.” I hold up my hands and place an invisible wall of magic between us. “If you’ve been looking for me, then you’ve also been looking for the guy I was with. Where is he?”

“You will come with me to the Silver Lady,” the centaur says. “She demands to see everyone who enters her labyrinth.”

“I don’t have time for this!” I shout, urgency boiling within me. I can’t remember the last time I cried, but I feel ridiculously close to tears right now. “If you know where he is, then tell me. If you don’t, I’d appreciate it if you’d get out of my way.”

He raises his sword and points it directly at me. A bolt of white light shoots from the tip. It hits my barrier of magic, causing it to shimmer in protest. He shoots again. And again, and again. I can feel the barrier weakening. I do what I did with the troll, gathering as much power as I can while the barrier still protects me. It doesn’t take as long; the centaur is big, but not nearly as big as the troll.

With a burst of power, I push the barrier toward the centaur before letting it disappear. He stumbles backward. I hold the swirling ball of magic in one hand, pull my arm back, and throw it with all my might. The centaur flies backward, hits the wall, and slumps down onto the floor.

It’s horrible to see such a majestic and beautiful creature lying motionless, almost dead. But he was blocking my way, and I have to find Nate. I run to the other side of the cavern. Holding my hands a few inches away from the stone that leans against the wall, I force it to move. With a grinding rumble, the stone begins to roll to one side, revealing an opening in the wall behind it.

I consider creating another ball of light, but the ever-present sparkles in the ceiling are enough for me to see by. And what I can see is that there’s nothing on the other side of this opening but another tunnel. There must be a reason it was concealed though, so I step through and hurry forward.

After only a few minutes, I become aware of a thumping sound. Faint but continuous, I can feel it vibrating through the soles of my boots. The tunnel grows larger, gradually widening until it reaches a size that could easily accommodate the troll I stunned earlier. One by one the pinpricks of light in the ceiling wink out, to be replaced by a soft yellow glow that seems to be emanating from the walls.

I continue further, and the thumping is joined by a noise that I strain to make out. Music. Quiet at first, but growing rapidly louder as I advance down the tunnel. I begin to run, the music fueling my need to find Nate. I can see an end to the tunnel up ahead. I run faster, pushing myself, only slowing down when I can see exactly what it is at the end of the tunnel.

A door.

I stop in front of the door, breathing heavily. I raise my hands and rest my palms against it; the wood shudders beneath the beat of the music. Knowing that I don’t have to worry about depleting my supply of magic, I take a few minutes to draw enough power to stun a large man. After all, who knows what might be right behind this door? I wrap my free fingers around the doorknob. Surprisingly, it turns easily. I pull the door open—and find a mass of writhing bodies.

A burly faerie standing at the door turns to me in surprise. He has acid green hair and one eye to match; the other eye is an empty socket. “What—”

I throw my hand forward and stun him without even pausing to think. He falls against the doorframe and slides to the ground. Fortunately, no one seems to notice. I stand on tiptoe—which adds next to nothing to my height—and scan the kaleidoscope of dancers. Flashing lights of various colors reveal almost every kind of fae I can think of. Jumping, dancing, swaying, screaming, laughing. This is clearly where Creepy Hollow’s Underground comes to party.

I’m about to back out through the doorway—after all, the chances of Nate being here are ridiculously slim—when a bolt of light hits the wooden doorframe just above my hand, causing it to splinter and smolder. I spin around to see the centaur galloping down the tunnel toward me.

What? How the hell did he wake up so quickly?

I stumble back into the Underground club and pull the door closed behind me. At the same time, I realize something: I’m not in the labyrinth anymore, and that means I should be able to open a way out of here. Now, if I could just find Nate—who’s probably back in the labyrinth somewhere—and keep myself from getting killed by a centaur and a club full of Undergrounders.

I push through the crowd, thankful that everyone here is too preoccupied with having a good time to realize that a trainee guardian is in their midst. Sweat, scales and feathers rub against me, and a shudder of revulsion courses through my body. Someone stands on my foot; someone else grabs my hand and twirls me in a dizzying circle before letting me go. I’ve lost all sense of direction now, but I see a wall nearby, and I push against bodies until I reach it.

I press my back against the wall, trying to figure out my next move. The centaur is inside the club now. He’s taller than most of the creatures here, and the flashing lights reveal his passage through the crowd as a broken series of different colored images.

Okay. So I need to get back into the labyrinth without the centaur seeing me, somehow find Nate, return to this club, and open a doorway home. I can do that. I can.

I’m trying to decide whether to go left or right around the room, when the centaur freezes. By the next flash of light—orange—I see his face turned in my direction. Blue, green, magenta, and then he starts forcing his way through the crowd toward me.

Oh crap, oh crap. I crouch down. Keeping my right side against the wall, I run. I squeeze past a group of pixies, a faerie couple tangled in each others’ arms, a woman with bat’s wings, a confused boy who looks like—

Nate?

I turn back and grab his shoulders. “Nate! What are you—how did you—”

“Violet! I … I …” He swallows, blinks, wraps his fingers tightly around my arms. “I don’t know …”

No time for this. I hold his hand securely in my own, slip my stylus out of my boot, and write on the wall. Please open, please open, please open. It does.

“Stop!” The shout is loud enough to be heard over the music. I spin around and find myself face to face with the centaur’s sword. Slowly, hating the fact that I have to do it, I raise my hands. “You will not leave,” the centaur commands.

I slide one foot backward through the doorway to prevent it from closing. I’m about to ask the centaur what he plans to do to stop us when I feel my eyes drawn over his shoulder. A guy with blue-black hair and a look of contempt on his face is staring at me. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” I say. What the hell is Ryn doing in an Underground club?

“No,” the centaur says. “There is no kidding. If you enter the labyrinth, you may not leave without seeing the Silver Lady.”

My eyes are still fixed on Ryn. His gaze slips from me to Nate and back again. He shakes his head, mock disappointment written across his face.

Crapping crap! Do I really have to run into the person I dislike most in the world now?

“Come,” the centaur says, and the tip of his sword glows white.

“Sorry,” I say, feeling a dagger materialize in each of my hands, “but I’m not going anywhere with you.”

The centaur thrusts his sword forward just as Nate dives in front of me. The force of the lightning bolt throws him back against me, and we fall through the doorway. “No!” I scream, and fling both daggers through the rapidly diminishing slit of space as the edges of the doorway melt back toward each other.

I fall through the darkness, Nate on top of me, and land on something soft and hairy. We tumble onto my bedroom floor beside an enormous brown bear—Filigree. I sit up, grab Nate’s shoulder, and roll him onto his back. Across the center of his chest, a hole is burned into his T-shirt. His skin is blackened and bleeding. His eyes are closed.

“No no no no. Filigree!” I punch Filigree’s shoulder to wake him. He raises his head. “Help me get him onto the bed. Now!” Filigree shifts into gorilla form, stands, and lifts Nate from the floor. He drops him onto the bed, then changes into a mouse and scurries up Nate’s arm and onto his shoulder.

I reach under the bed for my training bag and pull out my emergency kit. I scramble through the vials, powders and bandages until I find what I’m looking for. It’s a clear potion with tiny green flecks in it, excellent for speeding up the healing of burns. Nate is only half faerie though, and I have no idea if it will work on him.

I pour a few drops into the open wound. The potion sizzles as it meets Nate’s skin, giving off a smell like crushed leaves. I grab the edges of his T-shirt and tear the hole bigger, then place my hands on either side of the wound. Despite the life-or-death situation, it doesn’t escape my notice that my fingers are spread out across Nate’s bare chest. Filigree lets out a squeak. I look up at him. One eye bulges slightly larger than the other, as though he’s trying to raise his non-existent eyebrow. “What?” I ask, feeling my cheeks flush. “I’m not just doing this so I can touch his chest, okay. I’m trying to heal him. Besides, he’s actually a halfling, not a human, so you can stop judging me.”

I turn my attention back to Nate. Magic runs down to my fingertips and into his body like rain soaking into the earth. And still I don’t feel drained. I can’t help marveling at that. It’s as though my supply of power is endless, never needing to be replenished by rest or food. But after only a few moments, I remove my hands from Nate’s skin. I have no idea what this power will do to his normally magic-free halfling body, and I certainly don’t want to overdo it.

“Please work, please work,” I mutter, staring at the wound. Nothing seems to be happening, but perhaps it’s just that the healing is really slow. I stretch out my hand and gently brush Nate’s hair off his forehead. My heart contracts painfully for a beat.

I climb off the bed, walk to the bathing room, and get down on my knees by the pool to scrub my hands. I’m now utterly confused by my feelings for Nate. I thought I was ready to say goodbye to him earlier, but when he disappeared in the labyrinth, I was terrified I’d never see him again. That must mean something, right? I force myself to take my time washing my hands, hoping that when I return to Nate, the wound will have begun to heal.

It has. It’s healing from the outside in, the edges turning pale pink as the potion works its magic. It happens slowly, too slowly for me to see unless I look away for a considerable amount of time. I let out the breath I didn’t know I was holding and collapse onto the bed beside Nate.

The griffin disc is poking into me again. I pull it out of my pocket, lean over, and place it in the drawer beside my bed. I wish I could tell Tora about it. She’d be amazed at the amount of power I used tonight. Anyone would be. I held back a flood of water, fought off another faerie, and used stunner magic three times. Man, I would be getting so many points if this were an assignment.

I begin to relax, and my mind drifts back to the Underground chamber. Nate had his questions answered tonight, but now I have a whole lot of my own. Is it possible Angelica knew my parents? And what could she want revenge for? Maybe she made a mistake. Maybe what I said to her was true, and she did just have the wrong Violet. Somehow, though, I doubt that’s the case.

I force myself to think of other things. I wonder what I should do with the griffin disc. I wonder how much power it has left in it. I wonder if Nate will want to see his mother again, and whether his father ever knew what Angelica was. I wonder what Ryn was doing Underground. I wonder many things, until finally I drift into dreams.

I wake when I feel movement beside me. I sit up quickly. Nate groans and rubs his eyes. His hands flop to his sides and he blinks at me. “Are we home?” he asks.

“Yes. Well, my home, not yours.” I look down at his chest. Nothing remains of his encounter with the centaur except a pale pink patch.

Nate follows my gaze down to the scar on his chest. “Oh,” he says as he sits up. “Didn’t I …” He looks at me. “Something hit me.”

I nod. “The centaur’s magic. You jumped in front of me. Thanks, by the way.”

He smiles. “You’ve saved my life more than once, remember? It was the least I could do.” He looks down again. “And I like what you’ve done with my T-shirt.”

I chuckle. “You’re welcome. Though the credit should really go to the centaur. He did most of the damage.”

The corners of Nate’s smile lower slightly. “I don’t think I’ll be returning any time soon to thank him.”

I reach forward and cover one of his hands with mine. “So what happened, Nate? Where did you go? One second you were behind me and the next you were gone. I was just about going insane trying to find you.”

Nate rubs a hand over his eyes and shakes his head. “I don’t know, Vi. I remember running behind you … and then I remember being in the club.”

“That’s it?” I search his eyes. “You’re sure you don’t remember anything in between?”

He stares at the bed covers for while, as though trying to see something that’s not there. “I’m sure,” he says eventually. “There’s nothing.”

“Maybe it was just some labyrinth trick,” I suggest.

“Maybe,” he says, but there’s doubt in his voice.

I take both his hands in mine, lacing my fingers between his. “So,” I say. “You’re a halfling.” And it’s possible your mother has a major grudge against my deceased parents.

“Uh, yeah. I guess I am.” He pulls his hands free of mine and climbs off the bed. “So this is your home, huh?” Okay. Clearly he’s not ready to talk about the halfling thing yet. Well, I can wait.

“Yes.” I twist my hands together as I watch him examine my room. For some reason, it makes me feel as vulnerable as if I’m standing naked in front of him.

He turns in a slow circle. “It’s round.”

I arch an eyebrow. “I see your observational skills are still intact.”

“Why is there a mirror lying flat on your desk? Do you do some kind of magic on it?”

“Yes, actually. I use it to talk to other people. I see them in my mirror, and they see me in theirs.”

He looks at me. “Like the faerie version of Skype?”

“Um … sure.” It’s possible I’ve heard the word before, but I have no idea what it is.

He picks up two objects, each roughly the size and shape of a silver coin. I open my mouth to explain what they are, but he says, “Wait, let me guess. These … magically expand into dumbbells?”

I laugh and shake my head. “Way off. They’re sound drops. You stick one on each temple, send a little magic into them, and they play music in your ears.”

“No way.”

“Yes way,” I assure him. “I like to train to music. It blocks out all the gossip going on around me.”

He stares at the sound drops in his palm. “Why don’t you put them in your ears instead of on your temples? That seems more logical.”

I shrug. “Magic is magic. It doesn’t have to be logical.”

Nate places the sound drops back on my desk. He wanders past the shelf of old poetry books that belonged to my mother and crosses to the other side of my bedroom. I jump off the bed and join him at the doorway to the bathing room. He peers in at what looks like a slice of nature. Grass grows naturally, and a pool fills the center of the room. Scattered amongst the blades of grass are hundreds of tiny blue and yellow flowers. Trees with tangled branches conceal the walls, and water tumbles down a pile of rocks and into the other side of the pool.

“You are kidding me,” Nate says. “You have a pool in your bathroom?”

“The bath idea never really took off,” I say. “Self-cleaning pools have been in for centuries. And the mini waterfall provides an excellent shower. Also, in this realm, people tend to say ‘bathing room,’ not ‘bathroom.’” Nate simply stares, his mouth hanging open. “If you’d like to,” I add, “you can use it sometime.”

He closes his mouth and looks at me. Several heartbeats of silence pass between us before he says, “So you’ve decided not to leave me then?”

I look down at the bare skin revealed by the hole in his T-shirt. “I have no reason to anymore,” I say quietly. “You’re a halfling, Nate, not a human, which means I’m not breaking any Law by being with you.” He stiffens at the word halfling. I touch his arm. “I know it’s a lot to take in, everything that’s happened tonight, but I’ll be here when you’re ready to talk about it. I’m not going anywhere.”

I look up and find him staring at me. His gaze makes me feel hot all over. I lift my hand and run my finger over the almost invisible scar on his chest. He shivers at my touch. Gently, he reaches out and cups my face in his hand, brushing his thumb over my cheekbone. I lean forward to meet his kiss. My hands slide down over his jacket and slip beneath the hem of his T-shirt. His skin is warm, smooth. I skim my fingers across his back, feeling the ridges of his spine and—a raised pattern of hot skin?

I open my eyes and step back. “Nate,” I say. “Your back.”

“What?” I turn him around and lift the bottom of his T-shirt. My next breath catches in my throat, and I clamp a hand over my mouth. Tattooed onto the left side of Nate’s lower back, the skin around it still red, is the black outline of an eye.