Violet's Story

Chapter 5

Five

We tumble onto the grass in Nate’s back garden. I sit up immediately, afraid that Zell will somehow follow us through. But the only thing that breaks the silence on this quiet street is the sound of our labored breathing and the occasional cricket chirp.

I collapse onto my side—the side that wasn’t hit with Zell’s magic. My stylus rolls from my open palm onto the grass beside me. I try to reach it to return it to my boot, but my hand is in such pain I can’t even move my fingers.

Nate takes a few deep breaths before propping himself up on one elbow. He looks down at me and says, “Of all the places in the world we could have landed after falling off that cliff, you chose to take us back to the very people who just tried to kill us?”

I sit up in disbelief, blinking away the dark spots that threaten to engulf my vision. “Shouldn’t you be thanking me?”

“Vi,” he says, a smile turning his lips up. “I’m just—”

“You were the one who was convinced they weren’t actually going to harm us. You ruined our chance at escaping last night. You didn’t even try to run away when I attacked Drake on the cliff! I have been trying to save your ass since the moment that reptiscilla appeared in your bedroom—a job you haven’t exactly made easy for me—and now that we’re finally out of harm’s way, you can’t even be bothered to—”

He leans toward me, cutting off my words by pressing his mouth to mine. He’s kissing me. He’s kissing me! I freeze for a second, then shove him away from me before realizing that I actually kind of like it. “I—I’m sorry,” I stammer. “That was just—instinct. You, um, took me by surprise.”

Do I want him to kiss me again? Is it a good idea? No. Yes. I don’t know!

“No problem,” Nate says, refusing to look at me. “Just trying to get you to stop shouting at me.”

I can’t seem to get any words out.

“Looks like it worked,” he adds. “And I wasn’t trying to make you angry with that comment. I was just … making a light-hearted observation. And thanks. For saving me. Again.”

He isn’t going to try to kiss me again. It’s probably for the best. No, it’s definitely for the best. I shouldn’t be kissing human boys. I’m sure it’s on some list of Guild rules.

“Oh, wow, have you seen the back of your shoulder?” Nate asks, leaning to one side so he has a better view of my back.

I stare at him.

“Sorry, dumb question. Of course you can’t see it. It, um, looks pretty painful.”

“Not as painful as this.” I hold out my scorched wrist. It’s throbbing with such intensity I think I might be sick.

“What the hell?” Nate whispers, touching my elbow to bring my arm closer to his face. The skin around the metal band is blistered and raw. “This happened because you used magic?”

“Yeah. I think this band is meant to make the use of magic so painful that the wearer is basically powerless. But, you know, we had to get away.”

“You have to get this seen to.” Nate’s eyes are large and worried.

“I suppose.” The black spots are swimming in front of my eyes again. “Normally I’d heal from something like this pretty quickly, but—” don’t pass out, don’t pass out “—um, I guess this band thing is stopping that.”

Nate looks toward his house. “Let’s go inside. I can get you some painkillers at least. My parents like to go to bed early so as long as we’re quiet we won’t—”

“Violet!” My head jerks up to search for the source of the voice. “You’re okay.” A man leaps off the roof and lands beside us. I’m about to panic when I realize I recognize him. It’s Flint, Tora’s older brother. He’s involved with security at the Guild, so I’m not entirely sure what he’s doing hanging out on Nate’s roof. Oh, heck, did he see us kissing? “Tora’s going crazy,” Flint says. “She’ll be so relieved to know you’re all right.”

“But …” I’m confused now. “How did she know anything was wrong?”

“Raven saw what happened.” Flint sits down on the grass and crosses his legs. “She was in the trees, setting up traps for those nixles that are breeding out of control, and some faerie—a crimson, I think she said—jumped out of nowhere, stunned you both, and disappeared with you.”

I nod. “I figured that’s what happened.”

“We had no idea where to look for you, of course; you’re the only one with that ability.” Flint winks at me. Nate gives me a strange look. “So Tora’s been harassing the guys at Missing Fae all day—you know how slow they are—and I’ve been checking in here regularly, hoping you’d show up. Oh, I almost forgot.” Flint removes a small bag from his back and pulls out an emergency kit. He opens the lid, lifts out two tiny cupcakes, and gives us each one. “Raven modified yours slightly,” he says to Nate. “It’s human-safe.”

Nate stares at the cupcake in his hand for a few moments, then looks up at Flint. “Are you serious? Vi’s arm has been magically barbequed and you think she needs a cupcake?”

“What? Let me see.” I hold out my arm, and Flint leans closer. He examines the metal that’s stuck to my skin. I watch his expression grow darker.

“You know what this is,” I say.

He nods. “I haven’t seen one in a long time, but I do know what it is. And I know how to remove it.”

“Oh, thank goodness.”

Flint doesn’t look happy though. “It’s going to hurt, Vi. Badly. Really badly. You should definitely eat the cupcake first. And let’s move out of sight of the house. I’m glamoured, but you two are rather conspicuous.”

We huddle between the rose bushes, and Nate pops the cupcake into his mouth in one bite. I do the same, and within seconds I feel a kind of healing strength spreading throughout me. At the same time the pain in my wrist increases. My body is fighting to heal itself, but that horrible metallic band won’t let it.

“That wasn’t a normal cupcake, was it?” Nate says, once he’s finished swallowing.

“Of course not,” Flint answers. He removes a special stylus from his emergency kit. Instead of narrowing to a point, it has a square, flat tip. The type of tip you could insert underneath things. “Okay, let’s get that thing off you.”

I swallow, then jump slightly as I feel Nate’s hand covering my uninjured one. “Squeeze as hard as you need to,” he says. “But just so you know, if there’s any blood involved, I’ll probably pass out.”

Flint grips my arm above my wrist and whispers words I don’t recognize. Then, very gently, he pushes the edge of the stylus beneath the metal band. The flash of pain seems to be everywhere at once—chest, head, fingers, feet, eyes—blinding me with its intensity. I jerk back, breathe in sharply, and watch the black spots gather in full force before my eyes.

Murmuring voices rouse me. The pain is gone, though a deep weariness reaches right to the core of me. I blink a few times, and my eyes focus on Nate’s worried face. I can feel the grass beneath my head.

“I guess I was the one who passed out, huh?”

“Understandable,” Flint says, his head appearing next to Nate’s. “I probably should have put you to sleep first. Sorry about that.”

I shrug. “I was only conscious for about three seconds of pain before everything went black.” I raise my arm to have a look. A strip of angry red skin encircles my wrist, but the intense agony has faded to a mere whisper of an ache. I sit up and find that Nate is still holding my other hand. I don’t pull it away.

“It will leave a scar,” Flint tells me. “Strange, I know, since we’re not supposed to scar, but it must be some property of the magic in the band.” He stands. “I’ve put some protective spells around the house in case that faerie comes back for the boy.”

I pull my hand out of Nate’s—reluctantly—and stand up. “Thanks, though it’s probably not necessary. I don’t think he knows where Nate lives, or I’m sure he would have come here first and taken Nate when no one else was around.”

Which leads my thoughts to the next question: How did Zell know that Nate was in Creepy Hollow forest with me?

“Well, I need to get going,” Flint says. “I’ve already informed Tora that you’re okay. She’ll visit you in the morning. Oh, and the boy’s parents think he’s been away on a school field trip.”

“Thank you, Flint.” I lean forward to hug him.

“You can take care of things from here?” he whispers into my ear. I know what he means, and for a split second I wonder if I still have that vial of Forget. But when I pat my pocket, I find the tiny cylindrical shape there. I nod at Flint. Of course I’ll take care of it. Nate definitely needs to forget everything that’s happened.

Flint kneels on the grass and writes a doorway into the ground. He jumps into the void and disappears.

Okay. Now you just have to get Nate to drink what’s in that vial. Then you can go home and this will all be over.

I turn around and join Nate on the ground. He’s playing with my stylus. “Why isn’t it working for me? Has it run out of magic or something?”

I laugh. “The magic isn’t in the stylus, silly, it’s in me. It’s in nature.” I place my palms next to each other, draw on my own power, and watch my cupped hands fill with a liquid like molten silver. Nate leans forward and touches it; his fingers come away dry. I throw the liquid into the air and watch the droplets transform into shimmering silver butterflies that flit quickly away.

“The stylus just helps to channel magic,” I explain, “like when we send amber messages to each other, or open doorways to the paths.”

“But when you conjure sparkly weapons out of nothing, all you need is your hands?” he asks.

“Oh, the weapons are different,” I say. “When we begin our training, we each get assigned a whole set of weapons. Bow and arrow, sword, whip, daggers, and a whole lot of others. These weapons are enchanted so we don’t have to carry them on us. But it’s not like they’re invisible, it’s more like … they exist in another dimension.”

“Another dimension?” Nate smiles. “Have we moved from fantasy to sci-fi now?”

“Well, I don’t really know how else to explain it.” I twist a piece of grass around my finger. “It’s like they’re always there, but just out of reach. So as soon as I need one, my mind calls for it, and a moment later it’s in my hands. When I don’t need it anymore it disappears.”

“Incredible,” Nate says with a grin. He leans back on his hands. “This may sound weird, but I’m glad that reptiscilla attacked me. I’d never have known about your world otherwise. Or about you.”

You’re going to forget all this. You’re going to forget me.

But I don’t want him to forget. I want him to kiss me again.

He must have noticed something in my expression because he leans forward. “I won’t tell anyone what I know,” he says. “I swear. You can trust me.”

I nod. I believe him. But that’s not the way this works.

Nate looks down into his lap. “Vi,” he says, and I know it’s stupid but I like the way he says my name. “That crimson faerie was looking for a guardian who had some special ability to find people. And the guy who was just here implied that you would know where to look if someone was missing.”

Ah. Not just an uncommonly good-looking face after all.

“Yeah,” I say slowly. “That would be me.”

He leans even closer. “So you could find my mother?”

I narrow my eyes. “I thought you didn’t want to have anything to do with her.”

“Oh, come on. You know I didn’t mean it when I said that. You just about rolled your eyes into the ceiling.”

“I don’t know, Nate …”

He grabs my hand. “Please. I mean, it’s not like I want her in my life or anything. I just want to know what this is all about. How did she get involved with a faerie? Why does he want to find her so badly?”

I have to admit I’d like to know the answers to those questions too. Perhaps once I’ve made Nate forget everything I can find out on my own. There’s just one little hitch …

“Do you have anything that belongs to her?”

“Um, I don’t think so. Why?”

“Well, I have to connect to her somehow. It would be easy if I knew her, but since I don’t I’ll need to use some item that belongs to her.”

“Oh.” Nate looks disappointed, but then his face lights up. “My dad must have kept some of her things. I’m sure we can find something.”

I’m sure I can find something.

“So you’ll help me?” Nate takes hold of my other hand now.

“Um, yes, okay.” I hate lying to him. I feel terrible. But I have to make him forget about me and my world. If I don’t, and the Guild finds out, I probably will end up expelled.

“Nate, why don’t you have a girlfriend?” Okay, what? I don’t remember thinking about that question before it came out. I try to pull my hands out of his, but he won’t let me. “I mean, I’m assuming you don’t, because, you know, you kissed me. But you seem like a nice guy, so I’m just wondering why you’re not … taken.” I’m floundering. I wish the earth would open up and swallow me whole. Come to think of it, if I could reach my stylus I could make that happen.

Nate looks down at his lap. “I was dating someone last year, but … well, it just didn’t work out.” He laces his fingers between mine, and a shiver zings down my back. “This year I thought I should focus more on school. I’m not failing chemistry, by the way. It’s actually my favorite subject.”

“And you don’t think chasing down your mother will interfere with school?”

“Not if we use those magic faerie path things. We can go anywhere in no time at all. We could have a date in Paris and be back the same night.”

A date.

This is not happening, Violet. Just give him the damn potion and leave.

He leans forward and closes the distance between us. His lips touch mine, hesitating just a moment in case I want to pull away. I don’t. His lips are cooler than mine, something I was too freaked out to notice the first time. My heart beats so fiercely it hurts. I open my mouth, and his tongue nudges against mine. He tastes like the cupcake I ate before I passed out.

I want to get closer to him. I want to put my arms around him and feel the rhythm of his heart, but it’s impossible the way we’re sitting, legs crossed, facing each other. Without detaching my lips from his, I uncross my legs and get onto my knees. I shuffle closer, my hands moving to—

And then a horrible gurgling sound causes us to jump apart in fright. I look up and see a light on in Nate’s house. Nate shakes his head and starts laughing. He pulls me closer and whispers into my ear, “I bet you never thought a toilet would scare you.”

A toilet. Of course. I don’t know whether to hate it or thank it.

“Do you want something to drink?” Nate asks, running his fingers up and down the inside of my arm. “I’m really thirsty.”

Trying to ignore the goose bumps rising all over my skin, I say, “Uh, yes, thank you.” I let him lead me around to the back door. What a perfect opportunity; I can just empty the potion into his glass when he’s not looking.

The thought makes my chest ache.

We tiptoe across his kitchen, and Nate pours us something to drink. I slip my hand into my pocket and pull out the vial, enclosing it in my fist. Nate places the two glasses on the counter in the center of the kitchen and puts the jug back in the fridge.

Just pour it in, just pour it in.

I hesitate and miss my opportunity. No problem. I’ll just wait until he’s distracted.

Nate leans on the counter and reaches across to hold my hand again, as though the physical contact is a lifeline for him. I’m afraid to look up, but my eyes are drawn to his as though by a spell. I can’t look away. His eyes are dark pools that I imagine myself falling into.

And there’s that warmth inside my chest again that just won’t seem to go away. That heat that quickens my heart and steals my breath. But at the core of it is an ache. A deep and desperate longing to no longer be alone.

With Nate, I wouldn’t have to feel that ache anymore.

I slip the vial back into my pocket.

“So,” I say. “When do we go find your mother?”