Hold Tight (The Embrace Series) (16 page)

“This is my fault.” Isaac pinched the bridge of his nose. “If he figured out you’re with me, then he’d want to use you to get back at me.”

“Right, because you sent him packing the last time he was here.”

“I warned you about messing with the Fae.”

Glad Mr. In Control was back, I bumped his shoulder with mine and replied, “No, you said learning about earthly elements was more useful than learning about faeries.”

“I believe I called them devious little creatures that twist the words of humans to their advantage.”

Figured he’d remember his words verbatim. I already felt bad enough I’d been tricked into thinking Reed was a nice guy. Isaac dragged his fingers through his hair, grabbing a fistful at the back of his head. We were quiet, each consumed in our own thoughts. Mine centered on that tiny fuchsia-wrapped treat I hadn’t gotten to enjoy.

“What’s the big deal about eating a piece of candy anyway?” I asked.
An amazingly delicious piece of candy,
I added silently.

He studied me, eyes all squinty and mouth opened just a little. “You feel like you need it, don’t you?”

“No,” I lied. I needed it almost as much as I needed to breathe.

“Faerie food is like a drug to humans. Eat enough, and you’ll become dependent on it. Eat too much, and you’ll forget who you are. It’s how faeries lure their victims away from their homes and into their realm. Can you hear him, in your thoughts? When you look at him, do you see beyond his human guise?”

I scrunched up my nose, sure now I had briefly seen Reed’s true form at the gas station and that his baby-blue eyes were as bright as the lightest, freshest snow. “But I’ve only had a piece—or three,” I corrected, remembering the candy I’d found in the kitchen.

Isaac closed the book, and it disappeared. “I wouldn’t put it past him to slip something into your food or beverages.”

“He can do that?” Of course he could. Invisibility gave him an unfair advantage. “Can’t we send him back?”

“You’d need a spell to cast him out of our realm, and I’ve never been able to find one. Believe me, I searched the last time I faced him. The best we can do is seal the door you opened, only we can’t do that until we know Reed’s in his realm, and I doubt he’s going to volunteer to go quietly.” Isaac leaned forward, elbows on his knees as he peered out toward the horizon.

“You know, I don’t think Brea is anything like her brother.” The more I thought about that, the more I was sure she’d help me. “She hinted to closing the door once. What if we ask her to lure him home so we can do it now?”

“Do you think you can trust her?”

I wanted to trust Brea because we’d become friends. At least, I thought we were friends. There was always the possibility that she was the one slipping me faerie roofies. “I don’t know, but it’s a plan.”

“Where is she now?” he asked, hope rising in his voice.

I shrugged. “She sort of comes and goes as she pleases.”

His shoulders slouched forward, but instead of going off on how I’d let a faerie—two, apparently—run around Gloucester unchecked, he said, “Let’s focus on protecting you.”

He hopped off the rock and held his hand out to me, helping me down.

I liked that plan. “How we going to do that?”

“We’ll faerie-proof you.”

Chapter 14

Faerie-Proofing

Turned out faerie-proofing a person required a length of chain that one could find in any hardware store—or my garage since my dad was a packrat. Isaac and I gathered what we needed from my dad’s toolbox and went to my room to work on what I expected to be a complicated spell.

“Give me your wrist,” Isaac said, holding up a seven-inch length of chain he’d recently cut to size by pinching the unwanted link between his thumb and forefinger and blasting it with a small amount of magic.

“Why?” My gaze traveled from the metal chain to his eyes to my wrist, which I promptly hid behind my back. “Tell me you aren’t suggesting I wear that dirty thing like a bracelet.”

“Iron’s toxic to faeries. We’re lucky your dad had it.” He held the thing closer to me.

Out of all the words sprinting through my mind,
lucky
wasn’t one of them.

“What’s to keep him from grabbing me by the waist?” I really didn’t want to make a fashion statement showing up at school with a hardware store special as my bracelet.

“If you’re worried about it, I could fashion together a belt to match.” When I didn’t move a muscle—which was out of fear he was serious—he said, “Faeries don’t like to be around iron. Wearing it around your wrist should be enough to keep Reed away.”

With a heavy sigh, I relented and gave him my wrist. The chain went right next to the hemp bracelet I never took off. With a little help from his powers, Isaac easily squeezed the last link into an oval, securing it in place. But one wasn’t enough. He made a matching one for my left wrist.

I held my forearms out. “These look ridiculous.”

“It’s only temporary.” Isaac set the spare chain on my dresser, noticing the flowers for the first time. “Where did you get these?”

“Brea picked them from the garden.”

“It’s the end of fall.” He pulled one of the green sprigs from the vase and studied it.

“She’s a summer faerie. She can wake the flowers if she wants to.”

He grabbed the bouquet in one hand and turned toward the garbage can near my nightstand, dripping water on the dresser and carpet in the process. I jumped in front of him before he could throw them out.

“They’re from Brea, not Reed.” I went to grab them, but he moved his hand out of my reach. “We want her help. Don’t you think we’ll insult her if we throw out the flowers she gave me?” We needed Brea to stay on our side. Besides, a bouquet of flowers was not going to make matters worse.

This time when I reached for them, he didn’t resist.

“Get rid of the meadowsweet,” he said. I gave him a confused look, and he added, “It attracts faeries. It’s the green stuff.”

I pulled the sprigs of green leaves and pine from the mix and handed them to him.

On the way back to my house, I had told Isaac everything I knew about Brea and her home. We knew that her brother was of the Winter Court, so Isaac was sure that with winter fast approaching, Reed had become more powerful than Brea.

Isaac leaned against the dresser, legs crossed at his ankles. “When did you summon her?”

I blew out a sigh and picked up Jeffery, the stuffed giraffe I’d gotten at a carnival when I was thirteen. “I don’t know, a week ago. I think. Why?” I sank down onto the corner of my bed.

“Was it before or after Natalie disappeared?”

“Before.” The word dragged out as the gears inside my head clicked into place. “Oh my God, you think she’s been abducted by faeries. And the fact that I just said that out loud and meant it shows how seriously weird life has gotten.”

Isaac spun the meadowsweet between his fingers. “One way to find out.”

A quick trip downstairs gave us all the things we needed. Our scrying bowl was one of my mom’s navy-blue serving dishes; it was shallow and ceramic, perfect per Isaac. He surrounded the bowl with meadowsweet and daisies. We built the circle without Kaylee and Josh.

“We couldn’t get this to work with all four corners of our coven. Why do you think it will work now, with only the two of us?” I asked.

“Last time we were looking for Natalie in our world. To cross realms, you need meadowsweet and something that has been touched by a faerie’s magic.”

“Hence the daisies.”

He smirked. “Yep.”

We sat facing each other with our hands linked and the bowl of water on the carpet between us. We used a photo of Natalie that had been taken at our eighth grade graduation party as the image of who we were looking for. Since she had given it to me, we also used it as the something that was once hers.

The water swirled in a silver haze. I kept picturing Natalie in her purple ski hat, the pom-pom on top of her head bobbing front to back when she laughed. Her wind-kissed cheeks had grown even rosier when she’d talked about her secret admirer. Had Reed given her the flowers? Had the blue rose been from him? Now I wondered if the bouquet I’d so adamantly saved from the trash was from Brea or if it had been from Reed all along.

The silver haze moved slowly to the outskirts of the bowl. It was like looking through a mirror. An image started to form: first a brook, then the snowy shore and ice-laced trees. It could have been anywhere, except the water was too blue and the needles of the tall cypresses too green. The sky was a palette of indigo and plum. A group of girls in long velvet dresses scampered into view, laughing and chatting, though we couldn’t hear what they said.

The girls drew nearer in our sight as if we’d hit a zoom button. Three of them were fairies; I could tell by their slanted eyes and creamy complexion. But the fourth was human. Her shiny hair and too-perfect skin looked the same as the others, but her normal brown eyes gave her true nature away. Then a fifth girl ran up to them, carrying a covered basket. The view adjusted again, focusing on her.

Natalie.

“I did this,” I murmured. I had ruined Natalie’s life along with her families’ and friends’ by playing with magic I didn’t understand.

“You didn’t mean to.”

“That doesn’t make it better.” My fingers slid from his. “Why would he take her?”

Brea had said faeries used to kidnap babies, but Natalie was far from an infant. Reed couldn’t have done it to punish Isaac; Isaac barely knew her.

“Something about her must have intrigued him. It might have been how petite she is or her scent, but luring humans away from their homes is something the Fae are all too good at. It’s one of the reason witches cast them out of our realm.”

“How do we get her back?” I asked. Returning her to her parents was the only thing that truly mattered.

Isaac rubbed his hand on his jeans. “Madison, there’s a reason humans aren’t supposed to accept gifts from faeries. Their food changes our cellular structure. We literally become dependent on it. Now that she’s in Sanctus, she’s better off staying.”

“We’re not leaving her there.” I pointed to the scrying bowl for emphasis.

Isaac tilted his head to the side as he watched Natalie pull a wine bottle filled with clear blue liquid out of the basket. “She looks happy. That’s a good thing.”

“How is that a good thing?” When his mouth opened and closed without a reply, I said, “She’s obviously been brainwashed. So…we…we’ll get her back and unbrainwash her.”

“Unbrainwash?”

“You know what I mean, Isaac!”

“Madison, Natalie’s lived on a diet of their food and spirits for, what? A week? Her body’s changed.”

“No.” I shook my head. “It can’t be too late. She just needs to eat something normal.”

Isaac reached over the bowl and held my hands. “Madison, it doesn’t work that way.”

“I refuse to believe it’s too late! She has family and friends who care about her. She deserves to be with them, Isaac. They deserve to have her back. Three stupid pieces of chocolate can’t mean a lifetime away from the people I love.” Tears streamed down my face, and my body trembled. “I don’t want to forget what I have here.”

“I won’t let that happen to you.”

“I want it. The candy,” I whispered, ashamed to admit it out loud and scared to death because the ache in my stomach was a hunger I’d never felt before. “Even though I now know what it is, I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Isaac pulled me into his arms. “But you haven’t crossed realms yet, and I won’t let you. We’ll send Reed packing, and then we’ll find a way to counter what he’s done to you.”

“And if we can’t? If it’s too late for me too?” I sniffed, eyes leaking tears on Isaac’s shirt. “We have to at least try to save her, Isaac.”

He held me tighter. “I’ll see if I can find a way.”

Even though he said the words, he didn’t sound optimistic.

Chapter 15

The Test

Discovering Natalie was enjoying herself in Reed’s realm was downright disturbing. Had she willingly left her friends and family behind? Did she miss them? Did she even remember who they were? If faerie food really was like a drug to humans, the answer to these questions was most likely no.

As if it wasn’t bad enough to know that my actions had torn a family apart, I found out Reed had gone back to work after our encounter at the convenience store. The icing on the cake: Dad loved the guy.

“The reception desk is going to be cool,” he said on returning home after Isaac’s and my scrying session. “Not one right angle. Reed designed it that way.”

The worst part was I couldn’t tell Dad the truth of why he should fire the guy, so I said nothing. Caden still worked for my father too—there was another guy I didn’t trust. I even considered the possibility that Caden might also be a member of the Seelie Court. Maybe Isaac was wrong and Reedsnap, Dellis, and Rhoswen were three different faeries and not two. Now that I had my iron bracelets and Caden liked to show up everywhere I went, I was sure it was only a matter of time before I found out.