Queen of the Fae: Book Two in the Fae Unbound Series (Fae Unbound Teen Young Adult Fantasy Series) (18 page)

"If that's true, then you're not Lizbet." In the back of her mind, Sheila remembered Lizbet's warning that the fae might be dangerous. She wished she’d thought before she’d blurted that out.

"I am. Don't worry. She...Morgan, I mean...has finally fully remerged. Today at school. She gave up trying to take over. It was really cool."

Sheila continued to look at her daughter for a long moment. "If you're Lizbet, then tell me, what does Lizbet most want out of life?"

"That's an easy one, if you’re talking about what I most want right now—I want to be free of the wings so that everything can just get back to normal. Which, as you can see, is already done." Lizbet stood up then and turned around. Sheila could see that the wings were gone. Not just folded on her daughter's back, but gone. Lizbet said, "Isn't it great? But I do have responsibilities to the fae. I can help people like Mona now."

Sheila enclosed her daughter in her arms when she came forward for a hug. She wanted to be happy for her, but she wasn't sure she should be. The girl in her arms felt and sounded like her daughter, but a part of her held back. Lizbet didn't just want her wings gone. They were only a symbol; what her daughter really wanted was a normal life back. Holding court was not part of any normal life that Sheila would have expected.

 “Mom, Mona and I are going to take a walk in the woods. It’s such a nice day. We have so many things to talk about, don’t we, Mona?”

Mona turned and nodded to Sheila in affirmation, but Sheila saw her hesitate for the briefest second before she did. She wasn’t sure what that hesitation meant, but she didn’t like it.

“Sure, honey. Just be back in time for dinner.”

Sheila waited until they disappeared into the trees at the back of the garden to pull her phone out.

The first time Morgan had made her reach for the earth, it had been invigorating as the power began to feed up through the soles of her feet, but then it grew painful as the connection to the soil grew stronger and she began to transform. Afterward, Morgan assured her that the pain would decrease in time as her human cells absorbed more of the transformative magic a dryad uses to join with the earth. But Mona didn’t want to do it again. And she certainly didn’t want to do it every time Morgan commanded it.

But that didn’t matter: Mona had no a choice. She’d sought out the queen as a better alternative to the gawking and judging of other people, and now she was an indentured servant assigned to build a relationship with Sheila so she could spy on Lizbet’s friends and family. She was also expected to be available for the queen whenever she wanted to dial up the fae at her home in Scotland. The queen smiled sweetly and asked her for her help, but behind the smile was a command and a threat. Why couldn’t Morgan just get a cell phone like everyone else?

“Here will be fine, Mona. We’re far enough away from the house. No one will see.”

Mona slipped off her sandals and dug her feet into the soft topsoil. She closed her eyes as the energy started moving from her feet to her legs and up her body, changing her as the whispers of the other dryads became stronger. The voice of the queen came to her more as a vibration than a sound: in dryad form, she no longer had ears. The queen fed her questions, and she relayed them to the others who lived in various parts of Europe. When the queen had asked all of her questions, she told Mona she could return. Mona visualized pulling her roots from the soil, painfully, and the stiffness in her body gradually eased until she fully inhabited her human form again.

“So, Euphemia, the answers to my questions?”

Mona looked up from the ground where she lay in agony and began to relay what she had learned.

Gurrdenn peered in the family room window, watching Bobby stare at colorful images as they flashed across the front of the picture box. Gurrdenn also enjoyed the images, and he laughed as one of the creatures on the screen hit another over the head with a hammer bigger than he was. But there was no point to it; neither of the creatures ate the other one when the battle was over. Even so, Gurrdenn enjoyed the battle as he kept an eye on his god.

He heard the sound of a bell and then the raised voices of the mother and father. He moved to the large glass door on the patio to better see what was happening. Everything that happened in the home of the god was of interest to the gnomes.

The father looked angry, shouting at the mother from just outside the door. Gurrdenn didn't understand all that he heard but, "around those fae again" and "you have an elf standing guard at the end of your driveway" and "I'm getting Bobby out of here" made sense to him. 

Bobby walked into the hallway then. The father saw him and said, "Bobby, come here. You're staying at my house for a while."

The mother turned around. Her voice was quiet. "Bobby, please go to your room. You're not in trouble. I just need to speak with your father privately."

The father moved forward but the mother blocked his path as he said, "Bobby, come here."

Bobby turned around and went back the way he'd come in. Gurrdenn tracked him with his eyes until the boy disappeared out of the other side of the family room.

The mother and father became quieter, and then the mother shut the door and the father was gone.

Gurrdenn knew what he had to do. The Bobby god was under threat.

Tanji parked at the side of the road and walked into the meadow. The sun was just rising, and the grass glistened with a touch of dew. It was a beautiful and peaceful scene. She wished she could enjoy it.

"Eamon?" she called.

The gruagach appeared at her side in a blur of movement. "Mornin’, lassie. What brings you here so bright and early?"

"Real problems, I think. Lizbet's mom called me last night, and she was worried. She says that Lizbet had an elf over for a pow-wow, and she was planning on ‘holding court’ regularly as Queen of the Fae. She also says that Lizbet claimed your good buddy Queen Morgan had finally remerged and fully integrated with her, so no one needed to worry about her anymore. The thing that bothered Mrs. Moore the most was that she couldn't tell if it was real Lizbet or faux Lizbet."

"Poor Sheila, she's so been so jargogled since Fae Day. I'm glad she called you. Will you be able to tell the difference if it's my mistress just claiming to be Lizbet?"

"Yeah, definitely," Tanji said. "But if ‘ol Queenie is trying to pretend that she's Lizbet instead of just sneaking around when Lizbet's out of it, that worries me. Do we let her think that she's fooled us, or do we confront her? I really don't know what to do when I pick her up for school this morning if it's not Lizbet in the car with me."

"If, as you say, it's Morgan trying to convince you that she and Lizbet have finally remerged, let's go about this carefully. With Morgan in full control, she could take Lizbet away. I believe James, or more accurately, Myrddin, would be the only thing keeping her here, so we've got to keep quiet until we're sure we have a plan."

Morgan reluctantly dressed herself in Lizbet's ridiculous clothing but admired the way the style displayed the girl's athletic body to good effect. She tried to find suitable pieces in Lizbet's jewelry box, but none of the trinkets there were real gold and none contained precious stones. What status must this girl have if she owned nothing to flaunt her position?

She walked out the front door after hearing the signaling sound Tanji used to let Lizbet know she had arrived. She’d observed all of Lizbet's actions closely for over a month now, and she was sure that she could fool even Lizbet’s best friend if she chose her actions carefully, sticking close to the behaviors and patterns of speech she had observed. 

"Hey Tanj. Like the new me?" Morgan turned so that Tanji could see her smooth, wingless back as she approached the car.

"Whoa! When did that happen?"

"Morgan integrated yesterday, like, all of a sudden, after school. It was weird. But suddenly, I had all of her memories, and that was it. She was just in there. And I had the magic, so I made the wings go away."

"Seriously? I'm so happy for you, girl."

"Thanks. I've wanted it so badly. It’s so hard to believe! I can get back to normal now. Although, of course, I had to hold court last night because Morgan is the fae’s queen, and they really need her back to lead them. So, I've got to make sure that I'm doing my duty. It's going to be so hard to do when I'm stuck here so far away from most of the other fae."

"Court? What does that mean?"

"You know that half-fae have been showing up here because their communities don't accept them, and I need to be able to provide them with assistance of some kind. I've also been advised that the elves are unhappy about the number of half-fae that have been seeking them out; they want to be left alone. Some of the elvin communities are even discussing arming themselves at their borders to keep the curious away. I need to help them understand that would be a bad idea. Morgan was a peacemaker. I need to be available to respond to all of my people so that things don’t go wrong."

"Most of the elves are in France, Germany, and the UK, right? I can’t really see those modern democracies being okay with armed fae states inside their borders. So you can really help with that?"

"Of course. Although I’m not present in Europe, Euphemia…,” Morgan paused and corrected herself, “…Mona, who is working for your father, is lending me her talents as a dryad to remain in communication with the fae court in Europe. I have Morgan's enormous body of wisdom in these things now, and I need to get involved again for the good of everyone."

Tanji wanted to roll her eyes at that, but instead she replied, "Yeah, I can see that. Good for you, girl."

Morgan exited the car after Tanji parked it in the parking lot of Lizbet's school and walked into the school next to Tanji, exactly as Lizbet did every day.

As they parted ways at the first hall, Tanji said, "Hey, good luck on that chemistry test today."

Morgan replied, "Thanks! Yeah, I guess I'll do okay."

Tanji turned right down the hall, out of sight of Lizbet. She grabbed her phone, pulled up the contact for Eamon, and hit the call button.

"Eamon? The chick I gave a ride to? Definitely not Lizbet...she almost has Lizbet down, but she's a real freaky version of her who doesn't think it's the least bit weird she's telling elves how to run their lives...yeah, no...she definitely has control of the magic because the wings are gone...it was like that was what she showed me to prove she was Lizbet and that instantly gives her cred. She hasn’t got a clue what Lizbet is really about."

Tanji listened for a minute. "No…yeah…I'm sure. I wished her good luck on a chemistry test and she didn't say a thing. She took chemistry last year. She's taking physics this year. Lizbet would have caught that mistake in a heartbeat...but I knew it wasn't her even before that. That was just to make sure my gut reaction was right."

Tanji stopped outside of her classroom. "Look, Eamon, I gotta go. Just catch up with me tonight, okay? We have to do something."

Morgan congratulated herself on how well she'd managed Lizbet's school day. She was gracious when the human children noticed her lack of wings, and she felt sure that she’d behaved in every way as the girl Lizbet would in the same circumstances.

As she walked down the hall, a boy slapped her on the behind as he walked past, then continued quickly on, turning around once to wink.

Morgan raised her hand and the boy fell to the floor, gasping for air. She walked up to him and looked down as he continued to fight for breath, eyes desperate, begging her to stop. "No one touches the Queen of the Fae unless she wills it."

Morgan then waved her hand, and the boy was able to breathe again.

"See that you stay very far away from me in the future."

"Moore!" a voice rang out behind her, as the boy scooted away from her across the floor, then stood up and hurried off.

Miss Armstrong stood in the middle of the hall, hands on her hips. 

"Moore, we're going to the principal's office. Now."

Morgan had no intention of letting a human tell her what to do, but from previous encounters with this woman, she knew the woman had some kind of authority over the girl. She would need to comply if she meant to pass herself off as Lizbet. She fell into step behind the woman who stalked through the hall in front of her.

When Morgan spoke to the heavy set, bespectacled, middle-aged man whose nameplate identified him as Principal, she made a point not to be too compliant. She thought the girl had more bearing than to allow herself to be manhandled. She advised him that no one should be allowed to touch her that way without her explicit permission. The principal agreed, but he also advised her that she knew that violent behavior was never tolerated on school grounds. The boy would be punished with an out-of-school suspension, but she would be placed in after-school detention for the day to think about how she could have handled the situation differently.

Morgan fumed on the inside but accepted detention without an argument.