The Changeling (33 page)

None of them looked at me as I got to my feet. Billy tried to stand between the window and me, blocking my view, but I caught a glimpse of several people moving about on the terrace below. When I looked again, I saw a sheet covering something, and several of my friends holding each other.

Perfect calmness and a dull sensation were the only things I felt when Sherman forced himself past my barrier and began compelling me. Billy grabbed Doug like a sack of potatoes, and Sara guided me to the room across the hall, flinging the window open. All five of us drifted out the window and downward toward the ground. Before we landed, Sherman intensified his efforts and I lost consciousness. I came to in the Duesenberg. Sherman compelled me to remain calm, as he continued to force himself past my barrier. He woke Doug, who looked completely bewildered.

Horror spread across Doug’s face. “Was any of that real?”

“You were not upstairs when the storm began, you took shelter with us in here,” Sherman said, forcing himself into Doug’s mind. It worked.

Doug slumped back in the seat, completely relaxed.

“It’s time we went back inside,” Sherman said, still compelling calmness.

As he released his mental grip on my mind, I became aware of people crying. Billy grabbed one elbow and Sara the other. I stared at both of them and fought for breath when I saw their pained expressions. Candace stumbled to me, bent at the waist, arms crossed, wailing guttural, anguish-filled screams, trying to talk. Doug caught her before she collapsed on the floor. Her face grimaced as she sucked in a noisy breath.

“She’s dead. Rachel’s dead,” she moaned.

TWENTY-TWO

A DREARY PALL

Reach, catch, pull, push!
My inner voice screamed the rhythm.

At the pool wall, I tucked my head, flipped, and pushed off hard. After several kicks, I breached the surface of the water and drew in a quick breath.

Accelerate,
my mind droned with each stroke as I tried to perfect my form. I had to go faster. I had to get to the end—I was desperate to finish. Had my face been out of the water I would have been screaming at the top of my lungs. Anger, no, rage, pure rage drove each stroke.
Stay aligned
, the nagging inner voice screamed as I focused on the line in the bottom of the pool.

“Another sub-fifty, O’Shea,” Coach Rollins said when I touched.

I pulled myself out of the water and grabbed a towel, muttering, “Done today,” as I walked past him. He didn’t say a word, and let me leave. Though I didn’t look, I knew all my teammates were staring at me. That’s all they’d done for the last month.

I showered, dressed and stormed out of the building without saying a word to anyone. Dad and Grandpa waited for me by the Lincoln, but they didn’t speak as I slid into the back seat, put my Earbuds in, and cranked up my iPod.

They’d all tried to talk at one point or another. Everyone wanted me to “move on,” whatever that meant. How could I move on? How was that possible when every time I closed my eyes I saw her face? I couldn’t move on when every moment of silence was shattered by memories of her voice, and every time I breathed I felt guilty that my lungs, rather than hers, were filling with air. I’d wondered a thousand times why she’d followed me up the stairs, and what might have happened if she hadn’t. I was crying again, heaving, when I saw the helpless look on Dad’s face in the rearview mirror.

***

Because I was a straight ‘A’ student, Principal Spencer agreed to give me some time off. I’d finish up my classes during the summer. So each morning for forty-three days I’d searched for Cassandra at 9 am, but she had disappeared the night she murdered Rachel, and she had not appeared over Springdale at all during that time. My link to Mitch was withering away and there was nothing I could do about it, save for the option I didn’t want to take. At the moment, my anger wouldn’t allow me to give up.

The day after Rachel’s funeral, I visited the cottage at the Seoladán and found a note from Cassandra inside the bureau where I’d found Pete’s journal. She warned me that more would die if I didn’t leave the Weald. The note did two things. First, it alleviated
some
of the self-blame I carried continuously. She’d planned to kill one of my friends all along and there was nothing I could have done about it. Second, it turned my fear and dislike of the Unseelie, all of them, into hatred, and that hatred was growing more intense by the moment.

After searching for Cassandra each morning, I returned to the clearing and listened in on the Council, just as Pete had done. Ozara defended the Unseelie, repeatedly arguing that Zarkus would never allow the Unseelie Clan to risk an all out war. Predictably, she referred to Cassandra and the others as rogues, and brushed aside the event as if it were not that important.

Sometimes human, sometimes exotic animals, the Council members took random forms each time they met in the clearing. Most often they discussed nothing important, but that wasn’t the case when the Council considered what should be done about me. Two of them blamed me for the attack, suggesting that I’d used my abilities offensively, but Sherman quieted them.

“I was there,” he said, “Maggie O’Shea never acted offensively, even when her own life was in peril. She has kept her promise.”

Ozara agreed, but suggested that it might be best for everyone involved if a new family was put in place. To my horror, half the Council agreed.

Victoria interjected. “I believe it best if we forgo this debate for now. Indeed, I cannot fathom why we are not instead discussing why the Steward has not taken the fifth trial.”

One of the Council members, Asharyu, a handsome African male with a deep, drum-like voice, answered, “But that has been discussed, and to great ends. There is no proof the Second exists, so there is, from my perspective, no need for a Maebown.”

“You would all agree, would you not, that had Maggie O’Shea been a Maebown, Cassandra and the Unseelie would not have challenged her. And it is possible that Maggie’s friend, the young girl, would still be alive,” Victoria countered.

Seven on the Council agreed.

Anuket, an exotic Middle-Eastern-looking Fae, with almond-shaped eyes and braided black hair, shook her head. “I think teaching her how to create Aether would be injudicious at best. She has attacked Faekind, and she knows how to destroy us. Do you really expect us to trust the power of Aether with a temperamental and deceptive child? We all appreciate your point, Victoria, but to let loose such a power on the world until we know there is a need is foolhardy.”

“I trust her,” Sherman said simply.

“I do not,” Anuket said bluntly. “None of the prior Maebowns were so young, so impetuous, and are you that ready to condemn her? If human life is truly precious to you, Sherman, why sentence her to death?”

“We have long disagreed on that point, and I still maintain her death need not be inevitable.”

“You cannot mean that,” Ozara said. “We cannot trust a human with Aether. As a species they have proven themselves irresponsible and dangerous, and that is without understanding Naeshura. With little more than crude tools and an elementary understanding of physics and nuclear power, you cannot ignore the destruction they have caused intentionally and unintentionally. You were with me for the aftermath of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Bikini, and we’ve seen their carelessness play out time and again at Kyshtym, Prypiat, Lucens, Tsuruga, Middletown, Fukushima—I could go on. It terrifies me to think of what they would be capable of with real power.”

Victoria challenged her. “While we have often lamented their mistakes, and I will agree, they have been numerous, humans are of the physical world. We are not. It is disheartening that I find myself reminding the Council of something each of us already knows: this is their world, not ours. Each of us has seen species come and go. Disaster, destruction and rebirth, it has always occurred. How is this any different?”

A muscular, strikingly beautiful blonde male quickly replied. “Never before has a species caused so much damage—destroyed with such tenacity. None of us has seen a species so actively and blindly pursue its own destruction. We chose to respect nature. We did not interfere when humans spread. We did not intervene when they slaughtered one another, or when they began their slow, violent rape of the physical world. We did nothing when they forgot what we taught them and turned to their myopic view of science, and we remained uninvolved when they immersed themselves in religious dogma. They seek what they cannot have—dominion and control,” he said. “It’s a myth to which they desperately cling without considering the meaning. Five thousand years later, they have learned nothing. Were it not for its fear of death, mankind would have already destroyed itself.”

There was a long pause before Sherman spoke. “Over the last century, a faction of this Council has begun to sound more like the Unseelie Elders, and I for one do not find comfort in that fact.” The blond male recoiled and shook his head, but Sherman continued, “There were other courses of action we could have taken, courses still open to us. As humans are fond of saying, the die is not yet cast.”

Well then
, I thought as the tether yanked me back to my body,
I know who I can trust
.

***

“Hello?” I said.

“
Hello?
That’s no way to answer your phone when I call,” Candace said playfully.

“Sorry. Sorry I haven’t called.”

“I know,” she said. “Same here.”

“How’s Ronnie?” I asked.

“He’s better, a little better. How’s Doug?”

“He doesn’t want to talk about himself, he just keeps asking how I’m doing.”

“Yeah, I figured as much. It’s time we all meet, I think. We need some
private
time at the bistro. Think you’re ready?”

I thought about it for a second. “Sure.”

“How ‘bout an hour?”

“I…”

“Mags, no excuses. An hour.”

“Okay.”

Candace was waiting for me on the terrace when I pulled into the parking lot across the street. Gusty and Smokey hovered not far away.

“Back off!” I screeched. “I’m not going to create Aether today. I’m here to grieve with my friends—in private.”

Both retreated a few hundred yards.

Doug pulled up as I started to cross the street. Then Ronnie. It had been weeks since the funeral, but the pain of losing Rachel was written across their faces and expressed in their body language. Ronnie moped over to me, and Doug caught up. When he was close enough, Doug reeled both of us to his sides in a half bear-hug as we walked silently to the terrace. After a spattering of “heys” and a lengthy group hug, we sat for a moment in complete silence. Ronnie shook his head and got up.

“Ronnie?” Candace’s voice cracked.

He looked back at her and smiled. He grabbed an empty chair and moved it to the table beside him. Candace pulled a pair of sunglasses out of her purse and fought with a quivering lip. The four of us simply stared as Ronnie sat down, wiping his eyes.

“There,” he said softly. “Room for her.”

A sob caught in my throat as I stared at it. I sucked in a deep breath and blinked my eyes wide hoping the tears blurring my vision would evaporate. Doug grabbed my right hand, sniffling, and Candace leaned up against me on the left, dragging Ronnie closer.

We’d held each other at her funeral, but we didn’t talk about what happened. That day was so horrible. Each sob had felt like an accusation even though nobody except me knew what really happened.

“Who’s going to go first?” Ronnie asked.

“I will,” Candace spoke up. “God, I was fine a minute ago, but it just creeps up on you so fast…”

“I know. Me, too,” Doug said, wiping his eyes.

“I still can’t believe she’s gone.” Candace wiped under the black lenses of her sun glasses.

“Me either,” Ronnie choked.

“Well, we’re here for her, doing what she’d tell us to do—looking after you, Maggie.”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Yes!” Candace said. “Rachel always got angry when you withdrew, tried to handle things on your own. She’d be pissed if we didn’t do something now.”

I sobbed as quietly as I could, trying to hold it together.

“You dropped out of school…”

“Taking a break…” My voice cracked.

“Well, we haven’t heard a word from you since it happened. That ends today. Talk!” Ronnie commanded.

When I thought I could speak, I muttered, “I don’t know what to say. I’m so…”

Doug reached around with his free hand and turned my face toward him. “Don’t say it. Don’t you dare blame yourself for this. Are we alone?” he whispered.

I threw my Air barrier around us and nodded. “Doug, Sherman erased your memories of what happened. It
was
my…”

“Havana, I’m glad I don’t remember exactly what happened, but Candace told me I was upstairs, that you came after me and Rachel followed. I know they compelled me to forget, but I know
basically
what happened. Stop blaming yourself.”

Candace squeezed my side. “Before you go ballistic, I felt…”

I tugged on her, pulling her closer, “It’s okay. I was going to tell him if you hadn’t. Full disclosure, right?” I tried to smile, but only managed a trembling grimace.