The Changeling (40 page)

“What? You don’t like it?” he asked, studying my face.

“No, it’s great, just a little loud.”

Danny smiled and placed his hand on the hood. Immediately it turned the same dark green metallic as Dad’s GT.

“What if someone’s watching?” I glanced back at the hotel windows.

He gave me an exasperated look. “I’m Fae, Maggie. Do you like the color?”

“Yeah, much better.”

“You need to be careful driving it.”

I rolled my eyes, “I’ve driven fast cars before…”

“Darling, you’ve never driven anything like this.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll be careful.”

He raised his left eyebrow.

“I promise, jeez. You’re worse than Mom.”

He handed me a room card. “324.”

“Thanks.”

He lowered his chin and studied my face. “Are you ready for this?”

My stomach knotted. He frowned, sensing the muscle spasm. I nodded my head and smiled, projecting confidence.

He cupped the ball of my shoulder in his hand. “My dear, I may not be able to read your real emotions, but I’ve been a lawyer for a hundred eight-nine years and—pardon the vulgar human vernacular—I can smell a load of bullshit from across town. What’s wrong?”

“I’m just nervous. If the Fae are there, and I have too, you know…”

He cut me off. “Maggie, taking life is perverse. There is nothing I can tell you to change that, and no argument to the contrary will convince you otherwise. Killing may be necessary, however.”

My head shook involuntarily. “I hate this. I hate thinking about ending anyone’s life, even one of theirs.”

His mouth pulled to the side, forming a sympathetic half-smile. “That’s not
really
the problem, is it?”

A noisy huff escaped from my lips. “No, it’s not. What I hate worse is how much I want to…do it. They murdered Aunt May, murdered Rachel…they plan to murder my family.” Tears welled up in my eyes. “I hate them…I want all of them to die,” I growled.

Danny took my hand and exhaled slowly, allowing me to catch my breath. “You’re afraid you’ll change?”

“Thinking it is one thing, acting on it…my god…sorry,” I muttered.

“Don’t be. You’re in an impossible position.”

“Impossible?”
Great, thanks…

“Yes. Impossible in that you can’t emerge from this unscathed. Impossible because you have been given no easy choice—kill or die. I hope for your family’s sake you choose the former, if necessary.”

Despite being uncomfortable with the violent thoughts flashing in my head, I had little doubt about what I’d do if I faced an Unseelie. I nearly killed Chalen last year, and I knew I wouldn’t hesitate if I got another shot at him. That really bothered me—I didn’t want to become that person. But my god, they’d given me no choice. “I’ll do what I have to do,” I said.

He nodded. We spoke a few more minutes before I went to my room, alone, to wait for nightfall. Behind closed doors I pulled the wig off and changed back into my clothes. Big brown eyes, determined and ready, stared back at me in the big mirror in the bathroom. Steady hands, calm heart beat, slow even breaths—I repeated, “Mitch, I’m coming for you.”

With a little concentration I channeled the pure essence of the Fire element. The connection came, oddly, from deep within the earth, but it was precisely the same energy I’d felt in the gazebo. It remained amorphous and translucent for many minutes as I concentrated on condensing it. Goosebumps formed on my upper arms when it melded into a thin red stream in my hands, flitting around like a dandelion plume caught in a light breeze.

I dropped the connection and recreated it several times. In forty-five minutes I could form it with a mere thought. For the next hour I did the same with Earth, Air, and Water, each one easier than the last. It became easier to create all four at the same time. My confidence at an all-time high, I concentrated on the elements and kept my mind off everything else.

Combining Earth and Fire, I created Quint. The glowing orange orb was just as malleable as the raw elements, and within a few minutes, controlling it grew easier. A sphere, tendrils, I could make anything, but I still didn’t know what it did. When it sliced through the marble countertop, I gasped. It even sliced effortlessly through the strongest Air barrier I could muster. “Oh, my god,” I kept saying with each experiment.

Clóca, the shimmering combination of Water and Air, was more difficult to figure out. It didn’t cut anything, and while I could feel it, it became invisible to the naked eye when I spread it out. Wrapping it around my body, like I did with an Air barrier, didn’t appear to do anything either—until I stood in front of the mirror. My heart rate sped and I felt dizzy. “Oh my god, I’m invisible,” I muttered in the darkened room. “Not even a shimmer.”

It was possible to make objects disappear, too. An empty Diet Coke can vanished when I wrapped the substance around it. “Ohhh…no way…” From across the room, the can was utterly imperceptible to my eyes and my senses.
This is what Tse-xo-be meant when he told me to, “reflect on it.
”

My lucky watch read 5:35 pm. With only a few hours before nightfall, and too nervous to eat, I sat alone in the room practicing. Though I tried for an hour, the secret to Aether, unfortunately, remained a complete mystery. Combination after combination failed, and alternating the strength of the substances, even the order in which I combined them, produced the same disappointing result—when the four elements met, they formed an unremarkable white light.

Walking through the lobby felt surreal as I passed a dozen people. They were going to dinner, most of them. We were in different worlds tonight. Two minutes later, the GT500 rumbled to life, growling like an angry predator. Just a tap of the accelerator made the engine roar, and each time I did it, my confidence grew. The car seemed angry and ready to battle—at least that’s what I told myself.

The sun was setting in the western sky, washing out the vibrant colors of green foliage with glowing gold light, when I slipped the car into gear and rumbled out of the parking lot. Its reaction to the slight pressure from my right foot pinned me back into the seat. Danny was right. The Shelby snarled past 60 in a few seconds, the exhaust sound nearly as intoxicating as the new car smell of the leather interior.

I followed the navigation on the dash, and drove into the darkening countryside west of Fayetteville.
Your destination is on the left.
My stomach folded and I took a few deep breaths before I opened the door to the warm summer air. My mind focused on every sound when the door shut. The pinging sound of the engine cooling blended with the rustling sound of leaves in the occasional breeze and the songs of a dozen species of birds and tree frogs. The omnipresent Ozark soundtrack played at full volume.

The car seemed pretty well hidden from the road, but to make certain it was still there when I got back, I snapped off a half-dozen wild bushes and forced them into the ground around it.

I wrapped myself in Clóca, studied the navigation screen on my phone, and set out through the woods to cover the mile between Mitch and me. Spreading my mind as wide as I could, my heart raced a little when I sensed absolutely no Fae in the area. Using my senses, I scrambled down the hill, between trees and around underbrush, trying not to make a sound.

Clóca worked so well that I snuck up on several squirrels and a couple of deer without them noticing anything but my footsteps. Each animal turned its nose to the wind, studying my scent, but they scanned the woods in vain trying to locate me.

My heart beat fast and I felt short of breath when I edged up to the clearing where the farm lay. It appeared much dirtier to my physical eyes. Four people were in the house: three downstairs and Mitch, I assumed, in the attic. The fifth person was in the barn directly in front of me.

Even though I was invisible, and I’d confirmed that the Fae were nowhere around, it took all my will power to step into the clearing. A shabby mixed-breed dog that I hadn’t seen on my astral visit trotted to the barn. It slowed and began sniffing the air, warily approaching the place where I stood.
Sorry puppy!
I created a dust devil and chased the poor creature completely out of the yard.

Walking as quietly as I could toward the house, I momentarily saw stars as adrenalin filled my body. The woman and her children were watching television in the living room, forcing me to walk between them to get to the stairs. Each step I took caused the floor to creak. The little girl noticed first, and she clutched her doll to her chest and stared wide-eyed past where I stood.

Pity roiled in my chest when I thought of what would happen to her when the Unseelie found Mitch gone. I walked quickly to the stairs and then noisily made my way to the second floor. The woman clutched both of her children, trying to soothe their frayed nerves. All three stared at the clunking sounds my steps made. The stairs to the attic were narrower and steeper. Reaching out with my mind, I forced the door open and emerged in the hot, stuffy space. The smell of urine and feces festered in the stale air, and I grew angry. No, I was completely pissed off. The air was slightly better in the room where Mitch lay still as a corpse and covered in sweat despite a small box fan whirring loudly in a small window.

Tears filled my eyes as I scooped him into my arms. His breathing changed, speeding up, but he remained dazed. Clutching him to my chest, I couldn’t do anything for a few minutes except kiss his forehead and whisper how much I loved him. The presence startled me.

“
Thank god
,” she said.

“Aunt May…”

“
Girlie girl, ya need ta get yer brother outta here. That man’s comin
.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Lifting Mitch was easy. While he looked better than Drevek did, I guessed he weighed less than forty pounds. Walking back across the attic floor, I felt two people coming up the stairs. “Oh crap!”

The window in the end of the room was small, and I wasn’t sure whether I could carry Mitch through, but I decided to try. My concentration faltered, and I dropped the Clóca shield. I fumbled to re-form it, but before I could, the door to the attic sprang open and the round-bellied redneck stormed through. He focused on me, pointing what I guessed was a shotgun. His wife peered around the corner with a frantic look on her face, clutching the doorframe.

“Ya put that boy down,” he rumbled in that awful accent.

I calmed my nerves, and sent my mind across the room until it made contact with the barrel of his rifle. “Go to hell,” I said calmly.

He studied my face and seemed to grow more confident, taking a step or two. “Ya ain’t one of them, are ya?”

“No, you filthy mouth-breather, I’m worse. Get the hell out of my way. I’m taking him with me.”

He took a step back, “You a human?”

“I’m a Maebown.”

“Ain’t never hearda that, but alls I know is, if you take that boy we’re as good as dead. I’d rather take my chances with you.”

“Big mistake!” I laid Mitch down on the floor, stepped over him, and created Quint, forming a barrier around the both of us. “You’ve made several stupid mistakes…this is another.”

The man’s wife gasped a deep breath and begged him to leave me alone. He ignored her and took aim at me. I lifted the barrel of his gun and he reacted by firing. The tiny pellets hit the Quint and disappeared in bright flashes a foot from my chest. Spontaneously, my body reacted to the blast. I tried to duck and cover my face, all a second too late. Were it not for the Quint, he would have killed me. He fired one more shot with the same result, but this time I merely flinched. My mind reacted and yanked the shotgun free from his grip. With a shard of Quint, I sliced the gun into several pieces and allowed them to fall on the floor, all but the wood stock. With a burst of Air, I landed it between his eyes hard enough to knock him into the wall.

The woman screamed, “Please don’t kill ‘im.”

Her plea was desperate and guttural, but it wasn’t as effective as the shrill screaming and sobbing coming from her children downstairs.

“Lady, you need to get this man and your kids out of this house. You need to leave and never come back.”

“They’ll find us—kill us all,” she blubbered.

“You kidnapped my brother. He’s nearly dead lying up here in this filth, so why should I care what they do to you?” I screamed.

“Brother? Ohh dear Jesus, I don’t want no part of this, never did. It’s all Roy. I took care’a yer brother as best I could. Please help me!” she begged. “Those people’ll be back anytime.”

“I know I’m going to regret this. Can you get him to his feet?”

“I ain’t sure,” she said, wiping the wetness from her jowls with thick hands.

“Be sure!” I screamed. “Get him to your car, now!”

“Where da’we go? We ain’t got no money to get far.” She began blubbering again and my anger turned to pity. The little girl’s face filled my mind’s eye.

On a broken piece of the gunstock, I burned Danny’s phone number and blew it to her. “Call him, he’ll help you, give you some money. But you have to do it now.”

She whimpered but didn’t move.

“Do you want to live?”

“Yes,” she choked between sobs.

“Then get moving, now!” I screamed again.