The Changeling (49 page)

At breakfast the next morning I was exhausted after only three hours of sleep, but I couldn’t keep the smile off my face.

Smiles really are contagious. “Sleep well?” Dad asked, grinning at me over a newspaper.

Grandma Sophie studied my face. “I’d know that look anywhere. Your mom had it each time she talked to your dad.” She giggled when the smile dropped off my father’s face.

“It’s true. I talked to Gavin last night…long distance.” Well, I could be honest about that much.

Dad flung the newspaper in front of his face and acted disinterested. I tried not to laugh, but everything was funny this morning.

“How is he?” Grandma asked.

“He’s great,” I sighed.

Mom raised an eyebrow. “Where is he?”

“He was in Africa, staying at an oasis in the desert.”

“Oh? How exotic…how exotic
and far away
,” she said, dropping a not-so-subtle hint.

***

After yawning one time too many, Mom lectured me about late night phone calls and implemented a new “phone curfew” that coincided with my bedtime, but she didn’t protest when I went upstairs to take a nap just before noon. I downed several energy drinks, hoping they would keep me from having to fight my tether. Sara left me alone, joining Billy with my friends, confident that I couldn’t get into any trouble in my bedroom.
Little did she know
.

Though I was tempted to find Gavin again, I concentrated on Ozara instead. After about twenty minutes, she made her way to the Seoladán with Meili, Katarina, and four guards. Each disappeared at the well. In less than two seconds, I found myself at Ozara’s side moving quickly across a rolling green countryside. Billy told me they’d probably use the Seoladán in Northern Ireland, and I assumed he was correct when we crossed the sea. After travelling a considerable distance, I saw the English coast. Small beaches sat between the sea and tall, blondish-tan and gray cliffs.

We crossed over a small harbor village tucked between rolling grassy hills. Charming brick and stone buildings surrounded by stacked stone walls lined narrow streets that ran parallel to a small river. We sped past the little village and then beyond another.

I could tell it was near nightfall. The sun was setting to our right somewhere beyond the haze, casting long shadows across the English countryside. Ozara took human form the moment I sensed the other Fae. There were only ten waiting in a circular area atop a hill. It was a round, grassy berm more than two hundred feet in diameter and covered by scrubby brush. I scanned for other Fae among the houses in the distance, and beyond them along the rolling misty hills. My senses picked up nothing, so maybe Billy was right. Maybe the Second wouldn’t test Ozara after all.

Ozara glided to a depressed area just beyond the inner circle and only fifty feet from the Unseelie. Meili and Katarina settled into positions on either side and just behind Ozara, mirroring the Unseelie Elders who flanked Zarkus. The guards did the same, and immediately I felt the tension.

“Are we alone?” Ozara asked.

“Yes,” Zarkus replied.

“Let us begin,” she said.

I hovered some distance above and behind the Seelie. Ozara created an Aether dome around the entire group. Before it closed around them, I moved closer, so I could hear what they were about to say. The instant the barrier closed, I felt safer—surely that would keep Ozara safe. Of course, that was when all hell broke loose.

Stunned senseless—that was how I felt when the first Seelie guard popped out of existence in a flash. I quickly scanned the area, searching for the Second. My mind screamed that it had to be close despite what my senses were telling me. Nothing made sense. There was no Second.

Meili cursed at Ozara, snapping me out of my stupor. She had struck down the guard with a strand of Aether. Zarkus conjured Quint and turned on his own guards, each one screaming in agony and then falling silent in a bright flash. I couldn’t comprehend what was happening.
Why?
I wondered as Katarina moved quickly away from Ozara.

One of the Unseelie elders attacked her with electrical energy. She blocked it and glared at him. With a flick of her fingers, he burst into several hunks of flesh and disappeared in a bright flash. She was more powerful than I had ever imagined.

Ozara turned to Meili as he backed away from her. He transformed into…I could only describe it as a dragon, more than twenty feet tall at the shoulders and twice as long. Black scales, clawed feet, and foot long fangs, he locked his red, cat-like eyes onto Ozara. He cast fire and molten material—it washed over her, singeing plants and grass to a black crisp, but it had a minimal effect on her. He spun, his horned tail whistling through the air, glancing off her barrier, but knocking her back a few feet. She ducked a second volley and attacked him with Aether as he snapped his massive jaws just above her head. Burned by contact, he yanked his enormous head back and curved his long neck like a snake ready to strike.

I fought to keep from screaming. Nothing made sense. The remaining Seelie guards appeared dumbfounded, just standing motionless, staring at the impossible scene, as Meili desperately fought for his life, pushing the Aether back with molten energy.

“Why have you betrayed us?” Katarina screeched at Ozara, before blasting her across the space with an aerial assault. Ozara dropped her assault on Meili and turned her attention to the Aether barrier. Katarina was blasting a section of it, hovering between solid form and Naeshura. She had nearly opened a hole when Ozara sealed it up.

Katarina deflected attacks from the remaining Unseelie Elder and Zarkus. She spun and lashed out, knocking Zarkus backwards twenty feet. Ozara once again dropped her attack on Meili as Katarina exploited a weakness and wounded Zarkus, gashing him nearly in two. He lashed out at her with Quint, but she blew it into the earth, adding to the fires that burned all around her. Through the smoke-filled air, Ozara closed the distance, fighting through Katarina’s incredible shield, her face distorted. For a moment, I thought Katarina had the upper hand as long lacerations appeared all over Ozara’s body, but they healed almost instantly and she smiled sadistically. Meili screamed in anger and tried to burn through Ozara’s barrier, but it was too late.

Katarina, the beautiful Slavic-looking Fae who was more than twenty million years old, flashed out of existence under the crush of Aether.

The Seelie guards fought beside Meili, who continued to curse at Ozara, snapping his massive jaws against her barrier. The other Unseelie elder clapped his hands and as he did, two massive slabs of stone crushed a female Seelie guard. Her flash lit the seam between the stones and disappeared.

The tether to my body pulled hard, and I was unable to maintain my position. Fear, shock, betrayal, I still could not believe what I was seeing.

Ozara destroyed both remaining guards, their simultaneous flashes reflecting off the billowing smoke, and then only Meili remained. Still in dragon form, he circled the edge of the barrier as Zarkus moved closer. Meili snarled and snapped at Zarkus. Quint pierced Meili’s barrier. He dropped to the ground, shrinking into his human shape. He gasped for air and clutched the bloody wound in his chest.

Zarkus pinned him to the ground with searing Quint bindings. Meili’s ghostly blue-gray eyes never showed fear, but he winced as the Quint separated his hands and feet from his limbs. I desperately wanted to help him as I slipped further away in the darkness. The tether pulled relentlessly until my consciousness slipped through the Aether barrier. Ozara looked in my direction.
Oh god, can she see me?

I slipped further away until all I could see through the mist was the glow of fire. Lingering for a few seconds longer, Meili’s flash sent me back to my body. I awoke, covered in sweat, and panting, desperately trying not to cry. Snapping up my keys, then running from the house, I needed to be some place I could scream, some place I could lose it. The Fae guards followed me up the drive and out to the blacktop. Pressing the gas pedal to the floor, the Thunderbird screamed past eighty.
What the hell just happened
?

When I got to Ronnie’s house, I slammed on the brakes and my T-Bird skidded sideways in the street. The acrid smell of tire smoke filled the interior of the car. Nobody was there. Trying to calm down wasn’t possible—I’d just seen Ozara in league with Zarkus. They’d murdered their own kind, each of them.
What the hell is going on?

The Thunderbird slid sideways through a stop sign, and I would have been broadsided if not for my subconscious mental push. Without thinking, I stopped the ratty old pickup abruptly in the street just a few inches from my door. The red-faced driver cursed and flipped me off. Livid, I pushed his truck into the ditch, rocking it onto the passenger side tires, and sped away as it rocked back down in a cloud of dust.

Billy, Sara, where are you?
I shook violently and cursed Ozara’s name when I stopped in front of Candace’s house. It, too, was empty.
Oh, crap!
I realized I’d left my phone on my dresser, along with my driver’s license. For several seconds, I took deep breaths and fought to erase the images from my mind.

When my heart slowed, it occurred to me that I probably shouldn’t discuss this with anyone. Not yet at least. If I told Sara, Ozara would kill her. If the guards saw me talking to Billy, he’d be in danger, too. Ozara felt me there when I passed through the Aether barrier. Did she know it was me? “Crap!”

I knew if I told anyone anything, the guards would tell Ozara. Even Sherman and Victoria would be in danger.
That much is crystal clear.
Then I remembered Ozara inviting Victoria to Caer Bran. Victoria would be dead had she gone.
Play it cool,
Maggie. Play it cool.
I knew I had to figure out what Ozara was planning, and somehow I had to figure out how to create Aether.

Driving back to the Weald, I debated whether there was a Second Aetherfae at all. My gut told me there was, but nothing made sense anymore.
If there is a Second, why would Ozara ally herself with Zarkus?
Why kill two Council members?
Fighting to keep it together, I turned down the long drive to the cottage. I felt like I was voluntarily stomping my foot in a bear trap.

Mom and Dad were still at Grandma and Grandpa’s cottage across the cove, and Mitch was with them. Back in my room, I tried to calm down even more. There was only one person I wanted to see, but I decided to find Gavin a little later. Instead, I reclined on my bed and focused on my new enemy.

Ozara was with the Council when I found her. Zarkus stood silently behind her. In a sad voice that made me sick, she told them how both clans had been ambushed—that the Second had arrived with a large force and killed everyone but her, Zarkus, and Ahriman, the other Unseelie Elder. While the Council members mourned the loss of Katarina and Meili, Ozara warned them that Asharyu had been correct all along. The Second, whom she could not identify because it was shrouded in Aether, was much more powerful than she had thought.

Angered and sick of the lies, I left Ozara and the Council, concentrating on Gavin. I needed to be with someone I couldn’t endanger, someone I could trust. He was waiting in the same place I’d left him last night. Immediately, he was aware of my presence. His beautiful face relaxed and he lay back against a tall palm tree and wrapped his hands behind his head.

“Back already?”

I signaled yes, but he frowned. “Maggie, are you upset?”

Again I signaled yes.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

He exhaled slowly and settled back against the tree.

“Would you like to talk about it?”

“Yes…Yes.”

He grinned and said, “This may take some time—I hope you’re not in a hurry.”

Being with him, even like that, calmed me down. As we began the painstakingly slow process of trying to communicate, I felt the tug of my tether. He continued asking me questions when it yanked me several feet away from him. I was very tired, so I assumed my body was saying “time to sleep.”

I answered “No” to a question about Mitch, then again to his inquiry about my friends, but as I did the tether pulled me violently several hundred feet away from him. Willing myself back was incredibly difficult. I felt panic when the words, “
you will forget
,” rang in my mind.

“Maggie, are you all right?” he asked, sensing something was wrong.

“No.”

Before he could ask another question, the tether pulled hard—so hard I felt dizzy.
Oh, my god, what’s happening?

Gavin called my name as I slipped into the dizzying space that separated my mind and body.

Back in my room I was completely disoriented by the voice, which still commanded me to forget. Ozara was bent over my bed with her hands on both sides of my head. Zarkus stood to the side, peering intently at me. “
You will forget about the Fae—you will not remember.”

Struggling to keep my distance, I knew better than to scream. Still she kept commanding.

“
You will not remember anything about us. You will forget everything we have taught you. You will forget.”

It was my worst fear realized. She was erasing my memory. Gavin, Sara, Billy, she was stealing them from me. Floating above the bed, I saw tears rolling down my physical face, and my mouth was agape. My body was pulling me back. I was slipping, losing the struggle. I fought to go somewhere else in the world, frantically concentrating on anything, but it was no use. Darkness.