The Fairytale Curse (Magic's Return Book 1) (27 page)

There was a bustling craft market set up in the heart of The Rocks. They’d closed off part of the main street and set up awnings across the road. Underneath, throngs of people browsed everything from clothes to pottery, kangaroo balls on key rings to delicate stitched artworks.

“Can we look?” CJ begged.

Shopping was a cure for just about anything, and CJ needed a break just as much as I did.

“There’s too many people.” Simon looked around uneasily, as if he expected a Sidhe to leap out of the crowd any minute and turn him into a toad.

“Please! Just for a few minutes? We’ll stay right with you.”

It was hard to resist those big blue eyes of CJ’s. Tougher men than Simon had crumbled before.

“Five minutes, then.”

She plunged into the crowd and we hurried to keep up with her.

“Look at these!” She held up a candle that looked like a ball of stained glass, or a miniature Tiffany artwork. It was beautiful. When I looked closer I could see some of the candles on display showed tiny street scenes; some were even adaptations of famous paintings. “They smell divine.”

The next stall had dreamcatchers and wind chimes, threaded with feathers and beautiful glass beads. Already Simon looked like a man who regretted his decision.

“Five minutes,” he said again.

CJ flitted on through the stalls, the most animated she’d been since the night of the formal. It was nice to see her smile again.

“Keep up,” said Simon. “We don’t want to lose her in the crowd.”

He forged ahead, calling to CJ to wait, and I strolled after them, trying to take it all in. I’d just stopped to look at some silver jewellery when a voice behind me said, “Hello, Violet.”

I jumped. “Oh, hi, Miss Moore.”

Why did she have to sneak up on me like that? My history teacher looked as glamorous as ever, in skin-tight black jeans and a deep burgundy top with the most plunging neckline I’d ever seen. Even I had trouble keeping my gaze out of her cleavage; the old guy manning the necklace stall had no chance. I doubt he had the faintest idea what her face looked like. A silver pendant nestled in the deep curve of her breast, a feather worked in the finest detail.

“How are you enjoying the holidays?” I asked, willing my heart rate to return to normal. Not that I cared, but she was staring at me expectantly, so I blurted out the first thing that came into my head. She had a knack of unsettling me; I never felt comfortable around her. I’d never managed to shake the bad impression of that first bloodthirsty Ancient History class.

“Very much,” she said. “How about you? Have you bought anything at the market?”

“No, I’m just looking. Still new here. We’re just getting to know our way around.”

“Me too.” She pulled a handful of origami figures out of one of her shopping bags. “Look what I found down the other end. Aren’t they amazing?”

I’d never seen such intricate folding. There were birds, dolphins and even something that looked a little like a bear. It was probably meant to be a koala. All done in beautiful Japanese papers.

“Here, have one.” She offered me one of the birds.

“No, that’s okay,” I didn’t want anything of hers, despite how pretty it was. “I wouldn’t want to deprive you.”

“Nonsense. I’ve got plenty. You can’t just window shop at your first markets—you need a souvenir.” She pressed the little bird into my hand.

“Thanks.” Her eyes were so intent on me, it seemed impossible to say no. My mouth just wouldn’t form the word. Instead I found myself nodding stupidly and tucking the little thing into my pocket under her watchful gaze. Well, I’d just have to throw it out when she’d gone.

“You’re welcome. Enjoy the rest of your holidays—I’ll see you on Monday back at school.”

I watched her walk away, irritated by the nagging feeling that I’d meant to do something when she’d gone. What was it? My head felt thick, as if I’d just woken up. She disappeared into the crowd while I stood there, trying to remember. I could see Simon’s head peering this way and that, anxiously looking for me, so in the end I gave up and went to join the others. It couldn’t have been that important.

“There you are,” he said when I caught up with them. “I think we’d better move on. There’s something I want to show you.”

He shouldered his way out of the throng of shoppers and we tagged along in his wake. He led us away from George Street, up the hill toward the sandstone cutting under the road that led onto the Harbour Bridge. Dad had pointed it out on our first trip to HQ, said it had been partly built with convict labour. The Argyle Cut, it was called. Now we weren’t flashing past in a car, I could actually see the chisel marks in the stone. Crazy to think that convicts had put them there. That was such a long time ago, though I guess it didn’t seem that way to the warders, who were dealing with problems that began centuries ago—but it seemed like a long time when you were seventeen. I wondered what it would have been like to be seventeen back then. No internet. No phones. I was certainly glad I lived in
this
century.

Though I could have done without the threat of fairy invasion.

“Where are we going?” CJ asked as we dodged around another group of Japanese tourists, huddled together over a map.

“To Observatory Hill.”

Simon led us past galleries and cute little stone cottages, past steakhouses and pubs where the clientele spilled onto the footpath along with a rich beery smell, through the Argyle Cut, and up a steep flight of stone steps so old the passage of feet had worn a hollow in the middle of each step.

“What’s at Observatory Hill?”

“An observatory.” Well, derr. “A famous piece of Sydney history—but also a vital piece of magical history. You won’t find that mentioned on any of the tourist guides, though.”

At the top of the stairs we crossed a road and entered a park. The observatory itself was a handsome old building with a green copper dome. Like most of the historic buildings in the area it was built from the local sandstone, and glowed a warm honey gold in the afternoon sun.

“What’s that yellow thing on top of the tower that looks like an upside down Chupa-chup?” I asked.

“That’s the time ball. It’s the whole reason the observatory was built here. Every day they raise the ball up the spike, and at one o’clock exactly they let it drop. It’s important for navigation to know the exact time. From up here all the ships in the harbour could see it, and they used it to set their chronometers to the right time before they started a long journey.” He smiled, an expression you didn’t see too often on his face. It made him look a different person. “And from Australia, every sea journey is a long one.”

“But what’s that got to do with the observatory? Couldn’t they have just built the tower by itself?”

“The observatory is how they know the correct time. It’s the astronomer’s job to set the time from observing the movement of the sun and stars.” He shook his head. “Of course, sightings of the stars aren’t what they used to be, now a big modern city’s grown up around the observatory. Too much light pollution. But anyway, that’s only the mundane history.”

It was peaceful up here, an oasis away from the crowded narrow streets of The Rocks. Hardly anyone was about, just a man walking his dog and a family on a picnic rug under the trees. It didn’t seem like the kind of place to feature prominently in magical history.

Simon led us across the grass away from the observatory. We passed a war memorial and stopped at a stone bust.

“Hans Christian Andersen,” I read.

“The Dutch guy who wrote all those fairy tales?” CJ asked. We’d certainly read our fair share of fairy tales over the last two weeks.

“Danish, actually,” said Simon.

“What’s he doing here?”

“It’s ironic, really. He’s only a new arrival—a present from the Danish royals in 2005—but they managed to put him almost exactly on the spot where the anchor once stood.”

“What anchor?” CJ asked. She was gazing out at the view and was only half listening. She probably thought he meant some ship’s anchor, but I’d been doing my reading, and I knew what he meant. Finally, someone was talking to us about the secrets of
The Gilded Cage
.

“The Spear of Lugh. It formed the southeast anchor of the great condensor built by the warders when they relocated the Sidhe prison.”

“When they moved it to Australia?”

“Yes. It didn’t move the Sidhe world anywhere—that exists on another plane altogether. Another dimension, if you want to call it that. But having the prison in the Northern Hemisphere made it too easy for them to worm their way out again. The first condensing was supposed to destroy all the existing portals between our two worlds—but there were a lot. Every second damn hillock in Ireland alone was a fairy hill, or an entryway to their world. That’s how they got their name: ‘Sidhe’ means ‘people of the hills’ in Gaelic. After Cottingley the warders decided to move it, to stop the random escapes. There always seemed to be another portal that they’d missed.”

“And that’s what condensors do? Suck aether away?”

“Aether and Sidhe. If the warders wanted to they could condense Puck right back where he came from.”

He was pacing out a circle with the bust of Hans Christian Andersen roughly at its centre, checking something on his phone and adjusting his perimeter as he went.

“What are you doing?”

“Checking the seals,” he said.

“You have an
app
for that?” Warding had certainly come into the twenty-first century.

“The app shows me the markers. I could find them myself, but it takes longer. It doesn’t check them; I have to do that. It takes latency to feel their resonance. We still haven’t managed to come up with anything electronic that will do the job.”

“What about the Hendrix counter?”

“That measures the presence of aether. If the seals are holding, there shouldn’t be any.”

I watched him curiously. He was pacing anti-clockwise, and I suddenly remembered something I’d read about entering fairy hills by circling them widdershins.

“And what are the seals sealing exactly?”

“The power of the Spear of Lugh. It’s an ingenious system really—it uses the Sidhe’s own magic against them. The power of the four anchors is sealed into the earth at the four anchor points. The original spell linked the anchors into a net that created one giant portal to suck the aether and all the Sidhe out of the world. The second spell moved the prison and made sure of it. Now the residual power’s enough to hold that portal closed so the Sidhe can’t get out.” He grimaced. “At least, that’s the theory. Obviously things haven’t been working so well in practice lately.”

“Obviously.” One hand went to the collar I wore around my neck as living proof. At least Emmet’s version had less pointy bits than the quick job Dad had knocked up the first time.

“How many times do you have to walk round that circle?” CJ asked. Clearly she would rather be somewhere else. Probably back at the markets.

“Seven times. Seven is a powerful number in magic.”

“People must wonder what the hell you’re doing sometimes,” I said, but he didn’t reply.

He stopped, frowning, and glanced down at his phone, then continued on more slowly. On the next revolution he paused again at the same place and sniffed the air. Curiouser and curiouser.

“What? Is something wrong?” I trotted over and sniffed too. “I can’t smell anything except … um … burnt toffee?” That same smell had been in Josh Johnson’s bedroom the night Puck cursed us.

“Burnt
toffee
?” CJ rolled her eyes. “What have you been smoking? All I can smell is car exhaust.”

Simon gave me a strange look. “Burnt toffee’s a pretty good description, actually. Are you sure?”

I nodded, mystified.

“That’s the smell of aether,” he said. “And if you can smell it even when you’re wearing that collar, your latency must be off the charts.”

CJ looked away and I felt a quick pang of guilt. But it wasn’t my fault! And if all latency meant was that I could smell a bit of aether, it wasn’t anything to be jealous of either.

“But why is there aether here? There shouldn’t be, should there? What does it mean?”

His expression was bleak. “It means someone’s been messing with the seals.”

“Who? A Sidhe?”

“No. There’s too much iron here. It must be one of us. One of the seekers.”

“Don’t look so horrified,” CJ said to me. “They’ve been talking about a traitor for weeks.”

“I know, I know. I just don’t get why any human would be trying to let the Sidhe back in.”

“We can worry about why later.” Simon’s mouth was a grim line. “But if we don’t find out who and how soon, we’re going to be up to our armpits in bloody fairies.”

Late that night I was still tossing restlessly, unable to sleep. I wasn’t used to sleeping in air-conditioned buildings: I’d get too cold and pull all the blankets up, only to overheat and have to throw them off again. In the other bed CJ was breathing softly, one hand thrown up beside her face, fingers gently curled. Her dark hair fanning across the pillow reminded me of Kerrie’s, and I shivered.

Emmet and Dena were no closer to a solution for the warder’s pretty sister. Dad was still a bear, though Mum had finally succeeded in getting clearance to bring him back to Sydney. They were due to arrive late Tuesday, which would be the second day of school. Sergei was still an ogre, and CJ and I at least had our collars, but the underlying problem remained. We were just lucky that ours manifested itself in a way the collars could fix. In the other victims the magic was buried too deep for such easy solutions.

I pulled my clothes back on, let myself out of the visitors’ suite and padded down the dark hallway. There were night lights on for security in some of the offices, but the hallway was only lit by the streetlights coming in the big arched window at the end. I pressed the button to call the lift—might as well go down to the kitchen and grab something to eat. I wasn’t even the tiniest bit sleepy.

The chime of the lift arriving sounded so loud in the stillness that I jumped. I stepped inside and raised my hand to press “G”. For an instant it hovered there, and then I pushed “B” instead. What the hell, it was worth a try.