The Fairytale Curse (Magic's Return Book 1) (28 page)

The dungeon level, as I thought of it, was darker than level 1. No windows. I padded down the hallway, my bare feet making no noise on the cool tiles. The faint hum of servers greeted me as I passed the computer room, then faded as I approached the corner leading to the vault.

I took a deep breath, then peeked round the corner. Too much to hope that there would be no guard there just because it was the middle of the night. The side corridor blazed with light and, sure enough, a guard sat in the chair just outside the double glass doors at the end of the corridor.

Despite the bright lights, though, the guard was asleep.

I took a hesitant step around the corner. Wow, that looked uncomfortable. The man’s head rested against the wall, tilted back almost at a right angle to his neck. How could anyone sleep like that?

I crept down the corridor. He would wake up, for sure, and then what was I going to say? It was the middle of the night, and here I was, sneaking around after Dorian had specifically told me to stay away. I couldn’t have looked more guilty if I tried. Yet my feet kept moving, inching me silently closer to the sleeping guard, like I had some kind of death wish. Not even the thought of Mum’s disappointment at me getting into more trouble held me back.

What the hell was I doing here anyway? Puck was probably asleep, just like I was supposed to be, and even if he was awake, it wasn’t as though he was going to get a sudden urge to reveal the whole Sidhe plan because I asked him nicely. In fact he’d probably think I was just a stupid kid, and I’d already had it up to here with people thinking that. But Dad needed me. He might be arriving home on Tuesday, but he was still a bear, and likely to remain that way forever if we couldn’t come up with some kind of breakthrough. His condition made our frogs and diamonds look like a walk in the park. Someone had to do something.

The guard snuffled in his sleep and his head jerked to the side. I froze halfway through a step.
Please don’t wake up. Please
. I waited, heart hammering in my throat, until his head sagged back to its original position and his breathing evened out again.

Okay, if I was really doing this, it was time to get it over with. My nerves couldn’t take the strain.

I paused, hand on the glass door.
Hope the damn thing doesn’t creak
. The guard was so close I could have touched him. I held my breath as I eased the door open, watching his sleeping face the whole time, but the door made no noise, and he didn’t even twitch. I slipped inside and let the door whisper shut, relief making my knees tremble.

I stopped just inside the door. The lights were low in here and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust after the brightness of the corridor. The dimness was punctuated by bright dots of red, yellow, and green coming from the various monitors and machines in the room. They hummed quietly to themselves, a sleepy night-time song.

I picked my way across the room to the door to the side room where Puck was being held. A small window was set into it, but there were no lights on inside the makeshift cell. Strain as I might, with the light from the corridor behind me I couldn’t see anything in that glass but my own reflection.

Suddenly a face loomed there, white and shocking. Bloody hell! I jumped back, swallowing a cry of surprise.

“You scared me,” I said, trying not to sound accusing, though my heart was doing its best to hammer its way out of my chest.

The face grinned. It was an odd face. There was nothing about it that didn’t look fully human—no pointy ears or winged eyebrows—and yet something in its expression managed to hint at an inhuman otherness. He still looked as he had the day we saw him in the corridor—a young man with dark hair falling across his face.

“I should be the one who’s scared.” His voice was muffled by the door between us, but I could hear him clearly enough, though he stood back at least a metre. Dorian had said the iron of the door would hurt him. Maybe that was as close as he could bear. “I’m the one who’s being spied on in the middle of the night.”

“I’m not spying!” My voice sounded loud in the empty room. I made an effort to lower it. “I was just trying to see if you were awake.”

“Well, I am, as you can see.” He moved away, disappearing into the darkness until he switched on a lamp by his bed.

Then I saw why he’d come no closer to the door. He couldn’t: he was chained by a manacle around one ankle to a bracket on the wall. The chain was long enough to allow some movement, but not much.

He spread his arms wide in a mocking gesture. “Welcome to my kingdom. Won’t you come in and join me?”

I laid a hand against the door. Opening it would be stupid. I could talk to him just as easily from out here. There was no reason to put myself in danger.

But he was chained up, and that chain looked like it meant business. No doubt it was made of iron.

He sat on the bed and crossed his legs. His jeans rode up enough to show the manacle, padded with some kind of thick wadding. Even so, I could see ominous black lines spreading up his leg from it. His foot was a nasty purplish colour and swollen.

I shoved open the door and marched in.

“What’s wrong with your foot?”

“It’s the blood sickness.” His eyes glittered strangely in the half-light from the lamp. “Your iron poisons me.”

I felt a flash of sympathy. Damn it, I shouldn’t be wasting sympathy on him—it was his fault CJ and I were in this mess. His fault that pretty Kerrie might never wake up. And probably his fault too that my Dad was now a polar bear. I folded my arms across my chest and hardened my heart against him.

“Why did you come here?” I asked.

“Because your so-charming warders invited me. It was an invitation most difficult to refuse.” He moved his leg and the chain rattled. “Now ask me why I don’t leave.”

I shifted impatiently. I could see what everyone meant about it being hard to get a straight answer out of these people. “I don’t mean why did you come
here
, to this cell. Why did you leave your world and come back to ours?”

“But what is this distinction you draw?” He leaned forward, his gaze pinning me to the door. With the lamp behind him his face was in shadow, but his eyes glittered, red lights dancing in their depths. Creepy bastard. “Who was here first, child? It is
all
our world.”

“I’m not a child.” Mature, I know, but I had no answer to the rest of it, and his eyes were weirding me out. They made me think of demon possession and a bunch of half-remembered stories of things that go bump in the night. Maybe coming here wasn’t one of my better ideas.

“Of course you are. I can feel it in you. All that power, longing to get out, but they won’t even tell you you’ve got it, will they? The adults all want to keep you in the dark, keep you powerless. They like it that way.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. How the hell did he know that? It was true. No one, not even our own parents, had told us a thing about magic and the world they inhabited until it came knocking down the walls of our reality. They still hadn’t mentioned my latency, or CJ’s lack. The only reason I knew most of what I did was because I’d tricked Simon into giving me
The Gilded Cage
.

The Sidhe man laughed and patted the bed. “Come, sit down. I won’t bite. They warned you about me, didn’t they? And they were right to. It’s all true. But at least you know where you stand with me. You should be more afraid of the things they didn’t tell you about themselves.”

“I’m fine here.” I might be young, but I wasn’t stupid. I leaned back against the door. Its solid iron weight reassured me. “Go on then, tell me what they should have. And while you’re at it, tell me how to turn my Dad back into a man. Which fairy tale is he from?”

He laughed, showing even white teeth. “You don’t even know the right questions, do you? Ask them how they anchored their great trap.”

“They used the four treasures.” I was confident of that one, at least.

“Then why are the treasures not needed any more? How did they transfer the power from our treasures to their anchors? Ask them about the blood they spilled. Ask them why they shun their own people who are born defective.”

“What do you mean, defective?”

“Ask them. See what answer you get. And while you’re there, ask them what else that collar around your neck does.”

Goose bumps rose on my arms.

“It stops your curse from making me an outcast,” I snapped.

He shook his head. Half hidden behind his hair, his eyes gleamed in the dim light from the lamp. “No, child. That’s not all it does.”

I swallowed, fighting down my uneasiness. It was so quiet in the little room, as if we were the only two people awake in all the world. Why had I come here alone? I should go; he was doing this deliberately, trying to get to me. Trying to drive a wedge between me and the warders. Dancing all around, refusing to give me a straight answer to anything. But I couldn’t help myself; I had to ask.

“What else? What else does it do?”

“Take it off.” He sat perfectly still, a statue of a man, but I couldn’t shake the feeling he was a predator, and I was the dopey herbivore that was about to become lunch. “Take it off and you’ll see.”

“And then you’ll tell me how to help my father?” There’d be a few diamonds to tidy away before I left, that was all. He couldn’t hurt me, surrounded by iron.

“Then you might be able to help your father without any assistance from me.”

Without taking my eyes off him, I reached behind my neck and undid the clasp that fastened it.

“So? Nothing’s changed.” With my free hand I caught the diamonds that fell.

“Can’t you smell it?”

Oh, my God. There it was again. Burnt toffee. I groped behind me for the door handle. There was aether in the room, and he was a Sidhe. I had to get out.

“Be calm. You are in no danger. The aether is within
you
.”

I froze, half in, half out of the room. He still hadn’t moved from the bed. I was torn between flight and a desperate desire to know more. Dad needed help. If Puck so much as lifted a finger, I was out of there …

I took a deep breath to settle my nerves. Let’s hope this cat could survive its curiosity one more time.

“You mean the aether from your curse? That’s what I can smell? Then how come I couldn’t smell it before?”

“You’ve been wearing that collar constantly for what? A week? More? The curse, as you call it, doesn’t go away. The collar merely suppresses it. The aether, unexpressed, has built up to noticeable levels now. That is all.”

With the door half open, the noise of the machines in the other room was more obvious. Somewhere a clock ticked away the night, loud in the darkness.

“And your point is—? That’s what it’s meant to do. You said the collar did something else as well.”
And you implied it was something bad
.

He shook his head wonderingly. “You truly are ignorant, aren’t you? Do they not teach you how to think in those schools you go to? You have latent powers, yes? Very strong ones, too, if I am any judge of these things. They have lain unused because there was no aether to make use of. And now there is. In you.”

My God. He was saying I was a walking vault, full of the raw material of magic. And that my “powers”, whatever they were, were now within reach. I sucked in a shaky breath. From latency to what? Magician? Mage? Someone who could turn a bear back into a man?

“Is it any wonder your warder friends were so quick to get that collar on you, before you discovered what you could do?”

“That’s not true. Dad was trying to help us. To get rid of your stupid curse.” And now these Sidhe bastards had punished him for it. I clung to the truth. It
was
the truth, wasn’t it?

“Of course he was.” He smiled agreeably. “And if it also suited his other purposes, why, who can blame him?”

“I don’t believe you. I can’t do magic.”

“Ah. But have you tried?”

Well, of course I hadn’t. The thought had never even occurred to me. Why would it? He watched me, patient as a cat stalking a bird.

“I don’t know how to,” I said at last, drawn into the conversation despite my best intentions.
Go back to bed
, my conscience insisted,
you know the Sidhe are liars
. But conscience stood no chance against the onslaught of curiosity. How could anyone be expected to walk away from a conversation like this? He was making so much sense. And the possibility that he was right, that I might be able to work magic and save Dad, took my breath away. I would do anything to have my father back.

“It’s like everything,” he said. “It takes practice, but once you have the way of it, it feels as natural as breathing. Do you have something small? A hair clip? A coin?”

My hair sprang free in wild curls around my head. It should be obvious even to a man that there was nothing restraining it. I felt in my pocket for a coin and my fingers brushed something. I pulled it out: the little origami bird Miss Moore had given me at the market, red and gold and intricately folded. Funny, I’d forgotten all about that.

“That will do very well,” he said. “I cannot demonstrate, since the aether lies within you. Only you can access it. You must imagine this bird changing colour, becoming a green bird perhaps, or pink. Something quite different from its reality. See it in every perfect detail. Some think magic is a matter of willpower, but they are wrong. Magic comes from the heart. You must pour your heart into this little bird, and if your heart is true, the bird will follow your heart’s desire.”

Right. Pour my heart into an origami bird.

He smiled a little at the look on my face. “Don’t be discouraged if nothing happens on the first try, or even the hundredth. Your power is like a muscle that must be exercised to make it strong.”

Okaay.

What are you doing, you idiot? Don’t listen to him!
But I had to. How else was I going to help Dad? I stared at the bird, feeling like an idiot. How did you communicate your heart’s desire to a piece of folded paper? Part of me suspected he was pulling my leg, and any minute now would burst out laughing at the poor foolish human who thought she could do magic. But the other part … Magic. He was saying I could do
magic
.