This is ten different kinds of illegal.
I stuffed a muffin in my mouth to give me some courage.
Once I was away from the house, I flicked on the headlights and headed toward the school. Delia had left one of her own albums in the CD player, so I hit buttons and whirled knobs until I found a rock station. I needed the pounding bass and growling guitar to give me courage. Cramming another muffin in my mouth, I started to focus a little better; I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. What I needed to do was prioritize. If you took out the supernatural homicide bits, this was just a problem like any other I’d faced: a super-hard school project, a tune that refused to be tamed, a musical technique that twisted my fingers. I’d tackled all those before by breaking them down into little bits.
Okay. So I knew I had to confront the Queen. What did I know about her? Nothing—except that she was both like me and like a faerie from living among them for so long. So I could pretty much abandon any idea of appealing to her emotions. Maybe I could appeal to her human nature, if she had any left. Hell if I knew how to do that. I jammed another muffin into my mouth.
As I pulled into the short access road that led to the empty high school parking lot, I saw a fire twisting high and wild at the base of one of the streetlights. In the flickering orange light, a massive black animal bellowed and charged as tall, whip-like men with horns tormented it, tossing glowing hot embers at its sides and face with their bare hands. I could almost feel the thinness of the veil between my world and Faerie—in my head, I could imagine it crackling, paper-thin and fragile.
I slowed the car. The whole stupid thing was right in front of me; I was going to have to get out and do something about it in order to get to the high school. I addressed a silent prayer to the skies: I’m an idiot. Please don’t let me die for the sake of a black cow-thing.
I jumped. A glowing ember had smacked the windshield of my car, burning a black spot on the hood before sliding out of sight. I almost swore again, before remembering it was Delia’s car. Outside, the whip men laughed before turning back to their torture; they thought they were playing a prank on someone who couldn’t see them.
I grabbed the jar from the passenger seat, opened the door and got out to face them. I’m brave. I remembered an episode that happened when I was thirteen or so, when I found one of the neighborhood boys piling dirt on an injured bird and watching it struggle beneath the dust. I had just stood for a long moment, trying to think what to say to stop him, frustrated by my shyness and by the boy’s cruelty. Then James had appeared at my shoulder and said to the boy, “Do you think that’s the best way to be spending your admittedly miserable life?”
I took strength from the memory and adopted my Ice Queen posture. My voice oozed contempt. “Having a nice Solstice?”
The whip men’s heads turned to look at me. Their narrow bodies were black as tar and seemed to absorb the firelight instead of reflecting it. The giant bull, on the other hand, was pale dun beneath the ash that covered his coat, and I saw panic and rage in his liquid eyes.
“The cloverhand,” hissed one. The voice was the same I’d overhead talking to Luke; many voices all rolled into one. “She is the cloverhand.”
“That’s me,” I agreed, still standing next to the car. I was scared snotless, but I stood perfectly straight. “I’d think there’d be better things for you to do, on this night of all nights.”
One of the whip men turned to me, his mouth curving into a smile. With a jolt, I realized he had no eyes beneath his brow—just empty hollows, with smooth skin in the shadows. The others looked at him, also without eyes, as he spoke. “Truth, cloverhand. I can tell the truth when I hear it. Can we do you on this night of all nights?”
“Go to hell.”
After I said it, I thought it might be a bit redundant, since they looked like devils already. But the whip man said, his voice grating in a thousand whispers, “Hell is for those with souls.”
Another, equally tall and with too many joints in his spine, said, “Come to our fire, tell us what you want of us. Make us a trade: the tarbh uisge’s body”—he gestured to the massive dun bull—“for yours?”
I unscrewed the lid of the jar. “I have a better idea. How about, the bull goes free or all your fun stops for the night?”
The whip man who had suggested “doing” me approached; his walk was all wrong, and it sent a shiver through my body. “That does not sound like a truth to me, cloverhand.”
I scooped out a warm handful of the green muck in the jar, trying not to think about just how nasty it felt (exactly like picking up a handful of fresh dog crap), and hurled it onto the faerie.
For a moment there was nothing, and I thought Granna, you let me down. But then he began to sigh. His breath went out and out and out, and then he just fell to the parking lot, still breathing out, until he was empty.
I’d thought I might feel bad, but I just felt intense relief.
I held the jar out toward the others. “Not much left, but probably enough for each of you. Let it go.”
One of them hissed, “I don’t think you want to see the tarbh uisge freed. He will bear you down into the water and your salve will not help you there.”
I looked at the wide eye of the bull as its massive body trembled, lit both by the bonfire and the green-gray light of the streetlight overhead. It didn’t belong here; it was a remnant of another time and another place, and I saw its fear of the present weeping from every pore.
“I’m not afraid.” I took a step forward, forcing myself to step over the body of the one I’d killed, though part of me imagined it grabbing me as I did. “Leave this place.”
With angry buzzing, like distant bees, the whip men backed away, toward the fire, their posture deferential. They backed directly into the fire and their bodies incinerated instantly; I would have thought they’d died if I hadn’t still seen hints of their eyeless faces in the coals and wood of the bonfire.
The bull lowered its head and stamped a hoof at me, its eyes enormous and sentient. Something about it was so ancient and pure that I ached for an intangible past I had never known.
I gave a little bow. “You’re welcome.”
It blew its red-lined nostrils at me and plunged into the night.
My skin prickled. Faerie pressed in around me. I had to go back to the beginning before it was too late.
twenty
The high school doors were locked, but with the moon behind me I wasn’t worried. It only took a moment to mentally click the doors open, and then carefully lock them behind me. Inside, the halls were lit sickly blue-green by the fluorescent lights, and the windows to the classrooms were black squares in the doors lining the walls. The familiar smell of hundreds of students and books and cafeteria food turned my stomach with anxiety. It was as if I’d never left. It took me a long moment to gather my nerve and remind myself just how strong I could be now.