Rise of the Fey (25 page)

Someone shouts my name as a violent wind picks up inside the room, sending furniture flying into the walls with loud, wood-shattering crashes. The explosion from a few nights ago flashes before my mind’s eye, and I whip my hands over my ears to block out the screams, unable to stop what’s happening around me.

“Get out,” I whisper, terrified, as a storm breaks loose above our heads, quickly soaking through my uniform.

“
Sowilo!
” Sir Lincoln shouts, his voice drowned out by the tempest.

The wind suddenly drops and the downpour abates to a light drizzle as calm is slowly restored over the classroom. Panting, I crack my eyes open and find my classmates eyeing me wearily from the tops of the remaining chairs and desks to avoid the foot of water that’s submerged the room.

“Another pair of shoes ruined!” Keva exclaims, fuming. “Couldn’t you have at least warned me?”

“Sir, Bri’s hurt!” Dina yells.

My eyes widen. “What?”

Jack vaults over my desk, pushes me aside, then drops to the floor to lift Bri’s small, inert body out of the water.

“Oh my god, did she drown?” Laura asks, hopping onto Keva’s desk so she can get a better look.

“Don’t be stupid,” Keva snaps, pushing her away.

Laura squeals as she slips off her perch and falls into the water, the class bursting into nervous giggles around her.

But Jack’s not saying a word.

“Out of my way, Morgan,” Sir Lincoln says, waving the last of the storm clouds out the windows with another push from his sylph.

He gently gathers Bri in his arms then lays her carefully on top of our desk to check for a heartbeat. Bri’s face lolls to the side, pale under the blood streaking down from a cut on her forehead.

With a muffled whimper, I stagger back towards the exit then turn around and flee.

“It don’t matter where you go,” Daniel calls out after me, “we’re still going to hunt you down, she-devil!”

I barrel down the hallway towards the restrooms, and a surprised scream greets my entrance as I reel towards the stalls.

“Leave!” I manage to utter, before I fall onto my knees and get sick.

I hear a girl run out, shrieking, while my stomach heaves again, emptying itself of all its contents. I swat my hair away, sticky with sweat before another wave hits me, followed by a low rumbling propagating through the floor.

“No,” I say weakly, holding tightly onto the toilet bowl.

The rumbling grows louder and I throw myself out of the stall as the floor convulses before the toilet explodes, dirty water erupting like magma from the broken pipe. I let out a terrified scream as the toilet in the next stall explodes as well with a deafening sound.

Large pieces of white porcelain fly overhead, cracking one of the sinks and shattering the mirror above it. I cover my head as
the silvery shards fall in a scintillating shower around me and into the fetid water flooding the bathroom.

My hand convulses around something sharp. I suck in my breath as a stinging pain lances through my finger and, looking down, find that I’m gripping a large piece of the broken mirror.

A strange sense of calm suddenly descends upon me, as if I’m no longer inhabiting my own body. I watch myself raise the shard to my arm.

“I’m a monster,” I say flatly, “and monsters don’t deserve to live.”

I push the jagged piece of mirror through the remains of my shirtsleeve and into my flesh. Blood pools at the tip then flows down to my blackened hand as I pull the fragment of glass across my forearm, from elbow to wrist. I bite on my lips to stop myself from screaming, the pain burning its way up to my shoulder, forcing me to connect with reality again. Yet, even as the cut reaches my hand, it’s already mending itself.

I pull the shard back out before ramming it into my forearm again, cutting more deeply, only to watch in horror as my muscles, tissue and skin knit themselves back up again.

I burst into hysterical sobs, raking the broken piece of glass up and down my arm, feeling it hit the bone, until the water around me is scarlet with my blood, my arm screaming in agony.

The door to the restrooms slams open.

“Morgan, stop!” Arthur yells.

I hear him rush over, the water splashing as he drops on the floor next to me, then his warm hand grabs my own before I can stab myself again, crushing my fingers in his fist.

“I’ve got to find the ogham!” I shout, tears pouring down my face. “Only then will I be able to stop!”

Arthur twists my arm around and I let out a sharp yelp, dropping the shard into the murky waters of the overflowing toilets.

“No!” I scream hysterically. “I’ve got to find it, it’s the only way!”

“Morgan, stop it!” Arthur yells, grabbing my other arm before I can find another piece of glass.

“Don’t look at me,” I wail, bursting in renewed tears. “I’m evil! You should put me down before I hurt anyone else!”

Arthur’s arms suddenly encircle me, holding me so tight to him that I can barely breathe. I try to fight him off, but no matter what I do he doesn’t let go.

“I can’t hurt them anymore,” I wail, pounding his back feebly. “I keep getting everyone killed….”

“Shh,” Arthur says, rocking me back and forth, “it’s OK, everything’s OK.”

My sobs eventually die down to a hiccup, and Arthur finally pulls away from me.

“Bri’s fine,” he says, “there’s nothing to worry about. It was just an accident.”

I want to tell him that he’s got it wrong. That he was never supposed to protect me. If he’d kept me in jail, then Bri would never have been hurt in the first place. And if I hadn’t been brought to Lake High, Owen wouldn’t have sat in that stupid chair, and Percy wouldn’t have almost died fighting the banshee, and the whole attack on the school wouldn’t have happened! And if my father had let me die at the hands of that Shade, then Agnès would never have been murdered, and he himself…

A strangled sob escapes my lips.

Everything bad that’s happened around me started with my cursed birth.

“Let me show you something,” Arthur says, pulling me up after him.

I stumble as he leads me to an intact mirror. Then, using his wet finger, he traces some runes on its surface before whispering
a few words. The mirror fogs up, smoky white tendrils rising from its smooth surface before dissipating again to show me a woman’s face, smiling as it looks down at something outside the mirror’s range.

“Who is that?” I ask, my voice breaking.

“You really don’t recognize her?” Arthur asks. “Even after you fought tooth and nail to save her?”

Arthur traces another glyph in the mirror’s corner and the image pulls out so that I can now see what the woman’s smiling at.

“A baby,” I whisper, finally recognizing the pregnant lady from the fight by Little Lake Butte Des Morts. I glance at Arthur in amazement. “They both survived?” I ask, still unwilling to believe what my eyes are showing me. The woman had been attacked by a Fey, pumped full of poison, and on the verge of giving birth in below-freezing temperatures…those aren’t what can be called ideal survival conditions.

Arthur nods, smiling. “They wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for you,” he says.

I look again at the nursing mother, remembering the warmth that had spread from my hands into her body. I hold out my hand to touch the infant’s soft-looking cheek, but the moment my fingers graze the mirror the image dissolves.

“So don’t you ever hurt yourself like that again, understood?” Arthur says meeting my eyes in the mirror’s reflection. “If it weren’t for you, those people wouldn’t have made it, Jennifer would be long gone, and I would just be another name on the casualty list.”

I nod slowly, though I am not entirely convinced I shouldn’t have my powers restrained somehow.

“Good,” Arthur says, sounding relieved, “then let’s get out of here and call for a cleanup crew.”

But as he takes a step, his knee gives out.

“You’re bleeding!” I exclaim, rushing to his help.

“It’s nothing,” Arthur says, pulling a shard of mirror out of his knee and dropping it on the inundated floor.

“Don’t tell me it’s nothing,” I say. “It’s an open wound and”—I straighten up and point at the broken toilets which, thankfully, have stopped their spewing—“with all the crap around us, it could get infected, or you could get cryptosporidiosis
²⁴
, or hookworms, or—”

“OK, OK, I get it,” Arthur says with a disgusted grimace. “I’ll go see Dr. Cockleburr.”

“Or…” I narrow my eyes at him and he takes a half-step back, wincing.

“Or what?” he asks apprehensively.

“Or I could heal it for you,” I say haltingly.

Arthur looks around uncertainly.

“Don’t you trust me?” I ask, unable to stop my voice from shaking.

I find myself holding my breath as I wait for his answer.

“Do…do your thing then,” Arthur says, rather stiffly.

“Awesome,” I squeak out. I clear my throat. “Uh, why don’t you sit down over there?” I say, motioning towards a small wooden stool down by the showers where the floor isn’t covered in refuse.

As Arthur limps across the room, I wash my hands and arms until my skin is raw, apprehension knotting my insides, then drag my feet over to him.

“Could you, uh, roll up your pants?” I ask, kneeling before him.

I hold my hands before me so they won’t touch anything dirty as Arthur carefully reveals his wound.

Without my asking to, he passes his hand over his injury.

“
Laguz
,” he murmurs.

One of Arthur’s rings sparkles pearlescent white and a soft jet of water washes the grime off his leg. A vision of Bri lying unconscious on the school desk flashes before me and my hands start shaking uncontrollably. I look up apprehensively, but Arthur has the good grace to pretend not to notice.

“It appears to have passed right next to the patellar tendon,” I say to distract myself from the terrifying thought of losing control over my abilities again. I gently prod his knee and blood seeps from the deep gash. “Though it could have damaged your meniscus…and perhaps even your anterior cruciate ligament.”

I babble on for another minute, enumerating every single medical fact I know about the knee to hide my increasing nervousness.

Finally, when I’ve run out of things to say, I take a deep breath, lay my hands over the cut and close my eyes.

Please, just please don’t let me blow his leg to pieces, I silently pray. Slowly, a pleasant heat envelops my hands. I want to open my eyes but I’m too scared to see what I’m doing. What if I’m making it worse instead, or making something strange grow, like a spike, or fur? Arthur’s leg is awfully soft, now that I think about it….

I fling my eyes open and let out a sigh of relief. Arthur’s knee looks as good as new—no fur, no spikes or scales and, most importantly, no gaping wound.

“You could’ve told me I was done,” I mutter, shivering with relief.

Not getting an answer, I lift my eyes and notice Arthur’s looking neither at his leg nor at my face. I follow his gaze down,
wondering what’s caught his attention, only to find that my torn shirt is sticking to me in a very revealing way.

Heat blazes to my cheeks. I throw my arms up to cover myself and my fist connects with a loud
thwack
. Arthur gasps in surprise as he falls off his stool, smacking his head hard on the tiled wall.

“Oops,” I say. “Didn’t mean to give you a concussion.”

A voice coming from the bathroom’s doorway makes us both jump. “It was either that or somethin’ much more embarrassin’,” Percy says with what can only be an evil grin. “Came to tell ya that Irene wants to see ya both. I recommend ya don’t change—could make the conversation briefer and to the point, so’s you guys can resume where ya left off real quick.”

And with a wink, Percy dashes away.

To my perverted pleasure, Percy wasn’t wrong—the moment we walk inside the KORT room, I see Irene’s small face pucker up in distaste.

“What have you two been up to, cleaning the sewers?” she asks. “Never you mind,” she adds as I open my mouth to reply, “I don’t want to know. I just called you in here to inform you that I’ve called the Board over and they’re sending a crew to pick up the Sangraal. They’ve asked that Morgan demonstrate how it works to them before they leave. Oh, and they’ll want to interrogate the Watchers as well.”

“You. Did. What?” Arthur asks, tense as a drawn bowstring.

“What I had to do, evidently,” Irene retorts. “What you should have done. You know very well that this place isn’t secure anymore, what with the spy working from inside the school, and the wards currently down. On top of that, I heard you almost got ousted last week.”

“I gave you no permission to remove the Sangraal from the school’s precinct,” Arthur says. “It’s always been here, and it shall remain here.”

Irene gives a tired sigh. “This is no time to have a fight, Arthur. I just told you about it out of courtesy, so my son won’t look like an idiot for once.”

“I still can’t allow it to happen,” Arthur says. “You talk about things being bad here? Yet why is it that you never broach the subject of corruption within the Board itself? Or has Luther converted you to his side of the matter too?”