The Fallen Stars (A Star Child Novel) (33 page)

“I need to drive this contraption.”

“You…? Uh, I could drive you,” he offered, looking as though the idea terrified him.

“No. What
you
must do is sprinkle as much salt as you can find around the perimeter of your house, then go inside and shut the door. And stay inside,” I warned him through my tears.

The fact that he didn’t question my directive spoke volumes, as though he’d been given that advice many times before. He nodded. “I have salt. Let me show you how to get it started first, though.”

And so began a rather frustrating driving lesson with Fred. Fred had more patience than I did, for he explained repeatedly about the “shifter” and the “brake” and “gas”. Once I’d pretty much gotten the hang of it, I left him behind, driving—albeit with some inconsistency—out of his driveway.

The car jerked as I drove, at least until I remembered that I needed to use the long pedal on my right, and then it was going entirely too quickly. “Ahh!” Stomping my foot on the pedal on the left, I slowed down, jerking to a stop. “Okay, take a deep breath. You can do this.”

I took my foot off of the left pedal again and very gingerly tried the right pedal. Though it took longer than if I’d used magick, at least I moved. As long as no one realized who drove the car in the first place, I could get there.

Worry nagged at me. I’d taken too much time with the car. Walter would have been found out by now, wouldn’t he? Also, when would dawn approach? The clock on the dashboard read four-thirty, but although I could tell time—one of the basic functions that came with my mortality—I didn’t have a sense of what that meant.

Following Fred’s directions, I pulled onto the main road and drove. The road wasn’t hard to drive on, but wound its way up the mountain on a narrow curving course that took me through the dark woods. When I came to a small building with a guard in it, he just looked at the car and waved me on. Fred had warned me that I would need to keep pressure on the gas or Cindy, which was the name he’d given his car, might get stalled.

However, as I continued to drive, getting better every moment, Cindy seemed to be cruising right up the hill without a problem. Adding words of encouragement, I patted the part that Fred had called the “wheel”. “You’re doing so well, Cindy!”

The car continued up the hill for quite a while. Though I had to work to steer on the winding road, my confidence increased the further Cindy and I traveled. “Good girl, Cindy!” As if on cue, Cindy decided that she no longer had any interest in continuing and the car sputtered and jerked. The higher we drove, the worse the sputtering became.

Fred told me that I would have to drive seven miles to reach the top. I had no idea how long or far that was. What if Cindy quit before then? Pressing my foot down on the long pedal, I tried to get her to go faster, but it made no difference. “Go, Cindy, go!”

Then, as we hit a slight plateau, Cindy apparently decided that this was the end and simply rolled to a stop in the middle of the road. I didn’t care for Cindy very much at that point. Deciding that I could do nothing further with her, I reached for the handle, opened the door, and exited like Fred had shown me. He would have to come collect his car later.

Turning, I started walking. My clothes weren’t enough to keep me warm and I plunged my hands in my pockets, trying to keep my fingers from freezing. Then I remembered Fire.

“Fire, warm me,” I whispered. Flames didn’t spark from my hands, but I felt heat pour through my body. It worked. The feeling that Fire was with me reminded me of my family, my birthright. Though my parents, my sister, and my brother were not with me physically, I did not carry on alone. They were with me in spirit as I called on this element—the element that would help me find my Kellen.

Picking up the pace, I walked faster, scanning the area as I searched for anything that might help me. Up ahead, a corner came into view. I made it around the bend and came face to face with an army of winged people, flying at the ready. There were hundreds of them, hovering in mid-air, their bows all pointed in one direction:
Mine.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

KELLEN—
TRUTH

Moving closer to the edge of my seat, I regarded Tai, who paced the room.

“When young Stephen disappeared, his parents…they went mad with it. Looked everywhere, they did, but there was no sign of him. Your Grandda, he…” Tai seemed to choke up as he spoke of my Grandda. Maybe Tai’s own father had come to mind?

Tai began again. “Your Grandda went out looking for him and it tore him up inside.”

Staring at Tai, the gears turned in my mind. “He told you all this?” It didn’t seem like the sort of thing that an adult would tell an eight-year-old.

Tai looked up and into my eyes. He seemed to be carefully considering his next words. Slowly he stood, and his posture changed as if he were an older man instead of one who appeared to be in his thirties. His eyes never left my face, their deep honey-tinged brown color reminding me of a lost puppy dog. As I looked on, he aged right in front of my eyes, his youthful skin gaining lines and coloration from the effects of sun damage, his middle looking fuller, softer. Tai shuffled from side to side for a moment before he spoke again.

He glanced at the floor and then back at me. “Kellen, I
know
all of this,” he said.

In that instant, I knew too. Though he might have looked different, the mannerisms, the voice, the cadence of speech were all the same. It had been many years, but there was no mistaking it. It all came back to me.

“How did you come to be here, Grandda?”

At my mention of the name “Grandda”, Tai’s eyes widened before crinkling up at the sides, a warm smile lighting his face. “You always were smart as a whip, boy.”

I’d never known his first name. He’d just always been “Grandda”. If his name had been in any of the paperwork for Gran’s will, I hadn’t seen it. “Why didn’t you just tell me it was you?”

Grandda’s face seemed to portray all the worry, all the concern of the past years. “You’ve been through too much. I didn’t want you to go into shock.”

A laugh escaped my lips. “I’m past the point of shock. I should be in therapy.” Running my hand over my face, I asked, “Are you still…alive?”

“No, I’m…I’m what they call a ghost. A spirit. A lost soul.” He winked at me, as if this idea amused him.

“But why? You always seemed to have had a good life. Why would you be lost?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Because I made a deal, a deal that would get me my son back. In exchange, I have to stay here. Here, instead of with my beloved wife.” Reaching into his pocket, he took out a small framed photograph about the size of a business card. Turning it in my direction, I glimpsed a picture of Gran when she’d been younger. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

Smiling, I took the picture from him and looked at my Gran. “Yes,” I said as I handed it back to him. “Am I dead?” Another sip of tea went down my throat.

“Nah, nah. This is just…an interlude, as they say. As soon as you leave, you will no longer be safe.”

Taking another sip of my tea, I processed this information for a moment. “So what happened with Stephen?”

“Something you should know about your father is that he’d been the most wonderful son up until that day that he disappeared. He definitely was his Ma’s boy, and I loved him, even though he wasn’t my son by blood. I loved your Gran and so I loved her boy as my own, raised him as my own.”

“What did you do when he disappeared?”

“Lost my mind. When you’re a parent, well…it’s unimaginable. It’s your worst nightmare come true a hundred times.” Grandda’s voice sounded thick with emotion. Holding my tongue, I sat there, waiting for him to continue.

“He’d told some of his friends about the rath but he talked to me about it the most. When he went missing, I immediately knew where he had gone. Every night I would leave an offering at the rath. A bit of leather, bread, pretty much anything that I supposed they might like. Yet nothing happened for weeks, and we began to fear that we would never find him.

“Then on the thirtieth night, a little man was waiting for me at the rath. He thanked me for my gifts and told me that I would be granted a boon of my choosing. He made quite a few suggestions—livestock, prosperity, and more. However, all I told him was that I wanted my son back. I remembered later that I should have set stipulations. I should have asked him to be returned
exactly as he was
.”

“He wasn’t?” I supplied with surprise.

“No. The Stephen that came back wasn’t…right. He wasn’t himself. He hated us, for one thing. The worst part was how he treated his mother. So cruel, so,
so
cruel
…I don’t know if she ever got over that in her whole life. She was devastated.”

“After that first night I returned to the rath again and again. I wanted my real son back, not this changeling, for that’s what I truly believed that we’d been given. Imagine knowing your real son is trapped while an impostor stays with you.” Grandda looked down at his tea.

“What did the changeling do that was so horrible?”

“That’s just it. You never caught him
doing
anything, but you
felt
like it was just a matter of time before he did. There was something in the way that he looked at you. Like he knew all of the secrets of the world and you were only in the way. He was cold. After the closeness that he’d shared with your Gran, she couldn’t handle it. I’d find her out by the cliffs at night sobbing, just crying her eyes out. When Alistair found us and offered to take Stephen with him to get to know his brothers, we readily agreed. I hate to say it, but it was such a relief getting him out of the house.”

“Did you ever meet any of the faeries again?”

“No. I kept trying to find a way to reach Arawn or anyone in Faerie who would help me. Though no matter how many visits I paid, I never saw the little man again and I wouldn’t go into any of the raths. They would definitely take me then. I kept up the visits for over twenty years.”

“Why did you stop?”

He rubbed his chin, scratchy and in need of a shave. “I had to keep my part of the bargain.”

“What was that?”

“In exchange for getting my son back, I had to give up my soul. To Arawn.”

Blood drained from my face and I stared at my Grandda. He’d loved my father enough to risk it all and give up his life and his love.

“By that time, you were born and were a—”

“Year and a half old,” I said.

He nodded. “Aye, and a smart little tyke even then.” A smile lit his face, making it seem almost boyish for a second until the memories flooded back to him.

“And you didn’t die of a heart attack,” I said.

He looked at the floor. “No, it was more of a rough end than that. Our ship went down off the coast. There were no survivors. He came for me, Arawn did, and he also took the rest. They hadn’t done anything wrong. He called them
spares
.”

“I never knew.”

He looked up at me. “Your Gran, she probably didn’t want you to worry about going into the water, didn’t want you to be afraid. She was thoughtful like that,” he said, a wistful smile on his face.

“Yeah.”
Sorry, Gran, I should have known
. Grabbing the small book, I waved it at him. “But what does Stephen have to do with the second part of the prophecy? He’s not in the book. There’s nothing mentioned about him at all.”

“I’ve told you as much as I can. There are parts of this that you’ll have to find out for yourself.” Tai scratched his head and seemed to swivel slightly on the short squat wooden chair. “We tried to take you with us, to get custody of both you and Roger. Alistair tried to pull every string that he could after your mother died.”

After the horror of finding Gabe’s car, being ripped from Cali’s side, and nearly run over, being with my Grandda filled me with emotion. Complete polar opposite compared to the crushing numbness that had kept me moving forward for so long.

“Have you gone to Faerie and looked for your real son?” I asked again.

Sighing, Grandda came and sat down next to me, looking much more solid than an apparition should. He seemed real and I could feel warmth coming off of his body.

“I can’t leave the Cusp. If I could, I would go to Faerie myself, but I can’t. I’m forever trapped here.”

“If I get out of this, Cali and I will go and look for your real son.”

Grandda laughed as if I’d given him the most wonderful news. “So you call her Cali, do you?”

A small smile escaped me, but I couldn’t keep it up. Worries about Cali, where she’d gone to, if she’d been trapped, haunted me.

“You two are going to have a rough time of it,” Grandda said.

Let’s state the obvious, why don’t we?
“I think we’re
already
having a rough time.”

He laughed again. “We’ve all pretty much taken sides, all of us in Faerie and the Cusp. You’ll have to trust your gut because you’ll not be able to tell who is for or against you. In your darkest hour, I’ll be there though.”

“I’m sorry, Grandda.” I looked at my shoes, tears filling my eyes because I would have to leave soon and because he’d saved me.

“But you did nothing, my boy. Everything that has happened has only hurt you. You didn’t bring it upon yourself.”

“Yeah, but I’m sorry you had to go through it.” My words sat in the room like a third person. For a moment, Grandda placed his arms over my shoulder and I was filled with warmth that uplifted me. In that moment, I didn’t doubt that everything would eventually be all right. We would be okay. He removed his arm and I was cold again, though some of the unexpected warmth of his touch remained.

When I looked at Grandda, he seemed a little fuzzy around the edges, as though he were a TV with bad reception, or a pixelated image stretched beyond its resolution.