The Faery Keepers (7 page)

             
“Ah. I see we’ve hit this little snag.”

             
“What snag?”

             
Maggie and I are sprawled on the couch, the TV forgotten. I’m perched on the extreme edge of my cushion whereas she’s utterly at ease. Well, to the untrained eye she is. To me, on the other hand, Maggie is as tense as I am. The grim set of her mouth, a flat angry line, and the darkening of her eyes to a bottle glass blue are dead giveaways.

             
Derek doesn’t know this, though.

             
“See, with
Faeries
, if they don’t want you hearing something, you don’t. Plain as that.”
             
I blink. “What?”

             
He gives an exasperated sigh and mutters something unintelligible under his breath. “How do I explain this... I suppose you can say it’s Faery magic. It’s glamour. Like how before now you weren’t able to see them. That’s mainly because they don’t
want
you to see them. You get what I mean?”

             
“Um, I guess,” I say even though I still have no clue what he’s going on about.

             
“You know you still haven’t explained how you found my house,” Maggie cuts in on any words he’s about to say.

             
He turns to her. “I dropped you off, remember?”

             
“Yes,” she allows. “But you didn’t come in. There are three floors and this place is not noted for its small size.”

             
She was right. The first time I’d been here I’d gotten lost trying to find their door and had to call her from a pay phone in the lobby. Luckily I’d had loose change in my pocket that day.

             
“It’s not that hard to look at the directory downstairs, you know.”

             
“I can’t believe I thought you were remotely attractive,” Maggie mumbles so low I’m not sure it’s what she said.

             
“What?” Derek squints at her.

             
“Nothing,” she says all innocence.

             
He shakes his head and Maggie leans towards my ear. “I think I need to have a talk with David about whom he lets come up here,” she whispers.

             
“I heard that,” he snaps grouchily. “I don’t have to be here. Don’t have to help you. So you two might want to be a
bit
nicer to me.”

             
“Well
I
never wanted you here, so count me out,” Maggie grumbles with a toss of her hair. She crosses her arms and slouches back, pointedly ignoring us.

             
Derek shrugs at her and averts his attention fully on me. His brown eyes meet mine and I resist the urge to look away. “You’ve got to understand this; these
Faeries
will make you tap dance until your legs fall off without a second thought or care. You have to be careful. Their magic is not something you want to meddle with. I
need
to know what happened yesterday.” The intensity of his stare makes me
squirm
. I run through everything that happened, not leaving out anything. Well, except the tiny detail that I’d seen him at the pool. That bit of information is going to stay secret until I mull it over some more and figure it out for myself.

             
“That’s all,” I say when I’m finished.

             
“You’re sure? There isn’t
anything
you want to tell me? Nothing you’re leaving out?” he prods.

             
“No, nothing,” I lie, surprising myself that it’s convincing even to my ears.

             
“Alright.” His mouth is a grim line now. His eyes darken for reasons unbeknownst to me before his hair falls in his face again, covering any evidence.

             
I tell myself that I’m imagining things but my gut screams at me that something isn’t right. I should take Maggie and get out of there,
now
, and run far away. As far as my legs can carry me.

             
But why?
the rest of me argues.

             
Then Derek lets out a piercing whistle so high pitched I wince and cover my ears.

             
“What are you
doing
?” Maggie yells, clamping her ears, pain and confusion painted on her face.

             
“I’m sorry,” he mouths as the windows on the far side of the room explode inward, projecting glass into the air and raining onto the carpet. I’m not certain that’s what he said. It makes no sense.

             
At first glance it looks like no one is in the apartment. As my eyes adjust and the reality of what I
should
be seeing hits me I can see them.

             
Four guards wearing armor and bearing vicious looking weapons launch themselves into the room. They’re obviously more dangerous than the guards like Breen b
ecause instead of the thorn he’
d wielded they had wicked looking swords that were not made of any metal known to man. A black, see through material that glistens like glass. Maybe it is glass. I don’t want to know, nor do I want to find out.

             
I gape in absolute horror, scrambling from the couch to make a break for the door.

             
Before I can make it two steps Derek catches me around my waist with one of his arms.

             
“Let me go!” I shriek, pounding his arm with my fists. “Let go! Derek, LET ME GO!” I flail at him with anything that will make contact. But it’s to no avail. He barely winces.

             
Maggie, meanwhile, is putting up her own fight with the
Faeries
in the room by the sound of her shrieks and the
thumps
of punches.

             
“MAGGIE!” I strain to see her. “MAGGIE, HELP!”

             
“Shut up,” Derek snarls. “You can’t win this. It’s five against two.”

             
“
How could you?
” I demand, nearly in hysterics. “We
trusted
you! HOW COULD YOU?!”

             
“Shut. Up.” And before I can do anything his free hand clamps down over my mouth, muffling any screams that may have come. I try to bite his palm but I can’t get my lips parted enough to find purchase. His skin tastes like salt and sweat.

             
I try kicking him again but I give up when I realize I’m only tiring myself out. I can’t stop the tears streaming down my face to pool on his hand and I don’t care either. Let them see.

             
Somehow I end up in a trance-like state. I could see and hear everything going on around me but I can’t move, can’t speak. I vaguely see Maggie collapse as I’m lifted into Derek’s arms, unable to protest. In other circumstances I might have gotten a thrill out of being carried in a
guy’s
arms. Now I only felt a forcibly contained loathing. And that was only because I
couldn’t
act. Now I got what he’d meant about their magic. It was ironic really, that the person we’d just begun to trust, who is supposedly
helping
us, is now going to. . .I don’t know what they are going to do with us. Honestly? I don’t want to think about it.

5. Chrysantha Queen of the

Summer Court

             
They carry us down the stairs and out into the parking lot. I don’t see Derek’s Jeep anywhere. Makes me wonder how he got here in the first place.

             
I can guess where we’re going before we turn in the general direction of it; the Apple Orchard. Of course. I’m surprised at our mode of transport. You guessed it. Walking. I wonder if I purposely break my legs, would I get a car ride now and then. That is when and if I get out of this. At least this time we were being carried. Which was odd seeing as no one saw us. And we passed plenty of pedestrians.

             
Oh, right. Duh. Glamour. If I could I would’ve smacked myself on my forehead. In fact I would do a lot of things if I could. Killing Derek would be on the top of my list.
Or at least seriously maiming or injuring him will suffice.
I briefly wonder if I would get tried as an adult. Fifteen is in the middle; I technically have three more years. But you never know with our court system.
Besides, wouldn’t it be considered self-defense? He’s kidnapping us after all. I scold myself and
forcibly
cease my more than morbid thoughts.

             
It seems like it ta
kes hours to get there, even in
this weird state we are in. Thinking the word “we” reminds me of Maggie and the fact that I can’t see her. She could be dead for all I know. Common sense tells me that if they did, in fact, kill her there would have been some sort of scuffle, like a scream or something. That didn’t help very much, though, because the thought of Maggie screaming made my insides go numb, even if it isn’t because of impending death. I want to call out to her very badly, but know I can’t. Still, that doesn’t stop me from trying. You can guess that it doesn’t work. In fact, I can’t even open my mouth. So, needless to say, I wish I could have given anyone a hundred bucks if they guessed that correctly. I would have given someone a thousand bucks if they could break us out of this. I would have given my whole life to our savior. I bet Maggie would too.

             
We’re finally in the apple orchard. Don’t ask how I know, I just do. Familiarity? Yes I know, I can see the apples, but the point is that I
can’t
. I have shut my eyes. I just can’t bear this any longer. I want out! I regret ever going to that pool that day. I regret the pool even being there. I possibly could stretch it so far as to say I regret being
alive
. Why would this happen to us, of all people? Surely there was someone better cut out for the job than us.

             
We make the distance to the tree and halt. I figure that’s where we are. I try to listen to noises to give me some hint as to what is happening, but quickly realize that opening my eyes would be a more logical option to accomplish that. No matter how much I don’t want to. How much I just want to transport myself out of this situation.
Suck it up, Kate
, I think as I open my eyes to find out that it doesn’t really matter whether they’re closed or not. All I see is black anyways.

             
Normally a person would be going, “What’s happening to me?” I’m not stupid, though. They’ve blindfolded me. Whether it was Derek or som
eone else, I don’t know. I ca
n’t see! It hardly matters, but I close my eyes again. When they finally do take this thing off, I want them to think I’m not affected by it; I want them to think I don’t even know it was on me. Don’t want to give them the satisfaction of getting to me.

             
“What the hell?” I hear Maggie somewhere behind me. Frankly, I agree. We’ve been standing here for a long time.
Wait
. I start, just thinking something. We can’t talk...so how is she managing speaking?

             
I try to open my mouth again. This time I succeed. “Maggie!” I call out to her frantically. “Where are you?”

             
“Katie!”
I can hear the trembling in her voice
. “Katie, I can’t see!”

             
“Neither can I. They’ve only blindfolded us.”
             
“Then why don’t I feel anything on my face?” her
shoots up a few octaves
with fright.

             
“Quiet!” comes a growl from ahead of me. My mouth works to call them names I didn’t even know I knew, but no noise comes out once more.
Dang it
.

             
I open my eyes again, hesitantly, and find that she’s right. I feel no material pressing on my skin and yet I can’t see a thing. I give a small involuntary whimper. What have they done to our eyes?

             
“Shh. You’ll be fine,” Derek whispers in my ear. I want to punch him in the face. If he thinks we’re going to forgive him for this, he’s
high
ly mistaken.

             
I can smell the woodsy/earthy scent of being underground; the air gets cooler as I feel us descending down . . . stairs? We must be
inside
the tree. How the heck was that possible? We weren’t that
small
.

             
We go down what seems like forever. I couldn’t tell you where we were if I tried. There must be a lot of tunnels in this place. How many
Faeries
live here? A million? It was either a very confusing labyrinth or they were purposely taking a roundabout route to make sure we didn’t know where the heck we were. Well, it was working. Kudos to the Fair Folk. Once again they
’ve
baffled the dim witted humans.