The Fallen Stars (A Star Child Novel) (15 page)

“What is it, K?” Gabe asked.

When the squeaking sound of the chalk against the board began, he and Cali both turned and saw it too. Writing appeared on the board, a message printed on it before our very eyes in tight, spiny scrawl. When the chalk dropped to the ledge, the writing stopped. It read:
I trust him. Go.

It matched the handwriting from the notes and from the tree in town. There’d been no doubt about it. Dillion’s handwriting couldn’t have been any more distinct.

The three of us stared at one another, locked in a silent discussion. There’d be so much risk associated with going with William, but if Dillion trusted him…

“If my Uncle trusts him, then I think we need to as well,” said Cali.

“Okay, but if we go with him, we leave at the slightest hint of anything funny. Got it?” I said, repeating my earlier lament.

“Agreed,” Gabe and Cali said in unison. It felt like we’d just sworn a pact, like in one of those weird teenage movies where they spit on one another’s hands or exchange blood. Thankfully, this pact involved neither.

Stopping by the door, we each put on our parkas. My fingers immediately found the piece of iron in my pocket. Grasping it with one hand, I held Cali’s hand with my other. I started out in the lead, but Gabe quickly cut in front of me to talk to William.

We didn’t have far to walk, maybe several hundred yards. The path took us directly to a small gatekeeper’s house that I hadn’t noticed before. How Hansel-and-Gretel-esque. Though I couldn’t see much of the exterior of the place in the dark, it definitely reminded me of something straight out of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. A cottage deep in the woods. Maybe
we
were going to be the dinner…

“This way,” William muttered over his shoulder as he led us into his house.

The last to cross the threshold, I couldn’t have been more surprised at what greeted me. The cheerful one room cottage epitomized the phrase “neat and orderly”. From the tidy blanket that covered the bed, to the colorful collection of books and music on the wall, it truly represented a home. Dried flowers and herbs hung artfully from the ceiling in various places. A variety of plants rested on the windowsills, tabletops, and mantel. A blazing hearth was the focal point in the room, flanked by two overstuffed chairs. Then my gaze shifted to the table, which overflowed with place settings for a formal dinner. Rich blue damask fabric covered the table and ran down to the floor where it pooled at the feet of the chairs.

William took our coats before removing his own oversized outer gear. In the light of the cottage, he appeared younger than I’d first assumed. Perhaps in his early twenties, late teens even. Short brown hair framed his smooth-shaven face. Again, he stared at Cali, but not for as long this time. After a moment, he snapped into host-mode. “I’m, uh, sorry. Have a seat.” William pointed to the table and chairs, not commenting on how he knew there would be four of us for dinner. Yet he immediately answered that question when he said, “I didn’t know how many we’d have for dinner, but it looked like I guessed right!” He smiled, his hands outstretched as he indicated the table.

Cali, Gabe, and I exchanged looks but took our seats, sinking into the comfortable chair cushions that dotted each of the chairs at the large round table.

“Should we even eat what he serves us?” I whispered to Cali, remembering the advice from Gran that you should never eat anything given to you in Faerie. This was close enough.

Cali shrugged. “Dillion would have warned us otherwise. Besides, don’t you think
I
would feel anything if he were one of them?”

The word
no
lay on the tip of my tongue, threatening to come out, but I held it back. In truth, I didn’t know if Cali still had the ability to discern anything about Faerie, and that worried me.

William returned with four red dishes, setting one on the table in front of each of us. “Nothing special, I’m afraid. Just a simple shepherd’s pie.”

As he spoke, I picked up on the faintest traces of an Irish accent. The tantalizing smell of the food wafted up under my nose, teasing me. When had I last had a meal like this?
I practically moaned with gratitude in anticipation of the meal. Warm Irish Brown Bread complimented the dish, along with a bottle of wine.

It was on the tip of my tongue to say that we weren’t of drinking age yet. However, I remembered that I was the only one who hadn’t reached drinking age. Cali had come of age centuries ago. No one could have doubted her. She and Gabe accepted glasses of wine from William without hesitation.

“Jack?” William held up the bottle, about to pour me a glass.

“No, thanks. Gives me a headache,” I said, kicking myself for not just accepting the wine.

“Some milk then?” William’s smile appeared mocking, as if he’d known my true age.

“Nothing, thanks,” I said.

Gabe smirked, digging into his dinner with gusto. Taking a bite myself, I had to admit that it far exceeded my expectations, though it would never measure up to Gran’s. Restaurant quality, certainly.

“So tell us a little bit about yourself, William.” The guy
had
given me dinner. Plus we needed more info on one of the few people that could pinpoint our location.

“What do you want to know?” His face seemed closed off.

Normally I had a talent for reading people.
Not William.
“Well, you aren’t from Maine, that much is obvious from your accent. Where are you from?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light, even, not wanting it to sound like the interrogation that it was.

“Dublin,” he said easily, though he didn’t expand on that information. He went back to eating his dinner as though the rest of us weren’t there.

“That’s a cool city,” I said. I’d only been there once and it’d been a long time ago.

No one spoke for about a minute.
Awkward.

Gabe, who had never been able to stand silence, seemed compelled to break it. “Where’s your family, man?”

“Dead,” William said in a flat voice. Gabe flushed.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Calienta said, placing her hand on William’s. He looked up and met her eyes, staring into them as if he could see into her soul.

“Yeah, man, me too. I didn’t mean—” Gabe said.

William turned to Gabe, breaking his connection with Cali. “It’s nothing,” he said. “It happened a long time ago. A lifetime ago.” With no further comment, he left the room, but before we could share any whispered thoughts in his absence, William returned with a cheesecake, a pot of coffee, and several cups. “Dessert?” he asked. We all nodded and he began serving dessert as though there hadn’t just been a supremely awkward moment between the four of us.

Deciding to try another tack, I looked around the room. “There are quite a few plants and herbs around the house here. Are you a gardener?” I asked.

William smiled; his personality was a puzzle. “I’m a warlock, actually,” William said.

Cali’s eyes darted to his before she met mine, and I picked up on her feelings of suspicion. Gabe looked at me as well. I didn’t believe for one minute that any of this was a coincidence.

William started talking again, but I’d stopped listening. A rushing sound began in my ears as I formed a plan about where we could go next. Should we just go get the car and start running? Would we ever be safe again?

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CALI—
FLIRT

Forcing myself to calm down after William’s announcement, I took another bite and then rejoined William’s conversation about his life as a warlock. How was it that I hadn’t noticed the magick in this house?
Looking around, I still saw nothing out of the ordinary. My mortality blinded me.

“It sounds a lot more complex than it is. I use the herbs to heal people and animals when they’ve been injured,” William said, tipping his chair back and off of its front legs slightly. “For example, Mr. Stonewall down the road has a bit of high blood pressure, so I made him a concoction with hawthorn to help.” He rubbed his fingers along his jaw as he spoke, his eyes never leaving mine.

“Do you have any other powers or gifts?” I asked, trying to keep my face a pleasant mask. I didn’t like the way William made me feel, as though every inch of me fell under inspection and nothing of value had been found. Or at least the judgment had been withheld. He seemed to look straight through me to the most vulnerable part of me, the part that I kept hidden, especially from people like him.

“Well…” William paused for a moment and then leaned toward me across the table. “I’m also really good at picking up information from people.”

I looked away, catching the expression on Gabriel’s face:
horrified
.

“What, like, you can read minds?” Gabriel asked.

William smiled at him. “Sort of. I get impressions from people, snippets of information here and there. Sometimes it’s concrete and sometimes it isn’t.”

Sitting forward in his chair, Kellen met William squarely in the eye. “So what impressions have you gotten from us?” he asked.

I glanced at Kellen as he spoke. Kellen didn’t like William, that much I could tell, maybe from the first moment that they met. Perhaps it simply felt that way because a stranger had been introduced into our situation, but judging by Kellen’s posture—rigid, leaning forward as though ready to fight—I didn’t think so.

William took a sip of his wine, which only added to the tension. “Not much,” he said. “Except that your name is Kellen and this is…Cali?” William raised an eyebrow, looking at me as he said my name.

A sinking feeling in my stomach made itself known. Why would Dillion have us trust this man? How could a warlock mean anything but trouble?

“Interesting. So how does that work, exactly?” Kellen asked, taking a sip of my wine, his eyes meeting William’s in challenge over the brim of the glass.

“It’s pretty simple, actually,” William confessed. “A person’s name is the easiest piece of information to pick up from him or her. When you introduced yourself, you gave me one set of names, but I picked up on another.”

I took my glass back from Kellen, tasting the wine again. My cheeks burned. It seemed intimate drinking from the same glass as Kellen had, but I had no idea how to respond.

Gabe spoke up. “They’re eloping. They’re under eighteen and they don’t want their parents to find out, okay? Kellen’s my cousin. I’m just trying to help him out.”

William seemed to mull Gabe’s lie over for a moment before raising his glass. “Congratulations to both of you, then. Don’t worry, your…
secret
is safe with me.” He locked onto my gaze and I couldn’t look away. The words sounded sincere, but I didn’t believe that William took Gabe’s story as truth.

Again, I made a conscious decision to slow my pulse to act calm when in fact I felt the opposite. I smiled at William. “We’ll keep you in mind when we’re at the ceremony next week.”

“I’d like that,” William said, inclining his head in what appeared to be a silent salute to me before he drank.

“William,” Kellen interrupted him and I realized that I’d been leaning in a little too close to William, as though he’d held me transfixed. I sat up abruptly. “Do you mind if I check out your collection?” Kellen gestured at the shelves on the wall.

“Be my guest,” William said, though his eyes remained on me as he answered.

Once again, I found myself leaning toward him, staring into his eyes, and I made myself pull back. Why did I keep leaning closer to him? Had he entranced me? Perhaps he had.

“So you’re getting married, huh?” William said, as though Gabriel no longer sat at the table with us. “My bad luck, then.”

I tried to open my mouth to speak, but I could only look at him. What was this trickery?

“Yes, they are,” Gabe said.

There was something so unusual about William, yet strangely familiar. Like I knew him before, somehow. That was impossible, though, and it scared me. I didn’t know this man, yet I
knew
him somehow. I needed to understand the connection—and fast.

“Pity,” said William, taking another drink, not breaking eye contact with me. When he finished, he licked the rim of the glass slowly with his tongue, sending an involuntary chill through my body. The action reminded me of a serpent.

“This is a really interesting collection of jazz books you’ve got here, William. Or can I call you Bill?” Kellen said from across the room.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Kellen perusing each title, no doubt searching the contents of each book. He’d only have to glance at the information to recall it in perfect detail.

William shook his head. “No, William is just fine. Thanks,” he said, never taking his eyes from me.

“When did you become a practicing warlock?” I asked, raising my coffee cup to my lips. When I set it back down on the table, William pushed the wine toward me. Reaching behind the wine glass, I took the coffee, holding the steaming cup close, my eyebrows raised.

William laughed out loud, still watching me. “It was the family business, you could say,” William said. “At least at one time. Now there’s just me.” His face changed, and for just a short space in time, he looked bitter.

“Man, I bet that’s cool, though, being a warlock. Someone doesn’t toe the line, you blast them away or something,” Gabe said.

William laughed again, breaking our eye contact and looking at Gabe. Apparently, the idea of blasting someone away held appeal for William. “It doesn’t quite work that way, but you’re right, that does sound cool,” William replied.

I took a slow, deep breath, trying not to show my relief at breaking my gaze away from his. I looked into my coffee cup, determined to look everywhere but at William for the rest of the night.

Kellen intervened. “So, William, you like Stanley Turrentine?” he asked. In his hands, he held some small square things that were different colors with pictures on the front of them. I leaned forward to ask what they were, but then stopped myself. William didn’t need to know the truth about me, even if Dillion did trust him.