With a Kiss (Twisted Tales) (16 page)

“Too bad.”

“Why does she have to be me? Is it because . . . I’m dying?” It scared me how hard it was to catch enough breath to say it.

“Are you?” I nodded and he shocked me with a grin. “Good.” He squeezed my hand. “You were making
me
tired just looking at you.”

Bugul snorted at this, but ever since Hobs
discovered
his vow of silence, he was completely out of words. Babs continued to decorate the goblin with my jewelry, but nothing would help the poor thing. Maybe that’s why Hobs kept stealing the baubles from him and throwing them into my backpack.
What is he doing with all that useless stuff, anyway?
My irritation gave me fresh energy, though it never lasted long enough to do any good. “What are you packing?”

“Gifts. Faeries like glittery things.” Hobs held a necklace in front of Babs and she jumped for it, but he held it just out of reach.

“Whatsh that?” she asked. Bugul folded his arms in silent rage.

“If we’re going to vacation in the Sidhe,” Hobs said, “we’ve got to be able to barter.”

“How will we get there?”

“Between wake and sleep, hope and desperation, life and death. Whatever. The Sidhe is right in front of us. We’re almost there, beautiful girl. No worries.”

“How long . . . ?” I couldn’t finish.

“Depends on if we get caught.” Hobs sat heavily down on the side of my bed, peering into my eyes. I couldn’t move away and after a moment, he laid gentle fingers against the tiara on my head, his breath warm against my ear. “Listen closely.” The jewel glowed over his face, and he seemed to be talking to it. “There are six rules of the Fae.” I flinched. Rules were not my strong point. They always got me into trouble. Hobs smirked as if he could read my mind. “It’s only six, babe. It’s not that hard.”

“Rrrr!” Bugul stood up in outrage, swinging his fists. “Uh-uh!” It was hard not to interpret that Hobs was getting something wrong. “Mmm mmm rrrrsss.” That was a little harder to decipher, and I tried to listen more closely, knowing that Hobs would only misinterpret Bugul in his lame attempt to translate. “Mmm mmm.”

Hobs blew my dark hair out of his face and straightened to look at Bugul. “What?”

“Mmm mmm.” Bugul held up seven fingers.

“Seven.” Even half dead, I could figure it out. “There are seven rules, aren’t there, Hobs?”

“Ummm hmmm.”

“
Ummm hmmm
means no,” Hobs said.

“He’s saying seven.” I stuck stubbornly to my claim. Let Hobs mute me with a spell if he dared—I wasn’t backing down. Babs pulled the Skittles from the backpack. They were the leftovers from our great shopping expedition. If it wasn’t for Daphne’s mothering, Babs would be just as sick as I was. Babs ceremoniously presented the Skittles to us with her sticky hands.

“Love the present, Babs.” Hobs tossed them into the backpack again. He watched me and growled in defeat. “Okay, seven rules then.” Bugul let out a satisfied sigh and Hobs gave him a cold smile, which I knew meant trouble. “First rule—the Otherworldly can’t eat faery food. It’s forbidden.”

Already, the rules didn’t make sense. “Why?”

“It’s disgusting.” My forehead wrinkled. That couldn’t be the real reason. He touched the tiara over my head and it rang over my ears in response, repeating the rule back to me:
The Otherworldly can’t eat faery food. It’s forbidden
. “You must remember,” he said.

“Did you hear that?” I asked. “Your words . . . they’re echoing back at me.”

“It’s just a little reminder every time you’re tempted to break the rules. No worries. No one else will be able to hear it but you and me. It’ll be our little secret. They’ll be glad too because it’s annoying.”

Babs had returned to pawing the Skittles and I sat up too fast, making my head ache. “What happens . . . when faeries eat
our
food?”

“Nothing.”

As always, it wasn’t fair, and it must have shown on my face because he pushed me back against my bed with gentle hands. For once he looked serious. “Second rule. If you hear the music of the faeries, run. You must remember.” He touched the tiara over my head again. I felt him ingraining it into my memory quite literally. The words circled through my head:
If you hear the music of the faeries, run. If you hear the music of the faeries, run.

I wasn’t strong enough to fight against whatever spell he was putting over me. “C’mon, you can’t tell me that faeries really sing . . . that bad?” I said.

He grinned. “They’ve got nothing on you.” He tapped my head again. By now I was used to the ringing that filled my ears at the motion. “Third. Never say thank you.” I gave him a curious look, and he shrugged. “It’s offensive. That’s why we’re bringing the gifts. It’s the only way to get what we want. You must remember.”
Never say thank you
. It echoed in my head.

Hobs turned to the scowling Bugul. “We need more shiny things for bargaining. I saw some jewelry in the bathroom. Go get it.” Bugul glanced at the bathroom, then at me, shaking his head forcefully. Hobs sighed. “He doesn’t like mirrors,” he explained. It wasn’t hard to know why, and Bugul’s eyes narrowed at him. “He’s afraid he’ll get snatched to the other side. Don’t worry, friend, I’ll hold your hand if you’re scared.”

Hobs reached out for him and Bugul scrambled away with a growl. Babs happily wrote on the wall behind us with a bright red marker. Bugul snatched it from her grip with an angry swipe and threw it at us on his way to the bathroom. I had a feeling if he could talk, it would’ve been accompanied with a lecture.

Hobs winced at Babs’ artwork. I couldn’t really react, except to lift my head, peering closer at the writing on the wall “What’s it say?” I asked.

Babs bowed her head in shame. “Ish my name.”

I squinted at the wall, but there was no way to decipher the scribbles. “I think it says Lug,” Hobs said after a moment. My shadow giggled.

“Nobody is calling her Lug,” I told them both. My shadow rolled her eyes and went to grab something to clean it up with . . . outside of my room! She pranced into the hall.
Is she already taking my place?
I didn’t have enough energy to get nervous about it. At least I couldn’t see through her anymore. She looked quite solid. I could die and no one in this world would be the wiser.

“It’s for the best, Sleeping Beauty,” Hobs whispered. He dabbed something onto my eyelids. The glitter fell from my lashes onto my cheeks. My eyes felt even heavier. Hobs started pacing. “It’s the fourth rule, actually. Don’t use our names, only use euphemisms, nicknames—you never call a faery by their name.
It’s annoying, and they have to go wherever you call. Or worse, it’ll make
you
go to them.” A loud clatter followed the pronouncement, and Hobs let out a pained howl. “Poake-ledden!” He hopped up and down holding the knee that he had run into the dresser.

Bugul chortled loudly from the bathroom. Hobs growled out, but because of the little devil he was, he had a hard time keeping his own laugh back. He settled back next to me and finished the ritual. “You must remember that.”
My head rang again as he touched it again. Strangely enough I felt myself drifting away, his words settling into my dreams.
“Never call a faery by their name. It’s annoying and they have to go wherever you call. Or worse, it’ll make you go to them.
Poake-ledden!”

The corners of my mouth turned up when I heard the faery swear word caught at the end of the echo. Even in the depths of my exhaustion, I had a bad case of schadenfreude. Babs tried to bury herself into my side, but my bed was too tall for her three-ish foot frame and she couldn’t climb up. As soon as Hobs swung her up beside me, her arms were around me. She watched me with concerned eyes. “Whatsh the matter?”

I squeezed her hand in response just as I heard the sound of wailing. My eyes strained for the window. Babs’ fingers tightened over mine. She was finally old enough to be scared. The Banshees were coming with new, probably stronger orders, and I had no fight to give them. “I can’t run . . .”

“Of course you can’t.” Hobs grabbed a pair of my old boots he had stashed under the bed. They were made of brown leather, laced up the front, and lined with fur—hardly appropriate summer attire. “It’s the fifth rule. You promised you
would
bring Babs back. You must never break a promise to a faery. You must remember that.” His words repeated through me.
Never break a promise to a faery.
It drifted in and out of my consciousness.

I was seeing things. Snowflakes fell over my bed. The wailing grew more distant, like it was from another world. I watched the ivy cling to the bed posts with desperate fingers. Dense trees groaned above us in a tower of shadow. The branches creaked under the weight of heavy snow.

“Sixth rule.” Hobs laced the boots onto my leg with an efficient tug. I tried to ignore the fact that they looked terrible with my sweat capris. “Do not trespass the sacred territory of the faeries. You must remember that.” Too late. The circlet buzzed over my head in warning, glowing through the dark forest. Is that why Hobs had programmed the rules into me? To remind me every time I was tempted to break them . . . or when I already did?
Do not trespass the sacred territory of the faeries.

The Sidhe could no longer be held from my vision, and I wasn’t tired anymore. Energy coursed through my body. It was a rush, and I sprang up from my bed like I was caught in the middle of a sprint. I blinked away the snowflakes from my lashes. My bedroom was still here, but so was this forest. Everything about it was magical and deadly. “Why can I see this?” My heart quickened. “Uh, Hobs, what’s happening? I’m not dead, am I?”

“It’s a rebirth. The curse was the only way to get you back to the Sidhe.” I stared at this new world. My world was covered with it. A tree here. A desk there. Snow. Wallpaper. It was hard to figure out what was real and what wasn’t. This new vision was a part of the curse—it only took pure exhaustion to get me to see what was already around me in this strange new dimension called the Sidhe. Hobs leaned next to me, nudging me with his elbow. “I told you that faeries live here side by side with you . . . in another world.”

Babs’ eyes got wide as we watched the forest grow thick around us, choking out my world with it. She huddled close to me, one hand in Hobs’, the other in mine. Her thick lashes blinked rapidly. She looked to be about seven now. I wasn’t the only one who noticed her little growth spurt—Hobs turned to me, looking regretful. “I don’t think anyone will recognize the princess now.”

I shivered. The whole forest shimmered in the cold. The falling snow glittered over the Sidhe. It was scary and beautiful all at once. Just the kind of place where I imagined Red Riding Hood would feel quite comfortable—if her hood was trimmed with fur. “How long has the princess been gone?”

His eyes roved over my face, then lingered on my lips. “Too long.” He brushed the flakes of snow from my cheeks. “Time stopped when she was stolen. Now all we know is winter and war. Everything bad happened when she was taken. The treasures were gone. Bargains were made with the Otherworldly. If we don’t get her back soon, I don’t think we have long before everything is destroyed.”

I remembered that Hobs told me that the princess was my age—seventeen. It was a long time. “What happened to
you
when she left?”

“I swore I’d get her back, even if it killed me. There’s a connection between us—it’s hard to explain. I wasn’t even sure what it was . . . but,” he took a deep breath, “I searched the world for her and there was nothing. No trace of her anywhere. I had lost all hope of ever finding her.”

My world was disappearing into his. I jumped when my tiara murmured a warning into my mind.
Do not trespass the sacred territory of the faeries.
The reminder made me nervous. It was too late for that. “Hobs, does anything bad happen if I break the rules?”

“You face the consequences. That’s all.” The door to my fading bedroom ripped open. Bugul’s incensed face peeked out the very moment my bed disappeared out from under me. His grumbles faded into nothingness and we left the poor guy behind in my bedroom. I shrieked and fell through the air, tumbling into a pile of cold snow.

Babs landed over me and I let out a pained
ooph
. Hobs face-planted next to us. He pulled his head up from the snow, and it trickled from his newly acquired black beanie down his blond hair. He narrowed his dark eyes. We had collapsed in the middle of the forest onto a pile of frozen leaves and ice, our legs making heavy imprints in the snow, but even under all the debris I could see we were in a faery ring. The snow had melted around its boundaries.

I sat up, squeezing Babs’ small hand, though it wasn’t as small as before. “My bed?”

“Um, yeah . . .” Hobs smiled slowly. “It’s a faery transporter. I think it did its job.”

With a kiss, one, two, three, the sun circles. Another world you’ll see
. Yes, the faery queen was right. I was seeing another world. It glistened white. I took a shaky breath.