Glimmerglass

I was more terrified than I’d ever been in my life. I grabbed the afghan that was still wrapped around my shoulders and flipped it like it was a sheet I was trying to drape over a bed just right. It came to rest directly over the creature’s head, and I let go.

My hope had been that blocking its vision would slow the creature down at least a little, but my plan worked better than expected. The creature tried to pull the afghan off its head, but the yarn kept getting caught on all the little sticks and twigs that jutted out of its body. Shrieking in outrage, the creature began shredding the afghan with its claws.

The distraction gave Ethan just enough time to come running. His knife flashed again and again as he plunged it through the afghan and into the creature below. Black icky stuff dripped from the blade, and the creature’s shrieks turned to sounds of pain. But Ethan didn’t stop stabbing it until the shrieks subsided and the creature collapsed to the floor and stopped moving. I blinked, and suddenly the creature’s body lost its shape and became nothing more than a pile of sticks and straw and gross black sludge.

The sudden absence of screaming and shrieking made me feel like I’d lost my hearing—except I could hear my frantic breaths as my mind tried to absorb everything that had just happened.

Ignoring me for the moment, Ethan bent to check on Jason while Kimber and her friend tended to the other two boys. Jason’s eyes were squinched shut in pain, and he clutched what looked like a handkerchief to his bloody face. Ethan had torn his shirt open and was now probing gently at his ribs.

“Broken,” I heard him mutter under his breath when Jason flinched under his light touch. “It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” he warned, then put both his hands on Jason’s chest.

I saw the flash of fear in Jason’s eyes. I didn’t know him, wouldn’t even have known his name if the other boy hadn’t called to him, but I guess taking care of my mother for all those years had given me a nursemaid instinct. I knelt on Jason’s other side and took hold of his hand. He squeezed gratefully.

Ethan was mumbling again, and I felt the little hairs on my arms stand at attention. Ethan was obviously doing some sort of magic, and though that wasn’t unusual in Avalon, it still felt surreal to me. Then Jason screamed, his back arching as his hand nearly crushed mine.

It lasted only a few seconds, and then Jason’s whole body sagged and he breathed a huge sigh of relief. He closed his eyes, and I figured he’d just passed out.

“What were those things?” I asked Ethan as I began shaking in delayed reaction.

I could see the muscles clenching in his jaw as he ground his teeth. “Spriggans,” he said, then spit as if the word tasted bad.

That didn’t exactly clear things up for me. “What’s a Spriggan?”

He sat back on his heels and pushed his hair away from his face. “Creatures from Faerie. Creatures that are not allowed to set foot in Avalon.”

“Unseelie creatures,” Jason said, and I saw that he hadn’t passed out after all. He was also eyeing Ethan strangely.

We’ve already established that I was woefully ignorant of the workings of Avalon and Faerie, but I did know at least a little something about the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. All of Faerie was divided between the two Courts, which were sometimes at war, and sometimes at an uneasy peace. The Seelie Fae were the “good” Fae, although when speaking of Fae, “good” is a relative term. The Unseelie Court was home to all the bad guys—goblins and monsters and things that go bump in the night. And, apparently, Spriggans.

Ethan frowned down at Jason. “They are no kin to me, so stop looking at me like that.” He helped Jason sit up.

“Sorry,” Jason said, avoiding Ethan’s eyes.

Ethan patted his shoulder. “No harm done, and I can’t blame you after what just happened. It’s creatures like Spriggans that give the Unseelie Court a bad name.”

It took me a moment to make sense of this exchange, but when I did, my eyes widened to what I felt sure were comic proportions.

“You’re Unseelie?” It was somewhere between a question and a gasp of horror.

“I am,” Ethan confirmed. “As are approximately half the Fae who reside in Avalon. And no, we are no more uniformly evil than humans are uniformly good.”

Jason looked only halfway convinced. But then, he was still in obvious pain. I frowned at Ethan, not at all sure how to take this little bit of news. He’d seemed perfectly at home wielding that knife and stabbing the life out of those nasty creatures, and it was hard not to wonder—yet again—if he was one of the good guys or one of the bad guys.

“I thought since Avalon seceded from Faerie, the Fae here weren’t supposed to be affiliated with the Courts,” I said. “They’re only supposed to matter in Faerie.”

Ethan laughed dryly. “That’s true in theory. Reality is somewhat different. You’ll notice many houses and businesses in Avalon displaying either white or red roses. White roses mean the house or business is Seelie; red roses mean it’s Unseelie.” His eyes fixed on my chest. I looked down and noticed that the cameo lay outside my shirt. The cameo with the white rose on it.

Had Dad’s thoughtful gift had some invisible strings attached? He’d never mentioned that wearing the white rose declared me to be a Seelie girl. It seemed to me he should have told me, and I couldn’t help wondering why he hadn’t.

Ethan met my eyes, and I suspected he knew what I was thinking. “Neither Kimber nor I wear the red rose,” he said. “As far as we’re concerned, it’s an outdated custom that desperately needs to be abandoned. I’ve never even set foot in Faerie, so why should I declare allegiance to the Unseelie Court?”