Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception

“He’s too old for you. And he doesn’t go to your school.” The last sentence was a bit indecisive. She was guessing.

I looked up, right at her. Her weakness lay in her indecision. I wondered how many times I’d had an opening in a discussion like this and missed it because I was too complacent.

“You’re right. He’s only here for the summer, and he’s a senior. I know he’s a little old. But I’m not doing anything stupid. And he’s a gentleman. Is there anything wrong with that?”

Mom blinked. I don’t think she knew what to do. Had I ever rationally contradicted her before? Ever? She drank her cocoa, still young and pretty, but now with a glaring chink in her armor.

I could have waited for her to say something, but I didn’t. I pressed home my victory. “And I have my cell phone with me all the time, so you can always get me. Don’t I always answer it? You raised me to know what to do. You’re going to have to trust me.”

Oh, damn, that was good! I washed my smile down with some cocoa. That was killer.

Mom sighed. “I suppose you’re right. But I do want to know whenever you’re out with him.” She stood up and went to the kitchen to rinse out her mug, her head framed by the dark night window above the sink. “What does James think about this?”

“Uh—what do you mean?”

She turned and faced me, expression slightly withering. “Use your brain, Deirdre.”

eleven

In my dream, Luke was sitting in his tired Bucephalus, arms crossed on the steering wheel, forehead resting on them. Barely visible in the moving darkness of the car, the torc on his arm glinted, a dull secret.

I wasn’t in the car, but I could see the corner of his face as if I were an invisible, tiny watcher perched on the gear shift. His lips moved, his voice barely audible.

“I am Luke.” The pause before his next words stretched into hours, lifetimes. Mist moved outside the car windows, pale, damp fingers leaving marks on the glass. “It’s been one thousand, three hundred forty-eight years, two months, and one week. Please don’t forget me.”

The mist dragged with it a kind of slow, dangerous music, alluring, like the promise of sleep to a dying man. Luke stretched out his arm to the radio and spun the knob.

Sound blasted out of the speakers and shook me awake. Blinking around my room, I couldn’t figure out what time it was; the light in the living room was odd. Then I realized that it was because mist pressed against the windows, and the moon reflected into every cranny. I groaned and stretched out on the sofa, working out a crick in my neck. Rye looked up at me from his post on the floor. His expression suggested that both of us would sleep better in my bed.

“But there’s freaks up there,” I whispered to him. I sat up and stretched again, catching a glimpse of the clock on the wall: two a.m. Sleep seemed far away.

Before I had time to wonder what had woken me out of my dream, I heard a dull tap on the window. Rye sprang to his feet. I jumped, more startled by Rye’s sudden movement than the noise. At the window, a face loomed out of the mist, nose pressed against the glass, leaving a print.

Even as Rye began to growl, I relaxed. It was Luke. He pressed his nose against the window again, making a funny face. I held up my finger to him—just a second—and bounded into the kitchen. I paused in front of the laundry room to put on jeans and my long-sleeved T-shirt from earlier, feeling a little stupid that Luke had seen me in my slinky pajama top and crazy hair. Rye followed me to the back door, still rumbling under his breath.

Only then did I remember what Granna had said. The little voice that always agreed with Mom and Granna and Delia whispered faerie. Playing with your emotions. Steal you away. Immune from iron. Keep away.

I don’t know why my conscience even bothered. I had known as soon as I saw Luke at the window that nothing would keep me from going out to meet him. I had to. My heart was already pounding at the idea that he was outside, without him having to say a single word. I was pathetic, but knowing I was pathetic didn’t help me.

I opened the back door into a silvery, foreign world. The mist hung in the air and the moonlight glanced through it, turning the landscape a shimmery blue. Luke stood just off the back steps, a long-sleeved black shirt covering his torc, his hands in his pockets, everything about him blue and light. This felt more like a dream than the one I’d just had.

“Sorry if I woke you.” He didn’t sound apologetic.

I shut the door softly behind me and stood on the stairs, acutely aware that Mom and Dad slept inside. I kept my voice low. “I wasn’t sleeping very well, anyway.”

“I wasn’t sleeping at all.” He glanced around at the mist and then back at me, smiling vaguely. “In retrospect, it seems awfully selfish to wake you up to entertain me during my insomnia.”

I crossed my arms and turned my face into the slight breeze; the night smelled wonderful, all cut grass and faraway flowers. It was a night that made you think the sun was overrated. “How do you want me to entertain you? I can step dance a little, but it looks pretty silly in bare feet.”

Luke narrowed his eyes as if he were imagining me step-dancing. “I don’t think I need to see that. I’d rather—” For the first time, he looked uncertain, glancing away into the shifting blue light. “I know you said you didn’t want to be ‘practice.’ But you could take a walk with me, and I could pretend I was still only fascinated by you and nothing more.”

My stomach flipped. It took more effort than I imagined to force my feet to stay on the steps. “Is it safe for me to go with you?”

His face was unreadable, a mask to me, and he sighed. “Probably not.”

I sighed, too, and then I joined him at the base of the steps and held out my hand. Luke looked at my outstretched fingers for a moment, and then up at my face.

“You did hear me say probably not, right?”

I nodded. “I don’t care. I’ll go with you.” I was going to stop there, but the words tumbled out. “Isn’t that what you do? Tangle me up so I don’t know which way I’m going and then steal me away?”

He stared at me.

The silence forced words out of me. “Granna told me what you are.”

He stared for another long moment, and when the words came out, they were forced. “What—am—I?”

I almost said “faerie,” but I remembered and swallowed the word. “One of Them. She’d seen you before. That’s why she hates you. She’s making something to keep you away from me.” The words were falling out; I couldn’t seem to shut up.

Luke’s body had gone completely stiff and his voice was tight. “You think I’m one of Them?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I don’t care what you are.” I stepped back, biting my lip. I’d just tipped every bit of emotion out of the box that I, as a Monaghan woman, was supposed to keep locked away.

Luke’s hands were tight fists by his sides. “I’m not one of Them.”

“Then what are you?”

“I can’t tell you. Or anyone. I could sooner fly.”

Inspiration blossomed, sudden and brilliant. “You can,” I said.

He shook his head. “I can’t.”

“You don’t have to say anything. Let me try and read your mind.” It was such a simple, perfect idea. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? In my head, I saw the image of me shimmering out of James’ mind. If I could see that by focusing for one second on his eyes, how much more could I do if I really tried?

I could see the resistance on his face. If he really was what Granna said, he would never agree. Maybe he wasn’t what Granna said, and he would refuse anyway. I wasn’t sure I would want my mind read, and I didn’t have anything to hide.

Luke looked into the mist again, and then closed the distance between us, his voice low. “You can do that?”

“I think so. I sort of did earlier today.”

He chewed his lower lip. It was endearing, like a little kid trying to make a decision. “I don’t know. It’s so—”

“Private?”

“Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay. Let’s do it. But not here. Someplace safer.”

The mood had changed; suddenly we were on the same side again. I looked out into the slanting blue light, wondering who or what we had to be safe from now. And what counted as a safer place. Surely he didn’t mean to drive to the city again. Maybe a church? The nearest church was ten minutes away if we drove.

“There’s a cemetery near here, isn’t there?” Luke’s voice broke into my thoughts. “I thought I saw one.”

I nodded. “Do you mean the one just behind our house? The old one with the big monument?”

“It’s got an iron fence around it, doesn’t it?”

I frowned. “But no gate.”

“Doesn’t matter. They can’t go underneath an iron archway. It’s got one of those, hasn’t it?” He pressed his fist to his forehead. “God, I can’t believe I’m doing this. You don’t know how stupid this is for me.” He unclenched the fist and held his hand out to me. I took it and he clutched it tightly. “Dumb as dumb.”

Together, we walked through the back yard, into the silvered trees, and down the worn deer trail that led to the cemetery. Around us, the air glowed and moved, changing and swirling, touching us with invisible cold hands, hanging in the trees like gauze, glimmering on the leaves like precious jewels. There was nothing human in this night but me and Luke, holding tightly to each other’s hands, surrounded by magic thick enough to touch.

I felt watched.

Luke never let go of my hand, but he never let down his guard, either. Everything in his posture indicated tension; watchful power wound tight enough to snap. After seeing what he’d done to that cat, it was hard to imagine the enemy that would be able to overcome him. Unless he was the enemy.

The iron archway of the old cemetery appeared abruptly among the periwinkle trees, and Luke pushed me through it quickly, jumping in after me as if just barely escaping grasping jaws. I looked back through the archway and blinked as a barely glimpsed shadow passed beyond the arch and disappeared into the mist. Slow goose bumps rose on my arms. I thought about asking Luke what he thought the shadow might have been, but I didn’t really want to know. It was easier to be brave without knowing.

“Inside?” I suggested, barely whispering. Luke followed my gaze over to the massive marble monument in the center of the cemetery and nodded. We picked our way between headstones and tall gray sycamores, the dead listening as our feet walked across them. I had never thought that I would feel safer inside a cemetery than outside.

The monument towered before us; icy white in the mist. It was like a three-sided tomb, and inside was a statue of a man cradling a child. They too were icy white marble, larger than life, frozen solid in a dark blue sea. I scrambled into the monument without pause, feeling safer in its shadows, and Luke followed me.