Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception

A tiny chill escaped from my locked-away emotions. Just when he said “They”—then, it was gone. It was probably stupid to be afraid of Them and not him, but I believed They wanted to hurt me. I couldn’t believe that of Luke. I followed him from the monument, moving between the graves. We were as silent as ghosts. The mist fooled my eyes, but I was pretty sure we weren’t going back the way we came.

“Why this way?” I whispered.

Luke’s eyes darted past me. “We’re climbing over the fence. They’ll be expecting us to come out the gate.” He looked back at me, his eyes finding the key that was still hanging against my skin, and kept moving. The mist shifted and shimmered, hiding even the massive trees until we were upon them. I didn’t see the iron fence until I was close enough to touch it. The waist-high iron was solid and black, in a way that nothing else in the cloud around us was.

Luke gripped it and was over in half-a-breath’s time. He held out a hand to me again.

Without touching him, I stepped onto the bottom rail of the fence and clambered over it. He lowered his hand again and led the way. It only took me a few moments to realize where we were—on the end of the road where I’d found his car parked. We were only a few minutes away from my house.

Then I smelled it. A familiar, sharp, sweet smell, hovering on the edge of the cut-grass smell. And I heard it, too: a sound almost like music, forming snatches of tune somewhere in the part of my brain I didn’t think I used.

I felt Luke start to move a second before he moved, and then he grabbed me, pulling me toward the side of the road, his fingers tight on my arm. Is this when I should start being afraid of him?

He hadn’t pulled me more than a few feet when a pleasant voice, halfway to a song, said, “I thought I was the only one who couldn’t sleep.”

For a moment I didn’t recognize the voice, but then Luke stiffened and turned. I saw a tall, snowy figure step out of the mist toward us. She was all the more frightening because I knew her from far more ordinary circumstances—and she shouldn’t be here. Eleanor was walking dead-center down the road toward us, solidifying as she did. I couldn’t tell if it was the effect of the mist or if she really was materializing right there on the road. Luke tightened his grip on me, shifting me subtly so that he stood between myself and Eleanor.

He looked at her, voice casual, as if he wasn’t obviously shielding me from her. “What do you want?”

Eleanor smiled, so beautifully my head hurt. “Couldn’t this be just a chance meeting?” She reached into the folds of her fine white dress and withdrew a long, pearly blade with a round, unadorned grip.

“It could be,” Luke snarled. “What the fuck do you want?”

The words sounded wrong in his mouth; desperate.

Eleanor laughed, a delicate sound that made the trees shake on either side of us. “Temper looks so bad on you, dear.” She held out the polished bone knife toward him. “I brought this for you, since you seem to have lost yours.”

“I didn’t lose it.”

She circled us. Luke held me so tightly it ached.

“Yes,” she said finally. “I see that.” She reached out as if she were going to touch my hair, her elegant fingers stretching toward my face, and then jerked back. Eleanor looked down at her fingers as if surprised at what they’d done, and then looked at Luke’s secret, hanging around my neck.

Luke stepped back, pulling me with him. “Don’t touch her. Keep your filthy hands away from her.”

Eleanor studied her fingernails. “Hmm. I don’t know why you’re being so rude, sweetheart. We’ve been so forgiving of your schedule these past few days. Everyone’s been so nice to you. I really expected to find you in a good mood. It’s been quite long enough for you to be all rested up.” She extended the knife toward him again. “And now you can just finish everything up and we’ll all go back to our lives.” She laughed, and this time the trees shuddered up and down the road. “Well, most of us.”

I imagined its pearlescent surface lying gently across my neck, leaving a red trail behind it. He’d killed so many people before; I didn’t know him at all. In my head, I saw his dagger slip into the cat’s jaw. But I still couldn’t be afraid, no matter how much my logical mind warned me to be. I couldn’t seem to think of him as anything but my protector.

Next to me, Luke shook his head wordlessly.

Eleanor circled us again, her eyes on me this time, appraising. “Ah, Luke. You’ve made some poor choices over the years, we both know that, don’t we? But I think this one is possibly the worst choice you’ve ever made.” The words oozed out, studded with poison. “So, are you sure you really won’t do it? Just real quick? It would only take a moment. I would do it for you—but, you know.”

“No.” His voice was hard, but I felt him shaking against me.

Eleanor pouted gently, so beautiful that angels wept and flowers shriveled. “Whatever shall I tell her, then?”

“Tell her—” Luke paused, and when he spoke again, his voice had a desperate edge. “Tell her I throw myself on her mercy. Tell her I can’t do it and I beg for her mercy.”

Eleanor looked puzzled. “You can’t do it? Kill this girl? Why?”

“I love her.” Luke’s voice was flat and matter-of-fact, just as if he’d said, the sky’s blue.

I felt my knees go weak; if he hadn’t held me so tightly, I would have stumbled.

The smile on Eleanor’s face was so radiant, I couldn’t bear to look. She glowed with fearsome joy. “Oh, I shall tell her. Shall I tell her that last part as well?” She clasped her hands together, pressing her fingers to her lips as if she would burst with the tremendous gift he had given her.

Luke was about to answer, but the road was empty.

The mist moved slowly over the surface of the asphalt. After a long minute, Luke released me and took a step back, his eyes fixed on where Eleanor had been. He linked his hands behind his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “God, what have I done?”

It was a good question. I had no friggin’ idea what had just gone on. Except I remembered the words, “I love her.” Those stuck in my mind, playing over and over with the images of his murders providing a horrible counterpoint. Everything else seemed difficult to hold onto, sliding away as soon as I thought about it. I watched Luke pace, his fingers still laced behind his hair, and images began to flash through my head again. Mindless memories—Luke as a child, reaching up into an adult’s hand. His hair glowing in a city sunset. His fingers typing on a keyboard.

My head swirled, Looking away, I tried to focus on my own life and my own memories, but Luke’s kept flashing through my head in dreamlike spurts. My eyes were suddenly heavy, as if the sleepless night had caught up with me all in a rush. I wanted to lie down on the street and give in to sleep, but a part of me knew my exhaustion couldn’t be natural.

“What’s wrong with me?” I asked, my eyes half-lidded.

Luke glanced over to me and sighed. “You’re tired?”

I nodded slowly.

He held a hand out toward me for the third time since the tomb. I shouldn’t have taken it. But screw it. I was too tired to process my doubts and the still-flashing images of his past and I wanted to take his hand so badly it hurt. I reached my hand out and he took it firmly, leading me down the road toward home like a small child.

“Have you ever heard of psychic vampires? People who take energy from other people to fuel themselves?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Those people only wish they could be Eleanor when they grow up. She must’ve used a lot of energy to do that vanishing trick of hers. I was wondering who she got it from.”

I stumbled and pulled myself back up. “Why aren’t you like this? Why only me?”

“Because you were easy. Because she wanted to hurt you.”

He said something else too, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was falling asleep on my feet. Luke released my hand and I immediately sank down onto the road, relieved just to stop.

“No, pretty girl. Come on.” He leaned over and lifted me as if I were only the slightest of packages. The tiny bit of me that was awake whispered, Can’t trust him. Tell him to put you down. I just rolled my face next to his soft black shirt, his familiar smell lulling me to sleep, wishing life was just this simple.

I woke up a little bit when cold air-conditioning bit my skin. He’d carried me right into the house, past a grumbling Rye on the kitchen floor and up the narrow stairs, turning me so I didn’t kick the wall. It was proof how much Eleanor had drained me that the idea that Mom might discover us didn’t make me leap from his arms. Somehow it didn’t surprise me that Luke knew right where my room was, making his way silently across the floor, quieter than fallen snow at night.

Carefully, he set me down on the bed and tugged the blankets up around me. My bed felt amazing after two nights of sleeping on the couch—cool and soft. Luke knelt so he was eye level with me. I looked at him through slitted eyes as he gazed back at me, his expression pensive, the dried, red, tear-stain untouched on his cheek.

“Is everything ruined now?”

I blinked slowly, an image of him laughing and playing with a dog very like Rye flicking behind my eyelids like a slide in a projector. I wasn’t sure if I answered out loud. “I don’t know.” I couldn’t think of a way to answer that question without knowing why he’d killed those people. Blink. An image of his fingers hooked around the edge of the torc, tearing at it. Blink. The present-day Luke again, fingers close enough to touch me, but not.

“Do you still see my memories?”

I forced my eyes open and nodded against the pillow.

His voice was barely a whisper. “I see yours, too.”

I mumbled, “I really screwed up, didn’t I?”

He touched the bloodstain on his cheek—my blood—and rested his forehead on the edge of the bed. “Oh, Dee. What am I going to do?” Time passed, unnoticed. Was I sleeping? Blink. An image of him kissing my cheek softly, or maybe it really happened. Then a hollow feeling in my gut, when I realized he was gone.

And then just sleep.

thirteen

I woke up to a beeping cell phone and loud voices downstairs. Mom and Delia. No surprise there. They argued like other people breathed; it was instinctive and unavoidable. I buried my face away from the too-bright sun; I must have really slept in.

Rolling onto my stomach, I extricated the phone from my back pocket (good thing I’d rescued these jeans from the laundry when I went out to meet Luke, or else the phone would’ve gotten washed). I sat up and wiped the sleep out of my eyes. I felt like I’d been dead for the past few hours. I’d been lost in a dreamless sleep so heavy I’d slept through my phone ringing.

Luke.

I was instantly awake, the events of the melodrama that was now my life running through my head. I flipped open the phone: fourteen missed calls, three new texts. Every call was from James. They started at about six a.m., with the last one just a few minutes ago. I opened the text messages.