“So we know his weakness. I say it’s time for a repeat performance.”
Isaac combed his fingers through his hair. “Can’t. I promised Reed I wouldn’t harm a member of his court.”
“You did. We didn’t.” Josh pointed to me and himself, a self-satisfied expression etched across his face.
I was trying to decide if threatening a vindictive faerie was the best course of action when Isaac spoke up.
“Still can’t. We know the door is located in Madison’s house, in the spot where she first summoned Brea, but it’s invisible to everyone except faeries. Unless Fae reveal it, we can’t access the portal between realms ourselves.” He glanced at the clock on the DVD player.
“How’d you find the door last time?” I asked, tucking my legs underneath me.
“A spell from my grandfather’s grimoire.”
One day I was going to have to read this grimoire. It seemed to be a collection of very interesting and useful spells.
“So we cast it again,” I said. Hell, we should have done that the day Isaac had found out Reed was here.
Isaac let his head fall back. He looked at the ceiling and replied, “Can’t. Tore the page out of the book and burned it.”
“Why’d you do that?” Josh asked.
“It was part of our agreement. Reed didn’t want anyone else finding a door and sending some deadly spell through it.” Isaac laced his fingers behind his head as he thought.
“He’s smart,” I commented. “You have to give him that.”
Josh took a seat in the sphere chair, forearms resting on his knees. “Fine. We can’t burn down his castle or tree stump or wherever it is faeries live. We can still exploit his weakness.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“His sister. We nab her and hold her prisoner until Reed relents and goes home without you.”
“That could work,” Isaac said. “I can’t help execute the plan, though.”
“I got this one,” Josh said.
My head pivoted from Josh to Isaac and back. “How exactly are you going to hold a creature prisoner that can only be seen if she chooses to be seen?”
“Meadowsweet,” Isaac answered. He grabbed his grandfather’s grimoire and fanned through the pages as he continued. “We create a faerie ring with it.”
“A what?” I asked.
“A faerie ring,” he repeated. “They were popular in the fifteen hundreds.”
Josh nodded. “We can trap her at Madison’s, near where the door has to be.”
“And if Reed calls our bluff?” I asked.
“Who’s bluffing? Either Reed leaves or Brea stays. End of story,” Josh said.
“So we’re going to create a circle out of meadowsweet and leave it in my kitchen until Reed says uncle and steps back through the door?” I paused. “Don’t you think my dad is going to wonder why a girl with pointed ears and sparkly cheeks is standing in a ring of leaves?”
“You said yourself he can’t see her,” Josh replied.
“Yeah, but he can see the meadowsweet.”
“Madison’s right,” Isaac interjected. “We can’t do this at her house.”
“Besides,” I said, “we don’t have anything for her to eat.”
“How long do you think Reed would leave his sister to starve?” Josh said.
“We aren’t going to torture Brea!” I protested.
“Of course not,” Isaac said. “We’ll provide three meals and snacks. We’re civilized people.”
“We’re not trapping her here. She hasn’t done anything!” I’d be no better than Reed if I forced Brea to eat something from our realm.
“Has she stopped by to visit since Reed told her to leave?” Isaac asked.
“She brought me more flowers.”
“That she conveniently dropped off when you weren’t home.” He stuck a scrap piece of paper inside the grimoire and closed the book. “If she was your friend, she’d be helping you get away from Reed. Her absence proves that she won’t cross her brother.”
I swallowed audibly. I really didn’t like the idea of using Brea as leverage, but I didn’t have a better suggestion. Reed was too smart to allow himself to become trapped in a faerie ring, and even if we did manage to deceive him, I doubted he’d agree to walk through the door without some sort of motivation. Besides, we wanted Reed gone, not stuck in our world.
Whether it was because Isaac’s powers wrapped around me like a security blanket or that we eventually devised a plan, over the course of the morning, the burning in my gut lessened to a nagging whisper, and my hands only trembled when Reed’s name came up. Considering our evil plan centered around him, that was a lot. Thankfully, however, it didn’t come up once during the hours we spent hustling about Gloucester to get everything we needed to execute Plan Faerie Exile.
Now all I had to do was hope my newfound stability wouldn’t completely dissolve the moment I saw Reed.
Chapter 27
Josh’s and my shoes slapped the sidewalk as we made our way to the back of the cemetery. The soft
“I don’t like this,” I muttered.
“Madison, we have less than an hour before Caden comes back, and it’s not like you can go into hiding to buy us more time,” Josh said, hiking the backpack we’d brought higher onto his shoulder.
The beams of light from our flashlights sliced a path through the darkness and allowed us to see an occasional shadow float past.
“They can’t hurt us,” Josh reminded me when a long thin shade stopped in front of me.
I stepped around it. “Yeah, well, I’d prefer not to see them.”
“Ever stop to think they’d rather not see you?”
We were on the east side of the cemetery, far away from my mom. I had tried to talk Josh into setting up near her grave, knowing the whispers of the dead couldn’t reach us there, but it was too close to the main road. Someone might see our lights, and we needed privacy.
Josh stopped behind the crypt of a family who’d died long ago and scanned the area. A cluster of overgrown shrubs lined a rusty chain-link fence about twenty feet from where we stood. Tall maples and ash trees dotted the open field of overgrown weeds. Immediately to the left of the crypt was a decaying statue of an angel, her blank stare focused on the grave she guarded.
“This should be good,” he said.
“Isaac can’t be a part of this. Not after the promise he made about harming a member of the Seelie Court.” And Kaylee wasn’t here because Josh didn’t want to put her in danger.
He dropped the backpack in the unruly grass. Three shadows lingered in the gloom not far from us, hovering above the ground eerily.
“You sure those things can’t hurt us?” I asked, taking the pillar candles Josh held out.
“Pretty sure.” He set his flashlight on its end so that the light beamed upward.
