“You ain’t listening to a word I say,” Deena said, throwing her arms up.
“No, you don’t understand. The fae—well, some of them—want Caleb dead. I don’t have time to explain. If you hadn’t been sleeping off pixie dust for the last hour—”
“Only an hour? Just how fast were you going?”
“I’m in a police cruiser. It doesn’t matter. Anyway” —she shook her head at me but I ignored her— “the point is I need to heal my brother before they try to make me queen.”
“You can do that?”
“Well, they say my magic is keeping him alive. And since he kept getting better while I was in the hospital and only got worse once I left, I figure being close to him is all he needs to heal. I hope.” Because if I was wrong, I was screwed. I had no idea how to work this whole magic thing.
“Okay, I get that,” Deena said.
“And if they find me and do the investiture…Well, from what Caleb says, I’m pretty sure they’re telling him he has to die so I can have my magic back. But if he’s already better because I healed him…”
“From what Caleb…” Deena took a deep breath. “So now you’re talking to Caleb who’s in a coma and he’s telling you they’re gonna kill him?”
“Yeah. You know, you’re taking this a lot better than I thought you would.”
Deena shook her head. “Way I see it, I’ve got a foster kid I’m removing because of child endangerment, another kid about to die, and I’m facing a lot of mess to make sure you two stay alive. All the fairy stuff comes second. I’ll think about that crazy sh—stuff when we get you safe.” Deena huffed out a breath. “Now what do we need to do next to make sure ‘safe’ happens?”
I dangled her DHS identification in front of her. “I need you to get me in.”
Deena snatched it from me. “Where’d you put my purse?”
I didn’t know why I thought that it would be so hard to get to see Caleb. No one had bothered stopping us as we entered the hospital’s large, glass doors. The security guard hanging out near the front desk didn’t even spare us a glance as Deena navigated us toward where we needed to go.
But in the end, it was Deena’s badge that was going to get me into the ICU.
“I’m here to take this girl for a visit to her brother, Caleb James,” she said.
The woman at the ICU reception desk turned to her computer screen, typing in a few things. “Looks like he’s in room 312—third door on the left…Wait, looks like he already has a visitor.”
“Who?” I asked, surprised. Not many people knew Caleb—he was kind of an introvert.
“Um…” The woman peered at her screen. “Says it’s a family friend.”
I turned toward Deena, my eyes wide. “There were no family friends.” I bolted down the hall, Deena running after me. If some fae already got to Caleb by passing for a friend, I didn’t know what I’d do.
I pushed his door open, out of breath, praying he was still alive, that this ‘family friend’ hadn’t done something awful to him.
Caleb looked small and pale, surrounded by plastic tubing. His body seemed like it was being held together by casts alone, but that wasn’t what grabbed my attention: it was the gaunt, orange-haired woman sitting next to him.
Her sunken deep blue eyes met mine, peering up at me as though looking through a fog. Those eyes—I saw them in the mirror every single morning. She smiled, her lips dry and cracked, teeth stained brown and dark yellow.
“Kella,” she said, her voice wobbly and hoarse. “I thought you might come.”
I swallowed, my gaze darting between her and Caleb, not sure which image was more disturbing. But I knew—knew—that this wasn’t some fae who’d come to kill my brother.
Even though she bore little resemblance to the picture of the vibrant, red-headed woman I’d found when I was six, I still recognized her.
Deena’s face was a mask of neutrality as she asked, “Excuse me, but who are you?”
“I’m Kella’s mother—the queen.” At the word queen, she laughed, a hysterical sound that sent goosebumps racing down my arms. “Queen,” she murmured again before shaking her head as if trying to clear it.
Even though I had already guessed, I still stood there in shock—a shock that only intensified when she added, “Kella needs to complete the investiture.”
I gaped at her. Where was the run far, far away and never return? Or the I love you so much—look how much you’ve grown? I wasn’t an expert on family reunions, but telling me to go back and get possessed by my great-grandmother was the last thing I’d expected.
“What?” I said, because that was the only word I could manage to push out. All the others seemed to back up into each other like some sort of verbal traffic jam.
“Kella, while I’m living and my mind is clear, she can’t get to you,” she said, tapping her head. “I have to be dead—or something close to it. That way, the queen and all that power binds to the staff. They told you about the staff, right?”
“Yes, but…this isn’t possible. Everyone’s trapped in their glamours. How can that happen with you still alive?”
Deena glanced at my mom and back to me, taking a step back as if to say this conversation was out of her area of expertise.
“Twelve years of this,” she said, tapping her right hand—a hand that I now realized held a needle. “All so we stay in our glamours—so everyone believes me dead. Twelve years of keeping her in that staff, away from my mind.” She laughed. “The queen’s bound to the investiture staff, but she won’t be in a few hours. In a few hours, I’ll—first time in years.” She nodded her head, her hands trembling. “Need to be clean and wait. You understand?”
No, I didn’t understand. Not at all.
“You take drugs to—to keep
