right between them just the same.
“I’ll drive you to the library,” she said.
Sunlight was burning through the last of the rainclouds as Timothy and Peri left the house, and the temperature felt even milder than before. Overnight, a small clump of crocuses had forced its way through the soil of the front garden and was blooming resolutely in the corner. As they crunched across the gravel toward the waiting car, Timothy zipped up his borrowed jacket and decided that England wasn’t so bad after all…but he still missed his home in Uganda, and probably always would.
“Was it hard for you?” he asked Peri. “Leaving the Oak, I mean?”
Peri slid into the driver’s seat and put the key in the ignition; with a determined twist she turned it, and the engine rumbled to life. “Yes and no,” she said as Timothy climbed in beside her. “I had Paul, of course: That helped. And I knew the Oak was still there, even if I couldn’t live in it anymore. But even though I’d learned enough about your world to get by, I wasn’t prepared for how different it would be.”
“I suppose it would be pretty disappointing in some ways,” said Timothy. “Boring, even.”
“Boring?” She flicked him a glance. “You’ve no idea how tedious it was growing up in the Oak. But disappointing…yes, I suppose it was. I’d been friends with Paul for over a year by then, and we already knew we loved each other, but his parents didn’t know me at all, and it wasn’t easy to win them over. They sent me to stay in town for a few days, alone, while they tried to figure out where I’d come from and what to do with me… It was horrible. And even after Paul convinced them to let me move into the House, I had so much to learn, and I kept making mistakes. There were times we both wondered if we’d done the right thing-but it was done, and we had to make the best of it.”
She backed the gray Vauxhall out of the drive and onto the road, speeding up once they’d crossed the stone bridge. Hedge-tangled walls rose around them as the wood fell away, making it difficult to see more than a few meters ahead. It must have been fun for Paul teaching her how to drive, thought Timothy.
“It did get easier, though, right?” he asked.
“Not for a long while. I just got better at-” Suddenly her foot came down on the brake, and Timothy rocked forward, the seat belt cutting into his shoulder.
“What?” he exclaimed, but then he saw it: a small brown-and-red bird, fluttering back and forth across the road as though to block their path.
“I’ve never seen a robin behave like that before,” said Peri, frowning as she drove closer. “Is it injured? Or protecting a nest?”
Timothy started to answer, then yelled and flung his arms over his face as the bird launched itself straight at the windshield. Peri wrenched the wheel, skidding the car across the road; they crashed into a hedgerow and stopped abruptly, broken twigs and dried-up berries pattering over them.
“Peri?” asked Timothy, and then in alarm, “Peri!”
She sat motionless, slumped against the steering wheel. He couldn’t see any blood on her face, but when he grabbed her shoulder she felt stiff as glass, and he couldn’t make her move.
A bird-shaped shadow flickered past the car’s front window, then dropped down beside Timothy’s door and swelled, ominously, into a tall human shape. Then came the voice, level and commanding, impossible to disobey:
“Get out of the car.”
Ten
Timothy shoved the car door open and stepped out onto the road, his shoulders squared defiantly. “If you’ve hurt Peri, I swear-”
“She is not injured.” Rob pushed back the hood of his sweatshirt and shook out his damp red hair. “Only suspended in time.” His eyes narrowed. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I was just trying to figure out where the other six feet of you came from, Robin.” Timothy spoke in his boldest tone, trying not to let the faery see that he was afraid. “That’s quite a trick, changing shape like that.”
“Enough,” said Rob. “I did not come here to indulge your human curiosity. Tell me: Where will I find Linden?”
“Why?”
“Because the message I bring is urgent, and it is for her sake that I came. Where is she?”
Timothy folded his arms. “I’m not telling you anything until you tell me why you’re here.” After all, from what he’d learned of faeries, they didn’t usually do things for others out of the kindness of their hearts. If Rob had flown all the way here just to talk to Linden, then he must be expecting an equally big favor from her in return. And what if she couldn’t afford to give him what he was asking?
Rob made an impatient noise. “I do not bargain with humans. Tell me, or-” He raised a hand and Timothy tensed, not knowing whether to expect a threat, a spell, or a physical blow. But then Rob let his arm drop and said flatly, “Very well, I will take the risk. Do you remember the twin brothers who were playing chess when you came to Sanctuary last night?”
Lean frames, strong bones, cold black eyes. He’d seen them a second time as he was chasing Linden out the door. “I think so,” said Timothy.
“They are known as the Blackwings,” Rob told him. “Byrne and Corbin are expert hunters, clever and ruthless and ambitious for the Empress’s favor-and in their raven forms they can fly farther and more swiftly than I. The Empress has commanded them to bring you and Linden to her alive, but rest assured that if they catch you, you will find that small consolation.”
Cold ants swarmed up Timothy’s spine. “You mean…they know where to find us? But how?”
Rob pulled a scrap of fabric from the pocket of his sweatshirt, shook it out-and there, suddenly, was the jacket Timothy had left behind at Sanctuary. “I tracked you here with this,” he said, tossing it back to him. “Fortunate for you that I found it before the Blackwings did; for all I know they are still back in the city, looking for some similar means to hunt you down. But it will not be long before they find something they can use: a drop of Linden’s blood on the pavement perhaps, or a single hair from your head. And with that, they can follow you anywhere.”
Timothy’s hands clenched around the jacket. “So how do we stop them?”
“You cannot,” said Rob. “But if you cease wasting my time and show me where to find Linden, then I will tell you what you can do instead…”
Linden sat up, rubbing sleep from her eyes. After a bath and an hour’s rest in her own cot she felt a little better, but she had hoped to sleep longer, and now it was impossible. Why was there so much noise going on outside her door? All those shouting voices and running feet-the last time she’d heard such a commotion, it was when she’d accidentally left the East Gate open and a mouse got in.
“Oh, Linden!” Wink burst through her door, wings and hands flapping in excited unison. “You won’t believe this!” She whisked around her, brushing wrinkles from Linden’s skirts, straightening her tunic, helping her into her leather waistcoat and buttoning it tight. She combed Linden’s brown curls with her fingers, then propelled her out the door, announcing, “Here she is!”
Linden stumbled, and stopped short. There on the landing stood Rob, surrounded by a crowd of awestruck, excitedly chattering Oakenfolk. At this small size, with those angular bones and the points of his ears showing through his russet hair, there could be no doubting he was a true faery. And yet…what was he doing here?
She ought to have been afraid, but somehow she couldn’t be: She had told him about the Oak, after all. And despite all the harsh things he had said about the Oakenfolk being Forsaken, he had still healed her, and given her shoes to wear. Linden opened her mouth and, stupidly, said the first thing that came into her head: “You don’t have any wings.”
“Being male, I should think not,” said Rob. “But rest assured that I can fly as well as you.” And with that his form blurred, and the faeries around him all jumped back as a full-sized robin appeared in his place.
“You must pardon us,” said Valerian, and Linden looked around to see her coming down the Spiral Stair. Even
