A Fairy Tale (28 page)

The first verse of “Lavender’s Blue” made Maeve’s eyes go wide, and she leaned forward eagerly. She let Emily sing the whole song, and when Emily finished the song, Maeve paused, thinking, before finally shaking her head slowly.

“That is not it,” she said. “Do you not know other songs?”

“I know hundreds of other songs,” Emily said, her voice rasping from strain and dehydration. “This is what I do.” A human servant approached with a glass filled with a sparkling liquid, beads of condensation on the outside showing that the liquid was nice and cold. Emily stared at it for a moment, sorely tempted, but waved it away. It wasn’t worth being trapped in fairyland. Maeve would just have to get used to her sounding gravelly.

“It’s a song you knew from childhood,” Maeve said. “Something you and your sister learned together.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down much. I come from a musical family. Do you maybe know the tune or the first line?”

Maeve came off the sofa and loomed over Emily. “You will give me this song.”

Refusing to be cowed, Emily put her hands on her hips and stared up at her. “I’m trying. I just don’t know which song you want. My sister sang a lot of songs with me.”

It took some effort to maintain eye contact without blinking or doing anything else that might make her look like she was lying, because Emily was starting to suspect which song Maeve meant, and although she had no idea why the song mattered to Maeve, she had no intention of sharing it. She didn’t remember details, but she had a vague memory of Sophie and Nana singing something together. It was a simple, repetitive melody, but Emily couldn’t remember the words, even though she could hear Sophie’s sweet, soft voice singing it in her memory.

But what could a song have to do with becoming queen of the fairies?

Central Park

Saturday, 11:00 a.m.

Michael was too restless to sit around, so he took a shower, dressed, and headed for the park. He still felt wobbly and sore and couldn’t move very quickly—a possible sign that his adventures had been real—but he needed to do this. He had to know.

On a Saturday morning, the park was an entirely different place than it had been the night before. It was full of people enjoying the last weekend in August. Kids ran around, laughing and yelling. People walked dogs, sat on benches and read, or just strolled along the paths. He headed straight for Belvedere Castle, ignoring all the other park activities.

He wasn’t sure what he expected to find—maybe a scrap of that spiderweb silk clothing or a sign that those booths had been there. Instead, the place was painfully normal, crowded with Saturday-morning park-goers. He stood in what he estimated to be the spot where he’d seen Jen. He could picture the scene in his mind, as vivid as if it were still happening. Had he dreamt it, or was Sophie telling the truth?

The park didn’t hold any answers for him. The market might as well have taken place on the moon. With a weary sigh, he headed down the stairs. At the foot of the stairs sat a small white cat—the cat he’d helped? It stopped grooming itself and approached him, rubbing against his ankles and purring. Apparently, that much had been real. The cat then trotted daintily over to a hedge and turned to see if he’d followed.

Caught in the hedge were several scraps of fabric. One looked like it had been torn from the shirt he’d worn the night before. Another seemed to have come from Sophie’s dress. A third looked like it had been woven from spiderwebs. All that told him was that he and Sophie had been here, along with someone else who dressed like Sophie’s so-called fairies. It still didn’t mean that there was a fairy realm hidden beneath this world.

He looked around for the cat, but it was gone. “Did you lose something?” a soft voice from right next to him asked. He jumped, startled, and turned to see a woman wearing a flowing white dress. Her hair was white-blond and sparkled with sunlight even though they were in the shade. She looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t quite place her. “Or perhaps you lost some
one
.” There was a faint sibilant hiss to her speech.

“No, no, I’m fine,” he said.

“You lost your lady. I could help you find her. You saved my life. I owe you a favor.”

He backed away warily. “What? You must have mistaken me for someone else.”

She made a purring sound deep in her throat. “I make no mistake. I helped you last night, but that was because I do not like Maeve and we must protect the enchantress. I still owe you a life debt.”

Michael figured he had two options: He could faint, let the park’s medical personnel deal with him, and then pretend that none of this had ever happened and resign himself to never seeing Jen again, or he could accept all the evidence and do something to get his wife back.

“Maybe later,” he told the woman, who flicked him a smile before sauntering away.

He headed home, moving as quickly as he could without straining himself. He needed to talk to Sophie.

Emily’s Apartment

Saturday, 11:00 a.m.

Sophie barely had a chance to shower and put on clean clothes before there was a knock on the door. She opened it to find Amelia and Athena. “We need to talk about what happened last night,” Amelia said as the two of them brushed past her to enter the apartment.

“Please, come in,” Sophie said dryly, shutting the door behind them. They were already seated at the table by the time she rejoined them. “I see you made it out okay,” she added.

“Did you get Detective Murray home?” Athena asked, wringing her hands anxiously. “That poor man, finding his wife again like that.”

“Yes, he’s fine, more or less. I’m not sure how well he’s coping with what he’s just learned, but he’ll come around.” She dragged Emily’s desk chair over to the table, then decided she’d had enough pleasantries. It was time to get down to business. “I need to stop Maeve.”

“Well, yes, of course, that
is
our job,” Athena said. “We are to keep the throne empty, at all costs.”

“I take it that means you will join us,” Amelia said.

“For this,” Sophie agreed. She didn’t feel it necessary to tell them that her mandate to stop Maeve had nothing to do with their roles and everything to do with settling an old debt. “I need to stop Maeve and get Emily back. Then I’ll think about what to do next.”

“Don’t forget about Jennifer Murray,” Athena added.

“That may be more difficult. But first things first. We need to figure out why Maeve needs me to win the throne. If we know that, then we should know exactly how to stop her. I don’t suppose it’s as easy as wrapping myself in iron and staying well away from any gateways.”

“You’d have to do that for the rest of your life,” Amelia said. “You also might not get your sister back. No, we need to put a stop to her so she won’t keep trying.”

“You are most likely the key,” Athena said. “What is it that you know or can do that might be useful?”

Sophie ran her hands through her hair and rubbed her throbbing temples with her thumbs. It was hard for her to concentrate when she was constantly, painfully aware of Emily’s state of distress. Something was wrong, wherever she was. “I can dance. I’ve known Maeve most of my life, but I don’t have any good blackmail material on her. She never made much of an impression on me until she kidnapped my sister. She’s not particularly special or powerful.”

A knock on the door interrupted her train of thought. “Excuse me,” she said as she got up. She opened the door to see Michael filling the doorway. Speaking without thinking—a sure sign that she was under too much stress—she blurted, “What are you doing here?”

“I want to help—whatever it is I can do. I’ve got something at stake here. I may not be of much use physically, but I’m a cop, so I’m used to thinking analytically. And I’m in on the secret now, so there’s no excuse for lying to me anymore about what you’re up to.”

“You’ve decided you believe me?”

“You told him?” Amelia asked, her voice rising in pitch to what in any other woman would have been a screech.

Sophie glanced over her shoulder to see that the sisters had joined her in the entryway. “He was there, he saw it all. I had to explain,” she protested.

“But if he didn’t believe, it would have been easy enough to smooth his memories,” Amelia said.

“He deserved to know. He’s affected.” Sophie turned back to Michael and added, “But I don’t need your help. What I need is one less person I have to protect.” She fixed him with a direct gaze while making a conscious effort not to influence him magically. “I know you want to help, and I understand why, but there isn’t anything you can do.” Less stridently, she added, “You should probably be resting.”

She tried to close the door, but he stepped inside before she could shut him out. “You can’t drop all this crazy stuff on me and then leave me out of the loop,” he said. Turning to Amelia and Athena, he added, “I’m the youngest of three brothers. Isn’t that supposed to mean something in this sort of thing?”

“Wrong kind of fairy tale,” Sophie said, but Amelia took his good arm and led him into the apartment and over to the daybed.

“Please join us, Detective,” she said. Sophie opened her mouth to protest, but Amelia glared her down. “There is a pattern to such things, and it isn’t just in stories that the youngest of three brothers has power. He could be helpful.” Michael shot Sophie a triumphant smile as he sat. Amelia placed a hand on his shoulder and said, “Besides, I rather enjoy having a handsome young man around. I am Amelia Abernathy, and this is my sister, Athena Abercrombie. Emily works at our shop when she’s between shows, and your lovely wife was a regular customer. It’s such a pleasure to meet you.”

Athena rolled her eyes and coughed while Michael turned pink. Sophie could have cheerfully strangled them both. She didn’t need any distractions, and Michael had become increasingly distracting after she’d spent hours with him in her arms. Even though it had been perfectly innocent, it had been the kind of feeling she was afraid she could get used to. Not that she would, since it was utterly impossible. But she kept her mouth shut and dragged the dining chairs over to the daybed so they could all sit together.

“What I’m curious about, Detective,” Athena said as she sat beside Michael, “is how you found the market last night. You shouldn’t have seen that.”

“He has a four-leaf clover on his keychain,” Sophie answered for him.

“I assume Sophie has explained some of this to you,” Athena said to Michael.

He nodded. “She briefed me. I understand you need to stop Maeve to get her captives back.”

“And we’re getting nowhere,” Sophie said. “I can’t think of what it is about me, something I know or have, that Maeve needs.”

Michael said, “Well, what do you know or have?”

She sighed in frustration and resisted the urge to run her hands through her hair. “That’s the problem. I don’t
know
.”

“Try listing a few things,” he encouraged. “I’ve got an outsider’s perspective, and remember, this is what I do. I sift through information to find the key facts.”

“Okay, then. There’s the dancing. I make an amazing peach cobbler. I boss people around. Somehow I doubt she needs any help with that.”

“You said your grandmother knows about the fairies. Did she teach you anything?”

“She told me stories. But they’re just fairy tales, not histories.”

“Are you so sure?” Amelia asked, leaning forward with interest.

“None of them were about taking a throne. Most of the stories were about people escaping from fairy captivity,” Sophie said. “I
really
don’t think Maeve wants that.”

“Was there anything about finding a lost person?” Athena asked. “A story can be a metaphor, and a lost loved one could stand for something lost by the fairies.”

“That’s it!” Michael cried out. He turned to Sophie. “What about that song you sang to calm your grandmother this morning?” He glanced sheepishly among the three women, then continued, like he was trying to justify his theory, “It was about finding a lost love, and it sounded like it had instructions in it.”

Sophie laughed out loud and launched herself at him, throwing her arms around him and hugging him fiercely. “You’re brilliant!” she said with another laugh. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”

Then she realized that she was practically sitting in his lap and jumped up and back to her own seat. She grabbed a notebook and began writing down the lyrics. “Now that I think about it, my grandmother was very intent that I learn this song. She said her mother taught her to sing it, and her mother had taught her. I always thought it was just some old folk song, but maybe Michael’s right, and all along they’ve been passing on the instructions.”

“How would Maeve know about it?” Athena asked, leaning over to read what Sophie had written.

“When I was little and went into the woods to dance with the fairies, Maeve was part of that group. Sometimes I sang as I danced. This was the song I knew best.” She shook her head in disbelief. “And I bet Maeve figured it out when she heard it—or maybe it stuck with her and she figured it out later. Though it might have helped if Nana had told me what it was about.”

“She may not have expected you to ever use it,” Amelia suggested. “You may have been meant to be just another link in the chain passing the knowledge along.”

“But how did my family get this knowledge?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time fairy knowledge was entrusted to humans,” Amelia said. “Most of the things enchantresses have learned about using magic originally came from the fairies. We had our own power, but we had to learn to use it. If you inherited your magical abilities from your grandmother, it makes sense that the knowledge went with the power.”

Athena finished reading the words to the song and said, “These instructions are rather precise. I bet Maeve doesn’t remember them exactly, so she’d need Sophie to give them to her.” She gasped. “Oh my, does Emily know this song?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember my grandmother singing it to her. She may have heard it, but Nana won’t let me forget it. Even now, when she gets agitated, the best way to calm her is to sing the song to her.”