Elixir (33 page)

The Queen leaned closer to him.

“Do you want to go home?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then choose.”

“What if I guess wrong?”

“That’s your problem.”

The knives were identical. He couldn’t detect any differentiation in the way the hilts had been forged, or a single variation between the stone blades. How was he ever going to tell the difference? This wasn’t fair. She was just tormenting him. How did he know she wasn’t lying and both the knives weren’t just weapons?

“Why do you give me this false choice? Why don’t you just kill me?”

“Because I promised Mab I wouldn’t. Fairies are bound by their promises, Obadiah—even more than you’re bound in the roots of my trees.”

He could tell she wasn’t lying. There was a fifty percent chance he’d get out of this alive.

“Are you hoping I pick the one that kills me?” he asked, scowling at her.

The Queen regarded him in silence for a moment.

“Yes.”

“Why do you hate me so much?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

“If this is about Mab,” Obadiah said, “I care about her very much. And she cares for me too.”

The Queen stared at him, and though her body looked young, her eyes looked very old.

“You’re human,” she said dismissively. “Mab seems human now, but she’s still a fairy inside. And someday when I am gone, she will regain her powers and become the next Fairy Queen. All you are, Obadiah, is an obstacle in her way.”

“Mab doesn’t want to be Queen,” he replied. “She told me so. She would never do the things you have done—kill innocent children. It’s not worth the price of power.”

The Queen shook her head.

“Mab doesn’t have a choice. Just like I didn’t have a choice when it happened to me. The seed of her power is already growing inside her, whether she likes it or not. Don’t tell me that you haven’t seen the signs, Obadiah.”

Obadiah thought of Mab. Underneath the veneer of awkward human girl that clung to her, there was something inside her that was fierce and wild and powerful. He’d seen glimmers of it the first night he’d met her at his club. And more than anything, he’d seen it when they’d made love. It was what drew him to her. And yet he knew, as she grew into her power—if she really did become the Fairy Queen someday—she would have no more need of him.

“You can’t be with her,” the Queen said derisively. “You’re human.”

“That’s not true,” Obadiah said through gritted teeth. “I may look human, but I’m not. I’m part Fey. I can do things that human beings can’t. What human can cross the threshold between the worlds? Why do you think your sleep spell didn’t work on me, when it worked on every other human child? Why don’t I age like a normal person, now that I’m out of the cocoon? Because I’m not fully human. I’ve got Fey blood in me too.”

The Queen turned to him, a cold, disdainful smile spreading over her face.

“I’m sorry, you’re right,” she said—her smile far worse than any yelling would have been. “You’re not human. You’re something far more pathetic than even a human being. You’ve got a little bit of magic blood. A teeny little bit of magic. And a little bit of magic is the most pathetic and the most tragic thing in the world. Yes, Obadiah, you can do a few spells. Good for you. But my spells make the forests move at my command.”

“So why are you paying this much attention to me?” Obadiah asked her. “What is it you want?”

“I want you to stay away from my daughter,” she replied.

“I think Mab is falling in love with me,” Obadiah said quietly.

“She’ll get over it,” the Queen answered flatly.

She slowly walked in a circle around him. “Anyway, your match would never work. Mab is immortal.”

“I might be immortal too,” countered Obadiah. “I’m over two hundred and I look like I’m about thirty. I’d say I’ve aged well,” he said with a sarcastic laugh.

The Queen looked down at him, a sort of pity in her eyes.

“Yes, Obadiah, it’s true. You may live to be very old. But Mab will live forever. And that makes all the difference.”

Turning on her heel, she said, “I should kill you now and get it over with.”

“You promised Mab you wouldn’t. You told me you have to live by your promises. And besides, if you kill me,” Obadiah said, “your daughter will hate you for it.”

“She already hates me,” the Queen said wearily. “She won’t forgive me for severing her magic. I knew that when I made her a changeling.”

“Why did you do it then?” he asked.

“Because it was the right thing to do,” said the Queen. “When you love someone, you do what’s right for them, even if it makes them hate you.” In the moonlight, her face was so full of nobility and despair as she said these words that for a moment Obadiah felt almost sorry for her.

Well, as sorry as he could feel for someone who wanted to kill him.

“If you severed her magic, though,” he said at last, “how can she become Fey again? How can she be immortal? How can she become the next Queen?”

“The spell isn’t permanent,” the Queen replied. “It will be un-invoked when she ascends the throne. When she becomes the next Fairy Queen, she’ll get all her powers back and then some.”

“What if she doesn’t want to be the next Fairy Queen? Trust me, Your Majesty, I’ve spoken to her—she doesn’t want the throne. She’d never be able to do what you do—make magic from those poor children.”

“We don’t always do what we want,” the Queen said bitterly. “We do what we must.”

Obadiah looked up at the Fairy Queen and cried out in horror and awe. The Queen had dropped her disguise. Her perfect beauty was just a mask, covering what he now saw.

She loomed over him—taller than the tallest hemlock trees, towering thousands of feet in the air. She was elemental—her body made of pillars of fire, torrents of water jetting up into the air, whirlwinds shrieking up to the sky.

So this was what she really looked like? Her queenliness, her cruelty—they were a disguise too. Now she stood before him in all her raw power—a force of nature, neither evil nor good. She could obliterate him, swallow him up, devour him if she wanted. But she didn’t.

Was this what Mab would turn into someday?

“Choose one of the knives, Obadiah.”

Her voice vibrated inside his bones.

It was no longer a threat. It was simply what must be. Obadiah understood that now. He could either die or go home. But he couldn’t stay like this.

He knew what he had to do. There was no hesitation. He wasn’t even afraid anymore.

He picked up one of the knives that was lying on the ground in front of him—he didn’t know if it was the right knife or not. He was past caring. Taking a deep breath—he plunged it into his heart.

As the blackness closed over him, the last thing he saw was the Fairy Queen’s eyes.

CHAPTER 26

I
looked up at the imposing monolith of Woodhull Medical Center, Eva propped against my shoulder, with no idea what to do. If I checked her in right now, no one would believe it. They already had a patient by her name in the system. I could admit her under a false name and somehow switch them later, I thought, my mind frantically trying to come up with ideas as the cold wind blew freezing rain into our faces. I looked up at the tiny row of windows on the eighth floor. How was I going to get up there?

I saw someone pacing back and forth in front of the hospital entrance. I squinted in the freezing rain. Was that . . .  ? No, it couldn’t be . . .

“Obadiah!”

He ran towards me and threw his arms around me, wrapping me in his warmth. I was shaking and crying—I found myself patting his skin, making sure he was solid, making sure he wasn’t a ghost.

“You’re alive!” I kept repeating, my arms around him, squeezing him hard, absurdly afraid that if I let go I’d lose him again.

“Yes, I’m alive,” he said, but his voice sounded like he himself wasn’t sure.

“You’re not hurt, are you?” I asked in a whisper, afraid to know the answer. “My mother didn’t . . .  ?”

“No, I’m relatively unscathed. She could have killed me, but she didn’t.
I
could have killed me, but thankfully I didn’t.”

“Oh, thank god you’re okay.” I pressed him against me. Nothing had ever felt as good as his touch in this moment, and I kept squeezing him tighter, convincing myself again and again that this was real, that he was real.

“I guess she honored her end of the bargain,” I said softly, more to myself than Obadiah. “I begged my mother to spare your life. I said I’d do anything if she would just not hurt you.” I paused, remembering the enormity of what I had promised in return. “I told her, if she let you live, I’d become the next Fairy Queen.”

He pulled back from me a little stiffly. I realized just how tightly I had been hanging on to him.

“What’s wrong?” It stung a little, how he’d abruptly pulled away from my arms. “You’re not mad at me for that, are you?” I asked. “I did it to save your life! It was the only thing I thought she would listen to. We’ll work out the details later, okay? But I can tell you this. If I ever reign, I am going to free the Shadow children. I asked her to promise she wouldn’t take more—but I want to free the children who’ve already been captured too. We can find magic another way, or do without . . . I am not going to tread in the Queen’s footsteps.” I looked up at him, and then back down at Eva. “But our first worry is what to do about Eva . . .”

“That I can help you with,” Obadiah said. “Allow me to do something right, after all I’ve done wrong.”

“I don’t think you’ve actually done anything wrong, but I’ll accept your help. Let’s get her inside.”

“Of course.” Obadiah walked over to Eva. Gently, he lifted her up, as if she weighed nothing at all, as if she was some injured bird he was lifting from a cardboard box.

The midwinter air was biting, and I shivered as we walked together towards the side entrance of the hospital, away from the traffic around the main entrance. We had a long way to go, and it might not turn out alright, but at least both of them were here now—and that gave me hope.

I felt like I had déjà vu as I approached the enormous redbrick building. It had only been a couple of days ago that we had visited Eva here. Never had I dreamed we would be bringing her back like this. I felt like a failure as a friend, a failure as a human being. Obadiah carried Eva as I raced up to the front of the hospital to borrow one of their loaner wheelchairs. I skittered on the ice, rolling it back to where Obadiah and Eva were standing—it seemed like all four wheels would never quite go in the same direction at once. We loaded Eva inside and began slowly making our way towards the hospital door.

“Do you think we should check her in under her real name?” I asked. We were passing the hospital’s little garden, with its lone scrawny tree, the one I had seen from Eva’s window just a few days before. It was bigger, seen from the ground, but still skinny and sickly.

“I don’t think we should check her in at all,” Obadiah said. “What if we just make a swap? They look just alike. The hospital staff will never know. And the Fetch Eva also suffered from a head injury, so they’ll give her the appropriate treatment. Only, this Eva is alive and real, so she can get better.”

“How the hell are we going to get up there to swap them?” I asked.

He said nothing, the corner of his mouth twitching up into a smile.

“You’re suggesting we fly up there—like we did on New Year’s Eve?”

“People don’t usually look up.”

“But then how will we get the window open?”

He took a knife out of his pocket. It was a fairy knife—a stone blade, the hilt decorated in a crescent moon design. “We’ll have to pry it.”

I wasn’t sure this plan was going to work. Then again, I didn’t have any better ideas.

The next minute we were in the alley behind the hospital. There were two enormous Dumpsters in the alley, their sides marked with decals denoting poison, hazard, medical waste. But there were no people. The wind whistled through the cold, empty space.

Obadiah must have seen my nervousness. “Trust me on this one,” he said, reminding me of his words on New Year’s Eve.

“If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t have stuck with you this long.”

He didn’t say anything, only smiled. But it was a real, genuine smile. And even in the frigidness of the alley, I felt warm.

“Alright. Do you still have the little flask of Elixir I gave you?”

I produced it from my pocket.

“I don’t think there’s anything left.”

He eyed it. “One drop should be enough to get us there—we don’t have to be up there for long.”

“This has got to work. She can’t take another fall.”

“I’m not going to let anything like that happen again.”

Looking up into his serious black eyes, I believed him.

Obadiah handed me the flask. I let a drop fall on my tongue, then I gently parted Eva’s lips with my cold fingers and slid the remaining liquid into her opened mouth.