Bailey Morgan [2] Fate (26 page)

“It can't be that bad,” I said, searching his eyes for confirmation. “Right?”

James looked a little bit sheepish.

“Fine,” I sighed. “In that case, tell me about the others.”

He raised one eyebrow quizzically. “The others? I already told you most of what I know.”

“Not who they were in Greek mythology,” I said. “Tell me about who they are now. You know … normal stuff.” He seemed to have no idea what I was talking about. “Like who's dating who. Or who the cool kids are. Or what their powers are.”

Okay, so maybe that last one wasn't entirely normal, but I was curious. I wasn't exactly sure why I was curious, and I got the feeling that there was something I should have been remembering, something that this place and this moment and James were keeping me from thinking about, the same way it made my thoughts fuzzy whenever I tried to think about my friends.

Hadn't I come here for a reason?

Hadn't I been scared of something?

I couldn't quite remember, which was strange, but
not quite as strange as the fact that I suddenly didn't want to.

“Powers?” James repeated.

I gave him a look. Even when my mind was fuzzy, playing dumb didn't work on me. I was friends with Delia, and she made pretending to be more clueless than she was an art form. Or at least I was pretty sure that I was and that she did, but under the influence of the rainbow of blackness here, I couldn't have sworn to it. Strange feeling, that—being unsure of the one thing in life that I'd always known was true.

“What can you do?” I said. “What can anyone here do? Like … Eros. Does he really have a bow and arrow? Does he make people fall in love?”

Is he the reason I feel this way with you?
I thought. It made no sense. None of it made any sense.

“There was a time when Eros interfered more in the lives of mortals,” James said. “There was a time when we all did, but then the worlds began to separate, and later …” He trailed off. “Later, things changed.”

My best calculations said that “later” corresponded with the establishment of the Nexus, the Fates, and a new connection between the two worlds.

“How did things change?” I asked, feeling on some level like I should know the answer, but unable to access it.

“Crossing over became rarer,” James replied. “It became possible only at certain times, certain places.”

The fuzziness in my head kept me from figuring out why that sounded familiar. The inside of my skull itched, and I found myself wondering how to make it stop and
whether or not my powers in this realm extended to reaching inside my own brain to scratch.

There was something I was forgetting.

The thought was fleeting, sucked out of my head by the air around me and the gentle movement of the other dancers through this magical space. With deliberate effort, I finally remembered that I'd been asking him about powers and, despite feeling a little light-headed, I continued on that path.

“What can you do?” I asked.

“Me personally, or the Sidhe in general?”

“Either,” I said.

James took my hand and spun me. “I can do this.”

I laughed. “That's not a real answer.” I waited for him to tell me what his powers really were, but no answer came.

“Tell me about someone else then,” I said. “Like … what about Lyria? She's Aphrodite, right? But what does that mean? The Greeks thought she was the goddess of love. She's the heir to the Seelie throne. So what can she do?”

“Lyria is highly empathic,” James said carefully. “She has the ability to feel others' emotions as her own.”

“That's it?” I was skeptical. Eze was powerful. I could feel that much, and I doubted that her daughters were any less powerful. And for some reason, the question felt more important than my mind told me it was.

“She's also an expath,” James continued. “She can manipulate the emotions of others, though she rarely chooses to do so. There are strict rules governing the
manner in which we use our powers on one another. Lyria knows them well.”

Rules that govern
… The phrase sounded familiar.

“Okay,” I said. “So Lyria's emotion girl. I guess that makes sense, with the whole love thing.”

It didn't exactly make sense considering that I hadn't seen Lyria display any emotions, but close enough.

“Anything else?”

“She's very strong in the glamour, ” James said. Seeing that I didn't understand, he elaborated. “Changing what other people see when they look at her. It's a skill we all share, but some are better at it than most.”

“And that's it?” I asked. I wasn't actually all that interested in Lyria's powers specifically, but I wanted to get a sense for exactly how outclassed I was here. I was psychic, but if that worked on other Sidhe, it certainly didn't work the same way, because I hadn't caught a stray thought in the Otherworld. Not one. As I waited for James to reply, I tested my pyrokinesis, concentrating just long enough to reach for the fire inside me, verifying that it was there, ready to spark to life the second I called it.

I couldn't manage a glamour. I wasn't an empath or an expath, but as far as power went, I wasn't doing half bad for someone who only half-belonged here in the first place. Now, if only I could put my finger on why it seemed so important to match my powers against theirs.

“Lyria does have a few other powers,” James admitted. “She can call forth certain emotions in their physical forms—-fire for passion, ice for fear. Nothing too out of the ordinary.”

So much for my extraordinary fire powers.

But if my powers weren't “out of the ordinary,” then why were Drogan and Eze bothering to woo me? Why did anybody care about the result of my Reckoning? Why bring me here at all?

And what was I forgetting?

“Song's over.” James's mild comment broke me from my thoughts, and I realized that we'd stopped moving. I had no idea how long we'd danced, but as I stood there, the stillness jarring my muscles, I couldn't shake the feeling that it had been hours and that my time here tonight was almost done.

“Thirsty?” James asked.

I nodded. Putting heart and soul into unearthly movements for extended periods of time had a tendency to do that to a person.

James reached out to the shadows, and as I watched, he pulled at its edges, and the darkness complied, stretching and molding itself into two cups, one for each of his hands.

“Water?” he said, offering me one of the cups.

I took it and smiled at the feel of the shadow, metallic yet silky. I raised it toward my lips and glanced down at the water. It was clear and there was light in it despite the darkness of its container. It smelled fresh and sweet, like dew, only more so. I lifted the cup to my lips, and as I did, a reflection danced along the water's surface.

My necklace.

Without warning, the necklace grew very hot against my skin, and I reached for the chain, to snatch the pendant away before it burned me. My fingers grazed the side of the
pendant, and it was only through luck that it didn't cut me again. My contact with the charm was brief, but in that instant, Annabelle's voice flashed into my head, clearer than any Earth-related thought I'd had since we'd started dancing.

“No food. Nothing to drink, either. It's another one of those overlaps between Celtic and Greek mythology. Several sources I found mentioned that if a human eats or drinks in the Otherworld, they can never leave. Ever.”

I dropped the cup as if it had scalded me the way the pendant had a moment before. I expected it to shatter, but instead it dissolved, losing its shape as the darkness swirled and fled back to the living shadows. As for the water, it lay at my feet, sparkling in a way that looked sinister to me now.

Water wasn't supposed to be that clean or that pure or that anything. It wasn't supposed to be beautiful or smell divine. This wasn't my kind of water, and I wasn't supposed to drink it.

“What's wrong?” James asked, but the moment before the words left his mouth, I saw something flash across his face—a split second (or maybe not even that) of disappointment—and I lowered my shields in hope of hearing his thoughts.

So close.

I took a step back.

“Bailey?”

He'd tried to make me drink. He'd tried to trick me into drinking. He'd offered it up so innocently, but if
Annabelle was right, then there was nothing innocent about it. Once I ate or drank something here, I wouldn't be able to go back, and if I did, I'd waste away, longing for what I could never have again.

With James's horrible thought still echoing in my head, I knew beyond all knowing that was what he had intended. A-belle had wondered if that kind of trick would work on me, because I was part Sidhe, but what she'd forgotten, what I kept forgetting, was that I was part human, too.

They'd brought me here to seduce the Sidhe in me, and barring that, to fool the human.

And James was at the center of it all. The connection I'd thought there was between us. The way he'd made me laugh.

“Bay?” James wrinkled his forehead, confused.

Oh, I just bet he was.

“Don't call me that,” I said. “You don't get to call me that.”

He'd been so nice. So friendly. He'd been glad to see me. He'd acted like he'd spent his whole life missing me, like all of them had, when really, he'd been trying to get me to drink. I went over every word he'd spoken, and realized that from the beginning, his words had been crafted with one goal in mind.

He wanted me to stay here.

“That's what this is about, isn't it?” I asked, my voice ancient and small and shrill all at the same time. “That's why you brought me here, that's what this Reckoning is. It isn't just choosing sides. You don't care if I choose Seelie or
Unseelie. You just want me to choose. You want me to stay here.”

But why? I was one of the Fates. I couldn't stay here. I belonged to the Nexus and to Earth. I couldn't live in the Otherworld the way the others could. So why the persuasion? Why the tricks?

Maybe,
I thought slowly,
it's not so much that they want me here as it is that they don't want me anywhere else. Maybe they don't want me in the mortal realm.

The ideas were fleeting, wisps of smoke that slipped through my fingers again and again, but I clutched at the pendant, not caring whether it cut me or not, and things grew more concrete in my mind.

“We do care which court you choose,”
‘
Xane said. “My father and I would very much like you to pledge yourself to the Unseelie. There’s a greatness in you, Bailey. You could be great here.”

Xane was oblivious to the fact that I was freaking out—that, or he just didn't care. Axia showed slightly more tact.

“You're confused,” she said, “and that's our fault, but we play by rules not our own. You speak truly enough. You weren't meant for the mortal world, and we do want you to come home, where you belong. But as Xane said, the choice offered to you at your Reckoning tomorrow night is an important one. The Seelie Court would be honored to have you.”

“Tomorrow night,” I repeated. “My Reckoning is tomorrow? And you expect me to choose courts?”

“You must choose,” Lyria said softly. “That's what a Reckoning is.”

“That's what a Reckoning is,” I repeated. “A choice that's not really a choice. You pick one of two options, and you're stuck with it for the rest of your immortal life.”

“It's our way,” Axia said, her voice louder, but as gentle as her sister's. “There comes a time when all Sidhe must choose. For you, that time is tomorrow. For the rest of us, it could come any day.”

“You mean none of you have been Reckoned?” I asked. I'd been operating under the assumption that I was the only un-Reckoned person left. They were thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of years old. I was a senior in high school, yet somehow
I
was the one on the chopping block?

“You've lived in mortal years,” Axia said. “We have not. We're considered young still. Our time will come, and when it does, we—each and every one of us—will choose, just as you must choose tomorrow.”

“And if I choose, what then?”

The three heirs looked at one another.

“Then all will be as it should be,” Axia said finally.

“I'll be stuck here,” I said. I couldn't drink the water. I couldn't eat the food. Somehow, I severely doubted I could pledge myself to either of the Otherworldly courts and expect to be allowed to go home.

“Would that really be so terrible?” James asked. I couldn't let myself wonder at the tone in his voice and what it meant. “You love it here. Think of the way it feels to run. Think of the singing and the songs and the burning and the cold. Think of your connection to us and ours to you.”

Gone was the awkward goofball, and in his place stood someone far more eloquent, someone who didn't seem nearly as human as he had moments before. Someone I still felt connected to nevertheless …

“You played me,” I said. “This whole time, you've just been …” I trailed off. I couldn't even say it.

“I haven't told you anything that wasn't true,” James said. “I want you here. We all want you here. You're amazing, Bailey. I don't think you understand just how special you are.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why am I so special?”

“Because the power comes through you.” James's words were followed by the loudest silence I'd ever heard. I inferred that whatever he'd just told me, it wasn't something that I was supposed to know.