Bound In Blue: Book One Of The Sword Of Elements (16 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY

I checked myself out in the mirror again.

“C’mon, what’s taking so long?” Peter had been asking some variation of that for the past half hour. Taking a deep breath, I opened the door and refused to look at his face until he said something.

“Wow.”

I could feel my cheeks burning. “Is it OK?”

Peter laughed. “OK? Are you kidding me? Don’t get me wrong, Rhi, because I just don’t think of you that way, but you’re like
totally
hot.”

I couldn’t help grinning. “Don’t be an idiot.”

Dragon or no dragon, when Peter told me dressing up for the dance was mandatory, I wanted to scuttle the whole plan. He and Miko convinced Tynan and Daley to go too and it became a whole group date thing again.

Because that turned out so well the last time.

I fidgeted in my costume. Going as the Little Mermaid had seemed like a good idea at the time. Streaks of red hair paint enhanced the highlights in my hair and I’d scrunched and fluffed it into a mass of curls. A green bikini top was covered in sequins from the craft box hidden in the back of my closet. Rummaging through Mom’s wardrobe, I’d found a long green skirt so tight that I couldn’t imagine how she’d ever walked in it. It was made of a ruched material, and when I cut slits in the bottom edge, it fanned out to suggest a mermaid’s tail. The skirt hung low on the hips and it was sheer enough to show my legs and bikini bottoms in the light.

I felt naked.

Peter was dressed as Superman and it was the same costume he wore when he took Lacey the year before. I didn’t think it was the smartest idea, but it was too late to change now. Our school had a strict policy about dances—show up at the starting time or you didn’t get in.

“Tynan’s going to pop a gasket.”

“That’s not what I want.” I rummaged through my purse until I found the charm bracelet. I was starting to feel silly about hiding something so pretty. I fastened the silver chain around my wrist, but I still twisted it so the charm was on the inside and dangled against my palm. “I’m not interested in Tynan that way.”

Peter’s pale eyebrows shot up in surprise. “I thought you liked him.”

“I do, but . . . he’s got issues.”

As we walked to the Celica, I threw Peter the keys—there was no way I could drive stick in this outfit. As I eased into the passenger seat and the seams of my skirt strained, I prayed to make it through the night without a wardrobe malfunction.

Putting his key in the ignition, Peter paused and looked at me. “Is it Daley?”

“I don’t know,” I murmured.

Peter sighed as he started the car and pulled away from the house. “Maybe Tynan has issues, but so does Daley. I talked to him about Melusine.”

“You what?”

“Don’t worry. I didn’t tell him anything, but Daley’s my friend. I just wanted to know how he still felt about her. He’s got to be aware of her on some level.”

“What did he say?”

Peter hesitated before answering. “That he will never love anyone the way he loved her.” Something crushed my heart in its icy fist. “I’m sorry, Rhi.”

We were approaching the gate when a flash of something caught my eye. “Stop for a second.”

Peter hit the brakes. “What? What is it?”

“I’m not sure, but I thought I saw something running around the back of your house.”

He peered out the window. “A coyote?”

“I couldn’t tell.” Coyotes were pests, but not usually dangerous to people. They’d go after dogs or cats though and the stud farm had plenty of those.

Peter put the car in park and got out. As I watched, I noticed how muscled he was and how he walked with a kind of dangerous grace.

We’re all changing so much.

He disappeared behind the house for a couple of minutes and then returned, got in the car, and drove away without saying a word.

I stared at him. “Well? Did you find anything?”

He was breathing fast, but his voice was steady. “Paw prints—lots of them—all around the house.”

“Like the ones in the guesthouse?”

“Yup.”

“Coyote?”

“Too big.”

My mouth went dry. “What about your parents? Shouldn’t we warn them or something?”

Peter shook his head. “They’ve gone to a show in Toronto and they’re staying overnight in a hotel downtown. Old Tom was going to lock up the horses and go visit his daughter in Port Hope, so he’s probably already gone too. We’ll take care of things at the dance and then get the others to come back with us. I think we’re going to need their help.”

“Is it another Cŵn Annwn?”

“I don’t know, but there’s more seaweed piled up behind the house. It was like some kind of crazy nest.”

What nests in seaweed hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean?

“I heard something howling a few days ago but I thought it was Tom’s dog.”

“Let’s just do what we need to at the dance and get back as soon as possible.”

We were quiet until we reached the school and parked. Shuffling inside in my skirt, I presented our tickets to one of the students sitting at the table outside the gym.

“Hey, Rhi! Love your costume.” It was one of the Bumblebees dressed as a sexy nurse. I was pretty sure her name was Angela, but they all tended to mash together into one black and yellow swarm. Apparently none of them remembered they used to be almost completely unaware of my existence.

I felt bad that I hadn’t really returned the favor.

“Thanks,” I said as Sexy Nurse stamped my hand. “I like your costume too. Have you seen Lacey yet?”

Sexy Nurse exchanged a look with Sexy Little Red Riding Hood, another Bumblebee. “Oh, we’ve seen her. Maybe you can talk some sense into her. We’ve all tried.”

“I’ll try too,” I said and that seemed to satisfy them. Sexy Nurse gave me a smile and a wave while Sexy Red stamped Peter’s hand like she was kissing it.

I was too eager to find Lacey to wait for him to disentangle himself. As I entered the gym, the noise of the music and the color of the flashing strobe lights hit me with so much force that I thought my own colors had burst out of me and splattered all over the walls. My vision blurred, but I steadied myself and looked for Lacey.

She wasn’t hard to find.

Swaying to the music, Lacey was dressed in black leather pants and a vest that pushed her breasts up past PG-13 territory. A studded choker and teased hair completed the biker chick look, but I knew the black tattoos crawling over her bare arms and shoulders were real.

As I approached, her eyes flew open, though I doubted she could hear me over the music. I would have expected her eyes and lips to be made up to match her outfit, but she wasn’t wearing any makeup at all. In fact, her face was ashy pale. She shouted something, but I shook my head and pointed to my ear to show I couldn’t hear. Grabbing my arm, she pulled me to the far exit and down the hall to the backstage entrance of the auditorium.

“No one will bother us in here.” I followed her through the wings and onto the stage. It was pitch black except for the light above the stage manager’s table. I couldn’t see where the stage ended and the chairs began and I had a strange impression of nothingness—as if the rest of the world had disappeared.

“Scary, isn’t it.” I could hardly see Lacey, but her voice carried. “All those people—it’s terrifying. But once you get going, it’s such a rush.” I wondered if she’d even auditioned for this year’s show and her next words answered me. “I’ll miss it, but Cailleach says performing is a type of magic. Until she frees me, all my magic is bound to her.”

“What do you mean, ‘frees you’?”

Lacey’s laughter was harsh. “Don’t you know yet,
Rhiannon
?” She stressed my name strangely. “None of us are free. Taliesin wants something, and if you don’t give it to him, he’ll just take it. Arthur and Morgan are worse. If you go to them, Arthur will enslave you the same way he did her. If you fight them, you’ll die. You can always join your father I guess, but maybe there’s a good reason your mother was hiding you from him.” I was surprised by how much she knew and was glad the darkness hid my face. “At least Cailleach has promised to give me my freedom once she has what she wants.”

“What does she want then?”

Lacey laughed again. “It doesn’t matter. What do
you
want?”

“I want Melusine gone.”

“Why?”

We’d been over this already. “Because she’s dead. Because she enchanted Daley when she was alive. Because she could hurt him. She could hurt all of us.”

“And because you love him.”

The words rang out through the stage and the auditorium like a bell.

“Yes.”

Lacey walked back into the glow of the stage manager’s light and I left the abyss of the stage to join her. She handed me a piece of paper with elegant handwriting on it. “I’m glad you were honest with me. It makes everything so much easier. Cailleach’s powers rise at Samhain—Halloween—and she’ll meet you at that address and that precise time. This is your spell, so you need to find all the items yourself. Don’t pawn it off on Peter.”

I didn’t like her tone. “Of course not.”

She tapped her fingernails against the table a couple of times as we stared at each other. “Can I give you a piece of advice?”

I was starting to lose patience and a thread of angry scarlet wormed its way across my vision. “What?”

“Leave Daley alone. Be happy with Peter and Tynan. Cailleach says even the redcap has a thing for you. Isn’t that enough? Why do you need Daley too?”

Scarlet frosted with ice. “This is for Daley’s own good and everyone else’s safety.”

Lacey backed away into the darkness. “You’re
his
daughter—what can you know about ‘good’? Maybe someday, someone will decide to put you down for their own safety, for everyone’s ‘good’. Maybe they already have. Something’s stalking you, Rhi . . .”

My name whispered and echoed across the stage, but I knew Lacey was already gone.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

I opened the stage door and walked out of the darkness, squinting at the transition to the fluorescent lighting in the hall. Clutching my list, I stumbled around a corner and walked straight into a couple making out against one of the lockers.

The girl pushed away in surprise. She was wearing a mask with feathers draping down her neck and a black-feathered ballet skirt, but I would have known her anywhere. It was Miko.

The guy with her wasn’t Peter.

I didn’t get a good look at him as he took off out the back door, but I caught a glimpse of white teeth when he turned to smile at me. I remembered the text she received that day by the pool and the old friend who wanted to hook up some time.

Apparently that’s exactly what they did.

We stared at each other—Miko covering the side of her face with her hand and me crushing Cailleach’s instructions into a ball. The paper was sweaty and ragged, but it was better than doing what I wanted to do.

It was better than punching her in the face.

“It’s not my fault,” she whispered. “I tried to tell you—you can’t trust a fairy.”

I turned and walked away.

“He promised me wings.” I could tell she was crying, but I didn’t stop. I could feel the red rising inside me was too dangerous for me to be around her. Almost blinded by angry crimson, I went back to the dance to find Peter.

“Rhi? Are you OK?” I was surprised to discover I’d almost walked right past Daley without seeing him.

“No. No, I’m not,” I said, but I knew he couldn’t hear me. He stared at me for a moment, then reached out and pulled me into his arms.

“What are you doing?” I yelped. The music had changed abruptly to a pop ballad and my voice was loud in the sudden quiet. Daley smiled. My embarrassment increased as I realized my arms were somehow around his neck and his hands were warm on the curve of my bare waist. We were dancing, sort of.

If you call me swaying back and forth in this stupid skirt dancing.

“You looked a little unsteady.” He glanced over his left shoulder at my hand. “What’s that?”

I crushed the paper into an even smaller ball. “Just something I need to take care of.” I took a look at him. “What are you supposed to be?” He was wearing jeans, a black t-shirt, and a black leather jacket.

“Just me.”

I shivered in his arms. That’s all he needed to be—just Daley. Costumes might be mandatory, but I doubted anyone would have dared to try and stop him from getting in. “Why are we dancing?”

He shrugged. “It seemed like the thing to do.” For once there was no challenge, no twist of suspicion in his voice. “A better question is what am I even doing here?”

There was no sign of Melusine and the necklace was tucked away under his shirt, so I relaxed a little. “I really don’t know. I thought you’d bail.”

Daley laughed and my heart skipped a beat; I’d never made him laugh before. I wanted to tell him everything—about Melusine, about me, even about Miko—but then his irises darkened and I could have sworn fine blades of lightning were flickering across them. Pulling me closer, he frowned as if he didn’t understand what he was doing. My body was molded so closely to his that when a rumble of distant thunder vibrated through me, I wasn’t sure where I ended and he began.

Daley closed his eyes as if he couldn’t look at me anymore, but he leaned in and his mouth brushed mine. Gasping as electric sparks arced across my lips, I pulled back and that’s when I saw them.

Melusine and Tynan standing together staring at us.

Shoving Daley away, I focused on Melusine’s fury because I couldn’t bear to look at Tynan. He was dressed as a pirate, like a little boy.

Daley stiffened and turned. “Ty . . .”

Melusine’s face hardened as she realized Daley still couldn’t see her. Iridescent scales rippled across her skin.

I braced myself to face the dragon.

The stench of seawater and rotting fish filled the air. People stopped dancing and looked around, making faces at the smell. A moment later, the fire alarm went off and kids started running for the exits. Teachers struggled to keep things under control and I was surprised to see Thomas Redcap among them.

Miko had to push against the crowd to reach us. “I pulled the alarm to get everyone out.” I refused to respond to the pleading in her eyes as Peter joined us.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to tell him his girlfriend is a lying skank.

Peter’s pale eyebrows shot up as he wrinkled his nose. “Do you smell that?”

I nodded. It smelled like something that nested in piles of rotting seaweed.

The gym was now almost empty. One of the teachers began to walk towards us to herd us out, but Miko made a slight motion with her hand and he turned and ran out the nearest door.

“He thinks we’re following him,” she explained.

“Thanks Meek,” Tynan said.

“Glamour is the only thing fairies are good for.” She seemed so sad that I was tempted to forgive her, but one look at Peter, oblivious in his dorky Superman costume, and I just couldn’t.

I caught his eye. “Can you see anything?”

“Nope. I’ll cut the strobes.” He went over to the abandoned DJ equipment and fiddled with the knobs until the colored lights stopped flashing.

“There.” Daley pointed to the far side of the room. “By the wall. Something’s moving.” Melusine drifted to his side. The dragon had subsided.

Miko frowned as she concentrated. “It has a type of glamour, enough to make it almost disappear in shadow, but it will have to come out to attack.” She swayed, but Tynan caught her and steadied her. When she pulled away, her costume was dark and wet around the neckline and something that looked like blood stained the sleeve of Tynan’s shirt.

We all jumped when the door to the gym crashed open, but it was just Redcap. “I see you’ve cornered the Dobhar-chú,” he commented as he sauntered towards us, “but this one has friends hiding in the corners.” I caught the fleeting impression of movement on the far edges of the room. “Water-hounds are cautious killers. I’ve been following this pack ever since I caught their scent.”

“What are they hunting?” It had to be asked, but I already knew the answer.

Redcap winked. “Why, you,
mo leanabh
, of course. They’ve been hunting you.”