Copper Ravens (3 page)

“Come, now. It wouldn't be
so
bad.”

“Mom!”

“That was the original intent of the honeymoon,” she continued, undeterred. “To drink sweet mead and come away with a babe for your troubles.”

“Is that what you and Dad did?” I sneered.

“Careful, or I'll tell you,” she warned. She watched me squirm for a few moments before she continued. “As to your first question, Max will be fine. For all that he's of metal, there's fire in his blood, and he's never gotten a chance to feel it. Let him burn a bit.”

I nodded, gazing past my mother to the heavy mantel above the kitchen hearth. Since the kitchen was always the heart of the home, it's where we'd put the one of the few mementos we had from the Raven Compound—the picture of Max, Sadie, and me in the backyard beneath the fairy tree, taken when we were kids. As I looked at the sweet-faced boy crammed between his sisters, I tried to reconcile the brother of my memory with the man of today. “If he burns any more, Micah may extinguish him.”

“That he may,” Mom murmured. “That, he may.”

4

T
he next morning dawned bright and clear, complete with fluffy clouds and a soft breeze. I should have known that something bizarre was going to happen from the deceptively calm way the day began.

I'd spent the bulk of the morning shuffling around the manor, bored out of my mind. Micah had been summoned to some sort of a meeting that had to do with the Gold Queen, and, being that I'd insulted Old Stoney only the day prior, we both thought it best to give the old rock a bit of time to cool down. So I had helped Micah back into his formal attire and handed him his sword, and, after a lingering goodbye, he went off to hear about what I hoped was the Gold Queen's most excellent recovery.

And really, it's not that I minded being left to my own devices. I liked having free time to explore the manor and its surrounding gardens and orchards, since it was now, and probably always would be, my home, too. It was a far cry from the tiny two-room apartment I had rented in the Mundane realm, not to mention the gaudy opulence of the Raven Compound. Just like the girl in the fairy tale, I'd found myself a charming prince and moved right on in to his castle.

However, spending the last few weeks surrounded by this never-ending luxury had left me feeling more than a bit jaded. The Otherworld is an amazing land, filled with untold wonders and beauty, yes, but sometimes I just wanted to play a game on my phone. My poor, trusty, old phone, which by now had probably been confiscated and dissected by Peacekeepers, who were now very aware of how often I had called for takeout.

Speaking of takeout, I missed eating it in front of my elderly Picture Vision while I watched bad postwar movies and good prewar movies. Not to mention all the types of takeout I, um, took out—pizza, grinders, rubbery Chinese. Yeah, the silverkin could whip up anything I asked for, but they couldn't quite manage the proper containers. Yes, I missed the little white cartons, and paper coffee cups with their badly fitting plastic lids, and my car, and…

I scrubbed my face with my hands; this trip down memory lane wasn't going to accomplish much, other than feed my misguided nostalgia for the less fine things in life. Searching for a distraction, I left my rooms and prowled the manor's silver hallways. Eventually, I found Sadie on the second level, standing alongside a heap of scrolls and books while she attempted to explain to Shep the basic concept of a library; I don't think it ever occurred to her that the silverkin don't read and therefore have little use for books.

Come to think of it, I wondered if they
could
read. They didn't technically have eyes, and they were constantly bumping into things, but something was helping them navigate. Sonar? I made a mental note to ask Micah, and a second mental note to ask Sadie if she'd like to teach remedial reading to a bunch of metal critters. A class full of silverkin would sure keep her occupied.

Not wanting to get involved in any library-related hubbub, I continued down the hall to the large windows that looked out over the gardens. I saw Mom in her usual spot, meditating yet again; at this rate, she was on track to become an honorary Buddhist.

Really, I understood why Mom was behaving the way she was. It had been obvious how much she and Dad loved each other, even to us kids. Once, I'd tried imagining what I'd do if Micah disappeared, and the mere imagining was terrible.

“You went into hiding?” I'd asked her, back when she was still working locator spells. Luckily, Mom had been in the rare mood to share some of her history. It seemed that she had made quite a few enemies while she was queen of Connacht, back in her mortal days, and a fair few during her later days as the queen of the Seelie Court. “And that was how you ended up in Fairy?”

“Not exactly,” she replied. “My mortal enemies grew to be more than my court could handle, so I retreated to a
brugh.”
A
brugh
, I then learned, was a fairy hill. A single night's revelry under the hill could be as short as a day, or as long as a century in the Mundane realm's timekeeping.

Mom didn't just party there. She became their queen.

“Drink enough of their wine, and one's mortality burns away,” she had explained. “Then the prior Seelie Queen, Eleanore, was killed, and I took up the throne.” I'd learned long ago that when Mom uttered innocent-sounding phrases such as “took up the throne,” she actually meant something along the lines of “I fought a long and bloody battle and killed all who opposed me.” My mom's badass that way.

“So when did you decide to leave?” asked Sadie, who had literally been on the edge of her seat. Not that I blamed her, since a story about Mom's past was a rare treat indeed.

“I never decided, not one way or the other. Beau did that for me.” Mom smiled, gazing at a far-off memory. “He'd managed to infiltrate his way into the
brugh
, all yells and kicks. He was a scrappy boy, Beau was.” Sadie and I had laughed at that; around us, at least, Dad was anything but scrappy. “Once my guard captured him, he was dragged before my throne, this impertinent mortal with the greenest eyes I'd ever seen.”

“Love at first sight!” Sadie squealed.

“More like love after his next bath,” Mom said. “After a few days of having your dear father around, I realized that my court's magic would eventually overpower Beau's, leaving him more fey than Elemental. I couldn't let him lose his identity, so we slipped away.”

“And your court never looked for you?” I asked. If Micah went missing, I had no doubt that all those of metal would overturn every rock and twig in the Otherworld in order to find him. Shep would follow, straightening things up in their wake.

“I imagine they were too busy naming my successor,” Mom replied, in that way of hers that meant something a bit more involved had happened.

“You gave up being a queen for Dad?” Sadie asked, a bit awed.

“Oh, it wasn't such a sacrifice,” Mom said. “I left behind a lonely life as a monarch for a husband and three wonderful babes. I'd make the same choice again a thousand times over, and I wouldn't change a thing.”

“Even though he's gone now?” I ventured.

“Aye,” Mom murmured, tucking a length of hair behind my ear. “Even so.”

As I remembered that short discussion, I wondered if I should go down to the gardens and try to talk with her. I mean, all of this moping disguised as meditating was getting us nowhere. In the midst of my internal debate, Max emerged from his room.

“Hey,” I greeted. All I got was a grunt in reply. “What's up?”

“Nothing, yet.” Max shoved past me and made his way toward the kitchen. Not having anything better to do, I followed, then watched in utter amazement as he ate four bowls of oatmeal in the space of a few minutes, drained two truly enormous mugs of coffee, and then asked for a plate of eggs. It was like he was fattening up for hibernation.

“Where's Micah?” he asked as he shoveled eggs into his mouth.

“With the bigwigs.” I picked at some bread. “And Sadie's trying to build a library with the silverkin, and Mom is doing the strong and silent thing again, which means that I'm bored out of my mind.”

Max took another swig of coffee and wiped his mouth on the shoulder of his shirt. Classy. “Want to come to the village with me?”

I eyed him dubiously, remembering his return the prior evening. “Depends. What's going on there?”

He set down his tankard with a thud and scowled. “What's Micah told you I do?” he countered.

“We're all wondering what you do,” I snapped. “You come home in the dead of night, looking like you were dragged through the woods with these things chasing you…What
are
you doing?”

“I used to hang out at the market, but after the boggarts—”

“Wait.” I put my palms flat on the table and stared at my idiot brother. “Do you mean the Goblin Market?”

By the look on Max's face, that was exactly what he meant. The Goblin Market was where the true evil congregated; the creatures that called the market home made the Iron Court look like a petting zoo. We'd been warned to stay away from the Goblin Market for as long as I could remember. Well, Dad had warned us. Mom had threatened us with eternal grounding.

“You are not,” I said. “If Mom finds out—”

“I haven't been there since—”

“What good reason could you have for going there anyway?” I demanded.

“I was looking for Dad.” Max exhaled heavily, drank some more coffee, and worried at the edge of the table. “I figure if I go out in public, raise a little hell, word will get around. Eventually, it'll get around to Dad.”

I stared at my big brother, shocked and amazed for reasons he would not like to hear about. Yeah, I suppose that Dad would eventually hear about these antics, and if the creatures Max was hanging around with didn't kill him, Dad sure would once he found out. This was the stupidest, most irresponsible plan I'd ever heard, and I'd grown up with Max's stupid plans.

And yet, that didn't stop the guilt that stabbed at my heart. Here I'd been, mooning over having to get dressed up and attend court functions and worrying about the possibility of babies, and forgetting what we were all supposed to be doing—looking for Dad.

I'd just turned seven when my father got the call to war; I was eight and a half when the war, and the reports on him, abruptly ceased. To this day, we had no idea what had happened to him, not even if he was alive or dead. The Iron Queen had led me to believe that Dad was still alive; she'd insinuated that she'd known him, and said that she couldn't imagine death taking him. Still, I didn't think it was wise to put my faith in a known liar.

After Micah and I had freed Max from the Institute, he'd revealed that Dad had remained in contact with him for a few years after the wars ended, though the rest of the family had been unaware of this. To Mom, Sadie and me, Dad was just gone; I don't know what hurt more, the fact that Dad hadn't come by, or Max's revelation that, two years after the wars ended, all contact abruptly stopped. I could only think of two things that would have kept Dad from us for that long, and if he'd been imprisoned, he'd have probably escaped by now. The other option, I just refused to consider.

But Max seemed to think our father was alive, and, being that he'd apparently once been headquartered in the Goblin Market, near enough to the Whispering Dell to hear about these drunken escapades. Mind you, getting in fights in the village square was not the proper way to locate a missing man. One should organize a search, complete with maps and compasses and things. However, I didn't have any of those things, or the resources to put together a search party, or any desire to hear Sadie talk about the fricken' Dewey Decimal System ever again.

“So,” Max said, “want to come with me?”

“When do we leave?” Really, what could go wrong?

Call me naïve, but I'd always assumed that the seedy underbelly, whether in the Otherworld or the Mundane realm, was only out at night. I mean, how could such ne'er-do-wells prosper in the full light of day? While the sun watched from above, respectable shopkeepers and artisans went about their business, making quality products and earning a fair wage for their honest work. Once the mats were rolled up and the stalls were shuttered, and the sun's watchful eye was asleep, the bad guys emerged to cheat and pilfer what was left.

Yeah, naïve.

On this day the sun was blazing hot, though it was long before noon, and there I was with my brother in what we from the Mundane world would call a dive bar, complete with battered chairs and a sticky floor. All that was needed to complete the trashy ensemble were a jukebox and a mechanical bull. Oh, and some off-key karaoke wouldn't hurt.

As I pried my shoe off the floor, I was hit with a pang of homesickness for The Room, the dive where I used to hang out with my coworkers at Real Estate Evaluation Services, though they weren't actually my coworkers. It was a sham job, set up by Peacekeepers to spy on my family. You would think that the government would find other ways to spend our tax dollars.