Stolen Away (6 page)

“I don’t know,” I reminded him, easing back. “I’m asking
you
, remember?” I held up the phone. “And I’ll dial 911 if you come at me again.”

He frowned. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Then we’re even because I don’t know what Beltane means either.”

“You don’t need to be scared of me,” he insisted softly. “Be scared of the crow-brothers. Be scared of the swan and
the turning of the wheel.” He touched my cheek so gently, it was like a snowflake landing, brushing my skin and melting away. “Not me.” He bent his head, voice dropping to a husky whisper. “Never me.”

We stared at each other for a long, hot moment before I jerked back and let the maples draw a curtain of red and orange leaves between us. I shot across the lawn and the street and onto the crowded sidewalk. I ran all the way home. Mom was working, so I pushed out onto the balcony. I paced the roof, to convince myself there was no danger, no secret, no crow-brothers.

Big mistake.

I didn’t even see them appear.

One minute I was alone, and the next … not so much. I yelped, my heart leaping into my throat like a disoriented frog. I counted nine of them—five women and four men—all still as glass with black eyes and crow feathers for hair. They wore armor and carried swords of sharpened jet. I swallowed thickly. “Who are you?”

No one answered me; they all just took a step forward, circling me in a sharp silence that made my palms sweat. I turned on my heel, trying to keep them all in sight. I opened my mouth to yell.

“Hel—” I wasn’t sure if I was shouting for my mom or for Lucas. It didn’t matter, I didn’t have the chance. One of them rushed forward, moving so quickly I felt dizzy. The air shifted all around me, and his hand closed over my mouth. I struggled but he only laughed.

“Someone wants to see you.”

His hold tightened and he dragged me forward, his crow-brethren laughing in a scratchy, inhuman way that lifted all the hair on my body. Their feathers ruffled. It might have been beautiful if I hadn’t been so scared.

He stepped onto the railing, hauling me up next to him. The pavement far below was littered with old gum and candy-bar wrappers. A flock of sparrows lifted from the trees in the park, chirping frantically.

“Let’s see if you can fly as well as the whelp boy,” he said, as if he was offering me poetry and roses. I thought I saw Lucas, suddenly there behind him, shouting.

And then he pushed me.

I screamed all the way down.

I could imagine, in that moment, my broken body on the pavement below. The last thing I would hear would be my own hysterical screaming and the mocking half caw, half laugh of the crow-people.

I fell for a long time.

There was a hand gripping the back of my shirt, the one Mom embroidered for me, and I didn’t know if I should be trying to shake it off or praying it held on tight. I didn’t feel like I was dreaming, but I clearly couldn’t be awake either.

Especially when I landed.

I didn’t break apart into a hundred pieces, I didn’t even break my legs, though my ankles felt the impact.

And I wasn’t on the sidewalk outside our building. Instead, I was in a long room that looked like it belonged
in one of those medieval movies Jo was always making me watch. Candles flickered next to painted oil lamps and beaded floor lamps. Hand-knotted rugs were piled on the dirt floor, and all the furniture was carved out of mahogany and ridiculously ornate. The ceiling was a tapestry of tree roots, hung with lanterns.

People in bustled gowns, leather pants, and jet jewelry drank pale pink liquid from champagne flutes. Their faces were angular and powdered with glitter; some necks were too long, movements too fluid. I really hadn’t thought I had such a good imagination.

“The girl, my Lord Strahan.” The crows were behind me, each down on one knee, heads bowed.

Strahan wore a lace cravat and silver at his forehead, like a crown. Three women, diaphanous and gray as mist, floated behind him. Everything about them was as pale as pearls: hair, skin, eyes, mouths, clothing. Their tattered gowns undulated in a wind only they could feel. They emanated a glacial sadness that made me shiver.

Strahan was slender and sharp, like a sword. And he was circling me like I was prey. “Dreadful hair,” he said. “I’ll never understand the modern penchant for cheap fabrics and short hair.”

When he reached out to touch my short brown hair, I slapped his hand. I’d seen Mom do it countless times when she tended bar down the street. “Hey, back off.”

He paused, as if I’d shocked him. I guess he didn’t get
smacked a lot. The crows muttered behind me. The silence stretched, like a thread pulled too taut. Adrenaline fizzed through my blood. I wondered briefly if I was going to be sick on his polished boots. Harp music was soft all around us, incongruous in its gentle lilting.

I really,
really
wanted to wake up now.

He shook his head. “And the pattern of that embroidery is pitiful. Did you really think it was enough to hide you from me? And that tattoo is a pathetic charm.” He clicked his tongue. “The glamour that kept you hidden from us is gone, child. Nothing can hide you from me now.”

Everyone looked at me, mostly with an odd kind of hunger. There was a girl chained to the wall beside us. She was too thin and looked away when I noticed her. Her wrists were covered in blisters and the translucent wings lifting gently from her spine were mutilated.

Wings.

Because this wasn’t weird enough.

She looked terrified, even more so than me. But if this was a dream, and it had to be, I didn’t have to just stand around, wringing my hands. I could be brave in a way I might not have been in real life with all those inhuman eyes devouring my every movement.

I bolted for the nearest doorway.

It was stupid. There were too many guards and I knew I’d never make it, but I had to try. Terror had my legs moving before my brain could come up with a better plan.
Strahan just reached a hand out and caught my hair, yanking me to a vicious stop.

“Eloise Hart.” His voice was silky, menacing. Beautiful.

And then he smiled, slowly, as if I were a pet monkey who’d amused him. My knees went weak. His entourage laughed, clinking glasses together.

“Lovely,” he murmured. “The others broke with such lamentable swiftness. You might be entertaining after all, and I could use the diversion.” He stroked my cheek and it tingled, as if I had a sunburn. “And I’ve such a fondness for diversions.” He squeezed, his fingers bruising me. “I’m tired of these games, you see, and I’m tired of Antonia.”

“What does this have to do with my aunt?” I suddenly remembered the way she refused to sit with her back to a window or a door, the way she rigged her van with door alarms. Was Strahan the person she was running from? And why?

“You’re very like her.” There was something in his eyes at odds with his bored tone. “And you’ll tell me where she is, little fawn, won’t you? And give me what I want.”

He yanked the ribbon out of my hair. Welts rose at my nape from the scrape of the material. He looked at the ribbon, dropped it in disgust. “That’s not the one.”

He was looking for a ribbon? I was being bruised and manhandled and, oh yeah,
abducted
, for a ribbon?

I tried to pull out of his grasp. “Is Lucas here?”

His eyes narrowed suddenly, dark as flint, and I wouldn’t
have been surprised if sparks had leaped from his eyelids. He was stunning, all pale hair and lightning. “You would speak the name of a Richelieu whelp to me?”

Chains rattled as the winged girl shuddered. I would have taken a step back if there hadn’t been so many crow-guards behind me. I had nowhere to go, and the air felt thin, distant. This wasn’t a dream, after all.

It was something else, something much worse.

“You’ll lead me to your aunt or she’ll come to fetch you,” he drawled. “Either way, you are of some use to me. I suggest you remain that way.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, you wouldn’t, would you? But you will, soon enough.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Take her away.”

• • •

I was taken to a narrow room with a sloped ceiling, also made of braided roots and hung with oil lamps. There was a huge bed, a washstand, and a narrow table with a single candle and a box of parchment and quills. The outer door stayed open. The inner door was thick filigreed metal, like vines curling over themselves. The lock clanged shut. Two of the crow-guards stayed outside, their eyes yellow above sharp noses. A few giggling women joined the guards, clearly tipsy on whatever that pink stuff was they were drinking. They wore matching pink dresses with ornate bustles in silver wire cages.

“She doesn’t look like much, does she?” one of them said in an exaggerated whisper. “Her aunt was much prettier.”

“
Hsst
, mentioning her. Do you want Himself to hear you?”

She sniffed. “I’m not scared.”

Her friend shook her head. Icicles dripped from her hair like a crown. “Then you’re as foolish as you are reckless.”

“Oh, Poppy, you never let me have any fun. We haven’t had a human in ages.”

They stumbled away, still bickering. I didn’t like the way she’d said
human
, as if it implied some sort of delicacy, like caviar or Belgian chocolate.

Yet another reason I had to get the hell out of here; I didn’t want to end up as dessert.

But I still had no idea where I was or how to get home.

I was distracted from the rapid and distinctly downward spiral of my thoughts by some sort of commotion in the hallway. There was scuffing of feet and whimpering. I went to the glittering cage door and looked out. Two men and a woman were dragging the winged girl, her wrists bloody, her feet bruised and dirty. I felt small and scared and sick. They passed by close enough that I could smell her sweat: cotton candy and pond water. I gagged.

The crow-guards advanced suddenly, swinging the heavy wooden outer door shut in my face. I jumped back to avoid
getting my fingers and my nose crushed as the fairy girl was muscled into the room next to mine. I pressed my ear to the wall, the silk paper smooth against my skin and patterned with swans holding fish in their beaks.

“Hello?” I called out, wondering how thick the walls were. They felt uneven, like plaster or mud. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

I slid down to sit on the floor in the corner, my mouth close to a swan eye, painted with far too much realistic detail. My mother would have loved it; it was surreal and delicate. I was half-afraid it was going to drop its fish in my lap.

I might have heard a sob, but I wasn’t sure. I leaned closer to the swan, could have sworn I felt its warm breath. I blinked, pulled back slightly. The paper was cracked, and if I turned my head at just the right angle, I could make out a tiny glimmer of light, barely bigger than a watermelon seed. “I know you can hear me.”

There was a muffled gasp, a pause. I wiped my damp palms on the carpet. “I’m Eloise.”

“I know.”

I was a little heartened that she’d at least answered me. “What’s your name?”

“My speaking-name is Winifreda.”

There was a long pause and I would have thought she’d gone away except that I could see small glimpses of her hair, which was knotted and cornflower blue.

“Please talk to me,” I tried again.

“I’m not supposed to. We’re not allowed to talk to the other displays.”

“Displays?” I echoed, insulted. “I’m not some party favor.”

“Of course you are,” she said softly. “All of us are.”

“What? That can’t be legal.”

I heard a rustle, as if she was shrugging. “He can do as he wishes until Samhain binds him, though it never really does anymore. It’s worse now, so close to the holy days. It makes him peevish.”

“Peevish?” I thought of the burns and blisters on her pale skin and swallowed. “That’s just great. Where are we, anyway? His country house or something?”

“You’re at Strahan Hall. They’re a traditional family, still keeping to the raths as the ancients did. There aren’t many like this. Most have been abandoned.”

“Um, can you say that again in English?”

“A fairy rath, under the earth, near Rowanwood Park.”

“Rowanwood Park? There aren’t any houses in the park.” I pressed my eye closer to the gap, saw only a flutter of bloodied wing.

“We’re under the park, in the west hill.”

“
In
the hill.”

“Of course, where else would a rath be? The fey have always lived close to the earth. Some say we were driven underground while in the old country.”

“Oh.” Like
I
was the weird one for not thinking people lived inside hills. “Wait, fey?”

“Fae folk,” she explained. “Surely you’ve heard the stories of the Good Neighbors.”

“Uh-huh.” I had vague recollections of reading Keats’s “La Belle Dame sans Merci” in English class last year, about a knight enslaved by a Fae princess. “Do you know how to get out of here?”

Winifreda’s voice was small. “You’ll never get out of here.”

My stomach tumbled. “I have to.” I pushed my shoulders back. False confidence was better than none at all, according to Mom, anyway, even if she did deal with drunks and grabby bikers instead of megalomaniac Fae lords. When I sat back, my pendant fell out of my sweater.

Winifreda made a small sound. Light filled the hole when she scrambled away from the wall. “Don’t let him see that.”

I touched the iron stag, frowned. “Why not?”

“We can’t abide iron.” I thought of the chains on her wrists, the way Lucas’s hand had been blistered when he handed me the pendant. “And he especially cannot stand the Hart insignia.”

I slipped the chain off, took a closer look at the spiraling antlers. “This is my family insignia? I didn’t even know we had one.”

“All the old families do. So you
are
the one,” she added in such a soft whisper, I didn’t think I’d been meant to hear her. She didn’t come back to the wall, and she didn’t say anything else.

I wondered what an old family was and what that even meant. I thought about Mom wondering where I was, about Jo and Devin, and about Lucas left behind on the roof. I rubbed the stag pendant and wished it were a magic lamp so I could transport myself home.