Page 69 of Samhain

Minutes passed like hours, hours like centuries, and the sounds from the crowd grew louder and more intense—moans mixed with laughs and cries of mourning. People wore ruby-colored robes, and a few had animal skulls over their faces like masks. At Midsummer, we had jumped over a fire and drank endless wine from leather chalices. Tonight, the revelers of Faerie chanted in tongues and sobbed in low tones among each other.

“We need to demand our answers tonight,” Ivy said, clawing the nervous rash on her neck.

“We should get the fuck out of here.” Lex paced back and forth, chain-smoking and pulling his hair. “This was stupid, even for us, X.”

They’d been arguing about what to do for the last few hours, going in circles, arriving nowhere in the conversation.

“If we do that, we don’t find out the truth,” Miri cut in. “We came here for a reason.”

I agreed with her. We were already here. But there was another, more desperate part of me that also agreed with Lex. I wanted to book it out of this hellhole like my ass was on fire. Everything gave me the creeps—the medieval decor and the shifty-eyed looks from everyone else around us. It wasn’t like the last time, and I wondered if that was because my perspective had changed or if it was because the festival had a different meaning.

Perhaps we had been tolerated two years ago. Tonight, I felt like an intruder.

I walked to Miri, who still stood at the entrance to the tent, watching the world go by. She hadn’t moved since we’d arrived.

“What’re you looking at, Juliet?”

She nodded toward the stage. “I can tell which are human and which aren’t.”

I followed her line of sight to a blond child on the stage. She couldn’t have been more than five or six, but the way her hair frizzed out around her head reminded me of Lizzie.

“She’s human.” Miri raised an eyebrow at me, curling her lips into disgust. “A lot of them are.”

If the queen liked your company, she might keep you forever.

I watched the girl on stage hold a plate of grapes while the queen drank and laughed and picked her fill of fruit.

What was her story? How had she gotten here? What events in her life went so wrong that she’d become a servant girl for a fairy queen?

Fire swelled in my gut, and the urge to protect her had me rooting my feet in the grass to keep from launching myself at the stage. But Miri and Ivy were right. We were here to get our answers, and I needed to behave myself until then.

21

Miri

Lex was on edge. We all were. Something heavy hung in the air, something more than the ritual or the way Ashley had ditched us. I sensed foreboding on the horizon, and I couldn’t explain it. Chewing my bottom lip, I counted the number of humans while my spouses argued about whether we should leave or wait it out.

I sensed the fairies in attendance. Perhaps it was because of their connection to nature or because they had lived among the trees so long they were a part of the forest. Their auras shone around their bodies like halos, like I’d had my eyes open under chlorinated water too long and looking at them was like looking at white blurry lights. The queen’s aura was the brightest. Did that mean she was the most powerful?

“Ashley’s the closest we have to a clue,” Carter said. “If she can undo the gift, we’ve got to try.”

Lex took a deep breath and sucked on his cigarette, but stopped arguing. Maybe he accepted the lot we’d cast for ourselves and decided to wait it out.

“Okay, fuck it.” Carter headed back toward the table. “I can’t stand it anymore. I’m starving.” He sat and pinched at the turkey to pile it on his plate.

“Carter—” Ivy moved to stand next to him. “If you consume the food of the fae, you could get stuck here.”

“Yeah,” Lex said. “Like Persephone and shit.”

“Ashley promised not to harm us.” Carter took a deep breath, raking his eyes over the spoils. “We didn’t get stuck last time. How much longer are we going to wait for the queen to finish?”

No one answered him, and my own stomach growled.

“Do you want to go to your death on an empty stomach?” Carter looked at me. “If I’m not leaving here anyway, then I’d rather enjoy the time I have left.”

I’d been nauseous since we left Killwater, but now that we’d been stopped, my adrenaline had subsided and left an empty hollowness in its wake. If we were here permanently, at least we’d be together. If Carter wanted to give in to temptation, I’d go with him. One of my nannies used to say there wasn’t anything in this world that couldn’t be fixed by a good meal.

“I’ve got a terrible feeling about this, but I’m with you until the end.” I held out my hand to him like I had last night. He took it, hooked his thumb around mine, and gave it a shake. “You’re right. This could be our last meal.”

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