Except for the night of Homecoming and the day I shattered Jack's soul-contract, I used to only see the ominous, magical Twilight Chessboard in my dreams. Now I could see it whenever I closed my eyes and let the scent of honey and the knife-sharp touch of magic brush through my mind. When the walls around the magical nexus in my chest fell, the Great War Game of the Fea Fayre superimposed itself behind my eyelids.
Everything had changed since the night of Homecoming near the end of October. Now the giant, enchanted pieces of the War Game were scattered, some of them crumbled to dust, some of them missing. A lot of the skyscraper-tall, razor-edged playing cards ringing the Chessboard had brand-new faces on them, and the Queen of Hearts card lay in a thousand blanket-sized shreds across the vast expanse of the Chessboard, too. There were different colors displayed among the remaining chess pieces. The Chessboard itself was all-new.
But two thing was still the same: there were still three sides to the Escher-like landscape, and I freaking hated this place.
I smelled the sickly honey scent of the Borderland Mist—the soupy, sticky, gray fog that surrounded the Chessboard itself and kept it separate from the rest of Faerie. A dull, bronze unlight emanated from the giant playing cards around the board and from the strange pieces assembled on its checkered surface. It made the whole place look like some kind of hellish Wonderland, and I was Alice, confused and irritated as crud.
“Why am I even here?” I muttered to no one, crossing my arms against the dry, cool wind. That wind always blew here. It carried the scent of old books and blood with it. One scent I liked, one I hated; guess which was which.
I hadn't come to the Chessboard on purpose. Part of my “learn-to-use-your-magic-properly” regiment included meditation, and the lowering and re-raising of my nexus walls so that I didn't have to turn into a homicidal maniac in order to do anything remotely magical. I never wanted a repeat of what had almost happened at Homecoming during my fight with Lily. But every time I practiced, when I went to bed I would end up right back here: my not-so-happy place.
“Looks like you've got something to learn, Black Queen.”
Oh, fudge. I knew that voice. That voice was liquid gold spiked with tequila and happy-crack. It was a sound like angels singing. It raised goosebumps on my arms and made the hair at the nape of my neck prickle with static nerves. It was also incredibly annoying and gave me the heebie-jeebies.
“I don't like cryptic comments, Darren,” I told my unwelcome visitor, clenching my teeth against the weird tingle in my extremities when he walked up beside me.
Darren Moss, known at Pillar Preparatory Academy as the Black Knight (yeah, I know) was drop-dead gorgeous. Chris Pine, Hugh Jackman, even the current Mr. Universe—none of them could hold a candle to Darren, thanks to his use of magical plastic surgery. Darren was only pretty thanks to blood magic. Sexy he might have been, but creepy cut down his sex appeal by like, nine-tenths.
“Have you been studying the Chessboard?” Darren asked. He moved as if he was going to put his arm around me, but I must've twitched because he shifted away from me instead. I didn't like touching Darren. It was like snuggling with a giant maggot slathered in honey. At the same time, I liked it a little too much. He had that effect on people—also thanks to his magic.
I scanned the Chessboard. Each square was maybe the size of a big-screen television, and unlike before, when each square was either solid ivory, red, or black, now the white tiles were spattered with blood, so they were all sickeningly, vibrantly red. There was only one standing white piece on this board. Before Homecoming, there had been pieces to represent all three sides, all three colors. Now there was only Gavin Whitmoor's White King, and his sister Lily's fallen White Queen, slowly crumbling to bone dust beneath thorny black roses. But three Queens still loomed overhead: Geneva Carson, the Red Queen; my Black Queen piece; and an elegant spire of polished silver dripping blood. Seven pairs of glittering wings, as sharp as my vorpal blade, jutted from the sides of this Silver Queen. A crown—but not a Crown—of glistening blue stones sat on her head.
“What am I looking for?” I muttered to Darren, nervous despite myself. “There's so many Red pieces, I can't see anything. And why aren't all our Black pieces on the board?”
Darren shrugged, an elegant rippling of muscle. The fact that I even noticed made me wanna put a fork in my eye. He said, “We're all there. We just don't have that many.”
“The entire White Court, except for Gavin's people, belongs to us.” That had been confusing as heck, but incredibly useful since it meant that everyone bonded to the White Queen couldn't hit me anymore. Raise your hand if you're all for not getting beat up on a daily basis!
“Technically, yes, they do.” The look he flashed me was reminiscent of one he'd probably give his mentally deficient, inbred cousin. “But wars have been lost on technicalities before, Black Queen. Just because they're bonded to you doesn't mean they're yours. Take Zachary Moonsword for example. He doesn't care about you at all. If you can't even control one of your Knaves, why should anyone else worry about you?”
Meaning it didn't matter that I had the incredibly toothy Knave of Diamonds, the hulking bruiser who was the Knave of Spades, two flesh-eating Faerie boys (including the former Knave of Hearts, now the Black King to my Queen), a werecat who owned a demonically-possessed Ford F850, a warlock immune to witchcraft, two witches, a motorcycle-riding werebunny, and a member of the bloodthirsty Wild Hunt in my inner circle. I was missing the certifiably-crazy Knave of Clubs, which meant I was at the bottom of the food chain.
I stared at Darren. “Seriously?”
He grinned, and my stomach filled with butterflies. If he made me barf, I was puking on his stupid Prada shoes.
“You're a Queen of Faerie, Alyssa. A demon Queen. You've fought and won a battle on the Twilight Chessboard. You've made it to the center of the Maze of Mist.” He laughed and shook his head ruefully. “Did you really think things would get easier?”
“Um, yeah.” Seeing as that's what they were supposed to do. After taking care of Lily (check) and Geneva (sort of check), I was under the impression that my life was supposed to go back to normal. Well, as normal as could be when my boyfriend was an immortal cannibal from a completely separate species and a whole bunch of Faeries and witches were camped out in my house.
Darren was laughing at me again. His laugh was like velvet, and usually gave me happy shivers against my will, but not when he was laughing at me. “You poor, delusional simpleton,” the Black Knight said, reaching out to pat me on the head.
“Touch me and I'll rip off your arm and beat you with it,” I warned him, raking my hands through my short-chopped hair. Could I get hives from stress? Could I get zombie plague from stress? I wasn't sure. The only way to know was if I started craving brains, but by then I'd be so entrenched in the zombie mayhem I probably wouldn't even find that unusual.
“Usually girls ask me to touch them,” Darren said, breaking me from my zombie thoughts, and he grinned at me as if inviting me to share in a dirty joke.
Part of me wished he would touch me, and part of me wished someone would come and snap me out of this. I could get to the Great War Game of the Fea Fayre on my own, but I couldn't get away. Magic never worked the way I wanted it to. Case in point—I couldn't use my bond with Darren as his Queen to switch off his sex-vibe. In fact, being the Black Queen and being bonded to Darren's Sluagh and human servants actually made it worse!
“If you touched me, I'd probably gag.”
“Are you still upset that I bought this face with dead kittens?” He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. “Because I gotta tell you, it was totally worth it. I got laid way more often afterwards.”
“Nope. That's not it at all. I just hate pretty people. I have a complex," I added, nodding for emphasis.
Sarcasm was one of my cures for wanting to punch the gorgeous warlock. In the weeks after Homecoming, Darren had taken to talking about himself and sex a lot around me. He'd actually told me he was trying to wear me down and get me in bed. He wanted to make it with me because I was the Black Queen. His words, right to my face. Can you believe that?
Unfortunately for him, I didn't believe in having sex as a teenager (no chemical imbalances in my brain for me, thanks) or before marriage (I refused to commit without paperwork), not to mention I had a boyfriend, so he was out of luck. So he kept trying to get me to give in, and I kept trying to keep from strangling him with one of my dad's adorkable neckties.
“After what you did to Lily's face, that doesn't surprise me,” Darren said, just when a sudden pressure bore down on my shoulders. Someone was shaking me. “By the way,” the warlock added. “You need to learn how to see, Alyssa. There are only two colors, but there are three sides. Think about that.”
And then Lilith Whitmoor was shaking me out of my magical daydream, snapping me back to reality. She'd already murdered my best friend; what did the face-slapping mutant she-witch want with me now? My soul?
“Snap out of it, you stupid human! Wake up! How am I supposed to sleep with you whining in your sleep?”
Lily's nails bit into my shoulders through my t-shirt as she shook me. Dizzily, I pushed her away. Coming out of an alternate dimension, even if I was only visiting the place magically, always left me feeling like I was down two or three pints of blood. How did I know what that felt like? My boyfriend had once taken a chomp out of me and drunk my blood, knocking me unconscious for almost an hour.
“What?” I mumbled, focusing my fuzzy eyes on the White Queen—my bad, former White Queen. “What d'you want?”
“You woke me up. I could hear you in my room. And your King is here.”
Lilith Whitmoor was icily beautiful in her slinky, white slut-dress and spike-heeled screw-me shoes. Only the saving grace of silver leggings and a silver belt kept her from looking like a streetwalker. Instead, she looked like a heroin-chic supermodel with an abusive boyfriend. The bruises on her face and neck had yet to fade away completely, despite her Faerie blood.
“Ugh,” I replied, trying to suppress a twinge of guilt. Those bruises had been from me. I didn’t normally whale on people like that, but…well, she’d pushed me too far by then. Not that I was making excusing. Really. “Please don't call him that. That is so lame, you have no idea.”
The condescension in her smirk would've made my blood simmer if I'd been more than half-awake. “You wanted to be Queen, human. Deal with it.”
Heh. Human. If only she knew. We’d discovered a few weeks ago that my entire life had basically been a lie and I was either adopted, or my parents were holding out on me, because I was actually a demon—basically a type of super-fairy. Specifically, I was one of the Boajuun. In layman’s terms, a boojum. So scaryful sounding. And I was in a prophecy. Whoopee. In reality, all either one got me was a spot on the hit list of the Fayre royal family and the Demon Parliament or whatever.
If I’d really wanted to scare the crud out of Lily, I could have told her about being Boajuun. She probably would’ve fainted.
And then when she woke up, she would turn me in to the Faerie Cops and I’d get killed.
Pushing down those depressing thoughts, I tried to sit up and ended up rolling out of bed and landing on a pile of books. The look in Lily's eyes told me she'd put them there on purpose. Most people probably would've been angry, but I actually found this whole thing a bit amusing. She'd been on the top once, able to bring some serious smack-down. Now she had to resort to petty pranks like that. Pretty sad.
The laughter died in my throat when I rolled off the books and onto a tack. The thin needle stabbed deep into my palm until the disk at the end was flush to my skin. Blood welled up and seeped out.
“Why,” I growled, prying the tack's flat head away from my flesh, “am I letting you stay in my house, again?” A few drops of blood spilled out of the wound. I sucked on it; I was not putting on a Band-Aid because of Lily the Lunatic.
Lily smiled. “Because you're a stupid human who doesn't know what's good for her. And you’re too soft.”
As she spoke, Jack Knightly stepped into the room with my textbooks in one arm and Eddie Wong, the Knave of Diamonds, in a headlock under the other. My Court didn’t like Eddie because he’d almost killed me while under soul-contract to Geneva. Now he worked for me, and we were friends. I called him Funshine Bear; he didn’t mind.
Jack released Eddie—albeit reluctantly—to glare at Lily, while Eddie started gathering up the various articles of crud I needed for the school day. Since the Chinese-American shapeshifter had nearly killed me by severing my carotid with his super-nasty eel teeth a few weeks ago, Jack and the rest of my posse kept him running step-and-fetch as punishment. I kept telling them not to, but despite my title as Queen, I apparently possessed very little authority.
A great example of just how little authority was Jack's treatment of Lily. I didn't expect the flesh-eating Faerie boy to love the psychotic witch who'd tortured him since he was barely old enough to walk, but I'd asked him to ignore her at the very least.
“Watch your mouth, witch,” the dearg snarled, baring his needle-thin, rot-black teeth in a feral grin, obviously not ignoring her. “In case you've forgotten, I can actually take bites out of you now, and it's been a very long time since I've had a bite of White witch.”
Tension crackled like static in the air. I was starting to regret that the “do-no-harm” restriction on all the new members of the Black Court was fading. Pretty soon, they'd be back to killing each other. I didn't know how to fix that, or the current situation. If Jack took any bites out of Lily, she couldn't defend herself because of my bond with the dearg. She was the only one helpless because of how tightly I’d bound her to me. I hadn’t wanted to—who wanted Sadism Barbie prancing around in their head? —but it was either that, or kill her.
I didn't like Lily—obviously, as I was prying a tack out of my hand that was only there courtesy of her—but I didn't advocate attacking defenseless people either. But Jack was ticked enough that he probably wouldn't listen.
So I did the only thing I could think of.
“Ugh!” I yelled, throwing myself back on my bed and kicking me feet like a toddler throwing a tantrum. “Come on, you guys!” There was so much whine in my voice, it came out “guy-zuh!” Flopping on my belly and wriggling like a landed trout, I moaned, “It's too freaking early to be starting this stuff. It's only Monday! I have to go to school in an hour.”
By now, both of them were staring at me like I'd grown tentacles. Sticking out my bottom lip until my mouth-veins were visible, I added in a wobbly voice, “Can't we all just get along?”
Jack narrowed his eyes at me, which were leeched of their blackness and washed out to nothing but white. When he was that angry, acting like a ten-year-old Valley girl was the only thing that seemed to work, since he found me so ridiculous he had to laugh. It was a cheap ploy, but hey—whatever worked, right?
“No. No, we can't get along,” Lily snapped. “I'm only here because—"
“We don't care why you're here,” Jack replied, quietly now. His teeth were lightening up, receding a bit. “What my Queen wishes is my command. Count yourself lucky.” He swept out, leaving Lily fuming and me thankful there wasn't going to be any fresh blood spatter on my bed.
Eddie just kept tidying up around my messy room (also courtesy of the White Queen, who invaded my room to use my vanity and was used to having servants clean everything, and so refused to learn how to pick up after herself), probably pretending to be invisible so I wouldn't notice him and kick him out. I'd let him stay, though. He really wanted to be useful, and I felt tons better about being “alone” with Lily with my toothy shadow bustling around the place.
When Lily had first moved into my house, we'd had a lot of friction over closet space (she had more shoes than Jack had teeth and wanted my closet as well as the one in the guest room), and whether she was allowed to use our guest bathrooms like the rest of my court (Jack and Fiver wanted to make her pee in the nettle bushes at the edge of my backyard). Thankfully, we'd moved past arguing about everything. I made it easier for everyone by keeping Lily upstairs with me and Jack—who slept in a sleeping-bag in the hallway in front of my door to guard me—and having everyone else camp out in the living room, which was segregated by gender: boys in front of the couch, girls behind it, with sheets draped over a clothesline strung across the room for privacy.
Now Lily just planted little booby traps around my room and baited everybody so they'd attack her and end her miserable existence as an outcasted witch thrust into abject poverty. That last part was a direct quote. Yeah, I couldn't believe it, either.
Unfortunately for Lily's plans for passive suicide, I'd made it clear that anyone who laid a finger on her in anything other than legitimate self-defense would find themselves kicked out of the Court, since I despised the idea of backstabbing and infighting. I wanted a Court, not a pack of wild dogs willing to kill to win my favor. Manslaughter—not a way to impress me.
“You need to learn to control your Court, human,” Lily snarked, plopping her plastic butt on my vanity stool and beginning to carefully apply some pearl-pink lip-gloss. The bits of glitter were like tiny jagged shards of glass.
Giving orders on how to be a psychotic megalomaniac—also not a way to impress me.
“And how do you suggest I do that?” I growled, dashing into my closet. I'd been stabbed by a tack, a sucky way to wake up, so today I planned on dressing like a hobo. Grabbing a bright orange t-shirt with gray stripes that said Help—My Cat Is Stuck in a Tree in Odaiba, I hastily yanked it over my head and grabbed a pair of jeans.
“That's obvious,” the White Queen replied when I popped back out of the alternate dimension that was my closet. She was now applying smoky eyeliner. Since I had to tie the laces on my combat boots and couldn't cross my fingers or toes, I crossed my eyes and my tongue and wished really, really hard that she'd poke herself in the eye.
“Obvious. You mean I should torture them so they live in constant fear of me losing my temper and killing them in horrible ways, the way you did? 'Cause in case you've forgotten, you've been overthrown. Clearly there are flaws in your plan. And,” I added, coming up behind her and crossing my arms, “you're hogging my mirror.”
She didn't budge; just applied silvery lipstick. Eddie straightened up and shot the White Queen a dark look before asking, “Do you need me to remove her, my Queen?”
I sighed. “Eddie,” I said, patting him on one skinny bicep. “My splendiferous Funshine Bear. For the gajillionth time, please don't call me that. It's just Alyssa.” Being called “my Queen” all the time was just one step closer to becoming a whacko like Lily. Not on my to-do list.
“I apologize,” the nerdy-looking wereel replied. “Let me rephrase: do you need me to remove the White Queen, Lady Alyssa?”
It was a choice between sighing again or face-palming. Too much sighing could easily come across as melodramatic, so I slapped my forehead. Farewell, brain cells.
“Back on topic. Your way of getting people to do what you want doesn't work, Lily. Hence your Knaves and your...your Queen secondary staging a coup.” I could almost say that last part without flinching.
“If it weren't for you, that never would have happened.”
“Blah-blah-blah, hindsight is twenty-twenty and stuff,” I said, taking my backpack when Eddie offered it to me. He'd packed it for me yesterday evening.
If I wasn't careful, I could get used to this kind of treatment. On the flipside, I could feel my muscles atrophying from lack of use. Whenever I said something like, “I'm gonna get some ice cream” and tried to get up to get it, the boys sent Eddie to get it instead, and he'd be back before I had time to take more than ten steps. The only thing I could always manage was the remote control. Eventually I'd lose the ability to manipulate my own limbs and be a helpless torso with stick parts.
“Maybe you should shut up and go catch your bus,” Lily said, blowing a sparkling, poisonous kiss at me. The Vibe nearly knocked me on the floor as her brilliant golden eyes cut to my reflection in the mirror. Lucky girl—she didn’t have to go to school, since her dad and her brother wanted her dead for failing to kill me at Homecoming. One of the reasons I let her stay here. Maybe I was a big ol’ softie. “Big day today.”
“Don't remind me,” I muttered.
She smirked, and I throttled the urge to smash her face into the glass. I was trying to set a good example, for everyone. It wasn't—completely—Lily's fault that she was basically an axe-murdering circus freak. Seeing the way she tried to powder over the thick, ridged white mark on her cheek helped me remember that.
“Is the so-called Black Queen afraid of a little tea party?” She mocked, and I started forgetting again.
Tightening my backpack straps with shaking hands, I replied, “Nope. Just afraid of going to prison for killing Doreen.”
“I can promise you, human, Doreen is the least of your prob– what in the name of all that’s holy are you wearing?”
I glanced down at myself, glanced at Lily in her glamorous dress that looked like it came straight off some fashion show runway. Slinky, shimmery white and silver silk or whatever it was versus bone-gray stripes on pumpkin-orange cotton—yeah, mine was way better.
“Anime t-shirt,” I said. “I've got tons. They're really comfy. This one’s from Digimon.”
“I don’t even know or care what that means. You're going to wear that.” There was a wealth of disbelief in her voice.
“Yes,” I said, and she turned to stare at me in abject horror.
“To school,” she clarified. I nodded. “Today.”
“How many ways do I have to say 'yes?' What, are you brain dead?”
“That's what I'm wondering about you. You're going to wear... that.” She gestured with helpless disgust to my outfit. “To a meeting with the Red Queen's Hatter and the Lady Dormouse.”
Both of whom should feel honored that I was wearing jeans with no holes in them and bright orange laces in my combat boots instead of the usual black (especially considering Hattie Marshal had tried to kill Jack and me many, many times and Doreen had murdered my best friend by shoving her down two flights of stairs), but I didn't say that. All I said was, “Lily, with names like that, I don't think anyone's going to really care about me wearing an anime shirt to this meeting.”
She thought about that for a minute while I wondered if I'd have to fight for the right to sit at my vanity table. Was it worth it? I touched my chopped hair. Bone-straight and baby fine, it never needed brushing. Tangles were invaders to my cranial orbit. The dark auburn locks probably stuck out in a bazillion directions, but I could fix that with water. So no, not worth it.
“Maybe I'll get luckily and my dad will think I'm the one that killed you,” Lily said suddenly. “Someone probably will if you show up looking like some kind of homeless kid at a freak convention instead of like an actual Queen. Way to slap Geneva in the face. I would've done that ages ago, but I have too much self-respect.”
I had about ten seconds to figure out if I was going to allow my anger over that comment to put me in jail for assault and battery. I decided on trying to avoid the police. Then I bit my tongue until I tasted blood and counted to one hundred, just to make sure.
“Well,” I replied, grinning with false joviality as I moved to leave. “I've always had killer fashion sense.”
“Lame,” Lily replied without looking at me. She was back to admiring herself in the mirror. Was Geneva this bad about primping? “Also untrue.”
“Everybody's a critic.”
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