Garnet 4 - The Red Queen's Invitation

"I'm concerned," I told Jack as we threaded through the packed hallway toward the cafeteria. The kids who obviously belonged to the Red Court gave me a wide berth. Half the White Court—the half that belonged to Gavin—did, too. But what gave me a funny little glow in my chest was when a few kids sporting black and white outfits gave me tentative smiles and waved at me. I grinned at them and waved back or nodded, depending on how bad the crush around me was.

So far today, I'd been pretty much left alone. Probably because Gavin was still busy licking his wounds and Lily's people were wondering what I was going to do about them. I was still trying to figure that one out myself. And Geneva's goons weren’t going to possibly tip the outcome of our whacked out Wonderland tea party before it even happened. The Red Queen would kill them. Possibly literally.

"Concerned?" Jack echoed as we made it to the cafeteria door. He held it open for me, which always made me feel weird. I still wasn't used to the whole chivalry thing. It didn't make me feel all weak and wimpy, or like the boys thought I was too pathetic to get my own doors. It actually felt nice. And I'd get the door for them, sometimes, too, and they gave me weird looks, so we were pretty much even.

"Yeah."

"About what?" He asked as we slid into the lunch line.

I drew a deep breath. He was going to like this about as much as a cat liked getting a bath. Exhaling slowly, gathering my courage, I finally said, "About Lily."

To my surprise, he actually smiled. "Thank you," he said, sounding relieved. Um.... "Thank you! Finally you've seen sense. So," my dearg added, suddenly full of good cheer and fun. "When do we kick her out?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Pause. Rewind. Now, what? Kick her out?" I could tell from his expression he fully expected me to do just that. "What crack-acid are you smoking?"

"I... isn't that what you meant?" He asked, frowning. Dark eyes watched me as if I'd transformed into some kind of dangerous, venomous snake. "That wasn't what you meant," he said slowly. "All right. What are you talking about, then?"

"I'm concerned about Lily the person. She seems... depressed."

He blinked. "I'm sorry, but what did you say?"

Oh, brother. "She. Seems. Depressed."

"And I am supposed to, as you say, give a flying rat's buttered carcass because why?"

Oooh, he'd stolen my phrase. Sneaky, smexy phrase-thief. I'd get him back for that—after we addressed the Lily situation. "Look, I know you guys hate each other but—"

"I don't hate her," Jack replied, as if commenting on the weather. A double-take was necessary because at first glance he seemed perfectly serene. Only the sizzle of black fury through our bondline—the magical doohickey that connected my soul and emotions to his, and vice-versa—told me differently.

"You don't?" Why did I not believe him? Hmmm…gee, I wonder.

Jack gave a shrug, a liquid motion as if his limbs weren't attached the way normal people's were. "Of course not. Don't be absurd."

He'd just called me "absurd." Part of me wanted to make sure his limbs were no longer attached the way a normal person's were…but I loved him too much. Dang it.

"I just want her ripped into a million painful and incredibly bloody pieces so I can sprinkle her on my porridge most mornings." He said it the way most people said they liked milk with their cereal.

Sometimes Jack would make a comment, or smile in such a way that I was forcibly reminded that he wasn't human. It was easy to forget sometimes that he was Fayre, an old and almost completely alien race. Did that scare me? I'd say it made me a tad nervous, but scared? Me? Of Jack? Please. Besides, after everything he'd been through—being forced to do all kinds of horrible things because of the former soul-contract between him and Lily, serving as one of the main punching bags for Lily's entire family, and almost being molested by Gia Whitmoor, Lily's psychotic b-with-an-itch of a so-called mother—he had a right to the creep-edge that sometimes showed up in his behavior.

"Jack, as long as she lives at my house, I don't want her suicidal or depressed or anything like that." I snagged a couple bags of chips and dropped them onto my tray. I'd been informed by Fiver, my favorite flesh-eating Bunny Wabbit, that bringing my own lunch to this meeting would be considered incredibly rude, so I was stuck with cafeteria food on a day lacking pizza or tatertots. Which meant I was stuck with chips and maybe a chicken burger. All for the cause, though. Rah-rah and Team Spirit and all that stuff.

"I don't see why you worry about someone like her. She's not a threat anymore."

"What if she decides to blow us up or put anthrax in our morning orange juice?" I paused, considered. "Does anthrax even work that way? What does anthrax even do?"

"I'm sure I don't know anything about anthrax," Jack said in the slightly condescending tone boys used when they thought girls were talking nonsense. "And if you're that concerned about her, why don't you throw her out?"

I glared at him as I grabbed the chocolate milk. Maybe I was just a touch on the paranoid side, but it seemed really strange that there wasn't any regular milk out. Just chocolate and strawberry. Black and red. Well, brown and pink, but still…was that weird?

I knew what was weird—me, defending the White Queen to Jack. Except with the Julie thing, he'd never actively opposed me on anything important. And it turned out he'd been right to be suspicious of Julie Frost, the Queen of Spades. She'd been a spy sent by Lily to get close to me so she could seriously injure and/or kill me. But we'd become best friends instead, and Julie had died saving me from Doreen when the Red Court witch—basically acting on Lily's orders—had tried to throw me down two flights of stairs.

David Jacobson, Julie's former Knave of Spades, was not invited to this meeting. Captain of the swim team, topping off at almost seven feet tall and weighing in at more than two-hundred-fifty pounds, the wereotter wanted Doreen's head on a plate. He'd known and loved Julie almost his entire life. Of course, he also wanted Lily dead for forcing Jack to kill David's little brother.

But David was willing to abide my new rules…for now. Having to tack on for-now at the end of that made me just a little bit nervous. Okay, more like a lot nervous.

It was giving me a headache that Jack, who normally backed me up, chose to argue with me about this, especially right now. "Where is she supposed to go?"

He slashed me with an obsidian look. "Try 'I don't care.'"

He wasn't getting it. He might not care, but I did. Wasn't his job as my King supposed to be helping me run my Court? I certainly didn't want him for hired muscle. Patching him up always made it difficult to breathe, seeing how he was both bleeding and usually shirtless.

"It's my fault she can't go home—" I began.

"No, Alyssa, it isn't."

Jack stopped suddenly and whirled on me. His eyes began to bleach to white and his teeth started darkening. People behind us hissed insults or snapped for us to hurry it up, stop holding up the line. Jack flicked his inhuman eyes at them, and they fell silent. Only someone suicidal tried to tangle with a dearg when his teeth came out.

My very ticked off dearg growled, "It's not your fault. It's Lily's fault. Lily is the one who tortured the people who should have been able to trust her. Lily is the one who attacked you, repeatedly, in an attempt to make you give up and either bow down to her or kill yourself. Lily is the one who sent a spy into our midst. Lily is the one who ordered the hit on you and Julie, and Lily is the one who's responsible for her own actions."

None of which I could argue with. But Lily was caught in the system, too, just like the rest of them. It seemed I was the only who had a problem with the actual system, not just the people in it. Then there was her dad. I'd never tangled with an adult before, but I wanted to tangle with Lily's dad, who thought it was okay to beat Jack and Lily whenever either of them made him mad. And there was something I didn't think Jack had thought of yet.

"If you thought you were going to lose me—if you thought I was going to leave you—what would you do?" I asked softly.

"I...." He blinked, paused. His eyes were slowly darkening to onyx again. His teeth gleamed pearly white and had gone back to being nice and straight and even, instead of needle-thin and pointy. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Just answer the question." Although I was positive I already knew the answer.

He frowned. "I don't know."

"Would you let it happen?" I demanded. This part was important, and I couldn't afford to give an inch. I'd had theories about Lily and Geneva—a lot of theories—and this past week or so of having the White Queen sleeping on my floor and getting on my nerves had solidified some of them. "Would you just let me traipse off into the sunset with Darren? Or even—blech—with Fiver?"

At Darren's name, Jack's eyes flashed and he jerked away from me, went back to sliding through the lunch line. I winced. Darren was a big button for Jack that I didn't like pushing, since Darren had made it very obvious he wanted to replace Jack as both my King and my boyfriend (not happening), but it was a valid question.

"No," he growled as the lunch lady rang up the stuff on our trays posing as food. "What does that have to do with this?"

"Would you attack Darren or Fiver to get me to stay with you? To get them out of the way? Would you do anything to me? Would you hurt me? Hurt them? Hurt anyone?"

Indecision warred on his face, in his eyes, arced along our bondline like electricity. He stepped out of line, away from me, to give himself time to compose, to think. But he couldn't decide. I could feel that. He couldn't decide whether he'd attack or hurt someone just to keep me around.

With most guys, especially all the human ones, that would normally be the behavior of a stalker. But this was different. Jack loved me, but that was only part of his motivation. He needed me, just as much as he loved me. His parents didn’t care about him. They'd let Lily's family rip him to pieces again and again. There was special niche in Parent Hell for Jack's mom and dad. He didn’t have any siblings. Except for Lily, until we'd bonded he hadn't had anybody. So I got why he'd hurt someone to be with me, to keep me with him.

Plus, without me, he would probably die. He'd be tortured by the White Court or the Red, they would break him, and then they'd kill him. There would be nothing to stand between him and the pain if I left him, because I was the one who was supposed to protect him. The only one who could. The only one who would even try. And the only person who would bust down doors, knock out teeth, and put people in the hospital if I had to in order to keep him safe.

It had taken me a while to realize that Jack had been the only one who could or would willingly protect Lily from anyone. She had needed him just as much as he needed me. Now she didn't have him. She was alone.

I remembered the voice screaming, Please! Don't leave me! Please, don't leave me alone! The day I'd shattered the soul-contract—and the soulbond—between Jack and Lily, I'd heard that frantic, desperate scream echoing through the Void.

Lily's voice, Lily's fear, Lily's need.

Obsession? No. Necessity. And a bond there, too—she loved him. I was the only one who could see it, because I was the only one who didn't think of Lily as the Big Bad Whatever, the Head Honcho of the Evil Department. In her own messed up way, the White Queen had loved—still loved—Jack. It was why she had held onto him, with chains of magic and chains of sparkly enchanted witch-iron or whatever. Punished him for, in her eyes, straying.

Would Jack do the same for me? To me? No, but that was because he knew I wouldn't leave. He trusted me. He wouldn't have bonded with me, thrown in his support to me, if he didn't trust me. After everything that had happened to him, he was too cautious to gamble with his life. I'd had to earn his trust first. That was the only reason he wouldn't hurt me.

But the others?

I hadn't looked away from his eyes, twin pools of obsidian fire, while he struggled for an answer. He opened his mouth as decision suddenly hummed across the bondline.

"I—"

"It's show time, you guys," Harriet Marshal interrupted. Another Faerie, Harriet was something called a Sluagh—basically a type of Faerie vampire, but instead of fangs, she had teeth like shards of broken glass, and her eyes glowed aquamarine when she got ticked off. She'd glided silently up to us and neither of us had noticed, because she was just that epic. The moment she spoke I jumped. "Hattie and Doreen are waiting...nice shirt, Alyssa."

Grateful for the interruption, I glanced down at myself and smiled. I'd borrowed one of Jack's only black shirts—nine-thousand thread-count Egyptian cotton or something like that; whatever, it was expensive and pretty—and wore it like a jacket over a white silk shirt with a black fractal pattern spattered across it like dark blood. Nobody had had a chance to get a good look at it yet except Jack, who'd winced when he saw I wore white. I thought it was nice and symbolic and stuff—black over white, and of course black comes out on top, just like it did at Homecoming.

And they all thought I sucked at diplomatically sending a message. Silly, silly Faerie people.

"Darren's waiting by the table, to show good faith," Harriet added, shooting a nervous look at Jack. His jaw muscle twitched. Oh, brother. Harriet was bonded to Darren, and I was pretty sure she loved him. Maybe not in love with him, but I could tell she adored the guy. Considering how he treated her—as opposed to how he always hit on me like a sex-crazed schmucky horn-dog—I understood why. And she liked Jack a lot. Jack liked her. But Jack hated Darren (for obvious reasons) and still didn’t fully trust him not to hurt me.

Considering Darren was one of only three people I knew who knew the big bad secret of me being not just a demon, but the Alice from Lewis Carroll's coded prophecies—the other two being Jack, of course, and Fiver, who could read minds—and Darren hadn’t ratted me out yet, I had to admit I trusted him. And I liked him…when he wasn’t being a douche.

Ignoring the silent byplay between Jack and Harriet, I headed for the lunch table where the Lady Dormouse—aka Doreen Moss, Darren's twin sister—and Geneva's Mad Hattie waited for me. Talk about a mad tea party. What was next, croquet at the Queen's?

Cold, dark eyes slid up from the table to stare at me as I sank onto the bench, flanked by Harriet and Jack. Darren, with a weird smile, sat next to Harriet. Doreen, the owner of those chilling eyes, glared at her twin brother before turning to Hattie Marshal.

Hattie Marshal looked better than she had after the Homecoming battle in the school parking lot, but that wasn't saying much. The giant gaping chunk that Jack had bitten out of her that night still hadn't grown back completely, and the lopsided way her shirt and jacket hung on her told me just how much bandage she wore on her shoulder. Bruises painted a violent watercolor across her face. Still, I didn’t feel too bad. She'd been trying to kill Jack.

"Greetings, Black Queen," Doreen said after a long pause. She glanced at Hattie again, but the look on the Sluagh girl's face made even a whacko like Doreen nervous enough not to push for her to be chatty-chatty and polite. Hattie was the kind of person who would ask in normal conversation if you wanted to know what your spleen looked like in the light of day, and be completely serious.

"Greetings to the emissaries of the Red Court," Darren said in his smoothest, silkiest voice. Hattie flushed and Doreen glowered. Considering that, in their eyes, he'd stolen Hattie's twin sister to be his brainwashed slave—Love slave? Ew, don't think like that, Alyssa, yech!—and was a traitor to the Red Court, their reactions were understandable. But if it came down to a fight against Geneva's Mad Hattie, I wanted someone physically stronger than her who was also immune to magic and could take Doreen in a one-on-one fight, leaving Jack and Harriet free to deal with Hattie. The only person I knew who fit the bill was Darren.

"Looks like we're all here," said bill-fitter continued, "the Hatter, the Hare, both Dormice, and Alyssa."

"And the Black Jack," Hattie growled through peeled-back, black-painted lips, showing serrated teeth like shards of silvered glass. Her eyes glinted like ancient gold coins, but they weren’t glowing yet. Hunger burned in their depths.

Hattie was Sluagh, too, descended from the Faerie Wild Hunt—those magical creatures who randomly chased after anyone in their path. If the person ran, they were torn to bloody bits by Faerie hounds. If the person didn't run—and who wouldn't run from an army of sweaty, hairy, toothy Faerie guys on horseback with crossbows and swords and ravening, salivating, man-flesh-desiring demon-poodles?—then they were made part of the Hunt, and cursed for their courage (see suicidal tendencies) to ride through the skies forever or until they chose to hop down off the Faerie Ponies of Doom and die. Sounded kind of like a Johnny Cash song, actually, except without the awesome, croony cowboy voice.

Because Hattie was one of them, she craved blood the way crack addicts craved their drugs. It wasn't like actual nosferatu vampires (which didn't exist, apparently), where they fed on the blood of the living to survive. If the Sluagh didn't eat regular food and drink regular water or whatever, they'd die even if they had blood. But that didn't stop Hattie Marshal from craving Jack's blood like a meth-head craved crystal crack. They'd always been rivals. I didn't get that, but I wasn't a blood junkie or a psycho, so obviously I didn’t get to join the club. Not that I wanted to.

"And the King is here, too, of course," Darren said, as if he didn't see the glint of raw bloodlust and hatred in Hattie's eyes or, if he did, didn't care. Harriet kept a wary eye on her sister, but Darren merely shot Jack a look before saying, "So—down to business."

§

"So now that we're all here, what do you want, exactly?" My Queen demanded, propping her elbows on the table. A casual observer would think she didn't take this meeting seriously, but the fact that she was dressed up told me otherwise. I wondered what she might get from this conversation that the rest of us would miss. She had such a unique way of looking at things.

I wasn't worried about how she'd handle herself. What worried me was Darren, and the fact that she'd brought him along with us in the first place. I understood her reasoning, I did. But Darren could not be trusted. He'd already made it clear he was after something other than Alyssa's wellbeing. Whatever it was—and I doubted it was just her body, though the fact that he wanted that as well made me want to rip his appendix out—I wouldn't let him have it.

However, I could appreciate the spit-in-the-eye symbolism of bringing Darren to a meeting with Doreen. The only two people Doreen had ever lost a fight to were her twin brother and Alyssa. A narcissist to the core, no doubt that rankled her quite a bit.

"How about we eat first?" Doreen replied to Alyssa's prompting, with all the manners of a society hostess. A muscle in her cheek twitched when she began almost spastically rearranging the plastic-ware around her lunch tray. No doubt she was imagining carving Alyssa up with the shards of her plastic knife and fork. Doreen liked cutting things up.

"I can never eat when I'm excited," my Queen replied with chilly politeness. "Let's cut to the chase. Why did you set up this meeting with us?"

"We're here to offer an invitation, nothing more," Doreen said. Hattie said nothing, just watched me with half-mad eyes.

"An invitation to what, pray tell?" Darren asked his sister.

"Geneva is hosting a tea social two weeks from now. Until that time, we propose a ceasefire between the Black and Red Courts. We can't make promises for Gavin Whitmoor and his people, obviously, but for our part, no violence. In exchange, you agree to come to the aforementioned tea social."

"I don't even know what a tea social is," Alyssa replied.

Hattie finally tore her gaze away from my face to stare at Alyssa with a WTF expression on her face. "It's a fancy word for tea party, all right? Humans are so stupid."

"Geneva wants me to come to her tea party?"

Doreen nodded. "Precisely."

"Not to be rude or anything, but uh…why?"

"She doesn't want bloodshed. She doesn't want a battle like the one you had with Lily. She certainly doesn't want a war."

"Meaning she doesn't want to get her ass kicked and lose the right to try for the Garnet Crown," Darren interjected.

"Wait, what?" Alyssa stared from Darren to Doreen, who glared at her twin as if she would cheerfully claw his eyes out with her bare hands. Darren just offered his sister that bland "oops" smile that made most of the guys in the senior class want to deck him. I could actually appreciate it, though, since it made Doreen grind her teeth.

"Can't you ever keep your mouth shut, warlock?" Hattie snarled. She started to lunge to her feet, but Harriet and I both stood up before she'd finished moving. Alyssa propped her chin on her hand and looked bored, but I felt her fury sizzle along our bondline, hot enough to burn. She wouldn’t go out of her way to attack Hattie or Doreen, but if they attacked someone she cared about—including Darren, unfortunately—she would come down on them like an avalanche. Considering she'd nearly beaten Lily to death in a fit of rage at Homecoming, neither Doreen nor Hattie wanted to deal with enraging the Black Queen that much.

"It's not my problem if the Red Queen is a coward," Darren replied airily.

Doreen leapt to her feet this time, eyes blazing, reaching with one hand for Darren. "How dare you—"

"Okay, everyone shut up!" Alyssa suddenly yelled, and the cafeteria fell silent. She eyed the rest of the room, baffled, before turning back to Doreen and Darren. "Jeez! What is this, kindergarten? Do I have to make the quiet sign? Now no more name calling or someone's gonna end up in time-out."

"Don't you dare mock me, human," Doreen snarled.

Alyssa folded her arms. "I'll mock you if I want to, if you decide it's socially acceptable to act like the last fourteen years of your life never happened and you don't know how to behave. What are you, two? Act like a teenager and I'll treat you like one."

"How do you put up with her, Darren?" The warlock's sister demanded. Indignation spread across her face like a disease. "I know you have sick tastes, but seriously!"

Alyssa stiffened. I tasted rot on the back of my tongue and knew I was in danger of going dearg in the middle of lunch if someone didn’t do something to make Doreen stop talking. Rumors like that, of the Black Queen bypassing her King for the Black Knight—especially when that Knight was Darren Moss, demon-possessed warlock—were dangerous on a good day.

"Well, it's so nice to see the children can behave themselves without adult supervision," a familiar voice said behind me. I turned to see Fiver Rairah approach the table and take a seat next to me, sandwiching me between the ash-blond dearg and my queen. "Doreen, I had no idea you had such a twisted, depraved mind."

Alyssa smiled. "Yes, you did."

"Hmmm, you're right, my Queen. I did. Now, Doreen, you asked how we put up with Lady Alyssa? I will admit, she may be a bit eccentric, but at least she's not…what do you call them, my Queen? Homicide Barbie?"

Alyssa shot him a look that plainly ordered him to behave. To my surprise, he subsided, smiling. Then I realized—we were in public. Of course he was going to act as if he obeyed her every whim. In reality, he drove her crazy. Strangely, she seemed to find that comforting.

Darren grinned. Alyssa suddenly stiffened again beside me.

§

Something touched my thigh, and I froze. I glanced under the table and realized it was Darren's hand, stretched across Harriet's petite figure. The scheming warlock replied, "The benefits of being bonded to the Black Queen far outweigh the negative aspects."

"You better get your hand off my thigh or I'll demonstrate some negative aspects," I growled, and jabbed his forearm with the prongs of my plastic fork. He barely stifled a yelp and jerked back from me. Turning to Hattie and Doreen as if nothing weird had happened—and considering this was Darren we were talking about, nothing weird really had—I said, "Tell Geneva she'll have my answer in a few days. I have to talk it over with my Court."

"The sign of a weak Queen," Hattie muttered. Oh, well now she was hurting my widdle-bitty feelings. Boo. "Why not simply order them to obey you?"

"Because they might have valid reasons why I shouldn't go, like the fact that you're all certifiably crazy. Or that this might be some kind of trap. In which case I'd have to go all gung-ho on your butts and beat you into turkey stuffing before sashaying off into the sunset like the epic ninja I am."

"A Queen should have absolute control over her Court," Hattie spat.

I snorted. "Yeah, we saw how well that worked with Lily."

"Lily Whitmoor is weak."

I couldn't help it—I smirked. Maybe it wasn’t politically savvy, but I couldn't help myself. "I didn't see your Queen stepping up to the plate at Homecoming. She just stood there with her cutesy-wootsy widdle crown on her head, doing the Beauty Queen wave. We were all very impressed." I nodded with a mock-amazed expression on my face. Of course Doreen leaned forward, eyes blazing, teeth bared. Honestly, she looked like a rabid spider-monkey.

"I ought to rip your face off," she hissed.

Jerking my chin at the crimson blouse she had on—normally she didn’t wear ruffles; must've been the occasion—I said, "You'd get blood on that nice, silk shirt. If you're anything like Darren, that would make you really unhappy."

For a second I saw something flicker in her eyes. She glanced at her brother, then looked back at me. Her expression turned mean again. "I'm nothing like Darren."

Darren glanced at me. I raised my eyebrows. He smiled politely and said to the Red Court girls, "I take it this means we're done, then?"

Hattie and Doreen rose to their feet, matching looks of disdain on their faces. That was the problem with mean girls—they would've been knockouts if they didn’t insist on twisting up their faces like angsty pretzels all the time. Hattie said coldly, "Four days, Black Queen. Geneva will have your answer after school, this Friday."

"Fine." I waved at them. "Now go away. I'm hungry."

They left. I looked at Harriet, at Darren the Schmoozer, at my favorite albino Bunny Wabbit, then at Jack. They all looked relieved more than anything. I felt great. I'd gotten through my first political meeting and nobody had died. Go, me.

Now if only I had some tatertots…