The Vicious Deep - Zoraida Cordova

For Tristan Hart, everything changes with one crashing wave.
He was gone for three days. Sucked out to sea in a tidal wave and spit back ashore at Coney Island with no memory of what happened. Now his dreams are haunted by a terrifying silver mermaid with razor-sharp teeth.

His best friend Layla is convinced something is wrong. But how can he explain he can sense emotion like never before? How can he explain he's heir to a kingdom he never knew existed? That he's suddenly a pawn in a battle as ancient as the gods.
Something happened to him in those three days. He was claimed by the sea...and now it wants him back.

You know what I've only read, like, 4 of in my whole life? Books about mermaids. Those Disney classic picture books about Ariel don't count, btw. And of the four books I read about mermaids, three were not for young adults, which is the genre I mostly write for.
1) The Mermaid Summer—I forget who this was by, I read it when I was maybe seven or eight years old (so almost 20 years ago). But it's about two kids, a brother and sister, who try to harness the power of a mermaid to save their fishing village and get a little more than they bargained for.
2) The Mermaid's Madness by Jim C. Hines—a high fantasy novel inspired by the Danish fairy tale, "The Little Mermaid," except the prince is evil, the mermaid is nuts, the Sea Witch isn't actually as bad as we think but she's still bad enough, and no one gets a happily ever except Cinderella's prince because his mother almost dies but doesn't, so yay.
3) Fortune's Fool by Mercedes Lackey—Katya, the female lead, isn't exactly a mermaid, but she's pretty close. She's one of the Sea Folk and seventh daughter of the Sea King. This novel is a combination of the fairytales "East of the Sun, West of the Moon," "The Little Mermaid," and "The Death of Koschei the Deathless."
4) Midnight Pearls by Debbie Viguie—an adaptation of "The Little Mermaid" where it focuses both on the little mermaid who becomes a human of her own volition and her merman brother, who was engaged to the mermaid princess who was turned into a human by the Sea Witch when she was little. So there are two couples in this book. It's a gooooood book.
Why is this relevant to anything? Because I'm about to review the fifth mermaid book I've ever read in my life and the only one where the main character is a dude (a mer-dude, to be specific). The Vicious Deep is the first book in a trilogy about Tristan, grandson of the Sea King, and it's astonishingly good, all things considered.

 

First of all, it's always refreshing to read a YA novel from a guy's point of view. There aren't many out there, after all. It's a nice change. Second, it's really nice that the "mean girl" thing hasn’t really pervaded male POV novels. "Mean boys" would be dumb. Not to mention incredibly violent, since boys tend to be more physical than girls when it comes to seeking revenge in some way.

 

Third, how original is it to have a merman as the main character? I can only think of maybe three things (counting this series) that have that—Disney's The Thirteenth Year, this series, and I think there's a trilogy about mermaids where the guy's a merman and the girl's a siren or something.
 

So why do I like The Vicious Deep? Well, there's the plot. Tristan reacts exactly the way you'd expect to finding out he's not entirely human. He freaks. It helps that he's got a friend his own age who is also a merman (Kurt is like, my abso-fave; he's adorkable and needs a girlfriend) who he can ask all those pesky "I just discovered I have fins" questions. My personal favorite question is actually a valid one, all things considered, and the author and characters handle it in a mature way (Tristan asks Kurt what happens to his genitals when he grows a tail; a valid question, since you never see anything beyond PG in movies or books with mermen, and they have to procreate somehow).
 
What I also like about Tristan is that he has flaws, but he feels bad about them. He tries to be honorable, though sometimes his teenage-boy-ness gets in the way. And he's responsible and brave; you see that when he's on duty as a beach lifeguard and he jumps into the water right as a big (apparently magical) storm hits in order to save someone he thinks is drowning.
 
I also love the mermaid politics. It's like, "Da frack is going on, exactly?" We've got a mermaid who helped Kurt win a race against the fiancé she really doesn’t seem to like and I think had him killed but then tried to frame Tristan for it, and that doesn’t get resolved before the end of book 1 so I'm curious where it's going. Then there are the other champions who are in line for the Sea Throne, who have magic and have been mermen waaaaaaaaaay longer than Tristan has. There's a pack of mer-noblegirls who follow Tristan to school from the court, too, though their motives remain unclear and smack of politics. It intrigues me a lot.
 
The thing that's really impressive about this book is how fleshed-out the story and characters are considering how short it is. It's actually a little too short for my taste (maybe 250 pages, less than an inch thick) and some things could have been fleshed out better, but considering the wordage she had to work with, I'm really impressed by the depth of the story.
 
Also a big plus—tropical landscapes for mermaid courts, dude. Whenever I think of the island where the merfolk held their little summit thing to decide who was in line for the throne, I always think of Wendy in Disney's animated Peter Pan sighing about, "A mermaid lagoon…ahhh, under a magic moon." Yes. Absolutely. That's what I got from that scene. It was beautiful. Almost made me want to go to where I might find a mermaid lagoon, except traveling is my enemy. Yesss…I only do it when absolutely necessary. Like for books.
 
And can I just say—a talking, living, mythical, ocean-faring ship in service to Tristan as the Sea King's grandson for the win. I love the ship. He's cool. A bit sad, seeing how he's basically cursed, but so cool.
 
Love the Sea King, too. He's so funny. He's like a grandpa most of the time, you can see how much he cares about Tristan, but we also get to see him be king, and that's cool. It's nice that in a book we get to see how royals deal with each other both privately and personally. That's something we don't see a lot of in many YA novels. A rare exception is The Song of the Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce (which sadly has its own flaws, but that's not one of them) and Anne Bishop's Black Jewels Series, though that's adult, not YA. So it's nice to see that sort of distinction made. Most people that I run into or talk to online don't seem to understand the line that has to be drawn between prince/king and son/father, for example.
 
There is one thing that seriously bothers me about this book, though. It's enough to knock down the rating from 4.25/5 stars to 3.5 because it's kind of a big thing. By the way, this problem involves a SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILERSPOILER! Okay, that should cover it.
 
So, here's my issue. A friend of Tristan's, this guy named Ryan, is Tristan's best friend. They have been best friends forever. The only person who's not family that Tristan loves more is his love interest, Layla (and can I say how refreshing it is for a GUY to fall for his chick best friend instead of the other way around?). So there's Ryan. And in a later battle in the first book, Ryan is killed. His body drops right in front of Tristan. The reason Ryan even died was partly because of Tristan; he didn’t do anything stupid, but he had to make some choices that resulted in Ryan dying. So Ryan is dead. Dead-dead-dead. Never coming back. And before the battle is even really over, Tristan knows this. His best friend is dead and he thinks it's his fault. That's the situation.
 
He doesn't really deal with this at all in the book. He handled his "I'm a fish-boy" freak-out very well and the author wrote it brilliantly; same goes for when Leila almost dies in another battle after getting stung by a highly toxic mutant puffer-fish. So it's not even a style choice. The author just basically glossed over it. Kurt's sister, who has a crush on Ryan, seems more devastated by his death than Tristan. Now, maybe Tristan handles his emotions in The Savage Blue (which is book 2) but as a reader, that totally threw me off. I was like, "Wait…what?" It just really hitched my rhythm. It's a big flaw for me.
 
So this book gets a 3.5/5 stars. I still want to own it, because the rest of it's great, but that one thing just bugs the crud out of me. So…yeah.

Seriously, though, go read it anyway.

LA Knight

Splitting a Sci-Fi Subgenre - the Old Utopia/Dystopia vs the New Straight Dystopia

I hang out a lot on the internet, on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, as well as places like Figment.com, and I've noticed there's a lot of confusion about different emerging genres. For example, what's the difference between urban fantasy and paranormal? Or the difference between space opera and science fiction? What defines steampunk? So I decided to write a few blogs about those different things. This one is focusing on a not-so-recent split in a sub-genre of science fiction that I actually studied for two semesters in high school: Utopia/Dystopia.

In olden days—aka, before The Hunger Games came out, which caused a change in how such literature was written—you couldn't have a dystopia novel without the concept of utopia. For those who don't know, a utopia is a perfect world where there is no crime, no unhappiness, no darkness, nothing. Everything's great. Fantastic. Perfect.

Of course, everybody knows that old phrase, "You can't please everyone." Same applies here. You can't have a real utopia in a world run by normal humans. Or even robots, actually, if you look at the film I-Robot with Will Smith. A utopia, by its very definition, can't exist without squishing somebody's happiness. And therefore you get the dystopia aspect—the part of the utopian society where all the crud and bad stuff pops up.

1)    In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, it was the destruction of basically anything that made you think too hard and thus question the rights and regulations of the government—namely, books. Except there are people who still like reading. Thus the conflict of the novel.

2)    In the film Soilent Green, they solve world hunger. Cool, right? Except they do it by resorting to a form of cannibalism ("Soilent Green is PEOPLE!") and it's this big government conspiracy involving murder and such.

3)    There's an episode in season one of Star Trek: The Next Generation about a planet whose culture has almost zero crime and everyone is so happy all the time. Sounds pretty nice, doesn't it? But how do they manage this? Because any infraction, no matter how small, is a capital crime. You die for walking on the grass if there's a "Keep Off" sign. That's crazy, right?

4)    A short story called "The Lottery" tells of a town without crime of any sort because the town gets out all their aggression, all their evil feelings, by stoning a town-member to death once a year, chosen at random via lottery.

5)    In Ayn Rand's novella Anthem, the peaceful, productive culture of the main character is preserved by the destruction of the human ego—the destruction of the concept I AM in the human psyche. Does it work? Of course not. Thus the conflict in the story.

In all these books and movies, we have the concept of utopia ("everything's fine, don't challenge the status quo, it's for our own good") paired with the actuality of the dystopian world ("pretend everything's fine, don't challenge the status quo or something terrible happens to you, just keep smiling and pretend it's for our own good"). But the publication of The Hunger Games changed this genre forever.

How?

By stripping away the concept of utopia from the utopia/dystopia subgenre.

I won't say it was for the first time (I haven’t read everything, believe it or not, lol), but for the first time on a nationally bestselling scale, the idea of "Big Brother is watching you for your own good" was ripped out of the utopia/dystopia novel, leaving only the aggressive resentment of "screw off, Big Brother; stop being a creeper."

In THG, for the first time, the reader sees a totalitarian government viewed for the sucky, civil-rights-smashing fist of tyranny that it is. This revolutionized the utopia/dystopia subgenre, creating a completely different genre of novels: the straight-up dystopias, books about worlds with unfair rules that people either view as necessary evils to combat even greater evils or actually acknowledge as sucking and try (or have tried) to do something about them—even if it's only to get out and get away as soon as possible.

Some of the best versions of this that I've read so far are the following:

The Chemical Garden Trilogy—Lauren Destefano

The Divergent Trilogy—Veronica Roth
The Hunger Games Trilogy—Suzanne Collins
The Iron Codex Trilogy—Caitlin Kittredge
The Lunar Chronicles—Marissa Meyer
The Razorland Trilogy—Ann Aguire **
The Red Death Duology—Bethany Griffin
The Selection Trilogy—Kaitlin Cass
 
** The Razorland Trilogy is actually a terrible series, badly written and completely implausible based on human physiology, BUT! It's a perfect example of a dystopian novel where the government sucks but is considered a necessary evil, so I included it in this list.

Basically, the publication of The Hunger Games gave rise to a sci-fi subgenre of novels where the main character(s) faced a corrupt government or ruling class or system that everyone (or mostly everyone) actually acknowledged was in fact corrupted. Generally this government came into power after some sort of apocalyptic something or other:

1)    The Chemical Garden Trilogy—a series of natural disasters and the outbreak of a genetically transmitted virus (incurable as of book 1) that killed about 50% of the world's population when males hit 25 and women hit 20 and is slowly eradicating everyone else as those birthdays approach. In this series, the government isn't the problem. It's the father-in-law of the MC; he's basically lord of the manor, as it were, and she's stuck under his power unless she escapes. This ruling class (subject to the government, but with more power than everyone else) is the corrupt group.

2)    The Divergent Trilogy—the outbreak of a huge war (though this governing system put into place afterward, while somewhat corrupt, is not totalitarian, and has only been in power for perhaps three or four generations; the corruption doesn’t begin to truly manifest until a couple years before the events of the first book)

3)    The Hunger Games Trilogy—a series of massive, catastrophic natural disasters crushing the American population to about 500,000 people (if that) set up the establishment of the current government about 150 years before the start of the trilogy; a war 74 years before the book's beginning started to take out said government, only to be quelled by the complete nuclear eradication of 1 of the 13 rebel districts (among other measures).

4)    The Iron Codex Trilogy—an alternate-history of the 1940/50s during the Red Scare, so no natural disasters, but with the appearance of strange preternatural creatures that actively hunt humans about 50-100 years prior to give the humans an "enemy" to fear, similar to what the Nazis did with the Jews; also set against the backdrop of a much more intense Cold War without the historical influence of World War II.

5)    The Lunar Chronicles—set in a country that kind of sucks regarding civil rights anyway (China, part of what's called the Eastern Empire after World War III; yes, that's WW3) and during a long-lasting outbreak of an incurable but highly contagious plague known as letumosis (thus giving the government the right to shut stuff down, arrest people, etc. if evidence of this disease is found). You actually see the difference between the Eastern Empire and France in book 2; the dystopian part is only in book 1 so far, and only for the main character, a cyborg (considered less than human in that country). Also set during the very tentative cease-fire between Earth and a technologically advanced alien race that wants to wipe us out for being an inferior species, so we've got the us/them mentality in use as well.

6)    The Razorland Trilogy—zombie plague and chemical/nuclear warfare about 60 years ago drove everyone underground (as far as the MC knows) into enclaves run by small councils.

7)    The Red Death Duology—war, natural disasters, and terrible incurable plagues created by chemical warfare maybe 20-30 years prior to the start of the novel; in this one, the government isn't so much the problem as a single (insane) person running the government in a principality set somewhere in Europe or the Mediterranean (they don't tell you which; only that there are crocs in the water, but they might've been imported by the psycho). Things really go to Hades in book 1 when the leader of the rebels decides to infect everyone with the Red Death (yep, from the Poe story) as a means of waging war on the city and its psychotic prince.

After the apocalyptic something or other, the government may start out nice, but then turns evil or malevolent in various ways, slowly, stealing the rights and livelihood of the people over time by corrupting those who can be corrupted and killing those who can't. That's a big background plot device in The Red Death Duology, The Hunger Games Trilogy, and The Iron Codex. And unlike in the old utopian/dystopian  novels, people actually notice. How they handle it may vary, and such discussions are for other blog posts, not this one.

A quick aside: I left out a few series that might seem to fall under this category—The Matched Trilogy by Ally Condie, for example, or The Delirium Trilogy by Lauren Oliver. The reason I left these out is because to explain how they fit the parameters would be an entire blog in and of itself. I'll get to it at some point, though, I promise. I've already reviewed Lauren Oliver's Delirium, but I intend to write an essay/blog about it at some point as well. I also plan on doing a four-part essay on apathy, blame, fear, and hope as used by dystopian governments in novels as effective coercion tools, here.

So, to sum up: in order to have a dystopian novel (whether utopian/dystopian or straight up dystopian), tyrannical governments/rulers/ruling forces must be present. For it to be a dystopian novel without the concept of utopia, the masses can't buy into the dictatorial lies.

Now everybody go read The Iron Codex. It's awesome!

LA Knight

Garnet 2 - The White Queen in the Looking Glass

Chapter Two
The White Queen in the Looking Glass

Lily watched Alyssa leave the room, the silvered glass like a barrier between the White Queen and Black. The young witch stared hard at her reflection for an excruciating moment, examining every flawed detail of her face—too wide nose, too thin lips that no amount of lip plumper could fix, eyes set too far apart, cheekbones too prominent, forehead too big, eyebrows too thick, ears sticking too far out, hair too thick with not enough wave to make it at least look the littlest bit stylish.

At first glance, Lilith Whitmoor was beautiful, a knockout. With a closer look, she was positive that anyone with eyes and a brain would see what she and her parents always saw—faults, imperfections. Where there should have been a glittering diamond, there was only a cracked and flawed cubic zirconia. Just as pretty to the uneducated observer, but worthless on the inside, her mother had always said. And Gia Whitmoor would know; the woman was an expert on fashion and jewels. Lily hated to admit it, but Gia knew quality when she saw it. Which was probably why her mother had wanted to get rid of her when the witch Queen had discovered she was pregnant a second time. Lewis Whitmoor, Lily's father, had had to talk (and threaten) her out of it—in case Gavin, Lily's older brother, "hadn't worked out."

That appreciation for quality was also probably why Gia had homed in on Jack. One of the few things Lily and the flesh-eating Faerie boy had always agreed on—Gia Whitmoor was a depraved cougar with no life who needed to keep her hands off her daughter's Knave. Lily had approved wholeheartedly when Jack had nearly ripped her mother to pieces when the disgusting ho-bag had tried to seduce the dearg.

Yes, Gia and Lewis Whitmoor both knew quality when they saw it…which was why they'd always despaired of their second child and put all of their hopes behind Gavin.

Lily thought of Alyssa Carde, the Black Queen, with her compact body and elfin face; her silky cap of auburn hair, chopped short so no one could grab it in a fight; the spark in her fierce, feral eyes...the same gold as the White Queen's, but a totally different shape and look. She dressed like a homeless bag lady, acted like a total barbarian, and didn't have the sense God gave a rock.

But Jack loved Alyssa, and hated Lily.

She'd seen it in his eyes when he'd come into the bedroom: hate. Pure and unadulterated, sharp as razor wire, toxic as any poison. It had been like every slap her father had ever delivered with the hand that bore his coven ring, times a thousand. The one person who was supposed to stay with her, the one person who had to love her because what else was he there for...and he hated her.

Lily wanted to hate the Black Queen for that, and couldn't. Because unlike Jack, unlike the Black Court she was unwillingly now a part of, unlike her brother Gavin, and unlike her parents, the Black Queen didn't hate her, didn't think she was worthless. In fact, whenever they spoke, Alyssa's eyes held the same love a sister might have for her younger, more obnoxious, wayward sibling. The prodigal daughter. It didn't make any sense.

That's how she stole the Queen of Spades from you, Lilith, her father's voice hissed in her ear. Don't let her fool you. She's manipulating you.

A sharp pain lanced through Lily's temples and she turned away from the mirror to glance out Alyssa's bedroom window. A cap of bronze hair bobbed along next to a halo of golden curls. Alyssa and Jack. The Black Queen and the Knave of Hearts.

No…wait…

An ache settled deep in Lily's chest when she remembered that no, he wasn't her Knave anymore, her Knave who would rip out any number of Red Court hearts to make her happy. He was Alyssa's Black Jack now, the Black King to her Queen.

"I hate her," Lily whispered, but she knew it wasn't true. She hated a lot of people—Geneva, the Red Queen; her own brother, Gavin, their father's favorite; their mother, busy sleeping her way through the starving artists of Paris to solve her midlife crisis; their father, who played favorites and never seemed satisfied with her. She disliked Alyssa, firmly believed she had the IQ of a lamp post, and needed to be put in her place. But the fire behind hate wouldn't come, because if she hated Alyssa, the only person who didn't hate her, then she would have no one.

She'd never had no one before. There had always been Jack. Jack, who fixed her snacks in the middle of the night when she couldn’t sleep; who would let her camp out in his tree house when they were kids and she'd had nightmares about Gavin trying to kill her; who beat up anyone who made her cry, even Gavin, even though attacking the White Knight would earn the dearg a beating; who took her shopping and always made her feel good about herself when she tried something on, instead of telling her she looked cheap or trashy, like her mother would.

But Jack hated her now. She had to get used to that. Alyssa was the only one who didn't, and wasn't that just pathetic?

Oh, she hates you, her father's voice muttered, silky as sin. How can you not see it? How can you be so blind to her contempt for you? A witch who can be fooled by a human doesn't deserve to call herself a witch.

"Shut up," Lily snarled, dropping her face in her hands. She rubbed her throbbing temples. "I don't care what you say. I'm not coming back just so you can punish me again. At least no one hits me here." And that was just bizarre. Except for that single fistfight at the Heart of the Maze of Mist at Homecoming, no one had physically attacked her since she'd moved into the Black Queen's house. She knew Jack and the others wanted to—they wanted to kill her—but Alyssa had told them point-blank that anyone who attacked her would be kicked out o the Court. "I'm physically safe here," Lily added. "I'm not leaving."

You're not safe, though. This voice was her own, the niggling voice of doubt. If Alyssa ever changes her mind, Jack will have a lot of fun tying you down, slicing you into bits, and baking you into pies. He's always had a fondness for witch flesh. And he'd make sure it hurt. He doesn't love you anymore. Maybe he never did. He won't protect you. He'll hurt you just because he can.

"I'm not listening to either of you," the White Queen whispered. She would've put her hands over her ears, but if she let go of her head she thought it might explode. Tears of pain and panic stung her eyes. Her brain pulsed and throbbed in her skull. She needed to get up and get some ibuprofen from the bathroom…but she couldn’t even seem to force herself to her feet. She just curled up on the vanity stool, clutching her head.

You don't really think the Black Queen actually cares about what happens to you. Even you aren't that stupid. Not my daughter.

Her father again. She could almost feel the burning in her face where he would backhand her if he were there, lecturing her like he used to. The thin, raised scar on her cheek throbbed in time with her head and her heartbeat.

That's how she stole Jack, you know, the voice continued, gently chastising. Why wouldn't it just shut up? Why wouldn't he leave her alone? She didn't belong with him, with the rest of her family, anymore. She was bonded to the Black Queen, and she wasn't welcome there, with them, with her so-called family, anymore.

She tricks them into thinking she loves them, just like she's tricking you. I thought you were too good to be tricked. That's what you kept telling me. 'Nobody can fool me, Daddy, I'm the best witch at Pillar Prep.' Were you lying? Looks like it, because she's pulled the wool over your eyes. Oh, Princess, what happened to my girl who could see through all of their tricks?

Lily's head shot up and she found her face in the mirror, pinched and white with rage, tinged with gray. The pain in her head eased back until it was just a slight pressure against her temples.

"You're wrong," she whispered, reaching out and tracing the reflection of her pale face. How long had it been since she'd been outside? Seen the sun? Spoken more than a handful of words to anyone other than Alyssa? Since the night of Homecoming, she realized. Since she'd lost everything because the Black Queen had shattered her Coven and her Court. "She hasn't tricked me."

Oh? That derisive voice mocked her, made her want to scream. But if she screamed, the Black Court would come running because they had to, because Alyssa had ordered them to protect her. Lily didn't want them in here. She didn't want to see them, any of them. Especially not Jack and Alyssa, who were so in love that it turned Lily's blood to shards of razor-sharp ice in her veins because Jack had never looked at her the way he looked at Alyssa. And if she screamed, the throbbing in her head might come back. Hasn't she?

"She hasn't tricked me," Lily snarled at the mirror. Her teeth were a feral gleam between toxic-pink lips. Her eyes gleamed feverishly. "She can't trick me. I can see right through her."

Good girl. Her father's praise, imaginary though it was, filled her with warmth—the first shred of warmth she'd felt since before Homecoming. That's my Lily. Good girl.

Lily leaned back, shoving a hand through her hair. No, she wouldn't fall for Alyssa's tricks. She wouldn't. The Black Queen couldn't toy with the White Queen. And she was the White Queen. She'd get her Coven back. She'd get her Court back…and she'd show her parents that she was worthy of being the Queen, of becoming the High Priestess of the Coven of White, of wearing the Alabaster Crown of Faerie.

And most importantly, she would get her Knave back…even if she had to kill Alyssa to do it.

Garnet 3 - 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…