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…

Garnet 1 - My Roommate—The White Queen

“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?”

 

 “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 street walker. 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. Black Jack is bad enough.” Everyone was calling my boyfriend that now. Ugh.

 

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 Boajun.

 

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 scar the crud out of Lily, I could have told her about being Boajun. 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 room, again?” A few drops of blood spilled out of 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 much.

 

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.” Even as he spoke, his obsidian needle teeth multiplied in his mouth until it seemed like his jaw would crack from the overcrowding.

 

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 pissed 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.”

 

And 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 was used to having servants clean everything and 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 room, we'd had a lot of friction over closet space (she had more shoes than Jack had teeth), who got to sleep on the bed (um, me, obviously, since it was my room and she'd tried to kill me several times), 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. Now she 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 kept applying her 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 too 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 got up to get it, the boys sent Eddie to get it instead, and he'd be back with it before I had time to take more than ten or fifteen 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 pink kiss at my mirror. 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 and pure 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. Her slinky, shimmery white and silver silk or whatever it was versus my 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 incredulous 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 that bad about primping? “Also untrue.”

 

“Everybody's a critic.”

§

 

She came downstairs, and everything in me relaxed. Part of me cringed because she should have been coming down those steps with me, but if I'd stayed in that room with the White Queen a second longer, my control would've snapped. My teeth would've ripped through Lily's carotid. And Alyssa would have been... I didn't know how Alyssa would've been. Furious, certainly. But would she hate me for killing the White Queen? After everything Lily had done? After everything she’d made me do?

 

“Is there a problem with what I'm wearing?” My Queen demanded, shaking me back from my red-washed fury.

 

“Pardon?”

 

“My shirt. Lily said there was something wrong with my shirt.”

 

My first instinct was to disagree with whatever Lily had said, simply because she was the one to say it. Then I got a good look at the monstrosity draped around Alyssa's torso and winced. Where did she get some of these things?

 

“Great,” she muttered, seeing my expression. “What the heck should I wear, then? They're lucky I even agreed to this. Now I have to dress up, too? Yeesh.”

 

“I don't see why you dislike wearing nice clothes to school.” It had been like pulling teeth to get her to wear something other than blue jeans and combat boots to Homecoming, despite it being a semi-formal event and the most important night of our lives thus far. Only Julie had been capable of getting Alyssa “girlified.” And she'd still worn the combat boots with her dress.

 

“I feel like crap when I put on nice clothes and they get ripped on barbed wire or covered in blood.” My Queen flopped onto the couch, backpack and all. The frayed canvas-and-duct-tape book-bag had seen better days. “Pee is even worse,” she added.

 

“You've been peed on?” Chantal, the werecat who'd been lounging on the back of the couch like the felines she took after, perked up. “When? By who?”

 

“Jimmy Byron, first grade. He hit me in the head with a rock, beat me up, dumped me in a trash can, and proceeded to pee on me.” Alyssa girl glared up at the ceiling, arms folded tightly across her chest. “Then he did the Tarzan yell and ran off. I pushed him off the jungle gym the next day. Accidentally broke his arm.”

 

So she could take out her tormentors without even trying. “You've led a fascinating life.”

 

“I'll take that as a compliment, but I'm still not dressing up.”

 

I raked a hand through my hair. Sometimes I could get Alyssa to see reason if we sat down and talked things out, but we had approximately five minutes to make the bus. We were being very careful today—not taking Mouse's van, since it was indirectly Darren's van and Darren was a sore subject with Geneva; not taking my Firebird, either, because the fire-engine red paint job might upset the Red Queen or her Court. So we actually had to maintain a schedule.

 

“At least wear a shirt that's in our Court color,” I pleaded. Her mulish expression had me biting back a sigh. My second set of teeth ground against each other until my jaw ached. After three months, didn't she understand she had to make an impression? Even after the battle against the White Court, she didn't seem to care about impressing anyone.

 

 “This isn't a formal occasion,” Alyssa said, eying me from the black leather couch. “It's not like Prom or a funeral. We're sitting down out under the Ramada at school and talking during lunch. Whoopee. Why do I have to wear black?”

 

“I thought you liked black.”

 

“I do, but I also got stabbed right after I rolled outta bed. Since I'm not one to throw pity parties, I want to wear my Greymon shirt.”

 

“Your what? Never mind,” I hastily amended before she could explain anything anime related. They ought to teach classes in anime literature, I thought as I struggled to condense a very long explanation into two minutes. It was the only way to understand most of what Alyssa was talking about past the words, Have you ever seen.

 

 “It's close enough to a formal occasion that you ought to be a little dressy,” I said aloud. “We're trying to open negotiations with the Red Court so we don't have a repeat of what happened with the White Court. We also need an ally against Gavin Whitmoor. What better ally against the White Knight than the Red Court? Please, put on something else.”

 

“Can I wear one of your shirts?”

 

I blinked. “Pardon?” I did not trust that guileless expression as far as I could throw its owner. She had some kind of nefarious scheme cooking. At least I knew she wasn't plotting out various methods of slicing me up while keeping me conscious. That was one of the things I loved about her. It was one of the things that had tricked me into falling fast and hard before I’d even realized what was happening.

 

“Yeah. If you let me wear one of your shirts, I'll dress up.”

 

“That's not dressing up,” I protested, but I might as well have tried to huff and puff a brick pig-house to the ground for all the good it did.

 

“Oh, it so is.” She smiled now, the smile that reminded me why I fought so hard to keep her alive despite herself. The smile that made me keep trying to get her to follow at least some of the rules. When the time came that everyone found out what she was—and it would come, I had no doubt—it would all matter then. It was the smile that made me grin like a loon, and even though I knew I probably looked ridiculous, I couldn't keep that answering smile off my face.

 

She got up and walked over so she could throw an arm around my shoulders. Her arm barely reached all the way around. I smiled, and laid my cheek against her hair. The bus would be coming in just a few minutes, but I didn't care. Not right then. I didn't want to force my way into Pillar Prep and deal with witch politics all day. I just wanted to stay here, with Alyssa and others, and rest. We still hadn't had a chance to really rest.

 

How did she handle it all, day in and day out? How did she handle all the stress and the fatigue and the emotional exhaustion?

 

She had to be on drugs. Well, I wanted whatever happy pills she was taking. Though kissing her always raised my spirits.

 

“Wearing one of your shirts totally counts as dressing up. You don't own a single article of clothing that doesn't have a designer name attached to it,” Alyssa said. “I think the cheapest thing in your closet is seven hundred dollars. I don't own anything that costs that much.”

 

“Well, they were designer sunglasses.”

 

“Sometimes,” she replied, “I cannot believe I know you.” And she kissed me on the cheek and went to kidnap one of my black silk shirts. The spot where her lips had brushed against my cheekbone burned pleasantly. When she did, it seemed everything would turn out all right.

 

But then I remembered that Alyssa was the Alice of the Haydn’s prophecies, the prophecies coded into Lewis Carroll’s “children’s” classics. And that meant that she would bring on the breaking of the Treaty of Jubei, which would keep the human world (mostly) safe from the Ayza, the demon royal family in Fayre. Alyssa was the Alice, which was basically a death sentence. The girl I was in love with—the only girl I had ever loved—had a death sentence hanging over her head.

 

Things were not going to turn out all right. We just had to hold out long enough to rip out the root of the darkness poisoning the Faerie Courts here.

 

Could we hold out that long? If Alyssa had anything to say about it, we would. I just hoped she was right.

Garnet 0 - The Black Knight on the Chessboard

Except for the night of Homecoming and the day I shattered Jack's soul-contract, I used to only see the 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 Homecoming. Now the pieces of the Game were scattered, some of them missing. The playing cards had different faces. There were different colors displayed. The board itself was all-new.

 

But two thing was still the same: there were still three sides to the board, and I hated this place.

 

I smelled the sickly honey scent of the Borderland Mist, the soupy, gray fog that surrounded the Chessboard itself and kept it separate from the rest of Faerie. A dull, bronze light emanated from the giant, razor-sharp playing cards ringing the board and 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 crap.

 

“Why am I even here?” I muttered to no one, crossing my arms against the dry, cool wind. That wind always blew here.

 

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. But every time I practiced, I ended up right back here: my not-so-happy place.

 

“Looks like you've got something to learn, Black Queen.”

 

Oh, crap. 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 were going to put his arm around me, but I must have 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 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 white piece on this board. Before Homecoming, there had been pieces to represent all three sides. Now there was only Gavin Whitmoor's White King, and his sister Lily's fallen White Queen, slowly crumbling to bone dust, and then me and Geneva Carson, the Red Queen.

 

“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 want to 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 to 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), 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 scrawny, certifiably-crazy Knave of Clubs, which apparently 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. You’re 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 honestly think things were going to get easier after all that?”

 

“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 were camped out in my living room. Never mind the homicidal witch living half-in my closet.

 

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 have to 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 week after Homecoming, Darren had taken to talking about himself and sex a lot around me. He'd actually told me that it was because he was trying to wear me down and get me in bed. He wanted to make it with me, not because he was attracted to me, but 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?