“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.
