Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie

I looked over my shoulder at the bonfire. I could still see Nuala, a dark form in the voracious flames, and on the other side, the figures of dancing students.

“Why should I trust you?” I asked him, but really, what I wanted to know was why I should leave Nuala in those flames by herself when I promised her I would watch her and say her name. And now I had to start all over again —seven times uninterrupted, Eleanor had said, and watch her burn from beginning to end.

The faerie smiled a thin smile, white teeth in the darkness. “We saved your life once, don’t you remember, piper? When she asked us, we saved your life. She traded Luke Dillon’s life for yours.”

My heart stopped beating. I couldn’t breathe.

“I don’t think you understand, human. They’re taking her cloverhand powers. They’ll be able to go anywhere, do anything. And they’re killing her for it. I thought you loved her.”

Now I heard another scream, this time from beyond where the faerie stood, and I knew that voice too. It was too like her singing voice to be anyone else’s. The faerie didn’t flinch. “Piper, I would not be here talking to you if you were not what was needed.”

“I need—I need a second,” I demanded. I turned back to the bonfire. Nuala was on her knees, hands covering her face, her hair and fingertips black, her shoulders shaking. It wasn’t fair. Wasn’t she supposed to pass out—get some sort of mercy?

“Amhrán-Liath-na-Méine,” I said. Nuala shuddered, hard enough for me to see it. “Amhrán-Liath-na-Méine.” She balled up her broken fingers against her face. “Amhrán-Liath-na-Méine.” I whispered her name four more times, and each time, Nuala wailed, agonized and awful.

If only I could do both. How could it take so long for her to burn?

And behind me, another scream sounded, and this one echoed Nuala’s, full of pain. Dee’s voice. I had to decide.

In my head, I knew I had to try to save Dee. She was the more important. Even if she hadn’t been Dee, she was powerful and she could make the fey powerful. There wasn’t any question—this was why Eleanor had told me how to keep Nuala’s memories. Because she was betting that I would stay by Nuala’s side to watch her burn from beginning to end instead of interfering with whatever they were doing.

And she was right. I wanted Nuala. God, I wanted Nuala. It made my stupid crush on Dee so inane in comparison. But to have Nuala, I had to stay until the last bit of Nuala was gone. And by then it would be too late for Dee.

Save Nuala or save the world?

If only I’d just been screwing myself over, instead of me and Nuala.

The worst part was that the last thing I saw Nuala do was take her hands down from her face. Just in time to see me leave her behind.

James

In the movies, they have a plan. They know the odds are terrible, but they also know where they’re going, they have large guns with lots of bullets, and they have an insane plan that involves martial arts and a pulley system. In real life, you have a sick feeling in your stomach, a pile of adrenalin, and a general idea of where shit is going down. And the universe is laughing and saying well, go to it, bucko.

Life sucked.

The faerie at the bonfire had looked back in the direction of Brigid Hall, so that was where I ran. Words were starting to crowd in my head, begging to be written down on my hands—fire and betrayal and go back to her—but I pushed them away and tried to concentrate on the rasp of my breath as I sucked in the cold night air.

I found Sullivan by the bonfire they’d built in the parking lot beside Yancey. He was tying some little twigs together with red ribbon by the orange light of the flames. Sparks spat out toward us. “James. I thought you were with—” He stopped, which made me eternally grateful to him.

I was badly out of breath. “I—you—have—to—come— with me.”

He didn’t ask. “Where are we going?”

I gulped air. “Brigid. Something’s going down in Brigid.”

“Brigid’s empty.” Sullivan gestured at it. The windows were dark; the building was beyond the reach of any of the bonfires. It looked even more shabby and desolate behind its shaggy, unmowed grass. “They lock it every Halloween night.”

I shook my head. “I have it on the word of someone green. Do you know if They can make kings of the dead?”

Sullivan stared at me for a long, blank moment, and then he said, “Let’s go.”

He shoved the twigs into my hand and started to run, coat flapping out behind him. I took off after him, feet pounding on the sidewalk and then on the autumn-crisp mowed grass as we left the bonfires behind. I felt the exact second that we outstripped the light of the bonfire. The air froze around us and the ground shifted out of our way.

“It’s a ward, don’t drop it!” Sullivan shouted back at me, and I realized he meant the twigs. “Hurry up!”

I pelted into the unmowed grass. Close beside me, something screamed, and I saw huge, velvety black eyes rising before me. I sort of shook the twigs at it and it screamed again, sounding a lot like Nuala, before shrinking away. In front of me, I saw shapes of bodies dancing around Sullivan, bobbing toward him and then away.

I was a few feet from the building when a form loomed right up in front of me, forcing me to wheel my arms back to keep my balance. It was small, light, hungry.

Linnet.

“God,” I said, staggering back. “You’re dead.”

She was hovering just off the ground. Looking at her again, after the first shock of discovery, I don’t know how I had known it was Linnet. Because she didn’t really look at all like herself. She was a cloud of pale, noxious gas, grasping and foul.

“Stay back from things you don’t understand,” hissed Linnet. “Go back to the bonfires. Leave this to those who know.”

This from the woman who wanted to fail me in English. “You’re pissing me off,” I said, and stretched out the ward.

She had no real face, not anymore, but she made a sound like a derisive laugh. “You’re just a pretender.”

Sullivan jerked my shoulder around and pushed me under his coat. “But I’m not. This explains a lot, Linnet. I sincerely hope you rot in hell.” He pushed me the last few feet to the door and gestured toward his coat. “You’re supposed to be wearing black, James.”

The building still seemed unoccupied—dark and silent. We stood before the red door. The only red door on campus. And for some reason, I was transported back to that movie theater with Nuala, where she told me that every red item in The Sixth Sense warned of a supernatural presence in the scene.