TEN
SAGE
Who turned up the heat? It’s so warm. Like, really warm.
A vague memory of fire and the smell of rosewater drift away as I become more aware of my surroundings. Sweat pearls on my temples. My lungs ache like they’ve been singed from the inside. As I open my eyes, they sting like mad, my vision blurring. What’s with all the fog in the room?
No, not fog. Smoke.
My nerves spark, and I sit up in a rush, every muscle in my body screaming. I feel like I raced an Ironman or something. What the hell?
A cough rips from my chest, raspy and thick with phlegm. And then another. I wipe the tears from my eyes and wave a hand in front of my face to attempt to move the smoke. But when my surroundings become a little clearer, the heat against my skin dulls.
And icy threads of fear weave through me.
Everything around me is black, burned, charred into rubble. The bed I’m sitting on is only coal and sticks now, the ceiling above my head full of smoldering holes. And the cushy chair near the window is glowing embers, the shelves of books framing it . . . the books are all completely destroyed.
What the hell happened?
I was dreaming of fire, wasn’t I? No. It was . . . I don’t remember. And I’m . . . I’m naked?
My God, did I do this? Panic fills me; new tears spring to my eyes. I scrape them from my cheeks, though, anger instantly following the panic and confusion. Anger at myself, at my situation. At my helplessness. How did this suddenly become my life?
Then I see a form on the floor.
The fear surges again, and I scramble to the body. I’m scared to touch it. The clothes are burned away in places, revealing blisters. The face is hidden, covered by a protective hand, the skin red and disfigured there too. The arms . . . are coated in markings.
Faelan!
Don’t be dead, oh, God, don’t be dead. But I can’t say the words; I can’t breathe.
I don’t think I should touch him. I don’t know what to do.
“What happened?” says a strangely calm voice from the doorway. I register that it’s a female, that it’s young. But I don’t look up. I can’t look away from Faelan’s still-smoking body.
A second voice whispers, “Goddess below.”
“Help,” I choke out. I have to do something! What have I done?
Something moves in my peripheral vision, and the first girl kneels beside me, wrapping a towel around my body. I think I’m hallucinating. She’s glowing. “Go get some of the vine near the door, Niamh,” she says to the other girl. Is this person an angel? Her cascading hair seems to have its own light, and her teal eyes and earthy skin emanate some sort of energy. But do angels usually wear bathing suits? Then she says, “Oh, Faelan, you silly asshole.”
Okay, I’m thinking she’s not an angel.
She places a hand on the twisted skin on his arm, closes her eyes, and whispers something rhythmic and soft, like a song in another language.
The air stirs, raising the hairs on the back of my neck, and her glow slinks over his arm where she’s touching him.
The other girl comes back in and tosses a bunch of leaves down. A vine. The glowing girl begins wrapping it around Faelan’s arm and his torso, still whispering the same strange words.
I watch in confusion as the emerald leaves turn yellow, then copper, then wilt completely, curling in on themselves.
“It’s not much, he might need more,” the glowing girl says to the other, who runs back out.
A moan comes from Faelan, and I gasp in relief. He’s not dead. “Oh, God, thank God.”
“My name’s Aelia,” the glowing girl says. When I glance up at her in confusion, she’s smirking at me. “Not God.”
I don’t know how to respond so I focus on Faelan again. “We need to call an ambulance. His burns—”
“He’ll be fine,” Aelia says in a tired voice. “We need to move him to his nest.”
“What? He needs a doctor!” His skin is still blistered and singed, his breathing labored.
Aelia just laughs and turns to the girl, Niamh, who’s come in with more vines. “Can you text the others and tell them we’ll need to add one more to the list for tonight? We have some introductions to make, I think. And go find James—he’s still asleep in my room.”
She’s obviously not listening to me. Is she nuts?
I tuck the towel tighter around my torso and reach down, trying to turn Faelan over to get a better look at his face.
“Uh,” Aelia says, “you may not want to do that.”
And just as she’s warning me, Faelan’s eyes fly open. His fingers reach out and grip me by the throat, a guttural noise coming from his chest as he flips me onto my back, climbing over me. All in half a second.
“See,” I hear Aelia say through my pulse thundering through my head, “he hates being woken up.”
I blink and gag, tugging at his arm, trying to squirm to get him off me, but his grip is ironclad around my neck, his weight pressing down on me.
Aelia slides a finger over his cheek, saying in a seductive voice, “Hey, Faelan. Don’t kill the newblood.”
He snarls down at me, a total stranger. A monster. His gaze is blank and milky white; his face and neck are burned, skin twisted on the left side. My vision blurs as he squeezes out my life, pressing me into the floor.
And then suddenly he’s gone and I’m gasping, choking on the burned air again. As I sit up, I realize he’s slumped against another male figure. “Well, hello there,” the new guy says. “You’re that girl who was a lost dove, aren’t you?” he asks, like I’m more interesting than Faelan’s burned body. He’s got a British accent, and as my vision clears I see he’s only wearing boxers. With heart-eyed emojis on them. He’s smiling that same sardonic smile that Aelia had on her face a second ago.
“Name’s James,” he says. “I’d shake your hand, but mine are a bit full. And I hear from Ben that your touch has some side effects. As we can see.” He nods to the wounded guy in his arms, then winks like he’s cute, and I feel like kicking him. What is so freaking funny about this situation right now? I nearly killed Faelan!
“Let’s get our resident wet blanket back to bed,” Aelia says, “where he can recoup a bit.” She and Niamh help James carry the large and limp Faelan out of the room.
I manage to get to my feet and follow them. But once we’re outside, in front of the door to Faelan’s cottage, James pauses and glances at me, then at Aelia, like he’s worried about something.
“Wait out here,” Aelia says. Then they all disappear into the small house.
I stand in a daze, staring at the green door. And as the stillness of the morning falls over me, the soothing sound of the waterfall in the background and the smell of sea air in my nose, the events of the last several minutes start to flick through my head in a panicked rush: the smoke-filled room, the charred surroundings, Faelan’s burned body on my floor, his milky eyes when he attacked me.
I feel like someone punched me in the face repeatedly. What just happened? Was it my fault? What did I do to burn it all? How am I not dead? None of it feels real.
Aelia and James emerge from the cottage before I can make sense of anything. That Niamh girl isn’t with them.
“It’s been a laugh, ladies,” James says, “but breakfast is calling, and I need to get to the set before they start the gossip about Rihanna’s new haircut without me. Plus, I’ve got lines to memorize for today’s shoot.” He flashes a quick grin at me, then moves in to give Aelia a blush-worthy kiss before he slips away.
“Your boyfriend works in Hollywood?” I ask her.
She just giggles. “He’s not my boyfriend, sweetie. James is a shade. They never reach status around here. Just keep it zipped to my dad that you saw the plebe with me.”
I’m not sure what she means, but it sounds vaguely racist. She kissed the guy right back, tongue and all. Is she telling me she French kisses all the peasants for fun?
“Let’s get you cleaned up, shall we?” she says in a bright voice as she hooks her arm through mine. She hugs me to her side, leading me toward the main house. “You poor thing. You must be so hungry after all that.”
“Is Faelan going to be all right?” Cold fear seeps through me again as the question slips out. And embarrassment is tangled with it. The charred skin, the white eyes—if I did that to him . . . me . . . I must be a monster.
“Oh, he’ll be fine. He just needs a nap.” She pats my arm. “He’s a downer, anyway. He’d probably have you on lockdown until he’s sure you’re not like the last female offspring from Brighid’s tree.”
What the hell’s that supposed to mean? I start to ask her to explain, but she keeps on talking.
“But bitches need to stick together, right? Can’t let the men push us around or they might get the idea that they’re in charge.” Then she winks and starts talking about some blog post on feminism she read this morning.
I tuck the information in the back of my mind and make a note to ask Faelan about this other “female offspring.” If I ever see the guy again.
The house is like a museum. There are artifacts from various eras and cultures in large glass cases along the halls and filling whole rooms. There’s even a room that looks like it’s entirely populated with old stone sarcophagi. I wonder if people really live in this house or if it’s just a place where they keep a collection of old stuff, like the Getty Villa. But then we finally pass what could be a den and walk through a real kitchen where a uniformed woman is chopping vegetables.
Aelia ignores the woman and leads me upstairs and down a long hall to her room—a vast space, the walls covered in images of . . . uh, herself: photographs, paintings, even mosaics. I have to bite my lip to keep back a derisive laugh. I don’t like to jump to conclusions about people, but this girl might be a narcissist. There’s a single eight-by-ten-inch watercolor of a pug near the window, the one sign she hasn’t reached Code Blue levels of navel-gazing.
The only piece of furniture in the room is a huge bed that looks larger than a king-size. Several of the throw pillows have her likeness on them too: her profile, a close-up of her wide eyes, even one of her lying half-naked on a golden couch on the beach, with the waves behind her. Wow.
She takes me through to a bathroom that could be a Roman bathhouse and shoves me into a large shower stall without ceremony. I toss the towel she gave me over the frosted-glass door, turn on the water, and wash off the soot and ash. It’s hard to believe I don’t have a single burn on me.
Once I’m done, Aelia hands me a slinky robe and takes me to what she says is her closet, but it looks more like a tiny mall. She studies my silk-covered body for a second—she’s obviously annoyed when I won’t disrobe and let her gawk at my naked self, but I need to retain at least a shred of dignity—then dresses me in ridiculously expensive-looking clothes from her nine-hundred-square-foot closet as she comments on my thin figure being great for movie roles and how she knows a guy who hires for body work if I’m interested.
I consider telling her I’d rather just find a way to get regular healthy meals so I don’t feel like a stick figure. But when she looks in the mirror and complains about her large hips and “massive ass,” I decide there’s no winning this discussion. Of course, there’s nothing massive about her. And considering all the images of herself in her room, I have to wonder if she’s fishing for compliments more than actually believing her own propaganda—in fact, I suspect she’s secretly insulting me, the way she keeps mentioning how she can see my bones. I just busy myself pretending to be amazed at a pair of pink sunglasses that are inlaid with what I think are real diamonds.
Aelia barely pauses to take a breath as she finishes dressing me and then takes me to a mirror, painting my face with layers of gunk before draping me in garish accessories. The whole time we’re at the vanity she’s chattering at me about a million pointless pieces of information. My favorite is how some girl named Astrid from the House of Cernunnos—which is apparently not a band but the name of another god’s family—was dating Faelan until she was adopted by the demi leader of that other House. And from what I can tell, Aelia really doesn’t like the girl. She claims Astrid is so full of herself because the girl thinks she’s some amazing style queen and badass hunter, but really she’s just an underling poser. Then Aelia proceeds to describe every dress that this Astrid has ever worn to every event, down to the last thread. She also goes on and on about some guy the girl’s dating, named Duncan, who apparently has “very big-name people in the music industry” on his payroll, and Astrid has him wrapped around her finger even though she’s totally just using him for his yacht.
Whoever this Astrid girl is, Aelia is obviously jealous.
“I mean, she’s an alfar, for Danu’s sake, right?” she asks me, as if I know what she’s talking about. “Who wants to suck face with a girl that tastes like a kale cleanse? I don’t know how Faelan did it all those years. Blech.”
I start to wonder if I’ve really entered a world of gods and goddesses or a live broadcast of TMZ.
The whole process lasts several hours, and I’m a little shocked when I see her fuzzy pink clock reading 5:00 p.m.
“Maybe we should go check on Faelan,” I say as she hands me a purple bag that matches my shoes. “I’m worried he’s not—”
“He’s fine,” she snaps. “Gods. If you’re hoping for some kind of romantic thing with the guy, you’re gonna be super disappointed.”
I just blink at her, feeling like she slapped me. The last thing I need is for this gossip queen rich bitch to hate me. “Okay, well, thanks for the clothes and all,” I say, trying to sound cheery, but I’m likely coming off as shrill. “I should probably go back to my room and, uh, start to clean up the place or something. I made a bit of a mess.” I think. I have no idea what I did, or if I did anything.
I do know that Astrid from the House of Cernunnos—not a band—gets her pubes waxed at Urban Blue in West Hollywood, though. So there’s that.
“Don’t be silly,” Aelia says, back to her casual voice. “My father will be here for dinner in an hour, and I’m sure your cottage is already fixed. No doubt it was finished hours ago.”
Fixed? What? “Are you joking?”
“You are slow, aren’t you? You slept in a furnace of your own making this morning, for goddess’s sake, and you didn’t get singed. Doesn’t that open your mind a little to the impossible being possible?”
She’s a bitch, but she’s got a point. And there goes that excuse to covertly check on Faelan. I smile at her and rack my brain for a replacement. “Cool. I’m, just, you know . . . it’s all very strange here, but you’re being so nice and all”—I clear my throat—“and I’m new, possibly a bit dense, so—can I, uh, go see it? In case it doesn’t meet my expectations.” I look in the mirror and play with my hair, topping the act off with a duck face. Just in case she thinks I can’t be shallow.
“Oh, totally,” she says, not looking suspicious. “Go take a peek, but be back for dinner in an hour. Daddy doesn’t like having to wait.”
The sound of this girl—who’s stunningly beautiful, almost unreal—calling the man I remember from last night Daddy . . . I have to force myself not to wince.
Instead I run my tongue over my teeth, like I’m checking for lipstick. “Totes.” And then I make my escape, slipping out from under her guardianship. As I work my way back through the massive house, I find myself thanking the universe for my horrible hopscotch journey through the foster system. Because if it did anything, it taught me how to become a chameleon and blend in with my surroundings—a gift that, I can tell, will be very handy in my current predicament.