The Inner Circle (Return of the Ancients Book 3) (23 page)

I looked at the gray dust curiously.

Suddenly, I wanted Rafael to hug me. Kiss me, even. I scowled, wondering at the awkward timing of such thoughts. After the day’s events, how could I possibly think of such things? Scowling deeper, I tried to collect myself.

But then I noticed him watching, looking down at me from under long, dark lashes. And for the briefest of moments, a half-smile played on his lips.

Opening my mouth, I said the first thing on my mind. “I’m sorry. Sorry about everything. All of it, from your having Marquis as a father, to the way it’s all played out. It must have been a miserable childhood.” I knew I was starting to ramble, but it was oh so hard to stop once I was on a roll. “And Melody. Having to deal with both her and Marquis this entire time must have been hard. I mean, I’m just really sorry you had to go through all that. It must have sucked to have had to deal with it all.” I winced, knowing I’d repeated myself foolishly so I tried to wrap it up. “So, I’m sorry. I know it must hurt, this whole thing with Marquis and all…”

Finally, I managed to zip my lips.

One of Rafael’s brows danced upwards as he sent me a speculative look, but he replied easily enough, “Marquis was never much of a father anyway. He was always aloof, untouchable.” He was quiet a moment before adding, “He’s nothing like Al.”

I felt a wave of sympathy. Moving to join him, I reached out to place my hand softly on his arm. And this time, I managed to find words for what I truly felt. “I’m really sorry that you met me. It’s my fault that you ended up with such horrible choices.”

I felt his muscles tense under my fingers.

“I’m not sorry I met you,” he said, lowering his voice. “There truly was no choice in this for me. How could I let you and Jareth come to harm?”

“For the greater good—” I began.

“No,” Rafael disagreed, shaking his head. “There
are
those strong enough to live with the consequences of making such decisions, but I’m not one of them. I couldn’t live knowing that I’d sacrificed you and Jareth to appease the fear of the Queens. A fear they have no business feeling in the first place. They are better than that.”

I heaved a sigh. “But it was a mistake all the same,” I said.

I felt his breath on my cheek. It reminded me of the dream that I’d had, of him kissing me as I slept. Suddenly, I knew that it hadn’t been a dream. He’d had the ability to shift all along.

Bending his head so his mouth was level to my ear, he whispered, "You’ll never be a mistake, Sydney. And I don’t care if Fate itself tells me so.”

I stared at him.

He stared back at me steadily. “I would do it all again, little green-eyed pixie.”

Gently, he tilted my face up towards his, and leaning down, he kissed me lightly on the forehead.

I just closed my eyes.

Grasping my hand, he pulled me into his massive closet and led me to the small wooden chest that I’d seen before on the day he’d given me Cor’s pen.

Lifting the lid, he drew out a familiar-looking crystal cylinder. It took me a moment to recall that before it had held a golden feather as bright as pure sunlight. But the feather that had been alive before was now a dull, shriveled wisp.

Rafael’s shoulders dropped. “Then it’s as I feared,” he said with a sad expression. “The Queen of the Light truly no longer trusts me.”

He stood there a moment before reaching for another chest to rummage through its contents.

As I waited, I eyed the crystal, remembering the Light Queen’s words in the coffee shop.
Only those who have gained my complete trust may see and keep my Light.
She’d given me a feather as well that day. It seemed years ago. I looked at my hand where the feather was supposed to be. I still couldn’t see it. Maybe because it really wasn’t there.

For the briefest of moments, I saw it. A bright curl of vibrant, glowing golden light hovering over my hand. But before I could even gasp, it winked away.

I scowled.

What did it mean? Did it mean that the Light Queen still had faith in me? Hadn’t she just wanted me dead?

I jerked in surprise as Rafael’s hand fell heavily on my shoulder. “Let’s go, Sydney,” he said.

I barely had time to nod before we’d shifted back to Earth.

Once again, I was standing in Rafael’s cold living room. The rays of the early morning sun filtered in through the window.

I shivered.

“What now?” I asked, my voice sounding unnaturally loud in the empty room.

“I will not give up,” Rafael vowed. “I will do what must be done to protect humanity and the Fae.”

“We’ll do it together,” I said, looping my arm through his.

He stepped closer and leaned his chin on the top of my head. “You’re quite brave, little pixie,” he said, wrapping his arms tightly around me.

I laid my head back against his muscular chest, and we stayed that way, taking silent comfort in each other’s presence.

I suddenly recalled the Queens’ words. “What did I do to the Hall of Mirrors?” I asked. “Did I break them?”

“I don’t truly know,” he answered. “But they’ve gone silent.”

“How can a mirror go silent?” I asked.

But my question was lost as Jareth appeared in a poof of mist. Brushing his sleeves, he rolled his eyes and said, “You certainly do know how to rile everyone up, Rafael. Exile yourself to Earth? Cor’s heir, a pureblood, walking away from his homeland to live with humans?”

“Exile?” I asked, slipping out of Rafael’s arms to face him.

“I’ve no reason to return there for good—” Rafael began.

But then a familiar voice interrupted us all.

“And where is ‘there’?” Al asked. Still wearing his Faraday baseball cap, he stepped out from behind the kitchen door. “Do you boys want to share just exactly what planet you’re from?”

My mouth dropped open as Al walked towards us, and my mind raced through a variety of explanations in search of a plausible one that he just might believe.

But I couldn’t think of a single one.

Al really was just too sharp. He was holding his Neighborhood Watch flashlight in one hand and his cellphone in the other. When only silence greeted his request, he held up his phone and flipped it around for all to see.

“Then maybe you can explain this to me?” he asked with a strange glint in his eye.

The tiny screen flashed as a video began to play. It was clearly from one of Al’s spy cameras in the front yard.

At first, it displayed a view of the street before the screen suddenly turned black, and all I could hear was a snuffling noise. Gradually, the blackness moved away to show a good view of the inside of Ajax’s nostril. Then he pulled back enough to reveal his entire nose and finally his face.

For a few seconds, the Doberman stared directly into the camera. 
He began to blink. It took me a second to realize that he was blinking a pattern.

“Morse code,” Al supplied, his expression inscrutable. “I haven’t heard of too many dogs knowing Morse code.”

“What did he say?” I gulped.

“
Danger. The Mesmers will attack soon
,” Al replied.

Jareth snorted. Folding his arms, he leaned against the wall and drawled, “I suppose you’re not going to believe that he simply had something in his eyes?”

Rafael lifted a cool brow in Jareth’s direction. “I believe it’s time,” he suggested calmly.

“I suppose,” Jareth replied with a careless shrug.

It sounded ominous. “Time for what?” I asked, flooding with concern.

But Rafael wasn’t listening to me. With a slight bow of respect, he held out his hand in a welcoming gesture. “I believe it’s much simpler to just show you, Al.”

Al didn’t hesitate. “Then let’s go,” he agreed, pulling out his truck keys.

“Keys are not … needed. Allow me,” Rafael said, touching Al’s arm.

They shifted.

I turned on Jareth and asked, “Where did they go?”

He took the time to yawn first, a great, big obnoxious yawn before he answered, “Avalon.”

I rolled my eyes. “I could figure out that much on my own,” I snapped.

Jamming his hands in his pockets, Jareth strolled to the living room window and peered out, rocking back and forth on his heels. “We’ve always known Al would have a part to play in this drama. It’s in his fate lines,” he divulged, and then his voice dropped, and he muttered as if to himself, “This is all happening so fast.”

He didn’t speak after that, no matter how hard I pestered him with questions. I finally gave up and settled for looking for Ajax, but the Doberman was nowhere to be found. And after a time, when Al and Rafael didn’t return, I began to nervously pace back and forth.

Again, I asked Jareth where they’d gone exactly, but he only responded with an irritated grunt.

After a while, I gave up pacing and sat down on the floor to idly trace figure eights in the dust as Jareth continued to stare unseeing out the window.

It was sometime later that I looked over at Jareth and asked, “Why didn’t you come when I called?”

This time, he responded. “You called?” His brow lifted in surprise.

I searched his face, and finally deciding that he was sincere, I nodded. “Many times.”

He scowled upon hearing it. “I was doing a concert …” he began, and then his voice trailed off, and a look of confusion passed over his face. “Or maybe I was in Avalon. I woke up in Avalon a short time before hearing Rafael’s mirror break.”

He didn’t say anymore. He didn’t have to.

I eyed him speculatively, suspicious that he’d again fallen victim to Melody’s evil designs. “You should wear a Faraday cap,” I advised.

He just snorted, and I knew better than to press him.

He turned his back on me after that, and I knew that I wouldn’t get anything else out of him, so I returned to drawing figure eights in the dust.

It must have been close to two hours when Al and Rafael finally winked back into existence.

I leapt to my feet.

Al looked decidedly green, but I knew it wasn’t only from having shifted the first time.

Rafael eyed him sympathetically.

He’d taken the time to change his clothing, and he looked as sophisticated and charming as ever with his shirt stretched tight across his muscular chest in a way that set his lean body off to perfection.

It was funny. Even in the midst of all this drama, I found him a distraction.

Al took a deep breath. “Right then, we’ve work to do,” he said. But then he added, “After a few Tums and a cup of coffee.”

He waggled his eyebrows at me and headed out the door and across the street.

We followed.

Everyone else in the blue rambler was still asleep as we filed into the kitchen. And I started Al’s coffee as he headed for the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.

Closing the cupboards, I joined Rafael and Jareth at the kitchen table, and we all waited in silence for Al’s return.

He came back just as the coffee finished, looking pale and with his brows drawn into a straight line. And after pouring himself a cup, he sat down to join us.

We waited.

But Al didn’t speak.

He just sat there, slowly sipping his coffee.

I was desperately thinking of ways to break the silence when Tigger waddled into the room. I suppose the smell of coffee had given him the false hope that we were cooking breakfast.

Once the old hound dog figured out that he’d been duped, his long ears drooped in disappointment, and then shuffling over to the refrigerator, he slowly turned in three circles before laying down with a loud, long sigh.

The noise broke the tension, and the line between Al’s brows disappeared.

“That’s quite some place you boys have there in Avalon,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. Looking Rafael straight in the eye, he held out his hand in greeting. “It’s a real honor to meet you.”

Rafael solemnly shook his hand in reply.

There was another silence this time, but it was much shorter.

Al drained his cup and slammed it down onto the table. “Now then, let’s get down to business,” he boomed. “What’s going on here? What do I need to know now?”

Jareth expelled a long breath through his nose. “Don’t ask me, I wouldn’t know where to start,” he said sardonically. Crossing his arms, he slouched in his chair, apparently satisfied with his contribution to the conversation.

After sending him a disparaging look, Rafael began, “Jareth and I are Fate Trackers. Fate Trackers dedicate their lives to protecting Earth, since the time of Queen Morgan—”

Knowing Al a lot better than he did, I knew this was never going to work.

“Let me handle this,” I interrupted. And turning to my foster father, I gave him the rundown in a single breath. “The lizard people in the second dimension are creating a portal to invade Earth. They’ve got Mesmers—your Chupacabras—who can control you with their voices and eyes—so that’s why you have to wear the hats. And they created this horrible mutant Tulpa out of human fear that Marquis caught in that orange tube, and I accidentally let it go, and it tried to eat me.”

I’d gotten a little side-tracked, so I took a deep breath and course-corrected.

“We also have a renegade evil mastermind Fae named Melody running around with a mysterious weapon,” I said, and then added, “And Rafael may have just started a civil war on Avalon that’ll probably cause us problems. Oh, and there’s this Shadow Person with a black top hat that appears at times and seems to be trying to help.” I nodded in satisfaction, figuring that was a fairly good overview. I was sure Melody would be quite displeased to know that I’d labeled her a renegade evil mastermind, but I felt it was a fitting title.

Al didn’t say anything.

I was beginning to worry that I’d lost him when he began to fire off questions, “So, Betty’s missing time—”

“Lizard people,” I cut him short.

“Marquis?” he asked.

“He’s a Fae controlled by the lizard people,” I replied.

“Harmony?” he asked.

“Fae,” I answered. “She’s Rafael’s bodyguard.”

“Zelphie?”

“She really
is
Rafael’s mom.”

“You know, this explains a lot about last Thanksgiving,” he muttered to himself and looked at me with a keen eye. “And this Shadow Person?”