Airily Read online

  He was going to kill Josh.

  “No!” In a rush of anger, Airily folded her wings for a dive bomb and plummeted toward the cat.

  The cait sidhe was so intent on Josh that he didn’t notice Airily. She hit the cat’s ear where she knew it would hurt most. Her sharp toes dug into the soft cartilage, pinching and twisting the flesh. She bit the sidhe’s ear as hard as she could until his coppery blood filled her mouth.

  The cat snarled and his grip on Josh loosened. Josh twisted away and pulled a spray bottle from his bandolier.

  Airily dodged as the sidhe batted at her. She took off, straight up then turning as a feral scream ripped through the clearing.

  Josh pulled the spray bottle's trigger and a green cloud of droplets hit the cait sidhe in the face. The fae clawed at his skin, howling in agony.

  “Do it again!” Airily screamed.

  “Bad kitty!” Josh smiled and sprayed again, covering the cat’s hands with the sticky brown concoction.

  A thick rope of shadow peeled away from the sidhe and lashed at Josh, striking him in the chest. Josh went flying.

  “Josh!” Airily cried.

  He hit the ground hard and rolled several feet. Airily waited for Josh to move, but he didn’t.

  The cait sidhe’s clothes rippled, the biker outfit giving way to a cloak of writhing shadows. The bones of the sidhe’s splotchy-red face moved under his pale skin. His ears grew larger and migrated to the top of his head, while his cheekbones widened. His nose turned into a pointed, twitching triangle. Pale white fur sprouted from his skin until he was covered in fine pale fuzz.

  Airily wondered if this was good or bad. Before she could decide, she was distracted by the whir of toy helicopter blades. The cait sidhe’s ears swiveled toward the sound, and then he looked up. The helicopter sped out of the trees with a pink water balloon hanging from the toy’s payload clamp. The cait sidhe stared at it, one ear flicking.

  Airily took advantage of the distraction and flew to Josh. She landed next to his ear.

  “Josh? Are you alright? Get up! You have to get up.”

  He groaned, opening an eye. “That really hurt.”

  She reached out tentatively and patted his cheek. “I need you to grab Poppa’s cage and run.”

  She wasn’t sure Josh understood her. He moaned again and got on all fours. Airily glanced back at the sidhe.

  The cat crouched low to the ground. His big ears

  flattened, and his tail twitched out from under the cloak of shadows. He leaped at the helicopter just as it released the first water balloon, exploding in his face. He screamed and writhed on the ground, like a dying animal. The cat rubbed his face in the grass, howling in agony.

  “Good work,” Josh said, getting onto his feet.

  “Grab Poppa’s cage and run,” Airily repeated.

  “What about you?”

  “I’ve got to bind him unless you think he’ll just leave.”

  They both looked at the cait sidhe rolling in the meadow grass, his skin red and burned from the potions.

  “Not likely,” Josh said.

  “Go!”

  Josh ran for Poppa’s cage, still sitting on the ground where it had been left when the attack began. He weaved a bit as he ran, wobbling on unsteady feet. Airily bit her lip. He must be really hurt.

  Airily pulled the torc from her pocket. If she could land on the cait sidhe’s back, make the torc big and slip it around his neck, she could use the binding spell Burn had given her. She tried to ignore how she was going to get a heavy silver necklace around a shrieking cait sidhe’s neck.

  Gripping the torc, Airily flew, arcing over the clearing. She folded her wings and dove for the sidhe. As she spread her wings to slow the dive, she spotted Josh near Poppa’s cage. Before Josh could grab it, a tentacle of shadow wrapped around his ankle. Josh cried out as he was dragged to the ground. It was too late for Airily to change course and help her friend. She landed on the cait sidhe’s back.

  Cold, liquid shadows flowed over her feet, trapping her. As Airily struggled, the shadows climbed higher—up her scaly bird legs, trapping her at the waist and then her arms.

  Airily couldn’t even scream; she was so cold. A sob

  escaped her chattering teeth. They’d lost. She’d lost. She’d hand-delivered the torc to the cait sidhe. He’d kill her, Josh, and then Poppa.

  Shadows closed over her head, blocking out light and

  oxygen. Airily struggled but couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Her lungs squeezed, trying to pump air that wasn’t there. She was drowning—dying.

  Abruptly, the shadows that held her tore away. Sunlight and air flooded back along with a gritty, drenching liquid. She could breathe again. Airily gulped in air as shadows dissolved around her.

  The shredded pink rubber scraps of a water balloon

  dangled from the cait sidhe’s shoulder. Airily looked up, grateful to be free, as Black Burn wheeled overhead. Flying up, Airily abandoned her plan to bind the sidhe. She looked for Josh instead.

  Burn’s attack freed him too. He crawled for Poppa’s cage, seemingly unable to get up and run. Airily flew to her friend’s aid, anger bursting inside her. The rotten cat had hurt her friends and family, and she wasn’t going to stand for it.

  The cait sidhe got to his feet and staggered before righting himself. His cloak of shadows smoked as iron-rich water dripped from its hem. Hissing, the sidhe threw out another rope of shadow. It struck Burn before she could reach the tree line. The crow screamed and hit the ground in a pile of feathers.

  For a second, Airily was torn between helping Josh and Burn. But when the crow hopped up, she stayed with Josh.

  “Are you alright?” Airily asked as she landed on his

  shoulder. Josh’s skin was tinged with grey.

  “I thought I was gonna die.”

  “Me too. Burn saved us with a water balloon.” Airily risked a glance as the cait sidhe lurched toward Burn.

  “Just run,” Airily told him.

  Josh nodded as he picked up the wire bird cage with Poppa inside. “I’ll get him out of here.”

  “Thanks.” Airily glanced at Poppa whose pallor made her stomach lurch. He looked dead, but his chest rose and fell.

  Black Burn’s cackling laugh rang out over the clearing. “Big, bad cait sidhe isn’t so bad, is he?” she mocked. “You should’ve taken the torc and left us in peace, kitty!”

  “Brave words for a carrion bird,” the sidhe spit. “None of you will live to see the sunset.”

  Farther off, the drone of a second helicopter attack flew inbound.

  “Enough of this.” The sidhe dropped and planted his hands on the ground. Shadows flowed down his arms, disappearing into the grass. Black mushrooms with purple spots sprouted all over the clearing. A ring of fungus pushed through the dirt surrounding the cait sidhe, Airily, and Burn.

  Airily turned, hoping to find Josh had made it out of the clearing. He hadn’t. A wide ring of mushroom grew around his path too. Josh ignored it and kept running, but instead of leaving the ring, he hit an invisible wall. Josh rammed into it and fell backward. Poppa’s cage bounced on top of his chest. Airily flew three feet into the air before hitting an unseen ceiling. The mushrooms trapped them all.

  “You had your turn,” the cait sidhe growled. “Now, we fight on my terms.”

  The purple spots on the mushrooms blazed bright, and the world was obliterated in a blinding flash.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  T

  he mushroom’s light faded, and a deep red sky hung overhead, shedding orange light, bright enough to see by but not bright enough to cast shadows. Tortured, gnarled trees grew in soldierly lines which stretched to the horizon. To their right, a wall climbed so high it disappeared into boiling, red clouds. They were surrounded by magic a thousand times more powerful than Airily had experienced in the threshold.

  “W-where are we?” she stuttered, not sure who she was askin
g.

  “The very doorstep of the Fair Lands,” purred a deep,

  sonorous voice.

  Dread curdled in Airily’s stomach and acid burned the back of her throat.

  The cait sidhe stood the same distance from Airily as he’d been in the regular world, only his shape had changed. He towered seven feet high, and his cloak of shadows had thickened into spiky armor.

  “Give me the torc and your death will be painless,” the cait sidhe said.

  “No!” Airily tightened her grip on the torc and flew for the safety of the trees.

  “Run!” She shouted at Josh as she flew over him.

  He didn’t need urging. Josh, cage in hand, was already on his feet.

  The cait sidhe laughed. The sound echoed, rolling through the trees. “You’ll never get away!”

  Airily ignored his taunts and landed on a twisted branch. The wood was cold to the touch; the bark was slippery as if it were wet. Her skin crawled at the wrongness of it.

  Josh panted up to the tree and set Poppa’s cage down. “This is so bad,” he groaned. “How do we get back? What if we die here?”

  Airily fluttered down and perched on Josh’s shoulder.

  “We can still bind the cait sidhe. Burn can get us out.”

  Josh shook his head and slumped against the tree. “I don’t know if I can do this. I can’t even—I’m in another world, Airily,” he said desperately. “Another world.” His breath hitched, and his shoulders shook.

  “You can, Josh. Please, you have too. Or we’ll never get back.”

  “Okay… okay, there’s a scientific explanation for this. This is another dimension. Like a pocket dimension between realities—Earth and the fairy realm. So, we just have to bind his powers with the torc, and we’ll be fine.” His voice cracked on the last word. “Burn will take us home.”

  “That’s right,” Airily said. She patted the side of his neck. Josh took a few deep breaths of the stale, flat air and wiped his eyes.

  “We lost some of our back-ups,” he said.

  “What do we have left?” Airily pointed to Josh’s

  bandolier.

  “Um…” Josh checked. “A spray bottle of repellant and the last two pokers.” He pulled one from his belt loop. The shovel had been lost.

  “Maybe I can work magic here,” Airily said.

  “Can you?”

  “It wasn’t much, but I made a flame with Burn. She told me how to try magic in her vault.” Her shoulders slumped. “Okay, it was really just a spark, and I was trying to make a fairy flame. But the sidhe thinks we can’t do anything. And Burn can do magic here. She can…” Airily’s words tumbled out as the inkling of a plan sketched itself in her mind.

  Doubt and hope warred on Josh’s face. “Will it be enough?”

  “He only needs to be distracted for a second.”

  “And then you can bind him?” Josh asked.

  “No, then you can bind him.”

  “What?” Josh squeaked. “What kinda plan is that?”

  “I’ll distract him while you sneak up and get the torc on him.”

  “I can’t do that, Airily.”

  “Yes, you can. You’re super good at sneaking. And you can carry the torc when it’s people size. Otherwise, I’d have to land on him, say the spell to make it big and then say the binding spell.”

  “Hey!” A sharp voice said from the other side of the tree. Airily and Josh jumped before realizing it was Black Burn.

  “You two gonna cluck all day?” She came around the tree trunk and Josh gasped.

  Airily’s eyes widened in surprise. Burn looked human. She had Black Burn’s dark eyes and brown skin but her cheekbones were angled higher and so were her longer, pointier ears. She had two straight legs and wore a cloak of glossy black feathers.

  “You’re so tall,” Airily looked at her enviously.

  “And so pretty,” Josh whispered.

  Airily frowned while Burn’s smug face got smugger.

  “A long time ago, we could easily shift like this,” Burn said and gave Josh a wink.

  “Back to our main problem,” Airily said. “We need to

  distract the cait sidhe while Josh sneaks up and binds him.”

  “That’s your plan?” Burn asked with obvious doubt. She glanced down at the birdcage and the unconscious Poppa. “Jay would have a fit.”

  “You got a better one?” Airily asked.

  “No,” she said. “But why don’t I take the torc and bind him?”

  Airily shook her head. “We need you to fight him with magic. Neither of us can do that.”

  “You can do magic here, right?” Josh asked.

  “Yeah,” Burn said. “But not like he can.”

  “I’ll help distract him too,” Airily said.

  “And what are you going to do?” Burn asked, her tone somewhere between sincerity and sneering. “Do we have any potions left?”

  Airily pointed at the last of the spray bottles.

  “You’re too small to carry that.” Burn shook her head. “And I hate to tell you this, but that repellant doesn’t work here either. I’m not even getting itchy.”

  “Seriously?” Josh gave the bottle a shake.

  “Well, I can fly circles around you!” Airily snapped.

  “You should bind the sidhe,” Burn said.

  “But then I have to do two spells instead of one.”

  Burn chewed her lip a second, then sighed. “Alright. We go in together and keep the cat busy. But I don’t like it. And I know Jay would hate putting you all in danger.”

  “Like you ever cared what Poppa thought,” Airily said.

  “More than you’d think,” Burn said softly. Before Airily could ask what she meant, Burn turned to Josh. “You might as well leave the fire pokers behind to keep your hands free.”

  “Why? That leaves me with nothing. I can’t go in defenseless,” Josh protested.

  “The magic is too strong here for any of those trinkets to work against a noble fae. If it makes you feel any better, blame magic.”

  “It doesn’t,” Josh said. He hesitated, then leaned the fire pokers against the tree. With a sigh, he took off the bandolier as well.

  “Without that stuff, you’ll be faster and quieter,” Airily added, trying to help. She didn’t like Josh giving up all his weapons either, but Burn had a point. Iron may have worked when the cait sidhe was on Earth, cut off from some of this magic, but not here.

  “Ready for the spell?”

  “Yeah,” Josh said.

  “I need you to repeat the binding spell exactly, okay?” Burn instructed.

  Josh nodded. “I’ve got a good memory.”

  Burn sang the lilting words slowly, carefully enunciating the foreign syllables.

  Josh repeated the words near perfectly. Burn corrected him a few times, but he got the spell better than Airily had.

  A wave of despair crawled over the back of Airily’s neck. She looked up to find the cait sidhe standing in the highest branches of a tree. Thick tendrils of shadow snaked down the trunk, hungry to ensnare them.

  The sidhe grinned at Airily. “Shouldn’t you be running?” he asked.

  Josh scooped up Poppa’s cage and ran.

  Airily flew for her life. Fear drove the plan from her mind. From behind, she heard a buzzing sizzle. Airily turned just in time to catch a dying flash of green light; Burn faced the sidhe and held her own.

  “Josh! Josh. Stop running,” she called out. Airily landed on a tree and waited.

  Josh ran a few more feet, before jogging back to Airily.

  “What? Why?”

  “The cait sidhe’s just toying with us. There’s nowhere to run.” She gestured at the orchard’s neat rows of trees stretching into infinity. “Burn’s back there battling the Sidhe.”

  Airily took the torc from her pocket and held it out to Josh. “I must warn you to be careful, the torc is tricky. It’ll make you want t
o keep it. I don’t know how. Just try not to look at it, which is hard because it’s really pretty and it’s easy to get lost in the patterns. Make sense?” The words poured through the fog of fear, and she hoped they made sense.

  “Don’t look at the enchanted object. Got it,” Josh said, as he snuck a curious glance at the silver crescent in Airily’s hand.

  Airily nodded. “Hold out your hand.” Josh did and Airily dropped the torc onto his palm. She spoke the spell to make it larger. “Mawr neu fach, rhowch gylch i mi mewn golau arian.”

  Josh gasped as the torc expanded in his hand, then overflowed. An open circle of shining silver draped his palm. He stared at it in surprise—then kept staring. His eyelids drooped, sucked into the maze of knotwork on its surface.

  Airily whistled sharp and loud. “Stop staring and get sneaking!”

  With a start, Josh tore his eyes away. “Sorry. Wow. Are you sure we can’t keep it?”

  “Not if you want to live to see your parents again.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Josh said, sounding disappointed. He pursed his lips and put the torc into the pocket of his cargo shorts. “If I bind the cait sidhe, what happens next?”

  “I–” Airily frowned. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out. But hopefully, he won’t be able to kill us anymore.”

  “That’s a good start,” Josh said as he kicked off his shoes and pulled off his socks. “Ready to sneak.” He wiggled his toes in the reddish dust.

  “Let’s go. You circle around and come up from behind. I’ll fly back and help Burn.”

  “Good luck,” Josh said. He held up his hand, palm flat. “High five.”

  “You too.” Airily slapped his hand with her own.

  She rose into the rust-colored sky, gaining altitude. From high above, Airily watched Burn and the cait sidhe trade

  magical blows. Sudden bursts of colored light scorched the earth and gouged chunks out of the trees. From his high perch, the sidhe summoned a streak of blue lightning. It struck Burn and threw the crow fairy into the air, her cloak shedding feathers.

  Now or never.

  Airily gathered what was left of her courage. She soared higher and higher until the battle below looked like an ant fight. Then she turned and folded her wings. Wind blasted her face and sang in her ears as she fell. Airily shut her eyes and focused on the magic. It greeted her like a long, lost friend. Magic curled around her body in fizzing waves. She needed a weapon—something to hurt the sidhe, even just a little.