The Trouble with Fate Read online

  “But you also have Were.” She gave me a slight smile. “The gates would sense that and might not let you pass. I don’t want you to ever try it, okay? Promise me?” When I didn’t respond, her voice got sharper. “Helen, using one is not like walking through a doorway. Even for a full-blooded Fae, it’s disorienting and dangerous.”

  “I could do it.”

  “Could you? When the gate is open, you see right to the other world, like you’re looking through a round window. It tricks your mind. You expect to cross a flat plateau, but instead your body is pulled upward at a great speed. It’s terrifying the first time, even if you’ve been told to expect it. If you lose focus of where you need to go, you can be pulled into the wind, and killed. They train your mind for weeks before you’re allowed to even think of stepping into a portal.”

  “Who trains you?” I asked, my mind already wandering.

  “There’s something more important for us to talk about.” She turned her head, and levitated all the coins sitting on the dresser into the air, squinting at them until she spotted the flat washer that Dad had put in his pocket and never returned to the jar in the garage.

  “There is a third realm called Threall. It lies between this world and Merenwyn.” The flat disk floated across the room. It slipped into the empty place between the Merenwyn quarter and the earthly penny. I studied the stacked coins floating in space.

  “Threall looks like a washer stuck between a penny and quarter?”

  The coins dropped to the bedspread. “No, Helen. It does not look like that.”

  “Then what does it look like?”

  She sighed, but didn’t squeeze the bridge of her nose like she usually did after some of my questions. Instead, she picked up the quarter and the penny. “It’s said to be a land of mists and bad things. They say a part of every Fae lives in Threall, the dreaming portion of us.” She pressed her hand to her heart. “It should be sacred, not a place anyone can visit.”

  I gazed dubiously at the dull piece of metal lying on the quilt. “How do you know Threall exists if no one has ever seen it?”

  “There are some who can travel there.”

  I gave her the “aha” look. “So there’s a portal.”

  “No, Helen. There is no portal. Only mystwalkers can travel to Threall.”

  “How?”

  “With their mind. Once trained, a mystwalker can create a second body in the world of mists, and walk on two feet, just as she does in Merenwyn.”

  “Cool,” I said.

  “No. Not cool. Mystwalkers search for people’s souls in Threall, Helen, and once they find them, they can do great harm.”

  “Huh.” There were a few Weres I felt like harming.

  “Don’t look like that.” Her fingers gripped mine. “There’s a reason I’m telling you this. Look at me.” Her eyes were so fierce. “Do you know how they find mystwalkers? They search for children born with the gift of walking into others’ dreams. Those children are brought to the King’s Court. Their gifts are tested. If they don’t have enough raw talent, they’re killed, and if they’re not killed, they become wards of the court. The King’s Court is not a place for any child. Those children, the ones who make it to adulthood, they become…”

  “What?”

  “Mad and soulless. The royal family trains them to walk in the mists, and do things there that Faes consider soul destroying.”

  “Like what?”

  “They steal others’ gifts. They plant seeds of madness in their enemies’ heads.”

  “How?”

  “Helen, it’s not a talent I want you to develop. It’s not a good thing.” Her grip turned crushing. “It’s a terrible crime to steal someone’s talent. Mystwalkers are shunned by all except their trainers. The lucky ones die young before they are driven mad, or worse, disappear.”

  “Where do they disappear to?” My voice sounded small.

  “Their souls stay in Threall. It gets harder and harder for them to come back, and one day they never do. Their body dies in Merenwyn, and the mystwalker is never heard from again. They say they float on the winds of Threall, crying for their home.”

  I bent my head to study the washer lying innocently on the chenille spread.

  She lifted my face with mum-loving hands. “Don’t walk in others’ dreams. If you feel yourself being pulled into one, resist. Never travel to Threall. Ever. Never admit to anyone that you know anything about dream-walking. Anyone, do you understand? Don’t tell your brother, don’t tell your friends, don’t tell your father. But most important, never mention it to a Fae. Do you understand? Helen, it’s very important. Mystwalkers always come to a bad end. Threall is a bad place. It can hurt you.”

  She got down on one knee, gazed deeply into my eyes, and repeated the last sentence, but slowly, as if each word were an individual sentence, turning the comment into a four-word paragraph heavy with meaning. Dream-walking was bad. Threall was bad.

  But it was like having something stuck between your teeth, and never being able to get it out. I didn’t want to get her all upset, so I didn’t point out that I had no friends other than Lexi, and that I was unlikely to ever meet another Fae. Instead, I rationalized that two out of three was good enough, and as soon as Mum and Dad fell asleep that night, I trotted over to Lexi’s room, shook him awake, and asked if he ever dream-walked.

  No horror on his face. He said, “Shut up.” Then he rolled over.

  Clearly, he never felt the terrible suck of his waking mind being pulled into someone’s dreaming one. For once, I knew something Lexi didn’t. And right there I decided it was one secret I wasn’t going to whisper into his eager ears.

  We already shared so much, a lot of it unwillingly. Does anyone really want to fight for elbow space in a womb? Be perpetually twelve minutes behind? Yeah, sure, there were probably advantages to being second—there were baby pictures of a pointy-headed Lexi—but the downside is that you start out not being first. And it seemed my legs were never long enough to catch up. For our first ten years of life, my brother plowed a trail ahead, leaving me to follow in his wake. Predictably, he was the first to walk. First to talk (and yap, yap, yap, did he ever talk). First one to dare to wander off the property and explore where he wasn’t supposed to explore. First one to be brought home by the Alpha after that adventure, looking muddy and wet, and more pissed than a cocker spaniel who’s been denied a treat.

  Fae Stars, I miss him. It’s not something a singleton can understand; the depth of grief a twin feels over the loss of their sibling. Except maybe if I explain it to you this way: once I stood on three legs. Now I wobble on two.

  But the future wasn’t something I thought much about back then. Like every other self-absorbed twelve-year old, I took it for granted that my brother would always be there; part best friend, part worst enemy. Mine to love and abuse. And so, I got mulish about the following. I got selfish about the sharing. And maybe Lexi did too. Maybe his heedless race through our short shared life was an effort to distance himself from me—the bobbing cork that followed the currents left behind him.

  But still, even after Mum’s talk, I kept poking at the idea of Threall. I wanted to see it, just once. The best way, I reasoned, would be to visualize “up.” It’s how I manipulate my magic. Think the word, and let her rip. And besides, I strongly doubted that you needed to create another body up in Threall. Why couldn’t you just take your own up there, and bypass the whole “lost my body” problem?

  So I sat there, cross-legged on my bed, and thought “up.” After a bit, I tried a different thought. “Lift.” Then I strong-armed it. I kept thinking “up” until sweat broke out on my brow and I felt queasy, and then suddenly, I felt a tearing inside me, so strong, it was as if a giant had my head in one hand and my toes in the other and was determined to stretch me like a piece of taffy.

  At the onset of the pain, my concentration splintered, and took with it that horrible rending sensation. I curled up in a ball on my bed, held my stomach, and decided
right there that I’d never try again. In fact, I added a codicil to my pledge: if dream-walking had anything to do with Threall, I’d resist being pulled into any vision. I’d turn away. I’d stay awake.

  Scary stuff, Threall.

  I exited the nature trail and turned down our street.

  Funny how life works out. Pledges aren’t so much broken as worn down. I’d gone from thought-picture deprived to dream overloaded. And even though the circles under my eyes were starting to look like purple bruises, I still wouldn’t speak to Lou about it.

  How could I tell her I was an untrained mystwalker?

  And there was more. Stuff I didn’t like to admit. There was something in the pull of my crazy aunt’s unconscious that I liked. For all my horror, for all my fatigue, there was a part of me that craved being dragged into her dreams. Something in me enjoyed thumbing through her thoughts and memories. Sometimes—so rarely—I saw Merenwyn. Sometimes I saw my mother again. And sometimes I saw things that frightened me.

  But it’s like a Fae version of Pandora’s box, right? You have the box, you’re not supposed to open it, and then somehow it’s open, and whooee, the stuff you find in there.

  Fascinating, scary stuff.

  Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to be bat-shit crazy like my aunt.

  Chapter Two

  Raymond Street was a place that tried hard years ago to be more than it was—and failed. Some fifty years back, a few knuckleheads thought they could make another shopping district in our town. Considering that Deerfield is a small dot on the map between the cities of Toronto and Hamilton, they were being overly optimistic. They pulled down old houses to replace them with the square flat boxes favored by the sixties developers. The consequence of their planning were four blocks of flat gray brick storefronts leading depressingly toward the lake.

  Now it was the street that sold dirty videos.

  Home was the top apartment over a used bookstore called Twice Read Books, owned and operated by a guy whose vision had slowly eroded until he had to hold the books up to the light and squint through a magnifying glass to read the sales sticker. Bob came from money, which was good, considering how his life had run. He owned the building, so he never had to worry about paying rent for his money-losing business, while the rents that he collected for the two apartments over his store were enough to keep him in the black.

  The entrance to our apartment was an anonymous brown door in the back parking lot. I started up the stairs feeling the bite of my backpack’s strap. It wasn’t all that heavy. I carried a change purse, two tins of maple syrup—the Fae-born’s preferred food group—plus a silver travel mug, four books that had come into my hands during my tenure at the café, and a hoodie liberated from the coffee shop’s lost and found. That and guilt made it feel heavier though. There was rent to pay, and syrup to buy when this lot was gone, and not a hell of a lot left in the kitty. I should have stolen something worth pawning.

  The door to the apartment was unlocked. Again. Any thief could walk in and help themselves to our stuff. I thought about that as I eased the door shut, and tiptoed down the corridor past Lou’s dark bedroom.

  Safe in my own room, I toed off my shoes and tossed my glasses on the bed. Then I stood for a bit, rubbing my elbow.

  How do you find someone to mind a batty Fae princess? Can you imagine that ad? Wanted: Someone who can endure being called a pestilent mortal, will work for almost nothing, is nimble enough to dodge projectiles, and finds it easy to rationalize every weird thing she sees happening in our apartment.

  My fingers started stroking the peaked tip of my ear.

  And then it occurred to me—I hadn’t made it to my bedroom undetected in months.

  Oh crap.

  * * *

  I pressed my ear against the back door to Bob’s store. Okay, if I was a full Were, I wouldn’t have to do that. I’d be able to detect the discreet blip of a mouse’s fart right through the bricks. Hell, I’d hear a bird drop a feather as it winged its way over the parking lot.

  I think.

  There is, technically, a lot I don’t know about Weres, even though I lived among them for the first twelve years of my life. When they’re not tracking a flea with their sharp teeth, they prefer to live like humans—they have mortgages and jobs, pay their car payments and taxes—but underneath that, they’re different. And exactly how much so is something they don’t share with someone who wasn’t 99 percent Were.

  Secretive lot, the bunch of them. I know from experience that their ears could pick up just about anything. You could keep your face absolutely blank, so they couldn’t read your expression, but the bastards could hear your heart speed up, and know that their insult scored a hit. It’s why Lexi and I mostly traded thought-pictures during school hours at the private school in Creemore where the pack’s young were taught human stuff. Our moon-charmed classmates couldn’t read our minds, and considering what I thought about most of them, that was probably a good thing.

  Bob wasn’t doing much talking on the other side of the door. His son, loathsome Lyle, was though. Annoying stuff, like how to start the eviction process.

  I pushed open the door and stood there, quietly taking in the damage left by Hurricane Lou. Not too bad at first glance. A lot of books strewn around. One of the flimsier book turnstiles was tilted, but that could be fixed by jamming a book under its front legs.

  Bob turned when Lyle said, “You!”

  He was old, Bob. I don’t know how old, but he was really ancient. Maybe sixty. Usually you didn’t notice his age because he wears Coke-bottle glasses that overwhelm his features. But now his face was naked, and his eyes were normal sized and tired. Where the glasses habitually sat on the bridge of his nose was a dent, and around that, a painful-looking scrape.

  “Did she break your glasses?”

  “No.” He had another red scrape on his cheekbone. “But they’re not comfortable to wear right now.”

  “We’re going to sue,” Lyle snapped. He might have gone on, but Bob lifted a staying hand, so Lyle ceased, lips clamped tight, his eyes narrowed on me like a thwarted cat. I’m pretty sure Bob still owned the deed for loathsome Lyle’s house.

  “Most of this came from tripping over my own books.”

  “Because she shoved him after she called him a troll,” threw in Lyle.

  “I’ll do the talking, Lyle.” He patted the air behind him for his stool. “She came in the back way, and she was already angry. Babbling something about the evil ones and another word. Something to do with mourning.”

  Merenwyn. Not angry then, I thought. Frightened.

  “I told her you’d be home soon. She started to leave and then she saw the book on the counter, you know, the new one on display by the cash register. The one with—”

  “Fairies on the front of it,” I said.

  Bob offered me a faint smile. “She said it was an abomination.”

  “And?”

  “She started taking books off the shelf and throwing them at me. I went to call for Lyle, but—”

  “She pushed him,” Lyle said. “We’re going to file charges.”

  “Lyle … let me tell it my way.” Bob finally found the chair and sat down on it. “My glasses had fallen off and I couldn’t find them. I couldn’t see well enough to dial his number.”

  “So you called 911. And they sent the police.” I swallowed, imagining it all in my head.

  “Before they even got here, she was out on the street. She got hold of that rolling display I put out every morning, and she was emptying it, throwing the books at passing cars, screaming insults at people. Plague carriers?”

  “Mortals. Pestilent mortals,” I said.

  Bob nodded as he stacked a book on top of two others. His fingers felt for the edges, and set them in a perfect tower. “The whole street backed up. Two cop cars came.”

  “Did they touch her?”

  “Yes. Then it turned really ugly.” His lips flattened. “She started screaming ‘It burns
, it burns.’”

  Skin-to-skin contact would have raised blisters wherever their mortal hands touched. It hurts worse than holding a curling iron to your neck and counting to five.

  “The woman is out of her mind, Hedi.” Bob’s face was concerned and bruised. “You know that, don’t you? She can’t be left alone anymore.”

  “Where’d they take her?”

  “To the hospital in an ambulance. There were burns on her wrists. I sent Lyle up to check your apartment but he couldn’t find anything left on, or signs that she’d scalded herself with the kettle. We don’t know how she hurt herself.”

  Lyle in our home. It didn’t bear thinking about. I pushed my glasses up my nose. A hospital. I could break her out of a hospital.

  “Hey,” said Lyle as I turned to go.

  “If you total up the damage, I’ll pay for it.” Another lie. Maybe Karma was snoozing and wouldn’t notice.

  * * *

  There is always someone who has control over the button. It’s never wise to piss that person off.

  In this case, it was a fat forty-something woman seated behind the reception desk at Beacon Memorial. I made the mistake of going straight for the doors to the treatment rooms, which messed up protocol in all sorts of ways, and ignored her importance as the guardian of the open-sesame button.

  She made me wait. And wait. People went in, people came out. Two weary policemen escorted an agitated man cuffed to a gurney into the treatment rooms. For a moment, as the doors swung open, I thought about slipping in via their wake but she was watching me, so I sat, and waited and tried to look like every other person waiting in the waiting room. Bored. Inside I was contemplating flattening the receptionist with her own computer screen. I was fretting over metal handcuffs, and I was thinking about ties. Not the ties that handcuff you to a gurney, but the ties that handcuff you to a past, present, and future.

  Finally, after forty minutes, she pressed the button and let me in.

  “My aunt was brought in,” I said to a nurse in the hall.

  “And she is?”

  “Louise Rogers.”