The Fairytale Curse (Magic's Return Book 1) Read online

  CJ groaned. “Yeah, we’re studying it at school. Are you saying that stuff is true?”

  “Not gospel truth, no. But a lot of the basics are there.”

  My opinion of fairies went way down. “But all they seem to care about is sex and wife-swapping and messing around with love potions.”

  “The High Sidhe are often very focused on affairs of the heart.” Obviously this information wasn’t classified; she’d lost that harried look. “Or at least the body. I’m not sure they have hearts, the way we understand them.

  “Anyway—” She checked her watch. “I’d better run. It’s been so long since anyone’s had dealings with the Sidhe we have to rely on our records to get a feel for what they were like. And I’ve got to tell you, some of those old mages were dry old sticks. At least with Shakespeare and people like that, you get more than just lists of attributes and known haunts. I’ll see you a bit later!”

  She headed back out, shutting the door behind her in a rush, as if she was relieved to escape. Shame she’d realised we knew nothing and clammed up; she’d dropped some interesting info before that. Seekers and magical artefacts; twins in magical families.

  CJ looked at me. “I don’t know about you, but I sure ain’t reading Shakespeare to pass the time, whatever she says.”

  She flopped into the nearest chair and pulled out her phone.

  “Who are you texting? Ashleigh? I’m surprised your thumbs aren’t bleeding yet, you’ve been texting so much today.”

  I leaned over, trying to see the screen, but once again she tilted it away from me.

  “Get off. Go find a picture book that won’t strain your intellect too much.”

  “Be anti-social then. See if I care.”

  I slipped out of our scarf and wandered off, but I wasn’t letting go that easily. I had more than a sneaking suspicion that there was a boy involved. With CJ, there usually was. But who? The only guy she’d shown any interest in at all was Josh Johnson, but I refused to contemplate the horror of my sister going out with that waste of space.

  I pulled a book off the shelves at random. Ironically enough, it was a picture book, though not intended for children. More like a field sketchbook, full of whimsical drawings of “the fae and other ungodly sprytes”, with notes on their behaviours. Some of the pictures were quite striking, but I pretended to be more engrossed than I was as I circled back to CJ’s chair.

  I needn’t have worried; she was so caught up in what she was doing I could have stood behind her blowing The Last Post on the trumpet and she mightn’t have noticed. I peered over her shoulder and my heart sank.

  When u coming back 2 skl babe?

  Y? U miss me? CJ texted back.

  Ill show u how much …

  I stood there for a couple of minutes, watching them flirt, until I was certain. It had to be Josh. I was going to have to disown my sister.

  She giggled at his latest attempt at flattery—or maybe she was just laughing at his spelling, who knows?—and then she finally realised I was standing behind her.

  “What are you doing?” she snapped, spilling diamonds on the floor. “Spying on me?”

  “What are you doing? Why are you encouraging that jerk?” At least I had the sense to grab the scarf before I opened my mouth.

  She tossed her beautiful black hair over one shoulder. “Who says he’s a jerk?”

  “Ah—you did, the first day we met him.”

  “He’s not so bad once you get to know him.”

  “I don’t think I have a strong enough stomach for that.”

  “Nobody’s asking you to go out with him.”

  “Oh, but you are? Since when? This has come on pretty fast, hasn’t it? You hardly even spoke to him on Saturday night, and you haven’t seen him since.”

  She clasped her phone protectively against her chest. “We’ve been texting a lot, and we skyped last night for hours.” Her face glowed with the memory. “He’s actually quite a sweetie.”

  I dropped into the chair beside hers and gave her a stern look. “So basically, ever since he found out you’ve got diamonds coming out of your mouth he’s been hot to trot. You don’t see anything suspicious about that?”

  She gave me a glare that could peel paint. “If you do, it’s because you’ve got a nasty mind. We have a lot in common.”

  “Right. He likes diamonds, you’ve got diamonds …”

  Couldn’t she see he was just like the prince in the stupid fairy tale? Oh, look, this girl is a walking diamond vending machine. Let’s get together!

  “Oh, for God’s sake. Is it so impossible he might like me for myself?”

  Of course not. There was a lot to like in that pretty package, and she knew it. What else could I say? I didn’t trust him, and she was determined to ignore me. I guess time would tell who was the better judge of character.

  “You just don’t like him because of that whole scene in the bedroom with the absinthe.” She leaned forward, intent. “But that wasn’t him, remember?”

  True. There had been something very unsettling about that guy, but if that hadn’t really been Josh … Maybe I was being too harsh. If Mum and Dad were right, that had been a Sidhe pretending to be Josh, presumably so he could get close enough to dump this stupid curse on us. Was that what he’d meant when he said he had a gift for us? Creepy bastard.

  A swell of noise in the corridor distracted us both. Raised voices were coming closer. Footsteps ran past the library door.

  Quarrel forgotten, we looked at each other. “Do you think that’s Mum back?”

  We hurried to the door. I paused with my hand on the door handle. What would we see when I opened the door? A real live fairy?

  “Come on.” When I didn’t move, CJ yanked the door open and stepped into the corridor.

  Six big guys in dark clothes escorted two people towards us. One was Mum. The other was a short, very ordinary-looking young guy in a scruffy T-shirt and faded blue jeans with a hole in one knee. If he was a fairy I wanted my money back. What a let-down.

  He looked up and his bright green eyes flashed when he saw CJ.

  “Hi there, babe. Fancy another drink?”

  ***

  Gretel looked up from the computer as we came into Mum’s office. “Are they back already?”

  “Uh-huh.” CJ slumped on to a couch, looking surly, as well she might. Mum hadn’t been amused, to put it mildly. She paused only long enough to send one of the men to show us to her office, then stormed off with a face like thunder. The scruffy guy had winked at CJ as he was hustled away.

  “And? Did they find anything?”

  I shrugged, perched uncomfortably on the arm of the couch next to CJ. “Just some guy.”

  “A guy?” She shook her head in wonder. “They really did it. They captured a Sidhe.”

  She turned back to the computer. Her hand on the mouse was shaking. “I’ve got to see this.”

  CJ had her phone out again, pretending she wasn’t interested. From where I stood I could see over Gretel’s shoulder. She’d set up a video link, and the screen showed part of a room where Dorian Kincumber paced back and forth past the camera. Dad stood in the background, leaning against the wall.

  “Where’s that?” I asked.

  “The vault,” she said.

  “As in, where they keep the money?”

  She grinned. “No.”

  “That’s right, you said that’s for the artefacts the seekers find.” I couldn’t see anything that looked like a magical object, just desks and computers and typical office-type stuff, but the camera didn’t show a very big slice of the room.

  “Among other things. It seemed like the obvious place to take a Sidhe prisoner.”

  “Sorry, you’ve lost me. Obvious how?”

  “The Sidhe have an aversion to iron,” said Mum, closing the office door behind her. “And the vault is lined with it—walls, floor, ceiling, even the doors. To contain the aether.”

  Gretel sprang up from the chair and held it out for
her.

  “All ready for you, Warder Winters.”

  “Thanks, Gretel.” Mum glanced at CJ, who carefully didn’t look up from her phone, but clearly she had more important things on her mind now than ferreting out what the Sidhe had meant by his comment. Not that she would forget. That look promised a thorough interrogation to come—once the interrogation on screen was done.

  Gretel left the room. On screen Dorian stopped pacing and looked up like a bloodhound quivering on point. The group we’d met in the corridor came in. Two of them handcuffed the prisoner to a chair, while the others took up stations around the room. Were those handcuffs made of iron too?

  An odd boxy contraption stood on a tripod next to Dorian. There was no lense, so it wasn’t a camera. It looked a little like those things surveyors use. I could see the leg of another one on the other side of the screen. The way Dorian rested his hand on it and stared at the Sidhe man, it looked almost threatening. I wanted to ask Mum what the thing did, but Dorian had started speaking.

  “What is your name?”

  The Sidhe laid a hand on his chest, pretending shock. “Why, don’t you know me, Warder Kincumber? I’m hurt.”

  “How should I know you? Your kind hasn’t been seen in the world since the incursion of 1920.”

  “By reputation, then. I flatter myself I was quite well known at one time. Even your great Shakespeare wrote of me.”

  “I’m afraid my memory of Shakespeare’s a little rusty. Tell me your name.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve been called many things. Call me Robin, if you wish.”

  Mum leaned forward and spoke into the microphone on her desk. “Robin Goodfellow?”

  The Sidhe looked up, directly into the camera, and performed a mocking half-bow. “The very same.”

  “Otherwise known as Puck,” said Dad.

  Puck? I’d heard that name before—he was one of the fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The one who spent all his time playing tricks on people.

  Dad was still leaning against the wall, arms folded. If he’d been about forty kilos heavier that might have looked intimidating, but when you’re shorter than nearly everyone else, it’s hard to be taken seriously. I should know. Puck only glanced at him, then turned his attention back to the more imposing Dorian.

  “What were you doing near the Cathedral?” Dorian asked.

  Puck leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other. There was a hole in the knee of his jeans. “Just going for a stroll. Working on my tan, you know.”

  “How did you escape the Sunlit Land?” Dad asked.

  Puck glanced over at him again. I sensed he was enjoying himself, despite the presence of the threatening contraption. He seemed perfectly at ease. Maybe he didn’t know what it did either. “Ah, well—you have your internet to thank for that. It’s a wonderful thing, you know. Brings the world closer together.”

  “What are you talking about?” Dorian sounded exasperated, but Dad was looking thoughtful, and Mum leaned on her intercom, one step ahead of both of them.

  “Katie, get Gretel in here, would you?”

  Gretel appeared in the doorway so quickly she must have been lurking outside. “What’s up, ma’am?”

  “Get me an analysis as fast as you can on the spread of that YouTube video. Who’s watching, how many, where they’re located, where’s the heaviest traffic, everything you can.”

  Gretel nodded and ducked out again. She didn’t ask which YouTube video Mum meant. They’d probably all watched it multiple times already, seeing those frogs explode out of my mouth, and the mad scramble for diamonds when CJ spoke. In this place there was only one YouTube video worth mentioning.

  “I’m talking about the connectedness of the world these days,” Puck was saying on screen. “We could have done a lot with a reach like that. We still could, in fact. They say it’s never too late, don’t they?”

  Dorian’s face grew red. The Sidhe man was a hard person to get a straight answer out of. Dad laid a hand on his fellow warder’s arm just in time to stop an angry outburst.

  “Tell me this, then. Why did you curse my daughters?”

  “Your daughters?” He looked at the ceiling and tapped one long finger on his lips, pretending to think. “Oh, you mean the pretty girls I saw in the corridor. That dark one does like a tipple, doesn’t she?”

  Mum stiffened. Oops. CJ was going to cop it.

  “Are they your daughters? What a coincidence.”

  Dad’s lips tightened. He rarely lost his temper any more, but when he did it was like fireworks going off. It was the red hair. Something else I’d inherited from him.

  “Don’t play games with me, Sidhe.”

  “But that’s like telling a fish not to swim, mortal. Playing games is what we do.”

  “Which is why we want you out of our world! Humans are not your playthings.”

  “Poor helpless warder. You don’t even know what game we’re playing yet, do you?” He smiled, that same unpleasant smile he’d worn as Josh Johnson. “Such a shame. It’s a very good game. And this time, we’re playing for keeps.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “What did that creature mean by another drink, Crystal?”

  There’d been a lot more to the interview, but the men never got any straight answers out of Puck, and in the end they gave up and left the vault. With the interview over, Mum took the opportunity for a little quality time with her eldest daughter.

  CJ tried playing dumb. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before.”

  Mum wasn’t having any of it. “Crystal Jane, don’t act any stupider than you have to. How many Sidhe do you think are walking around out there? He was wearing the appearance of Josh Johnson last time you saw him. Now cut the crap and tell me what really happened.”

  So the whole sorry absinthe-soaked story came out, and Mum’s face grew blacker by the moment.

  “Well,” she said as Dad and Dorian entered the room, “it looks like Violet will be going to the Year 12 formal on her own.”

  “Mum, no!” we cried together.

  “I’ve already got the dress!” CJ said. “And you’ve paid for the tickets.”

  “I don’t even want to go!” I added.

  “This is not open to negotiation,” she hissed. “Now sit there and be quiet.”

  Dorian paced, while Mum sat behind her desk scowling and Dad slouched in a visitor’s chair, apparently at ease. Only the jiggling of his leg as he tapped his foot double-time on the carpet gave away his true feelings.

  “We may as well condense him,” Dad said, breaking the long silence. “He’s obviously not going to tell us anything. Leaving him loose in the world is just asking for trouble.”

  “He’s hardly loose,” Mum said. “He’s surrounded by iron, under constant watch—what is he going to do?”

  “I don’t trust him,” Dad said.

  “Of course,” she said. “Nobody trusts him—he’s a pookah. They live to cause trouble. But let’s not do anything rash because we’re afraid of him. He’s contained as well as he can be for now. I think we should call a full Council meeting and let the others have a chance to see him before we decide.”

  “Jane’s right.” Dorian stopped his pacing. He’d literally worn a track in the carpet—the nap of the carpet where he’d paced was laying in the opposite direction to the rest. “We need as much information as we can get. What are the Sidhe doing?”

  “More importantly, how are they doing it?” Dad rubbed tiredly at his stubble. “I think what they’re doing is fairly clear. They’re attacking warders. First Bryan’s sister with the Snow White thing, now our girls.”

  Three pairs of worried eyes rested briefly on us, still parked on the couch in the corner of Mum’s office.

  “And what did he mean about the internet?” Dorian looked as if he were about to start pacing again, but Dad nudged a spare chair toward him and he sank into it instead. “What does technology have to do with magic?”

  “It’s not the t
echnology so much as what it can do,” Mum said. “I’ve got Gretel compiling a report for me now. I’m afraid he was referring to the spread of belief. You know they thrive on it. Because of that one YouTube video, belief in magic is spreading again, and there’s nothing we can do to call it back. The genie is out of the bottle.”

  “But that’s got nothing to do with it,” Dad objected. “Yes, lack of belief weakened them to the point where our ancestors could trap them, but that doesn’t mean that restoring belief is enough to free them. As long as the anchors hold, those walls are not coming down.”

  “That’s right.” Dorian nodded in relief. “Look at how much belief there was around the Cottingley affair—and that made no difference. The walls were still rock solid.”

  That was about the third time I’d heard somebody mention this Cottingley affair. It must have been big, whatever it was. I would have to find out soon.

  “I don’t know.” Mum still looked worried. “The reach of the internet is vast. Maybe now it’s enough?”

  Dorian shook his head. “No, there’s got to be more to it than that. Some extra step. What was that creature doing in College Street, so near to the Cathedral?”

  “It couldn’t be the spear. How could he get in?” Dad sounded like a man who was trying to convince himself and failing badly.

  “Maybe he’s just trying to fake you out,” I said. Playing games is what we do, he’d said. If this was the same Puck guy that Shakespeare had written about, he’d shown a fine talent for misdirection, impersonating other people and tricking half the cast into falling in love with someone else.

  They all jumped, as if they’d forgotten we were there.

  “Fake us out?” Dorian repeated, as if I were speaking some weird foreign language.

  “Yeah, you know—pretending to go after this spear to distract you from whatever he’s really doing. What’s the big deal with the spear?”

  Mum frowned, but before she could say anything there was a knock at the door and Gretel poked her head in. “I’ve got that report you wanted, ma’am.”

  “Excellent. Bring it in. Girls, go with Gretel. We’ll be here a while.”