Sleeping Beauty

Where to?" Jack asked.

I realized I wasn't crying anymore. There was no point. I was a broken, useless shell of a girl. My entire existence was a mistake. I had no home, no family, no future. All I felt was numb. After all, why mourn the loss of things I never should have had to begin with?

I shook my head, my voice hollow. "It doesn't matter."

"Do you, uh, want to talk about it?"

"You wouldn't understand." No one would ever understand because no one was the same as me.

No, that was wrong. Vivian. She and I were the same. I was hit with a sudden, aching need to see her. Really see her. I wondered if she knew about us, about what our fathers were. But she would have told me if she did. Now more than ever I could understand her, forgive her for what she'd done. At least I'd been able to grow up with the illusion of normalcy. She'd never had a life free from the faeries.

"Could you find someone? I don't know where she is, but IPCA has her somewhere."

Jack smiled at me in the darkness. "If IPCA has her, I can find her."

He veered to the side and opened a door into a white hallway I knew all too well. We hurried toward Raquel's office. "Wait here." Jack turned the corner out of sight.

I heard him knock. "Jack? What is it?" Raquel asked.

"Evie's missing!"

"What? What do you mean, missing?"

"I went to visit her, but her vampire and that dumb boy she likes were panicking. They don't know where she is."

"Reth." Raquel's voice cut through the air, so menacing even I was a little scared. "Don't worry, Jack. I'll take care of this. I should never have let her out into the world unprotected, but I'll get her back."

The sound of her pumps stomping down the hall was followed by Jack peeping around the corner, grinning. "All clear, then."

"You could have picked something nicer to tell her. I don't want her to worry."

"Oh, relax. Want to snoop in her office with me, or do you want to hide in the hall like a good little girl?"

I glared at him, pushing past. He opened her door and walked in like he owned the place, sitting down at her desk and propping his feet on it as he opened one of the drawers.

"Who are we looking for?"

"Vivian? She'd be . . . I don't know. Somewhere safe, where faeries couldn't get to her? And with medical stuff. And she's a Level Seven paranormal, if that helps." No doubt the IPCA researchers would be thrilled with the information I could give them about myself now. They'd never been able to figure me out before. Lucky them; ignorance was bliss. Or at least less painful.

He hummed cheerily as he flipped through the folders. I fidgeted, sure that at any moment Raquel would come back and I'd be busted. I couldn't face her right now. She'd try to rationalize this, comfort me. There was no way to make this better. There never would be.

"Here we go. The iron wing."

"The iron wing?"

"There's a whole section of Containment where the walls are plated with iron. Makes it impossible to open a faerie door there."

Interesting. That might have been nice to know while I was here. Yet another example of information IPCA hadn't trusted me with. I'd never been one of them, never really been a member. Of anything.

We took a roundabout route to Containment, then went through a supply door I'd never bothered to open. It led to a long, narrow hallway. I thanked whatever luck I had left (at this point it didn't seem like much) that we didn't run into anyone. Jack stopped in front of a plain door, a small, temporary plaque next to it labeled "Seven, Medical." Couldn't they have used her name, at least?

I pushed the door open and there, in a bed in the middle of the perfectly white room, lay the person who was the closest I would ever have to family. I walked slowly up, taking in the myriad of IVs, machines, and monitors she was hooked up to. And instead of the comfort I'd been looking for, I was overwhelmed with guilt.

"What happened to her?" Jack asked, leaning against the wall by the door.

"I did," I whispered. Why hadn't I tried harder to get through to her? I could have stopped her, could have convinced her to stop killing the paranormals. Instead I'd ripped the souls away from her, leaving her with barely enough to hang on.

But if I hadn't taken the souls, Lish still would have been trapped, never set free. I hated this. Why couldn't I ever love someone and not have to worry about all the other ways they made me feel?

I took Vivian's icy hand in my own, careful not to disturb the IV. "Hey, Viv." I tucked a stray strand of blond hair behind her ear, but her eyes stayed closed, the only evidence of life the rhythmic beeping of one of the monitors. Her breathing barely even disturbed the blankets.

"So." I choked back tears, trying to keep my voice even. "Turns out you were right all along. We really don't belong anywhere, do we? I tried to. I tried so hard, but-" The sobs came then, and I leaned my head over onto her shoulder. "I'm sorry," I cried, my words muffled by her still body. "I'm so sorry."

After a few minutes I felt a hand on my back. I stood up, wiping at my face. Great, now I'd gone and gotten her shirt wet, after everything else.

"It's not your fault," Jack said, his voice softer than I'd ever heard it.

"Tell that to her."

"Evie. You didn't do any of this. The faeries did. It's their fault. All of it."

I closed my eyes. He was just trying to make me feel better. I'd done this to her.

But then again, he had a point. If the faeries hadn't raised her the way they did, tried to pit her against me, we wouldn't have had that confrontation. They were the ones who broke her, twisted her until she thought nothing of stealing the life energy of every paranormal she could find.

Bleep, they were the ones who made us in the first place.

It was their fault I was this thing, this cold, empty husk that didn't belong anywhere. It was their fault that Vivian was lying there, that she'd never wake up again. It was even their fault that Arianna was doomed to an eternal life she never wanted. All the people who had been killed or turned by vampires across the centuries. All the kids like Jack who'd gone missing, forced to live among the faeries as pets-or worse. My mother, missing or dead, but gone, never to be mine.

All their fault.

"I hate them," I whispered.

"Of course you do." Jack put his arm around my shoulder. "Come on, we should go before Raquel figures out you're with me."

I nodded and squeezed Vivian's hand one last time.

We walked back out through the hall, passing the open cells I'd ignored before, most of which were empty. I jumped, startled, at a voice.

"Liebchen." Standing behind an electric-field guarded doorway was Uber-vamp. He smiled, one corner of his mouth turned up, his eyes languorously half closed. He didn't stand as straight as before, and even his glamour had a sick, unhealthy pallor to it now. "You look unhappy. Come in to me, let me take you from this world, my little monster."

I stared blankly at him. So this was where Raquel put him to make sure he wouldn't get out again. Jack rolled his eyes and flipped the vampire off, taking my hand in his and pulling me down the hall. I watched the vampire as long as I could, chilled by the look in his eyes, the memory of how it had felt to drain some of him.

His words rang in my ears. Little monster. It was true.

Jack found the nearest hallway that wasn't lined with iron and made a door. I didn't look back as we walked through. I was never going to the Center again. I suppressed a shudder at the Paths' darkness and closed my eyes.

"You really hate it here, don't you?" he asked.

"This is how I imagine hell. No fire and brimstone, just black and empty and alone forever."

He laughed. "Hell, huh? Well, hopefully we'll be able to disprove that theory soon. Besides, if it were hell, would I be here with you?"

"I don't know, if hell called for an eternity of annoyance instead of torment, maybe."

"I like you more every day. But neither of us qualifies for hell. We're victims." He smiled, the last word laced with venom. "And if we're occasionally wicked, well, certainly we'd be justified."

I wondered if he was trying to comfort me about Vivian, but he stared into the distance as though anticipating future wickedness. What did he want me to light on fire this time? I didn't think I was up for more destruction.

He opened a door into his Faerie Realms room. I collapsed onto a deep green velvet couch. "Can I please go to sleep and never wake up?"

"I believe your sister has that covered." I glared at him, and he held up his hands. "Sorry. Touchy subject. How about I go get you something to eat?"

I wasn't hungry, but I needed a while to be by myself and disconnect. Jack was so kinetic, always talking, always in motion. He exhausted me even when I didn't feel like this. Still, he felt like my only friend left in the world, and I was grateful to him. We understood each other. "Real food, please. This is the last place I want to be tied to for the rest of my pathetic life."

"Your wish is my command." He disappeared through the wall and I lay back, closing my eyes and willing myself not to think of anything, ever again. If I could only sleep, sleep and not have to think about the future without Lend, the emptiness inside me, that would be enough.

I was nearly out when a pair of hands with razor nails grabbed my shoulders and threw me across the room.

My arm hit the corner of a side table with a sickening crack, and I stayed on the floor, dazed. I could feel blood seeping from the fingernail cuts in my shoulders. What was happening?

"Get up," Fehl's horrible voice rasped at me. "I want to see how badly I can hurt you without killing you." I looked into her feverish eyes as she smiled at me. "How many of your limbs can you live without?"

She wrapped her hand in my hair, pulling me off the ground. I cried out, my arm burning with agony from the movement. I clutched at it, and Fehl's face lit up with cruel delight. She grabbed right where it was broken, and I screamed, lights swimming in my vision. I couldn't handle this much pain; I was going to pass out. I wanted to pass out.

"Evie!" Jack shouted. "Don't let her do this! Fight back!"

Fehl's face was right in front of mine, her breath hot and feral. Rage flared past the pain, rage at this faerie and all she had done to me, to Vivian. What her kind had done to the world. I shoved my good hand against her chest. It was time to finish what Viv started.

I opened the floodgates, and Fehl's eyes widened in shock and fear. A thrill went through me, seeing her face. She deserved to look like that.

Her soul connected with mine in a rush of energy and familiarity, my sparks and currents flooding up to meet it, welcoming it, wanting me to draw it in. Her soul was a dark thing, a wild and rushing thing, the wind howling eternally through a black canyon. I could taste its darkness, what it would feel like to own it.

And in that moment I knew I didn't want any part of Fehl inside me.

I shoved her away and she shuddered, crouching on the ground and wrapping her arms around herself.

"What are you doing?" Jack cried.

I trembled, drained from the effort it had taken to close the connection before I took any of Fehl's soul. Exhausted beyond belief, my arm in so much pain I could barely see straight, I shook my head. "I don't want anything to do with her. Denfehlath," I said, and her head snapped to attention. "Go away and never come near me or Jack again."

She jerked up, her movements stiff and forced like a living marionette, and disappeared through a door in the wall.

I sank to the floor, shivering.

"Why didn't you kill her?" Jack looked at me, incredulous and angry. "After everything she's done?"

"You don't understand. I was going to take her soul. But I don't want any part of her in me, Jack. A faerie soul would be worse than nothing at all."

He looked as though he was about to burst, then let out a deep breath. "Fine, then." Sitting on the floor next to me, he took my good hand in his. "It doesn't matter, anyway. Not after what we're going to do."

"What are we going to do?"

A beatific smile spread across his face, transforming his impish face into an angelic one. "We're going to save the world, Evie. We're going to make sure that faeries don't hurt anyone, ever again."