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"Here. " I ripped off a piece of bread and shoved it into her hand. "Eat this. All of you. " Lacking so much as a curious look, the other girls took pieces and put them into their mouths.
And chewed.
And swallowed.
And continued to look at me, without a single change.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
POSSIBLY IMPOSSIBLE
Shut up, okay?" I snapped, rubbing my temples. Jack was still coming back and forth, bringing two people at a time, and he was nearly done. Carlee and Lend were here in the meadow of orange grass and white trees, organizing the groups of people and trying to keep everyone calm.
Reth and I were unofficially in charge of the pregnant girls, and I was about to lose it.
"But he's supposed to visit us today. " A tiny blonde with tight spiral curls stamped her foot, her lips drawn in a pout. "I want to see him. He's coming to see us, he said so, and I want to see him, and if we're here he won't know where to find us!"
"We should go back right now. " Another of the girls, with perfect clear skin and a healthy glow, glowered at me. "I don't want to be here. I liked where we were before. And he's coming to see us. "
"Just go sit-over there! And. . . he's coming. Here. We told him you'd be here, and he's going to come visit you here, okay?"
All six of the girls nodded, some more eagerly than others. I was pretty sure Tiny Blond Terror didn't believe me, but she went with the others. There was something weird about them. Well, okay, there were tons of things weird about them. But there was a huge thing off. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but I knew it would come to me.
"What are we going to do?" I asked Reth, watching as the girls arranged themselves on the ground, playing with each other's hair or lounging, staring at the aquamarine sky. "Obviously the faeries are bringing them food from the mortal realms, which explains why giving the girls bread didn't snap them out of the faerie trance. "
Reth's expression clouded. He sat heavily, his legs at awkward angles like he didn't know how to sit on the ground. "I thought perhaps it would be the case, the Dark Queen keeping them here for safety but not wanting to change anything else and risk changing them and the Empty Ones, too. "
"Yeah, about time she exercised some caution. " One of the Dark Queen's early experiments to make an Empty One resulted in vampires. Brilliant move, that. "We can't get them to come to their senses until we get their names. "
"I doubt it will be that simple. "
"Oh, because I thought tracking down the names of six anonymous girls when we have no idea where they're from would be a piece of cake. "
"You do not understand the depth of the change they've gone through. The others are connected through their need for faerie food, yes, but these girls have been altered forever by loving a faerie. "
I thought of my mom, what had happened to her after loving my stupid faerie father and then being abandoned by him when he didn't need her anymore. She had wasted away without him. "But their babies. " My voice betrayed me by cracking. "They'll be okay if we take them away from whoever this faerie creep is, because they'll have their babies. They'll love their babies. That'll be enough. " If my mom had been able to be with me, if Melinthros hadn't taken me when he abandoned her, she would have been okay. She would have had something to live for.
"Look at them, Evelyn. "
I did, and for the first time it clicked for me what, exactly, was off. They didn't do anything that pregnant women did. I hadn't been around many, but some came into the diner occasionally. They couldn't go two minutes without resting a hand on their stomachs. I doubted they even knew they were doing it, but the need to touch the baby, to feel that life moving inside them, was a compulsion. I even caught a woman talking softly to her belly once.
The six girls could have had pillows under their dresses for all they cared. None of them had mentioned anything about needing to be cared for, or needing to eat or drink. The only thing I'd heard from them was whining about when they'd be able to see their faerie lover again.
"They don't care. " I felt like my soul had been sucker punched. "They don't care about the babies at all, do they?"
"They cannot. They've been consumed. Even if we find their names, I doubt they will ever be any more than empty shells. Being loved by the fey is not something a human can recover from. "
She wouldn't have loved me. I never would have been enough for my mother. Melinthros had truly destroyed everything about her, and I'd never been loved by either of my parents. Rage and sorrow deeper and hotter than I knew how to handle warred inside me, all the extra souls I was carrying around rising, agitated, and flowing through me.
"Would you have done that to me?" I glared down at Reth. "You wanted me to love you. Would you have destroyed me?"
He waved a hand, dismissing me with a single annoyed gesture. "I never wanted you to be mine in that way, my love. How many times must we go over this? I want to make you whole, more than you are. Not less. I've no interest in a human girl as a toy. It's distasteful. "
I gritted my jaw. "Distasteful. Yes. That's not an understatement or anything. These girls have been destroyed. Destroyed. Do you understand that? Whoever they were, whoever they could have been? That's gone. Forever. "
Reth raised an eyebrow at me from beneath his disheveled hair. "Well then, I suppose it's a good thing you are going to open the gate so we can all leave this realm. And perhaps if you had listened to me sooner and let me fill you, none of these girls would have ever come into contact with the Dark Court's machinations. "
I could feel my face turning red. "Don't you dare try to say I'm guilty of this!"
