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“I need you to trust me on this. I won’t do anything to harm Cadogan. But we need help.”
There was a pause.
“We’ll be waiting,” he said, and hung up.
I glanced back at Claudia, still unconscious on the backseat, realized there might not be enough macaroni drawings in the world to make up for this one.
• • •
The gate lifted when we drove up to it, the door into the basement garage sliding open. Theo drove down into the House, then into a space near the door where my father, my mother, and Kelley waited for us. She opened the door for Theo, and he lifted Claudia into his arms.
“Jesus,” my father said, brow furrowed as Theo carried her to the door that Kelley rushed to pull open.
She was still limp, hair cascading nearly to the floor. And she looked worse in the fluorescent lights, dark shadows beneath her eyes, a bruise across her jaw, and a paleness to her skin that rivaled vampires’.
“Second parlor,” my father said, and I pointed Theo toward the stairs. We followed him up, then into the pretty sitting room, where vampires scooted out of the way to give him the couch.Theo placed her down, then stepped back into the foyer, where we watched her warily.
“Yuen’s not here yet?” he asked.
“He’s on his way,” my father said. “Stuck in traffic.”
“Delia’s on her way, too,” Kelley said. “She was at the hospital.”
In the meantime, my mother stepped forward, checked Claudia’s temperature, her pulse. “Alive, but unconscious. I really don’t know how much we can do for her outside the castle. Her power, her magic, is tied to place.”
“She was at the church?” my father asked.
“She was,” Theo said, arms crossed as he looked down at Claudia. “Guarded by two fairies. She was bound, unconscious.”
“And the fairies?” my father asked, the tension clear in his voice.
“Alive,” Theo said. “But displeased.”
My father nodded.
“Ruadan did this,” I explained. “He wanted to get her out of the way in order to bring their kingdom back.”
“Their kingdom?” my mother asked.
“The green land,” Theo said.
My parents’ stares were blank.
“I don’t understand,” my mother said. “The green land is a place. It can’t be brought here. Deposited here.”
“That’s no longer the case,” Theo said, and pulled out his screen.
They watched the United Center become hills and flowing grass, the fairy mound in the middle of it all. My mother’s face, already porcelain-pale, seemed to lose all remaining color.
“They did it,” she quietly said. “But how? How could they do it?” The question was quiet, as if she was speaking to herself, had forgotten we were there.
“She took us into that world,” my father said. “And it’s a worldof magic. By logical extension, perhaps they could bring that world here.” But he didn’t sound convinced.
“Liege,” Kelley said, “what are we going to do with Claudia? This may not be a popular opinion at the moment, but she’s dangerous. I don’t know that we want her in the House.”
“I agree.”
We looked back to find Yuen in the doorway, Petra behind him. They were becoming Cadogan House regulars. And there were no shifters in their wake on this trip.
