Museum of Magic, page 16
“There’s no one out there,” Emmi said, unable to keep the doubt from her voice.
“How sure of that are you?” Puck snarled. “I’ve never see anyone not be able to actually use the powers they were gifted with. Are you really Elspeth Castor’s descendent? She would know.”
Emmi sucked in a harsh breath through her nose. “That’s not fair,” she said in a low voice.
“Whatever, Castor.” Puck shrugged, but his shoulders were still tight.
“You think there’s Hunters out there?” Emmi snarled. “Fine.” She turned to the street. The kids were now openly staring at their argument, ice cream dripping down their arms. “Hey, Hunters!” Emmi shouted at the top of her lungs. “You want him? Come get him!”
She whirled around and grabbed Puck’s arm, yanking him toward the front stoop. Puck dug his heels down, leveraging more strength than Emmi had expected from his slender arms, keeping himself from moving through the door.
“I’ll take him.”
The voice was cool and calm, but it was the assurance in the man’s tone that set Emmi’s spine tingling. She turned slowly, letting Puck go, and saw that the man who’d been carrying the box was not a neighbor or anyone she recognized. The box was gone. The man looked at her with pale eyes, a little smirk on his lips.
She had tried to use her vision and failed. The man was a Hunter.
“Take him then,” Emmi said. Her heart rate ratcheted up. How had he moved so quickly and silently?
His eyes roved from her to Puck, still inside, standing behind her. “You have to let me in,” he said. “Or force him out. If you can.”
Emmi stared at him, hard. That was the line Greybeard had drawn, too, when he’d first knocked on her door. She shifted her powers, focusing on him, and realized that this man was Greybeard, the original attacker, wearing a deep glamor of some sort. As she watched, he shivered, letting the illusions fade.
“How much fae magic did you burn up just to merit that disguise?” Puck snarled at the man.
Greybeard licked his lips as his eyes flicked from Puck’s shoes all the way up to his unruly hair. “I’ll have more soon.” He turned to Emmi. “Let me in, girl. It’s your house.”
Like a vampire, he needs an invitation, Emmi thought. The parallels were creepy, and Emmi remembered the way her grandfather had found out that salt created a weakness for the Hunters, or at least for their weapons. She looked back at Greybeard. Despite it being summer, he wore a long coat, his fists bunched up and hidden by the sleeves.
He’s got his weapon ready.
“Let me in,” Greybeard said again, his voice stronger, more demanding. He did not take his eyes off Puck.
“Emmi, Emmi, please,” Puck said, his voice hitching to a high note of panic. “I know we fought, I know I’m annoying, but—”
“Get out of the way,” Emmi said, using both her hands to shove Puck down and across the foyer. She took several steps in, and when she turned, there was nothing between her and Greybeard but the doorway and the thin carpet in front of it. He looked poised for action, his body tightly wound, his eyes glittering.
“How can I be sure you won’t hurt me?” she asked him.
“I don’t care about you,” Greybeard said. “Besides, even if you let me in, the house will still protect you. Castor built it…intentionally.”
Doubt seized Emmi’s heart, although she was curious about Greybeard’s choice of words.
“Emmi,” Puck pleaded from the floor.
“Come in,” Emmi said to Greybeard.
Grinning triumphantly, Greybeard stepped inside, taking a long stride to the left, completely by-passing the carpet Emmi and Puck had put down on the floor in front of the door.
The carpet that had a ring of salt hidden under it, the white powder caked thick and purposefully intended to trap the Hunter they’d lured inside with their fake, loud argument.
“Well, that didn’t work out,” Puck said, getting up from the floor, his eyes on the Hunter.
“The salt?” Greybeard smirked. “No. I knew you laid a trap. I’m not a fool, fae.”
Inside, Emmi’s nerves rioted in sheer panic. They had thought that with a believable enough fight, a Hunter would lower his guard and come inside. They knew they were being watched—they were always watched by the Hunters unless they were in an area that was protected—but they had hoped that bringing one inside would be enough. They’d barely begun the plan, and it was already failing!
But that does prove salt is a weakness, Emmi thought, that one idea giving her hope.
Emmi stepped over the carpet and slammed the door shut, hoping the movement was just enough to distract the Hunter. His eyes followed her, but he didn’t move, and he didn’t turn his back on Puck.
Puck, who pulled a fistful of ash from his pocket, drew a sigil quickly in his palm, and then flung the grey powder over them all.
Just before Emmi’s senses succumbed to the ash sigil portal, she heard Puck cry out in pain—Greybeard had gotten in a blow of some sort, quicker than lighting, but not quicker than Puck’s portal.
Warm air assaulted Emmi, and she felt her stomach plunging to her feet as her whole body swooped down in a freefall. Her hair blew in her face, and she scrambled to hold on to something, anything, but there was nothing there, just the salty breeze, the sound of waves, the scream of the Hunter—
A splash below her and a gurgling noise as Greybeard hit the water and sank, sank. Emmi felt cold waves licking at her feet as a hand wrapped around her wrist and swung her up. With his other hand, Puck pushed air straight down, creating a jetpack-like effect to keep him buoyed above the waves of the ocean below. As soon as Emmi was pulled up to his level, the little platform of air extended to her feet.
Her heart raced. “You almost let me fall!”
She got a good look at Puck as she wiped her hair out of her face. His shoulder was stained green with his blood, and his jaw was set in a grim line. Puck hadn’t just been hurt, the injury had been bad. “Let’s keep this quick, Castor,” Puck said.
Nodding, Emmi looked down. Puck kept one hand pointed down, creating the air barrier that kept them afloat, and the other gripping Emmi’s wrist, enveloping her in the magic. The air barrier was a meter or more above the ocean, dark blue-green with gently rolling waves, but even as she looked, the barrier slipped down an inch or two. Puck couldn’t keep the magic going for long.
With a gasp and a splutter, the Hunter’s head burst out of the ocean, a spray of salt water scattering like glittering gems. “What happened?” he shouted. He thrashed in the sea, looking around before he looked up. His eyes narrowed in rage. “What are you doing?” he screamed.
“Right, I’ll get to the point.” Emmi leaned down. “You can’t use your weapon when there’s salt, and there’s salt in the ocean, so…this should work.”
“You think so?” The Hunter grappled with his long cloak, and then Greybeard pulled out the same device that he’d used to attack Holyrood’s protective bubble. It looked like an enclosed dagger, the tip pointing out of a metal hexagonal tube that almost hid the whole blade.
Puck’s grip tightened around Emmi’s hand—fear.
But, even as the Hunter pointed it at Puck, nothing happened. The saltwater worked.
Cursing, Greybeard slammed his arm in the water. But his other hand lifted, an iron knife gleaming. His device wouldn’t work due to the salt, which would take magic from Puck. But a regular blade could take Puck’s life.
“Throw it, and we go!” Puck shouted, his voice cracking. “Figure your own way home then.”
That caused the Hunter to pause. “What do you want?”
“First of all, we want that.” Emmi pointed to the device that would suck away magic. Getting that would not only disarm Greybeard just in case, but it would give them something they could examine, perhaps finding a better way to thwart.
“No,” Greybeard sad flatly.
Emmi shrugged. “Look around.”
They were in the middle of the Atlantic, somewhere between England and America. There was no land in sight, just the curvature of the Earth and water, water, everywhere.
No ships.
No hope.
“You’ll kill me?” Greybeard asked in a low voice. It would take time for him to drown, true, but it would be inevitable.
“I don’t want to,” Emmi started, unsure of how far she could push this.
“I do,” Puck growled, the strain of his magic making his voice sound harsher.
Greybeard seemed to weigh his options, then tossed his weapon up into the air, and Emmi scrambled, pulling against Puck’s grip as she snatched it by the handle. It dripped with saltwater.
“Now let me out,” Greybeard snarled. “Send me back to land.”
“Oh, I have a few questions first,” Emmi said sweetly.
Puck’s hand twitched. “Hurry it up,” he said in a low voice. His face was pale, his eyes strained. “I can’t hold on much longer.”
Emmi focused in on the Hunter, using both her magical vision and her other senses, hoping she could see if he lied to her. “Where is my Grandfather?”
The Hunter’s eyes went wide, his body slack as he sank a few inches in the water before he started treading again. “You don’t know,” he said, marveling.
Puck grunted, and the air platform stuttered—not long enough for them to plunge into the ocean, but definitely long enough for her to feel it. He pulled her closer, and Emmi slipped her hand up to his forearm, careful not to let go of him as he reached into his pocket and pulled out another fistful of cold ash.
“Know what?” Emmi called back to the Hunter. She was distracted by Puck’s faltering magic, but not enough to ignore the important question at hand.
“I don’t have your grandfather, girl!” Greybeard shouted up at her. “None of the Hunters do. The fae have him!” He threw an accusing finger up at Puck. “The ones like him!”
At that, Puck’s magic shattered. The air platform turned to nothing, and Emmi plunged down to the ocean. At the same time, Puck quickly swiped his finger through the already scattering ash. The portal glittered and fell on them—Puck, Emmi, and the Hunter—like snow.
The Chariot
direction, determination, travel, and balance
Emmi smashed to the foyer with a teeth-clacking crash. Saltwater fell down on her like rain, droplets from the ocean that had gotten caught up in the portal spell.
Emmi was dazed but only for a moment. Puck was the first to move, leaping up, fire sputtering on his wet hands.
“Get out,” he snarled at Greybeard, who moaned on the floor at his feet, a dark stain of water spreading out from his sodden clothes.
The Hunter turned to Emmi. “You cannot trust his kind.”
“I can’t trust you, either,” Emmi quipped.
“Then trust none of us,” Greybeard pleaded even as Puck advanced on him, flames growing. “But don’t trust them.”
“I said get out!” Puck shouted at the Hunter.
The man struggled to his feet, moving slowly, as if hurt. There was a chance, Emmi thought, that salt did more than cancel out the Hunters’ weapons; it may cancel out their strength, their spells, anything about them that had been stolen from the fae.
Greybeard turned to the door, but he cast another look at Emmi. “I mean it, girl. Humans have to protect each other, witch or not. To the fae, we are disposable. Gnats compared to their long lives, worthless. We are fodder for their entertainment.”
As the Hunter spoke, the fire in Puck’s palms dimmed, worry creasing his brow as he looked to Emmi. But Emmi strode forward, not taking her eyes from the Hunter.
“You need to leave this house and never come back.” She spoke firmly with no hesitation or doubt, and at that, the Hunter finally left.
Emmi slammed the door behind him.
“Emmi, I swear to you by any god or king, I do not know what he was talking about,” Puck said urgently, his eyes searching hers. “Maybe the fae do have your grandfather, but I don’t know—”
In two long strides, Emmi crossed the room, placed her palms on either side of Puck’s face, and drew him into a long kiss, silencing his words and his worries. Once the shock wore off, his hands slid up her back, pulling her in tighter. She could still feel the warmth from the flames he’d summoned, the heat radiating through her shirt, and she had a fleeting thought of how easily he could burn her, how little she cared.
Puck started to pull away, but she could still feel the tension in his back, the worry threaded through his breath, so she held on. She kissed him until his breaths grew ragged from it; she kissed him until he could think of nothing but the kiss.
And then she stepped back. A soft sigh filled the space between them, and she wasn’t sure if it had fallen from his lips or hers.
“If I didn’t trust you by now, Puck, what am I even doing?” Emmi said, looking at him earnestly. “I am not stupid; I can see that you have your own motivations and that you have not told me the whole truth in this situation. But I do not believe you intend to hurt me or Grandfather, and I know you would have told me if you knew where he was.”
“I would,” Puck managed.
“I know.”
He let out a shaking breath.
“And now,” Emmi said, smoothing down her hair and straightening her shirt. “Let’s figure out where Grandfather actually is.” Just because she didn’t think Puck specifically had anything to do with his disappearance, it didn’t mean the fae weren’t involved. She wasn’t entirely sure about Greybeard’s word, but it was enough for her to consider it.
Puck smirked, his eyebrow cocked.
“What?” Emmi asked.
“I like the way you get down to business.” His voice was velvet, and Emmi wasn’t sure which type of “business” he was referring to. She swatted him on the arm, just in case. “Right, so,” Puck said, “the problem is that saying the ‘fae’ have your grandfather is rather like me saying a human does. There’s…a lot of fae. This isn’t narrowing the field down all that much.”
It also didn’t narrow down the location—Puck was proof enough of portals that could put Grandfather anywhere on Earth. Or in the fae lands, actually, which Emmi wasn’t sure was an entirely different location or an overlay on her own reality. She leaned against the front desk, tipping her head back to look at the darkly stained wooden planks on the ceiling, counting them idly as she tried to figure out a lead.
“Is there any fae that is linked to salt?” Emmi asked. Maybe her grandfather’s discovery had something to do with which fae was most interested in him.
“Oh, sure—there’s saltwater creatures, of course, some grindylows, sprites, selkies, some of the mer-people.”
Emmi tried to hide her astonishment at the idea that all those creatures were as real as Puck.
“Some of the sprites and goblins don’t particularly like salt,” Puck continued, “but that’s more about taste than magic.”
With nothing left to go on, Emmi checked her phone, hoping that perhaps the curator of the Museum of Magic in Bosworth had sent her a message about Grandfather, or…or something. No human had seen him, though. When she’d spoke to Joan of the Wad, the fiery queen had seemed to imply that the Hunters weren’t interested in her or Grandfather, which did lend credence to what Greybeard had told her. If only she had asked about the fae instead of the Hunters.
“Wait a minute!” Emmi shouted so loudly that Puck jumped.
“What?” he asked.
She thrust a finger at him. “When I asked Joan about the Hunters, you made a point to say ‘Witch Hunters.’ I’d forgotten about that, but you…you knew there was a distinction to be made then.”
Puck shrugged. “Joan’s crafty. I didn’t want her to deflect us with the Wild Hunt.”
Emmi’s mind surged. The concept of a Wild Hunt existed throughout Europe, although she wasn’t as familiar with the British version. Wild Hunts were bloodthirsty, rampaging gods or fae creatures that usually presaged—or feasted upon—war.
“Who leads the Wild Hunt in England?”
Puck bristled. “‘England’ is too limiting, Castor.”
“In Great Britain, I mean. The whole island.”
Puck shook his head. “The Wild Hunt comes from the fae lands, and crosses into the mortal realms.”
“Fine, but who leads it?”
“Gwyn ap Nudd,” Puck said as if the answer were obvious.
That was a Welsh name, and she had to get Puck to spell it for her before she could find it on her phone’s search engine. “Associated with Glastonbury Tor,” she read, scanning the pages that came up. “Part of Arthurian legends. King of the Fair Folk.” Emmi looked up from her phone at Puck. “I get that Joan was queen of the piskies in Cornwall,” she said. “What’s Gwyn’s role? What does it mean to be king of the fair folk?”
“King of all,” Puck said. “He mostly stays in the Otherworld, except when he’s leading the Hunt. But he’s the king. Others, like Joan, lead a specific group, but everyone serves the king.”
Otherworld—that was the more proper name for fae lands. And Gwyn ap Nudd ruled it all.
“We need to see him,” Emmi mused aloud.
Puck reared back, eyes wide. “We do not!”
“Why not?”
“Emmi!” Puck crossed over to her and gripped her arms. “You don’t just go to the Otherworld and chat with the king!”
“Why not?” Emmi asked again.
Puck shook his head slowly. “Who do you think he’s hunting?” he asked quietly.
Emmi had assumed that there was a sort of battle going on—the Witch Hunters versus the Wild Hunt.
“People?” Emmi asked, her voice a whisper.
“Humans,” Puck confirmed.
Emmi felt hope drain from her. “If this king hunted Grandfather—”
“He wouldn’t kill him,” Puck said immediately. He flinched. “Probably.”
