Kim blew her dyed-pink hair out of her face. “It’s called a nose ring.” Having people stare at her for the piercings and hair and leather was way better than having them stare at her because she looked prematurely old, like a progeria victim.
From the den, her father called, “Is she home?” A piece of ice clinked against glass. She so did not want to deal with Dad if he’d been drinking. He got maudlin about the old country and if she had to hear one more story about how life was so much better in Faerie, she’d scream.
“Yes!” Kim shouted. “I’m home and I’m going to bed so I don’t have to look at myself.”
She ran up the stairs two at a time, Utilikilt swinging against her legs. Mom hollered up the stairs at her, but Kim didn’t care. She hopped over the salt line on her threshold, slammed the door to her room and threw herself on the bed without even bothering to turn on the lights. What was the point?
The mantel clock downstairs chimed midnight.
Kim’s mom knocked on her door. “Kim? Come out, honey, your father and I need to talk to you.”
“Why don’t you come in?”
“If you’ll sweep the salt aside.”
Rolling her eyes, Kim dragged herself off the bed and opened the door. With midnight, the glamour masking her mother’s appearance had dropped. Mom had shrunk and twisted, aging one hundred years in the stroke of the clock. Gone was her carefully coiffed platinum hairdo in exchange for sparse, dry hair. The hall light gleamed off her scalp. Her nose nearly touched her chin, where a wart sported more hair than was on the rest of her head.
The thing that burned Kim like cold iron was that, aside from her dyed hair, she knew she looked just like her mother. All changelings were born looking old. That might be fine if you lived in Faerie with other people of your species, but here, Kim was just a freak. “What.”
Mom smiled, showing her scraggly teeth, but her chin trembled and her eyes were moist. “We’ve had a message. From the old country. Come downstairs so we can talk about it.”
Despite herself, Kim stepped over the salt line, into the hall. The only time she could remember Mom crying was when their dog had died. She’d held Buffy’s head and wept like her heart had broken. Dad had said the golden retriever had been the first mortal thing Mom had ever loved. Death wasn’t common in Faerie.
Seeing her on the verge of tears now freaked Kim out. She followed Mom downstairs without speaking.
Dad sat in his easy chair, holding a glass of whiskey loosely in his left hand. The reading lamp lit his arm and lap, but left his face in shadow. On the walnut end table beside him lay a piece of parchment at odds with the magazine-perfect living room.
The cream Berber carpet and the cranberry French toile curtains and the tan leather couch all seemed dirty and smudged by the introduction of this one thing from Faerie. It forced itself into her vision with a crisper focus than anything of mortal origins.
Her father set his drink down and leaned forward into the light. Like her mother, he looked scary ancient. His gray wool sweater hung from his shoulders as if he were a first grader playing dress up. His broad, pitted nose was bright red. Dad wiped his hand across his face and covered his eyes for a moment.
He inhaled deeply and dropped his hand. “This is difficult.” Dad picked up the parchment. “We knew it was coming, but… Do you want to sit down?”
“No, sir.” Kim bit the inside of her cheek, uncertain about what was going to come next.
Even though her parents had always told her they’d come to the mortal world for the sole purpose of conceiving her, even though her childhood had been filled with fairy tales in which she was the chosen one, even seeing their glamour, Kim had never fully believed them. Because the truth, that she was the first faerie born into the mortal world since the gate closed, was crazy. She gestured at the parchment. “Can I see it?”
Dad handed it to her and took another sip of his whiskey while Mom dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.
Right trustie and welbeloved, wee greete you well.
Grat is the task which wee must aske of you, but wee know you will fulfill it in such a way as may not onely nourish and continue our love and good will towards you, but also encrease the same. Our good and most loving Subjects, your worthy parents, have striven to raise you out of the sight of certaine devilish and wicked minded enemies of ours. These enemies who style themselves the Unseelie Court, have most wickedly and unnaturally conspired to have stirred up (as much as in them lay) a generall rebellion throughout our whole Realme. It pleases us to…
“I don’t get this.” Kim lowered the parchment. “I mean, she can’t even spell.”
Her mother winced and took the parchment out of her hands. “The Faerie Queen is using the high court language from before the gate closed during Bloody Mary’s reign. Your father and I had to learn modern English as a second language, of course we were both very young, but—”
“Fern, we need to get moving.” Dad nodded at the brass and mahogany mantel clock. “She wanted us at St. Andrew’s after mass.”
“What?” Kim scanned the parchment again, but the spelling was so poor she had trouble making any sense of it. The cathedral was five blocks from their house, and though she knew it held the Key, they weren’t supposed to open the gate until her sixteenth birthday which was still months away. “But it’s after midnight.”
Her mother sniffed. “If you’d come home when I asked this wouldn’t be a problem.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t tell me why.”
“I didn’t want to distract you at school. Your grades have already been slipping and—”
“Oh, as if that matters. What? My SAT scores will get me into the best schools in Faerie?”
“Stop it.” Draining his whiskey, Dad stood and pulled the letter from her hands. “The Unseelie Court know about you.”
That cut her retort off. The rebel faeries who formed the Unseelie Court had nearly torn the realm apart three hundred years ago when they closed the gate. The only people through since then had been a handful of changelings, like her parents, who’d worked a complicated magic to change places with mortals. “When you say ‘know’…?”
He snapped the parchment at her. “There’s a traitor in the Queen’s Court. She knows not who it is, but it is clear that they have found out about you and the plans to reopen the gate. If we give them any time at all, they will send a changeling and kill you rather than let that happen.”
“Woody, you’re frightening her.”
“What would you have? A child not frightened, but without the information to make good decisions? Fern. We can’t go into the church with her. She has to know that the Unseelie have likely alerted the Catholics and that someone might be there.”
“Let’s just go and get it over with.” Kim flipped the hood of her sweatshirt up to give herself at least a semblance of privacy. Underneath everything, a film of sweat coated her body. Her joints ached with anticipation. “Opening the gate is what I’m here for, isn’t it?”
Even though it was only five blocks to the church, her parents drove in case they needed to make a quick getaway. They stopped the Prius across the street from St. Andrew’s and got out with her. Farther down the block, the laughter of late-night hipsters drifted down Alberta Street. Mom put her hands on Kim’s shoulders and kissed her forehead. “I want you to know that your father and I are very proud of you, no matter what happens.”
Kim’s heartbeat rattled through every bone of her body. She knew their allergies meant that her parents couldn’t go into the church with her, but for a second, she wished they could. “Any last words of advice?”