“I want to be human,” I said.
Cernunnos held his arms out on either side of him, and light trickled down from his fingers, green and white, bleeding into the nothing. The color grew and rose around us until we stood in a twilight garden, the half-light tinted green as it filtered down between massive leaves the size of my body. Heavy white blossoms shaped like trumpets hung on the plants closest to us, and pale white lilies tipped their throats up toward the sky beyond them. They looked hungry to me.
“You can choose,” Cernunnos said. “When you burn, you can choose to be born human. I made such an offer to your sister, but she scoffed. I looked into the future, and I saw that you would do the same.”
“I wouldn’t,” I demanded. “What you saw was wrong.”
The antlered king walked slowly toward James. James’ chin was lifted, unafraid. I was terrified of the fascination in James’ expression. There was an unspoken choice James could make too. “This was before the piper. Piper, know that humans who wish to leave my realm do not.”
James didn’t flinch. He held up his left hand, the one I wasn’t holding, so that Cernunnos could see the writing on it; a bit that hadn’t been washed off or newly added. It said bonfire. “But I will. Won’t I?”
He sounded a little disappointed.
Cernunnos looked at James, and I didn’t like the nature of the expression; appraising and hungry.
James continued, “You and I know it. Because I will be there on Halloween with her. I know you don’t feel like I do, like a human, but I know you care for Nuala. You can’t want her to be there alone.”
The antlers turned slightly. “You don’t fear me, piper. And you do not care whether you leave this place. And that is why you will.”
James turned his face away from both of us. With both his thoughts and expressions hidden from me, he seemed very far away. His hand in my hand was cold and still. I had forgotten, over the last few days, that he had been chasing death when I met him.
Cernunnos came close to me then, the tips of his antlers brushing away fragile-looking green tendrils of leaves overhead, and I felt young and powerless in his shadow. “Daughter, do you understand what I am telling you?”
I nodded, just barely.
“Wear black, daughter, to your bonfire. You and the piper both. Cover your bodies with black garments so that my hungry dead will not see you.” Cernunnos took James’ shoulder in one of his ordinary-looking hands, and James jerked as if he’d forgotten we were there.
“James Antioch Morgan,” the king of the dead said, and when he sang out James’ name, it sounded like music. “You will be called to make a choice. Make the right one.”
James’ eyes glittered in the darkness. “Which is the right one?”
“The one that hurts,” Cernunnos said.
James
Death smells like birthday cake. That was the conclusion I came to, anyway, because Nuala and I reeked the morning after we met Cernunnos. Not really like birthday cake, but like candles, I guess. Like the smell after you blow them out. We stank of it, our clothing and hair.
“James Morgan, I’m not losing my job because of you. Wake up.”
The first thing I saw after being dead was Sullivan, his face a silhouette in front of a light, cloud-streaked sky. The first thing I felt was the side of my face, hot and ringing.
“Did you just slap me?” I demanded.
“Did you just die?” Sullivan shot back. “I’ve been trying to wake you up for the past five minutes. The slap was me losing my patience.”
“Nuala,” I said, and sat up, hurriedly.
“She’s fine,” Sullivan said, his voice accusing, just as I saw her sitting a few feet away. “She wasn’t the one who found death appealing.”
I ignored that part. “Why are we all sitting on the fountain?”
I looked past the satyr’s butt and saw Paul sitting on the other side of the fountain, eating a donut.
“Now do you want to tell me where you’ve been for the past two days?” Sullivan demanded. “Paul, you want to go first, since you’re eating my breakfast?”
Nuala and I exchanged looks. I said, “Paul went to see him too? Wait, it was two days ago?”
“It’s Halloween!” Sullivan said. “October thirty-first, seven forty-one am.” When we all stared at him, he added, “I’d give you more specifics, but my watch doesn’t do picoseconds.”
I waited for Nuala’s expression to change when she heard “Halloween,” but it didn’t.
Instead, she just said, “Will there be bonfires on campus?”
Sullivan nodded. “The staff lights them as soon as it’s dark. There will be several.” His eyes narrowed. “What did he say? Cernunnos?”
I waited for Paul or Nuala to say something, but they were all looking at me like I was the ringleader. So I went over what had happened while Sullivan ran his tongue back and forth over his teeth.
“Paul, what did he tell you?” Sullivan asked.
Paul swallowed the last of the donut. “He showed me stuff I’m not allowed to talk about.”
Sullivan frowned at him, but Paul didn’t say anything more.
“Go get cleaned up,” Sullivan said to us. “You all stink. Then, “And James, I need you again. Normandy wants to see you.”
“Goodie,” I said.
Halloween. It was finally here. I sort of wished I could disappear.
James
I’d assumed we were going back to Normandy’s office for our little talking to, but instead, Sullivan made a giant pot of coffee in his room and sat me at his kitchen table with a mug. The coffee was very black, and I said so.
“We’ll both need to be awake tonight,” Sullivan said. “The bonfires don’t even start until nine.”
When he said bonfire, my stomach pinched for a second, sick and raw. I only had a second to wonder at the sensation—when was the last time I’d been nervous?—when Gregory Normandy pushed open the door and came into the room. Like the last time I saw him, he was in a button-down and tie, only this time everything he wore looked a little rumpled, like he’d been wearing it awhile. He didn’t say anything to Sullivan, just pulled out a chair and settled down opposite me.
“Hello, James,” he said.
I looked at Sullivan.
“Coffee?” Sullivan asked Normandy.
“Yes.” Normandy accepted a cup and turned his attention on me. He looked huge at the table, his elbows resting on the surface and dwarfing it. “I need you to tell me everything you know about Deirdre Monaghan.”
Something about the way he said it, just assuming or something, made me bristle. I held up my hand. “She’s about this tall, dark hair, gray eyes, pretty hot in jeans.”
“James.” Sullivan’s voice held a warning tone. “Not really the time. Just answer the question.”
That pissed me off too. I didn’t really care for Sullivan pulling rank on me now, not after everything we’d been through. “Why?”
If I’d known how he would answer the question, I don’t know if I would’ve asked it.
In response, Sullivan pulled a slender phone out of his pocket and slid it across the table to me, sans introduction. I looked at him questioningly and he just gestured with his chin to it. “Read the unsent texts.”
I clicked past the stock photograph on the wallpaper and through the menu until I got to the unread text section. Fifteen unread texts. Every one to me. My mouth felt dry as I scanned the words.
i miss talking like we used to
i saw more faeries.
luke was here
everything isn’t ok
i killed someone
i can hear them coming now
And finally, the worst, because it was exactly the same as the text message I’d sent before school started.
i love u.
I just stared at the screen for a long moment before slowly closing the phone. I was aware of a bird singing a repetitive, ugly song outside the window and of a misshapen P on my left hand and of the minute pause between when I exhaled and when I began to inhale again.
Normandy said, “So I think you can see why it’s time for you to confide in us.”
“No, how about this,” I said. I heard how my voice sounded, flat and not like me, but I didn’t try to change it as I kept staring at the screen of the phone. “How about you guys tell me what we’re all doing here. Here at Thornking-Ash, I mean. Not in wishy-washy ‘we’re watching out for you to make sure nothing happens’ terms. Like in, ‘why the hell did you bring us here when you don’t even know what’s going on under your own noses’ terms. Like you told me that you knew something was up with Dee, right at the very beginning, and now she’s obviously totally screwed, and you should’ve done something—”
I stopped speaking then, because Normandy was saying something and I was realizing that I wasn’t angry at him at all. I was angry at me.
I stared at my hands.
“James,” Sullivan said. I heard the sound of Dee’s cell phone scraping across the table as he picked it up.
“Look. You’re not an idiot,” Normandy said. “I thought I was pretty clear when we met. We—we being myself and a few of the other staff members here—founded Thornking-Ash after we realized that They were more likely to harass or kidnap teens with incredible musical talent. Like my son.”
I dimly remembered hearing something about this, back when I’d first applied to the school with Dee. I just stopped myself from saying “the one who killed himself.” It sounded too tactless, even for me.
“He was stolen,” Normandy said, his voice very even. “That was before I knew about Them. I knew I couldn’t let that happen to anyone else. So we created the school to find at-risk students and keep them under a watchful eye.”
“And the thorn king?” I asked. “Obviously his trekking about behind the school isn’t a coincidence, given the name of the school.”