Home > Misrule (Valentine #3)(6)

Misrule (Valentine #3)(6)
Author: Jodi McAlister

Surprisingly, he laughs. A short, sharp bark of a laugh, but a laugh nonetheless. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard him laugh before.

Of course he laughs at the idea that he might be trying to impress me. Because he’s not trying to impress me. The only person he’s ever been interested in impressing is …

‘I’m still not going to tell you where Emily is. You can be as nice to me as you want, and stitch me up as many times as you like, and you could rip open the universe and get Finn back and deliver him to me with a giant gift bow stuck to his head, and I still wouldn’t tell you where she was.’

He deploys the #1 play from the Tam playbook and says nothing.

‘Even if I knew where she was,’ I add. ‘Which I don’t.’

He pulls another stitch through my skin, a white-hot scrape of thread that makes it feel like someone’s taken a cello bow to my brain. ‘We do not need to be enemies, Pearl.’

‘I’ll start plaiting the friendship bracelet.’

‘The Seelie were always going to reclaim the Valentine.’

I turn my head away, just in time to see the front door swing slowly open.

‘They do not leave changelings in the human world that They do not intend to one day reclaim,’ he goes on, because suddenly, after all these months of silence, he’s decided it’s time to be chatty. ‘Even the lowliest one of them who is changed will one day be reclaimed, and the Valentine is a prince. The Seelie have mourned his loss for almost eighteen years. You knew that They were always going to come for him.’

‘I knew no such thing, Tam,’ I say, making sure I enunciate his name loud and clear.

‘Then you are not as clever as I have given you credit for,’ he says. ‘The Valentine was always one of Them. They were always going to find him. They were always going to take him back.’

Another stitch. The sound the thread makes pulling through my skin is almost as bad as the sensation.

I dig my nails into the flesh of my left hand again. I have to keep him talking. I can’t give him an excuse to turn around. ‘I’m going to get him back.’

‘The Valentine is where he was always supposed to be.’

Is that a soothing note in his voice? Is he trying to soothe me?

‘You and I can work together, Pearl. All we need to do is –’

‘– get Emily back to fairyland,’ I say, catching his train of thought. ‘Then Finn’s there, and she’s there, and you’re here, and all the humans and all the fairies are wrapped up neat in their little boxes, never to meet again.’

‘Those are not the words I would have chosen,’ Tam says, ‘but yes.’

‘So let me get this straight,’ I say, as he bends even closer to tie off the last of the stitches. ‘You’ve been kind of nice to me, so I’m feeling generous, and I’m like, “You know what, Tam? You can have Emily after all,” so I take you to her, and she’s so happy when she sees your face that she’s like, “I’ll do you a favour, schnoogie-woogie, and not kill everyone in a twenty k vicinity,” and then she goes back to fairyland and you sidestep neatly into Finn’s life and we all live happily ever after?’

‘Take me to her, and I will give you my word that she will not harm you.’

‘Or us?’ Cardy asks. ‘Will you give your word that she won’t hurt us?’

Tam turns, but the knife Holly has at his throat makes him stop. ‘Get off her,’ Holly snarls. ‘Slowly.’

‘You won’t hurt me,’ he says quietly.

‘Want to bet?’ She presses harder, and I see a droplet of blood bead on his neck.

On Finn’s neck.

I swallow.

Slowly, Tam levers his body weight off me. I scramble out from under him, and Cardy helps me to my feet. ‘Are you all right?’ he says.

‘I’m fine.’

‘You’re shaking.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Here’s what’s going to happen, Tam,’ Holly says. ‘You are going to sit down in that chair. I’m going to stand right here so you don’t get any ideas. And Cardy is going to tie your hands and feet.’

‘What have you done with her?’

Holly laughs, a dark humourless laugh. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’

‘What have you done with her?’

‘You’re pathetic,’ she spits. ‘You’re free, idiot. For once in your life you’re free of her, and you want her back?’

Tam’s hand is like a cobra, striking so fast that I barely see it happen. The knife clatters into the wall. Then he has Holly pressed up against the curtains of the front window, his forearm at her throat, pushing her chin high so that it’s almost level with his. Cardy lunges toward him, but Tam kicks him away, catching him right under the ribs, sending him toppling backwards over Shad’s favourite armchair.

‘I will not kill you,’ Tam says to Holly, his voice quiet and menacing, ‘because I know what she did to you. But you will give the Silver Lady back to me.’

Then he’s gone.

Holly bends over, coughing. Cardy’s heaving in massive gulps of air on the ground.

I bend down and pick up the knife. It’s a Stanley knife with a yellow plastic handle and Holly’s initials written on it in black texta.

Something about this strikes me as the funniest thing in the world. Fairies everywhere with mind-control powers and swords and daggers made out of ice and Tam running around with who knows how much ninja training, and Holly-Anne Sullivan strides into the fight armed with a Stanley knife.

The front door is banging gently against the wall in the breeze. I hobble over and close it. My muscles must have cooled down or something while I was unconscious and Tam was stitching me up, because every step hurts. ‘Are you both okay?’

‘I will be,’ Cardy says, wheezing. ‘Just give – me – a second.’

‘Yeah,’ Holly says. ‘What happened? Where’s Finn?’

I close my eyes.

‘Pearl,’ Holly says, ‘where’s Finn?’

 

I don’t cry. I sit there in Disey’s chair in the lounge room with a cup of tea in my hands, the first rays of the sun starting to filter in the window, and I’m really proud that I don’t cry.

I tell them what happened after they left. The Riders coming. Throwing Phil through the Summer Door to stop them from making her their ironheart. Finn taking five of them on at once while I cut open Mr Hunter’s chest and put his heart back in place. Finn healing him. Everything stopping, as the Riders realised that they were no longer bound by what the fairies wanted them to do, and disappearing into the night to find where their hearts were hidden, maybe never to be seen again.

I don’t tell them about those few euphoric moments where Finn and I sat on the ground together, covered with blood, and the world around us took on the pristine, crystalline quality of a diamond, perfect and glittering, because we had won.

But I tell them how Finn went through the Summer Door to save Phil. How he didn’t come back, and so I went after him.

How the Crown Prince of the Seelie made me choose between them: boyfriend, best friend, long-lost twin.

‘They took kids for all four of us?’ Cardy exclaims, at the same time as Holly asks, an incredulous note in her voice, ‘So you just left him there?’

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