He looked up, eyes wide. “She’s still outside?”
A tap came on the window, where a new line of salt had been poured across the sill. The dripping wet piskie stared through the glass at us, her small features pinched into a scowl. I grinned at her smugly.
“I knew it,” Todd whispered, and dropped his wet jacket onto a chair. “I knew you were the right person to come to.”
I eyed him. “What are you talking about?”
“Just…” He glanced at the piskie again. She pressed her face to the glass, and he swallowed. “Dude, can I…uh....let her in? I’m scared those things are still out there.”
“If I refuse, are you going to keep bothering me until I say yes?”
“More or less, yeah.”
Annoyed, I brushed away the salt and cracked open the window, letting the piskie through with a buzz of wings and damp air. Two faeries in my room in the same night; this was turning into a nightmare. “Don’t touch anything.” I glowered at her as she settled on Todd’s shoulder with a huff. “I have an antique iron birdcage you can sit in if anything goes missing.”
The piskie made irritated buzzing sounds, pointing at me and waving her arms, and Todd shook his head. “I know, I know! But he’s the Iron Queen’s brother. He’s the only one I could think of.”
My heart gave a violent lurch at the mention of the Iron Queen, and I narrowed my eyes. “What was that?”
“You have to help us,” Todd exclaimed, oblivious to my sudden anger. “These things are after me, and they don’t look friendly. You’re the brother of the Iron Queen, and you know how to keep the fey out. Give me something to keep them away from me. The common wards are helping, but I don’t think they’re strong enough. I need something more powerful.” He leaned forward, ears pricked, eyes eager. “You know how to keep Them away, right? You must, you’ve been doing it all your life. Show me how.”
“Forget it.” I glared at him, and his ears wilted. “What happens if I give you all my secrets? You would just use it to further your stupid tricks. I’m not revealing everything just to have it bite me in the ass later.” His ears drooped even more, and I crossed my arms. “Besides, what about your little friends? The wards I know are for all fey, not just a select few. What happens to them?”
“We can get around that,” Todd said quickly. “We’ll make it work, somehow. Ethan, please. I’m desperate, here. What do you want from me?” He leaned forward. “Give me a hint. A tip. A note scribbled on a fortune cookie, I’ll try anything. Talk to me this one time, and I swear I’ll leave you alone after this.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And your friends?”
“I’ll make sure they leave you alone, as well.”
I sighed. This was probably monumentally stupid, but I knew what it was like to feel trapped, not having anyone I could turn to. “All right,” I said reluctantly. “I’ll help. But I want your word that you’ll stop all bargains and contracts after today. If I do this, no more ‘help’ from the Good Neighbors, got it?”
The piskie buzzed sadly, but Todd nodded without hesitation. “Deal! I mean…yeah. I swear.”
“No more contracts or bargains?”
“No more contracts or bargains.” He sighed and made an impatient gesture with a claw. “Now, can we please get on with it?”
I had major doubts that he could keep that promise—half fey weren’t bound by their promises the way full fey were—but what else could I do? He needed my help, and if something was after him, I couldn’t stand back and do nothing. Rubbing my eyes, I went to my desk, opened the bottom drawer and pulled out an old leather journal from under a stack of papers. After hesitating a moment, I walked forward and tossed it onto my bed.
Todd blinked. “What is that?”
“All my research on the Good Neighbors,” I said, pulling a half-empty notepad off my bookshelf. “And if you mention it to anyone, I will kick your ass. Here.” I tossed him the pad, and he caught it awkwardly. “Take notes. I’ll tell you what you need to know—it’ll be up to you to go through with it.”
We stayed there for the rest of the evening, him sitting on my bed scribbling furiously, me leaning against my desk reading wards, charms and recipes from the journal. I went over the common wards, like salt, iron and wearing your clothes inside out. We went over things that could attract the fey into a house: babies, shiny things, large amounts of sugar or honey. We briefly discussed the most powerful ward in the book, a circle of toadstools that would grow around the house and render everything inside invisible to the fey. But that spell was extremely complicated, required rare and impossible ingredients, and could be safely performed only by a druid or a witch on the night of the waning moon. Since I didn’t know any local witches, nor did I have any powdered unicorn horn lying around, we weren’t going to be performing that spell anytime in the near future. Besides, I told a disappointed Todd, you could put a wrought-iron fence around your house with less effort than the toadstool ring, and it would do nearly the same job in keeping out the fey.
“So,” Todd ventured after a couple of hours of this. I sensed he was getting bored, and marveled that the half-phouka had lasted this long. “Enough talk about the fey already. Word around school is that you were a total douche to Mackenzie St. James.”
I looked up from the journal, where I was making small corrections to a charm using ragwort and mistletoe. “Yeah? So what?”
“Dude, you’d better be careful with that girl.” Todd put down his pen and gazed at me with serious orange eyes. The piskie buzzed from the top of my bookshelf to land on his shoulder. “Last year, some guy kept following her around, trying to ask her out. Wouldn’t leave her alone even when she turned him down.” He shook his shaggy head. “The whole football team took him out behind the bleachers to have ‘a talk’ about Kenzie. Poor bastard wouldn’t even look at her after that.”
“I have no interest in Kenzie St. James,” I said flatly.
“Good to hear,” Todd replied. “’Cause Kenzie is off-limits. And not just to people like you and me. Everyone at school knows it. You don’t bother her, you don’t start rumors about her, you don’t hang around, you don’t make yourself unwanted, or the Goon Squad will come and leave an impression of your face in the wall.”
“Seems a little drastic,” I muttered, intrigued despite myself. “What, did she have a nasty breakup with one of the jocks, and now he doesn’t want anyone to have her?”
“No.” Todd shook his head. “Kenzie doesn’t have a boyfriend. She’s never had a boyfriend. Not once. Why is that, you wonder? She’s gorgeous, smart, and everyone says her dad is loaded. But she’s never gone out with anyone. Why?”
“Because people don’t want their heads bashed in by testosterone-ridden gorillas?” I guessed, rolling my eyes.
But Todd shook his head. “No, I don’t think that’s it,” he said, frowning at my snort of disbelief. “I mean, think about it, dude—if Kenzie wanted a boyfriend, do you think anyone, even Chief Tool Kingston himself, would be able to stop her?”
No, I thought, he wouldn’t. No one would. I had the distinct feeling that if Kenzie wanted something, she would get it, no matter how difficult or impossible it was. She had wheedled an interview out of me—that was saying something. The girl just didn’t take no for an answer.
“Kinda makes you wonder,” Todd mused. “Pretty girl like that, with no boyfriend and no interest in any guy? Do you think she could be—”
“I don’t care,” I interrupted, pushing thoughts of Mackenzie St. James to the back of my mind. I couldn’t think about her. Because even if Kenzie was pretty and kind and had treated me like a decent human being, even though I was a total ass to her, I could not afford to bring someone else into my dangerous, screwed-up world. I was spending the evening teaching anti-faery charms to a piskie and a half-phouka; that was a pretty good indication of how messed up my life was.
A crash of thunder outside rattled the ceiling and made the lights flicker just as there was a knock on the door and Mom poked her head in. I quickly flipped the journal shut, and Todd snatched the notebook from where it lay on the bed, hiding the contents as she gazed down at us.
“How are you boys doing?” Mom asked, smiling at Todd, who beamed back at her. I kept a close eye on his piskie, making sure it didn’t dart through the crack into the rest of the house. “Everything all right?”
“We’re fine, Mom,” I said quickly, wishing she would close the door. She frowned at me, then turned to my unwanted guest.
“Todd, it looks like it’s going to storm all night. My husband is at work, so he can’t drive you home, and I am not sending you out in this weather. It looks like you’ll have to stay here tonight.” He looked relieved, and I suppressed a groan. “Make sure you call your parents to let them know where you are, okay?”
“I will, Mrs. Chase.”
“Did Ethan set you up with a sleeping bag yet?”
“Not yet.” Todd grinned at me. “But he was just about to, right, Ethan?”
I glared daggers at him. “Sure.”
“Good. I’ll see you boys tomorrow morning, then. And Ethan?”
“Yeah?”
She gave me a brief look that said be nice or your father will hear about this. “It’s still a school night. Lights out before too long, okay?”
“Fine.”
The door clicked shut, and Todd turned to me, wide-eyed. “Wow, and I thought my parents were strict. I haven’t heard ‘lights out’ since I was ten. Do you have a curfew, as well?” I gave him a hooded stare, daring him to go on, and he squirmed. “Um, so where’s the bathroom, again?”
I rose, dug a sleeping bag from my closet, and tossed it and an extra pillow on the floor. “Bathroom’s down the hall to the right,” I muttered, returning to my desk. “Just be quiet—my dad gets home late and might freak out if he doesn’t know about you. And the piskie stays here. It doesn’t leave this room, got it?”
“Sure, man.” Todd closed the notebook, rolled it up, and stuffed it in a back pocket. “I’ll try some of these when I get home, see if any of them work. Hey, Ethan, thanks for doing this. I owe you.”
“Whatever.” I turned my back on him and opened my laptop. “You don’t owe me anything,” I muttered as he started to leave the room. “In fact, you can thank me by never mentioning this to anyone, ever.”
Todd paused in the hallway. He seemed about to say something, but when I didn’t look up, turned and left silently, the door clicking shut behind him.
I sighed and plugged my headphones into my computer, pulling them over my head. Despite Mom’s insistence that I go to bed soon, sleep wasn’t likely. Not with a piskie and a half-phouka sharing my room tonight; I’d wake up with my head glued to the baseboard, or find my computer taped to the ceiling, or something like that. I shot a glare at the piskie sitting on my bookshelf, legs dangling over the side, and she glared back, baring sharp little teeth in my direction.