“Kingdom of Fey?” I asked.
“It’s where the Fey live,” Aislin explained. “And since Nicholas is part Fey, he goes there sometimes. But I don’t think he’s very fond of it because…well, because the fey can be…”
“Everything’s a joke to them,” Alex interrupted. “Which means there’s a lot of running around in circles. And it doesn’t matter because I’m not planning on going to either one of those places.” Alex caught my eye. “Gemma’s going to bring him here.”
“What…” I gaped at him. “I’m going to bring him here? How am I…Oh…” I stopped as it dawned on me what he was referring to. I was going to use a good old normal crystal ball, which in turn would allow the Foreseers to know that I was using a crystal ball again, something I’d been forbidden to do until I’d been trained, and something Alex had promised Dyvinius I wouldn’t use until I had. So if I used the power of the crystal, Nicholas would show up here to collect on Alex’s promise.
“But if I bring him here that way then you’ll have to—” I started to say.
Alex shook his head at me, trying to get me to stop talking.
“Have to what?” Aislin asked curiously.
I gave Alex a funny look, wondering why I couldn’t say anything to Ailsin and Laylen about the promise he’d made to Dyvinius.
“Then he’ll be super annoying, just like he always is,” Alex said quickly, taking me by the hand, which threw me completely off guard. “Look, I have to talk to Gemma for a minute about what’s going to happen when Nicholas gets here, so excuse us for just a second.”
Before anyone could respond to this, Alex was pulling me toward the door. Laylen and Ailsin exchanged a perplexed look, which I’m sure matched the look on my own face.
“What’s wrong with you?” I pulled my hand from his grip after we’d made it out of the room. “Why can’t I say anything about the promise you made to Dyvinius.”
“Because...” he glanced back at Ailsin and Laylen, and then shut the door. “Ailsin will freak out if she finds out about it.”
“Why? How bad is it?”
“I told you that's for me to worry about.” He backed away toward the stairs. “We need to get that bite cleaned up before we bring Nicholas here. The less he knows about what’s going on, the better.” And with that, he headed down the stairs.
I sighed, trotting down the stairs after him. “But what happens when he gets here?” I asked, following Alex into the kitchen. “Are we just supposed to ask him for the Ira crystal ball and hope that’ll he’ll give it to us.”
Alex started opening up the top cupboards that surrounded the cooking area of the kitchen. “No. You’re probably going to have to do that.”
“Why would I have to?” I asked, wondering what he was looking for.
“Because…” he bent down and opened the cupboard below the sink. “I probably won’t be here.”
“Huh….Why won’t you…Alex what the heck is going to happen to you when I use the crystal ball.”
He reached inside the cupboard and pulled out a first aid kit. “I told you—”
I cut him off. “Just tell me, please.”
He looked at me, and I looked back at him, the electricity coursing all around.
“I’m just going to be gone for a little while,” he finally said with a shrug. “It’s nothing major.”
“But you’ll come back, right?” I asked, suddenly worried I’d never see him again. Hmm…That was weird.
He paused, considering what I’d asked him. “Eventually, yeah.”
Chapter 8
As Alex patched the bite on my neck, his words lingered in my head. Eventually. Eventually, he’d be back, but when? Did he even know?
I was sitting on the kitchen table, with my feet up on one of the chairs, as Alex stood in front of me, patting my neck with a cotton ball.
“What exactly do you mean by eventually?” I asked him, flinching from the pain. “’Just how long are you talking about? And why will you be gone? Can’t you just break the promise?” I mean he was good at breaking promises to me, so why not to Dyvinius.
He gave me a funny look. “You know, you ask more questions than anyone I’ve ever known.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, if you’d just tell me things, then I wouldn’t have to ask the questions.”
He shook his head, trying not to smile. “Well, I’m not sure when I’ll be back—there’s no time frame for what I’ll be doing. And I won’t break the promise because I can’t. It’s binding because I made it in the City of Crystal. It’s how things work—promises are unbreakable when made there.”
“Well, can you at least tell me what you have to do while you’re be there?” I asked as he pulled out a square piece of gauze.
“It’s better if I didn’t.” He peeled off the wrapper from the gauze. “Trust me, you’re better off not knowing.”
It was bad—I could tell. “Well, if it’s that bad then why are you doing it?”
He took the roll of tape out, looking very uncomfortable. “Because…as of right now it’s the only way I can think of to get some answers.” He ripped two pieces of tape off and tossed the roll back into the first aid kit. “And also because…” He struggled with his words as he taped the gauze to my neck. “Because I’m hoping if I do, then maybe you’ll start…trusting me more. And perhaps…” He closed the first aid kit, picked it up, and headed back toward the cupboard where he’d gotten it from. “You’ll forgive me.”
He said it so quietly I wasn’t sure if he’d actually said it. Before I could get around to asking him to please repeat himself, Laylen entered the kitchen.
“So I’m assuming you need a normal Foreseers crystal ball to get this Ira crystal ball,” he said to Alex as he slid onto the table beside me.
Alex shut the cupboard and nodded. “Yeah, does Adessa have one?”
Laylen nodded, and we followed him out of the room to go get one. I couldn’t help but look at Alex, thinking about what I thought he said—that I’d forgive him. The more I thought about it, though, the more I was convinced I’d misunderstood him.
After we got a regular old vision-seeing kind of crystal ball from Adessa, we went into the now cleaned up living room. Evidently, Adessa had used magic to clean and mend up Laylen’s and Alex’s mess. The shelves were back up on the dark blue walls, the knickknacks standing on them. The apothecary table was no longer broken and the black candles were topping it once again. And the crack in the wall had miraculously been fixed.
It was really early in the morning, and Adessa had decided she needed to do some inventory in her store. Alex had suggested to Aislin that she should go help Adessa. I think he did it so that Aislin would be distracted from the fact that when Nicholas showed up, he would be taken away to the City of Crystal. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t going to tell her, but there was no use trying to argue with him. Whatever the promise was, he wanted to keep it a secret from her.
While we had been getting things set up, Alex had informed me that he still wasn’t sure if this was going to work. All he knew was that Foreseers did have a Ira crystal ball, which allowed them to travel to and from places that people normally couldn’t travel to—like say for instance The Underworld—but he wasn’t sure how it would work exactly. All we could hope for is that we’d be able to get Nicholas to tell us. For some reason, I had a feeling that this was going to be tricky. Faeries were tricky after all, so getting information from one seemed liked it would be tricky.
The violet ribbons swirled and danced inside the crystal ball, which was balanced in its stand on top of the apothecary table in front of us. Laylen sat on the one side of me, while Alex sat on the other side of me. I’d put myself in the middle of them intentionally, figuring it’d be best to separate them, just in case they decided to get mad at one another again.
I felt a little afraid looking down at the glinting crystal ball. I worried where I would end up when I went in, and if I would even be able to get myself out. But we were all taking risks here, and I guess this was mine.
All I could do was cross my fingers, and hope that I would return to Adessa’s and find a more than cooperative Nicholas awaiting to tell me in detail what needed to be done to get my mother out of that horrendous place known as The Underworld.
But I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be nearly that easy.
“Okay, so now what?” Laylen asked. “Gemma’s just supposed to go into a vision and faerie boy will show up here and hand over this Ira crystal ball and then, BAM, we’ll just be able to travel to The Underworld without having to get dragged down through the lake by a Water Faerie?”
“Something like that,” Alex mumbled quietly as he stared at the crystal ball. He looked at me. “Whenever you’re ready, go ahead.”
I eyed the crystal ball warily. “Okay….” Well, here goes nothing. I reached for the crystal ball, but Alex caught my hand before my fingers grazed the glass.
“You need to make sure you go somewhere safe,” he insisted, holding onto my hand. “Just think of something simple that might have happened in your past. You have to be careful you don’t alter anything. Or get yourself stuck…You do remember how Nicholas got you out of the vision, when you went in with him, right?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “He just blinked and we were out.”
He frowned. “But he didn’t have you try.”
I sighed. “Look, I’ll be okay. I’ve gone in and out of visions on my own before. Some without using a crystal ball.”
“What?” Laylen said, at the exact same time Alex shot me a pointed look.