Chapter 9
nine
There was a golem with short blonde hair dyed pink at the ends and wearing a sequin skirt standing in front of me.
I’d seen them before in Verenthia, only a few, and I could have sworn they’d all been smaller, and their clothes most definitely hadn’t had sequins on them.
I racked my brain for what I knew about golems, what Rune had told me—that they lived in Bloomsridge and dealt in flowers, could communicate with them the same way lizard-tongues communicated with lizards.
I’d once seen a golem being bullied by an imp, too, and had tried to intervene.
I’d actually thought I’d won, but instead I’d ended up being transported into the Enclave with Rune by said imp.
“What the hell—what is that?” Betty stepped to my side. “What is that, Nil?!”
“Golem,” I said absentmindedly, analyzing every inch of the creature, trying to figure out if we were going to be attacked any second now, but…
“That’s right. I’m a golem, and golems have names, too. Mine is Arez, like I just said.” She turned to Betty. “And yours is?”
“Attack it,” Betty whispered in my ear, like she thought the golem couldn’t hear her. “Attack it, Nil, c’mon.”
The golem raised pale-colored brows and looked at me. “It? Seriously?”
“Nil, att—”
“Betty, stop,” I said with half a heart, then turned to the golem. “I’m not going to attack if you don’t.”
The golem sighed. Actually sighed—and it was incredible to see it.
The only imp I’d seen from closer up before had been trying to make himself smaller, had been crying, shaking while the imp screamed at his face—but this one was something else.
She held her shoulders back and her chin up, and she was not afraid in the least.
“You think I’m stupid? Why the hell would I want to attack a fae? I ain’t got a death wish, if that’s what you’re thinking,” the golem said. “And it’s she, not it. I’m not a thing, Betty. Don’t be rude.”
My mouth opened and closed a thousand times.
I had no clue what to say, and even Betty was silent for a good moment.
Then she suddenly stepped to my side, looked at the golem and said, “I think I like you.” Like she’d just made up her mind about the most important thing in her life.
“Can’t blame ya. I’m likable like that,” said the golem with a shrug, and any other day I’d have proclaimed I liked her, too.
Any other day, I’d have still found it weird as fuck to be face to face with a creature who looked like that but spoke like a human being.
Exactly like everybody else around here did. A true American.
Instead, I was caught on the one thing she said that made chills rush down my back more than anything, so the only thing I could say was, “I’m not fae.”
Now the golem looked surprised. “Right,” she said, in a way that made it pretty clear that she didn’t believe me.
“She can still kick your ass, though. Just in case you do plan to attack us,” Betty said. “And also, sorry for calling you an it. I was just about to shit my pants. You’re scary at first sight, but I totally dig the hair and that skirt.”
A smile—and her teeth were all straight and white and so…human. It was so fucking weird to witness, and I couldn’t even tell you why.
“I’m a golem. I can sense magic. I can sense your magic, Nilah Dune, and I know you’re fae.”
The way my stomach twisted and turned, even before Betty said, “She’s really not.”
“She is.”
A pause from Betty. “Look, I don’t care what you think you’re feeling—Nilah is human.”
“I can—”
Before the golem could finish speaking, I grabbed my hair and pulled it up, away from my ears. My round ears.
The golem saw.
“Holy shit,” she ended up saying, and she sounded like a deflating balloon.
“See? No pointy ears. She’s human,” Betty said.
“But…how?” She seemed genuinely confused. Suddenly on the brink of tears as she looked down at my body, analyzed every inch of me slowly.
“I think it’s time you answered some questions first,” I said because I was definitely more confused than she. She was a golem, here on Earth, and she had pink hair and sequins on her skirt—which I was willing to bet was made here, not in Verenthia. “Why are you here and how do you know my name?”
“Your post,” she told me. “I saw your post and the keywords you searched for online flagged my systems. I deleted everything before somebody else caught them. You’re welcome for that.”
Okay. It’s just a golem talking about keywords and social media posts, no big deal. Really.
Stranger things had indeed happened, though this came really, really close to the top three. Which was why a minute must have gone by before I forced order into my mind and I actually made an effort to speak.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I didn’t have the slightest clue what for. “Hold on—what do you mean, your systems? What did you delete? And who is somebody else?” Those were all the questions, I believed. Though I wouldn’t have been surprised if I missed one.
“My systems that I’ve put in place to catch anything people put on the Internet about Verenthia.
I’ve got a list with a bunch of keywords.
You know, fae, succubi, werewolves, merfolk, and the likes.
It usually leads to dead ends, and a lot of them are made by fantasy writers, believe it or not.
They do extensive research about everything and anything—and I mean extensive. ”
My God, I was tempted to rub my eyes because I could hardly believe what they were telling me.
“I got a hit by you, and I deleted a post you made on three different apps. I believe you said something along the lines of, if anybody knows how to get to Verenthia contact me asap! Pretty straightforward. Took the posts down immediately. I doubt anybody important saw them.”
I looked at Betty, and she looked at me.
“I told you I posted,” I stupidly said, only because what the hell else was there to say?
“Okay, okay, Pink. Let’s back up for a minute. How are you here again? Because last I checked we don’t have golems here on Earth,” Betty said.
“Jesus Christ, it’s Arez,” she said with a roll of her eyes.
And I would have laughed, I really would have. Jesus Christ? There was no Jesus in Verenthia—there were only stars!
I briefly considered I’d lost my mind for real, but no. Betty was with me, and she was seeing the whole thing, too.
“I’m here because I was banished, too, just like you.” She pointed behind us—right at the Aetherway.
Fire underneath my skin. “How do you know that?” Nobody couldn’t see the ink on my shoulder from the shirt I wore, unless they knew it was there.
“Because I saw you just now. All that magic, and the Aetherway still didn’t let you through.
You have to be banished.” Again, those eyes scrolled down the length of me.
“Something’s wrong with you, though. You have fae magic, but your ears are round.
” Then she looked at Betty for a second, and I could have sworn her suspicion made the air heavier.
The tension thicker. “What are you, really?”
Oh, you know, just a good ole vessel for half the soul of a dead queen. No biggie.
“That’s none of your business,” I said instead and took a step forward. “Why did you take down my posts?”
“Because there’s no telling what they’d do to you. They have entire divisions dealing with us. They’ve captured at least two Verenthians that I know of in my time here.”
Shivers all over my skin. “Who?”
“CIA, I think. Could be some other division—who knows? But they keep track of online searches and posts as well,” the golem said, rubbing the back of her neck like she was suddenly tired.
“If the CIA was interested in Nilah, they’d have been knocking on her door by now. The entire town is talking about her since the fae came and got her,” Betty said—my thoughts exactly.
But the golem shook her head. “Do you have any idea how many townspeople talk about ghosts and magic and miracles of one kind or the other? Any clue how many legends are out there, how many people call the police in the middle of the night to report paranormal activities?” She waved a hand.
“They don’t take that shit seriously—unless you use a specific name, like Verenthia. Or any of the fae courts.”
“Well, shit. Does that mean there’s a lot of you out here?” Betty asked because I still couldn’t speak.
“There’s enough. But if they find banished ones, they usually take them in and keep them locked up. The fae royalties have basically given them permission. They do come here once in a blue moon,” the golem said.
I close my eyes and breathed deeply. Yes, I knew that fae royals came here regularly—that’s how Lyall had created the life-bond when he healed me.
But I had no idea that there were golems here, or even other Verenthians, or that they could be held by humans in prisons. How in the fuck did that even work?
Betty said something, and the golem replied, but I still couldn’t bring myself to hear properly. To understand.
Just how much was out there that I still didn’t know? I thought Earth was safe from magics and curses and the likes. I thought humans were all safe.
“…like magic. Almost exactly like magic,” the golem was saying. “You’ve got inputs and outputs and currents—and it all comes with no feelings involved.”
I looked at Betty, the question in my eyes. “She’s talking about human technology.”
“Yes,” said the golem with a bright smile—and I was willing to bet that those were veneers, not her real teeth. “Between me and you, if we want to be completely honest, magic is kind of the original programming language, you know? The OG. I swear, they’re not too different in how they work.”
I blinked and blinked.
“How long have you been living on Earth again?” Because there was no way she’d be able to speak like that, even if it had been a few years. No way would she have come to the conclusion that magic is the original programming language, and somehow compare it to technology, unless…
“About twenty-five years, give or take.”
“Holy fuck, that’s a long time,” said Betty before I could.