Chapter 6 #2
“Don’t worry,” the fox girl said cheerfully. “That was a youngling. Nothing to be afraid of, unless there are others nearby.”
My brows whipped up. “Others?”
She glanced over my shoulder where it’d disappeared. “You make a good point.” She picked up the lantern, moving away from the stairs. Her shadow loomed large on the walls as she walked. “We should probably retire from the main tunnels, don’t you think?”
She stopped by the dirt wall across from the stairs, where the warm lantern light illuminated a round door. Its dark brown wood blended almost seamlessly into the dirt until she opened it.
Soft shuffling noises came from the tunnel behind me. I tensed, taking an unconscious step toward Lore.
A distant cry sounded. It might’ve just been a bird. . . or possibly something much worse.
I took another step toward the open door.
No light came from the hole above anymore. The sun had officially set.
All I had was the flashlight on my phone and a couple garden tools.
If she closed that door, I’d be thrown into pitch-black darkness.
“Are you coming?” Lore called, inside now.
My feet took me a few more steps on instinct before I stopped, glancing back. Terrified or not, I needed to go down one of those dark tunnels. But which one?
“You said you were looking for some people?” Lore asked, still holding the door open.
Spinning back around, I squinted at her.
Warm light spilled out of the tunnel, silhouetting her as she stood in the doorway.
“That’s what you said when you first arrived,” she reminded me when the suspicious silence lingered.
Oh. That’s right. “Why do you ask?”
She shrugged. “Maybe we can help you.”
A fae, help me? Doubtful.
I hesitated though. She’d said “we.” Maybe someone else inside had seen them. Honestly, I didn’t have the guts to waltz down one of those dark tunnels alone with only the flashlight on my phone. It practically screamed, “I’m prey, come eat me!” to anything that crept along in the dark.
I drew closer to the light. Fresh out of plans at the moment, all I knew for sure was I didn’t want to be left in the dark.
At the threshold, though, I halted, head nearly brushing the low doorway. I’d just put the shovel and weeder back into my coat pockets, but my fingers twitched toward them again. “How do I know you’re not one of those boggart things?”
From inside, Lore snorted a giggle.
I crossed my arms.
“Oh, you’re serious.” She tried to stop laughing. “I’ll forgive you for being rude since you’re obviously human. Have you never seen a boggart before?”
My lips parted. I wasn’t sure how to answer that. “Obviously human? Is it not always obvious?”
For some reason, that made her laugh again.
She waved for me to follow her inside.
I reluctantly obeyed. Taking in the space, I flinched when the door slammed shut. It felt like I’d made the wrong choice. No, more like I’d run out of right choices.
The ceiling was at least twenty feet high. Shelves of books covered the walls, along with multiple nooks and crannies to sit and read. Along one wall, two soft-looking couches plus a few colorful armchairs rested around a brick fireplace with a toasty fire warming the whole room.
It felt like a home, honestly. Though, judging by this main room, it was much larger than mine. Beyond the bookshelves, at least two more tunnels led farther underground.
Maybe if I was lucky, my family would be here.
I wasn’t usually that lucky though.
“It looks like a tall hobbit hole,” I murmured to myself as I absently followed her through the shelves.
“What? The burrow? I don’t know what that is, but it sounds offensive.” Lore stopped abruptly, and I almost ran into her. “Probably shouldn’t say it to him.”
“Him?” I followed her gaze to find a man—or rather, fae, judging by those pointed ears—seated at a desk, poring over a brown leather book.
He paused halfway through pulling off a pair of glasses as he looked up from the desk.
Pale blue eyes caught on mine.
He wore a tailored dark vest in a smooth, shiny fabric over a long-sleeved button-down shirt. Besides the weird clothes—and ears—though, he looked like he could’ve graduated high school only a few years ahead of me.
Actually, no.
He’d never blend in with the high school guys. They were all about sports, farting noises, and wearing the same sweatpants five days in a row, while he had this too-serious, mysterious, dark-and-handsome thing going on.
I bit my lip.
His gaze tracked the movement.
I stopped halfway through brushing the dirt off my backside and stood up straight.
Good looks are deceiving, I reminded myself. In fact, I was pretty sure I’d read that fae used beauty to make humans easier prey. Or maybe that’d been vampires.
Either way, I’d done my research and wouldn’t be so easily fooled.
Standing in this room with two fae who might not be as friendly as they pretended, I made the split-second decision to keep my knowledge to myself and act dumb. People always underestimate you when they think you don’t know anything.
As far as plans went, it was unfortunately the worst. But it was all I had.
I inhaled to ask if he’d seen anyone. He held up a finger, making me wait as he wrote something down.
“He’s appointed master of the south entrance,” Lore whispered, emphasizing the words like they held some sort of importance.
“Hmm?” I crossed my arms. “I have no idea what that means.”
She gave me a sidelong look. “It’s his title in the Hollow Court.”
“The Hollow Court,” I murmured. Arms still crossed, I gripped my coat to hide the trembling in my hands, wishing I knew what to do. Was I on my way to getting officially kidnapped, or did I still have a chance to find my family and get out of here? “What is this place?”
From the desk, the serious dude chose to finally join our conversation. “It’s my library.”
“Is everything under this tree yours?” I asked without missing a beat, waving at the strange underground room full of books.
“Are all of you—” I caught myself before I said “fae.” I was pretending to be unaware, after all.
“Are you tunnel people? Did you dig the tunnels yourself?” I made the mistake of meeting his eyes on that last question and found it hard to look away.
His lips twitched slightly. “Do you always say exactly what you’re thinking?”
Ha. Ironic since I’d actually stopped myself from doing just that. I narrowed my eyes at him, keeping the fox girl in my peripherals. She’d perched on a low couch next to a table that held a tea kettle and two half-full cups. “Not . . . usually.”
“Tea?” Lore interrupted.
“No,” we both said at the same time, not looking away for a tense moment.
He lifted his pen and cleared his throat. “It depends on what you mean by ‘under this tree,’ because technically, all of the Seelie are under the Elder Tree, and its roots stretch for miles across all of the Hollow Court.”
I remembered reading the name “Seelie” in the nonfiction book from the library.
It was from Scottish folklore. I pulled up my mental catalogues, trying to remember what else it had said.
Not much, really. . . It meant something like “blessed,” or “benevolent,” maybe?
If they were stealing families, though, I probably shouldn’t put too much stock into that.
“I would not use such a crass title as ‘tunnel people’ to describe us,” he continued, unaware of my inner turmoil.
“But yes, this particular burrow beneath this specific part of the forest belongs to me.” He paused to fold his hands together over the desk.
“And I’m not going to dignify that last ridiculous question about if I dug the tunnels myself with an answer. ”
I rolled my eyes. “How should I know what—” I almost messed up again by saying “what fae do.” This was tough. I coughed and finished lamely, “What people who live underground are into?”
He tilted his head slightly but seemed to decide that wasn’t worth answering. Lifting his fancy pen to hover over the brown leather book on his desk, he asked, “Your name and reason for visiting?”
Standing there in front of his desk with my wrist still stinging from the way I’d landed a couple minutes ago and that shocking creature from the tunnels imprinted on the backs of my eyeballs, I just shook my head. “Why?”
“I’ll be happy to discuss my reasons after you provide your information.”
“What if I say no?”
I didn’t usually have quick comebacks, too worried about what people thought, but something about him brought it out of me.
We glared at each other, in a standoff.
“Soren,” Lore piped up as she set her teacup down with a soft clink. “I don’t know if you heard the loud thump outside a minute ago, but she didn’t see the stairs, and that fall can be quite a shock. Give the girl a minute.”
As someone who often struggled to hide how I felt, I recognized the irritated twitch of Soren’s brow before he hid it with a tight smile. “Take all the time you need.” He spread his hands wide and set the pen down. His composed mask was a lot better than mine.
While I didn’t want to give the fae anything if I didn’t have to, I also didn’t have time to waste.
I caved.
“My name is Brynn. And I’m here for personal reasons.”
With a satisfied click of his pen, he wrote down my response and something else beside it in a swirling script before snapping the book closed.
“It’s for the entrance log,” he said, surprising me by keeping his earlier promise to explain.
“I’m tasked with noting every visitor who comes through the south entrance. ”
Did that mean he’d seen Dad, Rissa, and Olive? I almost gasped. He might’ve seen Mom!
“Do people. . . visit often?” That word tasted like dirt. His kind had dragged my family through here, and he was making it sound like they’d gone on vacation. But I tried to keep my feelings to myself.
He shrugged. “Sometimes.”
Purposely vague.
Like he had something to hide.
He was probably in league with the other kidnappers.
Stay suspicious. I chose my words carefully, feigning nonchalance. “Has anyone come through here recently?”
“What’s it worth to you?” His eyes narrowed, calculating. He wasn’t buying my act.
But that wasn’t a no. I’d bet he’d logged them in that book of his. “Which way did they go?”
He merely crossed his arms, waiting.
I gritted my teeth. “I don’t have any money.”
“Who says I want money?”
“What do you want, then?”
“What all fae want,” he replied, casually crossing one of his legs over the other and leaning back in the chair. “To make a deal.”