“What are you?” Meghan demanded.
“The dark mirror of your world,” rasped the creature. “The things you fear in the abyss. The shards of emotions you reject. We are...Evenfey.”
Evenfey. The anger in me stirred. So, I finally had a name for my enemies. Not that it mattered. I didn’t care what they were called; if they were a threat, if they were here to harm my family, I would destroy them. Simple as that.
Nyx drew in a sharp breath. “You are fey, then.”
“Fey.” The figure made a dismissive gesture with one long, thin arm. “Good neighbors. Demons. Words. Only words. We are what we are. It matters not what they call us.”
“Us,” I repeated, narrowing my eyes. “Then you are the same as them—the nightmare piskies and the Monsters.”
The creature gave a raspy choking sound. A moment later, I realized it was a chuckle. “Your labels,” it told me, “are amusing. And closer to the truth than you think. But you cannot know us. You, who stole our names and our world, you will never know us. You have already proven that we cannot exist together. Why should I tell you anything more?”
“What do you want here?” Meghan asked in a steady voice. The Evenfaery, if it really was some type of faery, stared at her a moment, its skull mask giving nothing away. Finally, it rasped:
“Where is he?”
“He?” Puck echoed, sounding nonchalant, though his stance was tense and both daggers were in hand. Nyx hovered beside him, her moonlight blades unsheathed and ready to kill. “There are a lot of he’s in the world, friend. Count Dracula is a he. Godzilla is a he. You’re gonna have to be a bit more specific if you want a better answer.”
“The Soulless King.” The creature’s empty eye sockets bored into mine. “The ruler of those who once were ours. The traitor of this world. Where?”
Keirran. Cold, murderous rage shot through me, flaring Unseelie magic to life. “You’ll never find him,” I told the figure, tightening my grip on my sword. “He is in a place you will never touch. But it doesn’t matter if you try to seek him out or not, because in another moment you’ll be dead.”
I lunged, sweeping my blade at the creature’s middle. It winked out of sight, vanishing in the blink of an eye, and my sword passed through empty air. With a curse, I spun, searching the trees for the creature, expecting an attack from behind.
“You will not stop us.” The voice came from overhead, at the same time I spotted the figure in the branches of a tree. It stood on an impossibly thin branch, barely a twig, as it gazed down at us all. “Our own king awakens. The anger and hatred of this world stirs him from his slumber. Soon, it will be enough to open the way to Evenfall.”
A chill coursed through me. At the same time, there was a pulse of Summer glamour, and the tree the Evenfey was standing on came to life. With a grinding creak, clawed branches reached for the spindly figure as Meghan raised her hand, her eyes hard as she clenched her fist. The Evenfey vanished, blinking out of sight just before leafy talons would have crushed the life from it. I scanned the trees around us, searching the branches for long limbs and a stark white mask, but the figure did not reappear.
“Quickly,” Meghan said, and began hurrying through the trees, back toward the Chase residence. “We need to check on Ethan and Kenzie. Let’s hope they’re all right.”
“Well, I’m completely creeped out, now,” Puck announced, sheathing his daggers as he fell into a jog beside us. “What was that thing? An Evenfey? Has anyone heard of that before? Where the hell is Furball when you need him?”
“I am here,” sighed Grimalkin, appearing from behind a tree as we hurried by. “And before anyone asks, no, I do not know what an Evenfey is. Although, it did seem...familiar somehow.”
“Yes,” Nyx murmured. “It was old, like the Wolf. I feel like I might have met it once, before.”
“Given what the creature told us,” Grimalkin said as he trotted along, “I would assume Evenfall is where these Evenfey are coming from. Perhaps a place in the Nevernever that is either sealed away or lost, though that is unlikely. Why would they be infesting the Between and the mortal realm if they come from the Nevernever?”
“Also,” Puck added, “did anyone else catch that little tidbit about their king waking up?”
Nyx looked grave. “‘The anger and hatred of this world stirs him from his slumber,’” she whispered. “It doesn’t sound pleasant. But...” Her smooth brow furrowed. “I don’t remember any king before the Lady. There was no mention of another ruler. And yet, the Evenfaery was speaking the truth. Or, it thought it was, anyway.”
“Meghan! Ash!”
Ethan’s voice echoed through the darkness, and a few moments later he appeared, twin short swords in both hands. Seeing us, he relaxed, though his eyes still scanned the darkness for threats.
“Is it gone?” he asked, glancing at Meghan.
She nodded. “You saw it as well, I assume?”
“Ugly thin thing with a deer skull on its face? Yeah, we did.” Ethan turned and gestured back toward the house. “Kenzie is inside. She’s fine, but we found something that you guys are going to want to see. Come on.”
We followed Ethan into the house, after he deactivated the numerous anti-faery charms he had around the entrance and front yard, and into a small office. Kenzie was seated at a desk, Razor perched on the chair back above her, and she glanced up with a somber look as we came in.
“Oh, you’re here. Thank goodness, Razor found you. Did you all see the creepypasta thing lurking outside?”
“We did,” I told her. “It’s gone now. Though it might return later—we didn’t manage to kill it.”
“It was looking for Keirran,” Meghan added. “It must’ve thought he was still here.” She gave Ethan a grave look. “I know you don’t want to hear this, Ethan, but I think you two need to leave and come back with us to Mag Tuiredh. If these creatures are looking for Keirran, they might try to use you to get to him. It’s not safe for you and Kenzie to stay here any longer.”
“No,” Ethan growled. “I’m not going to let the fey chase me out of my own home. The anti-faery measures are working well enough, and I can get even stronger ones if I have to. We can’t go running into Faery every time something dangerous comes through. You have to trust us, Meghan,” he insisted, looking the Iron Queen in the eye. “We know how to deal with the fey. We can take care of ourselves.”
Meghan’s lips thinned. I could tell she wanted to argue, but she and her brother had had this argument many times before. Her title and the fact that she ruled and commanded an entire kingdom of Faery didn’t mean anything to the younger Chase sibling. Ethan was determined to live his life his own way, and he was just as stubborn as his sister.