“But how do you know it’s not an illusion?” Chloe persisted.
“I don’t,” I said. “I have to believe that it’s not.”
“I’m really amazed that you’ve survived as long as you have, with logic like that at work,” she said.
“Everyone underestimates me,” I replied. “I’m not offended.”
“And besides,” Beezle said. “I can tell that’s not an illusion with my special gargoyle powers.”
“I know you are tired,” Nathaniel said, “but—”
“We should keep moving, I know,” I said. I looked at J.B., sleeping on a tree root. “We’re not going to be able to fly as long as J.B.’s knocked out. It would be hard for Samiel to carry Jude and J.B.”
“I told you, you can’t fly anyway,” Beezle said.
“Won’t it be safe to fly once we get away from the forest?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Absolutely not. They don’t like anything in their territory. I was just lucky that I saw the nest before I got too high.”
“What nest?” Chloe asked. “What’s up there?”
“Harpies,” Beezle said.
Nathaniel looked sharply upward. “Harpies. Are you sure?”
Beezle nodded. “I am definitely sure.”
“How many?”
“I saw eggs,” Beezle said.
“Then they’re breeding,” Nathaniel said. “There could be hundreds of them up there, and it would only take one or two to cause us considerable distress.”
“Harpies are myths from the Greeks,” Chloe said. “What are they doing in a faerie forest?”
“Titania must have made a deal with them,” Nathaniel said. “And if the gargoyle is correct, then we most certainly cannot fly. If even one of the harpies sees or senses us in the air, then they will consider us fair game.”
“Yay, harpies,” Chloe said, standing up. “Let’s walk now.”
Samiel bent to pick up J.B. I went to his side for a moment, put my hand on J.B.’s head. He was cool to the touch.
“No fever,” I said. “There’s that, at least.”
Nathaniel came up beside me, touched my shoulder. “His body simply needs time to recover.”
I nodded, but I knew I wouldn’t feel better until J.B. opened his eyes. Jude trotted silently ahead, and we all fell back into our positions.
The thing about mountains is that it’s hard to tell how far away they are. I don’t know how far or how long we walked with the sun beating down on us and no food or water. All I know is that after a while I started to feel woozy. And then a while after that everything went black.
I woke up with my head in Nathaniel’s lap and a mouth full of dirt. I turned to one side and tried to spit, but my mouth was too dry, and I gagged. Beezle sat on my chest with a worried expression on his face. Jude sat beside my arm, still in wolf form, his tongue hanging out in deference to the heat. Samiel and Chloe were standing, leaning on each other for support. J.B. was on the ground beside me.
“This is taking too long,” Beezle said. “You’re not going to make it to those mountains.”
“I can do it,” I said through bone-dry lips.
“Yeah, and I’m an Australian supermodel,” Beezle said. “Look, we’re on a deadline with Therion as it is. Remember the vampire invasion of your hometown? We can’t spend the whole three days messing around in the faerie kingdom. We have to get out of here so that you can get home and kick some vampire butt so that takeout can be restored.”
He was right. I knew he was right. We just couldn’t walk fast enough. Samiel was strong, but he couldn’t carry J.B. indefinitely. Chloe was weakened from her ordeal in Azazel’s mansion, and I was pregnant. Jude and Nathaniel could probably make it, but the rest of us wouldn’t.
“What do you suggest we do, then?” I said.
Beezle looked grim.
“We’re going to have to fly.”
12
“WHAT ABOUT THE HARPIES?” I ASKED. “AND JUDE AND J.B.?”
“I can carry you and the wolf,” Nathaniel said.
I shook my head. “That’s silly. We’ll need you to be able to fight if the harpies come after us.”
“When the harpies come after us, you mean,” Chloe said. “But I can carry Jude, anyway.”
Samiel shook his head. No, you can’t. You aren’t nearly strong enough.
Chloe flexed her biceps. “I lift weights, you know.”
“You can’t carry a two-hundred-twenty-pound wolf through the air no matter how much you can bench-press,” I said. “I can’t, either, and I’m less human than you are.”
“What if we wake up J.B.?” Beezle said.
“He’s traumatized. And healing,” I said, sitting up slowly and trying to wipe the dirt out of my mouth. “How are we supposed to do that?”
“Well, we are in faerie land,” Beezle said. “How are sleeping princes usually woken?”
I didn’t have to see Nathaniel to know he was scowling. I stood up to put more distance between us.
“Look,” I said, my face heating. “In stories it’s the princess that’s woken by love’s first kiss. J.B. and I don’t love each other.”
“Yes, you do,” Beezle said seriously. “Oh, there’s a whole lot of human stupidity and some other stuff in the way, but at the core of it you love each other. If you didn’t love him, you would have left him here and dealt with the vampires first.”