Jenna Black - Glimmerglass

“No!” I wailed, although I knew it would do no good. “Why are you doing this?”

The Knight knelt at Finn’s side, and even behind the dark glasses, I could feel his eyes locked on mine. His smile was cold and cruel, and I saw nothing even remotely human in his face.

“Leave Avalon,” he said to me. “Leave, and never come back. Else, it will be you next time.”

I screamed as he raised his hand, then plunged the knife into Finn’s back. Finn cried out and tried to move. I realized with horror that the knife had pinned him to the floor.

The Knight who was holding me finally let go, shoving me to the floor. Their feet crunched on broken glass as they left the dressing room.

Horrified, I made my way to Finn’s side, heedless of the glass. The knife hilt protruded from just above his right shoulder blade, and blood poured from the wound. He was still breathing, though, the air sawing in and out of his chest. I put my shaking hand on him, not sure what to do for him. I’d nursed my mom through a couple of drunken accidents before, but nothing remotely like this. Should I pull the knife out, or would that make things worse?

With a groan of pain, Finn turned his head toward me.

“Oh, God!” I cried. “Don’t move!”

His face was … ruined. That’s the only way I could describe it. I don’t know how many bones were broken, but it was a lot. But Knights are apparently made of some really strong stuff.

“I’ll live,” he managed to gasp at me. “Get help.”

I didn’t know if I believed his claim, but his words were enough to get me moving. Now covered in blood and mirror shards myself, I stumbled out into the shop.

The shopkeeper was lying on the floor behind the cash register. Kimber, sporting what was soon to be a massive bruise on the side of her face, was helping the other woman sit up. I’d have been relieved to see they were all right if my fear for Finn had let me think of anything else.

“The phone!” I screamed at the shopkeeper, hysteria threatening to take over. “Where’s the phone? I need to call an ambulance.”

She pointed at the phone, which was practically right in front of my face. I picked it up with shaking hands, but my palms were full of glass, so I dropped it. The shopkeeper had recovered enough to stand, and she reached out her hand.

“Let me,” she said. And since I didn’t know what number to dial, and couldn’t give an address, and probably couldn’t dial correctly anyway with my injured hands, I did.

The ambulance and paramedics arrived at the same time as the police. I was still shaking, but I had enough brain function to know I was better off staying by Finn’s side—even though he could do nothing to help me—than letting the police take me down to the station for a statement or questioning or whatever. The police had arrested my father on a trumped-up charge, and I had no idea whose pocket they might be in. I didn’t want to take the chance of losing what freedom I had, so I pretended to be a little more hysterical and hurt than I was. There was enough blood on me to make the act more than convincing.

Kimber and the shopkeeper received a cursory examination by the paramedics and were quickly dismissed as non-emergencies. Finn, however, was a different story. He was unconscious, and had clearly lost a lot of blood.

I rode in the ambulance with Finn to Avalon’s only hospital. The paramedics—one Fae and one human—didn’t seem anywhere near as worried about Finn’s condition as I was.

“He’ll be fine,” the Fae paramedic said. “If they’d been trying to kill him, they’d have used an iron knife instead of silver.”

“And they wouldn’t have put it through his shoulder,” the human muttered.

The Fae are vulnerable to cold iron, which is what they call pure iron. It doesn’t exist in Faerie, where silver is a much more common metal.

I’d gotten a better look at the knife than I’d wanted as I sat by Finn’s side waiting for the ambulance. The hilt was some kind of wood, maybe ebony, because it was very dark. But that wasn’t what had caught my attention. No, my eyes had been drawn to the ivory rose inlaid in that dark wood. I couldn’t help seeing that knife—left behind at the scene of the crime—as a claim of responsibility. Either the Seelie Fae were behind the attack … Or someone wanted us to think they were.

There was nothing I could do to prevent being separated from Finn once we reached the hospital. He was whisked off to the Severe Trauma Ward, and I was left with a cranky Fae healer who seemed to think I’d wanted to have shards of glass piercing my knees and palms.

I was gritting my teeth, trying to be a brave little trooper as the healer hunted for glass with his evil forceps, when my dad arrived. I was more relieved than I could say when I laid eyes on him.

I think Dad was planning to hug me—or at least give me a comforting pat on the shoulder—but the healer gave him a stay-out-of-the-way glare, and he stepped back.

“What happened?” Dad asked.

I opened my mouth to blurt it all out, then thought better of it. I glanced pointedly at the healer, who seemed to be finished picking glass out of me and was now using magic to heal the wounds. Dad nodded that he understood.

“Is Finn going to be all right?” I asked, even though multiple people had already told me he would. But those Knights had hurt him so terribly, and, because of me, he hadn’t even tried to defend himself.

“He’ll be fine,” Dad reassured me. “We Fae are a hardy lot, and our Knights more so than most.”

“What exactly is a Knight?” I finally remembered to ask.

“They are a warrior caste, the protectors of Faerie. They’re also sometimes known as the Daoine Sidhe. Most of them reside in Faerie and don’t set foot in Avalon. But those who live here are the best bodyguards in the world.”

“All done,” the healer said with a satisfied nod. “You can go home whenever you’re ready.”

I blinked, startled. No insurance forms to fill out? No bill to pay? And, most puzzling, no police to talk to?

I sent Dad a quizzical look, but he just smiled at me. “Let’s get you home and into some clean clothes, shall we?”

I wasn’t at all unhappy with the proposition, so I went with him despite my misgivings. On the way out of the exam room, he snatched a hospital gown off the top of a pile on a shelf in the entryway.

“I’ll give it back,” he assured me when I looked surprised.

I didn’t know why he wanted it in the first place—thank God he didn’t make me wear it—until we got to the parking lot that adjoined the hospital. Then I remembered the hot little sports car, and realized Dad didn’t want me to mess up the seats. It didn’t exactly give me a warm, fuzzy feeling, but Dad didn’t seem to notice anything amiss as he draped the gown over the seat and held the door open for me.

Okay, I know, if I had a car like that, with tan leather seats, I wouldn’t have wanted to get blood all over it either. But I felt sure that if Fae magic could seal all my wounds and save Finn’s life, it could probably clean a car seat, too.

Dad didn’t question me about the attack again until after we got home and I’d showered and changed. I then sat down on the couch beside him, the ever-present cup of tea cooling on the coffee table, and told him everything I could remember. When I got to the part about the knife with the white rose on the hilt, Dad visibly stiffened.

His lips pressed tightly together; then he let out an angry sigh. “Damn it!” he said. He leapt to his feet and began to pace, and it looked like he was thinking furiously.

“What’s going on?” I asked, a bit plaintively, I must admit.