Page 12 of Shadowed Summer Sun

I faked a smile as I met eyes with him. “Just about.”

I retrieved the can of tea leaves sitting at the foot of the pot’s stand. Opening it and scooping out two spoonfuls, I paid particular attention to the shade of the long leaves. They were a silverish-black, pointed sharply, and veined with thin purple lines. The leaves also smelled vaguely of almonds and copper.

As the tea water boiled, I poured the steaming liquid into the cup that Jack now held precariously from its thin handle. Old Betty had a similar porcelain tea cup. Where hers was white with blue flowers delicately painted on it, Jack’s was decorated with black, thorny vines that seemed to twist and curl as I looked at it.

Careful not to spill a single drop, I filled the Fae’s cup to the brim and waited for him to take a sip. As he did so, he sighed and looked up at me with eyes as black as night, swelling to cover most of his face.

“Perfection, deary. You’ve done your two favors, and only one remains.”

“What will you have of me then?” I asked, knowing full well what he wanted.

“Only for you to enjoy your cup in turn, of course. As I said, Ineverdrink alone. Go on, bottoms up.”

Jack’s skin was now a deeper shade of blue, iridescent and somehow translucent. A teacup appeared in my hands, sporting the same black vines. Nodding, I returned to the teapot, which was somehow dangling from its stand again, and switched the cup into my left hand. Working quickly to avoid being seen, I silently pulled the malachite from my bag and dropped it into the delicate porcelain.

Retrieving the teapot, I filled up my glass as I did Jack’s, right up to the brim. I turned to face him, the liquid sloshing gently, and blew across its surface before downing the entire thing in one gulp, careful not to swallow my stone.

The tea coiled through my insides as the taste of rusty nails and the mud from beneath a decaying body flooded my mouth. The pain was immediate and intense, gripping and twisting my insides like the worst flu. I fell to my knees, still holding the teacup, and squeezed my eyes closed against the onslaught.

Dark Fae magic wormed through my intestines and bled into my veins like mold. It was too much. Everything burned and froze over simultaneously, contorting my stomach and eating through me like acid. My stomach roiled, but the poison was spreading through my veins now. The damage was done.

While the malachite stone had suppressed some of the tea’s effects, I would need something more to fully break this hex.

As my heartbeat slowed, the drop in blood pressure making my limbs ache, Jack stood over me, smiling. My vision tunneled, and everything seemed to slow. Claws dug into my scalp, and a Darkness inside me answered the King’s call. Sweeping through my veins, it snatched up the Fae toxin like a net scooping up an insect. It burned as it dragged the poison back toward my stomach, amassing it into a putrid ball.

My body took over, and I heaved, throwing it up onto the floor at Bluestack Jack’s feet. Tears streamed down my face as I vomited more and more black onto the wood.

And then it stopped.

Breathing in a ragged gasp, I waited for more pain, more nausea, but it never came. I was unharmed, and, what’s more, I was alive. I pushed myself up to stand, glaring at the Unseelie beast before me, who no longer looked like an enfeebled farmer.

Jack’s blue flesh was waxy and splotched with gray-black. His too-big eyes were large masses of bloodshot white with pinprick pupils of black. Where he’d had gangly arms and legs, there were now spindly backward limbs tipped in sharp claws. Bluestack Jack’s nose had flattened, and his mouth had grown into a jagged line stretching from ear to ear, shark-like teeth poking crookedly from his cracked lips.

“No! You’ve cheated me!” His voice was a knife dragged down rusty metal.

“I did no such thing. In fact,” I stood straighter, putting my hands on my hips as I regained my senses, “You promised afairchallenge and knowingly presented a false task you knew there would be no surviving. You agreed to a bauble should I achieve all three tasks, Jack. I have. So, pay up.”

The monster screamed at me, tossing his makeshift furniture around the Ramshackle House and pitching a fit like a spoiled toddler. Energy hummed in my fingers, itching to be released. I gestured in the air, making shapes I’d never seen, and pulled the power taught. It latched onto Jack and clamped down, pinning him to the floor.

I held him there as I approached, something new dancing in my veins. I could feel the power of it, the tangible Shadow.

Hanging loosely around Jack’s neck was a blue bead roughly the size of a peach pit. It swayed as he thrashed about, dimly reflecting the light from his sparse windows. I took it, looping the leather cord around my neck and feeling the tingle of power that coursed through it.

“Hey! Give it back!”

“Are you breaking your deal, Jack?” I asked, voice even.

Bluestack Jack stilled, his bulging eyes pinned to me. The house was silent as the Fae ran his stare over me.

“Take it and be gone. Speak to no one what you’ve done,” he growled, staring daggers into me.

“You do not command me, Jack.” I couldn’t believe my own words. “Remain inside your Ramshackle House and plague the people no longer.”

A presence within me radiated strength. I had done something in this house by withstanding Jack’s trickery. Something had changed.

Turning to leave, I held Jack until I was past the threshold. He stumbled forward as I released my hold, but he made no other move to get up or give chase. When I stood on the crumbling porch outside his home, Badb quickly flew up and landed on my shoulder. She cawed anxiously, rubbing her beak across my cheek.

“I’m fine, friend. But that was close. Something’s… changed.”

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