Page 65 of The Vampire Castle in the Sky

“Excuse me?”

“I’m a forest sprite, silly,” she said very seriously. “I deal in goods. Now, if I were a fairy, I might be content with your favorite childhood memory or the taste of your first kiss, but we little folk like a good trinket.” Sniffing the air, she shook her head and cast me a disappointed look. “I can smell the magic on you. You’re from Thaloria. So you ought to know this.”

Ididknow this. But I also knew that sprites were not supposed to dwell outside the Dragonfly Forest, for their powers tended to deplete in magicless lands, and they needed double the amount of offerings from desperate humans such as myself to maintain them.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Haven’t you ventured a little far from home?”

She lowered her gaze, twirling a finger in the stringy foliage of her hair. “I am an exile. We tiny creatures have our issues too, you know.”

Great. Hector was all alone fighting for his life, and Arawn’s only hope was an exiled, possibly dangerous, and most definitely insidious forest sprite. “Things cannot get any worse.”

“Actually,” the sprite said cheerfully. “There is a high chance of rain tonight, so we should probably speed this bargain up unless you wish to catch yourself a nasty cold as well.”

“I will not bargain with a criminal,” I clipped.

The sprite scoffed, or rather she tried to, for her voice was so thin it sounded more like an outraged squeal. “Says the girl who knocked out her friend and is about to leave him for dead.”

“I beg your pardon—”

“You can beg all you want, it won’t make you any less of a murderer.”

“I’m not a murderer! I am desperate!”

Her expression grew positively demonic. I felt like I’d fallen into some kind of trap. “Well, look at that,” she chimed. “So you do understand what it is like.”

I had no words, only the same old feeling of lost agency.

The sparkle of the sprite’s silhouette dimmed as she rested between the dirt-spattered folds of my skirts, continuing in a more contemplative manner, “It’s a rough world out there. For the different ones, I mean. If you’re not one thing, you’re bound to be another, and no one likes anything with the wordotherin it. It certainly gotmeexiled.”

My eyes blurred with tears as I pulled Arawn’s serene face onto my lap.What am I going to do?I asked myself over and over. No answer emerged from the squall of my thoughts.

The sprite reappeared before me, her tiny face bright with hope. “If you take a chance on me, I will not disappoint you. I swear it on the stars.”

Conflicted, I glanced down at Arawn, then back at her, time slipping from me like water down a drain. “Please, don’t hurt him. I’ve done enough damage.”

“You know how this works. If you give me an offering, I have no choice but to uphold my end of the bargain.”

“If only your greatest mission in life wasn’t to lurk about the woods so you can dupe helpless wanderers such as myself,” I grumbled.

“And perhaps if I were better at it, I wouldn’t be so far away from home now,” she shot back.

I didn’t want to trust her. For all I knew, she wanted me to give her my compass so I would get lost in the forest and then fall into some kind of elaborate fairy trap.

But what other choice did I have? Hector could bedyingright now. I had to go back. I had to try to wake up the Castle somehow.

Tremulously, I stretched one arm to fish the compass out of the suitcase while still cradling Arawn’s head with the other.

It pained me to see the object plucked off my hand, but not more than the possibility of losing more time, of returning to the Castle only to find it without an Aventine waiting for me in it.

The sprite dug no grave, after all, for which I was more thankful than words could express. Instead, she threaded a cave of thornless vines around Arawn’s sleeping body and vowed to protect him if he did not wake before the first rays of the sun touched the sky.

“Thank you,” I sighed, facing the black hollow of the forest. I didn’t know the way back, but I hadn’t a minute to spend in worry. Each moment felt the length of a lifetime.

“As do I,” said the sprite with a huge, sharp-toothed smile. “This is my first trade. I will cherish it forever.”

“I have to hurry.”

I was about to bolt when she stopped me, her voice behind me high with curiosity. “Are you going back to the Castle?”

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