Page 51 of Rise of the Melody
I was slow on the uptake. I stared back at them in confusion before it sank in: CooShee and Zar MacCray knew each other.
Emotion attacked my senses. I thought about how I’d found CooShee, while in actuality, he had found me, hadn’t he? It was no coincidence.
“You got him to track me, didn’t you?”
Zar made a noncommittal shrug. “You know the cú. He does what he wants. I cannae force him.”
I swallowed hard. Never in my life had I felt so betrayed and brokenhearted. And by a freaking animal of all things. I crossed my arms and stared down at the ground, hating myself when I gave a loud sniffle. CooShee moved toward me, staring up at me with question.
“I’m fine,” I told him bitterly. He lay on the ground between us. After a minute I pulled myself together, shaking out my arms and looking up. “Why haven’t you told your dad?”
He didn’t hold back. “I dinnae trust any of them. Or you.”
“Okay. But why? What else do you remember? And wait…” My head nearly exploded all of a sudden. It was like fireworks went off inside me. I teetered on a wave of overwhelming dizziness. “Didallof you end up in Faerie? My parents, too?”
My parents!
He regarded me for a long moment before answering. “Aye.”
“Oh, my God!” I paced, grasping my cheeks, my body buzzing with the revelation. “Did you all get out together? Wait, how are you here? Zar, what happened to everyone? Are my parents still alive?” I bombarded him with questions, moving closer, wanting to grasp him and shake the information out of him. My entire body vibrated.
He stepped back. “The last time I saw the others they were still in H’trae. Alive. However, that was long ago. I’ve no clue what happened to any of them.”
“No,” I whispered, grasping my midsection and crouching. The hope I’d felt dropped inside me with the weight of a bowling ball. But…they could still be in Faerie. They could still be alive! I rushed upward so fast I had to blink away a dizzy spell.
“How did you get out?” I asked him. We could recreate whatever happened to him.
His jaw tensed. I watched the muscle twitch and his nostrils flared. “It’s not your concern.”
“Yes, it is! Zar…if we can get the others out?—”
“You cannae get them out.”
I nearly choked on a sob, covering my mouth. My parents could still be alive and this guy was the key, but for whatever reason, he wouldn’t tell me.
“What aboutyourmom?” I asked. “Don’t you want to save her?”
His eyes hardened. “That is my plan, but you needn’t know all of it.”
Ugh!
I understood that he’d found me because he wanted to keep an eye on me or punish me. If what he remembered was true, my mom really had sung that day. And somehow the portal had opened and swallowed them. I squeezed the top of my nose to ward off the tension headache coming on.
“Who else in Shehan have you told?”
“No one.”
Why had Zar come to me before anyone else?
“What do you want me to do?” I asked him, reaching for his arm to show him I was safe, that I was willing to help him, but he quickly pulled back.
“I cannae be touched.” A wild fear filled his eyes, making me step back.
He couldn’t be touched? Why?
“Okay,” I said. There were still a million questions I needed him to answer, but he was clearly in a delicate state of mind and didn’t trust me at all. I needed to be careful how I approached this. “I’ll help you. Whatever you need.”
“Oh, you’re going to help me.” He rubbed a thumb over his bottom lip before giving me a devilish grin that didn’t quite stretch up to those light eyes. “You’re going to sing to my da, Colette, and anyone else who’s not forthcoming. You’re going to get me the answers I need.” I froze as he went on, his eyes alight. “I’m going to get my mother out of that hell. And I’m going to end every single person who had a hand in sending us there.”
