Glimmers of Thorns Read online

  Unfortunately for me, that was enough.

  I’d been hearing those stories for a long time without taking them seriously. All it had gotten me was a brainwashed ex-best friend, a stressful side gig as the Faerie’s Queen’s informant, and a whole lot of stress.

  I turned the ignition off. The engine wound down to silence. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

  After the way the Oracle had royally screwed with my Little Mermaid case and brainwashed my best friend, I was more than ready to tear her limb from watery limb. The problem was that the girl marching into the Oracle’s Fountain to take her down was Daydream Olivia. Real World Olivia was too nervous to get out of her vehicle.

  There was relative peace as I sat here in the imaginary safety of my car, but it wasn’t going to last. I felt it in the air and my memory of her voice ringing in my ears: War is coming. I want you on my side. Every second of silence was one second closer to the hammer falling.

  A heavy raindrop landed on my windshield. I scowled at it and pushed my door open.

  The public rose garden where Isabelle and I had agreed to meet was deserted this time of year, and no wonder. From where I stood at the top of cement stairs leading down to the garden, the place looked deserted. Hundreds upon hundreds of gray-brown rose bushes spread out below me, indistinguishable from one another, each one nothing more than a lump of dark twigs unceremoniously lopped short for the winter.

  I walked down the steps and shoved my gloved hands deeper in my coat pockets. The garden was abandoned, with Isabelle nowhere to be seen. A raised bed of miniature roses hunkered down in the cold. I touched the handle of my wand, which held my hair back in a loose bun, and stretched out a finger toward the nearest bush. A single twig shot up and put out a bud, then opened with a flourish of red petals. It was the only spot of color in this whole gray-on-green landscape. I walked on.

  “Olivia!”

  I turned. The garden was still empty. But then, from over my glasses, I saw a curl of pink.

  I pulled the lenses down to the bottom of my nose. Over them, a nebula of blushing light swirled up from between two rose bushes.

  Isabelle came into view as I approached. She crouched between the rows and wore dirty brown overalls under a green jacket. A moss-green scarf tied back her soft brown hair.

  “You’re easy to miss,” I said.

  “That’s on purpose,” she said. “I try to not disturb the rabbits.”

  She leaned back on her heels and wiped her forehead with the back of one hand. Behind her, a small brown bunny leapt down the row of bushes and out of sight. I wasn’t sure whether it had been startled my movement or by her energy. She looked calm, but inside, she was as freaked out as I was.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “Killing time,” Isabelle said. She dropped a pair of hedge clippers onto the pile of twig clippings next to her. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  I considered pointing out that she hadn’t exactly been waiting on me. But I didn’t know how much time we had, so I didn’t bring up the subject of her plant breeding program, even though it was at least a thousand times more pleasant a subject than the Oracle.

  I threw up a sound bubble that would protect us from anyone interested in eavesdropping. It glowed white everywhere my glasses didn’t cover. I threw up a second bubble inside the first one, and a glamour inside of that one that would make it hard for passerby to notice us. The rain had left droplets of water everywhere. The Oracle could be listening or watching through any one of them.

  “Do you want to go somewhere dry?” I said. I hit the last word a little too hard and gave Isabelle a meaningful look.

  “No,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I know what you’re thinking, but Haidar and I have this place secured.”

  “Haidar?”

  “My boss,” she said. “He’s a wizard.”

  “And he knows about the Oracle?” I said.

  My skin tingled. Just saying her name made me cringe. It felt like it would summon her and make her come down on us, hard.

  “I’ve left Haidar out of this,” Isabelle said. “But he has reasons of his own for keeping it locked down. So let’s talk.”

  This was moving way too fast. I crouched down beside her.

  “How do you know you can trust me?” I said. “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “Because, Olivia,” she said. “We’re both ethical people. And I saw what happened to you at the Fountain.”

  Inside my coat pocket, a spark of startled magic leapt from my fingertips.

  “Wait, what?” I said.

  “I was there,” she said. “I’m sorry, I thought you knew. I’d followed Evan, and then I saw what happened with him and—”

  Her nostrils flared and her cheeks flushed. Apparently she wasn’t quite as over it as she’d appeared.

  She cleared her throat. “I could tell you weren’t happy when that faerie went into the Fountain,” she said. “I think we both lost somebody to the Oracle. I’m willing to trust you for that.”

  I did not want to think about Imogen Dann right now. I nodded sharply, trying to send the memory skittering away.

  A few more drops of water sprinkled down on my head. One landed on my nose, making me flinch. I raised a hand and flung it toward the sky. The ceiling of our little bubble hardened, and the drops stopped.

  “What’s your plan?”

  She brushed her hands off on her knees.

  “I don’t really know,” she said.

  I touched my wand to focus my energy—I barely had to touch it for a second, now—and held my hand out over the ground. Steam coiled up from the damp earth, leaving the grass and dirt warm and dry. We both let ourselves drop to the ground. I folded my legs underneath me and clasped my hands on my lap.

  “Maybe you’d better back up,” I said.

  She ran her fingers along a rose stem. The plant seemed to shudder and breathe under her touch.

  “I’ve been watching the Oracle for a long time,” she said. “A few years ago, I started getting reports from Glims that the fountains in this garden weren’t calling up the sprites like they used to.”

  I glanced up. A large metal fountain sat in the middle of this part of the garden, its structure made of shining rectangular pillars over a small square pond. The other fountain, which looked like bird baths stacked on top of one another, was farther away. I felt magic from neither of them, but the sight still made a prickle run down my spine.

  “Haidar and I have been enchanting the garden for years,” Isabelle said. “I started working here when I was fifteen, years ago now, and Haidar’s been here…” She frowned. “Longer than I have. I don’t know exactly. We’ve been putting all sorts of spells on the property, adding a few each year and letting them grow together like vines. For the last few years, every time we put a new spell up, I’d hear complaints about people not being able to get sprites to appear in the fountains.”

  She gently snipped a stray twig off a branch. I winced, but the rose bush seemed to sigh in relief the moment the twig was gone. Or, I thought, squinting at it, maybe the breeze had made the few straggling leaves flutter and relax like that.

  “I tried to find the problem, but there was none,” she said. “The spells were working exactly as they should, and the fountains were working exactly as they should.”

  “The magic wasn’t compatible,” I said.

  “And ours was stronger.”

  She looked over at the rectangular metal fountain. Her dark arched eyebrows drew together, just enough to make two tiny lines appear between them.

  “The Oracle’s servants couldn’t get in, and that seemed odd. Our spells were created like a net, designed to let anyone with good intentions in and keep anyone with bad intentions out. It’s been a nice thing for the gardens over the years. We attract the loveliest people on the loveliest days. You come here in spring and you can hardly believe someplace so beautiful exists. But the sprites can’t get in anymore.”

 
“Can they come in without using the fountains?”

  “Not that I’ve seen,” Isabelle said. “I told Haidar my suspicions. Must have been a year ago now, maybe more. He put extra enchantments on the garden to keep them out after that. I suppose I expected the Oracle to say something about it, to force a confrontation, but she’s stayed silent.”

  “Talking would blow her cover,” I said.

  “Those were my thoughts,” she said. “I’ve been keeping an eye on her for years, but then everything happened with Evan.”

  She stared vaguely into the rose bush as if her thoughts had become tangled in its branches.

  My throat felt dry. I coughed into my elbow. She didn’t seem to hear.

  “I’m sorry about all that,” I said.

  She started and looked at me, eyes large and gleaming like ink in the gray light. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “I saw it coming.”

  “The Oracle, or—?”

  “I knew Evan was seeing someone,” she said.

  I caught a wave of sharp pain off her, like someone had just socked her in the stomach. My own gut twinged in sympathy, but the tightness passed as she turned back to the bush and began stroking it again.

  “I followed him, and I saw her, and… well, it wasn’t hard to tell she was Glim. I felt water on her, like she was always swimming. I assumed the Oracle had sent her.”

  “She’s a mermaid,” I said. “Or she was, anyway.”

  The lines in Isabelle’s forehead relaxed, but only slightly.

  “I thought she seemed off for a sprite,” Isabelle said. “She wasn’t connected to the Oracle?”

  “Not until the end,” I said. “I was supposed to be her faerie godmother. She’d wished for Evan but I was trying to redirect her. Until the Oracle told me not to. It was complicated.”

  Isabelle sighed deeply but silently, like she didn’t want me to hear.

  “I assumed she’d been working with the Oracle from the beginning,” she said. “Our spells have kept her out of our garden for years now. It’s hard to think she hasn’t noticed. I thought perhaps it was her revenge.”

  “It still might have been,” I said. “It’s hard to know what she’s noticed. It’s better not to underestimate her.”

  I’d learned that lesson firsthand.

  The rain intensified over us, but we stayed dry. It seemed to be getting warmer in our bubble. I couldn’t tell if it was our body heat or just my nerves.

  Isabelle crossed her legs and looked at me. “I’ve been tracking reports of weird activity from her fountains since last year,” she said. “I lapsed for a while when Evan and I got engaged, but then that fell apart and I’ve been tracking ever since.”

  “Even while you were in France?”

  “My roses catch messages for me,” she said.

  She gave the bush next to us a fond smile. She and the plant appeared to be having a moment, but I couldn’t help interrupting.

  “Your roses what?”

  “They listen,” she said. “I asked them to watch the breeze for gossip about the Oracle. They catch the messages on their branches and I’ve been collecting them ever since I got home.”

  She leaned back and stretched an arm out behind her. It was immediately soaked by the downpour.

  She felt around in one of the bushes. I tensed, but the plants didn’t seem interested in scratching her. Instead, a tiny thorn glowed when her fingertip touched it. She pried it gently from the stem.

  “Here,” she said.

  The thorn glistened with rain. The moment she dropped it in my palm, a whispery voice wafted past my head like perfume.

  I helped an old Humdrum woman carry her groceries onto the train, a young woman’s voice said. And nothing. I got one coin. Yippee. I mean, I didn’t do it for the money, but when I was a kid, helping old Humdrum ladies with stuff was worth a lot more, you know? People better not whine about “kid witches these days” if they aren’t going to give them the same rewards as the last generation, that’s all I’m saying.

  The voice faded, leaving only the sound of rain sizzling to silence above us and pattering on the muddy grass outside our bubble.

  “You’re going to have to teach me that,” I said.

  “It’s not hard,” Isabelle said. “You just have to build a relationship with your roses, that’s all.”

  She took the thorn back from me and kissed it. The barb dissolved to dark brown soil between her fingers and she sprinkled the dirt on the ground.

  “I’ve been getting a lot of messages like this. Not enough coins for helping Humdrums, too many coins for helping Glims, and even some reports of fountains malfunctioning.” Her voice turned ironic. “A couple of the ones downtown have been handing out coins whenever people scare Humdrums.”

  “The Oracle’s been paying people to bait them,” I said. “She wants to drive the Hums out of the city entirely.”

  “I wish I could be more surprised,” Isabelle said.

  “But you’re not,” I said. “Why? I sure was.”

  “The Oracle’s been around for a long time,” Isabelle said. “She lived in Bridal Veil Falls for years, and then she moved to the Fountain in the seventies. She’s never been like the Faerie Queen. We don’t know if there’s only ever been one Oracle or if the role gets passed down like the Queen’s does. We don’t know her name. We only think she’s a faerie because enough people have made assumptions and because the sprites follow her, and you don’t hear of sprites following too many other forms of magic. But we don’t know. We just think she’s good because she rewards goodwill.”

  “The person with the job changes,” I said.

  Isabelle’s eyes narrowed. “And how do you know that?”

  “I heard it somewhere,” I said. “I don’t remember.”

  Unless Isabelle had been watching me much more closely than I realized, she didn’t know I knew Queen Amani. And she wouldn’t. We might all be on the same side, but Amani had asked me after the Fountain incident to continue keeping our connection to myself. The way she’d said it, I knew it wasn’t just about her trying to limit gossip about her potential heir anymore. It was a matter of safety, maybe more.

  “The Oracle rewards goodwill, but she also maintains balance,” I said, trying to steer the conversation back to only mostly dangerous waters.

  “She works for the happy completion of Stories,” Isabelle said, and there was an edge of sarcasm in her voice. “But she doesn’t get Stories. They change. Cinderella is assigned an impossible task until it just disappears from the Story. Stepsisters cut off their heels for years to get the slipper to fit until one day, that’s just too messy and foot mutilation becomes optional. Cinderella’s tree-spirit mother gives her advice and pretty gowns, unless of course she’s helped by a faerie godmother.”

  “All Stories have variations,” I said.

  “Variations that have been working in the Oracle’s favor a lot lately. You heard about Aster’s case?”

  “No,” I said. I knew Aster, of course—she was a Wishes Fulfilled godmother—but we didn’t talk much. “Have you been watching my work?”

  “I’ve been watching all the fountains,” Isabelle said. “Aster, your coworker, recently had a pretty typical situation involving a prince trying to guess a princess’s unbeatable riddle.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Let me guess,” I said. “The box with no jewels at all on it held the true treasure.”

  “Not quite,” she said. “If he came up with the right answer, he could gain access to a magic fountain that happened to sit on the princess’s family’s property. The usual plain box was the right answer, but guess what was in it? A dozen fairies who hadn’t eaten in days. When he opened the box, they flew off and attacked some poor Humdrum.”

  I winced. The tiny, glowing creatures we called “fairies” were actually hex moths—tiny, humanoid insects with sharp tempers and nasty bites. My great-great-ancestors had cultivated them and kept entire flocks for the potent dust that fell off their const
antly shedding wings.

  “The princess thought this was so hysterical that she granted him access to the fountain on the spot, and the fountain bubbled up a spray of gold coins he wasn’t even planning on,” Isabelle said. “And now some Hum is walking around Portland with itching fairy bites on his ears and can’t remember where they came from, except he’s starting to think that his apartment has bedbugs and maybe he should move.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Far, far from the city.”

  “And everyone’s surprised,” Isabelle said. “It keeps happening. And the lines between good and bad are becoming sharper. Not so anyone’s noticed, but it’s happening. The Oracle is clearly marking which actions deserve rewards, and you know people are going to fall for it.”

  She reached out to touch a rose bush as if for support. The stress throbbing off her started to wash over me in waves. I surreptitiously put my hand on the ground and reached out toward the bushes, too. The earth beneath my fingers pulsed with a warm, steady heartbeat.

  “No one is all good or bad,” Isabelle said. “Goodness and rewards don’t always go together. Beauty does not always mean goodness, and goodness does not always triumph. Stories are mixed.” She stared at me, her eyes large and intense. “We’ve forgotten that, as a people. We’ve forgotten that beautiful people can be good and bad, and we’ve forgotten that leaders will not be good if we aren’t watching their behavior and calling them out on their mistakes. We live in a culture of blind obedience, where everyone just does whatever the Faerie Queen says and whatever the Oracle says and never mind what they themselves think, and it’s toxic, Olivia. We are living in a toxic environment where things are going wrong and no one is even bothering to ask questions.”

  She fell silent. Her chest rose and fell with heaving breaths.

  She might be diving headfirst into dangerous territory, but apathy was never going to be one of her problems.

  “You don’t think we should do what the Faerie Queen says?” I said.