Chapter 33

I snapped the tome shut and hugged it against my chest.

"Willa, do you know of any place in the house I could store this where no one will find it? Someplace it'll be safe until I'm ready to read it again?"

Because if I let myself continue studying this and obsessing over it, I would not sleep tonight. And with the second quarterly practice test tomorrow, with the weight of my future resting on how well I could perform during these damned things, I couldn't risk heading to that Testing Center with bags under my eyes.

Anything, after all, could trigger my power—my… my faerie power, apparently. Not just bascale, but stress and fatigue as well. And while I was sure Ms. Pincette wouldn't report it if I exploded again, I wasn't sure about Mr. Conine or Mrs. Wildenberg or Mr. Fenway.

"Give me a minute," Willa said. "I'll be right back."

I waited. My fingers twitched, itching to open it again, to just take another peek and try to figure out which of those dotted towns or cities my mother might have come from. But… tomorrow, I could. After the second test.

I just had to get through tomorrow, and then I'd bury my nose in this thing until it went numb.

Willa returned mere minutes later, her fur disheveled.

"Okay, it's ready for you. It was my cousin Barty's favorite place to shit, so we had to clean it of all his droppings, but it should be a perfect place."

Bemused, I followed her skittering shadow back to the foyer, where she put her paws up on the piece of wall right beneath that giant cuckoo clock between the staircases in the back.

"It swings forward, but only when it goes off. Which should be any…."

Right on cue, the clock let out a mechanical chirp, and I pried the rounded edges of it from the wall. It swung outward, revealing a hole the size of my head.

I coughed at the dust and the cloying smell of old piss soaked in wood.

"This is perfect."

I gently placed the tome inside, patted its surface, and closed the cuckoo clock over it again. A small click told me it had latched back into place.

I didn't have the energy to ask Willa if she knew who'd designed this hiding space, or why it was there.

Faerie. I was part-faerie. That single thought consumed everything.

All I could do was crouch down next to her and whisper, "Can you send one of your friends to go wake Coen for me? There's something I need him to do."

Ten minutes later, Coen's figure hurried toward me, where I leaned against one of those lampposts behind the Testing Center. Its flickering flame sent dancing shadows over the taut lines of his face as he drew near.

As soon as Willa's friends had nudged him awake, telling him to meet me here, his voice had instantly filled my head and fished out my most recent memory. And when his shock never echoed in the chasm of my own, I knew he'd known all along. That the pirates were faeries. That we were that, too.

"I'm mad at you," I started before he could get a word in.

He stopped right before me, his breath puffing out into the air.

"Oh?"

"You knew."

He dipped his head.

"Yes, I knew."

"Then why did you keep it from me?" I shook my head and said, "You know what, don't answer that." Because I'm about to be a giant hypocrite. "I need you to do something for me." When he lifted an eyebrow, I said, "I need you to erase Emelle's memory."

The fog of my breath billowed outward, floating into his open mouth.

Coen pursed his forehead.

"What?"

"The memory of Lord Arad, I mean. And everything he said."

Melle was in too much danger, knowing that my mother had come from beyond the dome. It had already been gnawing on me, the precarious situation I'd put my best friend in, but the tome and what lay inside had made me realize how big the stakes really were for her. If a bored Mind Manipulator decided to poke around in her brain just for the hell of it, they would know she was affiliated with pirates—with faeries—and report her involvement to the Good Council.

And unlike me, Emelle didn't have to be involved. She was fully human. If it weren't for my friendship with her, she'd be as safe and innocent as the rest of them.

Coen didn't ask any more questions. He passed a thumb along my temple and said gently, "Done."

My head jerked up at him. "Really? Already?"

He tried to smile, but it came out more like a grimace.

"It's like wading through a thick, cold mist from this distance, but I already know her mind. And she's sleeping. Makes it easier."

She'll wake up with no idea thatyour mom was a… a pirate, he said into my mind, avoiding that other word, or that a white tiger ate a bunch of half-formed bats like it was nothing. Again, he avoided that other word. Vampire.

"Right. Perfect. Thank you." I sucked in a lungful of that thick, soupy air. Then, before I could second-guess myself and the absolutely insane thing I was about to ask, I blurted out, "I also need you to erase my memory of what I learned, too. Just until tomorrow night."

Now Coen's grimace turned into thin, hard suspicion.

"Why?"

"Because I'm scared, Coen," I said, grabbing onto his arms. "Scared I'm going to explode again tomorrow if I have… if I have this weighing me down."

This as in the tome and the map and the faerie continent of Sorronia and the fact that Coen had kept his secret from me and the questions that were tearing me apart. I could already feel my power pushing against its constraint in response, swelling up against my ribcage.

"Just until tomorrow night," I repeated. "After I've passed all my tests."

Coen bit his lip and flicked his gaze toward the sea.

"What if you don't pass?"

The question was quiet, but I still flinched. His tone told me what I'd already suspected, what I'd already dreaded. Coen had been planning on erasing this from me, anyway, as soon as Willa's friends had woken him up and he'd pieced together what I'd learned.

And that made me wonder if I'd figured it out in the past before. If he'd already erased my knowledge of this. My fingernails curled into my palm.

"I will pass the tests. I have to."

I was determined to remain calm tomorrow, no matter what creepers and crawlers I had to face. That raging panic, I was certain, was what had made my power break through the suppressant and explode outward. Which was why this was so important—for my mind to stabilize for the next twenty-four hours.

Coen scrutinized me, unreadable. Each of his breaths came out in foggy tufts, melding with my own.

"I can lock it away," he said finally. "Shield the knowledge of… of what's in the tome so you can't access it. Then remove that mental shield later."

"Yes," I breathed, even though part of me wondered if this was the coward's way out. Ms. Pincette wouldn't mention the tome again, I was sure, but she would have expected me to read it, and Jagaros would eat me alive if he found out I'd purposely hid away the map he'd requested me to find twice already.

But I knew myself. Knew my limits. And this was one of them. I would not be able to sleep or breathe or eat or do anything tomorrow with this one thing chewing at every thought that tried to rise to the surface of my mind.

"If this is what you wish," Coen said.

I nodded. Yes. I'd have this memory returned tomorrow night, and then I'd…

I'd confront everything.

"But you have to give it back after my test tomorrow," I warned suddenly. "You can't keep it from me forever. Okay?"

He didn't respond.

"Coen?"

He just gripped the back of my head, brought me close, and whispered three words into my ear as the moon finally sliced between the gray draping of clouds.

"Forget, my love."