Chosen - Kiersten White Page 0,94
genuinely happy to have the Littles here, excited at the prospect of taking them for a fun outing. Gods, don’t let her be secretly evil. Please let this mom be a good one.
Cillian leans against the counter and folds his arms. “That’s great, Mum. Do let us know if you decide to run away to Tibet or Madagascar or Shangri-la as a change of plans, though. We’ll need at least five minutes’ notice.”
Her reflexive smile is tight and defensive. “Give me a moment and I can make you all eggs. You still like them sunny-side up, right?”
Cillian doesn’t answer. He pulls out the necklace instead. She flinches as it winks in the light. “What is this?”
“Toast?” Her glance at me is accusatory. I wasn’t supposed to bring Cillian into it.
“It’s too late,” I say. “I’m sorry. We have nowhere else to turn.”
Cillian moves to block her path to the toaster oven. “This is our only lead. You owe me this. If we don’t find these people, our friend will die.”
His mom’s hands tremble as she reaches up and smooths the wrap around her braids. “What—what can this have to do with your friend?”
“The people wearing this symbol took him. And it can’t be a coincidence that Da’s puzzle is the same pattern. Was he involved with this before he died? Were you? Are you? Because they’re all zealots, and you’ve spent a lot of time trying to find God or religion or whatever.”
The kettle whistles, and Cillian’s mom shuffles around him to pull it off the heat. She pours five cups of tea and pauses on the sixth, raising an eyebrow at Doug. He shakes his head, and she sets the kettle back on the stove. We each get a mismatched mug. I take Jade hers, not wanting to let Cillian’s mom away from where we have her cornered. Jade’s face is bruised, her lip swollen, and I catch Doug staring at the damage with an unreadable expression.
Cillian’s mom wraps her hands around her mug and turns to face us, leaning against the counter with the same physical posture I’ve seen Cillian do a hundred times. “Your father isn’t dead.”
Cillian chokes on his tea. “What?”
“In my defense, I never said he was dead.”
He sets his tea down on the tile counter. We’re all frozen, unsure where this is going. “Yes,” Cillian says, “you did.”
“No. I try not to lie to you. If you remember, all I ever said—all I have ever said—is that we lost your father. I meant that literally. We lost him.”
“I think we should sit down.” Rhys takes Cillian’s elbow and leads him to the worn pink sofa. I can’t tell whether Cillian looks like he’s more likely to pass out or murder someone. I sit on his other side, both to support him and to keep him in place in case he does decide to strangle his mother.
Esther sits on a chair across from us, balancing her mug on her knee and staring down into it as though the tea leaves might reveal an easier way to tell this story.
“I was a student of fairy tales. Grad school. I wanted to teach. I’ve always been interested in oral traditions, the stories we pass down generation to generation. Why we tell the stories we do. I traveled the Irish countryside, asking for regional variations of the tales of fair folk. I found the same general information in every single one, but some of the towns and villages had details—very specific details. A hill you should never visit at night. A path that should never be walked alone. A house that was abandoned two hundred years ago and still stands unclaimed to this day. I could sense the power behind their fear. It wasn’t terror—it was self-preservation. It had all the same rules and practical steps as my spells. And that got me interested. I went to one of the abandoned houses at night, made a protective circle, and I waited. At midnight, a portal opened.” She pauses, then looks up at Doug. “I’m sure none of you will be surprised to learn that our world contains—contained—gateways and portals to other worlds. These weren’t fairy paths and fairy doors. They were openings to other dimensions. Hell dimensions. All the stories about keeping your loved ones safe from ageless, unknowable beings who would take them and never return them, or return them so altered you wouldn’t recognize them, were true. They were just about demons, not fairies. Same concept,