suggestions.
“Cut off all her hair and make her count each strand!”
“Tie her to the tallest tree and let the Joint-Eaters have her.”
“Put out her eyes and throw them in the Spider House!”
“Chop off her hands and melt them down!”
Shrieking and laughter surrounded her, getting louder as each suggestion grew worse and increasingly bloodthirsty. Donna bit her lip and dug her nails into her palms. She didn’t dare move, but the urge to run filled her like hot needles.
Bodies pressed against her on all sides as the crowd of faeries tried to grab a piece of her; her gloves, her scarf, and especially her hair. Donna lost count of how many times small hands tugged at it, and she yelped when a particularly small faery, about the size of her hand, flew on gossamer wings up onto her shoulder and perched there so she could tie painful knots. When one of them bit her, she started to get angry. That was enough!
“Stop it!” Donna shouted, trying to shake the little creature off.
“Stop it,” they mimicked. “Stop it !” The fey voices ech-oed her own voice back at her in mocking, high-pitched tones.
They weren’t really hurting her, beyond the hair-pulling and a few pinches that couldn’t do much through her winter clothes, but Donna was getting mad as each minute ticked by. She didn’t have long to act as it was, and this nonsense was nothing but a waste of her precious time. She figured that was the whole point, but her anxiety levels were almost through the roof already.
None of the more human-sized fey were doing anything to help her, and the queen was no doubt highly amused by it all, so it looked like Donna needed to get rid of the little pests on her own. Fine. She could do that. She’d faced down the Wood Queen, the Skriker, and the king of the demons. She could handle a few pint-sized faeries.
She shook a brown-skinned boy with dragonfly wings off her arm and quickly pulled off her emerald glove.
“Oooh!” the female faery on her shoulder cried, gazing at the brightly colored velvet with wide eyes. “That’s pretty.” At least she’d stopped twisting and tangling Donna’s hair for a moment.
The sun flashed against her swirling tattoos, and everyone suddenly realized that “pretty” could also be potentially deadly. Especially when you’re allergic to cold iron. Donna didn’t want to hurt anyone here, but she would if she had to. The fey who were bugging her seemed more of a nuisance than a genuine threat, but they still had very sharp teeth.
Carefully, making sure that they could all see what she was doing, she took off her other glove and waved her arms around.
The faeries scattered, shrieking.
Donna smiled to herself, then turned to face Queen Isolde.
Fifteen
Navin placed the bronze head on the dresser beside his bed. Newton didn’t say a single word, but that probably had something to do with the fact that he—it—had been stuffed into Navin’s backpack during the ride home.
Newton’s face—perhaps a representation of a deceased alchemist—was hawklike and watchful, with a hooked nose and a chin that protruded just a bit too much. It was carved to look like it was wearing a strange sort of hat, like a skullcap. The eye sockets were hollow, but when the statue spoke—and it could speak—the eye sockets lit up, as though holographic eyes were being projected onto their surface.
When Navin and Xan had first presented Newton with the escape plan, Newton claimed that the whole process was “undignified.” He’d stopped arguing when Navin told him his only other option was to forget being rescued and stay behind to rot in Simon’s lab. Right on cue, Maker created a brief magical diversion so they could get out of the house. It had been close, but they’d made it out with Newton intact. On the ride back, Maker kept reminding Navin to take the statue-bound demon to Donna, but that wasn’t exactly helpful when Donna seemed to have disappeared.
So Navin had brought the statue up to his room, all the time wondering if he was making a huge mistake. He could hear his sister downstairs, doing the dishes. It was her turn tonight, thankfully, so he hadn’t needed to have that particular argument. Their father would be away at the conference until tomorrow, which was another huge relief.
The uncomfortable silence stretched out as Navin and Newton regarded one another.
Newton blinked.
“You blinked first,” Navin said.
“On purpose,” Newton replied. His bronze lips didn’t move when