The Inner Circle (Return of the Ancients Book 3) Read Free Page B

under his breath. “Melody sent me down here earlier to make sure Rafael never set foot on Earth. Now I see why. This is the biggest mess …” His voice trailed away.
    “Who cares what Melody thought … or thinks,” I couldn’t resist saying. She’d clearly been evil for a long time.
    The conversation lulled for a moment. Suddenly, I remembered Rafael’s Blue Thread. Hooking my thumb over my shoulder, I pointed to the garage. “Was … that Rafael’s Blue Thread?”
    It was dark, but it was still light enough for me to see Jareth’s cocked eyebrow. “His Blue Thread is alive and well.”
    I don’t know why, but that made me feel better. “Then there’s hope it can all work out for the best?”
    “If you want to believe so.” Jareth’s mood was only getting darker. Striking the tree, he raged, “What’s happening here?”
    My head was beginning to pound. “This is a job for the army or something,” I said. “Not me.”
    Jareth stepped close and, gripping my shoulders, shook me a little. “What am I, Sydney?”
    His face was close to mine, the impressive purple welt under his eye made the entire side of his face look black in the darkness.
    “What am I?” he repeated.
    I knew we were both thinking of the images we’d seen in the Hall of Mirrors, the images of the white-cloaked figure experimenting with needles and injecting something into the dark-haired Fae that had given birth to Jareth.
    “Just because you might have some of their DNA doesn’t mean you’re one of them!” I said.
    He reacted violently to that and blanched. His fingers dug into my shoulders. “Are you saying I’m one of them ?” he hissed.
    Clearly, he couldn’t bring himself to name them.
    Neither of us could.
    “I’m saying you’re not.” I shook my head. “I’m saying you can be anything you want to be—”
    He cut me off. “I’ve always been different. From the start.”
    I knew that was true. He didn’t react to iron. And on Halloween, he’d made the scissors fly into the floor when he’d gotten angry. And he’d accessed the blue strand in Avalon to reach the decryption codes, something none of the Fae could do. But then, I suddenly recalled his strange reaction to me in the parking lot when we’d first encountered the Mesmers, his response to my sarcasm about dreaming. Abruptly, I asked him, “Can you dream, too?”
    The Fae couldn’t dream because they couldn’t access the second dimension.
    Clearly, he could .
    He jerked back involuntarily.
    “If that isn’t a ‘yes’, I don’t know what is,” I observed dryly.
    He recoiled even farther from me at that. His shoulders hunched down and he just looked like a massive ball of misery.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, reaching out to him.
    “This is the cruelest revenge,” he grated.
    Without any warning, he shifted, disappearing from my sight to leave only a small wisp of mist where he’d been standing.
    I scowled.  “Thanks!” I shouted, waving my hands in the cold air. “I’ll just manage the Mesmers by myself.”
    I honestly expected him to pop right back, but after about ten minutes, I realized he really was gone.
    Refusing to let myself even think about being afraid, I trudged back into the house and headed for the bathroom.
    Splashing water over my face with shaking hands, I rested my hands on the edge of the sink and stared at the person looking back at me. I analyzed the dark-haired girl with bright green eyes, dressed in faded jeans and a crumpled Bean There, Baked That coffee shop T-Shirt. She looked pretty normal, except she still had a thin gold Fae bracelet stuck on her wrist, a bracelet she couldn’t get off.
    This girl was caught in some kind of unending nightmare. She was dealing with things that some government agency should be handling.
    She was in way over her head.
    But I couldn’t do anything for her. Beyond slapping her face and pinching her arm on the off-chance that she was dreaming.
    I tried it. But as expected, I