“So why don’t you find this Jasmine and get her to undo the spell, then?” said Timothy around another mouthful of chips. Linden had tried one but didn’t like it, so he was finishing off the box by himself-though how he could eat so much and still be so thin, she couldn’t imagine.
“Because we can’t,” Linden replied. “It’s been nearly two hundred years since Queen Amaryllis turned Jasmine into a human and exiled her from the Oak, so she’s long dead by now. And anyway, she’d never have done it. If she was crazed enough to think it worth using up all our magic just to keep us away from humans, do you really think she’d be likely to change her mind?”
“Fair enough,” said Timothy. “So you think the faeries here will help you?”
“I don’t know,” Linden said. “I’d hoped so, but after the way Veronica behaved to you, tricking you into seeing her as someone you trusted, and then trying to take your music…” The memory of the other faery bending over Timothy, that hungry light in her eyes, still made Linden shudder.
“I still don’t get that part.” Timothy swirled his drink around with the straw. “How could she steal music from me? Why would she want to?”
Linden sighed. “You have to understand. We faeries aren’t creative, like you humans are. On our own, we can’t make art or music, or come up with new ideas-we have to learn all those things from you. But at the same time, having faeries close by makes humans more creative, so it works both ways. Or at least it’s supposed to.”
“But…?” prompted Timothy.
“Well, it’s also supposed to happen gradually. But last night, when Veronica dragged you off to play for her…it didn’t. Even shut up in that locker, I could hear. I could tell.”
Timothy looked down at his reddened fingers. “So she did that,” he said. “She made me-”
“She pushed you,” said Linden. “Forced all your musical ability to the surface, so she could take it for herself. I didn’t even know that was possible.”
“I’ve never played like that in my whole life.”
She touched his arm, trying to reassure him. “I won’t let her do it again.”
Timothy did not reply. He sat back against the bench, his eyes unreadable. “So now what?” he said.
“I have to try and find some good faeries,” Linden said. “Ones who will listen to what I have to say, and care enough to want to help-or at least be willing to bargain.”
Timothy studied her a moment. Then he said, “Well, good luck with that, I guess,” and began to slide out from behind the table.
“Wait!” she said. “Where are you going?”
“To find another hostel. I’m tired.”
“But what if Veronica finds you again? And I need your help!”
“I don’t know what for,” he said. “I gave you a ride here, and you got me away from Veronica, so it looks like we’re even. If you need to get back to the Oak, just buy a train ticket to Aynsbridge.”
“But I haven’t any money-”
“Why would you need it? You’ve got this ‘glamour’ thing: You can probably conjure up a few pounds.”
“I can’t do that,” protested Linden. “It would be stealing.” Use your gifts wisely and in good conscience, Amaryllis had told her, not for selfish gain. “And anyway, I don’t want to go back, not until I’ve found the help I need.” She clutched at Timothy’s sleeve. “Please don’t go. There’s so much I still don’t know about your world. And I can help you, too, if you give me the chance.”
For a moment Timothy still hesitated. Then he heaved a sigh and slumped back down onto the bench. “Oh, all right,” he said. “Sure you don’t want some chips?”
“Closing up,” announced the boy with the mop, and quickly Timothy drained the rest of his Coke, willing the sugar and caffeine to spark through his exhaustion, keep him going just a little while longer.
“Come on,” he said to Linden. “We’d better find somewhere to sleep.”
“Let me go first,” she said, springing up from the booth. She peered out the window into the street, then said, “I think it’s clear.”
“Of course it is,” said Timothy, shoving the door open and dragging his guitar case through. “She must have given up ages ago. I’m not that special.” But then a new thought occurred to him, and he turned back to Linden with a frown. “But if she was looking for a musician…why didn’t she take Rob instead?”
“Rob?” said Linden, and Timothy remembered: She’d never met Rob, she’d only heard him play at a distance.
“There was another guitar player at the hostel,” he said. “Older than me, but still pretty young-and he was good. Excellent, even. Why me, and not him?”
“I don’t know,” said Linden. “I don’t even know why she felt she had to-ow!” She hopped to one side and turned her foot over to look at it, wincing. Timothy was about to ask what was wrong when he saw that the slippers she’d been wearing in the restaurant had vanished, and that a chip of glass was sticking out of her heel.
“What happened to your shoes?” he asked.
Linden picked the shard out gingerly and rubbed her thumb across the wound. “They were just glamour,” she said as a dark bead of blood welled out. “I don’t have the right kind of magic to make real shoes, and keeping up the illusion was giving me a headache. Besides, I usually go barefoot at home-and how was I to know I’d be walking all over London tonight?”
Timothy swung his backpack down onto the pavement and rummaged through it until he’d found the old T-shirt he usually slept in. “Here,” he said, tearing a strip off the bottom and wrapping it around her foot. “This should help-but watch where you’re walking from now on.”
“That’s kind of you,” said Linden, limping a few steps experimentally, “but I have a better idea.” She gave herself a little shake and suddenly she was tiny again, wings unfolding from the deep V at the back of her jacket. “Ah yes,” she sighed as she hummed into the air, “that’s much better.”
Timothy watched, amazed, as she hovered around him. So small, and she darted so quickly-no wonder he’d mistaken her for a little brown bird…
The night breeze nipped at him, forcing him back to attention. He pulled an extra sweatshirt out of his backpack and tugged it on. It wasn’t as warm as the jacket he’d left behind at Sanctuary, but the extra layer definitely helped. “Right,” he said, picking up his guitar again. “Let’s go.”
Linden flitted to land on his shoulder and sat down, her faery form fitting easily into the space between his collarbone and his jaw. She was so small he hardly noticed the weight, but he could feel her solid warmth against his skin, undeniably real. Timothy let out a short laugh.
“What is it?” Her voice was a breath in his ear.
“It’s just…my cousin’s wife is a faery. I’m talking to a faery right now. And here I thought I was having a hard time just believing in God.”
“God?” Linden sounded curious. “You mean the Great Gardener?”
The Lord God planted a garden eastward, in Eden… “Yeah.”
“But you believe in me, don’t you?”
Timothy snorted out another laugh, this one more genuine. “It’s not like I have a choice! How can I not believe when I can see you right there?”
“Oh,” said Linden, and was silent. Then she said, “So you have to be able to see something to know it exists?”
Her puzzlement seemed genuine, but Timothy didn’t feel like getting into a lecture on the scientific method just now. “No,” he said, “of course there’s more to it than that. It’s just that I thought I knew what was real and what wasn’t, and now I don’t know what to think any-”
Linden gasped, but the warning came too late. All at once the air thickened around Timothy and he stopped in mid-stride, unable to move. He could only watch helplessly as a familiar figure spun itself out of the shadows and walked down the street toward him, smiling.