Part I
CHAPTER ONE
BACK TO “NORMAL”
My name is Ethan Chase.
Just shy of a week ago, I was dragged into Faeryland.
Again.
The first time it happened, I was four. Yeah, four years old, kidnapped by faeries and taken into the Nevernever, home of the fey. Long story short, my older sister rescued me and brought me home, but became a faery queen herself and now rules a part of the Nevernever called the Iron Realm.
Thirteen years later, despite all the precautions I took against the Fair Folk, it happened again. I found myself smack-dab in the middle of the Nevernever, and this time, I wasn’t alone. A classmate of mine, a girl named Mackenzie St. James, managed to get pulled in, as well. A lot of weird, screwed-up stuff happened in the next few days, like following a talking cat through the Nevernever, meeting my sister in the Iron Realm, sneaking out of the Iron Realm to meet up with the Queen of the Exiles and, oh yeah, discovering that my sister has a son. That’s right, I have a nephew. A nephew who is part fey, completely unknown to my parents, and who, by way of screwy faery time, is the same age as me.
There is one other important thing we discovered—the emergence of a new, deadly species of fey called the Forgotten, faeries that almost don’t exist anymore because they’ve been unremembered for so long. Faeries that have to steal the glamour from regular fey to survive, killing them in the process. But for me, the nephew thing sort of stands out. If I thought my family was weird before, it’s not even a blip on the weirdness scale now. I thought I’d seen it all. But when I got pulled into the Nevernever, the thing I never saw coming was Keirran.
When Keirran went back into the Nevernever, I knew I hadn’t seen the last of him. Still, I had no idea how entangled my life would soon become with his, and how he would be the catalyst...for the end of everything.
* * *
Sometimes I wished everyone paid less attention to me. Sometimes I even wished I had faery blood, so that when the really weird things started happening around me, people would forget they’d seen it as soon as I left. That worked for Robin Goodfellow, the most infamous faery in existence. And to a lesser extent, it even worked for my sister. But in the real world, if you’re fully human and you vanish into thin air for nearly a week, people tend to notice. If you vanish at the same time as a very rich, popular classmate, they notice even more.
Which was why, I supposed, I was back in the principal’s office the Monday after I returned from the Nevernever. Only this time, there were two policemen in the room as well, looming over my chair and looking stern. Kids passing by peered through the door’s window and gaped at me before hurrying off with their friends, whispering. Great. I already had a reputation for being a delinquent and a troublemaker; this probably wasn’t going to help.
“Do you know why we’ve brought you here, Mr. Chase?” the principal said, pursing his thin mouth. I shrugged. I’d been in this office on my first day of school and knew the principal thought I was a lost cause. No point in trying to change his mind. Besides, the two officers were far more worrisome.
“We’d like to ask you a few questions about Todd Wyndham,” one of the policemen stated, making my stomach twist. “As you may know, he disappeared last Friday, and his mother filed a missing-persons report when he didn’t return from school. According to her, the last person to speak to him before he vanished...was you.”
I swallowed. Todd Wyndham was a classmate of mine, and I knew exactly what had happened to him that night. But there was no way I was going to tell the police officers that Todd was part fey, a half-breed who had been kidnapped by the Forgotten and drained of his glamour. Problem was, draining his glamour had also robbed him of his memories, his emotions and his sense of self. By the time Kenzie and I had found him, his magic was already gone, leaving him dazed, passive and completely human.
Keeping my voice steady, I faced the officer who had spoken. “Yeah, I saw him at school that day. Everyone did. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal,” the officer continued, frowning harder, “is that Todd Wyndham showed up at his home last week completely shell-shocked. He doesn’t remember much, but he has told us that he was kidnapped and that there were other kidnap victims. His symptoms are on par with someone who has witnessed a violent crime, and we fear the kidnapper could strike again soon. We’re hoping that you can shed some light on Todd’s condition.”
“Why me?”
The policeman narrowed his eyes. “Because on the day after Todd’s disappearance, Mrs. St. James reported her daughter missing, as well. She was last seen at a martial arts tournament, speaking to you. Witnesses say that you pulled her out of the building, into the parking lot, and then you both disappeared. Care to tell me what happened, Ethan?”
My heart pounded, but I kept my cool, sticking to the script Kenzie and I had come up with. “Kenzie wanted to see New York City,” I said casually. “Her dad didn’t want her to go. But she really wanted to see it, you know...before she died.” They blinked, probably not knowing if I was being serious or overly dramatic. I shrugged again. “She asked me to take her, so I did. She never said her dad didn’t know she was leaving.”
Kind of a lame excuse, but I couldn’t tell them the real reason, of course. That a bunch of murderous Forgotten had found us at the tournament, chased us into the parking lot, and I’d had to send us both into the Nevernever to escape.
The policeman’s lips thinned, and I crossed my arms. “If you don’t believe me, ask Kenzie,” I told him. “She’ll tell you the same thing.”