Lady of the Veils

By M. L. John

In a suburban town twenty minutes from the border of Faerie lives a young woman named Karen MacGregor. Though she is the daughter of an exiled Faerie princess, Karen leads an unremarkable life full of homework, punk rock and old science fiction movies. When bloody civil war breaks out in her mother’s homeland her life begins to change rapi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gypsy Shadow Publishing
• Release date: Mar 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781619504493

M. L. John

The first novel M. L. John ever read was Frank L. Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, and she has had a love of fantasy ever since. As soon as her handwriting was good enough to write full sentences, she started writing stories about beautiful princesses who spent their time rescuing princes and slaying dragons. Very little has changed about her writing style since that time, with the possible exception of her penmanship. She lives in Colorado with her true love, their three children, an obnoxious baby brother who still won’t let her change the television channel, and a small menagerie of yippy little dogs and cats big enough to saddle. These days, she spends most of her time explaining different mythologies to her kids until their little eyes glaze and roll back in their heads.

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Lady of the Veils

Book One of the Knight of Avalon Series

by M. L. John

All rights reserved

Copyright © December 2010, M. L. John

Cover Art Copyright © 2010, Charlotte Holley

Gypsy Shadow Publishing, Inc.

Lockhart, TX

www.gypsyshadow.com

Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

No part of this book may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, and email, without prior written permission.

First eBook ISBN: 978-1-61950-449-3

Print Book ISBN: 978-1-61950-058-7

Published in the United States of America

First Print Edition: 03/26/2012

Dedication

To my mother, who never doubted.

Chapter 1

Vicious pounding thudded on the door of the YMCA. Surprised by the sudden noise, Karen MacGregor looked around to see if someone else was on it, but no one was. She was the youngest of the volunteers, and most of the time the others seemed annoyed to find her underfoot. But how much damage could she do by opening the door? The pounding came again, this time accompanied by terrified shouting in Fey.

Theresa, Karen’s volunteer supervisor, looked up from ladling food and snapped, Would somebody please get that door?

Ah, get it yourself, Karen muttered rebelliously under her breath. Theresa either didn’t hear her or chose not to respond. Karen ran to answer the door as one last shout thundered from behind it.

As she pulled the door open, the wind nearly blew it out of her grasp. Two Seelie Fey in the green uniforms of the Summer Court, a Brownie and an Undine, stood outside with a similarly clad Sprite sagging between them. All three were soaked, muddy and bleeding. The Undine was a water Fey, and in this violent weather she appeared to be formed of the rain, her skin glittering like collected dew, blood pale against her waterfall of hair. On the side of her face, a dark burn the shape of a hand marked her skin. The Brownie was about three feet tall, hairless and nut brown. A seeping head wound turned the mud on his cheeks red. The Sprite in the middle wasn’t moving at all.

Karen opened her mouth to speak, but the Undine gave her an indecipherable look and thrust the limp Sprite into her arms.

Here, grunted the Undine in accented English, placing one silver hoof inside the door, She is not well. Take care of her.

The Sprite’s weight almost toppled Karen, but she managed to keep her feet. The creature was delicate, with long hair that shifted color and bones that looked sharp against her thin skin. She looked as if she could ride the currents of a warm breeze despite the solidity of her body in Karen’s arms. The Sprite stared with flat, unblinking eyes. An unpleasant smell reached Karen’s nose as she lowered the Sprite to the mud-tracked tiles. Was the Fey bespelled? Could sorcery cause the same nauseating smell as new death?

Karen just stared at the Sprite for a moment, waiting for a clue or an explanation. She couldn’t possibly be dead, could she? She was Fey. They were immortal.

As Karen stared at the creature, she heard Theresa cry out from behind her, Oh my God! The woman hurried forward, shouting, Someone call 911! Kneeling beside the Sprite, the older volunteer tilted the Fey’s mouth open to clear her airway and breathed into it. Karen watched the narrow chest rise in response to the rescue breathing.

People were pushing past Karen to get at the downed Sprite, jostling her. She looked around for the Undine and the Brownie who had just come in, but they were nowhere to be seen; gone without explanation. A wall of people stood between Karen and the Sprite now, and she had to stand on her tiptoes to see over them. From the crowd around Theresa, a voice said, I think it’s too late, Theresa, she’s gone.

Gone where? Karen exploded, loudly and more angrily than she had intended. A few people looked up at her, but none of them had any answers. Ogres can’t kill the Warriors of the Wild Hunt! She can’t be dead! Try again!

Theresa emerged from the crowd. She was disheveled; her dark braid had come loose during the chest compressions and strands of hair were straggling around her face. Her eyes were shadowed with weariness.

Karen, she said, as if surprised the young volunteer still existed. Honey, why don’t you go sit down for a few minutes? The paramedics will be here in a while and I don’t want you in the way.

Karen almost became indignant at being dismissed again, but something in Theresa’s posture made her pause. She doubted if Theresa had anything in her soul that could be surprised anymore. She didn’t know how many dead Fey Theresa had seen. Karen had been working at the Arborville Y for only three weeks, since her Civics teacher had assigned volunteer work and a report for their final exam. Karen had chosen this out of some misguided sense of cultural responsibility. She wished fervently that she hadn’t.

There was more commotion at the doors. Karen shook off her thoughts, found Theresa gone, and disobeyed her by going to find out what was happening. Someone shouted, Does anybody speak Fey?

Karen pushed her way through the crowd. I do. Can I help?

Another of the volunteers, a man named Mark with a paunch and balding head said, What is this guy saying? It seems important.

Karen nudged her way through the crowd to the Dryad who appeared to be the center of the group. Rough bark grew from the backs of his arms, and his green hair was stringy with rainwater. He wore the blue robes of a wizard. Mud had been ground into the hem. He was wringing his hands and babbling in Fey to whatever volunteer would listen. None of the other translators were nearby and Karen’s fluency was strained by his frightened stammering.

Alarmed by his behavior, Karen shouted in Fey to get his attention. Hey! What happened? What’s wrong?

The wizard noticed Karen for the first time. He turned to her with wild eyes, whites showing all around his irises, and then stammered in the same language, The Ogres are in Avalon, in the palace. They have won. We are conquered.

Karen’s mind chattered insane questions, but her mouth was still. The thought of the Ogres inside the palace seemed impossible. If there was one thing she knew High King Thael Quintinar was capable of doing, it was holding his house against attack. The High Queen, his wife, had served with Karen’s mother in the Wild Hunt for centuries, and Karen had grown up playing with their youngest son. Each of Thael’s children was a stronger wizard than the last. When they all stood together, no Ogre could cross their threshold. Briefly, she wondered if she had misunderstood.

But Karen hadn’t learned Fey in school. She had learned it from her mother, who spoke it natively; she had even been placed in special classes as a child because she came from a bilingual home. It didn’t matter that the wizard’s dialect was more scholarly than the language she spoke with her family. She knew what she’d heard.

No. Karen shook her head with denial, held up her palms to ward his words away.

What is it? Mark demanded. What’s going on?

Karen ignored him. The Dryad continued, I saw the flames of funeral pyres before I escaped the city. They came from the courtyard.

Karen felt her heart stop for a second and gasped, It’s impossible.

I wish it were, the wizard said. He shook his head sadly and pushed through the ring of onlookers.

Karen watched him go. I really don’t think this is funny, she called, her voice high and near hysteria, but he did not look back. Karen watched one of the volunteers try to give him a cup of coffee, but he ignored it and made his way to the windows.

Mark surprised her a little by placing his hand on her shoulder. Karen’s thoughts felt foggy, as if she was watching herself through a badly out-of-focus movie camera.

What did he say? Mark asked again.

Karen blinked, struggling to bring her thoughts back under her control. I think he said the war was over, she replied. He said the Ogres are in Avalon, and he said he saw flames from the palace courtyard.

Going pale, Mark whispered, Dear God.

Karen nodded and walked away from him without speaking. Dear God, she thought. She started to cry. Her sobs were painful, burning her throat and her face as they tore loose. If she’d had a moment to prepare, she would have found somewhere to hide her grief. But it overcame her too quickly for that.

Karen? Theresa said. She sounded frightened. Karen, are you okay? What’s wrong? What happened?

Funeral pyres. It could not be so. What did all of this mean for her brother? She wondered if Julian would stumble into the YMCA, another refugee, soaked with his own blood and haunted with the nearness of his own death. Or was it really possible he had died when his fighter jet was shot down over the Enchanted Forest, as his Colonel claimed? She had spent four months refusing to believe it. But now… this war was over. He would be coming home. Or he wouldn’t, and that would be her final answer.

She doubted Beri would ever leave his home, even while it burned. He’d rather die. She had begged him last summer to come out to California. She’d couched it in terms of a vacation, keeping her fear for him secret, but he had told her he could not be spared. She had wondered at the time how he could have suddenly become so dedicated to his homeland. Now, with his house burning, that newborn sense of responsibility might have proved fatal.

For a moment, she hated her brother, whom she’d worshiped, and her best friend, who should have been safe in his palace, protected by his father’s Knights and his own strong magic. Why hadn’t Julian stayed home? He hadn’t needed to join the Air Force and become a fighter pilot; he could have taken the VP spot at Dad’s firm. Beri should have swallowed his pride and fled for Earth last summer when Karen begged him to.

Karen cried harder. She wanted to go home. She thought she would, actually; they didn’t really need her, and there were enough bilingual Fey in the room to translate the Avalon library into English.

I’m going home, Karen announced to Theresa, who was still looking at Karen with frightened concern. You don’t need me…

Theresa nodded, her eyes understanding. She patted Karen on the shoulder as the younger volunteer moved past her. Karen didn’t think she would return tomorrow. She had chosen a community service for her civics assignment that was far too close to home. She could have cleaned up trash along the highway, but no. Karen had wanted to make a difference in the world.

She hunched her shoulders in anticipation of the cold rain and walked through the back door into the parking lot. Her father’s silver Mercedes was dull as a closed eye in the filtering illumination from the street lamp above. Rain plopped into her hair and slid down her spine in oily slug tracks. Karen pulled on the thin gloves that would protect her hands from the steel in her keys, then unlocked the door and started the engine. It made her think of Beri, who had been an awful driver and crashed three of the nicest cars she had ever seen.

Karen sobbed, horrified as her thoughts of him became past tense. She almost wished she had never loved them, those missing boys who would leave her empty if they passed. She wished she could be any other girl, one who might realize in passing that the Ogres had conquered Avalon, and then quickly forget.

Karen scrubbed at her face and put the car in gear. The weather was getting worse.

Chapter 2

Karen’s alarm clock went off at 6:45 a.m., but she had not slept at all and she was too tired to switch it off. It beeped stridently, shrilling its repetitive tone into the otherwise silent morning. Karen’s mother had cried last night. It was the first time in her seventeen years she had ever seen Mom cry. Dad, normally cheerful, had looked pale beneath his neatly trimmed beard and held his wife as if she had suddenly become fragile. He had probably never seen her cry, either. Karen wondered if this was the first time her mother had ever cried. Before Karen’s mother had been exiled from the Summerlands, Mom had been a Seelie Princess, as well as a Knight known as the Dragonsbane. Did that kind of Warrior cry?

By the time she had decided she didn’t feel guilty enough about missing class to go to school, Karen finally found the strength to silence the clock and swung her legs onto the floor of her bedroom. Even when she wanted to stay home from school she didn’t have the guts to go through with it. She sighed and rubbed at her face, then hauled herself through the morning ritual and trudged out to her father’s car.

Karen was disappointed to find it still raining. She thought about Beri, and the way he had clapped and whistled at her when she first put on her awful plaid uniform the summer before her freshman year. That first year of high school, the thought of his response to her posing had helped her get dressed most mornings. Karen didn’t even want to think about Julian. Maybe he was okay. Maybe he was on his way home. She couldn’t bring herself to consider any other possibility.

This was going to be a bad day. She could hardly stand the country club WASPs at her school when her life wasn’t in turmoil.

I don’t want to go to school, Karen whispered, but she popped the car into gear and backed out of the garage.

The drive, and her first few periods of the day, were uneventful. Her civics teacher switched the news on. Karen half-listened to CNN report live on the sack of Avalon. She had spent half of her summers, and most of her vacations, in Faerie with the Quintinars. She could feel the wildness of the land, the pull of the untamed forest and the stillness of the recently paved roads in her blood. It was a beautiful, dangerous land, where demons, and sometimes angels, still roamed the wilds.

One of the newscasters cut into Karen’s attention then. He said, We’ve just received word that the High King of Faerie has been executed. We have Anderson Cooper, live in Avalon, to report. Anderson?

Karen’s head shot up from the doodle she had been creating in her notebook margins, heart pounding.

Anderson Cooper was wearing a windbreaker and standing on the beach with the choppy gray ocean behind him. Thanks, Jerry. It’s just been confirmed that High King Thael Quintinar and his family were executed at dawn this morning. They were hanged in the street outside the front gate of the palace, where the people of Faerie would witness their deaths. Naturally, the mood here in Avalon is quite grim this afternoon.

Karen launched herself out of her desk. No! Her shriek was too loud for the classroom, and all eyes snapped to her.

Mrs. Teakle jumped up, looking horrified, and said, Miss MacGregor. Is there a problem here?

Karen could feel herself trembling as if she would fly apart. Hot tears formed in her eyes, careening down her cheeks before she could stop them. She yanked up her book bag with little thought other than a need to escape the reporter’s unemotional drone.

Mrs. Teakle’s face quickly changed from annoyance to concern. Let’s step into the hall, dear, she said. Karen was already headed for the door.

Someone murmured, What the hell is her problem?

Another replied, She’s half-Fey, didn’t you know? She’s even got pointed ears.

A third girl said, No, she’s not, she’s too fat to be Fey.

Karen opened the door so hard that it slammed against a wall. Mrs. Teakle shut it quietly behind herself as she followed. Karen fought to get herself under control. This was no place for a breakdown. The assholes in her class would be talking about this for weeks. She could feel it already. Their scorn would be nearly palpable as she became even stranger to them, even more foreign.

Is this something you’d like to talk about? Mrs. Teakle asked. Karen fought to control her breathing, silently telling herself she had no reason to cry. The only answer she managed was the shake of her head.

Would you like to go home? Mrs. Teakle looked like sending Karen home would be a relief. Then she wouldn’t have to figure out what to say…I think it might be a good idea for you to be with your family today.

Her family! Thael Quintinar had been her godfather, had taught Karen lullabies and guitar chord progressions, clapped at her piano recitals, tied her shoes. Beri Quintinar had given Karen her first kiss, and she had pinned him down and shoved sand in his mouth for his trouble. Miathi had let her ride on the back of his motorcycle. Solis, the oldest daughter and heir to the High Throne, had taught her to apply mascara. She started to cry again, not really meaning to, but unable to help it.

Mrs. Teakle said, I’ll call your parents to come get you. Let’s head down to the office.

She led Karen gently by her elbow. The office was empty except for the secretary, who met Mrs. Teakle’s eyes as they walked in. Something undecipherable and adult passed between them, and Karen heard Mrs. Teakle ask for the phone. She dialed and then murmured quietly into the receiver for a few moments, then disconnected. After some time she turned back to Karen, patted her on a shoulder, and said, Your father said he’ll meet you at home. She appeared to struggle with herself for a moment, then blurted out, I don’t know if this will make you feel better, but he said that your godmother is probably still alive. He was quite sure of it, actually.

Karen blinked, surprised at the idea. That made perfect sense. The rest of the Quintinars were mortal because of the Birthright, which was a magic so powerful it eventually killed anyone who wielded it, but Leila had been born at the Seelie Court and could not work the Birthright. It was possible. Then she remembered the Sprite, heavier in death than she looked and smelling of sewage. If the Ogres could kill Sprites, they would be able to kill even the High Queen. She would have to talk to her mother as soon as possible. Her mother would be able to explain all of this away.

Karen didn’t know how she was going to stay composed long enough to drive home. Daddy worked in San Francisco, though, so even if he hurried to pick her up she’d be waiting for quite a while.

Ms. Teakle volunteered, I’ll send Claudia Weinberg with your homework. We’ll see you in a few days, hmm?

Karen nodded. Thank you, Mrs. Teakle, she replied quietly. I’m sorry that I went mental on you. I just…

Mrs. Teakle nodded again. I should have thought, the teacher replied. I should have realized that some of our students would be sensitive to the subject matter.

Karen said her goodbyes and left. The halls were peculiarly still during class periods. She had rarely ever been in the halls when they were so quiet. She made her way to her father’s sedan and got inside. The rain had momentarily stopped, but the sky was still dank and oppressive.

Karen’s hands were shaking, but she cranked the radio up and sang along as she drove. It was just noisy enough to keep her thoughts occupied. When a radio voice cut in to announce the news, she switched it savagely off and sang something fast-paced and loud until her voice filled the car and her throat burned. She thought of Beri’s panic attacks, and the way music had always calmed them. Karen had never told him she loved him. All of this time, she had worried she wasn’t pretty enough for him, and now she couldn’t ever say it out loud.

Karen pulled into her drive and got out of the car. It seemed her parents still weren’t home; both the Jag and the Beemer were gone. Karen walked in through the kitchen door. The house was silent, full of echoes and the sound of her own jagged breathing. Karen set her book bag down on the island in the center of her large kitchen and looked around, wondering what she should do now. She had to do something. She felt so powerless. After a moment Karen washed her hands and started to grease a pair of aluminum cookie sheets. She would need at least two for the epic number of cookies she was planning to make.

She needed three. The cookies had all been fed into a preheated oven when Dad appeared, still dressed in his suit and carrying his briefcase. He looked as if he were trying to be stoic and failing as he knitted his heavy brows together. He set his briefcase down on a counter, and Karen flew into his arms as she had when she was a child, crying anew because her father had appeared.

Hush, my love, he whispered, in his thick Scottish brogue. My dear heart. Don’t cry.

Karen sobbed against his chest and allowed herself to be comforted by the feel of his big hand stroking her hair. This pain was so great it felt like it would burst out of her. All other pain was like a dim echo of this. When she was in elementary school, she’d had a hamster die. It had been her one and only pet. She had never grieved for anything else.

Eventually she was just too exhausted to cry and Dad removed himself to the island. They sat in the kitchen and ate cookies she could not taste until her mother finally called her father back. He told her what had happened, and after a moment disconnected with words of love.

Your mother is coming right home, he assured Karen. Why don’t you run upstairs and change out of your uniform? You can’t be comfortable in it.

Karen did as she was told, quickly pulling on jeans and a T-shirt. Being alone was frightening. Ghosts hovered at the edge of her thoughts, waiting only for her permission to appear. She avoided looking at her bureau. She knew a framed picture of Beri kissing her cheek at the beach waited on its surface to gouge her with reminders. Then she ran back downstairs, two steps at a time in her hurry to make it back to a room with a person in it.

Karen and Dad looked at each other, neither really sure what to say. After a few moments, he asked, Well, love? Are you for ordering a pizza?

Karen shot a weak smile at him. Are you for ordering a vegetarian pizza?

He growled, but Karen knew it was mostly to amuse her. I don’t know how you turned out to be such a monster, he grumbled. Can’t you even let an old man have pepperoni on a day like this?

Karen said, You have to watch your cholesterol. And I don’t like to eat things that once had faces. So it’s a win-win situation.

They ordered the pizza and settled into the couch to watch television. They hadn’t been there long when Karen heard the sound of someone at the door.

Stay here, Dad ordered. I think that’s your mother. Just let me talk to her for a moment, all right?

Karen nodded as her dad propelled his bulk off of the couch and stepped out into the foyer. When he was out of sight, Karen stood and crept behind him quietly. She stopped at the door to the den, peeping around like a curious child. Her father was holding her mother. Mom was so much smaller than her husband that she seemed enveloped in his arms. She was shaking with silent sobs. Karen’s stomach lurched and she withdrew. Should she go in and make sure Mom was okay? She hesitated on the edge of the doorway. Dad had told her to stay put. Maybe Mom didn’t want to cry in front of her? Karen had seen her mother crying rarely enough that she felt she was witnessing something private. Karen tried to return to the couch and the rerun they had been watching, but she felt restless and wanted to stand. She decided to go upstairs and run a bath.

Karen closed herself in the bathroom. She filled the tub with water and the room with steam, then lowered herself into a scented tub full of bubbles. She relaxed back into the water. It was hot enough to sting, but Karen liked the distraction.

After a few moments, there was a knock on the door. Her mother called, Karen? May I come in?

Sure, Karen called. Mom opened the door and stepped inside. She was still wearing the white pantsuit she’d left in that morning. Karen’s mother was stunningly beautiful, even for a Princess of the Summer Court. She was a Daoine Sidhe, one of the race of people who ruled Faerie. In age, she appeared not much older than Karen. She had fashionably coiffed hair, golden as sunlight, and skin that shone with an internal light. Her eyes were large, green, and shadowed with weariness. Her ears were elegantly pointed. She pulled a washcloth out of the linen closet and seated herself on the edge of the tub. Karen moved her rope of wet hair out of the way and her mother gently started to wash her shoulders.

In Fey, Mom said, Your father told me you heard about the Quintinars from the news. I am so sorry. I would have been the one to tell you if I could have.

Karen nodded. I loved the Quintinars and they’re all dead. That would still be true no matter how I heard it.

Mom dipped the cloth in the tub and resumed scrubbing Karen’s back. That is a sad truth, my heart. I think Leila will come to us if she can. I know she lives. The news counted six bodies only.

Karen blinked. That made Thael and their five children. She would have agreed with her mother if she hadn’t seen the Sprite at the YMCA with her own eyes. Mom? Karen said quietly. What can kill the Fey?

Mom paused in her scrubbing, then started again. Only one thing, as well you know. The Birthright of the Quintinars will end an immortal life. But there are no more Quintinars, and there is no more Birthright. I suppose we are all truly immortal once again. Why would you ask this?

Well, Karen started carefully. Last night at the shelter I saw a dead Sprite.

Mom made an amused sound. No, you didn’t. There’s no such thing at all.

Yes, I did, Karen insisted, twisting to meet her mother’s eyes. I saw it myself. She was wearing the armor of the Wild Hunt, and two other Fey dragged her in. I think she was dead when she got there. Another volunteer started CPR, but she was too far gone.

Mom smiled gently, and from the expression on her face, Karen knew it to be at the naiveté of her youngest child. These volunteers are not Healers, my love, her mother explained gently. These are good-hearted people, but no experts in the physiology of the Fey. I will tell you what happened. Last night some poor Sprite awoke in cold storage, missing her armor and with a tag on her toe. She undoubtedly frightened the wits out of some medical examiner on her way out of the morgue. But leave she surely did.

Mom seemed so positive that Karen began to doubt herself. You’re probably right, Karen admitted, and turned around again.

I am, Mom said. She kissed the top of Karen’s hair and said, The pizza is here. Well done in making your father order vegetables.

I told you this whole vegetarian thing would come in handy, Karen told her mother, who chuckled musically and left her alone.

Chapter 3

Karen did not go to school for the next two days. On the first day, both of her parents stayed home with her and they all sat in the den, watching Gilligan’s Island on TiVo and eating popcorn. The second day Dad had to go back to work, and it was down to Karen and her mother. Mom’s elegant brow furrowed as she watched the Skipper rampage around the island after another thwarted escape attempt.

What? Karen asked her.

They would be better off drowning that fool, Mom dryly observed, shaking her head. Else they will never leave the island.

Karen snorted. There is something wrong with you, she said, shoving a piece of popcorn into her mouth. "He’s Gilligan. He’s what makes the show funny."

I do not get it, her mother announced. "Put on Grey’s Anatomy."

Daddy loves this show, Karen muttered, standing to grab the remote. Her mother’s iPhone rang. Karen grabbed it from the coffee table and passed it over. It was probably one of the partners from the law firm calling again since no one who worked there seemed to know what to do without Mom. They’d been calling her every half hour for the last two days.

Karen’s mother answered in English. After a few seconds, she switched to Fey. A sharp Who is this? piqued Karen’s curiosity.

Her mother stood suddenly and turned her back to Karen, walking into the foyer to be alone. Karen followed her silently, straining to hear.

I loved that lad as if he were my own. How can you be so cruel as to play this prank only two days after his execution?

Karen’s stomach knotted. Mom was talking about one of the Quintinar boys. How will you prove it? asked her mom in a soft voice. She paused, listening. Hear this, sir. Your nonsense offends me. It has been too long since I felt a blade in my palm.

Karen’s mother crossed an arm under her breasts as if to hold herself in, but her voice on the phone was steel. Fine. For my love of him I will come. But know that if you prove a liar you will suffer. She stabbed the screen of the phone viciously with the tip of her finger to disconnect.

Karen gingerly stepped around the wall to confront her mother. Tears had welled up in Mom’s eyes, and Karen reached for her hand. What happened? Karen asked gently.

Her mother held her other hand against the bridge of her nose, shivering with repressed emotion. Karen remained silent while her mother composed herself.

Mom eventually met her eyes and said, I need to go out for a while. You must stay here.

Why? Karen asked. Where are you going?

Hesitantly, she said, You must not allow yourself to believe a word of this. It is a cruel, heartless lie, and I am going only to make the perpetrator of this awful hoax pay. Do you understand me?

Karen nodded meekly. She had rarely seen her mother so furious. Okay. I promise I won’t believe it. What happened?

Mom glanced at the phone again as if to reassure herself she still held it. He said that he was Beriani Quintinar. And that Nikiana was with him at customs, on the Border. He wants me to come for him.

Karen was stunned silent for a moment. Her heart rose up in her throat.

At Karen’s hopeful expression, her mother said No! No, Karen, you cannot believe this! They counted the corpses on the news. There were six of them.

Karen’s heart fell again, back into the low place it had stayed since her last night at the YMCA. She fought back tears and hoarsely asked, "So why are you going, if that’s true? Do you want to get hurt?"

Mom met her eyes, and Karen saw a faint glimmer of brightness where there should have been only fury. She suddenly understood. Mom wanted it to be true as badly as Karen did. She was putting on a tough show to protect herself. If it turned out to be a hoax, Mom could always tell herself she’d known all along.

Karen clenched her trembling jaw, trying to decide how to feel. I want to go, she announced.

You cannot go.

"No! I want to go! How dare he call this house and tell lies like that? I want—no, I need—to punch him right in the face."

No. There will be enough violence from me. Your services are not required.

Mom. You don’t understand. I really need to do this.

Why do you need to?

Exasperated, Karen said, "I just have to see him