Innocent Darkness Read online

  Table of Contents

  Authors Note

  Prologue: The Runaway

  One: An Afternoon Drive

  Two: Consequences

  Three: Conversations

  Four: Findlay House

  Five: Charlotte

  Six: Enemies

  Seven: The Spark

  Eight: Stronger Measures

  Nine: The Wish

  Ten: Midsummer’s Eve

  Eleven: The Otherworld

  Twelve: Kevighn’s Cabin

  Thirteen: Seeds and Seedlings

  Fourteen: Progress and Lack Thereof

  Fifteen: Truth and Lies

  Sixteen: Wanting

  Seventeen: Preparations and Realizations

  Eighteen: Where’s Noli?

  Nineteen: Confrontations

  Twenty: Noli’s Flight

  Twenty One: The Wild Hunt

  Twenty Two: The High Queen’s Palace

  Twenty Three: A Rescue, of Sorts

  Twenty Four: Prince Stiofán

  Twenty Five: Sometimes the Truth Hurts

  Twenty Six: Plans

  Twenty Seven: Mood Swings

  Twenty Eight: James Returns

  Twenty Nine: Choices

  Thirty: It’s Just Not Fair

  Thirty One: Charlotte’s Solution

  Thirty Two: As the Dust Settles

  Thirty Three: Decisions

  Thirty Four: The High Queen is Law

  Thirty Five: A Bad Bargain

  Thirty Six: Homecomings

  Epilogue: Home Again

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  Innocent Darkness takes place in an alternate version of 1901, a peek into what might have been. I’ve taken significant liberties with history, both in changing things completely, like adding flying cars and hovercops, and in moving things forward or backward in time. For example there was no “pleasure pier” in Los Angeles until 1916 and the carousel didn’t appear there until 1922. The San Francisco Earthquake was real, however it happened in 1906 and was caused by a rupture on the San Andres Fault, not magical backlash from the Otherworld. A good deal of the city had to be rebuilt from the earthquake and subsequent fires. Over 3,000 people died. Many things in this story are based on actual history. The sensory deprivation box was used to treat different sorts of “imbalances” (along with a great number of very strange inventions). Women and girls really were institutionalized for things like willfulness, hysteria, and nymphomania. The Ancient Greeks considered aether the fifth element and aether appears in a variety of alchemical theories and in early physics. As for Faeries … they could very well walk among us. Be careful what you wish for is always sage advice, no matter when and where you live.

  —Suzanne Lazear

  Come away, O human child!

  To the waters and the wild

  With a Faery, hand in hand,

  For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

  —William Butler Yeats, The Stolen Child

  Prologue

  The Runaway

  Whatever happened, she could not allow them to catch her, nor could a single drop of her blood spill upon the ground. The only sounds were of her labored breath and the hum of night in the wildwood. Soon, the horns and hoof beats of pursuit would follow.

  Annabelle’s lungs screamed, as did her body. She’d grown soft, enjoying the lavish lifestyle of the high court, only realizing too late what she’d unwittingly accepted. The sound of the hunting horn echoed in the distance making her run faster. The lake lay to the right. Somewhere.

  She continued fleeing into the dark chill of the night, her wispy gown tearing on branches reaching out of the shadows of the wildwood like ghostly limbs. A root tripped her, sending her sprawling through the forest growth. Pain shot up her leg when she landed among the dirt and the leaves, scraping her elbow in the process. The ominous tattoo of hoof-beats filled the air and her heart raced. She stumbled to her feet in a mad panic, heart being so fast she feared the hunt would hear it.

  Ignoring the pain, she continued running, not bothering to stop when she lost a slipper. She kicked off the other. If they caught her, they’d kill her.

  Not tonight, though. No, they’d continue to charm and cosset her as they’d done since the night Kevighn spirited her away in his airship, rescuing her from being forcibly married to an old drunk three times her age. But the time of the sacrifice approached. They would then ritually slaughter her to enable the magic of their world to continue for seven more years.

  Gasping for air, she summoned the last of her strength, going right and pressing on, praying she’d reach the lake before the hunt reached her.

  The horn’s call cut through the night air. The wild hunt and fear of being caught nearly paralyzed her—especially being caught by Kevighn. His betrayal burned her soul like a branding iron. Annabelle would willingly die this night to keep them from getting her blood. It would do them no good if she were already dead when they found her.

  A body of water glimmered between the tree branches. Shouts pierced the air.

  “Annabelle, Annabelle where are you?” Kevighn’s voice reverberated through the dark woods, sending a flock of leather-winged creatures into the air. She pictured him in her mind’s eye, dark, beautiful, strong, and deliciously rakish despite the gentleman aeronaut persona he’d worn when they first met. Sweet words rolled easily off his lips, enchanting her, making her feel special, beautiful. Now she understood why they called him Kevighn Silver-Tongue.

  It was not for his kisses, but for his lies.

  Her leg cramped and she fell again, terror gripping her. Warm, salty tears rolled down her face. No, this couldn’t be. When she tried to push herself up her arms crumbled beneath under her weight. Her lungs, her limbs, had enough. She crawled towards the lake, her knees growing raw, her fine gown torn and dirty. That no longer mattered. Freedom—and revenge—lay within reach.

  Kevighn had lied to her, stolen her from her world, betrayed her trust, her innocence. In return, she promised herself she would deny him and his queen what they wanted most.

  “There she is,” Kevighn shouted.

  Her hands entered the water. The warm, blissful liquid welcomed her like loving arms. When her body gave up, she allowed it. Yes. Release.

  “Annabelle, no. Come back, let me explain.”

  Too late. Water covered her face as she sank into the depths of the very lake where Kevighn had professed his love for her. How ironic that it should be the place of her death. The moment her heart stopped, the magic broke, setting her free. The last sounds she heard were the screams of those on shore. The land began to shake, crying for the loss of its gift.

  We must not look at goblin men,

  We must not buy their fruits:

  Who knows upon what soil they fed

  Their hungry thirsty roots?

  —Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market

  One

  An Afternoon Drive

  Six Years Later, Los Angeles, 1901

  “Still working, Noli?” V’s voice startled her, making her bang her head against the undercarriage of the automobile. Rubbing her forehead, she tightened the last bolt with her wrench. She wheeled herself out from underneath the old clunker.

  “She’s nearly finished.” Noli patted the car. The old Hestin-Dervish Pixy belonged to her father. He’d always said he’d restore the auto, fancying himself a gentleman tinker. After her father disappeared, her older brother had said the same. When Jeff left to become an aeronaut, she’d decided to fix the Pixy herself—much to the chagrin of her ever-proper mother.

  “Don’t you have a book to read?” She smiled at her best friend. Sitting up on the dolly, she pushed up her old brass g
oggles. V possessed an insatiable thirst for knowledge.

  “Don’t you have homework to do?” Furrowing his brow in mock disapproval, he put his hands on his hips and raised his voice to mimic her mother’s, making her laugh. Eyes green as oak leaves sparkled at her through wire-rim spectacles.

  Steven Darrow, or V, as she called him, lived on the other side of the wooden fence. A year older than she, he stood gangly, lanky, and deceptively strong. As always, his blond hair didn’t quite lay flat. He climbed through the loose board in the fence to visit her every day after school—not entirely proper anymore with her being sixteen and him seventeen, at least according to her mother. Then again, her mother seemed stuck in the last century.

  “I’ll do it later.” Still holding the wrench, she grinned. Her gaze fell to her skirt. Despite the heavy leather apron, oil stains spotted her long, navy skirt. How would she explain the stains when she shouldn’t be tinkering in the first place? The well-worn wrench went back into her father’s battered, old toolbox.

  “We should go for a test drive.” She patted the side of the auto.

  “Noli!” V shook his head. Unlike her, he’d changed out of his school uniform and wore beige trousers, a rumpled button-down white shirt, and brown bracers.

  “A quick test drive, that’s all.” Standing, she rolled the dolly away. She’d made it herself from her brother’s old, broken hoverboard and cast-off wheels from a handtrolly “Please? I’ve loaded her up with coal.” Like all good cars, the pixy was steam-powered.

  The old “bug eye” two-seater convertible possessed giant headlamps in the front. A mesh grill underneath looked like a smiling mouth. The flying car’s black retractable wings reminded her of bat wings.

  She and V had reupholstered the interior with scraps from her mother’s dressmaking shop and painted the car’s exterior purple. They’d also scrawled the auto’s name on its side in silver paint. The Big, Bad Pixymobile. The brass gleamed; the wood refinished and waxed. She worked behind the dilapidated shed in her backyard, away from prying eyes who might tell her mother. V wouldn’t tell.

  Fishing another pair of goggles from her toolbox, she threw them at him.

  Catching them, he turned the goggles over in his hands. “I can’t drive that.”

  V couldn’t drive worth a lick, but was an ace hoverboarder.

  “I can.” She was an ace driver and an even better hoverboarder.

  His expression contorted to one of utter terror. “Remember what happened last time?”

  An escaped strand of hair out fell into eyes and she blew them out of her way. “That was a hoverboard. Stop being a fussy old bodger. You have an operator’s license. All you have to do is sit in the passenger’s seat. Please?” She cast a glance at her beautiful, rebuilt automobile. “And if someone tells your mother?” V pulled the goggles on.

  “She’ll restrict me to my room. Again. She’ll hide my tools. Again.” Noli loved her mother, even if she didn’t always obey her. But after Jeff left, she got difficult to live with.

  “What if she sells the Pixy for scraps?”

  “It belonged to Papa. Put it in the shed with a lock, perhaps. But to the scrap yard it will never go,” Noli replied. Her mother treasured everything of her father’s. Jeff ’s things, well, one day her mama threw her brother’s thing away without a word of explanation. Noli hid what she’d rescued in the back of the shed.

  “Do you have a spare leather cap?” V eyed the one covering her mop of chestnut curls threatening to escape from her braid. Her never cooperated in this sort of weather.

  “You are such a girl, V.” Rolling her eyes, she took off her cap and tossed it to him.

  V pulled the leather aviator’s cap over his wayward blond locks, and repositioned the brass goggles, which looked peculiar over his spectacles.

  “Don’t I look handsome,” he teased.

  “Wear that and your card will be full at the next ball,” she joked back. His being odd, bookish, shy, and a repository for useless information put many girls off, despite his looks, skill at writing poetry, and good family.

  She, being part of the distressed gentry, would be lucky to find a suitor, even if she left Los Angeles. Not that she wanted one. Why did she need to marry well to save her family? Really, she was perfectly capable of saving it herself. It just might take awhile. Besides, tinkering was always preferable to stuffy balls.

  Noli climbed into the driver’s seat, adjusting her own goggles.

  V hesitated, one hand on the passenger door.

  A noise of exasperation escaped from her lips. “If you don’t get into this automobile right now, Steven Darrow, I’ll take it for a drive all by myself.”

  He made an annoyed noise. “You know you can’t.”

  Women couldn’t hold full operator’s licenses. If they wanted to operate an auto or an airship, they must have a provisional permit and ride with a male over eighteen with a full license. Given they were one-operator conveyances, women couldn’t operate hoverboards. The woman’s equality movement had yet to reach Los Angeles.

  Not that she ever let that stop her. She nodded to the passenger’s seat. “Then get in.”

  The fact V hadn’t turned eighteen wouldn’t stop her either—or that fact that when she’d gone to get her provisional permit she’d been denied one. With a sigh, he climbed into the passenger’s seat.

  She grinned. “Thanks.”

  He shook his head in mock despair. “I don’t even indulge my sister the way I do you.”

  “Elise can grow up properly. I’m a lost cause.” She adjusted the mirrors. Her chance to grow up properly ended the day her gently born mother had to go to work. It enabled them to keep the house. Upkeep proved another matter entirely. But honestly, she had no problem with the idea of going to work … or even going to the university like her father had.

  Unfortunately, the people like her mother did.

  “Ready?” She pulled the lever that ignited the boiler. When she saw puffs of steam she tugged on the lever that started the engine. It only sputtered. She caught a jubilant smile on V’s face. Gritting her teeth, she pumped another lever furiously. Resetting the first lever, she tried again.

  “Come on, come on. Please?” she pleaded at the car. This time the sweet sounds of a rumbling engine greeted her. The rough grumble sounded more like a hungry beast than a kitten. But it ran. What a blissful sound.

  “That’s a girl,” she cooed at the car. Steam poured out of the little smokestack on the hood. She pressed the button on the dash, which started the wings. The gears creaked, making her wince. After a moment, a pleasant mechanized hum replaced the squeal of grinding metal and the wings flapped. Elation and excitement bubbled inside her. “Here we go.”

  “I’ll drive.” V’s hand covered hers. A gentleman’s hand, large, strong, smooth, and pale contrasted with one small, rough, and a most unladylike shade of tan.

  “Too late.” She flipped switches on the dash covered in an assortment of lights, buttons, switches, and gauges. Finally, after nearly two years of work, her beloved automobile could set off on its maiden voyage.

  Cranking another lever and pushing on the thrust, she took off. The auto zoomed forward with an awkward lurch. When it appeared as if they’d hit the fence, they angled up, taking off into the air. She pulled up on the steering wheel and gave the engine more power. The flapping of the wings and their ascent caused her hair to whip in her face. Maybe she shouldn’t have given V her cap. “Look.” Leaning over the side of the car, she looked down. Her house made a stark contrast to both his and the other houses in the wealthy Los Angeles neighborhood. Even though V had no mother, his house always looked impeccable.

  In contrast, the shutters of her house sat askew, paint peeling, awning sagging. The neighbors complained, though it was hardly Miss Havisham’s. Loose shingles dotted the roof. Tomorrow after school she’d fix them. Perhaps V would help. They could only make repairs on the house while her mother worked at the shop—and they could only do
things requiring no money or that she could barter for. Maybe she could fix something for someone in exchange for house paint.

  “We’ll just go once around the block.” She switched gears and pushed on the thrust. The Pixy flew. Even V said she couldn’t make it fly—and she had.

  V bit his lip, green eyes darting around like a fly in the kitchen. No one stood on the streets below. No hovercops loomed in the distance. “We know it can get airborne. Let’s take her down. Give me a land lesson in how to fly and I’ll take you for a ride tomorrow.”

  “What did you say?” With a grin, she pressed the thrust, going even faster. “I can’t hear you.” Laughing, she zoomed though the air. A single auto puttered away on the street below and Noli waved. Flying autos didn’t have quite the popularity regular autos did, well, not among old people like her mother. She couldn’t imagine why. Flying was so much fun.

  She pressed too hard on the thrust, making the auto jolt into a higher gear.

  “Slow down. Please? We should return home before we get caught,” V told her.

  Caught? She hadn’t thought about that. Her driving becoming erratic, as she pushed the engine, rushing to get home.

  “It’ll be fine, just ease up and steady your wheel. We’re nearly home.” V laid a cautionary hand lay on her arm, voice even and soothing.

  Yes, ease up on the thrust and steady her wheel. That was it. Her backyard came into view, the garden next to her favorite climbing tree the nicest part.