Endlessly (Paranormalcy 3)

"Oh. " Raquel frowned.

"So I need your help. You know all the names of the IPCA controlled faeries, right?"

She nodded, her frown deepening.

"Well, it was a dark faerie curse, so I figure we need a dark faerie to undo it. So you call an Unseelie faerie, we give him or her a named command to break the curse, ta-da, we can double-date!"

"Wait, who can double-date?" Lend asked.

"I'll let your dad tell you. So. Faerie?"

Raquel heaved a sigh, along the lines of her famous things never get easier, do they? sigh, and, boy, I agreed with her.

"To be honest, I don't know which court most of the faeries belong to. "

"You don't? How can you not know? It seems like pretty vital information to me. You know, 'Are you a member of the evil court kidnapping humans and plotting world domination, or a member of the moderately less evil court who just wants to get the crap off the planet?' sort of a survey when you get them. "

She raised her eyebrows. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to get information of any type at all from a faerie? Figuring out which court they belonged to was never a very high priority as long as we could control them. "

"Gah! IPCA keeps coming up with new ways to massively fail me. But you said you didn't know which court most of the faeries belonged to. Do you know any?"

She nodded, reluctant. "Yes, there's one I know for certain is from the Dark

Court. "

"Great! Let's call him. "

"Her. You know her, too. Fehl. "

Ah, bleep. Of course. The one faerie Vivian had mostly drained, who was now running around the Faerie Realms, feral and twisted. Also the one faerie I'd commanded never to come near me again.

"There has to be someone else. " I didn't even know if Fehl had enough strength to make it to Earth anymore.

Raquel paused, deep in thought, then nodded. "There's another I'm fairly certain is Unseelie. I'm not positive, though. "

"I'll take it!"

"We'll have to manage this very carefully, Evie. From what I saw, it would appear that entire court wants you dead. "

"Yeah, well, you know. Stopping their custom-made Empty One, stabbing their queen in the neck, breaking their mirror forest, I'm not really Miss Popularity there. "

"Stabbing-You what?"

"Long story. Faerie? I'd really like to hang out with my boyfriend while he's, you know, conscious. "

"Seconded," Lend shouted.

"Are you sure it's a good idea to invite an Unseelie faerie here?"

"We're very well protected," David said. "There's pretty much every elemental you can think of hanging out around the house, and Cresseda has put up numerous safety measures. "

"Very well," Raquel said. She didn't even blanche at Cresseda's name. David's fingers laced through hers probably had something to do with her newfound grace regarding the elemental who stole David from her. "Althenam. "

We all waited, barely daring to breathe, until a line of white light traced itself along the wall. A faerie, long and tall and beautiful with hair as orange as fire, stepped through, her eyes widening as she saw me.

Raquel said her name again, and she snapped her attention (and vicious glare) toward my former boss. "In the kitchen is a boy under a faerie curse. Undo it without harming him, then wait for further orders. "

I had to hand it to Raquel-she had the whole named command thing down. I tended to suck hard-core at it.