Touch (Touched by the Fae 3)

Really? I toss the notepad onto the coffee table. “What’s that mean?”

Leaning over, he gestures at my drawing. “Do you know what any of this does?”

“A little. I know about the iron nail, and I don’t know exactly what’s up with the rock that looks like a donut, but I saw the guy wearing this necklace lift it up to his eye like it was a microscope or something.”

“A seeing stone,” Ash says. “If it’s a real one, it can be used to break any glamour.”

I remember how Dr. Gillespie found me even while I was wrapped up in my shadows.

“Okay. Yeah. It’s a real one.” I tap the page with the tip of my glove. “I saw this on the other side of the necklace, too. A pale pink crystal, just like Callie said. I had no idea what it was. But now… what do you think?”

“I think you might’ve saved us the trouble of actually searching for a relic of Brinkburn. Where is it? Where can we find this? Who has it?”

“It was my doctor,” I tell him again. “One of my psychologists—the last one I saw before Nine pulled me out of Black Pine. Dr. Gillespie. He yanked the necklace out from under his shirt right before he chased me into Faerie. If anyone has a Brinkburn thing, I’m betting it’s him.”

Ash thinks about it for a second.

“So this human…” he says, his raspy voice going soft. Thoughtful. “This Dr. Gillespie? You’re sure he wears the trio of charms around his throat?”

I nod.

“And he knows who you are?”

He knows every damn thing about me. It’s all in my folder—and that’s not to mention everything I told him during the few sessions we had together.

I nod again.

“That won’t stop me, though.”

Callie gasps. “Riley, no—”

Ash places his hand on her shoulder. She turns into him, burying her face in his chest as my dad peers over her head at me, his jaw hard and his eyes blazing like golden fire.

“So you understand what you’re going to have to do, don’t you? To free Ninetroir?”

I nod one last time.

“I’m going to have to go back to the asylum.”

6

Black Pine.

When Nine first grabbed my hand and pulled me into the shadows, forcing me to leave my room in the asylum, I was furious. Not just at the touch—though that hadn’t helped my anger—but because I didn’t want to be a part of any of this.

I still don’t. If I could throw the whole Shadow Prophecy over my shoulder and walk away from it, I’d gladly do so without ever glancing behind me a second time.

That’s not possible, though. I know that—now. Back in June, when I was counting down the days until I turned twenty-one and could finally be free—ha!—I whole-heartedly believed that, once I was released from the asylum, it was done. Over. I could start my life again without Madelaine’s death or Nine’s warnings to haunt me.

Of course, that’s when Nine found me. Then Rys.

One week passed. Then four months. Now it’s been three-quarters of a year, I’m closing in on turning twenty-two, and going back to Black Pine is quite possibly the most stupid, reckless thing I could do.

It’s a place where the fae put people to forget about them. Sure, it’s a psych hospital—sorry, a “facility for wayward juveniles”—but it’s also staffed by fae-touched humans, like Diana and Duncan. Shoot, if Jason and Carolina are any examples, I can’t even trust the patients.

And now I’m going to willingly return.

It all comes down to stealing Dr. Gillespie’s necklace to get my gloves on this Brinkburn thing. Ash is convinced that the crystal is all I need to reverse Melisandre’s spell. Since he seems to know what he’s talking about, I’m all aboard the ‘save Nine by any means’ train. A little petty theft? It’s better than the alternative.