SPOILER ALERT: THIS BLOGPOST CONTAINS THE FIRST CHAPTER OF FAERIETALES 2: TO ERR IS FAERIE

So… I leave Sabrina hanging high and dry at the end of “Not So Human,” which was really jerky of me.

Remember though:

·         Authors are jerks.

·         I’m an author.

·         Therefore I’m a jerk.

I’m not nearly as much of a jerk as I could be however. A dear friend of mine, for example, spent much of last week reading through a book, only to find out that it ended on a cliffhanger and didn’t have a sequel. Nor is it likely to in the future, since it was written back in 2006 and the author has published plenty more since then.

Now that’s just cruel!

I’m not that mean. And I do believe in happy endings, hence the reason why I kept writing sequels to get Sabrina into a better place. “To Err Is Faerie” was originally intended to solve all of her problems.

Admittedly, it doesn’t nearly as much as I intended it to. But that’s why I wrote a third book! (See, I do care.)

So yes, our winged heroine has to go through some rough stuff to get to her happily ever after. Because I’m a jerk. And because, let’s face it, so are readers. Nobody’s going to read a story about a stress-free life.

In other words, pipe down and keep reading. ;-)
 

CHAPTER 1 

S

abrina lay in her massive royal bed, exhausted but unable to sleep.

It should have been such an easy task to accomplish, considering the soft perfection of her expensive, yellow comforter and matching sheets. They were a few of the luxurious perks that came with being a faerie princess. So were unlimited wardrobe choices, five-star cuisine, and servants at her beck and call. If she chose to utilize any of them, that was.

For the most part, she didn’t. None of it appealed to her, and she wasn’t sure if it ever would. Not when one of her friends was in the hands of a brutal, faerie-hating organization, probably undergoing horrific experiments even then. Having firsthand knowledge of all the many ways Dallas could be suffering right then – including psychological torture, electric shock or worse – wasn’t conducive to getting any real rest. Which was why she hadn’t gotten a worthwhile night’s sleep for two whole weeks.

It felt far longer than that.

Sabrina tossed onto her left side to curl her body into a fetal position. When that proved futile, she stretched her legs out and then drew them back in a bit, only to roll onto her back again within the space of another minute.

It was depressing how sluggishly the night progressed when one wasn’t getting any actual sleep. She’d become intimately acquainted with the way it could tempt and tease but never deliver the blissful oblivion she craved so much. It was downright cruel, like making a starving person stand in front of a bakery window.

Cruel and exhausting. She was so tired on a physical, mental and emotional level: so pretty much every way possible.

Not that she’d cried. Sabrina hadn’t done that since the Human Preservation and Advancement Committee had landed her in the hospital. That was the same day it had dragged Dallas off in front of her while she, left broken and helpless, did nothing to stop them. The HPAC didn’t deserve her tears, she’d decided then; just her hatred and vengeance. If it was the very last thing she did, she was going to get them back. For everything.

The group’s list of crimes was so well-established in her head that it was almost a tangible document. At the top was her parents’ murder when she was an infant. That had been what set up everything else to go wrong in her life. It was the reason why her older brother, then a mere week or two into his premature reign as faerie king of Scotland, listened to his counselors and sent her into hiding. Her new identity as an American human was supposed to be for her own safety while the royal advisors determined exactly how badly Faeriedom had been compromised. Yet their decision to keep her in the dark had ended up making her very vulnerable.

The HPAC had found her dating profile online and started researching her. Once it determined she was who she was, the organization tried recruiting her boyfriend, Alex, alarming him enough that he broke up with her without a word of explanation. That set the maniacal group back a few months, at which time it tried a Plan B, which was to set her up with one of its operatives. And when that failed just as miserably, the HPAC moved on to chasing her out of Pennsylvania, following her down to Florida and coming close to drowning her in a Hyatt hot tub.

Sabrina might have been able to move past that level of trauma with just a few lasting side effects, but things got worse from there. Though she’d ultimately made it to Scotland and on into her brother’s court, her human tormentors got to her along the way. Using the slightly less squeamish but still clueless Alex, they’d kidnapped her and treated her like a lab rat, taking blood and running tests without a shred of humanity. She was still suffering post-traumatic stress from everything that had happened there, including the violence she’d resorted to herself, snapping one of her captor’s arms like a piece of matchwood.

Then there were Jon’s death and Dallas’ kidnapping. She didn’t know which one she felt more responsible for. Jon, after all, had been her bodyguard. He’d died in the line of duty, protecting her from the HPAC. So the high-speed car crash that ended his life could be placed firmly on her winged shoulders. If she hadn’t been around to protect, he would still be alive.

As for Dallas, he wasn’t part of her assigned security task. He’d offered to help out, demanded to and even kind of lied about it in the beginning. Looking at it that way, a rational individual might determine that it was his own dumb fault he’d been captured. The problem was that he had done it to protect her. Which meant that his fate was her responsibility too.

Sabrina tossed in her royal sheets again, opening her eyes for a bleary second to look at her silver alarm clock. At first glance, it looked like an antique, with two large metal caps on top to conceal supposed bells. But despite its vintage look, the device had all the high-tech abilities a princess could wish for. Except the means of turning back time.

Seeing how very early it was, Sabrina let out a little moan of discontent, then closed her eyes tightly like she could force herself to fall asleep. It didn’t work any better than she thought it would. Her mind remained exactly where it usually did.

Her brother’s court hadn’t gotten any real leads as to where Dallas was being kept. Neither had the human authorities. Regardless of whether anyone wanted to admit it or not, nobody so much as knew whether he was alive. Based on her own experiences, Sabrina was pretty positive that he was.

She’d heard over and over again that the HPAC was most interested in faerie annihilation. But if they treated him like they had her, then she thought chances were high that they were busy running sick experiments on him too. And they would continue doing so for as long as possible; two weeks wasn’t anywhere near enough to exhaust the possibilities.

A shiver of revulsion and leftover terror ran down her back. She’d been in HPAC clutches for a few days. That was it. What anything longer than that would do, she could only imagine.

Her own memories were still fresh enough that it was impossible to even try to keep them at bay. Her various handlers had been so very meticulous, so practical and methodical, treating her with demented care. They’d wanted to use her to further their knowledge of the faerie race, but they’d also wanted to keep her in mint condition for as long as they possibly could. But she was sure, had they managed to keep her long enough, they would have started more invasive procedures.

White walls, perfect imitations of the HPAC facility she’d been kept at, thudded into place in her mind. She could practically see the blank, sterile room they’d kept her in, prompting a set of horrible questions she’d asked herself too many times over already. Like how far they’d managed to progress with Dallas. Or whether they were now figuring out any anatomical differences between faerie and human insides. She had no clue if there were any, but she was sure the mad scientists there were eager to learn.

Sabrina had an atrocious picture of Dallas lying on an operating table with his body cut open like a medieval torture victim.

With that in mind, she completely gave up on the idea of sleeping and swung her legs over the side of her bed. There was no way she could lie there another minute with just her waking nightmares to keep her company. If she couldn’t rest away thoughts of Dallas alone and in agony, she’d have to resort to something else.

Reaching under her four-post bed for her main source of distraction, she pulled out her laptop and flipped it open, making sure to face Deanda so that the bright light of the screen wouldn’t disturb her. The computer had been a gift from her brother when she first arrived in Faeriedom. Sitting on her bed with a big green bow when she’d first opened the door to her new suite, it had come with a signed card welcoming her to the palace. With it had been an appropriately sized smartphone and tablet, both the latest in faerie technology as well, which meant they were several steps ahead of anything Sabrina had seen in the human world.

Yet she hadn’t touched the tablet once. Not when her HPAC handlers had used their own models to record their findings, their greedy fingers tapping at the screen.

She assumed Kenneth had meant to give the high-tech presents to her in person. But since his schedule was filled with what seemed like unending meetings, many of which were focused around finding Dallas, she hadn’t seen much of either him or his wife Kyla since size-changing and coming “downstairs,” as they called their underground living space.

For that matter, she hadn’t seen much of him since Dallas’ kidnapping at all. He’d come to see her that first day, after she’d been discharged from the hospital. And she knew he was genuinely relieved she’d escaped physically unscathed other than some cuts, bumps and bruises. Yet Sabrina couldn’t help but wonder whether some part of him blamed some part of her for the whole situation.

Not liking the direction of her thoughts any more than she had before, she cast several nervous glances over at Deanda to make sure she was still sleeping. The laptop’s glow cast shadows on the other bed in the room. Like her own, the four-post piece of furniture was enormous, though the room itself remained spacious. Sabrina had insisted they stay together after Deanda had recovered from the accident, grown her wings and redeveloped the ability to fit into the smaller confines of Faeriedom.

She had missed her best friend incredibly for their week of separation, since Kenneth had insisted she come down as soon as she could fit. And now that the young women were together again, codependency seemed to suit them both as much as anything else could.

They’d offered the same sleeping set-up to Dallas’ younger sister Lauren, but she had declined. Apparently being alone didn’t terrify her. She might even want to be by herself so she could cry whenever she wanted to.

Sabrina was actually fairly certain that last explanation was closer to the truth.

Thinking about that made her feel more guilty than she already had been for checking her email. But she did it anyway, her fingers flying across the keyboard to enter her username and password.

Alex had been trying to convince her of his innocence ever since Kenneth and Kyla had him locked away on suspicion of collaborating with the HPAC in the latest attack. It wasn’t an altogether unbelievable accusation considering his previous affiliation with the wretches.

For her part, however, she didn’t want to hate Alex. She still wanted to believe the mistakes he’d made had been out of ignorance instead of malice or repeated and willful stupidity. There were plenty of logical reasons to have that opinion too.

Not that she couldn’t see the other side of the coin. For anyone who didn’t know Alex, who hadn’t seen him drag her out of the HPAC facility to ultimate safety, the facts were rather ambiguous. Sabrina wasn’t so far gone she couldn’t see that. Nor did she blame everyone else for their negative feelings about him. Some of her fellow faeries did a better job keeping those thoughts in their heads, but she knew they all disliked him with varying levels of intensity regardless.

One of the ones who held the strongest grudges had to be Lauren, who had gone into a hysterical screaming fit when she first got the news of her brother’s abduction. Sabrina had to rely on secondhand accounts about that, since the younger girl had been in Faeriedom at the time and Sabrina aboveground. But she didn’t doubt the details considering how Lauren had barricaded herself in her room ever since. Nobody ever saw her anymore except for the nurse and maids that Kyla sent in to check on her throughout the day.

Sabrina had tried to visit the pint-sized pixie as soon as she was able to size-change. But when she arrived, Lauren hadn’t said very much. She didn’t have to when her thoughts were so obvious. She was distraught and looking to blame whomever she thought she could.

While Sabrina had managed to escape the list, Alex most assuredly had not.

Then there was Alistair, her grown-up nephew and Dallas’ best friend. Overall, he had kept his mouth shut on the subject, too much the diplomat to tell her to her face that he despised her ex, especially when it was painfully obvious that she still had feelings for Alex. Alistair was a good man, so he wouldn’t do anything to intentionally hurt her, despite his own personal biases.

Her brother, however, had been a whole lot more vocal than the crown prince. Sabrina knew he meant well; that he – like everyone else – was worried sick about Dallas. Moreover, she understood how he didn’t want her to fall prey to yet another catastrophe, whether physical or emotional. But when she’d dared to mention Alex’s situation, his subsequent lecture and overall attitude hadn’t gone over well.

The truth was that Kenneth didn’t need to point out how dangerous it was to align herself with Alex. The stupid boy had already proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Regardless of whether he’d set out to do bad things or not, he had still horribly messed everything up.

Yet there she was, checking to see if he had emailed her anyway. And there she was, feeling a painful twinge of some softer emotion when she saw his name in her inbox.

Brushing a stray lock of bright yellow hair out of her face, she opened the message up despite her better judgment. It was written in the manly melodramatic fashion she knew to expect from him during serious moments.

Her green eyes rushed over it, not skimming per se, more like devouring. His words weren’t anything new though, merely repeated apologies and declarations of innocence in the whole Dallas debacle.

Sabrina sighed in supreme unhappiness. His writing was so painfully earnest, like a very solemn third-grader. It was difficult not to read it without some measure of sympathy. At the same time, it was even more difficult to respond. There was too much to say and no way for her to say it in mere black and white. Even if she spoke the necessary words right at him, in person, it seemed doubtful that the English language could express all the emotions she felt about what had happened between the two of them.

That included the passionate and practically desperate kisses she and Alex had shared back in her HPAC cell. She missed tasting like him. She’d always liked his particular flavor and how it lingered in her mouth well after they were done making out.

He was a stupid boy, she decided for the umpteenth time. Yet that didn’t seem to make her stop thinking about all the qualities she had always admired in him, like his honesty, which was funny in an altogether non-amusing way considering how unreliable he had turned out to be. But when he wasn’t being standoffish, he was sweet and attentive in a way that made her feel special and sexy and sexual.

She hated him that he still had that effect on her. Given half the chance, she would jump him again. She was depressingly sure of it.

Sabrina toyed with the touchpad on her laptop, her pointer finger making pointless loops around it. While she watched the little white arrow complete the same meaningless circuit on her screen, she contemplated the idea of replying but pushed the idea away after a minute or two.

She was already dangerous enough to the people she cared about without getting Alex involved. The last thing she needed was to go borrowing more trouble than she already inadvertently had. Besides, whatever she wrote was going to be screened by Geoffrey, the head of her brother’s Intelligence network, or someone under him. That department was monitoring Alex’s internet usage, a freedom they granted for the sole reason of seeing if they could trap him into giving anything away.

Sabrina turned the computer off and slid it back under her bed, then slipped her legs over the side to push her feet into the fuzzy yellow slippers she’d left on the floor not too many hours ago. The matching bathrobe was already draped loosely around her waist from all the tossing and turning she’d done throughout the night, and she secured it into place, stretching her green and yellow wings more precisely into the tailor-slashed holes in the back.

Almost as an afterthought, Sabrina grabbed up a hair twisty too, pulling her blonde hair back into a sloppy ponytail. She didn’t care how she looked. Even if she wasn’t so downcast, there was no good reason to fuss over her appearance when nobody would be around except her two bodyguards on duty, James and Jack. And if they expected her to look good at this hour of the morning, they were completely out of their minds and needed to be relieved of their duties.

With a last glance over at Deanda, Sabrina opened her unstained oak door to peer out.

Both men immediately stiffened to attention. In her opinion, they shouldn’t have to. It wasn’t like she was the type of princess to tattle if they didn’t mind their Ps and Qs. Yet she already knew telling them that wouldn’t make any difference, which is why she didn’t bother.

A concerned Scottish brogue greeted her when she went so far as to step out of the room. “Is everything alright, Princess?”

It was James, hands-down the more serious of the two, who asked the question. Technically, she’d noticed that both of them were pretty staid, but she had seen Jack smile once or twice, whereas James almost always just looked professional. She assured them that everything was fine, but their overly grave expressions made her think about Jon, who would have managed to show some sign of boyish charm while on duty.

It wasn’t that she missed him. She hadn’t known him long enough to consider him an integral part of her life. But that didn’t mean she didn’t think about him now that he was gone. She thought about him a lot.

Guilt apparently had that effect.

Craving a distraction from such morbid thoughts, she found herself lounging against the solid, cream wall in a clear indication that she wasn’t going anywhere. Her wings cushioned her head, a pleasant enough sensation, though she knew from experience that they’d fall asleep if kept like that for too long. They were every bit as much a part of her as her legs or arms or nose, and therefore had very similar nerve endings.

“So how do you do it, guys?” Sabrina asked, looking back and forth between the two men.

She was thankful that all of her guards’ names were now filed away in her memory, along with their faces. Jack was the slightly shorter, stockier of the two, while James was the one with the copper hair and bright blue eyes.

Jack cocked an almost non-existent eyebrow at her. It and its twin were such a fine shade of blonde that they were often invisible against his ruddy Scottish skin.

“Do what?”

“Stay awake this early in the morning,” she explained. “Aren’t you ready to pass out?”

He chuckled. “I sleep most of the day away, same as one of Dracula’s bats. That’s how.”

She gave him a tired grin, not because his analogy was all that funny but because his laugh was nice to hear. Maybe he wasn’t as uptight as she’d originally assumed. Maybe she just hadn’t had any time to see the other side of him before.

His partner, however, remained stoic. It was as if he thought something was going to happen so deep inside Faeriedom, within the protective confines of the king and queen’s palace.

“I wouldn’t mind being one of them if it meant I could nap during the day.”

“You not sleeping well?” Jack asked sympathetically, despite the obvious answer.

“What was your first clue?” But she kept all the bite out of her voice when she said it.

He pressed on awkwardly in his deep baritone, which managed to make him seem all that much more out of his depth in the moment. “Bad dreams?”

She shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest. A random chill went down her back. “That would mean I wasn’t awake.”

Since being awake was a bad dream with a strong dose of fatigue added, Sabrina almost thought she’d prefer an actual nightmare. It was a rather twisted way of looking at it, but just thinking about the possibility made her eyes close, her head tilt back against the wall, and her lips part the slightest bit in longing.

She wanted to sleep so badly. Really sleep; not fade in and out on all night long.

With that option unavailable, however, she wanted to talk. “So this shift wasn’t a punishment of some sort? You wanted it?”

James snorted at her skepticism, the first expression of individuality she’d ever seen him make.

Jack just smiled. “I worked night shift at a maximum security prison for a while, so doing it again isn’t that big a deal.”

His response intrigued her enough to listen for the sake of listening instead of as mere distraction. “Prison?” She asked, cocking her head to the side and raising her eyebrows in clear curiosity.

Sabrina already knew that faeries shared many of the same careers as humans: She had met one lawyer so far, and her cousin Aileen was a doctor. Then there were the engineers and artists and interior designers evidenced by the palace’s very existence. But for some reason, she hadn’t given much thought to faerie criminals. Perhaps she’d assumed they were too busy avoiding the HPAC to get into additional trouble.

She definitely felt that way, and voiced the thought as a question. If it was as dumb as she thought it probably was, she could blame her lack of smarts on the very early hour of the morning.

Jack didn’t seem to think it inane. At least he didn’t show it in his expression or tone. If anything, he seemed to take it too seriously, like educating her was some sort of very important task.

“The vast majority of faeries never see any of those buggers. We tend to stay down here where it’s safe and boring.”

“Boring is a good thing,” she agreed glumly.

He glanced at his partner, who had gone right back to wearing the best poker face ever. “It’s mainly the newer generations that go up nowadays,” he explained. “Even just a few centuries back, we had homes above and belowground. But between our complicated history with humans and then the HPAC formally banding together, most faeries decided they were done with the outside world altogether.”

Sabrina had already heard all of that from Deanda, but she’d much rather let Jack talk away and spare her the effort. So she didn’t interrupt his little history lesson.

He shrugged off his next statement before he even made it. “There were some who chose to stay above, but they were few and far between. And you still won’t find too many of us upstairs with the humans, at least not in Scotland or the rest of the United Kingdom. Not with the HPAC everywhere. Different elsewhere though, where the risk is a lot lower. I imagine humans out in those places would be surprised to find out how many faeries they interact with during their lifetimes.”

Afraid that the conversation might be over, Sabrina pressed for more. “How about you? Ever been up there before I came along?”

He shook his head. “Nae. I’m content being down here. Like you said, boring is a good thing. Not that the chances of getting caught by the HPAC are all that great, but it could still happen. And that’s not something I want to risk anytime soon.”

Sabrina recognized the blunder right away, though she would have let it slide if it was up to her. It wasn’t though, since Jack picked up on it an instant later, his expression taking several dramatic turns in the process.

“I mean,” he tried to right the situation, “obviously you know that since it happened to you but… I mean… erm…”

Taking pity on him, she shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. I know what you meant.”

He didn’t look convinced though, his aura filled with self-flagellation and his wings drooping to a noticeable degree. “I’m really sorry.”

“Seriously,” she assured. “Don’t worry about it. You saying it or not saying it doesn’t make a difference one way or the other.”

“Sometimes I talk without thinking,” he explained. “I think I actually do it a lot.”

She had to laugh at that, at least a little. It was hard not to react to his mournful brown eyes and downcast expression. Combined, they made a rather melodramatic picture.

“I think everyone does that.”

“Some more than others.”

“Or maybe you’re just particularly bad,” she admitted.

That got him to grin back, and Sabrina seized the chance to switch the subject. “So what kind of prisoners did you oversee, Warden Jack?”

It was a little cheesy the way it came out, but she doubted he was going to criticize her all that much with his own faux-pas still clouding his perception. Besides, he seemed to have the personality that would say that kind of thing anyway.

“The cream of the crop,” he informed her, his face straight as anything. “Misunderstood souls, every one of them. Put there by bad forces and mistaken identities and taking the rap for their pals.”

She was pretty sure he was being sarcastic, but she had to ask anyway just to be sure. “For real?”

He grinned, all traces of gravity lost. “Naw, I’m just having a go at you. That’s only what they would tell me.”

Being a sarcastic individual by nature, Sabrina played along. It was almost soothing to fall into old patterns, pretending that life hadn’t been turned upside down and shaken over and over and over again.

“And here I thought artists only suffered needlessly up in the human world.”

“Nope,” he informed her cheerfully. “Definitely here too.”

James still hadn’t said anything past that one question, but Sabrina saw him glance down at the large black watch he wore on his left wrist. It was doubtful that he did it to be rude, but it nonetheless made her wonder if he was getting tired of the conversation, despite looking as impassive as ever. Even his wings didn’t shift in the slightest to give an indication about what was going on inside his head.

Faeries spoke just as much with their wings as with the rest of their bodies. The biological additions weren’t there just for practical purposes such as flying away from danger. They were also for feeling and comforting and emoting. When it came down to it, they were quite animated things, as Sabrina was learning since getting a pair of her own.

Except, it appeared, when it came to James.

Not knowing one way or the other left her hesitant to continue chatting. She didn’t want to destroy her best chance of distraction because she was overreacting. And she couldn’t recall a time when the solemn bodyguard had ever struck her as insensitive, like his action rather implied. But still, paranoia was setting in, so she pushed herself off of the wall.

Sabrina started to fake an excuse of a yawn that ended up turning into a real one in no time at all. “I think I’m going to get a book from the library and stop bothering you guys,” she professed.

She had no actual intention of reading said book. Not when fiction had a vivid way of reminding her how horrible real life could be. It was merely one more excuse to stay away from her sleepless bed.

The two men fell into step behind her like she knew they would. Right then, she didn’t mind their presence considering the relatively short trip she intended to make. But sometimes she did find it rather tiresome to have someone constantly watching her. It had been less than a month since she started living the life of a faerie princess, yet she was already used to her bodyguards’ presence. She’d even admit that, after everything that happened, she would probably be a nervous wreck if they weren’t around. Even so, there were the occasions when she just wanted a few moments alone to do as she saw fit without having to consider the presence of two to four other people.

Sabrina made her way down the lightly shaded, high-arched hallways to the library. The palace had enough rooms to confuse even the savviest newcomer, but she could at least navigate her way to the main dining areas, the library and her brother’s office without assistance. It helped that the latter two were down the same wing.

That’s why she saw that Kenneth’s light was on. And that’s how she came to knock on his door at such a ridiculous hour of the morning. She did so timidly and only after getting assurances from the guards standing outside that he wasn’t in a meeting. But she did so nonetheless.

She wasn’t quite clear on what she was going to say if he had a minute to spare, much less longer than that. She just knew that she needed to see him. For her own sanity’s sake, if nothing else.