Rise of the Fey by Alessa Ellefson Read Free Book Online

couldn’t have done that sooner?” Nibs asks, spitting at my feet in disgust.
    “I didn’t,” I start, my mouth suddenly dry. “I’ve never…. It isn’t….”
    Nibs snickers. “Well, that’s all well and pretty,” he says, “but can’t you do something more useful, like whisk us out of here, by any chance?”
    It’s my turn to glare at the clurichaun.
    “Then I suggest we keep running,” he says, bolting, Puck and the black cat on his heels.
    Holding my hand as far away from myself as possible to avoid burning my head off, I run after them.

    “Shhh,” Nibs says, skittering to a stop at another fork in the tunnel.
    Breathing heavily, I perk my ears up. Over my heavy panting can be heard a faint, rhythmic buzzing as if thousands of bugs are trapped inside the walls and desperately trying to fly free. Nibs shudders visibly and I’m about to ask him what he thinks it is when the cat meows loudly, startling us.
    “Where the hell did that thing come from?” Nibs asks, looking more and more frightened.
    “Relax,” I say. “It’s just a stray that’s been following us.”
    Nibs throws me a murderous look. “Just a stray, huh?”
    The cat purrs loudly, circling my ankles, then heads down the right-hand passage where the buzzing is distinctly louder.
    “I think it wants us to follow it,” I say.
    “I’m not going anywhere near that beast,” Nibs says.
    The cat comes padding back for us, then meows questioningly before trying to herd us down its chosen path again. But for once I agree with Nibs: We need to avoid people and eerie, unknown thingies trapped inside walls, not run headlong into them.
    To the cat’s frantic hisses, we engulf ourselves into the left tunnel and run until the cat and the freaky buzzing are but distant memories. After what seems like hours, Nibs finally stops.
    “What is it?” I ask, holding a stitch in my side.
    Nibs sniffs the air then his lips thin out, stretching his scarred face outward, and I realize with a mixture of disgust and guilt that he’s smiling. “Up,” he says, pointing with his finger.
    I lift my hand higher so the flames can illuminate a greater portion of the underground corridor and find a ladder has been carved into the stone wall leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling.
    “What do you think is up there?” I ask.
    “Only one way to find out.” Nibs jumps onto the first rung and, nimble as a monkey, makes his way to the top.
    My arm shakes with the effort of keeping my hand up to light his way. But the moment Nibs pushes the trapdoor open, I hear him squeal and a gust of wind rushes inside to snuff my flickering flame out.

“Nibs?” I call out tentatively after the clurichaun has disappeared through the trapdoor.
    I wait for an impossibly long minute, anger broiling within me as the seconds tick by. Finally, I’m forced to come to the only conclusion left: The little rat’s run away without me!
    “I should’ve known he’d betray me,” I say through gritted teeth as I grip the ladder’s rungs and start climbing, “that’s what he was locked up for to begin with.”
    Heart pounding somewhere in my throat, I crack the trapdoor open and momentarily close my eyes to bask in the last rays of the sun, breathing in the scent of wildflowers carried over by the playful breeze.
    I hear a sharp ring followed by the clatter of wood and I quickly duck back into my hole before I realize the sounds are coming from the reconstruction site at the landing docks five hundred feet away.
    I peer through the gap, the rung’s metal digging into my hand, as one of the workers bellows a shout and another pan of the burnt-out pier comes crumbling down.
    I let out a breath of relief—it appears the general alarm hasn’t been sounded yet and the construction team is too busy working to notice one student wandering about the school grounds, even if she does pop out of the earth like some gigantic mole.
    I carefully hoist myself into the open air then let the trapdoor