The Faerie Guardian

Chapter Nineteen

I head downstairs to the third floor below ground. There are closed doors down here I’ve never been allowed behind, but one place I’ve visited is the potions laboratory. After all, one of the guys who works here was my assignment last year. I feel that gives me the right to visit occasionally and check up on him. And ask for favors.

I pull the heavy door open and cough as acrid fumes greet me. It’s close to midnight, but I knew he’d be here; he’s overly dedicated to his work. I wave my hand through the air, clearing a path through the haze of blue smoke.

“Violet!” I jump as the urisk hobbles through a doorway on the other side of the lab. As always, his appearance startles me. No matter how many times I see him, I can’t quite get used to his bald, misshapen head and scrawny, wrinkled body. It always takes a second or two to remind myself I don’t need to be afraid of him. Despite the fact that he wound up on my assignment list, he would never intentionally hurt anyone; the poor guy just wanted a friend. Unfortunately, he almost scared a human girl to death in his search for friendship. “What a lovely surprise!” he says. He carefully places a cylinder of yellow liquid on a lab bench, then tilts his head to the side. “Did you shrink, dear?”

“What?” I look down at my loose clothing. “Oh. No, these aren’t my clothes. Anyway, that’s not important. I need your help, Uri.” Uri isn’t his real name, of course. It’s something ridiculously unpronounceable. Uri The Urisk seemed a lot easier to wrap my tongue around. He was cool with that.

“Of course, of course.” He climbs onto a stool on the other side of the workbench. “What can I do for you? Need someone else’s eyebrows turned orange?” I wish I could smile at the memory of Ryn and Dale’s orange eyebrows. They tried every spell they could think of to get rid of the color, but Uri’s special little charm refused to budge for an entire week. My mouth feels like it’s forgotten how to smile though. Trying to force my lips upward seems impossible right now.

“I need to forget about someone,” I say. “Well, more specifically, I need to forget that I loved someone. I mean, cared about someone. I didn’t love him. Love takes time to develop, right? And I barely knew him. Just a few weeks, really. That’s not love. Maybe it could have been, but he made sure that didn’t happen.” Stop rambling, dammit! I take a deep breath.

“Forget someone. Hmm.” Uri rubs his hands together. “Well, the ingredients for a potion like that are—”

“Rare and expensive. I’ve heard. But I’ve got this.” I pull the vial of Forget out of my pocket and place it on the workbench between us. “Maybe you can make use of it?” Uri eyes the vial with a raised eyebrow. He’ll be wondering how I came to be in possession of this particular potion. From his perspective there are only two options: Either I stole it, or I was supposed to use it on a human and didn’t. “And please . . . don’t tell anyone about this.”

“Well . . .” He sits back, rolling the tiny vial back and forth between his knobbly thumb and forefinger. “I can try and isolate the ingredients from this potion, but as I’ve never needed to do that before, I’m not sure I’d be successful. And, of course, I’d need something that belongs to this boy you’re hoping to forget about.”

“Here.” I hand over Nate’s torn and bloodied T-shirt that, for some reason, I never got around to throwing away after the labyrinth incident.

Uri takes the T-shirt, then begins tapping a finger against an empty glass jar. “Are you sure you want to forget about him? Whatever hurt you’re feeling right now won’t last forever, and surely it’s best to keep all your memories intact.”

I sigh. Uri’s probably right, but that doesn’t mean I have to listen to him. “I don’t want to completely forget about him. It’s in my permanent record that he followed me into the fae realm, so it would create complications if I forgot his existence entirely. But I would like to forget that I was ever stupid enough to care about him.” I lean forward. “And yes, I am absolutely sure about that.”