“Vial!? What the fuck is she talking about, vial?” Regina held poultices over the various injuries on Emilia’s body. Had these been normal injuries, the herbs and magic instilled in the poultices would have sealed the wounds at a touch. But some kind of magical force held the holes and lacerations open as if whatever made them in the first place had not quite been removed.

“I… don’t know. She said Boris… what the fuck did she tell me about it?” Betsy hyperventilated as she held her hands to the sides of her head.

Regina ignored Betsy for the time being and whispered prayers to the Mambo and the Gede, begging them to give Emilia extra time, long enough for the three of them to figure something out.

Mirabel, now as tall as a human and naked as a jaybird, leaned over Emilia and whispered words in a language Regina didn’t recognize. Whatever she was doing wasn’t hurting, but she ignored the others. If she knew something that would help them, she wasn’t bringing it up then.

“A vial!” Betsy jumped up with an epiphany. “Emilia told me that when she’d end up too exhausted to move or use her power any longer after her exercises, Boris would let her hold a glowing golden vial. Is that what she meant?”

Mirabel’s head shot up at Betsy’s question, but Regina had already made the connection. “A Philter of Light. Damn, of course!” Regina shot up from her position next to Emilia and pointed to the enlarged fairy. “Don’t you dare let her die. I will be right back.”

Regina’s long legs chewed up the distance between the summoning room and the alchemy lab. Philters of Light were used to store power from the sun and moon, to be used by alchemists when they needed one or the other, but the time was wrong. For Emilia’s purposes, they could act as endless supplies of magic, renewed each day at the appropriate time. Such a use would never have occurred to her, Boris was clearly a resourceful genius. As an alchemy student, Regina had a key to the supply closets and no one would question her removing a Philter or two from the shelves.

Upon finding the closet she needed, Regina pulled four total vials out, two from each aspect solar and lunar. They were all she could hold as she scrambled back to the summoning room, glad that no one had stopped her in her mad dash to save her friend.

When she reached the summoning circle, Betsy had her hands on Emilia’s chest, compressing her heart manually while breathing into her mouth. Mirabel glowed with a cerulean light, that outlined an impossible skeleton made of children’s toys and nonsense. Regina’s sight had been trained to observe fine details during her time among the Sanctorum, though Mirabel appeared to be holding Emilia’s ankle in the real, she was in fact holding both Emilia’s leg and her soul, trapping the latter in the boundary of the former. Blue light motes faded from Mirabel as she wrapped her hand around Emilia’s soul. “Hurry.” More little foxfires spread from Mirabel’s lips as she urged Regina onward.

“I still can’t feel her pulse!” Betsy didn’t stop her compressions as she stared up at Regina with the same plaintive look on her face. “Regina, do something now!”

Regina upended two vials of liquid starlight onto Emilia’s chest and set the other two atop. A few trickles of light dropped to the floor to mingle with the blue motes escaping from Mirabel’s form in greater numbers. Regina stared at the fairy as she began to turn transparent. A sad smile crossed her lips, but then brightened as she said, “my life for hers, tis a fairy trade.”

She winked at Regina as Emilia gasped. At the same time, the light pooling on her chest vanished into Emilia’s wounds and the blue motes that had been sloughing from Mirabel joined them. The spectral image of Emilia flashed back into her body as Mirabel collapsed to the floor. A few bits of string and twigs rattled to the ground as the fairy began to disappear.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Emilia bolted upright with an explosion of movement. Her injuries closed as the starlight filled them. She turned to the fading fairy and whispered words Regina did not know.

Light poured from her lips as Emilia reached into Mirabel’s gradually disintegrating body. Her other hand wrapped around a Philter of Moonlight, Emila shouted, “no,” and the vial cracked, then shattered in her hand. Blood dripped from her fingers, which found its way to the still glowing pile of string and sticks where Mirabel had lain down.

Regina had to shield her eyes as the second Philter of Sunlight shattered and more blood flowed to merge with Mirabel’s substance. An ochre after image of a hunched old woman stooped over the fairy, patting Emilia’s head and dipping a lone finger into the fairy’s substance. “Granne Erzuli?” The old Loa rose and winked with a flicker of the stars as she faded against the flaring light from Emilia and Mirabel.

When the light faded, a tiny fairy woman, in her original size, curled around Emilia’s thumb, cupped and sleeping. Her butterfly wings, once royal purple, had been streaked with red in the form of a skull mask. Tiny white scars replaced the holes over her body, dotting her form like polkadots. To Regina’s magically enhanced vision, she was sure she bore little crosses over each of those scars.

With that final act, Emilia shuddered and fell back, still breathing.

“Holy shit. What just happened?” Betsy was sweating visibly as the light around Emilia dimmed and then faded into darkness.

“I don’t know, make sure she’s still breathing.” Regina pointed to Emilia, who had a small birthmark now on her collar in the shape of a cross with butterfly wings. Whatever had happened had changed both Mirabel and Emila, though how, Regina could only begin to guess.

“She’s breathing and her pulse is strong. She looks… I don’t know, she looks healthier than she did this evening. What the fuck?”

Regina rocked back on her heels and started to cry. She’d owe the Loa a feast after tonight, though she might strong arm Betsy, Mirabel, and Emilia into helping her. Before she did that, she needed to call her papa and ask about Granne Erzuli and why she’d show up uninvited. None of that mattered before the sight of Emilia hale and hardy, breathing on her own.

Wiping tears from her eyes, Regina took care of one last examination before she picked Emilia up and carried her back to her bedroom. She set Betsy to cleaning up the blood and making sure the aura of this place left no signs as to their activities.

The Fae Queen, S’ha Ren-la Shen Tel Roh, waved her hand across the face of the waters before her. A lone figure, Betsy her friends called her, scrubbed the floor of the summoning room in the junior complex while the other three figures slipped away into the night.

A hunched old woman, swathed in torn starlight robes, and attended by the white and black ephemeral Geminae who usually flowed over the Fae Queen’s shoulders, crooked her eyebrow at the Queen. “You saved that little fairy’s life just now. The girl too. Why?”

The Fae Queen had grown unaccustomed to having her actions questioned, but this particular questioner had long ago earned the right. Besides, even a Fae Queen respected an incarnate Goddess. “Technically, you saved them, Grandmother.”

Granne Erzuli gave a wheezing cackle, and tapped the scrying urn with an old gnarled, lightning-blasted cane. “I learned long ago not to joust with ye, old woman. But my question stands.”

S’ha Ren-la tapped one long nail against the arms of her throne. “Grigo and his ilk are wrong. Boris and Joshua are wrong too. I believe that Emilia Olren and Cary Formless will prove my belief.”

“Ain’t helping them cheating?”

The Fae Queen’s laughter mixed the sound of tinkling rain across a windowsill and the scraping of snow from the stoop. It set the white and black Geminae to dancing between the Loa and the Fae Queen. “As I said, you helped them. My hands are as pure as Grigo’s are stained.”

“Will you punish any of them?” The Loa’s voice turned quiet, rumbling with menace.

“I will not, especially not the girl whom I promised to you. As for the others… I’ve lost three of my court this night, Grandmother. I do not wish to lose anymore. Besides, the punishment for what Emilia has done would be death, even if Mir of the White Belle survives. What remains to be seen is whether they will be caught.”

At that, Granne Erzuli began to cackle, nodding her head at the Fae Queen. “Tis my honest hope you never change, S’ha. It would sadden me greatly.”

“And it is my hope that our relationship never changes, though we both must. Now, would you care to see what happens next… and would you place another wager on the outcome?”

The Loa gritted her teeth, but rather than shake her head and reject the Queen’s offer, she nodded. “Maybe in this, you could change a bit, but here are my terms…”