Jade: Book Three of the Everleaf Series Read online

  Jade

  Book Three of the Everleaf Series

  Constance Burris

  B.E. Publications

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Epilogue

  When Seeds Take Root

  About the Author

  Copyright

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Printed in the United States of America

  B.E. Publications, 2017

  Summary:

  Coal’s life has gone from bad to worse. First, he discovers he isn’t who he thought he was. Then, he finds out that his mother isn’t dead. Her name is Jade and she’s very-much-alive. And if that’s not enough, it’s Coal’s fault that his foster brother is in the hospital seriously injured.

  When he finds his way back to the fey realm, Coal has only one goal: find a way to heal his foster brother.

  Unfortunately, civil war is brewing in the fey realm. Chalcedony promises to heal Coal’s foster brother, but it will come at a price. She needs Coal’s help to give her the upper hand in the war.

  But Jade has other plans for her son; plans that will rock the fey realm and the human world like nothing before.

  To discover current and future stories by Constance Burris visit www.constanceburris.com.

  Prologue

  Jade - Eleven Years Ago

  THE LARGEST ROOM in Jade’s two-bedroom apartment was solely for plants. Some hung from planters suspended from the ceiling. Enormous, brightly colored pots lay on the floor and against the wall. The smallest plants were in cups and bowls sitting on the only table in the room. Most had been brought from the fey realm, either by her or smuggled in by a dwarf. There were still a few species from the human realm like the Maca root, a plant that is used to regulate menstrual cycles and hormones. The fledgling balsam fir, whose needles were pressed into an oil, was used for Ms. Effie’s arthritis pain.

  Coal, Jade’s five-year-old son, stood with his small, dark hands clinging to the worn metal watering can she had bought him from a dollar store. “Like this, Momma?” he asked while he tried to water one of the plants. He was spraying the floor more than the plant.

  “Yeah, baby, that’s perfect.” Jade stood beside him, soaking the plants he couldn’t reach.

  She usually never let him in this room. When he had just learned to crawl, she had awakened from a nap to hear him screaming. She found him on the floor crying with a damaged sumu blossom next to him. With its vibrant burnt-orange leaves that tapered into black at the base, the plant was the most beautiful and most dangerous flower she possessed. Of course, once he learned to crawl, the green room had been the first place he headed for on a cold, wintery day when she had fallen asleep with the door to the room left open.

  In the proper potion, the sumu plant was toxic and tasteless and lulled its victim into a peaceful death. In smaller amounts, it was merely a sleeping tonic. The plant in its native state was powerfully bitter, and the moment Coal bit into it, he spat it out and began screaming. He’d crawled away from the incident with a swollen lip.

  Eventually, he stopped putting everything into his mouth, and she made sure this room was locked whenever she wasn’t in it.

  Years later, she was doing what she should have done immediately after Coal had been hurt. She was killing it.

  The water in their cans had a lethal amount of salt. She felt as though she was salting the earth. She was leaving this place, and it was too dangerous to leave the plants alive.

  “Momma, somebody is at the door,” Coal said, pulling Jade from her thoughts and directing her attention to the ringing doorbell.

  She placed the tin of salt water on the table and was halfway to the door before she remembered Coal was alone in a room filled with dangerous plants. She turned back and pulled him along with her.

  Jade peered through the peephole in the door. Shemeya, Coal’s babysitter, stood on the doorstep. Someone was always showing up on her doorstep to request a remedy or to set up a hair appointment. When she had first arrived at the apartments, Jade had tried to stay to herself and not attract attention, but that hadn’t worked for long. She had thought having a child helped her blend in with people around her. To an extent, it did, but Coal was friendly, and his bright eyes and quick smile attracted people— people who would eventually try to talk to her. Because she was not a loner by nature, she talked back.

  “Hey, Shemeya,” Jade said. “I don’t have a lot of time right now. I’m headed out in a few minutes.”

  “Shemeya!” Coal released Jade’s hand and wrapped his arms around Shemeya’s legs. “Are you here to play with me?”

  Shemeya gave Coal a hesitant smile. “No, I’m sorry. I have to talk to your mom.”

  The salty scent of nervousness wafted from Shemeya in noxious waves. Jade narrowed her eyes. Before she could react, three other neighborhood kids, Sean, Ashley, and Andre, shoved their way onto the stoop beside Shemeya. Ashley was the oldest but the shortest of the three with butterscotch-colored skin and wide hips. Jade had relaxed Ashley's hair a few days ago, and it was still bone-straight, glossy, and healthy, but Ashley looked sick. Her skin was pale and sallow; dark circles surrounded her eyes; and something menacing clung to her like a ghost. Had the girl been cursed? Jade forced herself not to stare. It was none of her business.

  In a few hours, she would be long gone from this place. And the boy Sean was the reason why. He knew about her. She had come from the fey realm to the middle of Nowhere, USA because she knew no one here would know about magic or the fey or the separation of the realms. She had been utterly wrong.

  “What’s going on?” Jade asked, eyeing Sean. He had skin the color of a cinnamon stick and was tall with a muscular frame and narrow, dark-brown eyes. He had never talked to her. Thanks to Sean’s furious ex-girlfriend, Jade finally understood why: somehow, this human knew what Jade was.

  “We need to talk to you,” Shemeya said. The salty scent of nervousness was now mixed with the sour tang of guilt.

  “Why?” Jade spoke to Shemeya but looked directly at Sean. Whatever they had come for, she knew he was in charge.

  “Can we come in, please?” Shemeya asked. “It’s important.”

&
nbsp; Jade swallowed the lump in her throat. There were four of them, but they were only kids, she reminded herself. Human kids. They couldn't hurt her. “Go outside and play, Coal. This’ll only take a few minutes.”

  “It’s hot outside. Can I stay in here, please?” he begged.

  Jade answered with a silent glare. She never repeated herself. A threatening scowl was all it took for him to do what she asked. Coal slumped his shoulders, stuck out his bottom lip, and walked past the visitors on her doorstep. “Don't leave the front of the apartment!” Jade shouted to Coal’s receding back.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He kicked the red ball that had been lying a few feet away from their door.

  “What’s going on?” Jade asked after the door was closed and the quartet were inside.

  “You need to fix us,” Ashley demanded. The semi-transparent, ghost-like apparition that clung to her stared at Jade with dark, empty eyes.

  “Fix what? Ghosts are not in my . . .” And then Jade remembered her book was missing. It was a sentient, magical thing that was always disappearing and reappearing at will. Like a sentient sword, it chose its master unless it was stolen. When it was taken, the book reacted in a completely different way, clinging to and sucking the thief’s life and using it to fuel its non-corporeal form.

  Ashley reached into her purse and pulled out a gun. “Take this damn curse off me, or I’ll kill you.”

  “Ashley, we never talked about bringing a gun.” Sean’s voice shook.

  “The book you took is warded,” Jade began. “All you have to do is return it, and the curse on your back will be gone.” She had no idea if that was true. Once something like that had a taste of life, it tended to cling to it until the victim was dead. But now was probably not the time to tell Ashley that.

  “Did you bring the book?” Sean asked as he anxiously eyed Ashley's gun.

  Tears sprang from Ashley’s eyes, and she plopped on Jade’s couch, looking exhausted. The phantom on her back seemed to grin with triumph. “No; I left it in your house.”

  Sean took the gun from the weeping girl. “What about Shemeya?” he asked Jade.

  The relief doused, Jade furrowed her brow. She had assumed they were only here for Ashley. “What’s wrong with Shemeya?”

  “My dreads turn into snakes,” Shemeya said somberly.

  Jade couldn't help herself. She laughed. “You look normal to me,” she said, staring at Shemeya's hair.

  Shemeya exchanged a long, steady glance with Sean and Andre before she took a deep breath. Eyes closed, she shook her head while slowly running her fingers through her dreads. A few of them seemed to shimmer. The rough-textured locs now appeared smooth as they grew in girth. Four, no, five, of her dreads started moving.

  “Wow!” Jade said, unable to contain her astonishment. She always knew there was something different, magical, about the girl. Now, her suspicions were confirmed. She lifted her hand towards the snakes. They hissed as they rose and recoiled, but Jade kept her hand steady and didn’t pull away. The entire room was silent but for the hissing and slithering of the snakes above Shemeya’s head. After a long, electrified pause where Jade could barely contain her excitement, the snakes leaned into her hand. Smiling and meeting Shemeya’s gaze, Jade asked, “How did this happen?”

  “What do you mean ‘how did this happen’?” Sean demanded, puncturing Jade’s bubble of amazement and dragging her back to reality, back to the humans standing in her apartment who knew what she was.

  “I didn’t do this.” Jade caressed the snakes one last time before she faced Sean. “I have never seen someone’s hair turn into snakes. Besides, Shemeya has never done anything to me. I thought we were friends.” She turned to Shemeya. “You must have some type of magic all your own. Your snakes have nothing to do with me.”

  “You’re lying.” Sean gripped the gun tighter. The smell of his anger was putrid, thick, and heavy. “You’re doing all of this.” He walked over to Andre. With his free hand, Sean pulled back the hood of the boy’s thick grey sweater. As the light hit Andre’s exposed skin, cockroaches, beetles, grasshoppers, and a few red ants scurried away from his face and disappeared down his shirt.

  “Hey!” Andre rebuked.

  Jade let a grin betray her amusement. “Okay. That is my fault, but I was going to call the roaches off tonight.” One of the roaches escaped. Jade lifted her foot and stepped on it. “Damn. I didn’t know that the spell would work so well.”

  Andre stared at her, his jaw clenched. He had been mostly silent the entire time he’d been here. But he had plenty to say that day at the park. “Do you still believe black women look like cockroaches?” Jade asked.

  He seethed. “No, I told you I was just joking.”

  “It was not funny.” Jade had grown close to the women in these apartments. She shared their pain, grief, and joy. She couldn’t let the boy get away with calling the women she had grown to love cockroaches without teaching him a lesson. The spell had been risky, but it hadn’t taken much energy. Roaches and other insect-like creatures were the easiest species to compel.

  “How do you know about me?” Jade asked Sean. “I am not using glamour. This is a true shape.”

  “You reek of magic,” he replied.

  “Really?” Emotions she could smell. But it never occurred to her that anyone, especially a human, could smell magic. “I’ll have to fix that.”

  Jade turned to Ashley, who sat slumped and defeated on the couch. “Get up and get my book, and I’ll fix you and the bug boy.” All she had to do was tie up these last few problems, and she’d be gone, leaving this life behind.

  Before the girl got up to leave, Jade’s front door swung open. Four figures cloaked in sunlight stood in the doorway. After a few seconds, Jade's vision adjusted to the brightness, and her blood turned to ice. An elven woman with red eyes stood at her door. The red eyes of a queen.

  “Who lives here?” the queen asked. Of course, everyone pointed to Jade. The queen, with all her power, could not even recognize Jade for what she was. Perhaps she could still escape with Coal and both of their lives.

  “Who are these other people?” Queen Galena asked a human standing anxiously behind her.

  “They’re just neighborhood kids. I think she’s cursed them.” The man’s voice shook as he stared, horrified at Shemeya and her snakes.

  Damn. Damn. Damn. Why had I stayed so long? She had made a mistake believing this was her home, these people were her friends, and she was safe. Panicked, Jade grabbed the gun from Sean and pointed it at the queen. Without hesitation, she pulled the trigger. Jade had never touched, much less used one. The metal was cold and foreign, but it was small with no blowback.

  If the queen had been a typical elf, Jade knew a gun would have been enough to kill her, but her opponent was a queen. She wielded the magic of a hundred generations of fey. Before Jade could get off a second shot, the gun was taken from her hand, and Jade was on the floor with a foot pressing on her windpipe and painfully cutting off her air.

  “You obviously know what I am,” Queen Galena said, pressing harder. “But who are you? What are you?”

  “I’m human. You can’t touch me,” Jade managed to say as she pushed against Queen Galena’s foot.

  “Your home is filled with magic, and a human yielding true magic is impossible. What are you?”

  “This is not real magic. I only deal in herbs and natural remedies.”

  “What are you?” Queen Galena asked once more, her impatience growing.

  “I’m human,” Jade repeated, gasping for breath.

  With unbelievable speed, Jade found herself upright with her feet dangling off the ground. Before she could think, she felt the queen’s lips on her own. Jade’s eyes widened with shock.

  What the hell is going on? she thought, as she gathered all of her remaining strength to push the queen away.

  Then she felt it.

  It wasn’t a kiss. The queen was sucking all of Jade’s breath from her chest.

  No
, not her breath.

  Her life.

  Her essence.

  Her magic.

  Somehow, this monster was stealing her power. Jade felt herself losing control of her human form. Her short kinky hair straightened and grew as the tendrils snaked their way down her back. The color she’d gathered for the darker skin tone dispersed into the atmosphere like flecks of dirt on the air. The points of her ears grew. This was her true form. Her elven form was usually like putting on a pair of comfortable old shoes. It should have been a welcome change. It should have felt good. But instead, it felt like a dull blade raking against her soul, laying her spirit bare. Jade opened her eyes and met the queen’s gaze, willing the queen to stop, but her magic was useless on a queen. Not that she had much magic left anyway.

  With her last bit of strength, Jade shifted her fingers into talons and pierced the queen’s shoulders. If she felt anything, it didn’t register. The queen didn’t even wince. Hope gone, Jade gave into the darkness beckoning from the distance. She closed her eyes and waited for death.

  Chapter One

  CHALCEDONY STARED DOWN at Sojourner in disbelief. Warring giants, dwarves, elves, and even a few trolls surrounded Queen Tasla’s tree. The wind carried the clang of metal beating against metal and cries of pain from the battle below. She had been played. Coal had been nothing but a distraction. She had done exactly what Royden wanted.

  She looked over at Coal, who stood beside her, and she eyed his chest where he had been shot. It was smooth and healed. The sorcerer had healed him, but she was sure his newfound magic was aiding his healing. She didn’t understand how it was possible, but after all this time, he was actually Jade’s son and not some child she’d stolen to blend in to the human realm. He was an elf. She had so many questions to ask him, but the answers would have to wait. First things first.

  She concentrated on the battle below and pushed back her guilt. In its place was the same cold, ancient anger she had felt when she had seen Coal get shot by Agent Ellis.