From the look on both Sarah's and Irene's faces, I wasn't the only one with a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach. If the Goblin wasn't leaving anything out, then I couldn't see what there was to do about Toby.
Not without Irene disowning Sarah, which would no doubt royally cheese off the Goblin King. (Pun intended.)
"Can't he abdicate?"
The Goblin King looked at Sarah. Sarah looked at the Goblin King.
Silence stretched out. Toby looked from his sister to his brother-in-law, then looked at his mother, and finally at me. None of us said anything.
At last, the Goblin King said, "Until there is another heir… no. There is no conscious choice involved in being heir presumptive. It simply happens. As for the other method? Toby should, by all rights, have a voice in that."
Irene let out a choked sob. I wanted to touch her somehow, find a way to comfort her. But there was no way to be comforting about this.
After a few more moments, Irene pulled her purse out from under her chair and dug through it. It was one of those huge, chunky affairs full of all the things women apparently need in today's world. I've never understood that, actually — how much does a woman really need to carry around?
At last, Irene set her huge, guaranteed-to-piss-off-the-Goblin-King book down on the table with a whump. She opened it and started flipping through pages. Every now and then she licked her finger to turn a page. Before long, she'd found her Spelle of Disownment.
She turned the book around and slid it to her step-daughter and son-in-law. (I was pretty sure I was never going to wrap my brain around the fact that a Sidhe was a whatever-in-law to a family of humans.)
"Would this work?"
"Irene, this is a spell." Sarah laid her fingers on the thin, worn paper. "You can't cast spells."
The Goblin King narrowed his eyes. "She doesn't need to. Provided she means them, the words are enough."
I crossed my arms over my chest and tried to look like I wasn't going to put up with typical Sidhe unwillingness to give straight answers. "That doesn't answer the question, Goblin King."
"Eradicate the relationship between Sarah and Toby — make him not her brother — and yes, Irene's purpose would be fulfilled. He would no longer be heir presumptive of the Underground. And again, Toby should by all rights have a voice in this."
The Goblin King's eyes hadn't widened and his voice was low. Just this side of menacing. He was ramping up very quickly from 'royally unhappy' to 'royally pissed enough to melt faces.'
"Toby is a seven years old. David and I are his parents. It's our right to make this decision for him," Irene said.
I got the strangest feeling that, for once, mine wasn't the face an angry Sidhe wanted to melt.
I knew there was no way a disownment would end well. Sarah might accept it, but it would hurt her. Which was really all Jareth needed to work up a serious case of grudge. Not than any Sidhe grudge was ever mild. Problem was, horrible as Irene and David disowning Sarah would be, I just couldn't see any way out of it if Toby didn't want to be permanently separated from his father.
"Sarah, it might be for the best," I said. I kept my voice gentle. I felt for the poor kid, I really did.
Sarah nodded. There were tears in her eyes.
Irene reached across the table to hold Sarah's hand one last time. She turned her face to look at the Goblin King. "What do I have to say?"
"Your right words."
"I don't know what those are."
"Then you shan't be disowning Sarah today."
"Jareth," Sarah said, softly. "It's alright. I'll be alright. Just go ahead and tell her. Toby deserves…Toby deserves better than this sorry situation."
The Goblin King looked at Sarah for a long moment. He was still looking at her when he told Irene, "You speak for yourself and Dylan? Then tell her you disown her and she is no daughter of yours."
"It's that simple?"
"It's that simple."
I couldn't shake the feeling of foreboding. There was something missing. Something I wasn't taking into account. But I couldn't think what it was. Toby might have needed a voice if it had been really his decision. But if his parents severed the link, then she wasn't his sister anymore. It didn't really matter what he thought of it. It certainly worked that way in more mundane families, and they weren't using magic to effect the change.
Irene took a deep breath and let it out. She shivered, made the breath sound uneven and rattling. She squeezed Sarah's hand and let go.
"Sarah," she said. Her voice caught on a sob but she took another deep breath. "I disown you. You're not our daughter anymore."
I should have felt something, some fundamental part of Sarah's nature changing. But there was nothing. Sarah was the same mostly-human changling-like thing she'd been since I met her, and the Goblin King wasn't mightily pissed off.
The Goblin King inspected his gloves for a few moments while Sarah just looked perplexed.
Sarah looked to the Goblin King. "Something went wrong there."
"Those weren't the right words," he replied, in a bored tone. "Care to try again, Irene? Try using her full name. Maybe a prettier turn of phrase."
"Sarah Galadriel Williams, Queen of the Goblins," she said, voice shaking, "on behalf of myself and my husband, Robert Williams, I disown you. You are no daughter of ours."
Something shivered in the magic around us.
Ever had one of those moments where the air around you trembles and holds its breath? Like the entire universe is waiting to see what happens next? Yeah, it felt like that.
Sarah's expression turned flinty and remote. She traced her fingers in a circle on the table. I watched ice form in trails after her fingers. The ice gave off steam, and the steam became —
The seashell and silver wire circlet, accented with beads of sea glass.
Sarah re-arranged her hair, letting it fall long and dark down her back, and then pulled the circlet down low on her forehead.
And the Goblin King smiled. It was not a nice smile. He looked like he'd finally decided precisely how he wanted to eviscerate Irene Williams.
"Goblin King, this is neutral ground," I said, half-standing and reaching for my blasting rod.
He flicked a glance at me. Within the next instant he dismissed me as unimportant. Instead, he shrugged and said, "I am not a signatory of the Accords."
"We should change that," the Goblin Queen murmured.
"Perhaps when we're done here." His smile turned from satisfied to downright vicious. "Irene, Irene, Irene. I warned you, you know. Young Toby has a voice in this. Sarah is still his sister."
I looked at Toby and almost groaned. Nothing about him had changed. He still resembled the Goblin King more than his sister or his mother. He was still too sharp, too pointy, to be entirely human.
The Goblin Queen reached over to hold her little brother's hands.
"Toby, can you say it?"
"Say what?"
"Toby," Irene said, voice tight and urgent. "Toby, repeat after me —"
"He has to mean it, Irene. Toby, can you honestly tell Sarah that you don't love her or want her to be your sister anymore and mean it? If you don't, you'll make your father very ill."
Toby stared at us all like a frightened rabbit.
"It's okay to be honest, Toby," the Goblin Queen said. "Just tell us what you want. Use your right words."
He screwed up his face like he was going to cry.
And then he shot all Irene's plans and fears to hell with eleven words.
"I wish Sarah would stay my sister for ever and ever."
The Goblin Queen smiled. She bent to press kisses to the backs of each of Toby's hands, and said, "Granted. Would you like to come live with Jareth and me in the Goblin City?"
Toby nodded. "Do I have to say my right words?"
"No!" Irene shrieked. "No, Jareth can't have him. You won him back, he can't just be taken —"
I had to pull her away from the Goblin Queen. If she actually managed to strike out at her, the Goblin King would strike out with magic. A lot of magic. The kind of magic that would have brought the building down on our heads for harming one hair on Sarah's.
"Say your right words," the Goblin Queen whispered.
Toby lifted his chin, looked at Jareth and Sarah, and said, with far too much gravity for a seven-year-old, "I wish I could go and live in the Goblin Kingdom with Jareth and Sarah right now."
The candles flickered out.
When they winked back to life, the Goblin Queen and Toby were gone.
Irene sank to her knees and cried helplessly, as if broken. Tears streaked down her cheeks. She covered her mouth with her hands to stifle the noise. She was shaking, trembling, rocking back and forth from either the force of her sobbing or the force of her feelngs.
"Foolish, foolish woman," the Goblin King said. He drew himself up to his full height.
It wasn't an impressive height. I was taller than him by head and shoulders. But he wasn't trying to intimidate.
His voice was disdainful.
"You thought you could give me your husband's child to save yours. Never thinking about consequences, never thinking about how much you would hurt your husband and my own wife in your absolute desperation to keep the status quo of the last year."
"No, it wasn't like that." Irene shook her head.
"You wanted Sarah gone, and Toby and David to be all yours. If not away at college, then locked in the Underground with me. Me, to whom you owe your life."
"I was trying to save David —"
"Not even I," he said, very softly, "can cheat death. And now you have lost both children to me. "
The Goblin King spun his hand through the air. Mist formed, solidified into a big giant marble.
"Will I have to wait long to see him?" She was still sniffling.
"If you take this outside and break it," the Goblin King said, "then no. Not long at all."
She took the crystal, shouldered her purse, and left McAnally's.
Jareth spun another crystal out of thin air and mist, then lobbed it at me. I jerked back instinctively, but it broke before it even touched me.
The candles flickered out. I felt the ground hit when I went down.