Chapter Seventeen
Faolán laid Ivy down in her bed gently. Charlie rummaged through her cousin's drawers, trying to focus on finding Ivy some clean, comfortable pyjamas because otherwise, she'd lose her mind.
"Charlie," Faolán said quietly, sitting on the foot of Ivy's bed.
"Yes?"
"We need to talk."
Charlie sighed and came to Ivy's bedside to begin about the task of undressing and redressing her cousin. "It's late, Faolán," she argued feebly.
"Charlie, Ivy's slipped from consciousness. She's not in any ordinary sleep. She's in a magically-induced coma."
Charlie stared at him. That was probably the last thing she needed to hear.
"A magically-induced coma?" Dean repeated.
"Yes." Faolán paced in front of the fireplace, wringing his hands. "When Titania suspended Ivy back on the trail, Ivy fought so hard against it that her mind…broke in some places. And when that happened, Titania's magic entered Ivy's mind."
"Like what happened with me the other night?" Charlie asked.
"Yes, something like that. But you're part Faerie through ritual, and minimally so at that," Faolán said. "Ivy is part Faerie by blood, and much more so than you. Her humanity has fought against the magic and suppressed it for most of her life. The shock of coming into contact with so much magic on such a deep level has pulled her consciousness out of this world."
Dean downed the last half of his glass of whiskey and poured himself another. "Where is she, then?" he asked brashly. "Somewhere in a dream land? Can we get her back? Snap her back into consciousness here somehow?"
"Yeah, like we did with Bobby that one time with African dream root," Sam agreed.
Faolán frowned. "She's not in a dream land, exactly. She's trapped on the other side of the veil."
"She's over there?" Sam exclaimed.
Faolán nodded.
Charlie disappeared for a moment and came back with one of the large, dark-coloured leatherbound tomes from the reading room. She placed in on the coffee table and knelt down, flipping quickly through the pages.
"She's not in the Sidhe," she said to no-one in particular.
"That is the part of the Otherworld where we live," Faolán explained. "Very few outside of the Gentry have ever been there. The ancient bards and poets were the only ones who had the ability to see it."
"Here," Charlie exclaimed, jabbing her finger at a page in the book. "She's here."
Sam, Dean, and Castiel croweded around her to take a look at the page. It was a map of sorts showing the Fey-World, and Charlie's finger lay on a section over which was wirtten Tir na mBeo.
"The Land of the Living," she translated. "She's got to be there…unless she's in Tir na nÓg - the Land of Eternal Youth."
"She would be in Tir na mBeo first, yes," Faolán agreed. "If she wanders long, she will eventually come upon Tir na nÓg."
Charlie bit her lip and raised her eyes to Faolán. "This is going to be a bitch of a mission, isn't it?
"Why?" Dean asked. "Faolán, dude, beam me up there. I've been there once before. I think I can handle it."
"Excuse me?" Charlie said.
"Dean got abducted by Faeries a while back," Sam explained.
"Yeah. So. Come on, Faolán. Do your Tinkerbell thing."
"I am not Tinkerbell. And I can't," Faolán said tersely.
"Why the hell not?" Dean asked.
"Well, for one," Castiel jumped in, "she's physically here but mentally and spiritually there. She's in the spirit world, Dean. We can't enter unless we are brought or pulled there."
Dean smoldered in silence. He refused to believe what he was hearing.
Castiel continued, addressing Faolán this time. "And then there's the issue of the time difference, isn't there?"
Faolán nodded gravely. "We have no idea how much time has passed for her over there between her collapse and now," he said, "and if we do manage to follow her, we have no idea in what time we will end up."
Charlie collapsed against the couch, her hands over her face. "Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck fuck."
Dean sank into the corner of the couch, his hand clenched around his whiskey tumbler. "There's got to be a way," he muttered. "There just has to be."
"We'll hit the books right away," Sam assured him. "There's a lot of stuff in that reading room. We'll find a way."
"We have to," Charlie said quietly, removing her hands from her face. Her blue eyes shone with tears. "We have to."
Dean was incensed.
Pacing on the front porch, Dean was trying to make sense of it all. Castiel was an Angel. An Angel who had pulled him out of the pit. And now that same Angel was telling him that he couldn't get into the Otherworld? And what about Faolán? He was one of the Fey, and even he was refusing to go back. What the hell kind of logic was that?
Frustrated, he kicked at a post out of desperation to somehow relieve the anger inside him.
"Dammit," he said into the night. "Dammit!"
"Dean, you're insane," Sam bleated.
"I am not," Dean snapped, scanning the bookshelves. "What kind of hunter library wouldn't have a few spellbooks lying around, huh?"
"I'm not saying that expecting to find one is insane," Sam explained. "I'm saying that summoning one to us is insane. Especially since we've already got one."
"No offense to Faolán," Dean said, "but he seems pretty complacent about all this."
"Well, he's kind of in servitude to the family, isn't he? That probably comes with some strings attached, and judging by the way he was insistent on Titania following the rules I'd be willing to bet that he's not about to go breaking rules himself."
"Exactly." Dean stepped up onto a low stool by the shelves in the far left-hand corner of the room and scanned the gold-printed titles carefully. "We need a Faerie with more firepower, Sammy."
Sam grabbed Dean's arm and pulled him down off the stool. "Since when has summoning ever worked out for us, Dean?" he demanded, his voice suddenly sharp and emphatic. "Since when has making deals worked out for us? And, by the sound of it, the Griffins?"
"Look, if there's no way for us to follow her into the Otherworld to get her back, then we've got to work from the other way around!" Dean retorted, pulling his arm out of Sam's grasp. "So, you can sit here and lecture me, Sam, or you can help me call up a Faerie to bring her back."
Sam hesitated, noting the intense look of pain and anger flashing in Dean's eyes. The last time he'd seen that look in his brother's eyes was the last time they had seen Ben and Lisa, when Dean had asked Castiel to completely whitewash their memories so that they wouldn't know him.
"I know you want her back, Dean," Sam started gently. "We all want to get her back. We all want to save her. But you have got to stop trying to do this all on your own."
"I'm willing to do what it takes to get her out of the Otherworld and back into this world. What about you, Sammy, huh?"
Sam's face darkened. "That's not fair to say, Dean. For starters, don't you realise that this has devastated Charlie?"
Dean looked away, knowing full well that Sam was right but remaining unwilling to budge. "Sam, I am going to get her back. And I'll do whatever it takes – with or without your help."
"Maybe it doesn't have to involve summoning a Faerie," Sam continued. "Maybe we can find a loophole somewhere in a curse-breaking spell or something. I've been looking into that and there are some promising leads."
"Sammy, how the hell is any of this a curse?" Dean demanded. "These are deals we're talking about here. Not curses. We need a Faerie who can overrule Titania, release the girls from their family's deals, and maybe even take a few of the tinkly little mofos out while it's at it."
"Dean, Eoin Ó Gríobhtha's first attempt to overwrite a deal resulted in a curse being put on his entire family, remember?" Sam wheedled. "I don't know yet what kind of curse exactly, but once we find that out we can use some cursebreaking mojo. And maybe that will help us."
"Yeah, Sam. Maybe. In the meantime, Ivy's an empty shell upstairs on her bed and her soul is wandering around in the Otherworld. How long will it be before we get her back if we play it safe, huh?"
With that, he climbed back onto the stool and resumed his search for a spell book.
"Do you have…powdered ginger, five white candles, five blue candles, angelica root, dried bluebells, myrrh, mistletoe, a hazelnut shell, and…uh…Saint John's Wort?"
Charlie turned from the stove to face the kitchen door. Dean stood there, a rumpled piece of paper in his hand, looking like he'd been up the entire night. And he had been up the entire night, searching through the four spellbooks he'd found in the reading room for a summoning spell that would work on a Faerie powerful enough to swing some spirit-moving mojo.
"What are you trying to do?" she demanded.
"Nothing."
"Don't lie to me, Dean."
Don't try getting into my head this time, either, Charlie.
She glared at him. "Powdered ginger, angelica root, dried bluebells, myrrh, mistletoe, and Saint John's Wort?" she repeated.
"You forgot a hazelnut shell, five white candles, and five blue candles," Dean added, consulting his list.
Charlie's face became stormy with anger as she realised just exactly what he was planning to do with all that stuff. "You're going to summon a fucking Faerie here?" she burst out. "Are you insane?"
"Why does everyone keep asking me that?" Dean wondered out loud.
"Look, Dean, I know you've been to the Otherworld before, but that doesn't mean you know everything there is to know about Faeries," Charlie argued. "For starters, if you go you'll probably end up in a completely different time and location than where Ivy is now. And once you got there, she's most likely not going to be in the same place she started." She paused. "And do I really have to point out that neither your family nor mine has a good history with summoning stuff and making deals? Come on, Dean. Be realistic."
"Look," Dean sighed in exasperation, "if you don't want to be a part of this, then just tell me where I can go to get this stuff, okay?"
Charlie pursed her lips and shook her head. "No. I'm not allowing you to do this."
"I'm a grown man, Charlie."
"And a pretty dumb one too, sometimes. You can't just go around summoning Faeries, especially knowing what you know about my family's history with them!" Charlie insisted.
"We are talking about summoning one to get Ivy back," Dean exploded. "I'm not going to make a deal with any Faerie son of a bitch!"
Charlie shook her head. "Dean, don't you get it? Getting her back by means of a Faerie's powers means making a deal."
The sun was shining and the blue sky didn't have a single wisp of cloud in it, but Ivy was afraid.
She took in her surroundings. She stood on a well-worn path cutting through a field of tall, wispy grass freckled with bright, cheerful flowers. Several small butterflies flitted through the air, alighting on flowers briefly before fluttering back into the air.
Ivy turned to look behind her. The path and field seemed endless.
"Better start walking," she whispered to herself.
Castiel sat next to Faolán on the porch swing.
"You're angry at yourself," the Angel told the púca. "You shouldn't be."
"I'm meant to serve and protect them," Faolán said bitterly, "and look what's happened. Charlie's going off the deep end with worry and Ivy's lost in the Otherworld."
"It's their destiny. You can't change that."
Faolán put his head in his hands. "I have failed them."
"You have failed nobody," Castiel insisted. "What I have learned from walking amongst humans is that you cannot learn to forgive until you have learned to forgive yourself. Humans…the 'good' ones…they're so adept at it. They can forgive so many times for the same mistakes because of love." He paused. "Faolán, if you love these girls, if you love this family, you must forgive yourself."
Charlie sat on a chair by Ivy's bedside, holding her cousin's hand gently but firmly in her hands.
"We're going to get you out of there, girl. I promise," she said quietly. "Sam's working on finding a solution that'll make sure all of us walk free after this. Dean wanted to summon a Faerie, but…well, no way, right?"
Sam watched from the doorway, hanging back in the hallway just across the threshold. He didn't want to ruin the moment. Charlie and Ivy obviously had a bond as strong as if they were sisters; he knew it because in them he could see the same hardheaded loyalty that existed between him and Dean. There was a difference though: Dean and Sam would stop at nothing to protect each other; hell, they'd gone so far as summoning crossroads demons andmaking deals. Charlie and Ivy, though, exercised a particular caution. Charlie refused to let Dean summon a Faerie, even if summoning a Faerie was the only way to save Ivy.
Fortunately, it wasn't the only way. At least, Sam hoped he was right.
"We need a psychic," Sam said bluntly as he entered the dining room.
"Huh?" Dean looked up, confused, from his book.
"A psychic," Sam repeated.
"Okay. And why is that?" Dean asked, flipping his book shut and leaning back in his chair.
"Yes, do explain," Charlie urged, stepping in with an armful of books.
"What? More books?" Dean wheedled. Charlie rolled her eyes.
"Ivy's entire…non-physical self is stuck in the Otherworld, right? And it's impossible for us to go after her," Sam began. "So, we get a psychic to find Ivy and bring her back to this house. And then we get her back into her body."
"Sammy, I could kiss you," Dean said.
"Please. Don't," Sam said quickly with a laugh. "Save it for Ivy."
"This is awesome. Now, where do we find a psychic?" Dean wondered.
Charlie grinned. "I can answer that."