Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale (The Modern Faerie Tales)

Product Description

Discover the dark and seductive realm of faerie in the first book of New York Times bestseller Holly Black’s critically acclaimed Modern Faerie Tales series, where one girl must save herself from the sinister magic of the fey courts, and protect her heart in the process.

Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she drifts from place to place with her mother’s rock band until an ominous attack forces them back to Kaye’s childhood home. But Kaye’s life takes another turn when she stumbles upon an injured faerie knight in the woods. Kaye has always been able to see faeries where others could not, and she chooses to save the strange young man instead of leaving him to die.

But this fateful choice will have more dire consequences than she could ever predict, as Kaye soon finds herself the unwilling pawn in an ancient and violent power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms—a struggle that could very well mean her death.

About the Author

Holly Black is the author of bestselling contemporary fantasy books for kids and teens. Some of her titles include The Spiderwick Chronicles (with Tony DiTerlizzi), the Modern Faerie Tales series, the Curse Workers series, 
Doll Bones, 
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, 
The Darkest Part of the Forest, the Magisterium series (with Cassandra Clare), and the Folk of the Air series. She has been a finalist for the Mythopoeic Award, a finalist for an Eisner Award, and the recipient of both an Andre Norton Award and a Newbery Honor. She lives in New England with her husband and son in a house with a secret door. Visit her at BlackHolly.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

1

Coercive as coma, frail as bloom

innuendoes of your inverse dawn

suffuse the self;

our every corpuscle become an elf.

—MINA LOY, “MOREOVER, THE MOON,”
THE LOST LUNAR BAEDEKER

Kaye spun down the worn, gray planks of the boardwalk. The air was heavy and stank of drying mussels and the crust of salt on the jetties. Waves tossed themselves against the shore, dragging grit and sand between their nails as they were slowly pulled back out to sea.

The moon was high and pale in the sky, but the sun was just going down.

It was so good to be able to
breathe, Kaye thought. She loved the serene brutality of the ocean, loved the electric power she felt with each breath of wet, briny air. She spun again, dizzily, not caring that her skirt was flying up over the tops of her black thigh-high stockings.

“Come on,” Janet called. She stepped over the overflowing, leaf-choked gutter, wobbling slightly on fat-heeled platform shoes. Her glitter makeup sparkled under the street lamps. Janet exhaled ghosts of blue smoke and took another drag on her cigarette. “You’re going to fall.”

Kaye and her mother had been staying at her grandmother’s a week already, and even though Ellen kept saying they’d be leaving soon, Kaye knew they really had nowhere to go. Kaye was glad. She loved the big old house caked with dust and mothballs. She liked the sea being so close and the air not stinging her throat.

The cheap hotels they passed were long closed and boarded up, their pools drained and cracked. Even the arcades were shut down, prizes in the claw machines still visible through the cloudy glass windows. Rust marks above an abandoned storefront outlined the words SALT WATER TAFFY.

Janet dug through her tiny purse and pulled out a wand of strawberry lipgloss. Kaye spun up to her, fake leopard coat flying open, a run already in her stocking. Her boots had sand stuck to the tops of them.

“Let’s go swimming,” Kaye said. She was giddy with night air, burning like the white-hot moon. Everything smelled wet and feral like it did before a thunderstorm, and she wanted to run, swift and eager, beyond the edge of what she could see.

“The water’s freezing,” Janet said, sighing, “and your hair is fucked up. Kaye, when we get there, you have to be cool. Don’t seem so weird.