chapter eight
I shivered once more in the cold of the cave. There was no way I was using that afghan again, so I just tucked my hands under my arms and bit my lip. I’d worried that more students had been hurt, but apparently I’d slept a couple of hours and most of them had gone home before the attack. Kimber and the unwounded human boy, whose name was Brent, grabbed one of the other couches and dragged it closer to where the rest of us sat huddled in our safety-in-numbers group. Jason sank into it gratefully, though the movement made him grimace in pain.
“I thought you healed him,” I said, giving Ethan a puzzled look.
His expression was grim, and I noticed dark circles under his eyes. They seemed to have popped up very recently, since I didn’t think they’d been there before the attack.
“I’ve healed the ribs themselves. The soft tissue around them is probably still bruised as all hell.” He patted his friend on the shoulder. “Sorry, mate. I’m not too good at this yet.”
Jason gave me a sardonic look. “He’s being modest.”
“There’s a new one,” Kimber muttered, but no one cracked a smile.
“Ethan’s a magical prodigy,” Jason continued. “Most healers have to train for years to be able to mend bone, and they have to train so hard they can barely manage any other magic.”
Kimber sniffed disdainfully. “And if Ethan hadn’t wasted his energy showing off earlier, he might have been able to heal the flesh wounds, too.”
“Enough, Kimber!” Ethan snapped, springing to his feet. “How was I supposed to know’”
“Um, guys?” I asked tentatively, partially to head off the argument, partially because I was really worried. “Do you think there are more of them? I mean, what if they come back?” I shivered again, and this time it wasn’t from cold. I looked at the piles of guck that used to be monsters and wondered if any of this could possibly be real.
“I doubt it,” Ethan said, but he didn’t sound too sure. “If there were more of them, they’d have all attacked together.” Pointedly turning his back on Kimber, Ethan turned to the last of the human boys, the first one who’d been injured.
The wound had looked really bad when I’d first seen it, but when Ethan carefully peeled the sweatshirt away, it looked like it had stopped bleeding. Three angry red lines slashed across the boy’s chest, but the cuts weren’t as deep as I’d originally thought. Ethan did another healing spell, but apparently he was really low on juice. The wounds closed, but just barely. It would take very little to rip them open again. When Ethan finished the spell, he swayed on his feet, and for a moment, I thought he was going to pass out. Instead, he lowered himself to the cave floor and sat with his head propped against the end of the couch and his eyes closed.
I glanced up at Kimber, who was still giving her brother a sour look. “Can you finish up the healing?” I asked, and I could tell right away that it hadn’t been a good question to ask.
Her expression turned even more sour. “No.” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked away.
O-kay. Guess that was kind of a touchy issue. I looked at the other Fae, the one who might or might not be Kimber’s boyfriend. He shrugged.
“I can’t do enough to make a real difference,” he said. “Even if I do a bit of patchwork, we’ll still have to take them to the hospital.”
“So are we going to have to talk to the police about this?” I asked. Maybe the police would help me, get me out of this mess.
No one met my gaze, and I had the feeling my question had made them all uncomfortable. Then again, I’d seen a startling number of weapons make an appearance when the Spriggans attacked. Perhaps the Student Underground had too much to hide to risk talking to the police.
“That won’t be necessary,” Ethan said. “Spriggans aren’t under police jurisdiction. We’d have to talk to the border patrol, and I’m sure you’ll agree that’s not a good idea at the moment.”
I wasn’t as sure about that as Ethan assumed, but I wasn’t up to making an issue out of it, either. “Then can we get out of here? Please?”
No one had any objection to that idea. Ethan helped Jason to his feet, and Kimber helped the other boy. Everyone seemed capable of walking, though it was impossible to miss the strain on the human boys’ faces.
When we left the cave, I was pretty sure we weren’t headed back the way we had come, but my sense of direction sucks. I’m the kind of person who can get lost in a closet. Turned out I was right for once, though. Ethan didn’t think he had the strength to lift the flagstones again, so instead he took us to a different entrance to the underground tunnels. Conveniently, this one was located in the basement of the Fae boy’s house. I still hadn’t gotten his name, nor that of the second wounded human, but this didn’t really feel like a good opportunity for introductions.
We split up from there, the humans and Kimber’s friend heading to the emergency room and leaving me with Ethan and Kimber. The three of us trudged back to the apartment complex. There was hardly anyone on the streets this late at night. I wondered if monster attacks were commonplace in Avalon. Surely in all her efforts to make me never want to set foot in the place, my mom would have mentioned attacks by nightmarish Fae creatures in the streets of Avalon. But there had to be a reason that the human boy had had a gun and the Fae had all been armed with knives.
Remind me why I’d thought coming here would be a good idea?
When we got back to the courtyard, Ethan took hold of my arm, like he was trying to prop me up, though I’d been walking just fine.
“You look exhausted,” he said.
“So do you.”
He smiled crookedly, but the expression was strained. “Some sleep will do us both good.”
He started steering me toward one of the buildings, but Kimber cleared her throat loudly. Ethan turned to glare at her.
“What do you take me for?” he growled at her.
After all that had happened, I was a little slow on the uptake, so at first I didn’t understand what they were talking about. Kimber put her fists on her hips and glared right back. I sensed that there were layers of meaning behind those glares, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what they were.
With a grunt of disgust, Ethan let go of my arm and gave me a nudge toward Kimber.
“Fine!” he snapped, and without another word or glance at me, he turned away and stomped toward his building.
And that’s when I finally got it. He’d been planning to take me up to his apartment. Just me and him. My face heated with a blush. I kept my head down so Kimber wouldn’t see.
“Come on,” she said with a wave of her hand, and I followed her while trying to come to terms with my own naïveté.
If Kimber hadn’t objected, I’d have followed Ethan up to his apartment without thinking about the implications. I mean, yeah, he was a really hot, too-old-for-me Fae guy, and even though it kind of felt like he’d been flirting with me all night, the idea that he might have interest in a not-overly-attractive halfbreed teenager was kind of silly. But still, he was a guy, and I wasn’t a kid anymore.
Kimber’s apartment didn’t look like what I pictured as student housing. Not that the apartment itself was all that special, but the interior was something else. If you hid away a few of the telltale modern conveniences—like the phone and the TV—I swear the room could have been lifted straight from some nineteenth century manor house. It was like a set from a Jane Austen movie. And I’d bet everything I owned—which, granted, wasn’t much at the moment—that the furniture was all genuinely antique, not reproductions.
The place was beautiful but strangely cold. Kind of like Kimber herself. Everything was in shades of pale blues and greens, and there was nothing that looked out of place. The magazines on her coffee table were neatly stacked. The remotes for her TV and DVD player and stereo were arranged side by side with what looked like the exact same amount of space between them. I wondered if she’d needed a ruler to do that, or if she’d just eyeballed it.
“I only have one bedroom,” she said as I stood in the middle of the room wondering what I was supposed to do now. “The sofa isn’t great for sleeping, but it’s much more comfortable than the floor.” She grinned at me, suddenly looking much more like Ethan. “I’d offer you my bed, but I’m not that altruistic.”
She seemed to have thawed since we’d entered the apartment. Her shoulders were more relaxed, and her smile looked open and easy. Either she suffered from multiple personality disorder, or Ethan made her uptight. I was betting on the latter.
“How are you holding up?” she asked with sudden sympathy. “I can’t imagine what you must be going through.”
“I’m pretty freaked out,” I admitted. “But other than that, I’m basically okay.”
She nodded in what looked like approval, then disappeared into her bedroom, emerging shortly afterward with the promised pillow and blanket.
I eyed the sofa doubtfully. It looked about as cushy as a park bench—like it was meant to be looked at, not sat on.
“I’m sorry I don’t have anything more comfortable,” Kimber said, seeing the direction of my gaze.
“It’s fine,” I told her, not wanting to sound ungrateful. “It’s better than being locked in a cell, even if that bed was nicer.” I could have done without the Spriggan attack, and it would have been nice if Ethan and Kimber hadn’t made my rescue feel so much like a kidnapping, but I was glad not to be spending the night under Aunt Grace’s thumb.
“Thanks for getting me out of there.”
She frowned and looked away. “That was mostly Ethan’s doing. I was just along for the ride.”
Call me crazy, but I got the feeling she was just a touch bitter about it. “You helped, too,” I told her.
She dismissed my claim with a self-deprecating grunt.
“You did!” I insisted. “Those Spriggans might have killed us if you hadn’t been there.”
Her face brightened. “I did kill one of the Spriggans,” she said, sounding excited by the thought. “And I didn’t even need magic to do it.” Her smile was positively brilliant, and there was a happy twinkle in her eyes.
“If you start jumping up and down and clapping with glee, I’m outta here,” I muttered, and got the laugh I’d been going for. Kimber the Ice Queen had left the building.
“I feel quite the warrior princess,” she said. “And that was quick thinking on your part, too, tangling the Spriggan in your blanket.”
The praise made me blush. “Umm, that was really more luck than anything.”
“Nonsense! We both did quite nicely under fire. We can be warrior princesses together.”
I smiled at the image. “As long as I don’t have to wear a chain-mail bikini, I’m fine with that.”
“It’s a deal,” she said, holding out her hand for me to shake. “Now, I don’t know about you, but it’s time for this princess to get some sleep. Is there anything else you need before I abandon you?”
The list of things I needed would take an hour to recite, but I put on my bravest smile. “Nope, I’m good.”
“All right then. See you in the morning.”
Giving the couch a baleful look, I pried off my shoes and arranged the pillow and blanket as best I could. Then I climbed into my makeshift bed and tried not to think. I fell asleep before I could decide if the couch rated as torturously uncomfortable, or merely miserable.
The next time I woke up, there was no crisis, which made for a nice change. My neck and back were stiff and sore, and my head didn’t feel much clearer than it had when I’d first touched ground in London, but at least no one was kidnapping me and no monsters were attacking me.
Stretching in a vain attempt to work some of the kinks out, I stood up and headed toward the kitchen where various noises indicated Kimber was up.
I rounded the corner in time to see her pour some Cheerios into a bowl, and had to swallow a laugh. Who knew a Fae ice princess would eat something as mundane as Cheerios for breakfast?
I must have made some noise despite my effort to be quiet. Kimber turned and gave me a grumpy, first-thing-in-the-morning look.
“Want some?” she asked, shaking the cereal box.
My stomach growled its approval, and I nodded. I couldn’t help watching her out of the corner of my eye as I poured my cereal and doused it with milk and sugar. She moved with the uncanny grace of the Fae, but she looked far more human this morning than she had last night.
She was still naturally beautiful enough to make me feel like Ugly Betty by comparison, but her hair was tied up in a messy knot at the top of her head, and she was wearing faded flannel pajamas that looked like they were meant for a guy. I surreptitiously checked her feet for bunny slippers, but she wasn’t quite that human.
It was when I glanced at the clock over the stove that I nearly choked on my mouthful of cereal. It was almost noon. I couldn’t believe I’d slept that long.
“Ethan’ll be here around one,” Kimber told me. “Then we’ll take you out to conduct our … test.”
I swallowed hard. Ethan had said it wasn’t anything to be afraid of. But then again, he’d said I’d be safe in the cave last night, so he wasn’t what I’d call a reliable source. I stirred my Cheerios around in my bowl, my appetite gone.
Kimber pulled a sponge from the cabinet under the sink and used it to wash her bowl. I wasn’t surprised to find that she wasn’t the sort to leave dirty dishes lying around. She shot me a glance.
“It’s really no big deal, you know. The test.”
I nodded and tried to smile. But if I wasn’t going to trust Ethan’s word for it, I saw no reason why I should trust his sister’s.
Kimber pursed her lips. “You’re just going to look at something and tell us what you see. Real simple. Okay?”
I can’t say I was convinced, but I dropped the subject anyway. “Can I ask you a question?”
Her lips twitched in an almost-smile. “Apparently so.”
Har-dee-har-har. “Do people in Avalon always carry knives and guns around?” I remembered the shock of seeing Jason draw a gun and wondered for the umpteenth time what I’d gotten myself into.
Kimber thought about that question for a moment before she answered. I wondered what she’d decided to leave out.
“It’s not what I would call common practice,” she said. “But we are the Student Underground, and Avalon politics can get cutthroat. Literally. If we didn’t have Ethan, we might not scare anyone enough for them to bother us. But Jason wasn’t lying when he said Ethan is a prodigy. He can do amazing things now, and it’s scary to think what he’ll be like when he’s older and has more experience.” She made a sour-lemon face—inferiority complex, anyone?—before she continued.
“He’ll be a force to be reckoned with someday, and some people might prefer to reckon with him now while they still can. So he’s single-handedly made our Underground into a threat, and the rest of us are at risk by association. And that’s why we make a habit of always being armed.”
“Aren’t there, like, gun laws or something?”
She laughed. “We radicals like to think of laws as more of ‘guidelines.’ Besides, I’d rather risk someone going all technical on me about carrying a concealed weapon than be unarmed when attacked by Spriggans.”
She was being real chatty this morning, despite her obviously edited answers. I figured as long as she kept answering my questions, I’d keep asking them. “So are there a lot of Spriggan attacks in Avalon?”
I’d stopped eating my cereal, even though there were some milk-sodden O’s left in the bottom of the bowl. Kimber took the bowl from my hand and washed it while she talked.
“Not usually. Only the humanoid Fae are allowed into Avalon, though it’s a lot harder to keep Fae creatures out than it is to keep humans out. The border on the Fae side doesn’t have the kind of immigration system that you humans do.” A frown furrowed her forehead. “But the Spriggans would only take orders from Unseelie Fae. I can’t imagine why any of the Unseelie power players would want to attack our Student Underground. We’re known to favor an Unseelie candidate.”
“Maybe they were after me, ” I suggested. After all, everyone kept telling me I was in mortal danger. “Aunt Grace was attacked yesterday, and she said she thought her attackers were after me.”
Kimber raised an eyebrow at me. “She was attacked, you say?” There was no missing the skepticism in her voice.
“That’s what she said. And she had this big bruise on her face.”
Kimber snorted. “I bet you she was faking it. Even I have enough magic to heal a bruise. My guess is she was trying to scare you into doing what she wanted.”
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” I mumbled. “But even if that was all a big, fat lie, the Spriggans could have been after me, right?”
Kimber shook her head. “They couldn’t have known where you were or that you were with us. No, they were after Ethan, and the rest of us were just in the way.”
Does it make me a bad person that I was glad they were after Ethan instead of me?
I could have easily kept asking her questions till the sun went down, but Kimber had apparently had enough.
“I can lend you something to wear if you want to throw your clothes in the wash,” she said, striding out of the kitchen, which now looked as neat and pristine as if no one had eaten there for a week.
“It would have been nice if you and Ethan had grabbed my bags when you kidnapped me,” I grumbled. At five foot six, I wasn’t exactly a midget, but Kimber was much taller. I didn’t think I’d fit into her clothes real well.
She looked me up and down with an appraising eye. “I have some capris that should be just about right on you.”
Kimber was wrong. The capris didn’t look right on me—they looked like capris that were too long. But at least they weren’t the same clothes I’d slept in. With the pants, Kimber lent me a long-sleeved T-shirt. Good thing it had elastic cuffs; otherwise the sleeves would have swallowed my hands whole.
It was a gray and gloomy day when Kimber and I headed out to the courtyard to meet up with Ethan. Occasional splats of rain dripped from the clouds, but neither of the Fae seemed to think a raincoat or umbrella was necessary. I shivered in the damp chill and pulled the long sleeves over my hands after all.
Ethan must have noticed me shivering, because he stepped up beside me and threw an arm around my shoulders, pulling me close to his side.
I froze. I know it’s not really a big deal to have a guy put his arm around you, but still … Ethan wasn’t just any guy. He was a guy who’d make the most gorgeous human in history look ordinary. Plus he was Fae. Plus he was older than me.
Kimber seemed bothered by the gesture, her shoulders stiffening as she glared at Ethan. It was like she was a whole different person when Ethan was around. Even her body language was different, more tense and wary. I liked the Ethan-free Kimber better.
Ethan nudged me out of my frozen-rabbit impersonation by starting to walk. With his arm so firmly around me, I had no choice but to move with him. I swallowed hard and stared at the rain-slicked cobblestones at my feet.
Ethan’s body was warm against mine, and I actually stopped shivering. Okay, maybe having his arm around me felt pretty good, even if my heart was jackhammering and my nerves made me about as graceful as a three-legged elephant.
“Better?” Ethan asked, rubbing his hand up and down my arm and creating even more heat. Especially in my face, which must have been red as a matador’s cape.
I like to think of myself as being unusually mature for my age, and in a lot of ways, I’m sure it’s true. How many sixteen-year-olds are responsible for paying the bills and balancing the checkbook, after all? But I had about as much experience with guys as your average preteen, and it was showing. My tongue seemed glued to the roof of my mouth, and I was hyperaware of how he was touching me. I didn’t dare look at him and was glad my hair was at least partially shielding my face.
“Knock it off, Ethan,” Kimber said, but there was a hint of resignation in her voice.
“Knock what off?” he asked. “All I’m doing is keeping her warm, since you didn’t bother giving her anything thicker than a T-shirt.”
Kimber grumbled something I didn’t quite catch, but it didn’t sound complimentary. I wondered if she even owned anything thicker than a T-shirt, since it sure seemed that the Fae didn’t mind the cold at all. And the warmth that radiated from Ethan’s body was considerable, making me wonder what their normal body temperature was.
Maybe he was just trying to keep me warm. But I still couldn’t relax, and it was a minor miracle that the two of us didn’t hit the dirt in a pile of tangled limbs as our sides bumped in haphazard rhythm.
Walking got easier when we reached the main road. I was not a big fan of the cobblestone streets. Sure, they were nice to look at, but they were a twisted ankle waiting to happen. I bet high heels weren’t a real popular fashion choice in Avalon.
There wasn’t much on the far side of the road, just a strip of well-manicured grass and a super-strong-looking guardrail right at the edge of the cliff. Just the thought of being in a car accident on this road was enough to make my stomach shrivel. Maybe riding horses through the city wasn’t as weird as I’d first thought.
There wasn’t a whole lot of traffic, so the three of us had no trouble getting across the road, even with my uncoordinated gait. I couldn’t quite figure out where we were going, though. I looked up and down the strip of grass, and there was nothing of any interest as far as the eye could see.
Well, except if I looked out over the rail into the distance, but I didn’t feel much like doing that. It seemed I was more afraid of heights than I’d thought.
“Where are we going?” I asked, pleased to find that I actually was still capable of speech.
“Right here,” Ethan said, and we came to a stop.
“Here” didn’t appear to be any different from anything else along the strip of grass. I frowned, but I didn’t feel like asking any more questions. If Ethan wanted me to take this stupid test of his, then it was up to him to explain what I was supposed to do.
There was a noticeable stretch of silence before he spoke again, and I think he was annoyed that I managed to outwait him. Score one for me!
“Look out into the distance, and tell us what you see.”
At least he wasn’t asking me to look down. Slowly, I raised my head, having no idea what to expect. I braced myself for something scary.
But all I saw was a heavy blanket of mist that made it impossible to see very far past the moat.
“Am I supposed to see anything unusual?” I asked, but I was beginning to feel a flutter of relief. If I didn’t see anything unusual, that meant I wasn’t what they thought I was. Which meant I wasn’t important to anyone’s political ambitions, which meant I still had hope of moving in with my dad and having a close-to-normal life. Maybe the nightmare would soon be over.
I swayed, suddenly dizzy, and I was glad Ethan still had his arm around me. My stomach lurched, and I burped up the taste of Cheerios. Eww.
“I don’t think I do well with heights,” I said, quickly shifting my gaze back to the grass at my feet.
“Just give it another minute,” Ethan said.
“No thanks. Not unless you want me to barf on your shoes.”
He moved around behind me, and suddenly his hand was on my chin, forcing my head up. I felt the warmth of his breath against my skin as he spoke into my ear.
“One more minute,” he urged.
My first reaction was to close my eyes in protest. But he didn’t let go of me, and when I tried to jerk away, his other arm wrapped around me and held me still.
“Just look,” he said. “Please.”
It was the “please” that changed my mind. He sounded almost desperate, and I realized that whatever I saw—or didn’t see—meant a lot to him. I could deal with a minute or two of queasiness.
Besides, Ethan probably knew some kind of spell that would force me to open my eyes and look. I didn’t want to go there.
With a sigh of resignation, I slowly opened my eyes, braced for the dizziness and nausea. It was there waiting for me, and I held my breath, hoping I wouldn’t be sick. The warmth of Ethan’s arms around me helped steady me, and I gazed out into the distance.
I still couldn’t see anything but the mist. Except … There was something weird about the mist. I stared at it hard, trying to figure out what it was. Through the mist, I could see patches of the English countryside beyond the moat … only, there was a glimmer of something … else. A faint image that overlay the countryside, like a photo that had been double-exposed. I tried to focus on that elusive image, and suddenly, it came clear.
Just beyond the moat stretched a deep green forest. Not a pasture or building in sight, except as a faint afterimage.
“Whoa!” I said with a gasp, my heart leaping in my chest as my throat tightened in near-panic. I tried to back away, but Ethan was still holding me.
“What do you see?” he asked.
I shook my head, still staring out into the mist, trying not to believe what was right before my eyes. I blinked, and the forest was still there. Oh, crap. I shifted my focus to the afterimage of English countryside, and as I stared at it, it solidified once more, the forest fading into the background, but not disappearing.
“What the hell…?” I mumbled. I was getting dizzier by the moment, and I felt sure that I was going to fall down, into the mist that shifted continually before my eyes.
“Let her go,” Kimber said, and I felt her hand on my arm. “We already know what she sees.”
“I want to hear her say it!” Ethan insisted. He was still holding my chin up, his face right next to mine. I’d have freaked out about him being so close if I weren’t feeling so awful.
“Look at her face, you wanker!” Kimber said, her voice sharp as needles. “She’s about to faint.”
Surprisingly, fainting sounded like a really good idea. If I fainted, I’d be unconscious, so I wouldn’t have to see the impossible anymore, nor would I have to feel so dizzy and sick. Then maybe when I woke up, all of this would go away and I’d find it was all just a bad dream. The mist started to turn dark around the edges.