Authors: Jenna Black
Al waved my objections off. “I can deal with all of that. Illusion magic is my specialty, so I can just make us invisible. We can walk right out of the store past our Knights, and they’d never see us. And we can do the same at the border crossing.
We don’t need any paperwork. And no one ever has to know where we went. We can just say we wanted some girl time and slipped away. I know my mother will be mad, and I guess your dad would be, too but we’re teenagers, right? We’re supposed to make our parents crazy.”
“I can’t do it, Al. I just can’t. It’s too dangerous. I’m sorry.” I was much more pissed off at her than sorry about refusing her, and I know it showed in my voice.
“You’re the only one who can help me,” she said in a quavering voice, sucking her lower lip. “I know your history. I think everyone in Faerie has heard about how you rescued your boyfriend from the Wild Hunt against all odds. You know what it’s like to lose someone you love, to have everyone around you tell you to give up on him. You know what it’s like to not be able to bear to give up. You have to help me.”
The last thing I wanted to do was concede anything to Al, but I had to admit, at least to myself, that she had a point. I did have an inkling of what she must be going through if she really loved this guy. It’s easy to tell someone else they should just say “good riddance,” but a lot harder to convince yourself. After all, in my attempts to save Ethan, I’d been willing to bargain with the Erlking, a man so terrifying even the Queens of Faerie tiptoed around him. It was possibly the stupidest, most reckless thing I’d ever done, and I’d known it at the time. Nothing, not even common sense, could have stopped me from going after Ethan.
Of course, I’d been trying to save him from a life of eternal servitude, and Al was just hoping to win back a boy who clearly wasn’t worth the effort. I shouldn’t have even been contemplating helping her under the circumstances. Although as she’d said, the risks weren’t all that great, no matter how large they loomed. And helping Al might be the only way to get her off my back.
“What about money?” I asked, hardly able to believe what I was thinking of doing. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t carry British pounds around.” Avalon is an independent nation, and it uses euros, unlike Great Britain. “We’ll need cash for the cab ride.”
Al laughed in delight, her eyes sparkling with joy and excitement. She threw her arms around me in a crushing hug. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” she gushed. “And don’t worry about money. I’ll take care of that.”
She released me from the hug before I got too squirmy, but she grabbed hold of my hand and dragged me to my feet.
“Let’s go now!” she said. “The Knights will expect us to be in here forever with all the clothes I brought in. That’ll give us a major head start.” She grabbed her messenger bag and put it over her shoulder bandoleer-style. Then she disappeared from sight, although I still felt her hand on my arm. I blinked in surprise, although Ethan, the magical prodigy, had an invisibility spell, too.
I’d just agreed to go with her, but I found my feet reluctant to move as she tugged me toward the dressing room exit. “Won’t the Knights sense the magic and know that we’re sneaking past?”
I could hear the grin in her voice even though I couldn’t see her. “One advantage to me constantly using glamour is that people get used to sensing magic around me all the time. They won’t be able to sense what direction it’s coming from, and once we’re far enough past that they don’t sense it anymore, they’ll just think I dropped the glamour for a little while.”
I had the distinct impression this wasn’t the first time Al had pulled this particular stunt. I also suddenly realized her decision to bring about a million outfits into the dressing room was most likely a sign that this whole escapade was premeditated. She’d crafted an excuse to give us plenty of time before the Knights realized we were missing, apparently sure that she was going to get her way.
Maybe the constant annoying buzz of Al’s magic was messing with my
powers of reasoning, because I didn’t figure all this out until she’d dragged me out of the dressing room and we were sneaking past the Knights. I wanted to give Al another piece of my mind, but I wasn’t going to do it in front of our bodyguards while we were in the process of sneaking past them. That would guarantee I’d get in trouble with my dad. I couldn’t imagine how pissed he would be that I’d even considered going along with Al’s crazy scheme. I’d just have to wait until we were out of earshot before telling Al in no uncertain terms that I’d changed my mind, that we were going back into the dressing room so that no one ever knew we’d left.
Al, her hand still on my arm, half-dragged me out of the store. She must have used more illusion magic to keep the Knights from noticing that the door opened and closed with our exit, because neither one looked up.
Despite my resolution to put a stop to this the moment we were out of earshot of the Knights, I found myself meekly following along as Al led us down the street and around the first corner. I opened my mouth to voice my objection, but at that same moment, she dropped the invisibility spell and gave me another hug.
“Thanks so much for doing this,” she gushed again. “It’ll be an exciting little adventure, won’t it?” She sucked her lower lip again, looking so excited and hopeful that I found myself incapable of letting her down.
“Exciting,” I repeated dully. “Yeah, that’s one word for it.”
What the hell was I thinking?
But when Al hailed a cab to take us to the Southern Gate, I raised no objection.
____
We had to abandon the cab when we reached the Southern Gate, because we couldn’t pass through without passports. Al exchanged some euros for pounds, then we ducked into the ladies room, where she cast her invisibility spell again. Al held my hand so we could stay together, and we headed for the border crossing, dodging tourists and business people, slipping through gaps and under turnstiles whenever we could. I kept thinking that someone would sense her magic and stop us, but we didn’t run into any Fae—most of the Fae border control agents were stationed at the other end of the Gatehouse, where the border to Faerie was located.
The whole time we were crossing the border, I kept telling myself this was the stupidest idea in the history of the universe, and I should object. But somehow, that didn’t seem to be what I was doing. Instead, I let Al lead me along as my pulse sped ever more rapidly and my palms dampened with sweat.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding once we made it through the border crossing and set foot on English soil. Once again, Al guided us into a restroom, dropping the invisibility spell as soon as we were out of sight of prying eyes.
“This is insane,” I told her. “We have to go back.”
“This is exciting and fun,” she countered, doing that lip-sucking thing again.
It occurred to me for the first time that she was still wearing the dress she’d been trying on at the shop. Add shoplifting to the list of crimes we were committing.
I wasn’t convinced, but once again I found myself following her as she headed out of the restroom and got in line at the taxi stand. I looked longingly over my shoulder at Avalon, wondering what was wrong with me, why I was letting Al manipulate, bully, and cajole me into doing something I knew was both wrong and downright stupid. Sure, I’d taken some pretty reckless chances in the past, but it was always for a good reason, always because I was convinced it was the right thing to do. This time, I was convinced I was doing the wrong thing, and yet I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
We reached the head of the line and climbed into a cab. Al rattled off an address, and the driver took off. I still couldn’t believe what I was doing. I tried to rally my mental troops in hopes I could craft an argument that Al would actually listen to, but she turned to me with a frown.
“You look sleepy,” she said, then sucked her lower lip. “Why don’t you take a nap until we get there?”
Suddenly, my eyelids felt really, really heavy. A chill of alarm crept down my spine as it finally occurred to me there might be a very good reason I was doing this against my better judgment. Every time I came close to putting my foot down, Al sucked her lower lip and somehow talked me out of it. The most powerful of Fae magic-users can trigger spells with subtle gestures, and I’d guess that as Mab’s daughter, Al was definitely a powerful magic-user.
She smiled at me, and I might almost have called the look on her face apologetic.
“Sleep, Dana,” she said.
The compulsion slapped me upside the head with the force of a
sledgehammer, and my eyes slid closed.
Chapter Three
I woke up, groggy and disoriented, when Al grabbed my arm. I blinked in confusion as she pulled me out of the cab, and I almost fell flat on my face before my wits returned enough for me to straighten my knees. I tried to shake off the cobwebs as Al slammed the car door behind me and the cab sped off.
“You used magic on me!” I said, suddenly feeling much more awake as
indignation flooded my system.
She had the grace to look guilty about it. “My specialty is illusion magic, but I’m pretty good at compulsion, too. I’m really sorry about that, but you were my only hope.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at her. “This expedition is over,”
I said. “And if you try sucking your damn lip again, I’m going to make you regret it.”
I waved my fist at her. I probably looked pretty ridiculous making threats like that, but I’d had enough self-defense training that I figured I could break her magical concentration if it came to that.
“I don’t need the compulsion anymore,” she said with a shrug. “We’re here.”
I finally took a moment to look around and saw that we were in a kind of run-down-looking residential neighborhood. Narrow two- or three-story townhouses lined the street, their facades grimy and weathered. Most of the townhouses had bars over the first-floor windows, which didn’t give me much in the way of warm fuzzies. Nor did the fact that I could see no less than three buildings with boarded up windows and doors that made me think “condemned.”
Al didn’t seem to care about the shabby neighborhood. Ignoring me and my indignation, she skipped up the stairs of the nearest townhouse and starting ringing the buzzer, pressing it over and over again without waiting for an answer.
She was practically vibrating with excitement.
I stayed on the sidewalk, glaring at her back, wondering if there was any way I could salvage the situation. The cab we’d ridden in was already long gone, and there wasn’t another one in sight. Frankly, I didn’t think this was the kind of neighborhood that would see a lot of cab activity anyway. Not that I had any idea where we were, or how we were going to get back to Avalon from here. I didn’t even know how long I’d been asleep in the back of that cab.
My heart gave a little wrench as I realized my mom and dad must have heard about my disappearance by now. They’d be frantic with worry—assuming my mom wasn’t passed out drunk. I would owe them both a massive apology when this was all over.
As Al continued to lean on the door buzzer, I searched my purse for my phone. It wasn’t like my dad or Finn could come into London to get me, but at least I could let them know what was going on. Only my phone didn’t seem to be in my purse. Al must have taken it while I was asleep.
No one seemed to be coming to the door, but that didn’t discourage Al. She kept ringing the buzzer, over and over, occasionally pounding on the door with the flat of her hand.
“Let’s go, Al,” I said, raising my voice to be heard over her pounding. “He’s not home. Give me my phone so I can call us a cab.”
“I’m not leaving,” Al insisted, banging on the door again. “Gary! I know you’re in there. Answer the door!”
I wondered if she meant it literally when she said she knew he was in there.
Could her magic tell her that? I tilted my head up, looking for any signs of life in the windows, but the blinds were all shut tight.
“Al, come on,” I begged. “If he’s not answering, it’s because he’s not home or because he doesn’t want to. Either way, making a fool of yourself on the doorstep isn’t going to help. We have to get back.”
Al ignored me, kicking the door, because she wasn’t making enough noise already. One of the neighbors slid his second-floor window open and leaned out, giving us a nice view of his yellowed undershirt and his disgustingly hairy chest.
“Oy!” he shouted. “Shut the fook up!” His accent was so heavy I was
lucky—or, actually, unlucky—to have understood him at all.
Instead of being chastened, Al flipped the guy the bird without even looking at him. Things might have gotten ugly—I didn’t think Mr. Yellow Undershirt was the kind of guy to take well to a girl flipping him off—except at that moment, Gary’s door opened. Al gave a happy little cry and flung herself forward.
Scowling, Mr. Yellow Undershirt slammed his window shut and retreated while I got my first look at Gary, the love of Al’s life. I was not impressed.
Apparently, he’d been slow to open the door because he’d been in bed, though a quick glance at my watch told me it was almost four in the afternoon. His baby-fine, mouse brown hair was sticking up at odd angles, and he was wearing a ratty brown and white striped bathrobe. Stubble peppered his face and neck, and his eyes were bloodshot and dopey-looking.
“Althea?” he asked in the low, hoarse voice of a dedicated smoker. “What . . .
? How . . . ?” He hugged her back, but he didn’t look particularly happy to see her.
“I was so afraid my mother had done something to you,” Al said, her face buried against his shoulder. She had to bend her neck at an awkward angle to manage that position, because Gary was shorter than she was.
Gary patted her back, then finally seemed to notice me. He looked even more puzzled. I wondered if he even knew Faeriewalkers existed. I’d never heard of one before I’d moved to Avalon, and I suspected that was true of just about everyone who lived in the mortal world. It was probably a real strain on his brain to figure out how a Fae girl had managed to come to his home in the mortal world.