“You have to hide!” Kimber insisted. “Quick. Or would you prefer to spend more quality time with Grace and Lachlan?”
I wasn’t sure I bought the theory that Aunt Grace wanted to make me disappear, permanently. But I had no desire to be locked up again, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to say I
hated
Aunt Grace, I thoroughly disliked her.
I shoved my way into the crowded closet, Kimber pushing and pulling to get me past various obstacles. I ended up wedged in a corner between a stack of shoe boxes piled from floor to ceiling and a big, billowy, froufrou dress trimmed with feathers that tickled my cheeks.
The doorbell rang. Kimber hastily stuffed everything she’d moved back into the closet. I was buried deeply enough that I couldn’t even see the door, but it sounded like getting it to close was something of a struggle.
And then the closet door clicked shut, and I was alone in the dark. I sighed and shut my eyes, trying to forget that I was hiding in a dark, claustrophobic closet while my wicked aunt Grace was way too close for comfort. Every time I breathed, the feathers on Kimber’s ridiculous dress fluttered against my skin, the tickle growing more annoying with each breath. I tried putting my hand between them and my cheek, but it turned out my hand was just as ticklish.
I couldn’t hear anything. I hoped that meant Aunt Grace wasn’t actually searching the apartment for me. If she wasn’t searching, then maybe I could get out of this closet before I lost my mind. Assuming I hadn’t lost it already. If she
was
searching for me, it occurred to me that she might be able to do some kind of magic to find me. Note to self: ask Kimber for more details about how magic works if and when you have a chance.
It’s hard to keep track of time when you can’t see or hear, but it felt like I was in that closet forever. It grew stuffy almost immediately, and sweat trickled down the small of my back and between my pitiful excuse for breasts. I was seriously tempted to tear the feathers off of Kimber’s dress, but I was afraid someone might hear me and I’d give myself away.
Just as I was beginning to wonder if Kimber had left me here long after Grace had left just for a practical joke, I heard voices approaching. My breath caught in my throat and my heart started to hammer when I recognized one of those voices as Aunt Grace’s.
I let my breath out slowly and quietly. My heart hammered against my chest, and sweat beaded on my forehead.
“Would you like to look under the bed?” I heard Kimber ask, and she sounded drily amused. “Or how about in the closet? Though I’d open that door carefully if I were you. Things have a tendency to fall out. I don’t think she’d fit in one of my drawers, but you’re welcome to check there too if you’d like.”
Was Kimber nuts? Why was she actually
suggesting
Aunt Grace search the closet?
I clapped a hand over my mouth to keep from gasping when I heard the closet door swing open. No matter how much I told myself I didn’t think my aunt would kill me, there was no denying I was terrified. I pressed myself harder into the corner, but just as we’d had to move a lot of junk to get me in here, Aunt Grace would have to move a lot of junk before she’d be able to see me. I held my breath as I heard hangers clanking together and shoes hitting the floor. Kimber laughed as if she didn’t have a care in the world, and I wished I could reach her to smack her.
The closet door slammed shut, and I could hear the fury in Aunt Grace’s voice.
“Fine!” she snarled. “You or your brother have hidden her somewhere else. Don’t think I won’t find her! And you and whoever else was involved in her abduction will spend the next twenty years behind bars.”
Kimber said something in answer. I didn’t catch it, but I guess Aunt Grace did, because the next thing I heard was a loud slap, followed by Kimber’s gasp. I clenched my fists and bit my tongue to keep from shouting a protest. I’d disliked—and feared—Aunt Grace since the moment I’d met her, and it seemed my instincts had been spot on. I started groping blindly in search of a weapon. If Grace hit Kimber again, I was fully prepared to charge out of the closet and come to her defense. (Yes, I knew that would be dumb, but I would have felt like a coward if I’d hidden in the closet while Kimber got hurt.) Luckily, there were no further sounds of violence before the angry stomp of Grace’s footsteps told me she was leaving.
I was not in the most cheerful of moods when Kimber came back to dig me out of the closet. My nerves were shot, I was sweating like a pig, and I was so mad I wanted to punch her beautiful, delicate face. (Never mind that I’d been ready to charge to her rescue moments ago.)
“What the hell were you thinking?” I asked as I practically fell out of the closet, tripping over a tennis racket on the way out. Who knew the Fae played tennis? How terribly … ordinary.
Kimber grabbed my shoulders before I did a face-plant, but I jerked away from her. Unfortunately, I then stepped on a shoe. My ankle gave way, and I landed on my butt. And I’d thought I was in a bad mood
before
I got out of the closet!
I sat on the floor, peeling strands of hair away from my sticky, sweaty face. I glared first at the strappy red sandal with the ridiculously high heel that had toppled me, then at Kimber, who looked like she was about to bust a blood vessel trying not to laugh. I wasn’t finding it anywhere near so funny.
I scrambled to my feet with as much dignity as I could muster—which was about zero—and wished I were a few inches taller so I didn’t have to look up at Kimber.
“‘Why don’t you look in the closet?’” I said, doing a terrible impression of Kimber’s accent. “Were you
trying
to get me caught?”
She rolled her eyes—she seemed to do that a lot—and gave mea condescending smile. “If I’d acted like I had something to hide, Grace would have torn the place apart searching for you. This way, she wasn’t expecting to find anything, so she didn’t look very hard.”
I hated to admit that Kimber’s logic made sense. So I didn’t. “I practically had heart failure when she opened that door. At least you could have warned me what you were planning to do.”
“Sorry,” she said, but she didn’t sound terribly repentant.
Ignoring me, she started shoving stuff back into the closet. I could have helped her, I suppose, but I wasn’t feeling all that helpful.
“Are you all right?” I asked grudgingly.
Kimber rubbed her reddened cheek. “I’m fine,” she said with a rueful smile. “I should know better than to mouth off to someone like her.
“I guess we’re going to have to find you somewhere else to stay,” she continued, still cramming things into any available space. “Grace could come by for another surprise inspection, and I don’t want to assume we’ll get lucky twice.”
“I’ve already got a place to stay,” I said. “With my
father
.”
Kimber frowned at me. “You mean you
will
have a place to stay, when he gets out of jail. I checked on his status while you were hiding in the bathroom. He’s scheduled to come up before the Council tomorrow. But at least for today, he’s still locked up.”
I stifled a curse. My heart sank as I began to realize how thoroughly my life sucked right now. I was on my own, without a penny to my name or even a change of clothes, in a country so foreign there should be a new word for it, and with nowhere to go. I wanted to go home. Who would have thought it would come to this within two days of my setting foot in Avalon?
“I have to get out of Avalon,” I said, talking more to myself than to Kimber. Grace had said I wouldn’t be safe even outside of Avalon, but I wasn’t so sure. My mom and I had gotten really good at relocating over the years, and because she was always trying to make sure my dad couldn’t find us, we’d learned how to move without leaving a trail. Sure, I wanted to meet my dad and all, but not if it meant staying here and dodging Aunt Grace and Spriggans and who knew what other nightmares might come out of the woodwork.
“It sounds good in theory,” Kimber said, closing the closet door and turning to me with a look of sympathy on her face. “But your aunt Grace is captain of the border patrol, and you know she’ll have the Gates on high alert looking for you. Even if you
could
get through immigration without a passport.”
“But I’m an American citizen,” I whined. “They can’t keep me here against my will.” Maybe I could put in a call to the U.S. Embassy in London and they could get me out of here.
Kimber put her hands on my shoulders, giving them a firm squeeze. “You’re a Faeriewalker. The government of Avalon won’t give a damn if keeping you here against your will causes some kind of international incident. You’d be considered worth the fallout.”
Great. Just great. I was trapped in Avalon, my aunt was hunting me, my dad was in jail, and the only people who seemed to be on my side were a pair of Fae teenagers I barely knew.
Kimber gave my shoulders another squeeze before she let go. “It’ll be all right. Between Ethan and me, I’m sure we can keep you safe until your father is free.”
“Thanks,” I said, my throat tightening. She and Ethan were by far the best thing that had happened to me since I’d set foot in Avalon. If it weren’t for them, I’d still be locked up in Aunt Grace’s cell—or worse. “I’m really glad you guys came for me last night.”
Kimber smiled at me, but there was something strangely sad about the expression. “We’ll have to lay low during the day, but tonight when it’s dark, we’ll get you out of here to somewhere safer.”
“Safer like the cave last night?” I mumbled, but though I was sure Kimber heard me, she didn’t respond.
“Grace probably has someone watching my apartment and Ethan’s, so you have to stay inside and stay away from windows.”
Sounded like a fun day. “If I’m going to skulk around in the shadows waiting for nightfall,” I said, “then I want to spend some time getting a crash course in magic. What it can do, how it works, stuff like that. I’m just about clueless.”
She didn’t look happy about the idea. “Ethan’s the magic expert in the family,” she said.
I shrugged. “I’m not asking you to
show
me magic. I’m asking you to
tell
me about it. You can do that, can’t you?”
She sighed. “Fine. But I could use another hot posset first.”
I could get used to drinking hot possets, I decided as I took a sip from my steaming mug. My mom had tried making me warm milk a couple of times when I was a kid and couldn’t sleep, but it had been totally gag-worthy. This was sooo much better.
At my insistence, Kimber had used a lot less whiskey this time, though she’d poured some extra into her own mug.
“Do your parents know you put whiskey in your posset?” I asked.
Kimber sniffed in what looked like disdain. “They wouldn’t care if they did.”
She made sure to stay between me and the living room window as we retreated into her bedroom, where the heavy curtains would guarantee no one saw me. She sat on the edge of her bed, and I sat on a comfy chair tucked into a corner under a floor lamp. On the table by the chair sat a textbook that looked like it weighed about eight tons, and a dog-eared, yellowed paperback. I was nosy enough to peek at the titles. The textbook was
Calculus of a Single Variable: Early Transcendental Functions
, and the paperback was …
The Secret Garden
by Frances Hodgson Burnett, which I remembered reading when I was about eight. I blinked and looked back and forth between the two books and Kimber. Her cheeks turned a delicate shade of pink.
“Sometimes I need a break from ponderous academic reading,” she said with a shrug.
“So you’re a math major?” I asked, because I couldn’t imagine anyone having a textbook like that if they weren’t really, really into math. She didn’t look like any math geek I’d ever met. Hell, Ethan had said she was two years younger than him, and Kimber had said Ethan was eighteen—which made Kimber way too young for college, unless she was some kind of a prodigy.
“I haven’t declared a major yet,” she said. “But I’m leaning toward engineering.”
A Fae engineer. It just sounded … wrong. And how many jobs were there for engineers in Avalon? It wasn’t like engineering would be a useful skill in Faerie, so if she wanted to make use of her degree, she’d have to do it here. Of course, considering the quality of her clothes and furniture, she might be one of those annoying people who don’t have to work for a living.
“And in case you’re wondering,” Kimber continued, “Ethan will be a freshman in the fall, and I’ll be a sophomore. He may have gotten the magic in the family, but
I
got the brains.”
The look on her face said she wasn’t happy about that, which surprised me. Considering her obvious rivalry with her brother, you’d think she’d be thrilled to be ahead of him in school.
“That must drive Ethan nuts,” I said, and yes, I was fishing.
Kimber took a sip of her posset before answering. “Actually, he couldn’t care less. He’s got the magic, and that’s what counts.”
I felt a surge of indignation on Kimber’s account. “You don’t think being incredibly smart counts for something?”
She smiled wryly. “To humans, maybe. To the Fae, not so much.” She tilted her head to one side. “In human terms, it would be like Ethan was a superstar football player, and I was the brainiac younger sister. Who gets all the glory in that situation?”
I saw her point, but still … “That sucks.”
She laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “Tell me about it.” She sobered quickly. “Actually, Ethan has a lot in common with a human superstar athlete. He’s got an ego the size of Mount Everest, and he’s used to girls falling at his feet in admiration.”
The look in her eyes was a warning, but I pretended not to notice. I would come to my own conclusions about Ethan, thank you very much. It’s not that I didn’t believe what she was telling me—it’s just that I couldn’t help hoping I meant more to Ethan than a notch on his bedpost.
I didn’t think talking about Ethan was a good way to further what I was beginning to think was a budding friendship, so I changed the subject.