“So your wanting to meet me has nothing to do with you wanting to be Consul and me maybe being a Faeriewalker.”
Ethan and Kimber had lied about a lot of things, but I could see right away from the look on his face that this wasn’t one of them. This silence was even longer than the last. When he finally broke the silence, I could tell he was picking his words with great care.
“I understand that my position might make it hard for you to trust my motives. Yes, I would like to be Consul. But I wanted to meet you because you’re my daughter, not because you were part of my political ambitions.”
My throat tightened again. He was telling me exactly what I wanted to hear. I wanted it to be true so, so badly.
Dad pursed his lips. “I’m going to make an educated guess that it was the so-called Student Underground who kidnapped you. Am I right?”
I gave him a skeptical look. “Since I called from Ethan’s cell phone, I’d say that guess was
very
educated.”
He nodded. “Indeed. And how much did Ethan tell you about himself and his Underground?”
Oh, God. Please tell me I wasn’t about to hear something else I’d rather not know!
“I’ll take your silence to mean you don’t know much,” Dad said. “Ethan is the son of Alistair Leigh, who is the leading Unseelie candidate for Consul. Naturally, Ethan and his Underground support Alistair’s candidacy, so whatever he may have told you about me could well be colored by his own political leanings.”
Yep, that was something else I’d rather not have known.
So
that’s
why Ethan was so interested in a not-particularly-attractive, half-blood high-school girl. Not because he’d fallen in love with me at first sight. Bad enough to think he’d wanted me as just another notch on his bedpost, but to think he’d tried to seduce me for cold-blooded political purposes was unbearable.
How I wished I’d held strong last night and not let him kiss me. My mouth tasted sour, and at that moment I pretty much hated him. He’d ruined my first kiss!
I remembered how hard Kimber had tried to convince me that Ethan wasn’t good for me. She’d even told me he was attracted to my power. She’d tried her best to warn me without actually explaining what she was warning me about. Too bad she’d been busy stabbing me in the back while she’d been “helping” me.
I swallowed the lump in my throat, determined to deal with my heartbreak later. I couldn’t put my faith in Ethan or Kimber anymore; I’d never even considered putting my faith in Aunt Grace; and even if I’d wanted to put my faith in my mom, she wasn’t answering the phone. There was a limit to how much faith I could put in
anyone
, but my father, the stranger, sounded like the best deal available.
“Can we get out of here now?” I asked, and my dad, with a look of sympathy in his eyes, agreed.
The Stone’s Throw Inn was situated relatively low on the slopes of the mountain, and I was glad Dad had brought his car, a racy little red number that I guessed was an Italian sports car of some sort. You know: the kind that wouldn’t be caught dead doing something so crass as putting the make and model where just anyone could see them. The bucket seats were so low I felt like my butt would hit the pavement if we went over a speed bump. Not that I’d seen any sign of speed bumps anywhere in Avalon, but you get the idea.
Dad laughed as he climbed in. “I know, it’s a bit excessive for use in Avalon,” he said, patting the dashboard like it was his pet dog. “I’d love to be able to drive out into the mortal world and see how fast it can really go.”
The engine purred as he started the car and pulled out of his parking space onto the steep, curving road that would take us higher up the mountain.
“I think you’d get a handful of speeding tickets before you ever found out,” I muttered, feeling the car’s quiet power as it accelerated effortlessly despite the steepness of the road.
He laughed. “Most likely.”
I didn’t know what the speed limit was in Avalon—there never seemed to be any signs—but I bet my dad was breaking it as he zipped up the road. I tried not to white-knuckle the door handle as we zoomed around the curves. In an ill-advised moment, I glanced out the side window. On this bright, clear day I could see for miles. Unfortunately, I was seeing miles and miles of deep green forest. Faerie.
I turned away without blinking. The too-fast car ride was hard enough on my stomach without adding the nausea-inducing view through the Glimmerglass. When I faced front again, I caught my dad’s sideways glance, and I fully expected him to ask me what I saw. But he didn’t, and I was relieved. I really didn’t want to talk about the whole Faeriewalker thing right now.
Dad’s house was nowhere near as quaint as Aunt Grace’s. The entire bottom floor was a two-car garage—but in the space that would hold the second car, there was a horse stall instead. It was empty at the moment, the floor clear of straw, but a faint barn scent in the air told me the stall wasn’t just for show. Did that mean Dad made frequent trips into Faerie?
We had to take a spiral staircase to get up to the second floor, where the actual living area began. Moving in and out of this place must be a nightmare. (Says the girl who’s had to go through the torture of moving enough times to know.) Even carrying a suitcase up and down those stairs would be something of a challenge.
When we emerged from the staircase, we were in a spacious living room, with a tiny kitchen tucked into one corner. The entire wall facing the street was floor-to-ceiling windows. I tried to avoid seeing the view—you know, that whole seeing into two worlds thing—though I guessed it was spectacular. Instead, I looked around the living room, trying to get a sense of the man who was my father from the look of his home.
The stereotype of the Fae is that they’re old-fashioned (mostly because the vast majority of them are about a jillion years old). Grace’s house and Kimber’s apartment had both fit the stereotype with their antiques and conservative decor. Dad’s place did not look like the kind of house a Fae should live in. Not with those big, modern windows, or the modern art on the wall, or the Danish modern furniture. I’d always hated Danish modern, but that was my mom’s favorite, and I was beginning to guess why.
“The master suite is on the second floor,” my dad said, “and there’s a guest room and small library on the third floor.” Apparently he didn’t consider the garage a floor. “Would you like to change clothes and freshen up? Then maybe we can get to know each other better.”
“That would be great,” I said, trying to sound chipper, though now that I was here I felt nervous and awkward.
“Make yourself at home,” Dad said, gesturing at a door that I’d thought was a coat closet but that turned out to be a stairway. I guess since the Fae weren’t big on coats, they didn’t need coat closets.
I stopped with my foot on the first step, turning to look at my dad over my shoulder. “You’re not going to lock me in, are you?”
He looked shocked by the suggestion. “Of course not! You’re my daughter, not my prisoner. And I am not your aunt Grace.”
I sure hoped not. I nodded and started up the stairs, though I have to admit I was very tense as I climbed. When I made it to the third floor (or fourth floor, depending on your point of view), I saw that the guest room was about as inviting as the living room had been. Sparsely furnished, everything with that plain, stripped-down look of Danish modern, and instead of a cushy bed, there was a hard futon.
I felt better about the room when I saw my suitcase and backpack sitting neatly in the corner.
Never before had I been so glad to see my own clothing. I picked out my favorite pair of cargo pants and a heavyweight sweatshirt that might be enough to counter the chill of an Avalon early summer day. And I was more than ready to change into fresh underwear, since the ones I was wearing were still damp from being washed in the sink last night.
Feeling a bit paranoid, I didn’t close the bedroom door, afraid that if I did, I’d be locked in despite Dad’s promise. However, I did close the bathroom door most of the way as I hastily changed. I kept listening hard for the terrible click of a door closing, of a lock turning, but it didn’t happen.
When I was finished changing, I brushed my hair and secured it in a ponytail, then dabbed on some clear lip gloss. A light dusting of blush on my cheeks, and I looked almost like myself again, except for the haunted expression in my eyes.
Oh, well. I had a right to look haunted.
Feeling much more comfortable in my own clothes, I headed back downstairs to face my dad once more.
He was sitting on the sofa, which faced an oversized plasma TV instead of the view, thank goodness. An ice bucket on legs stood off to the side, and there were a pair of champagne flutes on the coffee table. I must have looked as surprised as I felt, because Dad answered my question without me having to ask.
“It’s not every day a man gets to meet his long-lost daughter,” he said. “A celebration is in order, don’t you think?”
“Um, I’m only sixteen.” The excuse hadn’t worked with Kimber and her posset, and it didn’t work with Dad either.
“I guarantee we won’t be arrested by the drinking-age police. Now come join me. We have a lot to talk about.”
At this point, I didn’t much want to talk about
anything
. I wanted to pretend for a while that this trip had gone exactly as planned, that I’d come straight here from the airport and this was the beginning of a better life.
I took a seat on the other end of the sofa as Dad went about opening the champagne. I was tensed and ready for the pop of the cork, but that didn’t stop me from jumping anyway. The corners of Dad’s eyes crinkled, but he didn’t full-out laugh at me.
He poured us each a glass, then handed one to me. I looked at it doubtfully. The milk, honey, and nutmeg in Kimber’s posset had toned down the taste of the whiskey, but this was pure champagne. I know a lot of other kids my age would be thrilled to get to drink something with alcohol in it. But those kids hadn’t lived with my mom.
“Drink up, Daughter,” Dad said.
It shows the state of mind I was in that I couldn’t force myself to take a sip until after I’d seen him drink. Why I’d suspect my father of wanting to poison me was anyone’s guess. Any day now, I was going to start worrying that “They” were watching my every move. I rolled my eyes at myself and took a tentative taste of the champagne.
The posset had been surprisingly tasty. The champagne … not so much. I couldn’t help wrinkling my nose at the flavor, though I suppose it was rather rude.
“It’s an acquired taste,” my father told me.
I put the glass down on the coffee table. “It’s not a taste I’m real anxious to acquire.”
“And why is that?” he asked, with a tilt of his head.
I looked away from him and gave him a half shrug. “Well, you know my mom.”
A beat of silence. “What about her?”
She’d been a lush since my earliest memory. It had never occurred to me that there might have been a time in her past when she hadn’t been. I swallowed hard.
“Didn’t she drink too much when you were dating her?”
“Ah,” Dad said, and he put his own glass down. “I understand. She drank no more and no less than most women her age.” He sighed. “But I’m not entirely surprised she developed a problem with alcohol. There is no place on earth quite like Avalon, and I imagine cutting oneself off from it entirely would be … difficult on someone who’d spent all her life here.”
His words detonated like a bomb somewhere inside me.
My mom hadn’t been an alcoholic when she lived in Avalon. She’d left Avalon not because she
wanted
to, but because she was determined to protect me from the hell that was Avalon politics. And leaving her home had been so hard on her, she’d started to drink too much.
Oh, God. All these years I’d spent despising her, blaming her … And it was
my
fault she was a drunk.
Either I was hiding what I felt better than I thought, or my dad wasn’t very observant. He’d shattered my entire view of my mom with just a few casual words, and he didn’t even notice.
“Well, if you don’t want the champagne, how about some tea?” he asked.
I didn’t want tea. I didn’t want anything, except, maybe, not to have heard what I’d just heard. But I nodded anyway, and Dad headed off to the kitchen, giving me a few minutes to collect myself. It wasn’t nearly enough time, but I’d been dealt enough shocks in the last few days that the pain turned to numbness pretty quickly. I didn’t think the numbness would last forever, and the fallout when it wore off was probably going to be nasty, but for now, I was grateful for it.
The phone rang, the sound so mundane that it helped draw me out of my head and back into the real world. I heard my father answer from the kitchen.
“Yes, she’s here,” he said, and he sounded really amused. There was a silence, during which the tea kettle started to whistle. “Of course I did,” my father said, and the kettle’s whistle cut off abruptly. “What kind of a fool would I be if I didn’t?” He paused for whoever was on the other end to say something, and then he laughed. The sound grated on my nerves for some reason I couldn’t define. Maybe because there was a tinge of nastiness in it. Or maybe that was just my imagination. “I’ll give her your warmest regards,” my father said, “but I sincerely doubt she wishes to speak with you right now. It was good of you to call and check on her.”
There was a beep of the phone turning off, and then some clattering around in the kitchen. Dad came back into the living room with a tea service on a tray. As a general rule, the people of Avalon weren’t as British as I’d been expecting, but they did seem to love their tea.
He had already poured two cups, with their telltale little specks on the bottom that said he’d never dream of using a tea bag. I was feeling miserable enough that the tea was more appealing than usual. I plunked two lumps of sugar into my cup and stirred the contents around absently.
“Was that Ethan?” I asked, because when I added up the half of the conversation I’d heard, it only made sense if he’d been talking to Ethan.