Susan's Summer (6 page)

“So, you accidentally ran into us?” I pushed.

Seth grinned, like he had nothing in the world to apologize for. I tried not to stare at his wide mouth. Or his warm blue eyes.

“I felt Fairies on our land. That hadn’t happened in years. Most Fairies have avoided us, not wanting to cause problems. You walked right in like you owned the place.”

I rested my head against the back of the chair I was sitting in. It was soft, and I was looking for any relief from the throbbing coming from near my temple.

“And you came after us?” I closed my eyes as I said it.

“The presence wasn’t threatening,” said Seth, his voice amused again now that we weren’t talking about his parents. “When I saw you I understood why. I just wanted to see what was going on. Technically, you should have asked permission to be here. Now that I’ve met you, or met you again, I can see why that didn’t happen.”

He was teasing me, but I didn’t open my eyes. Instead I said, “Well, the Arsenals haven’t been around in a long time. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that you’d mind.”

“On the contrary; I don’t mind at all,” he said, smiling.

“Excellent,” I murmured, charmed despite myself.

“Why did you pick that bar?” he asked.

It was an odd question, since the town was so small there weren’t a lot of options. But even odder was the fact that his voice was closer than it had been, even though I hadn’t heard him get up or move. When I opened my eyes to see what was going on I found him standing right in front of me.

I started to get up, but he held up a hand. “Close your eyes again,” he directed. He was holding something green, and I remembered Katie saying that her brother was in the garden, getting something for my head.

I started to protest, but my head really was getting unbearable. “I can apply that,” I said, holding out my hand.

“Probably,” said Seth. “But I need the practice. Katie is getting sick of me only knowing how to fix her bumps and bruises.” And with that he sat down next to me, careful not to disturb my part of the couch.

A cool hand, gentler than I would have expected, slipped up one side of my head, gently turning the bruise to face him. He sucked in his breath, but otherwise made no sound.

His touch didn’t hurt. In fact, it did the opposite. I didn’t even feel his hand or the herbs he held on my temple until after the throbbing, which had been getting worse and worse as the morning went on, subsided. Unintentionally, I sighed in relief. Seth still smelled of garden and clean soap and I tried to drink him in without his noticing. His hand continued to massage the damaged area of my head and I tried to focus on our conversation.

Like that was going to work. . . .

His presence so close to me was overwhelming, and being forced to use my other senses made me all the more aware of the very hot body mere inches away from mine.

“Hum?” I asked, realizing he had said something.

“I said, is your head feeling better?”

“Mm-hmm,” I murmured.

I knew he was smiling when he said, “Do you know whose elbow it was?”

“I blame the short guy,” I said. “Kid. He introduced himself to me—not like that makes him a gentleman.”

“He was drunk.”

“I don’t know why he couldn’t just have left us alone,” I said.

“You’re too pretty to leave alone,” Seth murmured. Before I could chastise him for complimenting me, his hands disappeared from either side of my head and he sat back. “What makes a gentleman?”

The question startled me enough so that I opened my eyes. Now that my head wasn’t tormented it was easier to talk.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“So, how do you know he isn’t one?” Seth prompted.

“Gentlemen don’t try to drag ladies places against their will.”

“So, I’m not a gentleman?” Seth was grinning again.

If I could have said one thing about Seth Arsenal when we were growing up, it would have been that he was unfailingly considerate and polite. I knew in my heart that those qualities were still there, but we both also knew that I had been angry at him all morning for “kidnapping” us and bringing us to a safe warm place with showers and breakfast.

I decided not to answer his last question and instead asked, “So, what did you put against my head?”

“It’s a family secret,” he murmured, grinning. “I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you.”

“Just return me to the bar with Kid and Larry,” I said.

“Just because you hadn’t used your Glamour yet didn’t mean you weren’t going to,” he said. “I know you can take care of yourself.” He said it fiercely, as if I was somehow offended that he had saved me. I wasn’t. I just didn’t think I could be saved.

“Come on,” he said, ignoring my feeble protests as he took my hand in his. “I have more to show you.” He beamed at me.

It was a gorgeous June day, so much so that the sun blinded me as we stepped through double glass doors onto a large stone patio. I tried to tug my hand out of Seth’s as emotions collided inside my chest and made it hard to breathe, but he wouldn’t let me go. Instead of focusing on the beautiful scenery around me, my eyes kept returning to Seth as I followed slightly behind him. His shoulder blades turned and moved under his shirt as his neck gently sloped into his back. It was the first time in months that I had checked out a guy, and this one turned out to be someone I couldn’t take my eyes away from.

That couldn’t be good for my summer project. The only man I officially wanted to stare at was my future betrothed, and there was no way my parents could have landed an heir. They didn’t have that kind of pull and I wasn’t that desirable a match, especially for a guy I knew so little about. Princes had a reputation in the Fairy world, and it wasn’t one of treating girls well. They knew everyone wanted them and they knew they could get what they wanted, since girls, both Fairy and human, practically threw themselves at their feet. The glamour the princes gave off was just too attractive for most girls to resist. I had spent enough of my time around princes, see Holt and Samuel for Exhibit A, to know.

Bottom line: I had to be careful. Both Holt and Samuel were two of the most decent and good-hearted guys I knew, but that wasn’t the norm.

“I believe you were worried about how you were going to get out of here,” Seth said over his shoulder, still grinning. “I just want to repeat that you aren’t a prisoner here.”

At this moment any fears I had of confinement were dwarfed by my fears of caring about someone again, and the panic that started to wash over me when he let my hand go only confirmed them. “Are you taking me out to the shed to kill me?” In my mind it was a joke, but it came out sounding hoarse and upset.

We were standing in front of a white, six car garage. The doors were closed and the windows were tinted, so I couldn’t see inside. Despite the sunshine my stomach clenched, because we were doing something that friends do: sharing.

I had recently developed an allergy to sharing.

“Don’t be afraid,” Seth said, and he swung open the door to the garage.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I had to force myself to step through the door. I had no idea who this was. Yeah, he looked like the son of a guy I had seen once when I was little, and okay, I had opened up my Glamour the tiniest amount and could sense the incredible amount of power flowing through him, but still. . . .

I nearly burst out laughing when he flung his arm wide and exposed . . . my car.

“How’d you get it here?” I asked, a laugh bubbling up in my chest despite my fears of just a moment ago. Relief made me weak.

“I’m a Fairy Prince,” he said, grinning. “I can make things happen when I want, especially really impressive things like having a car towed.”

Ah, I see
.

I looked around the garage. Like most Fairy palaces, the garage wasn’t new. It had been handed down through generations and now stood as a testament to time. It was made entirely of wood, with windows behind each car. In the corners were stacked old tools and boxes. I liked it immediately. It looked lived in and not like some modern, overly clean space. My car was at the far end, next to five other cars, all gorgeous. Mine looked silly in comparison.

“What’s wrong with it?” I demanded. “Can you fix it? We really should be going.”

Seth quirked an eyebrow at me. “Are you really in that much of a hurry to leave? I said you could stay. What’s the road trip about, anyway?”

I blushed. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth. It was one of those things that sounded all right in my head but made me sound crazy when I said them out loud.

“Just thought I’d visit some of my parents’ old friends,” I murmured, pretending interest in the wall.

“I’m sorry about your parents,” said Seth quietly. “I always liked them.”

My gut twisted. It had been a long time since anyone had said that to me. The tragedy had happened so long ago that people had long since stopped offering sympathy. Now it was just an awkward topic of conversation on the rare occasions when someone brought it up.

I shrugged. “Thanks.”

“Anyway,” he said. “How are the Roths doing?”

Another thing I didn’t want to talk about. I grimaced. Was there anything we could discuss without an angry bubble rising up in my chest?

“They’re okay,” I answered. “It’s tough to lose a family member.”

“Yes,” said Seth, leading me to my car. “I know.”

How could I have forgotten, however momentarily, that his mother was dead too? I looked at him and saw understanding deep in his blue eyes. He gave me a soft smile and I found my heart melting.

No, no, I told myself. The last thing I was going to do was have a summer fling with a Fairy Prince, especially this Fairy Prince. Maybe the old me would have, but not the new me. The Arsenals were very old and powerful, so powerful that their pedigree was high in the stratosphere, above even the Roths’.

“Mrs. Cheshire any nicer these days?” he asked. He stooped down and sat on the concrete floor of the garage and I stared at him stupidly.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

He shrugged. “Someone has to figure out what’s wrong with this thing.”

“And that someone is you?”

“Better me than you, huh?”

“Couldn’t you just take it to a shop?” I asked, feeling weak. I didn’t want to owe a debt to an Arsenal any more than I wanted to jump off a cliff.

“I could,” he said, “but there’s only one near here and they don’t have a tow truck, which means we’d have to call a service. It would take a while.”

“All right,” I said reluctantly. “Fine.”

“So, Mrs. Cheshire?” he asked as he wriggled himself under the car. His shirt rode up as he slid on his back, exposing a bit of flesh between his jeans and his t-shirt. I caught a glimpse of a hard, flat stomach. My mouth started to water.

Damnit anyway, what was wrong with me?

“Yeah, no, she’s still evil,” I said. I should probably have been more diplomatic about it, but the woman had issues. “It’s almost comforting that some things never change.”

I heard Seth’s laugh and smiled. “How do you know her, anyway?” I asked, perching myself on the hood of the car next to mine.

“She used to visit the Marchells a lot,” he said. “She stopped when Samuel came of age and was eligible to marry. Too much threatening to do on her plate, I guess.”

“Yeah, she’s good with the threats,” I said. “Or bad, depending on how you look at it.”

“My guess is she thought she was good at them until she met your friend Autumn,” he said. His voice was muffled, because it was traveling through my car, but I still heard Autumn’s name clearly. I hadn’t seen her since Holt’s Vine Ceremony and my heart hurt from missing my friend. She and I had become close when she realized that I was going to support her no matter what.

“Yeah, you might be right,” I said.

I heard Seth fiddling with things under my car and winced. I didn’t know much about cars, much less how to fix one, but I worried that he was just making it worse. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” I called out. He pushed himself out from under my car long enough to beam at me and then disappeared again. I felt my cheeks warm.

“Is Autumn good enough to be Queen?” he asked me. At his words an emotion shot through me that I quickly realized was anger. I hadn’t felt much anger in a while, because I had refused to feel much of anything, except angry at Logan, but even that was a dull and distant throbbing I hadn’t let myself get close to over these past months.

“Excuse me?” I said, offended on my friend’s behalf. “What does that even mean?”

Seth could tell I was angry and hastened to clarify. “I didn’t mean to be disrespectful, but it’s not an easy job being Queen of a Court, even if you have a King. Autumn is in a worse position, because Samuel’s mother is angry and because of what happened with the Roths. I simply wanted to know if she was up to the task. It’s been a long time since a girl had a choice between being Queen of two Fairy Courts, and she might have chosen none at all.”

Obviously Seth was up on the news, even for a recluse. The thing was, I had known that Autumn loved one of the princes in question, and though there might have been talk of her simply walking away, that had never been in the cards. For all practical purposes Autumn had become a Fairy from the moment she set foot in the Portland airport and met Holt.

“I think she’ll make a great Queen,” I said.

As I was fast coming to expect from Seth he then asked a question I wasn’t expecting.

“And what qualities, exactly, does one have to have to make a great Queen?” Seth asked.

I was about to shoot back an answer when I paused. I had always thought Mrs. Roth was a great Queen and Mrs. Cheshire was crazy. Toward other Queens I had come across I had felt a similar range of reactions. Some I had liked and some I hadn’t, but that was the main basis of my judgment: whether or not I liked them. Was that enough? Did they take care of their families? Did they work for the good of the whole court? They were in charge of others’ lives, and Fairies depended on them for survival. That was no small task.

“You have to be honest and fair. You have to think of others and be prepared to put their needs a head of yours,” I said carefully. “It’s a full time job, or actually, it’s more than that. You can’t ever walk away from being Queen, so you have to have a great capacity for love.” Liking what I had realized just as I said it, I enlarged upon it. “Love is the most important. Because if you don’t love something you cannot take care of it properly.”

Seth didn’t say anything for so long that I wondered if part of the car had fallen on him and crushed his vocal chords.

“Don’t you think?” I demanded, glaring at his legs as if they could see my face and relay the message to the rest of him.

“You think all you need is love?” he asked. He wasn’t exactly sneering at me, but I couldn’t tell if he agreed.

“No,” I huffed. “You need other things, but come on. I’m right. You have to really, really care.”

Seth pushed himself out from under the car so fast I almost slid out of my seat. He moved toward me, his hands covered in dark matter from the work he had just done.

“I can’t tell what’s wrong with your car,” he said, his eyes filled with an unnamed intensity. “I’ll have to look at it later.”

Before I could protest that I didn’t like that at all, he was standing so close to me I could smell the fragrance and the sweat on him.

“You have interesting ideas,” he murmured, his eyes never leaving mine. “But what if you have to take care of something, what if you don’t have a choice, even if you’ve lost the capacity for love?”

I stared back at him, wide-eyed. I had just been arguing that you needed love, when for the past few months I had walked around like a zombie. I suddenly felt uncomfortably close to him, to this conversation, and to thoughts of Holt.

“I don’t know,” I stammered out. “What are you trying to prove?”

Seth sensed that I was getting upset and backed off a little, thankfully. He sighed. “Nothing, nothing at all. Just an interesting topic, I think. Come on. Let’s go find the others. Katie will be wondering where we are.”

With that he stepped past me. I wasn’t sure what had just happened, except that in the past twenty-four hours I had come dangerously close to feeling something and I didn’t want to. I couldn’t. Not with any bit of my body could I accept what was happening to me now. It would be too painful.