Susan's Summer (7 page)

Seth was waiting for me next to the door and I walked slowly toward him. As I reached him I saw him looking past me, his face instantly clouding. “Damnit,” he muttered. “Why can’t she just leave me alone?”

Before I knew what was happening he tore off in the direction of the woods. I would have thought he was crazy, except that I saw a small, dark shape speed away as Seth took off after her. Seth and Katie lived alone, but they weren’t alone. Someone was spying on them.

I watched him race away. Proof that there was more to Arsenal that met the eye.

I waited a few minutes for Seth to come back out of the woods. I figured he’d catch the girl, because surely there was no way she could outrun him. I briefly considered following him, but I knew that in order to find him quickly I would have to use my Glamour, and I wasn’t ready to do that. Eventually, when there was no sign of him, I wandered back to the house. The door we had come out of was off of a small entryway that led into a larger living room, in which the sofas were bright red, in contrast to the white walls and the rest of the furniture.

I liked the room, if for no other reason than that it was more modern than the rest of the house, and I wondered if Katie had decorated it. I sat down on one of the couches, in part to wait and for Seth, but also because I wanted a quiet place to think. Seth had brought up several topics that I wasn’t comfortable discussing, and what was worse, it looked like we might be around a little longer than I had intended, in which case I would probably have to face talking about Holt. Everyone was curious about him and about what had happened last fall, and so far I had only avoided talking about all of it in detail because I had refused to hang around with anyone who hadn’t been at the Ceremony of the Vines. I had braced myself for the inevitable questions this summer, but it looked like they might be starting sooner rather than later.

My other issue was my strong reaction to Seth. I went all mushy and blushing every time I looked at him, and that just had to stop. I was too broken to care about someone again and I had a betrothed to find, and that was that.

I don’t know how long I waited there, but when Seth finally did appear and I came out of my reverie, at least half an hour must have gone by. He had washed his hands and put on a clean shirt, hiding any evidence of a run through the woods or of car maintenance.

Just as he walked in, so did Mae and Katie. “Hey, you two,” said Katie. “What happened to showing Susan the house?”

“Got sidetracked,” Seth muttered, glancing at me. I was curious about what was going on, but I knew that if I asked him about it he would just turn the tables and ask me questions I wasn’t ready to answer.

“Oh, well,” said Mae cheerfully. “There’s always tomorrow.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “We should be going anyway.” Working car or not, all of a sudden I didn’t want to stay in this house another hour, let alone another night. The easiest way not to be attracted to Seth or have to deal with deal with uncomfortable questions was to just leave.

“Wait, what?” three voices chorused at me. I flinched.

“Going where?” Mae demanded, as if I had offended her grandmother. I should have known from Mae’s comment this morning about the Arsenals’ house being like a “spa” that she wouldn’t want to leave.

“We have plans,” I gritted out. I tried to speak to her with my eyes, to convince her to see it my way. I knew “plans” was a stretch, but I couldn’t think of anything else off the top of my head that was likely to get her out of here. Anyhow, I just wanted to leave, period.

“They weren’t set in stone,” she said. “I’ve been through an ordeal and now you want me to drive across the country? Right this moment? Besides, our car is broken and you were hit in the head. We should rest, and luckily we have two lovely hosts who are willing to provide us with a place to do that.” She grinned at Katie. I could see that they were already friends.

“What are you doing this summer, anyway?” Katie asked, bouncing up from the seat she had just taken. I could tell this girl loved a good story, and she was enthusiastic about everything.

“We’re going on a road trip,” I said, acutely aware of the embarrassing reason I had given myself for going. I had told Seth only a headline, not the details, and I hadn’t yet told Katie anything at all.

“Awesome,” said Katie, beaming. “Can I go? My brother is SO boring.”

This time a different chorus of three voices broke out. “No.” I almost laughed at the expression on Seth’s face.

Katie sat back down and pouted. Crossing thin arms over her chest, she glared at her brother.

“What’s the motivation for this trip?” Seth asked. He seemed to sense that there was more going on than I was saying; he probably hoped Mae would tell him what I had not. “I don’t think I’ve heard it yet.”

“You know,” I said, as casually as I could. “See the world. Broaden our horizons. That sort of thing.” In truth, I couldn’t have cared less about broadening my horizons at this moment.

“You’re a Fairy. You’ve already seen everything you could want to see. We have places to stay all over the world—for free—what else could you possibly want?”

He had a point. He was, of course, referring to the Fairy custom of accepting other Fairies into their castles should they need a place to stay. Technically we could travel to Europe, or to the Supreme Council, and get a bed to sleep on and a room to stay in for a while. It was how a lot of young Fairies managed to see the world. Holt and I had talked about taking such a trip, and I had loved the idea of going with him. In my quieter moments of this painful year that’s what I had hoped Logan would be busy doing this summer. Knowing him as I did, I doubted that his behavior was so pure.

The sadness that was Holt’s aching loss came slamming back into me, and I gave myself a silent order: Get hold of yourself.

“We thought it would be a fun summer. The Fairy Courts are a little scattered at the moment and we wanted something to do, and we landed on this idea.” Mae lied so easily I would have thought she’d had years of practice. Now that I thought about it, maybe she did. I covered my mouth to hide my grin.

“And this was your first stop?” Katie asked curiously. “Arsenal land?”

“Well, that bit wasn’t intentional,” said Mae, waving her hand. “We would never have trespassed as we did, but. . . .”

But
, I thought,
I had been a raging mess, the car was malfunctioning, and we had pulled over at the first bed and breakfast we had come to.
Then I had foolishly insisted on going out, and the rest, as they say, is history.

As for permissions, I had discussed possibilities with other Fairy Courts whose territory I expected to be in throughout the summer. It really wasn’t that big of a deal, since I would just be passing through, but it was still polite to check ahead of time. But both Mae and I had totally forgotten about the Arsenals, which would never have happened if they hadn’t been shut-ins. Seth Arsenal was the heir of a powerful family, and he just so happened to rival Holt and Samuel in the breathtakingly hot department. If they had had the decency not to be shut-ins I never would have forgotten to get permission to enter their territory, and none of this would have happened.

Basically, in five seconds or less I had convinced myself that it was totally Seth’s fault that I was there.

“We’re going,” I said firmly. “We’ve trespassed on the Arsenals’ hospitality too long as it is.” Besides, I wasn’t exactly ready to give up my nights in bars for the quiet sofa and movies of the Arsenal household.

“You haven’t been here twenty-four hours,” Katie argued.

“Yeah, you stay with the Roths all summer,” Mae pointed out to me.

“They’re my family,” I retorted.

“You should stay,” said Katie. “At least for a couple of days. My brother’s garden potions are crap, so your head must still hurt.”

Seth stared at his sister in total shock for a second as if thinking that guests had made her bold. Then he broke into laughter. I couldn’t help it myself; it was too funny. I laughed as well.

“My head actually does feel better,” I said to Katie. “But I’m more than happy not to give your brother the credit.”

She grinned as Seth grumbled about being outnumbered by women.

After a few more minutes of arguing, Seth, who had seemed increasingly frustrated as the discussion went on, surprised us all by saying, “Maybe it would be better if you left.”

I tried not to acknowledge the stab of disappointment that shot through my stomach at his cold words, but Katie gave him a glare that would have melted glaciers. “They aren’t leaving,” she said icily. “Mae and I don’t approve, so they can’t go.”

“Mae doesn’t run my life,” I said.

“That’s what you think,” said Mae. She beamed at me. “Come on. Let’s go rest.”

“I’m not tired,” I said.

“If you don’t get up and come back to the room right now, I’m going to wash all of your white dresses with a red shirt,” she threatened.

“Fine,” I muttered, getting up to follow her.

Katie was doing something similar with Seth, who seemed like he wanted to say more but was being stifled by his sister. I was sure I knew what he wanted to say, something like, “Could you please leave now and let me get back to my life of peace?”

It was understandable that he might want someone there for his sister but not for himself, and that those two wishes might be in conflict in his own thoughts. He had kept away from other Fairies for so long that he probably didn’t have any idea how to interact with us, which made it all the stranger that he had brought Mae and me here to begin with.

“Okay,” I said as Mae dragged me away. “We can stay, but ONLY for a couple of days.”

~ ~ ~

“What are you doing?” she hissed, once we got back to the room and she had firmly shut the door behind me. “Why would you want us to leave?”

“He doesn’t want us here,” I pointed out.

“He does too,” said Mae. “Katie said so.”

“Katie wants us here,” I said. “Not him. He’s just being nice and doing what he has to for his sister. He didn’t want to explain what was happening with his family. It was like pulling teeth. Hard. He was unhappy about it.”

“He likes you,” said Mae. “I can tell.”

“He likes me because he doesn’t know me. Once he sees what an unbelievable mess I am, he won’t like me anymore.” No one could like the person I had become. The only reason anyone tolerated me at all was because I kept everyone at arm’s length.

Mae seemed to deflate. “You’re just sad. It’s natural to be sad. You’ve dealt with a lot of grief in your life, but sooner or later you have to pull yourself out of it.”

I looked at her for a moment, then turned and walked away; I couldn’t deal with any more of it. I had seen the garden through the sunroom window and I wanted to walk around in it before I left, so I headed back outside. I always felt better when I was outdoors among growing things.

We had gotten up late, eaten breakfast, pretended to fix my car, and talked, and now it was already early afternoon. I still wasn’t sure if I wanted to leave, or not. I was uncomfortable with the feelings I was having here and uncomfortable with Seth’s mixed messages. The best way not to have the feelings was to leave; that was the extent of my thinking.

I had seen from a distance that the garden was breathtaking, but catching a glimpse of it through a window and walking around in it were two very different things. I just had to assume that whoever Seth had chased through the woods wouldn’t try to kill me if I ran into her.

The Roths’ garden in Castleton was limited by the fact that it was almost in the center of town. Out here in the middle of nowhere, a garden could stretch on forever.