He never thought he’d have to be truly afraid of the police. That they—or some reasonable facsimile—would come after him. They could stuff him in the car and take off with him, and no one would think anything of it. Not only did people around here generally defer to cops, everyone knew he’d been in trouble with them and thought he was trouble.
He could disappear and nobody would bat an eye. Oscar pointed that out, but Kevin hadn’t truly understood it until now.
Near as he could tell, the cops hadn’t seen him. But they sure did think his name. Loud and clear.
That made his best option to stick close to the house, out of sight, and cut over a couple of blocks. He could continue on to school that way.
And what? Go to class like his world hadn’t flipped upside down? Hide out? Sure. Because pigs could fly and the Easter Bunny laid chicken eggs. If the Faery King’s agents wanted to haul his ass out of there, they’d do it.
They’d worse than screwed him. They’d pretty much rendered him powerless.
He backed up again nice and slow, no big movements to attract attention. One step at a time. Straight into one of them. Officer Burns, by his name tag.
Burns clamped his hands onto Kevin’s shoulders, his pinky ring dull in the lack of morning light. Kevin tried to pull away, but the guy was made of muscles.
“School is that way, son,” Burns said. “You don’t want to be truant now, do you? On top of everything else?”
“Let me go.”
To Kevin’s surprise, the fake cop did.
Kevin spun to face him. “What do you want from me?”
Burns smiled. “Just keeping an eye on you. Making sure we know where you are and what you’re up to at all times. We’re gathering evidence on you. And when we’ve got what we need, we’ll take you down, son.”
Kevin wanted to yell at him that he knew the guy was no cop. But he bit his tongue. His whole world had fallen apart in a handful of days. He had way bigger problems than Burns and his partner. He gritted his teeth. “Is that all?”
“For now,” Burns said.
“Thanks for the warning.” Kevin stepped away from him and marched down Mr. Morrison’s yard to the street. He walked right past the unmarked car, where Burns’ partner sat with the window open, pretending to read the paper and drinking steaming black coffee from a lidless Styrofoam cup.
Kevin didn’t give the guy more than a cursory glance. And he didn’t look over his shoulder for Burns, either. They wouldn’t come after him. They’d already delivered their threat. Still, he’d never been so glad to step onto school property and duck into the main building. Away from prying eyes.
He skipped the front yard of the school—and Amy—in favor of the smoking area where he’d be most likely to catch up with Rude. But Kevin not only didn’t see him, no ashes graced the spot where he usually hung out and dragged. The worry that sliced through him at breakfast cut deeper.
He pulled out his phone and called. Six rings to voice mail.
On the other side of the skaters’ island, a couple of girls sat close. Both of them long-haired brunettes, average cute. He ought to know their names; then again, he did know one of them. Ms. Kinsey from Rude’s party and Mr. Nance’s office.
He watched her pick a blade of grass and peel it apart, half her attention on her friend and the rest of it on Kevin. Not interested, not inviting, but also not dissing him.
He walked over.
“Rude’s not here,” she said. “He didn’t show up this morning.”
Kevin’s breakfast curdled in his belly. He checked his phone. Still no messages. No missed calls. Nada.
Ms. Kinsey focused on him. She didn’t even blink.
He should say something to her. Something polite. “Thanks.”
“Welcome.” She tossed the remains of the blade of grass she’d sheared down and plucked another one. “How are you holding up with everything, Kevin?”
The question startled him. It took him a second to snap to what she meant—the dead girl and the faux-cops. And that she’d used his name. “Fine.”
“Really?” She cocked her head. “I’d be so freaked out.”
He nodded. What could he say? She didn’t know the half of it.
“Not everyone thinks you’re guilty of something,” she said. “I just thought you should know.”
Not only had he not expected that, it speared him all the way through. “People taking bets?”
“Your odds aren’t all that great.”
“Figures.”
“Yeah.” She grinned ruefully. “I’m Stacy. Short for Anastasia. After the Russian princess.”
Some story. He bet no one who’d heard it forgot who she was. “How do you egg lockers from the inside?”
“Heard that, did you?”
He shrugged.
She leaned toward him and whispered theatrically. “Magic.”
Right. “What did they do to deserve it?”
“Tripped me in the hall. For the second and last time.”
He didn’t know if he would’ve admitted that to a practical stranger.
“Your girlfriend just came through here,” she said.
His girlfriend? “Amy?”
Stacy shredded her way through the next blade of grass. “I think she was looking for you.”
“Thanks,” he said again, and moved on.
He couldn’t help looking over his shoulder at Stacy on his way into the building. She could be a friend. She’d helped him, after all. And he needed all the help he could get.
Catching up with Amy proved hard to do. Every spot he hit—her locker, the snack bar that soaked the air with the scent of French toast and maple syrup—she’d just headed out. He went on to class and found her there, paging through her textbook, which lay open to the next chapter. More equations that luckily their teacher insisted they use calculators for. Because, damn.
She glanced up from her book. And she held a piece of folded notebook paper in her hand, low and unobtrusive. She handed it off to him with practiced grace as he passed her on the way to his desk.
You didn’t answer my text last night, it said in dull pencil.
He’d been a little preoccupied, what with wiping out on his bike and taking in the lowdown from Simone and getting lucky enough to snare a ride home and not die once he got there.
I was out, he wrote, and passed the paper back to her. Lamer than lame.
Forgot your phone?
On cue, Mrs. V walked in. “You know the drill. Phones off,” she said in her usual no-nonsense tone, and started to scribble a series of equations on the board before the bell even rang.
Everyone else scrambled to take notes on what she wrote, but Kevin concentrated on trying to think of a witty thing to say to Amy to get himself off the hook. The more he stared at her handwriting, though, the more he figured that she didn’t give a shit about his phone. She wanted to know whether he’d forgotten about her.
Things are hard at home, he wrote, finally. Can we talk about this after class?
He’d think what to tell her in the meantime, because he couldn’t keep deflecting her questions. Sooner or later she’d start thinking he was shining her on.
He went to hand off the paper, but stopped himself just in time. Mrs. V had zeroed in on him. Because obviously he wasn’t copying down the problem she’d just scratched on the chalkboard. He slid the extracurricular evidence into the back of his notebook and made with the studious. Which he was supposed to be. And usually was.
Amy reached back more than once, but every time he even thought about passing the note, Mrs. V marked him with her gaze. He didn’t know if Amy caught that, or if she took his silence as proof he’d blown her off. So when class ended he grabbed his books, took her hand, and dragged her out of the room to the nearest quiet place they could duck inside.
Which happened to be the library. All the way to the back, as far out of range of the information desk—and prying ears—as possible. The only witnesses? Tall shelves of
fiction. The Ks through Ls.
Only then did he let go of her hand and give her the note. While she skimmed it, he talked. He stuck as close to the truth as he could without sounding insane. If he wanted to have something good happen between them, he owed her that much.
“My dad’s not handling things well,” he said. “That’s why I went out.”
She slipped the paper into her pocket. “You want to cancel for Friday?”
He shook his head. “Do you?”
She studied his face. “No. But I want to know what you’re hiding. You’re up to something. It’s not another girl?”
“No,” he said. For a brief second, he thought of Simone, who so did not qualify. “I’m trying to figure out how to help my dad. He hasn’t been okay since—”
Amy’s face softened. “Since your mother died. What was her name?”
“Kate.” Kathryn Anne Meier Landon. Saying her name hurt. “I didn’t think you knew about her.”
“It’s not a secret, Kevin.”
“Yeah, but until lately I haven’t been used to too many people paying attention to what happens in my life.”
“I like someone, I pay attention,” she said.
He leaned against the bookcase behind him. The edge of a shelf poked into his lower back. The musty smell of old paper and binding filled his nose. He couldn’t quite look Amy in the eye. “I like you, too.”
She closed the distance between them, folded her arms across her chest, and relaxed against the bookshelf beside him. “So your dad’s going off the deep end.”
“Pretty much.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He only knew he wouldn’t risk her knowing too much. Besides the part where she’d dump him yesterday, he couldn’t deal with her showing up on Burns’s or his partner’s radar. Or getting noticed by any of the other people he’d met this week, for that matter. He wanted her safe.
“If you think of something, let me know, Kevin.”
“I promise.”
She changed the subject. “You thought at all about the costume party at Zoe’s?”
He’d tried not to. It still sounded like torture. But he had a thought. A good thought. A way she could help without getting in too deep.
“Do you have a costume in mind?” he asked.
“Not totally. Maybe we could do something couple-ish. Like Morticia and Gomez. Or Sid and Nancy.”
“Or the Faery Queen and King,” he said.
She laughed. “Fairies? Isn’t that kind of cutesy?”
“Anything but. I’m not talking about tiny garden fairies.” He said the rest of it before he lost his nerve. “You ever hear of the Wild Hunt?”
“Like the painting in Nance’s office,” she said.
“Noticed that, too, did you?”
“Hard not to. It’s really dark,” she said. “I like it. Don’t know much about it, though.”
“Me neither,” he admitted. “But we can find out. Betcha no one else will have those costumes.”
“On that all by itself, I’m sold,” she said. “You know the way to my heart, Mr. Landon.”
Any other time that would’ve sent his own heart into his throat, in a good way. Still, it meant a lot. “I’ve been paying attention.”
She touched his hand. “Keep doing that.”
“Always.”
They came out from behind the stacks to see Mr. Nance settled at a far table. He nodded at Kevin as he and Amy passed him, headed late to second period.
Even though the man had been sitting nowhere near them, Kevin couldn’t help but wonder if he’d heard every word they’d said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
KEVIN LOOKED FOR RUDE at lunch, but the big guy never showed up. Nobody had seen him—not even Stacy, who shook her head when he saw her in the lunch line. And still Rude sent no messages Kevin’s way.
The longer that went on, the more worried he got. What could he do about it? It hadn’t just been Mrs. V who had a hard-on for him. His second period Chem teacher kept a close watch on him, too. He had a funny feeling about the rest of the day: if he ditched class, he’d be reported right away.
Did he do it anyway? Or head out right after school to try to find Rude? He might be able to make it to the burned-out shell of the restaurant, but what then? Why would Rude be there?
He realized he had no idea where Rude went besides the restaurant. Who he kept company with, what he did. He hardly knew his friend at all.
Except that Rude had his back when other guys he thought were his friends only stabbed him in the back. He had a clear line of sight to where Scott sat, yukking it up with his new flavor-of-the-week buddies. His shiner had faded some, gone from black to purple and yellow. If he felt Kevin’s eyes on him, he didn’t show it. Bastard.
Amy slid onto the bench beside him. She followed his gaze to Scott and frowned. “How long have y’all known each other?”
“He moved in next door to us when we were both eight. His parents moved out of the neighborhood just before we started high school.”
“I can’t believe he did you like that.”
“Neither can I.”
She put a hand on his arm, physically turned him to look at her. “I wouldn’t do that to someone. I just want you to know.”
She made him feel like he could tell her anything and she would stick. She was for real.
He swallowed hard. “I’m like you.”
“Stand-up,” she said.
Yeah. He was a stand-up guy. He hoped.
“Fuck the bunch of them,” she said, her final word on the subject of Scott. “I went back to the library for study hall. It’s amazing what you can find on the Net about the Faery Queen.”
Not exactly what he’d wanted, but information was information and maybe he could turn it to his advantage. “Spill.”
“She’s capricious. Long black hair. Razor-sharp teeth. Very powerful. And beautiful enough to make men fall in love with her at first sight. There’s a story about this guy, Thomas of Erceldoune, a real guy from the thirteenth century, called The Ballad of Thomas Rhymer. There’s, like, three different versions of the poem, written in old-style English. Right up your alley.”
Because he enjoyed reading ye olde English so very much. “Ha ha.”
“Anyway, Thomas fell asleep under a hawthorn tree and the Queen was the first thing he saw when he woke. He fell in love and kissed her, and the penalty for doing that was seven years in the realm of Faery. He had to go with her. Seven years there was like a hundred years in Scotland.”
Like the time on Simone’s bus was out of sync with the time the rest of the world ran on.
“When she finally let him go, all the people he knew his whole life had died,” Amy said. “Can you imagine that?”
As far as he could imagine what Simone’s life must be like. “That’s out of hand.”
She nodded. “I definitely want to make a costume for her.”
Right, because for her this was about the costume party.
“Now we just have to find some information on the Faery King for you.”
“I’ll be on it tonight,” he said. Of course, the computer with the Internet connection at his place lived in the living room. His mom had insisted, so that he wouldn’t get himself into any unsupervised trouble.
What would she think if she could see him now?
He’d have to map a good strategy to do the kind of research he needed. Make it look like school work until his dad stopped paying attention. Once he got online and out from under his father’s nose, he might be able to find what he needed without even trying. He’d bet his dad had done a ton of research on the Faery King already, and that he’d find the relevant sites bookmarked.
Bottom line, if he didn’t get the job done tonight, he’d have a lot less time to do it tomorrow in the library and to puzzle his research together into some kind of plan.
He thought he knew how he could make it happen.
He
kissed Amy goodbye—nothing PDA enough to bring a hall monitor down on them, but plenty to fire the imagination. He wanted more than the taste of her mouth. He wanted to memorize her skin, to know what it would feel like to hold her hand at the movies, how it would be to learn everything about her.
He watched her head out to her next class. And then he caught Scott staring. He looked almost sorry. Too bad for him.
The afternoon dragged ass. Gym turned out to be about volleyball, which he could zombie-walk through—and did, though his funny feeling turned out to be spot on. Even while he spent his own study hall figuring bus schedules to the restaurant and back, and worrying about whether the cops would be parked on the side of the road waiting for him, the librarian stayed within eye- and earshot.
He refused to let it rattle him. Much.
He did his Stat homework, too. If he did actually make it home in time, he’d have other plans for his night.
He spent English distracted as hell by all of it, reading more Beowulf in Middle English, though thankfully the last of it.
When the dismissal bell chimed, he made straight for the bus stop behind the school—the bus would be faster than hightailing it home to pick up his bike. He half-expected the fake cops to be waiting for him. Instead, what did he see parked on the street in the same spot as yesterday after lunch? Rude’s Explorer.
The car was empty of everything but the big guy’s backpack on the passenger seat, a sea of trash from an entire day’s fast food chow on the passenger floorboards, and the remains of a super-sized drink in the cup holder. Oh, and Rude’s phone. In plain view on the driver’s seat.
The light still glowed on the display. Rude had just been there. Had he gone into the school? That seemed likely.
It’d only been twenty minutes since school let out, so of course the place felt utterly deserted. And it was. Except for the Rude, who stood exactly where he’d be on any normal day, wearing his black Hawaiian shirt and smoking with deep, ragged breaths. With Stacy-Named-After-the-Russian-Princess.
She talked at Rude and the big guy listened, never once taking his eyes off her face. Not even when he sensed Kevin standing there and waved him off. Only when she finished and slipped away did he turn to Kevin.
Hunt: An Urban Faery Tale (The Faery Chronicles Book 1) Page 12
