“Not so hopeless after all,” the King said. “It’s freeing, isn’t it?”
Kevin thought he understood, although possibly he’d missed the logic train. It was all so much to take in. “If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do. Because that’s all there is.”
The King nodded.
Kevin thought about the choice the King offered. Be small, or be big. No middle ground there. “What about the plans I’ve already made?”
“The one where you keep your date with Amy on Friday night and apply for scholarships and are accepted at an institution of higher learning so you can leave home and start a new life?”
Reduced to a nutshell, but yeah. “What happens to that?”
“Do you even know what you want to study?” the King asked.
He didn’t care. He just wanted out. “I’m still thinking about it.”
“You’re talented with English. You could teach. You could write.”
Neither of those things appealed much. “Like I said.”
“Yes.” The King took a sip. “Perhaps you’re meant for something else. Think about that.”
“Maybe I will.”
“I’ll see you on Halloween, Kevin.” The King rose to leave—that much showed clear on his face. Kevin had a nagging feeling he’d missed something in their conversation. That he’d forgotten something important.
“No. You won’t see me,” he said.
The King expression rolled from Done to Bemused.
“Don’t drop in here again,” Kevin said.
The King appeared to consider. “No, I think not.”
“It’s my house, it’s way late, and I didn’t invite you here.”
“I’m not a vampire, Kevin. I don’t require an invitation.” He said that matter-of-factly, as if vampires actually existed.
But then Kevin hadn’t believed in Faeries before Monday. What did he know? And still, something nagged.
He fished. “You came all this way to talk to me.”
The King let loose with another smile, this one warmer than the other. “It’s not really that far. All I have to do is close my eyes, fix the image of where I’m headed in my mind, and step sideways.”
Right. And you could travel the country with nothing more than a good imagination and a pair of ruby slippers. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I came all this way to talk to you, yes,” the King said. “And to collect your father.”
Kevin stared at him.
In his dream, his mother had told him he’d better wake up or he wouldn’t hear them in time. Them. “Who’s here with you?”
“What did you call them?” The King cleared his mug from the table, set it on the counter. “Oh, yes. My thugs.”
The cops. “You shined me on.”
“I distracted you,” the King said. “And yet everything I told you was true.”
Kevin tried to turn. Tried to run. His feet wouldn’t move. Not even an inch. “Sonofabitch!”
The King stepped to him, so close Kevin saw he had no flesh and blood. His body, solid. But made entirely of light. He placed a cool, nearly translucent finger under Kevin’s chin and lifted until Kevin met his gaze. “Aren’t you curious why I’m taking him?”
“Sonofabitch.” Kevin wanted to kill him.
The King saw it and ignored it because that would never happen, and they both knew it. The King projected a feral strength. Kevin was a kid. And he was only human.
“What was that you thought earlier while you prepared to fall asleep?” the King asked softly. “About sleeping with your clothes on? About the bat you’re still holding?”
Just in case.
“Now I know I’ll see you on Halloween, Kevin.”
“You can’t hold my dad for ransom. You can’t use him for leverage against me.”
“I just did,” the King said.
He stepped sideways and vanished, leaving Kevin alone in the kitchen as the clock struck four.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ONCE THE FAERY KING left and he could move again, Kevin ran down the hall, slipping and sliding in his sock feet on the hardwood. He slammed into the wall and rebounded into his father’s bedroom door. It took three tries to get his fingers around the handle. To yank it open.
The imprint his dad’s body had left in the sheets? Still warm. And rumpled. And scented with his father’s soap and the gel he wore in his hair.
On the nightstand, all his father’s things. And behind, the plastic blinds clattered with the breeze that whistled through the open window. He reached up and pulled it closed. The squeal of the glass in the frame sliced through him.
His dad was really gone.
He listened for any trace of his father’s thoughts. He listened so hard, he thought his ears would bleed. Nothing came.
What should he do? Go see Simone? Too late. Oscar? Laid out unconscious in the pool house. Rude? Taking care of Oscar, and keeping him safe. Who else was there? No one.
He half-remembered wandering around the house, trailing his fingers along the walls, the window sills, the furniture. Everywhere, he saw his dad.
He peered through the drapes in the living room to see the Suburban still in the drive. The keys? Still on the hook in the entry. The entry where he’d ended up. Where he’d slept because his body took over and forced him to.
A key in the lock of the front door stirred him. He watched the knob twist from where he lay in the entry hall, knees curled to his chest.
He saw the sun had risen and time had passed toward mid-morning from the quality of the light that filtered through the crack at the center of the living room drapes. He hadn’t heard a car, or any voices.
If the fake cops had come back, he had no fight left in him. If they wanted to haul him off to jail or disappear him or whatever, they could do whatever they wanted.
Neither of the officers had ever sported a bright pink Hawaiian shirt. No one should be able to get away with wearing one of those. It ought to be an arrestable offense, or something.
Rude hunkered down beside him, scooped him up, and set him on his feet. Kevin started to go down a couple of times, but Rude and the wall caught him until he steadied the last time. Only then did Rude give him some space, but not much.
“You okay, dude?”
Kevin shook his head.
“I looked for you at school this morning,” Rude said. “You weren’t there. And then I got called to Nance’s office. He’s the one who told me you were in trouble. He wrote me a fucking excuse to take to the office, dude. A family emergency note. He said to go get you.”
“Mr. Nance, the school counselor.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s weirder than weird.”
Not so much, seeing as Nance had written at least one other questionable note. Kevin rubbed his mouth. “It got outta hand here last night, man.”
Rude narrowed his eyes. “Where’s your dad? He in his room?”
Kevin told him the story. Halfway through, he had to sit down. Rude let him slide to the floor—slow—and settled down across from him. Kevin talked until his voice grew hoarse. When he finished, he waited for Rude to ask questions or rail at the enemy. But the big guy kept silent a while.
Kevin could see the wheels turning in Rude’s mind. And he could hear the tick of the kitchen clock and the noises the walls made as they settled and if he didn’t stop it, it would paralyze him again.
“Mr. Nance tell you about that?” he asked.
“Please,” Rude said. “I don’t even know how or why he told me what he did.”
“He’s like the cops, man. Not really a counselor.”
“I’d believe that if he hadn’t worked at the school since way before either of us started there. Besides, he helped us.”
Kevin didn’t know what to make of that, or anything else anymore. He wanted his father. He’d give anything just to have things back like they’d been last night, crazy and volatile and better than the emptiness the King had left him with.
His voice broke. “What am I supposed to do?”
“You can’t stay here,” Rude said. “Not by yourself. Not if you’re going to have a chance to fix things.”
They’d had this conversation before. “Déjà vu all over again, man.”
“No,” Rude said. “We have to put you someplace where you’ll be harder to find. Somewhere they wouldn’t think to look.”
“I don’t think there is one.” How could there be when the King had read every inch of his mind? When all the people he cared about and all the places he hung out had already been exposed?
“I can think of one place.”
Kevin didn’t argue this time. If he wanted to survive, he’d do what Rude asked. He went to his room and packed what he could fit in his spare backpack. He went through the other one, too, to make sure he took all the school books and notes and homework due through Friday.
This whole thing wouldn’t go on beyond Halloween. Either he’d lose everything—his father, for good; himself; Amy and any sense of a normal life—or he’d find a way to free all of them from the King. No compromise. No surrender. No deals to be made about becoming the magic.
If he couldn’t have beat up a mosquito just then, well, he’d have to get a grip.
He threw on some clean clothes, tied his jean jacket around his waist, and combed his fingers through his hair. And remembered to grab his toothbrush. He met Rude by the front door, and couldn’t help but notice again his dad’s keys hanging on the wall hook.
“We walking?” he asked.
“Can’t take the Suburban. It’s too easy to track.”
“With what—satellites?”
Rude shouldered his book bag. “Smells familiar.”
Smells? Kevin couldn’t wrap his brain around that. “What about your car?”
“Same difference,” Rude said. “I left it at home with Oscar in case of emergency.”
“How is he?”
“He’s breathing better and he’s got some color back in his face. He woke up in the middle of the night and asked for something to eat. I made him a fried egg.”
“That’s good,” Kevin said. Someone had tangled with powerful Faeries and lived to tell about it. If Oscar could do it, he could do it, too.
“Live to fight another day, dude.”
Yeah, right.
Kevin tried not to freak about leaving the house, knowing that he might never see it again, but also that it might never be the same home it had always been. He glanced over his shoulder so many times, it took him almost half a block to notice Rude had pointed them at the school.
“You want me to stay at school,” Kevin said. He’d never been there too long after last bell, and he could only imagine what it’d be like. The people from the after-school clubs who stuck around because they didn’t want to leave the grounds, the janitors mopping with the pine cleaner so strong the fumes could disinfect your sinuses, the mice that lived in the walls feeling free to run around in the halls. “Hell no.”
“I want you to go to school, Kev, just like every other day. You go to class and then tonight, go stay with who I have in mind. You don’t drop off the grid until you absolutely have to.”
“Can you say that in English, Rude?”
“They’re herding you, dude. Driving you towards your destiny. If you try to run before then, those cops will play like they’ve got a warrant for your arrest and pick you up. They’ll just stash you away until Halloween. If you do what’s expected of you—like going to class—they’ll just keep on with screwing with your life until Halloween. If we hide you the way Oscar said, you might have a chance.”
“So I’m supposed to act like nothing happened last night and go to class because it’s expected. And then we’re going to hide me and hope things don’t get worse?”
“Oh, they’ll get worse,” Rude said.
“Come on, man. How? How could they possibly?”
Rude looked away. “Your dad’s gone. How long before people start wondering if you had something to do with that? I mean, people already think you had something to do with the dead girl.”
Kevin stopped cold. The world started to swim.
Rude put a strong hand on his back. Kevin closed his eyes and waited for the big guy to tell him it was okay, or it would all be okay, or some such bullshit.
But Rude said, “Those cops, they’re sure to screw with Amy, too. Turn her against you. And they’ll probably have a go at me, too, so you know. They’ll make it so you have no one and nothing left if they can. Then it’s just you against them.”
People had been telling him for days he was in over his head. Every time he’d thought he understood what they meant, something new went down that showed him he had no clue.
Kevin’s forehead beaded with sweat. He started to wipe it away with his sleeve, but Rude shoved a handkerchief in his hand.
“Thanks, man,” Kevin said.
“Any time. You good to keep going?”
Kevin nodded. “Does Nance have a note for me, too? Something to keep me from spending the afternoon in the principal’s office?”
“It’s already on file,” Rude said.
Cool and everything, definitely something to be grateful for. But what was with the counselor? He might not be on the same side as the officers, but he definitely had ulterior motives. And some idea of what was going on. Maybe he was on their side, his and Rude’s and Oscar’s and Simone’s.
“Is Nance who you had in mind for me to stay with?” he asked.
“It’s worth a shot. Don’t you think?”
Kevin thought. “Any port in a storm.”
They got to school in the middle of lunch. Kevin threw the spare backpack with all his clothes into his locker and went to the cafeteria with Rude.
Kevin smelled the menu before he saw it: King Ranch chicken with the ubiquitous green beans, and flan for dessert. The scents made his mouth water and his stomach growl but, as nervous as he felt, he didn’t know whether he could keep anything down.
Rude pointed out that if he didn’t eat, he wouldn’t be strong enough to deal with whatever else came his way.
Lucky him, there was also tortilla soup on the lunch line. He tried a cup with a heaping helping of saltines on the side. It might not be much, but he’d settle for something over nothing.
They settled in the corner, as far from everyone else as they could get. Before they could even begin laying out their options, Amy came over and sat down beside Kevin. No tray, so she’d already eaten.
She took his hand under the table and twined her fingers with his, and with a twinkle in her eye opened her mouth to make some suitably smart-assed comment. But one good look at him stole whatever she’d been about to say.
She tightened her grip on his hand. “What’s wrong?”
What to say? I’ll-tell-you-later had worn thin. He couldn’t think of a good lie, and the truth had been out of the question all along. He thought about what Rude said on the way over, about how the King’s cops would get to her, and he figured they’d have no shortage of words.
Amy had his back now, dissing people she thought were legit police because she hadn’t seen him hurt anyone at the party. But she hadn’t been with him all night. In fact, there’d been a substantial part of the evening he’d been in the house or wherever. How did she actually know he was innocent? She didn’t. She believed him because she thought she knew him. Because she liked him.
If the detectives told her he’d killed his father the way Rude figured they would, how would that change things? Especially if they presented her with evidence, didn’t matter what kind.
What then? Damage control? If she went from supportive to suspicious, would she buy a word that came out of his mouth? If he’d had the opportunity to nip that in the bud beforehand by coming clean but chose not to? How did you make something like that right? You couldn’t.
He glanced down at his soup. Whatever appeal it’d held had congealed with the layer of grease floating on to
p. He pocketed the saltines. And he met Rude’s gaze, making sure the big guy saw what he meant to do.
“You need me?” Rude asked.
Would it help to have some backup to show he hadn’t lost his mind? Probably. But either Amy would dig it or she wouldn’t. He didn’t ever want her to look at him like he was certifiable. He didn’t want to watch her walk away, knowing he’d never touch her again or kiss her. Knowing she’d never speak to him again. He didn’t know how he’d handle that.
It could happen, and he didn’t think whether it did would ride on Rude’s being there.
“That’s okay,” he said. “But thanks.”
Amy glanced from Kevin to Rude and back again. “What am I missing?”
“Let’s go outside,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
KEVIN LED HER TO the quietest place out back, far enough away from the skater’s island that they wouldn’t be overheard even if she called him a loon at the top of her lungs and stormed off. The sun shone brightly on them and the wind blew steadily, lifting the blue-black fire of Amy’s hair. The grass they sat on had mostly dried from the other day’s rain, though the ground still smelled of damp earth.
He didn’t go with much of a preamble. He didn’t know how to break the news gently, although he tried to soften it around the edges as much as possible. The story still sounded worse than he’d thought it would. He knew it as he heard the words come out of his mouth, and he heard it in the silence that settled as thick as molasses between them after he finished.
Her dark eyes grew flintier by the second. Her cheeks reddened.
He realized he’d been wrong about how she’d take things. She didn’t think he was crazy. She didn’t seem sorry for him, or scared of him, or like she’d placate him with an understanding smile and fetch security. She was furious.
“You’re shitting me, Kevin Landon.”
“Why would I do that?” he asked. A rational question that invited a rational response.
Hunt: An Urban Faery Tale (The Faery Chronicles Book 1) Page 15
