She balled her hands into fists. “Because you want to get rid of me. Because you want to make a fool out of me. You could’ve just told me there’s another girl instead of making up this B.S. story.”
“What other girl?” It took him a second—a second too long—to snap that she must mean Simone.
“God, Kevin. To think I told Britt and Zoe they were assholes for saying what they did about you. I defended your ass. I made my costume for the party tomorrow night. I even started on yours.”
“But the bus girl is—”
“A half-human, half-Faery. Right. Please, Kevin, make up a good lie next time.”
“I don’t like her like that, Amy.” There weren’t words for how he felt about Simone. Confused and awed came close, but they didn’t cut it. And it didn’t matter. He wanted Amy.
“But she likes you.”
He couldn’t deny that.
“I knew it. Go to hell, Kevin.” She stood, all elbows and knees.
“Wait.” He grabbed for her arm.
She swung at him. Her fist slammed into his nose.
A sickening wave of pain bowled him over. He covered his face with his hands. Felt something sticky at the same time as he tasted blood.
“Don’t touch me, Kevin.” She stalked off.
He watched her go, blood dripping down his chin, until she disappeared around a corner. Only then did he become aware of people staring. A half-dozen of them who’d been close enough to hear. And to see her pop him.
One of them happened to be Scott. Who came right over and butted in, the bastard. “Jeez, Kev. What’d you say to her?”
“MYOB, man.” Kevin whipped out Rude’s handkerchief, glad to have it. Good news—wiping his face only turned half the white cotton red.
“Is it broken?” Scott asked.
“What do you care?”
Scott shoved his hands in his pockets. “You look like you’re in trouble, Kev.”
“I’ve been in trouble, man.” Kevin held his gaze. “You didn’t give a crap before, so why should you now?”
“That’s not fair,” Scott said.
Kevin shook his head. God, it hurt. “It’s completely fair. You have no idea what I’ve been dealing with all week. You think your dad’s a hard-ass? Mine’s lost it. We’ve been friends a long time. You blew me off like someone you met last week. What do you want?”
“To say I’m sorry. To make it right.”
How did you make something like that right? A half-hour ago, he’d have sworn you couldn’t. “You’ve got a helluva lot of balls.”
“More than I’ve got brains,” Scott said.
Kevin agreed. “How can I trust you?”
“Don’t blame you for not,” Scott said. “But try me if you’re game.”
Kevin had the perfect test. Trouble was, it could backfire with serious repercussions, like with Amy.
Maybe if he hadn’t held back on her, she would’ve taken it better. Or not. No way to know.
The only thing he could be sure of was that he needed all the help he could get.
So he told the story again, this time balls-out. No mincing on details, no tiptoeing around the blood and guts. Scott interrupted him with the occasional question. The bell rang, but he didn’t make any attempt to leave or even fidget.
Kevin finished up the tale without saying what had Amy so upset. That felt too personal to go into. Even though she’d clocked him in the nose, he felt like he’d be betraying her to even the score like that. He held it private the way he held onto Simone’s name.
Scott picked a handful of grass and let it fly into the wind. “Rude’s in on this.”
“A hundred percent.”
“Y’all have a plan yet?”
Kevin squinted into the sun. “Told you everything I know.”
“What can I do?” Scott asked.
“Think about it. See if you can figure a way through, if you notice something we haven’t.”
Scott nodded. “I wish I could say you can stay with me.”
“That’s all right, man. Even if your dad said it was cool I don’t think I could deal with him tonight.”
Scott grinned wryly. “One dad at a time.”
Kevin chuckled. “Exactly.”
“I’m around if you need me.”
Kevin mostly believed that. The doubts he had, he kept to himself. If he was going to give Scott a second chance, he had to give it all the way. “Cool. Keep your phone on.”
“Will do,” Scott said.
They parted ways once they got into the building. Scott headed upstairs for his class, and Kevin considered showing his face at Gym, but the coach wouldn’t take his late arrival kindly, counselor-manufactured note or not. Or he could go see the nurse. He had a bloody excuse for that.
But he turned on his heel and marched off to Mr. Nance’s office.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
THE SECRETARY IN THE front office had stepped out and Nance had someone with him when Kevin arrived, but he went in anyway without waiting to be invited. Amid the stacks of files and papers and the dusty bookcase with the thirsty ivy, the counselor chatted with Stacy-Short-for-Anastasia. He leaned forward, his elbows on the desk. No file open, no official documents. They had to be having a personal conversation.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Kevin said.
Nance leaned back in his chair. “Stacy, would you excuse us?”
She shrugged. And gave Kevin a look of supreme understanding as she left and shut the door behind her, which made him wonder how much she knew and how she knew it.
“Sit down, Mr. Landon,” Nance said.
“I don’t much feel like it.”
Nance gestured toward the chair Stacy had just vacated. “You don’t have much left in you, either. Sit down or fall down. Your choice.”
Kevin stayed on his feet. “Thanks for writing those notes earlier. For sending Rude to my house.”
“You’re welcome, Kevin.”
“Why’d you do it?”
Nance sighed. “That’s complicated.”
“Everything is right now,” Kevin said. “Don’t tell me you didn’t expect questions.”
“No, I did.” Nance bent forward again. He set his hands on the desk and laced his fingers together. “I’m just not sure I know how to answer them.”
“Truthfully would be good.”
Worry etched Nance’s brow.
Kevin knew that look. He’d seen it in the mirror a lot lately. “If you’re thinking I won’t believe you, stop.”
“Very well, Kevin. When you were here the other day, I told you that once upon a time I’d been just like you. That’s more true than you realize.”
Right. “Why did you write the notes and send Rude?”
“I’m not in the habit of dreaming about my charges, but I had a dream last night that was so vivid it could’ve been real,” Nance said. “I knew you were in trouble. I knew I had to send Mr. Davies to help you.”
“Do you always do what your dreams tell you?” Kevin asked.
“When my daughter appears in them, yes. That only happens this time of year.” Nance’s eyes welled with tears, but he didn’t shed them. “She’s been gone for seven years. Unsolved disappearance. The police expect she’s dead. They told me I needed to prepare myself for that possibility a long time ago. But I know better.”
Kevin gripped the chair-back in front of him. He looked from Mr. Nance to the oil painting behind his desk. The Wild Hunt, with a pretty good likeness of the Faery King at its head, too. Whoever painted that had to have seen the King.
“You paint that?” he asked.
“My daughter did, before she left home one evening and never returned.”
“What did she do, your daughter?”
“She sang.”
Kevin found that Mr. Nance had been right. He could sit down or fall down. He took a seat.
“I believe you know her,” Nance said.
Kevin did, too. “I think so.”
�
��Is she all right?”
None of them were. “No, she’s not. She’s been in Faery so long she’s grown wings.”
“I’ve seen them in my dreams.”
“She’s changing,” Kevin said. “Becoming one of them. She’s still…solid—flesh and bones and blood. But eventually, she’ll have a body made of light. That’s what I’m told.”
“By whom?” Nance asked.
Kevin thought twice about giving away the name. But Nance had to know already—or at least suspect—didn’t he? “Rude.”
“And Mr. Davies knows this because?”
“Trust me, Mr. Nance. He knows.”
Nance took a deep breath. “Is there a way to help her?”
“I don’t know,” Kevin said.
“Are you trying?” Nance asked.
Kevin shook his head. “She’s been helping me. I’d be fucked without her, and maybe I still am. She told me how to get the Faery King to let my father go, except it’s impossible.”
“All the great heroic tasks are.”
“What?”
“You should take some mythology when you get to college, Mr. Landon.” Nance rose and walked around the desk. He perched on the chair beside Kevin. “Do you know where she is?”
“I know where she’ll be,” Kevin said.
“Then you can take me to her.”
Kevin nodded. “I can get you there, yeah. But I can’t get you in. Only she can do that.”
Nance looked at him like he’d spoken a foreign language. “Why wouldn’t she allow me inside?”
Kevin didn’t know whether she would, but that wasn’t the point. “I’m just saying, Mr. Nance.”
Nance relaxed a hair. “Those are the rules.”
“In my experience.”
“Just so.” Nance glanced down at his dress shoes.
Kevin still had one question to ask. He had no idea what the answer would be, whether the counselor would want anything more to do with him than what he’d just agreed to do.
“Rude told me this morning that I can’t stay at my house,” he said. “I need to sleep someplace where the Faeries won’t think to look for me.”
“They’re planning to take you the way they did my Beth,” he said.
“That’s not the name I know her by.”
Nance dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “That other name, she always loved it. That’s the name she used when she played with her band. I think it’s who she wanted to be. I never called her by that name. I don’t intend to start now.”
Kevin could see that, the same as he couldn’t ever imagine calling her by her given name. “Yes, sir.”
“Tell me what they did to you,” Nance said.
So Kevin laid out the story for the third time that afternoon. He abbreviated as much as he could, but that didn’t take much edge off. Mr. Nance might not think much of his father, but seeing the King had taken his dad and the counselor had lost a daughter to him, he’d get it. Wouldn’t he?
“Of course I’ll help you,” Nance said. “Will you help my daughter if you can?”
“I will,” Kevin said. Even if he didn’t like Simone the same way she did him, he still cared about her. And he owed her. She’d been there for him every time he’d needed her.
That seemed to satisfy the counselor. “Then I think you should have your nose looked at, Mr. Landon. And why don’t you find Mr. Davies after school and meet me in the faculty parking lot? I drive a Cadillac. 1969.”
Kevin didn’t think he’d ever ridden in a car older than he was. “We’ll be there. At the farthest point from the street.”
“Just so,” Mr. Nance said. “It won’t do for us to be seen together outdoors. Of course, they won’t expect you to be with me.” The counselor didn’t stand to see him out.
Kevin stepped into the corridor feeling shell-shocked. The secretary in the front office peered at him through her rhinestone bifocals. He smiled half-heartedly at her and headed out back to find Rude just as the bell rang and the hall surged with bodies.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE THREE OF THEM—Nance, Rude, and Kevin—went to dinner at an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. They sat as far away from the window as possible, but still they could see the sun become a ball of liquid fire and set over the horizon. The temperature dropped so they could feel the difference when new customers opened the door. Autumn in all its chill glory rushed in.
Only when the traffic outside cleared did they set out for downtown.
Rude rode shotgun and took them in via Highway 59, under shiny new bridges and over the downtown spur. The business district wasn’t as deserted after dark on Thursdays, it seemed. More taillights flashed than usual. People strode on the sidewalks on their way to dinner or drinks. At the park in front of City Hall, the oaks had already been dressed up for the holiday season. Christmas lights already adorned their trunks and branches.
They turned east, into the warehouse district, but only managed a couple of blocks before Rude piped up.
“Pull over anywhere,” he said.
Kevin’s eyes widened with his surprise—and Nance caught it in the rearview mirror.
“What’s the matter?” the counselor asked.
“We still have a ways to go.” Kevin looked at Rude for help.
“We can’t take him to the bus,” Rude said. “They’ll be watching.”
“Just so,” Nance said. He steered the Caddy to the curb beside a lot with numbered spaces and a center kiosk with slots to pay for parking. “Do you have an alternate plan?”
Rude nodded. “One of us can go and bring her back.”
“I’ll do it,” Kevin said.
“You can’t go by yourself, dude.”
Kevin rolled his eyes. “What are they going to do to me? I’m behaving as expected. I’ve been to see Simone almost every night this week. I’m in deep shit. I need help. Who else would I turn to?”
Rude couldn’t argue with the logic. “Fine. But watch your ass in this neighborhood, all right?”
“Deal,” Kevin said. But he didn’t think anyone would mess with him. He had a date with the Faery King tomorrow night. If the King thought Kevin was all that—and clearly, he did—the Faery wouldn’t allow him to get mugged or worse. He stepped out into the night and drew his jacket close to shut out the wind that whipped around the buildings.
From that moment, the back of his neck itched like someone had a bead on him. The hairs there and on his forearms stood straight up, and the pizza sat like a rock in his belly.
He took half a dozen steps before he looked over his shoulder. He saw Mr. Nance’s car, headlights blazing, and a homeless guy pushing a grocery cart filled with all his worldly belongings across the pay lot.
What had he expected? A bogey man? The fake cops or some other secret Faery spy? A marching band?
No one else behind him, or in front of him. He didn’t see anyone out of the corner of his eye or even on the side streets he passed.
Still, he flinched at every little noise. The gun of a car engine blocks away. The scrape of windblown paper on concrete. The distressed meeeeooooowwwww of a cat whose silhouette he glimpsed on the spotlit brick wall of a warehouse.
He listened for danger—the real deal, not some figment of his imagination—and heard whispers. Nothing clear. Nothing he could wrap his head around.
He walked all the way to the bus like that, listening hard and freaked by his own shadow. He climbed up the dirty step, bracing his hand on the yellow metal. Paint flaked off in his hand. Simone pulled the lever and opened the door, met him at the threshold.
“I’m sorry about your father,” she said.
He appreciated that, especially now that he knew about her dad. “Have you seen him?”
“He’s with the King. He told your father you’re coming tomorrow night. Your father’s holding on to that, waiting for you to save him.”
“That’s cruel,” Kevin said.
“You’re afraid the King’s feeding him false hop
e.” Simone studied his face. “But you are going to try.”
“I am.”
“That’s all that matters, Kevin.”
Nice sentiment, but he didn’t see how. Either he did it or he failed. “I’m still working on the how.”
“I have an idea,” she said. “But it’ll take more than just you. We’ll need the help of that girl hiding behind the utility pole.”
Kevin swung around to see. He hopped off the bus step, onto the concrete. “Who’s there?”
Amy stepped out into the alley. She wore all black—boots, jeans, hoodie. Easier not to be seen if you blended into the dark. Easier to follow someone that way. There was nothing else she could be doing, no other reason for her to be there.
“I thought you wanted me to go to hell and leave you alone,” he said. “Funny way to show it.”
She walked toward him. “I wanted to see the bus girl with my own eyes.”
“Find out whether she’s real, and has wings,” he said. “And what were you gonna do once you saw her?”
“Tell her to stay away from you,” Amy said.
“Because he’s yours.” Simone came down from the bus in all of her blue-eyed, red- and purple-haired grace. She closed and opened her wings twice. The breeze they stirred brushed Kevin’s neck and sent a tingle from the tips of his toes to the crown of his head.
“Oh,” Amy said.
Simone folded her arms across her chest. “This is the one you have the date with.”
“Had,” Kevin said. “Emphasis, past-tense.”
Amy shook her head. “Wait.”
For what? “You broke it off with me, Amy. Remember?”
She stepped to Simone—by the shiver that rocked her, close enough to feel the magic that radiated from the half-Faery, half-human.
“He is mine,” Amy said. “What do you want with him?”
Simone held her gaze. “To help him.”
“That’s all?”
“I’m much older than he is,” Simone said. “I’m not even the same species anymore. But I’m not dead yet, either.”
Kevin looked from one to the other and back again. He couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
Amy matched Simone’s posture. “Say he sleeps with you.”
Hunt: An Urban Faery Tale (The Faery Chronicles Book 1) Page 16
