by Jenna Black
“Let’s go now!” she said. “The Knights will expect us to be in here forever with all the clothes I brought in. That’ll give us a major head start.” She grabbed her messenger bag and put it over her shoulder bandoleer-style. Then she disappeared from sight, although I still felt her hand on my arm. I blinked in surprise, although Ethan, the magical prodigy, had an invisibility spell, too.
I’d just agreed to go with her, but I found my feet reluctant to move as she tugged me toward the dressing room exit. “Won’t the Knights sense the magic and know that we’re sneaking past?”
I could hear the grin in her voice even though I couldn’t see her. “One advantage to me constantly using glamour is that people get used to sensing magic around me all the time. They won’t be able to sense what direction it’s coming from, and once we’re far enough past that they don’t sense it anymore, they’ll just think I dropped the glamour for a little while.”
I had the distinct impression this wasn’t the first time Al had pulled this particular stunt. I also suddenly realized her decision to bring about a million outfits into the dressing room was most likely a sign that this whole escapade was premeditated. She’d crafted an excuse to give us plenty of time before the Knights realized we were missing, apparently sure that she was going to get her way.
Maybe the constant annoying buzz of Al’s magic was messing with my
powers of reasoning, because I didn’t figure all this out until she’d dragged me out of the dressing room and we were sneaking past the Knights. I wanted to give Al another piece of my mind, but I wasn’t going to do it in front of our bodyguards while we were in the process of sneaking past them. That would guarantee I’d get in trouble with my dad. I couldn’t imagine how pissed he would be that I’d even considered going along with Al’s crazy scheme. I’d just have to wait until we were out of earshot before telling Al in no uncertain terms that I’d changed my mind, that we were going back into the dressing room so that no one ever knew we’d left.
Al, her hand still on my arm, half-dragged me out of the store. She must have used more illusion magic to keep the Knights from noticing that the door opened and closed with our exit, because neither one looked up.
Despite my resolution to put a stop to this the moment we were out of earshot of the Knights, I found myself meekly following along as Al led us down the street and around the first corner. I opened my mouth to voice my objection, but at that same moment, she dropped the invisibility spell and gave me another hug.
“Thanks so much for doing this,” she gushed again. “It’ll be an exciting little adventure, won’t it?” She sucked her lower lip again, looking so excited and hopeful that I found myself incapable of letting her down.
“Exciting,” I repeated dully. “Yeah, that’s one word for it.”
What the hell was I thinking?
But when Al hailed a cab to take us to the Southern Gate, I raised no objection.
____
We had to abandon the cab when we reached the Southern Gate, because we couldn’t pass through without passports. Al exchanged some euros for pounds, then we ducked into the ladies room, where she cast her invisibility spell again. Al held my hand so we could stay together, and we headed for the border crossing, dodging tourists and business people, slipping through gaps and under turnstiles whenever we could. I kept thinking that someone would sense her magic and stop us, but we didn’t run into any Fae—most of the Fae border control agents were stationed at the other end of the Gatehouse, where the border to Faerie was located.
The whole time we were crossing the border, I kept telling myself this was the stupidest idea in the history of the universe, and I should object. But somehow, that didn’t seem to be what I was doing. Instead, I let Al lead me along as my pulse sped ever more rapidly and my palms dampened with sweat.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding once we made it through the border crossing and set foot on English soil. Once again, Al guided us into a restroom, dropping the invisibility spell as soon as we were out of sight of prying eyes.
“This is insane,” I told her. “We have to go back.”
“This is exciting and fun,” she countered, doing that lip-sucking thing again.
It occurred to me for the first time that she was still wearing the dress she’d been trying on at the shop. Add shoplifting to the list of crimes we were committing.
I wasn’t convinced, but once again I found myself following her as she headed out of the restroom and got in line at the taxi stand. I looked longingly over my shoulder at Avalon, wondering what was wrong with me, why I was letting Al manipulate, bully, and cajole me into doing something I knew was both wrong and downright stupid. Sure, I’d taken some pretty reckless chances in the past, but it was always for a good reason, always because I was convinced it was the right thing to do. This time, I was convinced I was doing the wrong thing, and yet I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
We reached the head of the line and climbed into a cab. Al rattled off an address, and the driver took off. I still couldn’t believe what I was doing. I tried to rally my mental troops in hopes I could craft an argument that Al would actually listen to, but she turned to me with a frown.
“You look sleepy,” she said, then sucked her lower lip. “Why don’t you take a nap until we get there?”
Suddenly, my eyelids felt really, really heavy. A chill of alarm crept down my spine as it finally occurred to me there might be a very good reason I was doing this against my better judgment. Every time I came close to putting my foot down, Al sucked her lower lip and somehow talked me out of it. The most powerful of Fae magic-users can trigger spells with subtle gestures, and I’d guess that as Mab’s daughter, Al was definitely a powerful magic-user.
She smiled at me, and I might almost have called the look on her face apologetic.
“Sleep, Dana,” she said.
The compulsion slapped me upside the head with the force of a
sledgehammer, and my eyes slid closed.
Chapter Three
I woke up, groggy and disoriented, when Al grabbed my arm. I blinked in confusion as she pulled me out of the cab, and I almost fell flat on my face before my wits returned enough for me to straighten my knees. I tried to shake off the cobwebs as Al slammed the car door behind me and the cab sped off.
“You used magic on me!” I said, suddenly feeling much more awake as
indignation flooded my system.
She had the grace to look guilty about it. “My specialty is illusion magic, but I’m pretty good at compulsion, too. I’m really sorry about that, but you were my only hope.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at her. “This expedition is over,”
I said. “And if you try sucking your damn lip again, I’m going to make you regret it.”
I waved my fist at her. I probably looked pretty ridiculous making threats like that, but I’d had enough self-defense training that I figured I could break her magical concentration if it came to that.
“I don’t need the compulsion anymore,” she said with a shrug. “We’re here.”
I finally took a moment to look around and saw that we were in a kind of run-down-looking residential neighborhood. Narrow two- or three-story townhouses lined the street, their facades grimy and weathered. Most of the townhouses had bars over the first-floor windows, which didn’t give me much in the way of warm fuzzies. Nor did the fact that I could see no less than three buildings with boarded up windows and doors that made me think “condemned.”
Al didn’t seem to care about the shabby neighborhood. Ignoring me and my indignation, she skipped up the stairs of the nearest townhouse and starting ringing the buzzer, pressing it over and over again without waiting for an answer.
She was practically vibrating with excitement.
I stayed on the sidewalk, glaring at her back, wondering if there was any way I could salvage the situation. The cab we’d ridden in was already long gone, and there wasn’t anot
her one in sight. Frankly, I didn’t think this was the kind of neighborhood that would see a lot of cab activity anyway. Not that I had any idea where we were, or how we were going to get back to Avalon from here. I didn’t even know how long I’d been asleep in the back of that cab.
My heart gave a little wrench as I realized my mom and dad must have heard about my disappearance by now. They’d be frantic with worry—assuming my mom wasn’t passed out drunk. I would owe them both a massive apology when this was all over.
As Al continued to lean on the door buzzer, I searched my purse for my phone. It wasn’t like my dad or Finn could come into London to get me, but at least I could let them know what was going on. Only my phone didn’t seem to be in my purse. Al must have taken it while I was asleep.
No one seemed to be coming to the door, but that didn’t discourage Al. She kept ringing the buzzer, over and over, occasionally pounding on the door with the flat of her hand.
“Let’s go, Al,” I said, raising my voice to be heard over her pounding. “He’s not home. Give me my phone so I can call us a cab.”
“I’m not leaving,” Al insisted, banging on the door again. “Gary! I know you’re in there. Answer the door!”
I wondered if she meant it literally when she said she knew he was in there.
Could her magic tell her that? I tilted my head up, looking for any signs of life in the windows, but the blinds were all shut tight.
“Al, come on,” I begged. “If he’s not answering, it’s because he’s not home or because he doesn’t want to. Either way, making a fool of yourself on the doorstep isn’t going to help. We have to get back.”
Al ignored me, kicking the door, because she wasn’t making enough noise already. One of the neighbors slid his second-floor window open and leaned out, giving us a nice view of his yellowed undershirt and his disgustingly hairy chest.
“Oy!” he shouted. “Shut the fook up!” His accent was so heavy I was
lucky—or, actually, unlucky—to have understood him at all.
Instead of being chastened, Al flipped the guy the bird without even looking at him. Things might have gotten ugly—I didn’t think Mr. Yellow Undershirt was the kind of guy to take well to a girl flipping him off—except at that moment, Gary’s door opened. Al gave a happy little cry and flung herself forward.
Scowling, Mr. Yellow Undershirt slammed his window shut and retreated while I got my first look at Gary, the love of Al’s life. I was not impressed.
Apparently, he’d been slow to open the door because he’d been in bed, though a quick glance at my watch told me it was almost four in the afternoon. His baby-fine, mouse brown hair was sticking up at odd angles, and he was wearing a ratty brown and white striped bathrobe. Stubble peppered his face and neck, and his eyes were bloodshot and dopey-looking.
“Althea?” he asked in the low, hoarse voice of a dedicated smoker. “What . . .
? How . . . ?” He hugged her back, but he didn’t look particularly happy to see her.
“I was so afraid my mother had done something to you,” Al said, her face buried against his shoulder. She had to bend her neck at an awkward angle to manage that position, because Gary was shorter than she was.
Gary patted her back, then finally seemed to notice me. He looked even more puzzled. I wondered if he even knew Faeriewalkers existed. I’d never heard of one before I’d moved to Avalon, and I suspected that was true of just about everyone who lived in the mortal world. It was probably a real strain on his brain to figure out how a Fae girl had managed to come to his home in the mortal world.
“Er, I’m fine, luv,” he said, patting her back again.
Al pushed back from him finally, but she didn’t let go. “She threatened you, didn’t she?” Al asked. “That’s why you dropped out. And why you wouldn’t answer the phone.”
Gary looked sheepish. And guilty, though Al didn’t seem to notice that part.
“I value my hide, Al. Sorry, but she was real . . . persuasive. I wanted to at least leave word, but she said she’d kill me.” His accent was more upper-crust than you’d expect in this crappy neighborhood, and I could understand him much better than Yellow Undershirt Guy. I had the immediate suspicion that it was an affectation, maybe one he’d used to hide his background from Al.
My bullshit meter maxed out. He was just parroting back the explanation Al had already handed him, the one she wanted to hear. If he’d held up a sign saying
“I’m a sleazeball,” he couldn’t have been more obvious. Maybe he was afraid of what Al might do if she found out he’d dumped her and didn’t care enough to even answer the phone when she called.
“How . . . how can you be here?” he asked, shaking his head. “You’re Fae.”
“And the award for Best Statement of the Obvious goes to . . .” I muttered under my breath.
Al dabbed at her eyes and beckoned to me without turning. It was like she was afraid Gary would disappear if she let him out of her sight. Having no desire to get a closer look at Gary, whose bathrobe was starting to gape and reveal way more than I wanted to see, I stayed where I was.
“This is my friend Dana,” Al said, apparently unperturbed by my refusal to come closer. “She’s a Faeriewalker.”
Gary blinked. “What’s a Faeriewalker?”
Al gave him an abbreviated explanation, stressing the absolute necessity of keeping me close. I wondered if she was also trying to remind me why I couldn’t just turn around and walk away. I suspect the expression on my face was forbidding enough to make her worry I might forget—if she’d even bothered to look at me.
“So,” Al said, “are you going to invite us in, or are you going to keep us standing on the doorstep?”
Gary didn’t look thrilled about the prospect of letting us in, but he stepped aside and opened the door wider. I guess that was an invitation of sorts, though it surely wasn’t the level of enthusiasm Al had been hoping for. Personally, I didn’t want to set foot in the house. Gary had tripped my Creep-O-Meter the moment I’d laid eyes on him, and I didn’t think getting behind closed doors with him was all that safe.
If only I thought there was a chance in hell I could get Al to walk away. She accepted Gary’s invitation without even glancing at me to see if I was coming. I had to hurry to catch up. I thought we’d be okay with about fifteen yards between us, but I didn’t want to take any chances and planned to stay as close to her as possible. Which was going to make this touching reunion even more fun.
The inside of the townhouse was even more disreputable-looking than the outside. It looked like Gary furnished the place by Dumpster-diving. The carpet was a stained, puke-green shag, and the couch was some nubby, burnt-orange fabric with a big strip of duct-tape across one cushion—his idea of patching a rip, I guess—and three or four little round black patches that I took for cigarette burns.
Fast food wrappers and dirty dishes hid the coffee table from view, and the only decoration on the wall was a spiral-bound calendar featuring a topless babe and a red Corvette. Add to that the eye-watering stench of stale smoke and spilled beer, and I figured Gary’s house was now officially the grossest place I’d ever set foot in.
Even Al, looking around and frowning, wasn’t completely oblivious to the squalor. The frown turned to a narrow-eyed scowl when she caught sight of the girlie calendar. Gary blushed and hurried over to block her view and take it down.
“That’s not mine,” he said. “It’s Tom’s. My house-mate.”
“Oh,” Al said in a small voice, and for the first time, I thought she might be starting to rethink this whole adventure.
“Have a seat,” he said, waving at the couch. “I’ll get us something to drink.”
He didn’t wait for us to agree, hurrying out of the room like a cockroach scurrying away from the light. Al was regarding the disgusting couch doubtfully, and I sidled over to her.
“Let’s get out of here, please,” I said. “You got what you came for. You know he’s okay. We obviously—”
Al abruptly forgot her distaste for the couch, sitting down and crossing her arms over her chest. “This may be the last time I ever get to see him. I want a proper visit.”
I wanted to point out that you couldn’t have a “proper” visit in a stinking hovel, especially not when the guy you were visiting was a loser who’d probably been in bed when we came by because he was sleeping off a bender. I’d been around my mother in that state often enough to know it when I saw it. But Gary came back into the room, carrying two open cans of beer. He handed one to Al, who accepted with enthusiasm, then offered the other to me.
“No thanks,” I said, wrinkling my nose. My mom’s drinking had given me something of a complex about alcohol, but even aside from that, I thought beer was disgusting. How anyone could develop a taste for something that smelled and tasted so foul I’d never know.
“Aw, c’mon, luv,” Gary wheedled, his accent growing a little heavier. “’Ave a drink to celebrate our reunion.” He thrust the beer at me again.
“No. Thanks.”
To tell you the truth, this guy creeped me out enough that I wasn’t sure I’d even have accepted a soft drink from his hand. Not if it was already open, anyway.
Al had no such qualms, gulping her beer like she was parched. I think she was more unnerved by the squalor of Gary’s living conditions than she’d have liked to admit. Maybe she thought a little alcohol would make the place look better. I didn’t think anything short of a wrecking ball would do the trick.
Gary gave me a sour look, really insulted that I’d refused his beer. He plopped down next to Al on the sofa and put his arm around her, letting her cuddle into him. He shoved aside some of the trash on the coffee table, putting the other can of beer down before reaching over and putting his hand on Al’s thigh in an uncomfortably intimate gesture.
I was still standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, unable to bear the idea of sitting down. I sure as hell wasn’t sitting next to Gary on the sofa, and if I wanted to sit on the other chair in the room, I’d have to move the porno magazine first. Maybe if I stood there looking impatient, it would hurry things along.
