by Box Set
He says nothing for several moments, and when I raise my eyes I find him watching me. “That was actually an awesome fight,” he says quietly.
“It was.”
After a few more moments of awkwardness, he places his pages on the magically-erected table in front of him. “So what did you want to check with me?”
Seems the argument is over.
I begin to relax as Ryn and I discuss the details of our assignment and how best to report them. When I’m finished scribbling more notes, I turn to the blank sheets of reed paper and begin writing the report in full from the beginning. Silence fills the space between us as we both become absorbed in our work. It’s a comfortable silence, though. It reminds me of the way we used to do our homework together in junior school.
And that’s when it hits me: Somehow, after spending years hating each other, we got our friendship back. I can’t pinpoint exactly when it happened, but it happened. Ryn isn’t just the guy I used to know, or the guy I had to put up with during our final assignment. He’s someone I actually enjoy being around. Someone I can shout at and fight with and have everything go back to normal in just a few minutes.
I smile to myself and continue working.
I reach the part of the assignment where I was hanging helplessly from a ceiling and sit back with a groan. “I can’t believe how pathetic I was this past week.” I tap my stylus, currently in pen mode, against the table. “I feel like I lost some major points in the kick-butt department while dangling from a ceiling.”
Ryn looks up with a smile. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. It wasn’t what I’d call pathetic. More … endearing, perhaps.”
“Endearing?” I look at him in disbelief. “Now who’s being pathetic?”
He puts his stylus down. “You’re going to hate me for saying this.”
“Then don’t.”
“It was nice to see a more vulnerable side of you.”
I pretend to gag. “You did not just say that about me. Why not insult me properly and call me weak?”
“Because it wasn’t weakness. It was—”
“Endearing. Right. I got it. Let’s never talk about it again.” With heat creeping up my neck, I pick up my stylus and continue writing. I work quickly until I have to start describing our journey through the human realm. That’s when I get bored and my mind begins wandering. It continues wandering while I finish writing the report, and, by the time I reach the end, I have a question for Ryn. “Have either of your parents ever mentioned anyone named Angelica? A guardian they went to school with?”
Ryn rolls up his finished report. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”
“She’s Nate’s mother.”
“Halfling boy?” Ryn sets the scroll down and leans back on his hands. “His mother was at the Guild with our parents? In the same year?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. So a person our parents trained with turns out to be the mother of one of your assignments, who you then end up dating.”
“Yes. It’s unlikely, but it happened. Anyway, I was wondering if your parents ever mentioned her because it seems like she hated my mother and father.”
“Wait, how do you know this? Have you met her?”
With a sigh, I say, “I think I should tell you some stuff.”
Ryn sits forward. “Off-limits stuff?”
“Yes.”
“Awesome.” He rubs his hands together. “Give it to me.”
So I do. I go right back to the beginning and tell him about being kidnapped by Zell and Drake, and about deciding not to give Nate the Forget potion. I tell him about our time in the labyrinth, meeting Angelica, and the eye tattoo on Nate’s back. Then there’s Scarlet, and the shapeshifter I killed, and my date with Nate where he ended up handing me over to Zell, and all the things Zell said to me down in his dungeon when we were rescuing Calla. I tell Ryn everything
“Hectic,” he murmurs when I’ve finished speaking.
I nod. Then I take a deep breath and hold it in for a moment before plunging ahead with my final secret: Nate’s power over the weather.
“Are you serious?” Ryn says the moment I’m finished speaking. “So he’s the one who created that storm and the lightning that got into the Guild?”
“Well, I don’t know that, but probably.”
Ryn runs a hand through his hair. “Have you told Tora any of this?”
“No, and you can’t tell her, Ryn. You can’t tell anyone.”
“Look, I understand that you don’t want her to be mad at you, but this is important stuff. It sounds like Zell is trying to amass an army of specially skilled faeries to help him attack the Guild. Don’t you think whoever’s been investigating him for years would like to know about that?”
“They do know about it. I told Councilor Starkweather about all the trapped people we saw in Zell’s dungeon, remember? I’m sure she came to the same conclusion you just did. And she already knows that someone who can create and control storms has attacked the Guild. I could tell her Nate’s name and where he used to live in the human realm, but how exactly is that going to help?”
Ryn is quiet for a minute, obviously thinking over what I’ve said. “Okay, so I guess you don’t really need to tell the Council any of this. But what about Tora? Don’t you feel guilty keeping things from her?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “I do. Thanks for making me feel even worse.”
He gives me an innocent smile. “You’re welcome. Anyway, what you tell Tora is up to you, but since you’re sharing your secrets with me, perhaps I should share one of mine with you.” I raise an eyebrow as he rolls onto one side so he can dig in his pocket. He pulls out a silver chain with a white teardrop pendant and says, “I may have stolen something from the Guild.”
“Ryn!” Dangling from Ryn’s hand is none other than the eternity necklace. “Okay, you cannot guilt-trip me about keeping secrets from my mentor when you’ve stolen something this important from the Guild. What were you thinking?”
“I don’t trust the Silver Starky, remember? And she did lie to us. She said she’d send the necklace to the Seelie Queen immediately, but when I snuck into her office this morning, I found it buried beneath some papers in one of her drawers.”
“And why did you feel the need to sneak into her office and look for it?”
Ryn shrugs. “To see if she was lying.” He pushes the necklace back into his pocket. “I don’t think she was ever planning to give it to the Seelie Queen. She probably wanted to keep it for herself.”
“Or maybe she just hadn’t got around to sending it yet.”
“Or maybe—” Ryn raises a conspiratorial eyebrow “—she’s the spy Zell mentioned to you. Maybe she murdered that Seer last week. Maybe that’s why she was so insistent that we forget about what we saw in Zell’s dungeon. She doesn’t want us finding out that she’s involved.”
“No, no, no.” I shake my head. “The idea that the head of the Guild Council could be working with the Unseelie Court is both too preposterous and too scary to contemplate, so I’m going to go with my initial reaction: She hadn’t got around to sending the necklace to the Seelie Queen yet.”
“Well, despite the fact that I don’t agree with you,” Ryn says, “you are, of course, welcome to have your own opinion.” He shrinks the table back to a small wooden box, leaving my finished assignment pages to flutter onto the blanket. He lies back and puts his hands behind his head. “So I’m guessing that, in your opinion, I should put the necklace back?”
I hesitate before answering. What if the spy is Councilor Starkweather? She’ll take the necklace straight back to Zell, and then we’ll all be up against a powerful, immortal faerie. “I don’t know, Ryn.” I gather my neatly written pages and roll them together. “You decide. After all, you’re the one who took it.” I pack the scroll away and close my bag, remembering there’s something else I’m supposed to be asking Ryn about. “Your mother’s worried about you,” I say as I pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms ar
ound them.
“She’s my mother. She’s supposed to worry about me.”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Believe it or not, I can’t read minds,” Ryn says, “so I actually have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I roll my eyes. “The fact that you arrived home earlier looking like you’d just been in a fight? Which, apparently, you’ve done before, and which you did earlier this week while we were at the Harts’ house.”
“Oh, that.” He shrugs. “It’s just something I need to take care of for a friend.”
I watch him closely as I try to figure out what he’s got himself involved in. There’s no use guessing, though; it could be anything. “Okay, just tell me this: Should your mother be concerned about you or not?”
“Not. I’ll be done fighting people by graduation.”
“Graduation. Okay.” I rest my chin on my left knee. “Your friend is lucky to have you, you know, if you’re willing to get beaten up for him.”
“Yeah,” he says quietly, watching me from his comfortable position on the blanket. His eyes appear bluer than normal in the light cast by the glow-bugs around us. They’re dangerous, those eyes, because I keep finding myself captivated by them, even though I really have no business whatsoever being captivated by anything about Ryn. I can’t help it right now, though. Something about the way he’s watching me causes warmth to spread out from the lowest part of my belly right up to—
Friend, friend, friend, I remind myself quickly. I drop my gaze just as an unexpected whoosh sounds nearby. I jump to my feet, ready to face the threat, and find a branch blazing with blue and green flames above Ryn’s head.
“Whoa!” Ryn rolls over and springs up, a glittering knife in his hand. The fire vanishes, leaving wisps of smoke rising and curling in the air. Ryn’s eyes dart around as he searches the forest. “I can’t sense anyone’s magic except ours,” he says.
“Me neither.” My muscles, tensed and ready to fight, start to relax. “So where did those flames come from?”
Ryn lets his knife disappear before running a hand through his hair. “Probably just Creepy Hollow being creepy.”
I suddenly feel stupid for thinking it was anything more than that. Odd magical stuff happens all the time in Creepy Hollow. I’m just on edge because of the crazy, evil Unseelie faerie who happens to be after me. “Yeah, probably,” I say. “Just a weird, pyromaniac creature hiding in the trees or something.”
I resume my position on the blanket, and Ryn sits next to me with his back against one of the enormous gargan branches. “So, speaking of graduation …” he says.
I slide my hand into the top of my boot and remove my stylus. “We were speaking about graduation?”
“We were. And I was wondering which lucky graduate gets to spend the evening with you.”
I draw random, lazy patterns in the air, watching a faint path of silver trail after my stylus. “What do you mean?”
“You haven’t forgotten about the ball, have you?”
My hand freezes and the looping silver pattern vanishes. The ball. Dammit. I’ve spent so much time focusing on the graduation ceremony itself that I managed to forget about the ball I’m supposed to attend afterward. “Crap,” I mutter.
Ryn laughs. “You’ve got to be the only girl who’s overlooked the part where you get dressed up and have fun.”
“And who are you going with, Ryn? I don’t see anyone lining up to invite you.”
“That’s because the combination of my good looks and charm is so dazzling that most girls prefer to admire me from a distance.”
“Right.” I resume my random pattern-drawing. “Or it could be because you act like a total jackass in front of most people.”
“I love,” Ryn says, “how your need for complete honesty overrides any concern you might otherwise have for my feelings.”
“Wait, you have feelings?” I allow my mouth to hang open in mock horror. “Wow, sorry, I had no idea.”
“I know a lot more about feelings than you’d think.”
“Well, you certainly know how to hurt them.” The moment the words leave my mouth I know I’ve gone too far. “Sorry, that’s all in the past, I know.”
After a pause, Ryn says, “Yeah, whatever.” He picks up his stylus and transforms my silver pattern into floating drops of water. “Feelings aside, I was thinking perhaps you and I could go together, since neither of us is interested enough in the ball to bother with the stress of trying to find a date.”
I cross my arms. “And what makes you think I want to attend the ball with a jackass?”
“Because no one else is lining up to invite you?”
“Nice, Ryn. How could I possibly say no to an invitation like that?”
“You can’t.” He swirls the water droplets into a mini whirlpool in the air. “When someone as charming as me invites you to a ball, it’s impossible for you to do anything but lift your hand delicately to your forehead as you faint away, uttering the word ‘yes.’”
I glare at him. “My fainting days are over, so don’t count on that happening again.”
“Oh, but you were so good at it,” he says with a laugh. I aim my stylus at him, and he hurriedly says, “Okay, okay. All I need is a simple answer to a simple question: Will you be my date?”
“Fine. We can go to the ball together. But it isn’t a date.”
“No. Of course not. It’s simply a convenient arrangement that suits us both.”
“Yes.” I watch the whirlpool spinning for a few moments before closing my eyes and groaning. “Ugh, I really wish we didn’t have to attend that part.”
“Why? That’s supposed to be the fun part, V.” He nudges me with his shoulder.
“Maybe for some, but for me … well, it’s just not my thing. Dressing pretty, decorating my hair, painting my face with fancy makeup spells.” I sigh. “I can kick butt at every single exercise in the training center, but I can’t kick butt in there. In a ballroom.” The word almost tastes bad. “That’s for pretty girls like Aria and Jasmine.”
Ryn spins the droplets into a ball of water. “You did a good job at the Harts’ cocktail party.”
“That was part of an assignment. Of course I did a good job.”
“And at Zell’s masquerade.”
“Again, that was like an assignment.”
Ryn sighs and shakes his head.
“What?”
“No matter what I say, you’re going to disagree with me, so this is where my comments end.”
“Good.”
“But there is one other thing.” He waves the ball of water toward me until it’s hovering over my head. With a flick of his stylus, the swirling liquid drops through the air.
I gasp as the cold water hits my neck and travels down my back. “What the freak, Ryn?”
His grin is wide as he says, “Told you I’d get you back.”
Fifteen
“Raven!” I stand on tiptoe and wave as Raven turns around, her deep brown and magenta hair sliding over her shoulder. She peers through the throng of people filling the main lane of the Creepy Hollow Shoppers’ Clearing. I shout her name again. When she spots me, she smiles and waves. I hurry past open stalls, shop fronts built into trees, and busy faeries getting their shopping done. “Hey, thanks for waiting.”
“Sure.” She greets me with a hug. “I don’t often see you here. Shouldn’t you be hitting a punching bag or practicing backflips or something?”
“I’ve handed in my final report. My training is officially finished.”
“Congratulations!” Raven gives me another hug, then pulls me to the side of the path where we’re out of the way. “You must be bored out of your mind now.”
Ha, she knows me so well. “Yeah, kind of,” I say with a grin. “Anyway, I came looking for you because I, um, need your help.”
Raven hooks her thumb around the strap of the shrinking shopping bag on her shoulder. “Oh dear. Another fashion emergency?”
“Yes. I forgot that there’s a ball after the graduation ceremony, and I don’t exactly have anything to wear.” I put my hands together and do my best imitation of Filigree’s kitten eyes. “Will you please make a dress for me?”
“Vi, don’t be silly.” Raven laughs and my stomach sinks. “I started designing your grad dress months ago.”
My stomach halts its descent. “You did? Oh. Wow, thanks.”
“Of course. It’s one of the most important occasions of your life. You have to look good.” She hooks her arm through mine and leads me down the road. “It’s going to be absolutely perfect for you, Vi.”
Oh dear. That doesn’t sound good. “Um, it’s not purple, is it?”
She smiles. “I know how you feel about purple stuff, so no. It isn’t purple.”
“Okay, and nothing big and puffy, right? I don’t want to be wading through five hundred layers of fabric.”
“It won’t be big.”
“And no overly revealing slits. That cocktail dress I wore at the Harts’ party was way too—”
“Vi.” She stops and places her hands on my shoulders. “Trust me. I know you’re mainly indifferent when it comes to fashion, but even you will love this dress when it’s done.”
The tree we’re heading toward has an archway cut out of the bark and a sign above it that says Farrow’s Fantabulous Fabrics. We walk beneath the archway and into a gigantic room filled with roll upon roll of every imaginable material. There’s the regular stuff, like colors, patterns, and textures that do nothing but lie still. Then there’s the cool stuff, like fabric made from dewdrops, or flames, or smoke, or serpent scales that change color. This must be Raven’s idea of heaven.
“Oh, that is perfect for the client I met with yesterday!” She runs toward a sparkly fabric that twinkles with every color of the rainbow. I wouldn’t be caught dead in it. “I’ll take the entire roll,” she tells the shop keeper.
