by Jenna Black
“What the hell were you thinking?” I asked as I practically fell out of the closet, tripping over a tennis racket on the way out. Who knew the Fae played tennis? How terribly … ordinary.
Kimber grabbed my shoulders before I did a face-plant, but I jerked away from her. Unfortunately, I then stepped on a shoe. My ankle gave way, and I landed on my butt. And I’d thought I was in a bad mood before I got out of the closet!
I sat on the floor, peeling strands of hair away from my sticky, sweaty face. I glared first at the strappy red sandal with the ridiculously high heel that had toppled me, then at Kimber, who looked like she was about to bust a blood vessel trying not to laugh. I wasn’t finding it anywhere near so funny.
I scrambled to my feet with as much dignity as I could muster—which was about zero—and wished I were a few inches taller so I didn’t have to look up at Kimber.
“‘Why don’t you look in the closet?’” I said, doing a terrible impression of Kimber’s accent. “Were you trying to get me caught?”
She rolled her eyes—she seemed to do that a lot—and gave me a condescending smile. “If I’d acted like I had something to hide, Grace would have torn the place apart searching for you. This way, she wasn’t expecting to find anything, so she didn’t look very hard.”
I hated to admit that Kimber’s logic made sense. So I didn’t. “I practically had heart failure when she opened that door. At least you could have warned me what you were planning to do.”
“Sorry,” she said, but she didn’t sound terribly repentant.
Ignoring me, she started shoving stuff back into the closet. I could have helped her, I suppose, but I wasn’t feeling all that helpful.
“Are you all right?” I asked grudgingly.
Kimber rubbed her reddened cheek. “I’m fine,” she said with a rueful smile. “I should know better than to mouth off to someone like her.
“I guess we’re going to have to find you somewhere else to stay,” she continued, still cramming things into any available space. “Grace could come by for another surprise inspection, and I don’t want to assume we’ll get lucky twice.”
“I’ve already got a place to stay,” I said. “With my father.”
Kimber frowned at me. “You mean you will have a place to stay, when he gets out of jail. I checked on his status while you were hiding in the bathroom. He’s scheduled to come up before the Council tomorrow. But at least for today, he’s still locked up.”
I stifled a curse. My heart sank as I began to realize how thoroughly my life sucked right now. I was on my own, without a penny to my name or even a change of clothes, in a country so foreign there should be a new word for it, and with nowhere to go. I wanted to go home. Who would have thought it would come to this within two days of my setting foot in Avalon?
“I have to get out of Avalon,” I said, talking more to myself than to Kimber. Grace had said I wouldn’t be safe even outside of Avalon, but I wasn’t so sure. My mom and I had gotten really good at relocating over the years, and because she was always trying to make sure my dad couldn’t find us, we’d learned how to move without leaving a trail. Sure, I wanted to meet my dad and all, but not if it meant staying here and dodging Aunt Grace and Spriggans and who knew what other nightmares might come out of the woodwork.
“It sounds good in theory,” Kimber said, closing the closet door and turning to me with a look of sympathy on her face. “But your aunt Grace is captain of the border patrol, and you know she’ll have the Gates on high alert looking for you. Even if you could get through immigration without a passport.”
“But I’m an American citizen,” I whined. “They can’t keep me here against my will.” Maybe I could put in a call to the U.S. Embassy in London and they could get me out of here.
Kimber put her hands on my shoulders, giving them a firm squeeze. “You’re a Faeriewalker. The government of Avalon won’t give a damn if keeping you here against your will causes some kind of international incident. You’d be considered worth the fallout.”
Great. Just great. I was trapped in Avalon, my aunt was hunting me, my dad was in jail, and the only people who seemed to be on my side were a pair of Fae teenagers I barely knew.
Kimber gave my shoulders another squeeze before she let go. “It’ll be all right. Between Ethan and me, I’m sure we can keep you safe until your father is free.”
“Thanks,” I said, my throat tightening. She and Ethan were by far the best thing that had happened to me since I’d set foot in Avalon. If it weren’t for them, I’d still be locked up in Aunt Grace’s cell—or worse. “I’m really glad you guys came for me last night.”
Kimber smiled at me, but there was something strangely sad about the expression. “We’ll have to lay low during the day, but tonight when it’s dark, we’ll get you out of here to somewhere safer.”
“Safer like the cave last night?” I mumbled, but though I was sure Kimber heard me, she didn’t respond.
“Grace probably has someone watching my apartment and Ethan’s, so you have to stay inside and stay away from windows.”
Sounded like a fun day. “If I’m going to skulk around in the shadows waiting for nightfall,” I said, “then I want to spend some time getting a crash course in magic. What it can do, how it works, stuff like that. I’m just about clueless.”
She didn’t look happy about the idea. “Ethan’s the magic expert in the family,” she said.
I shrugged. “I’m not asking you to show me magic. I’m asking you to tell me about it. You can do that, can’t you?”
She sighed. “Fine. But I could use another hot posset first.”
I could get used to drinking hot possets, I decided as I took a sip from my steaming mug. My mom had tried making me warm milk a couple of times when I was a kid and couldn’t sleep, but it had been totally gag-worthy. This was sooo much better.
At my insistence, Kimber had used a lot less whiskey this time, though she’d poured some extra into her own mug.
“Do your parents know you put whiskey in your posset?” I asked.
Kimber sniffed in what looked like disdain. “They wouldn’t care if they did.”
She made sure to stay between me and the living room window as we retreated into her bedroom, where the heavy curtains would guarantee no one saw me. She sat on the edge of her bed, and I sat on a comfy chair tucked into a corner under a floor lamp. On the table by the chair sat a textbook that looked like it weighed about eight tons, and a dog-eared, yellowed paperback. I was nosy enough to peek at the titles. The textbook was Calculus of a Single Variable: Early Transcendental Functions, and the paperback was … The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, which I remembered reading when I was about eight. I blinked and looked back and forth between the two books and Kimber. Her cheeks turned a delicate shade of pink.
“Sometimes I need a break from ponderous academic reading,” she said with a shrug.
“So you’re a math major?” I asked, because I couldn’t imagine anyone having a textbook like that if they weren’t really, really into math. She didn’t look like any math geek I’d ever met. Hell, Ethan had said she was two years younger than him, and Kimber had said Ethan was eighteen—which made Kimber way too young for college, unless she was some kind of a prodigy.
“I haven’t declared a major yet,” she said. “But I’m leaning toward engineering.”
A Fae engineer. It just sounded … wrong. And how many jobs were there for engineers in Avalon? It wasn’t like engineering would be a useful skill in Faerie, so if she wanted to make use of her degree, she’d have to do it here. Of course, considering the quality of her clothes and furniture, she might be one of those annoying people who don’t have to work for a living.
“And in case you’re wondering,” Kimber continued, “Ethan will be a freshman in the fall, and I’ll be a sophomore. He may have gotten the magic in the family, but I got the brains.”
The look on her face said she wasn’t happy about that, which surprised me. C
onsidering her obvious rivalry with her brother, you’d think she’d be thrilled to be ahead of him in school.
“That must drive Ethan nuts,” I said, and yes, I was fishing.
Kimber took a sip of her posset before answering. “Actually, he couldn’t care less. He’s got the magic, and that’s what counts.”
I felt a surge of indignation on Kimber’s account. “You don’t think being incredibly smart counts for something?”
She smiled wryly. “To humans, maybe. To the Fae, not so much.” She tilted her head to one side. “In human terms, it would be like Ethan was a superstar football player, and I was the brainiac younger sister. Who gets all the glory in that situation?”
I saw her point, but still … “That sucks.”
She laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “Tell me about it.” She sobered quickly. “Actually, Ethan has a lot in common with a human superstar athlete. He’s got an ego the size of Mount Everest, and he’s used to girls falling at his feet in admiration.”
The look in her eyes was a warning, but I pretended not to notice. I would come to my own conclusions about Ethan, thank you very much. It’s not that I didn’t believe what she was telling me—it’s just that I couldn’t help hoping I meant more to Ethan than a notch on his bedpost.
I didn’t think talking about Ethan was a good way to further what I was beginning to think was a budding friendship, so I changed the subject.
I cleared my throat. “So, about magic…” Not very subtle, but I wasn’t sure subtlety would work.
Kimber stared at me long and hard before she finally allowed our previous subject to drop. She shook her head at me in a last sign of disapproval, then asked, “What would you like to know about it?”
I took another sip of my posset as I tried to figure out what to ask first. “What can it do?” I asked, then decided that was probably the stupidest, vaguest question ever. But Kimber didn’t find it as stupid as I did.
“In theory, magic can do just about anything, if the caster is skilled enough.” Her eyes glazed over as she searched for what she wanted to say. “Magic is an elemental force, native to Faerie. It’s not quite sentient, but it’s close.”
I shivered, because the idea of sentient magic was just, well, creepy.
“When you cast a spell, you draw the magic into your body—kind of like when you draw a deep breath before you dive into a pool. Then you release the magic you’ve drawn in, and—if you’re any good at it—it does what you want it to do.
“We vary in how much magic we can draw to ourselves—the more magic we can draw, the more dramatic a spell we can cast. At least in theory. In reality, drawing the magic is the easy part. Getting it to do what you want…” She shrugged. “That’s a lot harder.”
“So what is it that makes Ethan a magical prodigy?” I asked. I knew I was combining two of Kimber’s least favorite subjects—Ethan, and his superior magical abilities—but I wanted to understand about magic, and this seemed like a necessary step.
On cue, the corners of Kimber’s mouth tugged downward. “First, he can draw a lot of magic. Second, he has incredible endurance. Drawing and directing the magic is exhausting. And third, he’s scary-good at getting the magic to do what he wants.
“There are some spells that almost all of us can do. Things like locking doors, or lighting candles. They’re so common, they’re easy. It’s like teaching your dog to sit—just about anyone can manage that, but it would take someone with more skill to teach the dog a trick. If you have more skill with the magic, you can make it do things ordinary people can’t.”
“Like make me lose my voice?” I asked.
Kimber grinned. “Actually, that’s a very common spell, usually used against unruly children. No, something harder would be major healing spells, or illusions. Many of us could manage to do them with a lot of work and practice. Just like many humans could theoretically do brain surgery, but few are willing to put in the massive effort required to learn how to do it.
“What makes Ethan scary-good is that he can make the magic do lots of different, unrelated things. Most people have to really specialize. Sorry to use yet another analogy, but this is really hard to explain to a human. Let’s say a certain kind of magic—like healing magic—understands a specific language, like French. If you learn to speak French, then you can get the magic to do what you want. But the more complicated the spell, the more French you have to know to be able to do it. And maybe illusion magic speaks Mandarin, and attack magic speaks Swahili. You’d have to know three completely unrelated languages in order to communicate with them all. So that’s why most people have to specialize. Ethan, on the other hand, can pick up a new ‘language’ at the drop of a hat.”
And it gave Kimber a serious inferiority complex on top of the normal sibling rivalry. I couldn’t blame her, especially when Ethan seemed to enjoy lording his abilities over her.
“So is it some special language of magic you guys speak when you cast spells?” I asked.
She shook her head. “The words don’t matter. The language thing was just an analogy. People who are really good at magic can even use gestures instead of words. You just have to teach the magic that when you say ‘abracadabra,’ it means you want it to lock the door.”
I nodded sagely, still not sure I really got it, but figuring any further explanation would just make my head hurt. I decided it was high time I asked the question that was eating at me more and more as Kimber explained things. “Can Aunt Grace use magic to find me?”
“If she could, she’d have done it already. Locating spells are hard—finding someone or something that isn’t there is kind of an abstract concept and hard to communicate—so it’s one of those categories you really have to specialize in to be any good at.”
Well that was a relief, at least. “Does Aunt Grace have a specialty?”
Kimber looked kinda grim. “Yeah.”
“Well, what is it?” I prompted.
Kimber sighed. “Attack magic.”
And that blew my temporary relief right out of the water.
———
By the time Kimber had finished her extra-strength posset, she was distinctly mellow. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I was mellow myself, but I was a lot more relaxed than I’d been since I’d first set foot in Avalon. I’d never had a real close friend before. Sure, there’d been girls at my various schools who I’d sit with at lunch, or hang with for a while after school. But whenever I started to get close to someone, Mom would insist it was time for us to move again, and I’d be forced to start over at square one at my new school. After a while, getting too close was just more trouble than it was worth.
I was relaxed enough that I decided to ask a question that had been bugging me since I’d first caught sight of Kimber’s apartment. Was it only last night? I felt like I’d been here for years.
“How come your parents let you have your own apartment?” My mom wasn’t the most nurturing mother on the planet, but I had a feeling even she would balk at letting a sixteen-year-old live by herself.
Kimber looked down and away, and I knew I’d asked a sensitive question.
“Sorry,” I said, wishing I could suck my words back. “I’ll stop being so nosy.”
Kimber looked up and forced a smile. “It’s all right. You just hit a nerve, that’s all.”
I made to apologize again, but she cut me off with a gesture. “No, I mean it, it’s okay.” She let out a heavy sigh and seemed to brace herself before she began.
“My mom’s been out of the picture since I was ten,” she said, fidgeting with the ends of her hair while she talked. “She decided she wanted to go back to Faerie, but my dad was born in Avalon and wouldn’t leave. They agreed that Ethan and I would stay with Dad, and it’s been the three of us ever since.
“I’m sure my dad loves me in his own way, but he doesn’t really try to hide that Ethan’s his favorite. Well, Ethan wanted to move into student housing as soon as he graduated high school, and be
cause whatever Ethan wants, Ethan gets, Dad let him.
“Dad and I had a big fight a while later, and I told him I wanted to move out. I told him that since I was in college like Ethan, I should have my own apartment like Ethan.” Her eyes shimmered with tears, and her voice softened until it was little more than a whisper. “He said okay.”
I winced in sympathy. “Your dad must have been pretty dense not to get that he was supposed to say no.”
She laughed and blinked away the tears. “My dad is many things, but dense isn’t one of them. He knew what I wanted—he just didn’t care.” She took a deep breath and straightened her spine. “But it’s not that big a difference anyway. He’s a total workaholic, so he’s never home. I don’t really see him any less now than I did when I lived at home.”
Maybe my mom wasn’t so bad after all. All her embarrassing, neglectful, and downright stupid behavior was caused by alcohol. I knew that somewhere, buried beneath the booze-brain, was a loving mother. Kimber didn’t even have that.
“I think your dad really is dense,” I told Kimber. “He’s got to be if he doesn’t realize how lucky he is to have you.”
Her cheeks pinkened. “Thanks. But you don’t have to try to make me feel better. I’ve … come to terms with it.”
Yeah, right, I thought but didn’t say.
“Do you mind if I ask you something?” Kimber said.
“After all the questions I’ve lobbed your way, it’s gotta be your turn.”
“Why did you run away from home?”
I grimaced. Why did it have to be that question? “Geez, does everyone know I ran away?” I asked, trying to deflect the question. I’d never told anyone that my mom was a drunk—in fact, I’d gone to great lengths to avoid having anyone find out—and I wasn’t about to change that now.
One corner of Kimber’s mouth tipped up. “The fact that you’ve never shown any interest in calling home for help was kind of a giveaway, but I didn’t know for sure until now.”
