by Jenna Black
“The master suite is on the second floor,” my dad said, “and there’s a guest room and small library on the third floor.” Apparently he didn’t consider the garage a floor. “Would you like to change clothes and freshen up? Then maybe we can get to know each other better.”
“That would be great,” I said, trying to sound chipper, though now that I was here I felt nervous and awkward.
“Make yourself at home,” Dad said, gesturing at a door that I’d thought was a coat closet but that turned out to be a stairway. I guess since the Fae weren’t big on coats, they didn’t need coat closets.
I stopped with my foot on the first step, turning to look at my dad over my shoulder. “You’re not going to lock me in, are you?”
He looked shocked by the suggestion. “Of course not! You’re my daughter, not my prisoner. And I am not your aunt Grace.”
I sure hoped not. I nodded and started up the stairs, though I have to admit I was very tense as I climbed. When I made it to the third floor (or fourth floor, depending on your point of view), I saw that the guest room was about as inviting as the living room had been. Sparsely furnished, everything with that plain, stripped-down look of Danish modern, and instead of a cushy bed, there was a hard futon.
I felt better about the room when I saw my suitcase and backpack sitting neatly in the corner.
Never before had I been so glad to see my own clothing. I picked out my favorite pair of cargo pants and a heavyweight sweatshirt that might be enough to counter the chill of an Avalon early summer day. And I was more than ready to change into fresh underwear, since the ones I was wearing were still damp from being washed in the sink last night.
Feeling a bit paranoid, I didn’t close the bedroom door, afraid that if I did, I’d be locked in despite Dad’s promise. However, I did close the bathroom door most of the way as I hastily changed. I kept listening hard for the terrible click of a door closing, of a lock turning, but it didn’t happen.
When I was finished changing, I brushed my hair and secured it in a ponytail, then dabbed on some clear lip gloss. A light dusting of blush on my cheeks, and I looked almost like myself again, except for the haunted expression in my eyes.
Oh, well. I had a right to look haunted.
Feeling much more comfortable in my own clothes, I headed back downstairs to face my dad once more.
He was sitting on the sofa, which faced an oversized plasma TV instead of the view, thank goodness. An ice bucket on legs stood off to the side, and there were a pair of champagne flutes on the coffee table. I must have looked as surprised as I felt, because Dad answered my question without me having to ask.
“It’s not every day a man gets to meet his long-lost daughter,” he said. “A celebration is in order, don’t you think?”
“Um, I’m only sixteen.” The excuse hadn’t worked with Kimber and her posset, and it didn’t work with Dad either.
“I guarantee we won’t be arrested by the drinking-age police. Now come join me. We have a lot to talk about.”
At this point, I didn’t much want to talk about anything. I wanted to pretend for a while that this trip had gone exactly as planned, that I’d come straight here from the airport and this was the beginning of a better life.
I took a seat on the other end of the sofa as Dad went about opening the champagne. I was tensed and ready for the pop of the cork, but that didn’t stop me from jumping anyway. The corners of Dad’s eyes crinkled, but he didn’t full-out laugh at me.
He poured us each a glass, then handed one to me. I looked at it doubtfully. The milk, honey, and nutmeg in Kimber’s posset had toned down the taste of the whiskey, but this was pure champagne. I know a lot of other kids my age would be thrilled to get to drink something with alcohol in it. But those kids hadn’t lived with my mom.
“Drink up, Daughter,” Dad said.
It shows the state of mind I was in that I couldn’t force myself to take a sip until after I’d seen him drink. Why I’d suspect my father of wanting to poison me was anyone’s guess. Any day now, I was going to start worrying that “They” were watching my every move. I rolled my eyes at myself and took a tentative taste of the champagne.
The posset had been surprisingly tasty. The champagne … not so much. I couldn’t help wrinkling my nose at the flavor, though I suppose it was rather rude.
“It’s an acquired taste,” my father told me.
I put the glass down on the coffee table. “It’s not a taste I’m real anxious to acquire.”
“And why is that?” he asked, with a tilt of his head.
I looked away from him and gave him a half shrug. “Well, you know my mom.”
A beat of silence. “What about her?”
She’d been a lush since my earliest memory. It had never occurred to me that there might have been a time in her past when she hadn’t been. I swallowed hard.
“Didn’t she drink too much when you were dating her?”
“Ah,” Dad said, and he put his own glass down. “I understand. She drank no more and no less than most women her age.” He sighed. “But I’m not entirely surprised she developed a problem with alcohol. There is no place on earth quite like Avalon, and I imagine cutting oneself off from it entirely would be … difficult on someone who’d spent all her life here.”
His words detonated like a bomb somewhere inside me.
My mom hadn’t been an alcoholic when she lived in Avalon. She’d left Avalon not because she wanted to, but because she was determined to protect me from the hell that was Avalon politics. And leaving her home had been so hard on her, she’d started to drink too much.
Oh, God. All these years I’d spent despising her, blaming her … And it was my fault she was a drunk.
Chapter Fifteen
Either I was hiding what I felt better than I thought, or my dad wasn’t very observant. He’d shattered my entire view of my mom with just a few casual words, and he didn’t even notice.
“Well, if you don’t want the champagne, how about some tea?” he asked.
I didn’t want tea. I didn’t want anything, except, maybe, not to have heard what I’d just heard. But I nodded anyway, and Dad headed off to the kitchen, giving me a few minutes to collect myself. It wasn’t nearly enough time, but I’d been dealt enough shocks in the last few days that the pain turned to numbness pretty quickly. I didn’t think the numbness would last forever, and the fallout when it wore off was probably going to be nasty, but for now, I was grateful for it.
The phone rang, the sound so mundane that it helped draw me out of my head and back into the real world. I heard my father answer from the kitchen.
“Yes, she’s here,” he said, and he sounded really amused. There was a silence, during which the tea kettle started to whistle. “Of course I did,” my father said, and the kettle’s whistle cut off abruptly. “What kind of a fool would I be if I didn’t?” He paused for whoever was on the other end to say something, and then he laughed. The sound grated on my nerves for some reason I couldn’t define. Maybe because there was a tinge of nastiness in it. Or maybe that was just my imagination. “I’ll give her your warmest regards,” my father said, “but I sincerely doubt she wishes to speak with you right now. It was good of you to call and check on her.”
There was a beep of the phone turning off, and then some clattering around in the kitchen. Dad came back into the living room with a tea service on a tray. As a general rule, the people of Avalon weren’t as British as I’d been expecting, but they did seem to love their tea.
He had already poured two cups, with their telltale little specks on the bottom that said he’d never dream of using a tea bag. I was feeling miserable enough that the tea was more appealing than usual. I plunked two lumps of sugar into my cup and stirred the contents around absently.
“Was that Ethan?” I asked, because when I added up the half of the conversation I’d heard, it only made sense if he’d been talking to Ethan.
“Yes,” my father said. “He was calling
to make sure you’d made it home all right.” His smile turned sardonic. “And to find out whether I’d told you who he was, of course. Was I correct in assuming you didn’t wish to speak to him?”
I nodded and finally stopped stirring my tea. The sugar had dissolved long ago. “Would you have let me talk to him if I’d wanted to?”
His eyebrows arched in surprise. “Of course. I’m not fond of him, and I’m even less fond of his father, but I won’t dictate whom you may or may not speak to.”
I cocked my head at him. So far, he wasn’t seeming very dad-like. “There are plenty of fathers who wouldn’t let their sixteen-year-old daughters talk to guys they don’t approve of.”
He put his teacup down and turned to face me fully, his expression grave. “You are not a child, and I will endeavor never to treat you as one,” he told me.
I almost argued with him. At my age, I spent most of the time trying to convince people I wasn’t just a kid, but right now, I wanted to be. I wanted to be taken care of, to have the responsibilities taken off my shoulders, to have someone else make all the tough decisions.
If that’s what you really wanted, a little voice in my head whispered, you could have stayed with Aunt Grace in the first place. Then you wouldn’t have had to make any decisions at all.
“Do you have any questions for me?” my dad asked. “Avalon tends to overwhelm the average tourist; I can’t imagine what you must be thinking after everything that’s happened.”
I’d passed “overwhelmed” long ago. But despite all my turmoil, I did have some questions. First and foremost: “What’s to stop Aunt Grace or Ethan from kidnapping me again?”
“My resources are considerable,” he said. “You’ll always be safe in this house. Neither Grace nor Ethan is strong enough to overcome the spells I’ve placed on it.”
“What about Lachlan?”
Dad dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “Lachlan is a non-issue. He may be a physically impressive specimen, and I would not wish to face him in combat, but it would take something more sophisticated than brute force to breach my defenses.” His voice held a hint of contempt that I didn’t understand.
“But he is Fae, right? Even though he doesn’t look it?”
Dad didn’t actually wrinkle his nose, but his facial expression wasn’t far from it. “He is a creature of Faerie, but he is of the lower orders. His sort is not customarily permitted in Avalon, but with Grace championing him…”
Apparently, Dad was a snob. Lachlan might have been my jailor, but he was still one of the nicest people I’d met in Avalon. I felt almost offended by Dad’s attitude. I must have looked it, too, because he traded the nose-in-the-air expression for one of rueful amusement.
“We are a very class-conscious bunch, we Fae,” he said. The amusement faded. “You must understand that although Avalon has officially seceded from Faerie, the Fae are still Fae. We recognize one another as Seelie or Unseelie, even though technically we don’t owe allegiance to the Courts anymore. And in Faerie, the concept of all men being equal is so ridiculous as to be almost sacrilege. The Sidhe—what you think of when you think of Fae—are the aristocracy of Faerie. Lachlan is not Sidhe. I am.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, still feeling defensive on Lachlan’s behalf. “So what you’re saying is that because you’re Sidhe, you’re better than him?”
I expected him to say something placating. Instead, he just looked me in the eye and said, “Yes.”
I blinked in shock. There were a lot of people in this world who thought they were better than everyone else, but I couldn’t ever remember hearing anyone actually admit they felt that way.
“Lachlan is a troll,” my father continued. “He wears a human glamour—if he didn’t, even Grace wouldn’t have been able to bring him in legally—but that doesn’t change what he is beneath.”
I felt sick to my stomach. Dad wasn’t just a snob—he was a bigot. I had wanted to like him, maybe even love him eventually, but I couldn’t imagine liking a bigot.
Dad leaned toward me, and it was all I could do not to lean away in response.
“The Fae of Avalon play at being human,” he told me, “but we’re not. We will always be creatures of Faerie first, citizens of Avalon second. Some young bucks like Alistair Leigh think they can change that, but the Fae do not change. We will never be an egalitarian people, nor will we ever break free from the Courts.
“We belong to the Court of our parents, and we belong to that Court as long as we live. Anyone who says otherwise is either deluded or naive.”
I had a feeling there was a subtle message in my father’s words. We belong to the Court of our parents. In other words, even though I’m half human, I “belong” to the Seelie Court. Of course, he’d already given me that message when he’d sent me the cameo. I just hadn’t been able to read it.
“That is the reason tensions always run so high when it is time for a Fae to take the position of Consul,” my father continued. “Whether the Consul is Seelie or Unseelie matters little to Avalon’s human citizens, but to the Fae…” He shuddered theatrically, then flashed me another rueful smile. “I’d like to hate your mother for spiriting you away, not even letting me know you exist.” The smile faded, and he sighed. “But try as I might, I can’t blame her.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything at all. I could blame my mom for a lot of things she’d done, but trying to keep me out of Avalon wasn’t one of them. If I’d known the truth from the beginning, I never would have come.
I leaned forward to put my cup, still half-full, on the table. As if it had a will of its own, the cameo slid out from beneath my shirt. I was sure my dad noticed, though he didn’t say anything. It would probably have been a good time to confront him about sending it to me without explaining the significance, but I just didn’t want to deal with that bit of subtle deceit right now.
“I never did finish answering your question,” my father said, and I was relieved he didn’t force the issue of the cameo. “You are protected in the house because of the strength of my spells. Outside the house, you are vulnerable, so you must never leave the house alone.”
My heart sank. Maybe Dad was going to keep me prisoner just like Aunt Grace.
“I will hire a … companion for you,” he continued. “When you leave the house, you must be with me or with your companion.”
“By ‘companion,’ you mean, like, a bodyguard?” That idea was just too weird for words.
“Something like that, yes. It’s for your own safety.”
Yeah, and it was supposedly for my own good that Grace had locked me up. However, I knew an argument I couldn’t win when I heard it, so I didn’t bother trying. At least I wouldn’t be cooped up all day anymore. Maybe I’d even get to see some of the nice spots in Avalon instead of exploring dark, creepy tunnels in the heart of the mountain.
That idea perked me up a bit, and I managed a tentative smile for my dad. I wasn’t too happy about the whole bigotry thing, but other than that, Dad seemed relatively nice. I had my own clothes, and an almost-comfortable room to call my own. And I would finally have a chance to play tourist, if only for a little while.
Things were looking up.
Chapter Sixteen
Dad took me out to lunch at a quaint sidewalk café in the heart of Avalon’s shopping district. Avalon is one of the last hold-outs in the battle against chain stores and fast food restaurants. Most of the stores were mom-and-pop types, and the restaurants were unique. But even Avalon isn’t immune to the changing times. Right across from the café where we ate lunch, there was a Starbucks, and a little ways down the street, there was a Gap.
The “companion” Dad had hired joined us just as we were finishing lunch. I was leaning back in my chair, doing a bit of people-watching, when a man caught my eye. He was striding toward us purposefully, and he looked like he’d just come from Central Casting after auditioning for the part of a secret service goon. Tall, muscular, unsmiling, wearin
g a dark suit and—get this—dark glasses. All he needed was one of those curly rubber thingamabobs hanging from his ear and he’d be perfect.
Dad smiled when Secret Service Man approached, standing up and holding out his hand. Secret Service Man didn’t smile back, although he did shake hands and nod something that might have been a greeting.
“Perfect timing, Finn,” Dad said. “We were just finishing up.” In fact, the waitress chose that moment to dart by and return Dad’s credit card. He signed the receipt without even looking. “I’d like you to meet my daughter, Dana.”
Finn gave me the same formal nod he’d given my father. I had to struggle not to laugh. I wondered if there was a bodyguard stereotype he didn’t fit. I mirrored the nod, and if Finn had a clue I was mocking him, it didn’t show.
Dad sat back down, though Finn remained on his feet at high alert.
“I have some business to take care of this afternoon,” Dad told me, and I realized I didn’t even know what he did for a living. He went on before I had a chance to ask. “Finn will take good care of you while I’m gone and will escort you home when you’re through.” He opened up his wallet and pulled out a generous handful of euros. “I figured you might want to do some shopping while you’re in the neighborhood. I believe you Americans call it ‘retail therapy.’”
That made me chuckle. Yeah, some retail therapy might be just what the doctor ordered. Though I’d never been shopping with a big, hulking goon in dark sunglasses looming over my shoulder before. It ought to be … interesting.
I took the money Dad was handing me, then gasped when I saw it was five hundred euros. I guess when you’re in the big leagues like my dad, you don’t worry too much about having your pocket picked. I opened my mouth to protest that it was way too much money, but he interrupted me before I could.
