by Jenna Black
“Dana!” I heard my mom shout.
I was flying toward the door, ready to jerk it open and throw myself into my mom’s arms. But there was a wall between me and the door, and its name was Finn.
If he’d been human and I’d barreled into him like that, we probably both would have gone down. But he wasn’t human, and the impact didn’t even seem to rattle him, though I bounced backward and he had to grab me to keep me from falling.
“Let go of me!” I tried to pull free, not with any real expectation that he’d let me go. “That’s my mom!”
“Dana? Dana, are you all right?” My mom was pounding frantically on the door now.
“She’s fine,” Finn said. “Everybody calm down a minute.”
“I don’t know who you are,” my mom shouted, “but if you lay hands on my daughter you’ll wish you were never born!”
Yeah, my mom can spout clichés with the best of them. Usually, I would roll my eyes when she did that, but right now I was too desperate to see her with my own eyes.
“I am your daughter’s bodyguard,” Finn said. I tried one of the kicks Keane had taught me, and my foot made solid contact with Finn’s shin. He winced, but I hadn’t been cold-blooded enough to kick with the kind of force I’d need to really hurt him. He wasn’t the enemy, after all. “And if I open the door for you, it will break some of the protective spells Seamus has put on the house. That would be inadvisable at the moment.”
“You have no right to keep my daughter from me!”
“It is for her own protection. There have been attempts made on her life. I’m sure you’d prefer she be as well defended as possible.”
Oh, yeah. Telling my mom people were trying to kill me was guaranteed to improve her state of mind. Not!
“I’m okay, Mom,” I said before she could throw a fit. “Between Dad’s spells and Finn, I’m as safe as if I were packed in with cotton. Please don’t worry.”
I winced at my mom’s wrenching sob. Usually, her tears don’t have much effect on me anymore, but there was no denying she had a legitimate reason to be upset. Worse, I couldn’t think of anything to say that would make her feel any better. I thought the knowledge that both Queens of Faerie were on my enemies list would drive her completely around the bend.
“Seamus will be home around five,” Finn said. “Come back then and he’ll be able to put the defensive spells back up once he lets you in. Meanwhile, why don’t you go get some rest?”
Mom didn’t answer, just kept sobbing.
“Mom, I’m fine,” I said in my most reassuring voice. “Why don’t you go back to your hotel and call me so we can talk before Dad gets home?”
If we’d been playing out this scene at home, with my mom sitting on a doorstep bawling and otherwise making a public spectacle out of herself, I’d have been so embarrassed I’d want to sink into the floor. But my short stay in Avalon had already changed me. Of all the problems in my life, being embarrassed by my mom ranked somewhere around five million and one.
“Please, Mom,” I continued in the same voice, though I sounded more like I was talking to a frightened child than to my mother. “You’re here, and I’m safe, and I want to talk to you. Please hold it together and call me. So much has happened since I got here…”
I was kind of glad Finn was there, big, solid, and unmoved by my mother’s hysteria. If it had been just me, I’m not sure I could have stopped myself from opening the door and breaking my dad’s spells. Maybe nothing would have come of it and it would be perfectly safe. But I didn’t want to risk both my life and hers testing the idea.
Eventually, she cried herself out. At least for now.
“I’ll wait here until Seamus comes home,” she said between sniffles, and I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. Luckily, she couldn’t see me.
“What would be the point in that?” I asked, hoping she wasn’t completely past seeing logic.
“We can talk here.”
Obviously, more logic was needed. “If we talk here, we’ll both get hoarse from shouting through the door. And we’ll have an audience. Just go back to your hotel and call me. I’ll catch you up on everything that’s been going on.” I crossed my fingers when I said that, because I knew I was going to have to edit some of the details to keep Mom from completely wigging out. “Then you can come back and see me in person when Dad comes home.” And wouldn’t that be the cheerful little family reunion?
“Okay?” I prompted when she didn’t say anything for a while.
She sniffed again. “I just hate letting you out of my sight for even a moment now that I’ve found you.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”
There was another agonizingly long pause. Then she heaved an enormous sigh.
“All right. I’ll go back to the hotel. I’ll call you as soon as I get there.”
“I’ll be here,” I reassured her again.
I didn’t have super-hearing, so I couldn’t tell when she finally dragged herself away except by the fact that Finn’s posture relaxed.
“I’m sorry about kicking you,” I told him, realizing that had been completely petty of me.
Finn gave me a droll look. “Run through with swords, shot, et cetera, et cetera. Remember?”
I heard a loud snort and turned to find Keane, leaning in the doorway upstairs, looking down with disdain.
“That kick wouldn’t have dislodged a five-year-old, much less a Knight,” he said. “One wonders if you learned anything this morning.”
I glared up at him through narrowed eyes. I knew he was goading me, knew I should take the high road and ignore his crack. But I could already tell he was having a bad influence on me.
“One also wonders why you’d want me to break your own father’s leg,” I said through gritted teeth.
Keane opened his mouth for what was no doubt going to be an unpleasant response, but Finn cut him off.
“Enough, children,” he said, but he didn’t sound like he was really mad or anything. “Try to confine the hostilities to the practice mat.”
Keane didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who gave a crap about parental instructions, but to my surprise, he shut up. I had no interest in figuring out why that left me strangely disappointed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I retreated to my bedroom, leaving Finn and Keane to their own devices. I did not want an audience for the call with my mom. I sat in my room by the phone, watching the hands circle my watch.
Mom hadn’t mentioned which hotel she was staying at, and even if she had, I probably wouldn’t have known where it was, so I had no idea how long it would take her to get there. It was hard to believe it would take longer than twenty minutes to get anywhere in Avalon, unless you were on foot, but my mom almost certainly would have taken a cab if she wasn’t staying right around the corner. Yet the minutes kept ticking away, and still she didn’t call.
Maybe she didn’t have a room yet. Maybe there was a line at check-in, and that’s why it was taking so long for her to get back to me. But I couldn’t help being worried. Finn had been savagely beaten in an attempt to get to me. Would they also try to use my mother against me?
I paced across the small room, willing the phone to ring, panic spreading like fire through my veins. She might not be the perfect mom, and I might not have wanted to live with her—though those old days with her were looking pretty good right now—but I did love her. Just as I knew she loved me. She had sacrificed everything to keep me from getting embroiled in Avalon’s twisted political game, and what had I done? Run away from home and thrown myself into the shark-infested waters. How could I have been so selfish?
The phone rang before I could continue beating myself to death with guilt. I practically knocked the phone to the floor in my eagerness to get it, though I dreaded hearing a menacing voice on the other end telling me they had my mother. The caller ID said the call was from the Hilton, but that didn’t calm my fears.
“Mom?” I half-shouted into the phone, cros
sing my fingers like I actually thought that would have an effect.
“Hi, honey,” she said, as if she hadn’t just scared ten years off my life.
I sank down onto the bed, one hand clutching my chest while I willed my heart to calm its frantic thumping.
“What took you so long?” I asked. “You scared me half to death!”
“Check-in time isn’t until three, so my room wasn’t ready yet. I’m sorry. I should have called from the lobby to tell you.”
I squinched my eyes shut and bit my tongue to keep myself from saying something I would regret. Because if there’s one thing I’d learned in years of living with my mom, it was that drunks lie. And she was lying right now.
How did I know? Because I could hear the alcohol in her voice. She didn’t slur or have trouble forming words like drunks on TV do—she had a lot of practice talking while impaired, so it took a lot of booze to make it obvious to the casual observer. But I wasn’t a casual observer, and I was way too familiar with the signs.
When my mom is drunk, she talks a lot slower than when she’s not. Plus, there’s this kind of sleepy tone to her voice, like she’d just woken up in the middle of the night. That’s exactly how she sounded now. All the warm fuzzy feelings I’d been having since I found out she’d come after me drained away.
“You just couldn’t wait to start drinking, could you?” I asked, my own voice tight with anger. “As soon as you knew I wasn’t dead, you ran for that bottle without a second thought, even though you knew I was waiting for you to call.”
“I resent that implication!” she snapped. “I have not been drinking.”
Ah, the other classic Mom behavior that made me want to pull my hair out. If she was just sitting around the house watching TV, she’d admit to being “a bit tipsy.” But if she’d been drinking instead of doing something she was supposed to, she would never, ever admit it. Even when her breath reeked of alcohol, she’d swear she hadn’t had a drop, and there was a perfectly good excuse for why she’d forgotten to buy groceries, or hadn’t made it to that parent-teacher meeting, or hadn’t called the gas company to clear up that little misunderstanding about the bill. Whatever.
It all came back to me in a rush, the reason I’d run away from home in the first place. All my fears about my future were forgotten in the swell of anger and hurt that overwhelmed me. How could I stand to listen to the lies and excuses anymore? How could I keep my frustration from turning me into a screaming maniac? How could I watch her continue to destroy herself one brain cell at a time?
“I have not been drinking!” my mom repeated more loudly when I didn’t answer.
How could I have allowed myself to hope even for a moment that my running away might finally convince her it was time to clean up her act? And yet, the ache now forming in my chest and throat proved I’d let that hope grow despite knowing better.
“Why can’t you just admit it? You know I know, so why can’t you just say you’re drunk?” Don’t ask me why, but somehow, I couldn’t help thinking I’d feel better if she’d just confess the truth, stop acting like I was so stupid I couldn’t tell.
“We are not having this conversation, Dana. I have worried myself sick over you and flown halfway across the world to come find you, and this is the thanks I get?”
Then, naturally, the waterworks started.
When I was younger, I’d start feeling guilty right on cue when she started crying. Now it just made me madder. I didn’t say anything, just sat there with my teeth gritted and my eyes closed, waiting for her to wise up to the fact that her tears weren’t moving me.
Eventually, she stopped blubbering, and I heard her blow her nose noisily. I’m pretty sure I also heard the slosh of a bottle being tipped.
“Are you okay, honey?” she asked, as if none of the previous conversation had happened.
I tried to play the same game, but it was hard to force the words through my aching throat. “Yeah. I’m fine. Dad is taking real good care of me.”
“Of course he is. Your father is not a bad man. It was never him I wanted to protect you from. It was … this place.”
“I like Avalon,” I found myself saying, just to be contrary.
Mom didn’t immediately know what to say to that. Alcohol and witty dialogue do not go together.
“That bodyguard said there had been attempts on your life,” she finally remembered, and, oh no, off she went again. “My poor baby.” Blubber, blubber. “I tried to warn you. I tried to make you see.” Sniffle, snort. “We have to get you out of here and get you home.”
Amazing how little time I had to spend on the phone with my mother before “home” became a four-letter word. I didn’t want to go home with Mom, and I didn’t want to stay in Avalon with Dad. If only I could think of a third choice. (Other than getting killed by one of the Faerie Queens, that is.)
I tried to wait out my mom’s current fit of hysterics. But if I had to listen to her cry for another minute, I was going to go postal. “I can’t deal with this right now,” I told her in my flattest, coldest voice. “Call me back when you’re sober, and we’ll talk.”
Mom was in mid-wail when I hung up.
She tried to call back a few times, but I didn’t answer. Finn came up after the first time and asked me if he should pick up the phone if she called again. The pity in his eyes when he looked at me made me cringe. Had Dad told him my mom was a drunk? Or—ever so much worse—had he been listening to my phone conversation? He was a nice guy and all, but it wouldn’t shock me if Dad had given him other orders that had nothing to do with guarding me.
“Just ignore her, okay?” I asked.
He opened his mouth as if to say something, then changed his mind. “Very well,” he said, then slipped out the door and left me to my misery.
I hid in my room for the rest of the day, trying not to rehash my poignant reunion with my mom. I didn’t do a very good job of it, though.
Right around five, I heard the faint sound of the garage door opening, and I realized my dad was home. I was so not looking forward to whatever drama was about to unfold.
I’d assumed my mom would spend the rest of the day drinking herself into a stupor, which should have meant I wouldn’t have to deal with her again until at least tomorrow. But when I stuck my head out my bedroom door, I immediately heard the sound of arguing voices, and one of them was my mom’s. Groan. The idea of remaining hidden in my room was embarrassingly appealing, but I figured it was a bad idea to let them discuss my future—because what else were they likely to be discussing?—without any input from me.
I crept slowly down the stairs, hoping to eavesdrop and get a feel for where things stood before I made my entrance. Unfortunately, their voices were muffled just enough by the walls that I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I paused at the base of the stairs, listening intently, but both my parents went silent. There was nothing for me to do but go in blind.
I pushed the door open and saw something I’d thought I’d never see: my mother and my father in the same room.
My mom was seated on the sofa, a glass of amber liquid clutched in her hands, and my father stood with his back to the room, staring out the front window with his hands clasped behind his back. He didn’t turn to look at me when my mom shouted my name and sprang to her feet, sloshing a bit of her drink over the rim of the glass. I’m guessing she meant to run to me for a smothering maternal hug, but the look on my face must have stopped her.
“You gave her booze?” I cried at my father’s back, and I was so outraged I felt like I might explode with it.
Dad turned to look at me then, and those piercing eyes of his stopped my voice in my throat. There was no magic involved, just the crushing weight of his disapproval. Objectively, he still looked young enough to be my mother’s son—she had not aged gracefully—but the paternal authority in his gaze destroyed that illusion and made me shrink back.
“You are my daughter, Dana,” he said, his voice frosty. “Your mother is not, an
d is therefore free to make her own decisions.”
“Dana, honey,” my mom said before I could think of an appropriate retort, “let’s not fight. We have a lot to talk about.”
The fuzz of alcohol still showed in her voice, but at least she wasn’t passed out in the hotel room, and she was close enough to sober to retain her powers of higher reasoning. With her, that kind of limbo state could be the worst of two worlds—drunk enough to be maudlin, sober enough that I couldn’t work around her.
I swallowed my bitterness the best I could, crossing my arms over my chest in what I knew was a defensive posture. “Fine,” I said, then clamped my jaws shut.
Dad was still giving me his laser-beam stare. “If you plan to participate in this conversation, I expect you to treat both me and your mother with the proper respect. Understood?”
I blinked in surprise. I wasn’t sure why Dad was mad at me, but that seemed to be the case. I couldn’t find my voice, so I merely nodded my agreement.
“Good,” he said with a curt nod of his own. “Now sit down, and let’s all behave like civilized adults.”
My mom winced, and that was when I realized it wasn’t me Dad was mad at. She sank down onto the sofa, taking a healthy gulp of her drink. I sat on the other end of the sofa and refused to look at her. Dad, of course, remained standing. I think it made him feel more in charge.
“Your father told me what’s happened,” my mom said.
I looked at Dad, trying to gauge how much he’d told her, but his expression gave away nothing.
“We were discussing what’s best for you now,” Mom continued, and Dad’s poker face slipped.
“There is nothing to discuss,” he said in a voice that suggested this wasn’t the first time he’d said it. “You cannot change what’s already happened, and now that Dana is an open secret, it is safest for her to remain in Avalon in my care.”
Mom wasn’t so boozy she couldn’t manage a first-class glare. “Just because you keep repeating it doesn’t mean it’s true.”
