by Jenna Black
Dad’s glare was much more intimidating. “And just because you don’t want it to be true doesn’t mean it isn’t. Can you honestly tell me you’re equipped to protect Dana from assassins?”
She clunked her glass down on the coffee table and stood up, swaying slightly. “Can you honestly tell me you have nothing but her best interests in mind?” she countered.
Gee, I was glad we were going to discuss this like civilized adults.
Dad looked stricken. “I can’t believe you’d think I would put my own ambitions ahead of our daughter! You know how rare and precious children are to the Fae.” His voice was tight and choked, and I could barely recognize the stoic, reserved Fae politician I had first met. “You deprived me of my only child for sixteen years, and now you wish to whisk her away from me when I’ve only just met her. I won’t allow you to do it, and I wouldn’t have allowed it even if she’d proven not to be a Faeriewalker.”
I was really beginning to wish I’d stayed upstairs. Any idiot could tell they weren’t really discussing my options at the moment so much as airing out old grievances. Dad had seemed to take my mom’s decision to keep me secret from him with barely a blink, but obviously it bothered him a lot more than he’d let on. I wanted to slink away and let the two of them work things out, but I didn’t think I’d get away with it.
“You have no need to ‘allow’ me to do anything,” my mom said. “I am Dana’s legal guardian, and you can’t stop me.” She turned to me. “Pack your bags, Dana. We’re leaving as soon as you’re ready.”
She sounded terribly sure of herself, but even drunk she couldn’t possibly believe it would be that easy. Still, I leapt to my feet, hoping this was my chance to escape.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Cathy,” Dad said, then gave me a stern look that conveyed the message “sit down” without need for words. Reluctantly, I obeyed.
Mom gave him an absolutely withering look. “If you think you can keep Dana here—”
“Then I’m right!” he snapped. “How do you intend to remove her without my consent?”
Mom wavered.
“I want us to work in partnership to protect our daughter,” Dad continued, his voice steely. “But if you feel we must work at cross purposes, then rest assured that I will file a custody suit before you get halfway out the door. Even were Dana not a special case, I’d have enough grounds to believe I’d win, considering…” He glanced down at the glass that still sat on the coffee table.
Mom went pale, and something uncomfortable twisted in my gut. I had, of course, seen evidence before that my father was capable of a certain amount of ruthlessness. But as much as I disapproved of my mom’s drinking, it was a low blow for him to use it against her like this.
The look on Dad’s face gentled, and he sighed. “I had not intended this discussion to end in threats,” he said quietly.
Mom sniffled, and I looked up to see tears streaming down her cheeks. For once, I felt like the tears were a sign of genuine pain, not an attempt to elicit pity. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say that would make her feel better, but I impulsively reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze.
“It’ll be all right, Mom,” I said, though I doubted either of us believed it.
“I’m sorry, Cathy,” Dad said. “But I have to do what I feel is right for Dana.”
She raised her chin and blinked away her tears. “So do I, Seamus.”
She disentangled her hand from mine, putting both her hands on my shoulders and turning me to face her. “I will get you out of here, honey, I promise.” Then she kissed the top of my head like I was six, gave Dad one last dirty look, and marched for the door.
I wondered if she realized she’d never once asked me what I wanted. I wasn’t sure I could have answered her, but it would have been nice to think my opinion counted for something.
“Dana—” Dad started as the door slammed closed behind my mom, but I held up my hand for silence, and to my shock, he gave in.
“I need some time to think right now,” I said, not looking at him. “Can we please … talk about this later?” I sneaked a glance at him, but whatever he was feeling was hidden behind a carefully neutral expression.
“I understand,” he said, and I got the feeling he really did. “Take however much time you need.”
I nodded, but my throat was too tight to allow any sound out. I couldn’t have told you exactly why I was on the verge of tears, but I was, so I beat a hasty retreat before I could fall apart in front of an audience.
I spent at least an hour alone in my room, hugging my knees to my chest while I tried to figure out what I wanted to do. The likelihood was high that what I wanted would have little relationship to what I actually got, but I wasn’t used to not knowing my own mind.
A lot of soul-searching led me to the inevitable conclusion that what I wanted was the impossible: I wanted to live with my mom, but not with her alcohol. And I didn’t want my dad completely cut off from my life again. Oh, and I wanted not to have to hide from assassins for the rest of my life.
It was a depressing list of wants, and I was on the verge of having a pity party when a burst of inspiration hit me. There was no way I was getting everything I wanted, but maybe I could manage some of it.
Mom had made it very clear she wanted to get me out of Avalon. Dad had already dropped a load of obstacles in her way, but I doubted she was ready to give up. One thing that I was sure she hadn’t factored into her plans, however, was the possibility that I might side with my dad and want to stay in Avalon.
What might she promise me, what might she actually do if I used myself as a bargaining chip? There was only one way to find out.
I didn’t give myself very long to think about it before I picked up the phone, finding the number for the Hilton by reviewing the caller ID log.
Mom sounded distinctly drunker when she answered the phone. “Hello?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“Dana! Honey, is everything all right?”
“Yeah, everything’s fine.” I almost laughed. Who was I kidding? “I have a proposition for you, and I want you to hear me out until I’ve told you the whole thing.”
She hesitated. “Okay,” she finally agreed, sounding suspicious.
I took a deep breath before I continued. “There’s no way you’re getting me out of Avalon without my cooperation.”
“Dana!” she protested in a shocked whisper.
“Remember, you promised to hear me out.” Well, maybe promised was a strong word, but Mom was convinced enough to backpedal.
“All right,” she said, voice quavering.
“I’ll come home with you, but you have to swear to me on your life that you’re going to check yourself into a rehab as soon as we get there. And if you deny you have a drinking problem right now, then I’m going to hang up on you, and I will never come home. Ever!”
I could almost feel it, my mom’s desperate desire to feed me the lie once again, tell me she didn’t have a problem. But I think even in her booze-addled mind, she heard how dead serious I was. My life in Avalon so far had sucked. But now that Mom was here to remind me what it was like to live with her, I wasn’t so sure life at home sucked much less. It was just a different brand of suckage.
“I swear to you on my life that I will check myself into a rehab when we get home. Just please, come home with me. I need you. And no matter what, baby, I love you. You know I love you, more than anything else in the world.”
I took a long, slow, deep breath, trying to bring my thoughts to order. Could I be sure my mom would keep her promise when I wasn’t holding the proverbial gun to her head? Hell no. But maybe, just maybe, this time I was getting through to her. This time she’d actually go to rehab, dry out, rejoin the human race. And if there was even the slimmest chance that my ploy would work, I had to try it.
Of course, getting out of Avalon was going to take some doing, even if I cooperated. Actually, at the moment I had no idea how I was going to go about it. But I was determined to find
a way.
“Okay, Mom,” I said. “I’ll come home with you. But I need to take care of a few things first.” I wasn’t about to tell her the long list of obstacles that stood between me and freedom. She was probably going to continue to drink herself silly as soon as I got off the phone anyway, but there was no reason to add more fuel to her fire.
“You mean your father,” she said with a hiccup.
“Yeah, that’s a big one,” I said.
“If Seamus Stuart thinks he can keep my daughter from me, he’s got another think coming!”
Yeah, right. Like Mom was in any kind of shape to take Dad on.
“Please, Mom. Let me handle Dad. I think I know a way to make him see things my way.” I did the lying-through-my-teeth finger-cross. “But I need you to lay low for a bit. I have a feeling if he starts fighting for custody, we’d need an army to get me out of here.”
Mom thought about it a bit, and I could hear the clink of bottle against glass. I gritted my teeth to keep from snapping at her. If by some miracle my ploy worked, she’d have the rest of her life ahead of her without the pickled brain effect; I could put up with her drinking for a little while longer.
“All right, honey,” she finally said, and I let out a silent sigh of relief. “I’m at the Hilton, room 526. I’ll wait to hear from you.”
“Thanks, Mom. I’ll let you know as soon as I have things worked out.”
“Don’t take too long, honey,” she warned. “The longer you’re here, the harder it will be to get away.”
“I know. I’ll hurry, I promise.”
We said our good-byes. And then I lay down on my bed and tried to figure out how on earth I was going to escape.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I didn’t make a whole lot of progress on my escape plan before falling asleep, stress and the exhaustion of my workout with Keane having stolen most of my energy and brainpower. I woke up in the morning not having moved past step one.
Still in my sleep-addled, pre-coffee daze, I sat up and swung my legs out of bed. That’s when my body reminded me that it wasn’t used to the kind of exercise it had endured yesterday, nor was it used to being repeatedly bashed against a shield spell and thrown to the mats. I groaned in misery and almost got back into bed.
I spent way more time in the shower than was strictly good for me, but the hot water pounding down against my sore muscles felt heavenly. I was still stiff and sore when I got out, but at least I was able to move.
Silly me, I’d expected that after yesterday’s intense training session, I’d get a day off. But when I made my way downstairs in search of coffee, I found Finn and Keane sitting at the dining room table.
They didn’t see me at first, and I hesitated in the stairway, surprised at the sight that met my eyes. Keane was smiling. Not a nasty smile, or a condescending smile, but a real smile. He and Finn were each nursing a cup of tea, and though their voices were too quiet for me to make out words, they seemed to be having an easy, bantering conversation. Was this the same Keane I’d met yesterday?
Then Keane caught sight of me, and the smile vanished. Didn’t that just make me feel welcome? Obviously, he had some kind of a problem with me, but hell if I knew what it was.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” I said as I breezed past them into the kitchen for a cup of Dad’s awful instant coffee. I was going to have to remember to buy a coffeepot and some real coffee if I was going to stay here much longer—which I was, if I couldn’t figure out how to get out of Avalon. The kettle was empty, so I took it to the sink to fill it, but when I turned around, Keane was standing way too close behind me.
I hadn’t heard him approach, so he was lucky I didn’t drop the full, heavy kettle on his foot in my surprise.
“You might want to wait until after working out to put anything in your stomach,” he said, smirking at the pleasure of having startled me.
“Getting between me and my coffee is dangerous,” I warned him. “And there’s no way I’m in any shape for another lesson today.”
I tried to push past him but, surprise, surprise, he didn’t let me. I wondered if his shield spell was up yet or if a strategically placed knee or elbow would actually hurt him.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said, and I felt the heat creep into my cheeks. Apparently, I’d been pretty transparent.
“Think about what?” I asked, but he just looked down his nose at me. “You know, I’m not in the army, and you’re not my commanding officer. I don’t have to have a lesson if I don’t want to.”
He cocked his head to one side, his face a mask of exaggerated curiosity as he stroked his chin. I saw he’d painted his nails black today—just in case I hadn’t noticed he was wicked Fae Goth boy, I suppose. “Is it that you think you’ve already learned everything you need to know, or that you think you’re out of danger today?”
“I can see why you opted out of Knight training,” I countered. “They’d have ‘accidentally’ killed you before you made it to adulthood.”
His expression and his body language didn’t change all that much, but it was enough to tell me I’d drawn blood. His eyes hardened, and a muscle ticked in his jaw. I should have been thrilled at my victory, but I’m just not that mean-spirited.
“Sorry,” I muttered. “Just because you’re an asshole doesn’t mean I have to be a bitch.” Perhaps not the most wholehearted of apologies, but his expression thawed.
“I expect you to fight back with any available weapon,” he told me, and I saw something strangely like approval in his eyes. “If I attack you with words, then it’s only fair you counter with words.”
He smiled at me crookedly, and something inside me warmed. I’m pretty sure I was blushing as I turned away from him and put the kettle on the stove.
I should have known better than to turn my back on him. As I was reaching to turn the stove on—I didn’t care what he said, he was not keeping me from my coffee—he suddenly grabbed me from behind. I tried to counter with my elbows, just as he’d taught me, but he’d caught me by surprise, and I was too slow.
Keane whirled me around and bent down, grabbing me around the thighs and hoisting me easily over his shoulder. He clamped his arm over my calves, pinning my legs to his body so I couldn’t kick. From this position, there wasn’t much I could reach that was terribly vulnerable—not with any leverage, that is. I might have been able to reach his privates if I really stretched, but no way I was grabbing him there, no matter how effective it might be.
I reached up and tried to dig my fingers into his throat, but the position was too awkward, and he grabbed my hand with his free hand, pinning me even more securely as he carried me out of the kitchen. I raised my head and cast an appealing glance at Finn as we went by.
“Please call off your dog,” I said, but Finn held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
“I had to agree not to interfere or he’d have refused to come.”
“And that would have been a bad thing?” I asked, but we had already reached the spiral staircase, and I wasn’t sure Finn could hear me.
Keane carried me to the horse stall, the floor of which was covered with mats. He then slung me off his shoulder.
I’d expected him to put me down, not throw me down. Even with the mats, the impact with the floor knocked the breath out of me. I lay there, dazed, for a moment while Keane towered over me.
“Next time, put your arms out like this.” He demonstrated, holding his arms out to the side with his palms facing back. “Then slap your hands down when you hit to dissipate some of the force. If I’d been a bad guy, you’d be in deep shit right now.”
I sucked in a breath of air. “I’m really beginning to hate you,” I said.
“Glad to hear it,” he replied with a cocky smile. “Now why didn’t you go for my balls when I slung you over my shoulder? I let you hang low enough to have a shot.”
I pushed myself up to a sitting position, ducking my head to hide the blush I was sure colored my cheeks. “On
ly in your wildest dreams am I touching you there,” I grumbled.
He laughed and offered me a hand up. I decided to ignore it, figuring it was a trick of some sort. My muscles groaned in protest as I hauled myself to my feet. They hadn’t felt too good before Keane had slammed me into the mats.
“If a bad guy grabs you, are you going to be too prudish to touch him there if that’s your best chance to get away?” he asked.
My cheeks burning brightly, I managed to meet his stunning green eyes. “Touching a stranger is one thing. Touching someone I’m going to have to look in the eye afterward is another.” I jutted my chin out and gave him my most stubborn look. He’d pushed me into doing things I wasn’t comfortable doing, but he wasn’t going to push me into that.
Keane thought about it for a minute, looking displeased. Then he nodded. “All right. I suppose I can see your point. Now, let’s work on how to escape various holds, using the tools I taught you yesterday.”
It was a weird morning. Since Keane was teaching me how to escape holds, it meant he was constantly grabbing me, holding me against his body. He was an asshole, but he was one hell of a sexy asshole, and I couldn’t help being aware of it when his hands were on me. He moved with lethal grace, and the intensity in his eyes said he loved what he was doing—whether because he loved teaching, or because he loved fighting, or because he just liked beating me up I wasn’t sure.
I was pleasantly surprised to find myself a fast learner. Keane could still overpower me with frightening ease, but I was making him work harder at it than he had yesterday. Hard enough for a fine sheen of sweat to coat his brow. He should have smelled of nasty, stinky guy, but instead I caught the mingled scents of leather and something unfamiliar, yet faintly herbal.
One time when we were rolling around on the mat, I ended up on my back with my hands pinned beside my head. I was eye to eye with him, the entire front of his body pressed against mine. I felt his breath against my cheek, and I smelled the leather-and-herb scent that was beginning to be familiar—and delicious. His hair hung over one of his eyes, hiding it behind an inky black fringe, but I still felt trapped more by his stare than by his hold. His pupils dilated, and I saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard.
