Glimmerglass (8 page)

“What do you take me for?” he growled at her.

After all that had happened, I was a little slow on the uptake, so at first I didn’t understand what they were talking about. Kimber put her fists on her hips and glared right back. I sensed that there were layers of meaning behind those glares, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what they were.

With a grunt of disgust, Ethan let go of my arm and gave me a nudge toward Kimber.

“Fine!” he snapped, and without another word or glance at me, he turned away and stomped toward his building.

And that’s when I finally got it. He’d been planning to take me up to his apartment. Just me and him. My face heated with a blush. I kept my head down so Kimber wouldn’t see.

“Come on,” she said with a wave of her hand, and I followed her while trying to come to terms with my own naïveté.

If Kimber hadn’t objected, I’d have followed Ethan up to his apartment without thinking about the implications. I mean, yeah, he was a really hot, too-old-for-me Fae guy, and even though it kind of felt like he’d been flirting with me all night, the idea that he might have interest in a not-overly-attractive halfbreed teenager was kind of silly. But still, he was a
guy
, and I wasn’t a kid anymore.

Kimber’s apartment didn’t look like what I pictured as student housing. Not that the apartment itself was all that special, but the interior was something else. If you hid away a few of the telltale modern conveniences—like the phone and the TV—I swear the room could have been lifted straight from some nineteenth century manor house. It was like a set from a Jane Austen movie. And I’d bet everything I owned—which, granted, wasn’t much at the moment—that the furniture was all genuinely antique, not reproductions.

The place was beautiful but strangely cold. Kind of like Kimber herself. Everything was in shades of pale blues and greens, and there was nothing that looked out of place. The magazines on her coffee table were neatly stacked. The remotes for her TV and DVD player and stereo were arranged side by side with what looked like the exact same amount of space between them. I wondered if she’d needed a ruler to do that, or if she’d just eyeballed it.

“I only have one bedroom,” she said as I stood in the middle of the room wondering what I was supposed to do now. “The sofa isn’t great for sleeping, but it’s much more comfortable than the floor.” She grinned at me, suddenly looking much more like Ethan. “I’d offer you my bed, but I’m not that altruistic.”

She seemed to have thawed since we’d entered the apartment. Her shoulders were more relaxed, and her smile looked open and easy. Either she suffered from multiple personality disorder, or Ethan made her uptight. I was betting on the latter.

“How are you holding up?” she asked with sudden sympathy. “I can’t imagine what you must be going through.”

“I’m pretty freaked out,” I admitted. “But other than that, I’m basically okay.”

She nodded in what looked like approval, then disappeared into her bedroom, emerging shortly afterward with the promised pillow and blanket.

I eyed the sofa doubtfully. It looked about as cushy as a park bench—like it was meant to be looked at, not sat on.

“I’m sorry I don’t have anything more comfortable,” Kimber said, seeing the direction of my gaze.

“It’s fine,” I told her, not wanting to sound ungrateful. “It’s better than being locked in a cell, even if that bed was nicer.” I could have done without the Spriggan attack, and it would have been nice if Ethan and Kimber hadn’t made my rescue feel so much like a kidnapping, but I was glad not to be spending the night under Aunt Grace’s thumb.

“Thanks for getting me out of there.”

She frowned and looked away. “That was mostly Ethan’s doing. I was just along for the ride.”

Call me crazy, but I got the feeling she was just a touch bitter about it. “You helped, too,” I told her.

She dismissed my claim with a self-deprecating grunt.

“You did!” I insisted. “Those Spriggans might have killed us if you hadn’t been there.”

Her face brightened. “I
did
kill one of the Spriggans,” she said, sounding excited by the thought. “And I didn’t even need magic to do it.” Her smile was positively brilliant, and there was a happy twinkle in her eyes.

“If you start jumping up and down and clapping with glee, I’m outta here,” I muttered, and got the laugh I’d been going for. Kimber the Ice Queen had left the building.

“I feel quite the warrior princess,” she said. “And that was quick thinking on your part, too, tangling the Spriggan in your blanket.”

The praise made me blush. “Umm, that was really more luck than anything.”

“Nonsense! We both did quite nicely under fire. We can be warrior princesses together.”

I smiled at the image. “As long as I don’t have to wear a chain-mail bikini, I’m fine with that.”

“It’s a deal,” she said, holding out her hand for me to shake. “Now, I don’t know about you, but it’s time for
this
princess to get some sleep. Is there anything else you need before I abandon you?”

The list of things I needed would take an hour to recite, but I put on my bravest smile. “Nope, I’m good.”

“All right then. See you in the morning.”

Giving the couch a baleful look, I pried off my shoes and arranged the pillow and blanket as best I could. Then I climbed into my makeshift bed and tried not to think. I fell asleep before I could decide if the couch rated as torturously uncomfortable, or merely miserable.

The next time I woke up, there was no crisis, which made for a nice change. My neck and back were stiff and sore, and my head didn’t feel much clearer than it had when I’d first touched ground in London, but at least no one was kidnapping me and no monsters were attacking me.

Stretching in a vain attempt to work some of the kinks out, I stood up and headed toward the kitchen where various noises indicated Kimber was up.

I rounded the corner in time to see her pour some Cheerios into a bowl, and had to swallow a laugh. Who knew a Fae ice princess would eat something as mundane as Cheerios for breakfast?

I must have made some noise despite my effort to be quiet. Kimber turned and gave me a grumpy, first-thing-in-the-morning look.

“Want some?” she asked, shaking the cereal box.

My stomach growled its approval, and I nodded. I couldn’t help watching her out of the corner of my eye as I poured my cereal and doused it with milk and sugar. She moved with the uncanny grace of the Fae, but she looked far more human this morning than she had last night.

She was still naturally beautiful enough to make me feel like Ugly Betty by comparison, but her hair was tied up in a messy knot at the top of her head, and she was wearing faded flannel pajamas that looked like they were meant for a guy. I surreptitiously checked her feet for bunny slippers, but she wasn’t quite
that
human.

It was when I glanced at the clock over the stove that I nearly choked on my mouthful of cereal. It was almost noon. I couldn’t believe I’d slept that long.

“Ethan’ll be here around one,” Kimber told me. “Then we’ll take you out to conduct our … test.”

I swallowed hard. Ethan had said it wasn’t anything to be afraid of. But then again, he’d said I’d be safe in the cave last night, so he wasn’t what I’d call a reliable source. I stirred my Cheerios around in my bowl, my appetite gone.

Kimber pulled a sponge from the cabinet under the sink and used it to wash her bowl. I wasn’t surprised to find that she wasn’t the sort to leave dirty dishes lying around. She shot me a glance.

“It’s really no big deal, you know. The test.”

I nodded and tried to smile. But if I wasn’t going to trust Ethan’s word for it, I saw no reason why I should trust his sister’s.

Kimber pursed her lips. “You’re just going to look at something and tell us what you see. Real simple. Okay?”

I can’t say I was convinced, but I dropped the subject anyway. “Can I ask you a question?”

Her lips twitched in an almost-smile. “Apparently so.”

Har-dee-har-har. “Do people in Avalon always carry knives and guns around?” I remembered the shock of seeing Jason draw a gun and wondered for the umpteenth time what I’d gotten myself into.

Kimber thought about that question for a moment before she answered. I wondered what she’d decided to leave out.

“It’s not what I would call common practice,” she said. “But we are the Student Underground, and Avalon politics can get cutthroat. Literally. If we didn’t have Ethan, we might not scare anyone enough for them to bother us. But Jason wasn’t lying when he said Ethan is a prodigy. He can do amazing things now, and it’s scary to think what he’ll be like when he’s older and has more experience.” She made a sour-lemon face—inferiority complex, anyone?—before she continued.

“He’ll be a force to be reckoned with someday, and some people might prefer to reckon with him now while they still can. So he’s single-handedly made our Underground into a threat, and the rest of us are at risk by association. And that’s why we make a habit of always being armed.”

“Aren’t there, like, gun laws or something?”

She laughed. “We radicals like to think of laws as more of ‘guidelines.’ Besides, I’d rather risk someone going all technical on me about carrying a concealed weapon than be unarmed when attacked by Spriggans.”

She was being real chatty this morning, despite her obviously edited answers. I figured as long as she kept answering my questions, I’d keep asking them. “So are there a lot of Spriggan attacks in Avalon?”

I’d stopped eating my cereal, even though there were some milk-sodden O’s left in the bottom of the bowl. Kimber took the bowl from my hand and washed it while she talked.

“Not usually. Only the humanoid Fae are allowed into Avalon, though it’s a lot harder to keep Fae creatures out than it is to keep humans out. The border on the Fae side doesn’t have the kind of immigration system that you humans do.” A frown furrowed her forehead. “But the Spriggans would only take orders from Unseelie Fae. I can’t imagine why any of the Unseelie power players would want to attack our Student Underground. We’re known to favor an Unseelie candidate.”

“Maybe they were after
me
, ” I suggested. After all, everyone kept telling me I was in mortal danger. “Aunt Grace was attacked yesterday, and she said she thought her attackers were after me.”

Kimber raised an eyebrow at me. “She was attacked, you say?” There was no missing the skepticism in her voice.

“That’s what she said. And she had this big bruise on her face.”

Kimber snorted. “I bet you she was faking it. Even
I
have enough magic to heal a bruise. My guess is she was trying to scare you into doing what she wanted.”

“I wouldn’t put it past her,” I mumbled. “But even if that was all a big, fat lie, the Spriggans could have been after me, right?”

Kimber shook her head. “They couldn’t have known where you were or that you were with us. No, they were after Ethan, and the rest of us were just in the way.”

Does it make me a bad person that I was glad they were after Ethan instead of me?

I could have easily kept asking her questions till the sun went down, but Kimber had apparently had enough.

“I can lend you something to wear if you want to throw your clothes in the wash,” she said, striding out of the kitchen, which now looked as neat and pristine as if no one had eaten there for a week.

“It would have been nice if you and Ethan had grabbed my bags when you kidnapped me,” I grumbled. At five foot six, I wasn’t exactly a midget, but Kimber was much taller. I didn’t think I’d fit into her clothes real well.

She looked me up and down with an appraising eye. “I have some capris that should be just about right on you.”

Kimber was wrong. The capris didn’t look right on me—they looked like capris that were too long. But at least they weren’t the same clothes I’d slept in. With the pants, Kimber lent me a long-sleeved T-shirt. Good thing it had elastic cuffs; otherwise the sleeves would have swallowed my hands whole.

It was a gray and gloomy day when Kimber and I headed out to the courtyard to meet up with Ethan. Occasional splats of rain dripped from the clouds, but neither of the Fae seemed to think a raincoat or umbrella was necessary. I shivered in the damp chill and pulled the long sleeves over my hands after all.

Ethan must have noticed me shivering, because he stepped up beside me and threw an arm around my shoulders, pulling me close to his side.

I froze. I know it’s not really a big deal to have a guy put his arm around you, but still … Ethan wasn’t just any guy. He was a guy who’d make the most gorgeous human in history look ordinary. Plus he was Fae. Plus he was older than me.

Kimber seemed bothered by the gesture, her shoulders stiffening as she glared at Ethan. It was like she was a whole different person when Ethan was around. Even her body language was different, more tense and wary. I liked the Ethan-free Kimber better.

Ethan nudged me out of my frozen-rabbit impersonation by starting to walk. With his arm so firmly around me, I had no choice but to move with him. I swallowed hard and stared at the rain-slicked cobblestones at my feet.

Ethan’s body was warm against mine, and I actually stopped shivering. Okay, maybe having his arm around me felt pretty good, even if my heart
was
jackhammering and my nerves made me about as graceful as a three-legged elephant.

“Better?” Ethan asked, rubbing his hand up and down my arm and creating even more heat. Especially in my face, which must have been red as a matador’s cape.

I like to think of myself as being unusually mature for my age, and in a lot of ways, I’m sure it’s true. How many sixteen-year-olds are responsible for paying the bills and balancing the checkbook, after all? But I had about as much experience with guys as your average preteen, and it was showing. My tongue seemed glued to the roof of my mouth, and I was hyperaware of how he was touching me. I didn’t dare look at him and was glad my hair was at least partially shielding my face.

“Knock it off, Ethan,” Kimber said, but there was a hint of resignation in her voice.