Kaleidoscope (Faylinn Series) (7 page)

“Will I have to go?” I asked incredulously. That question instantly became the most urgent.

“I won’t make you, if you don’t want to.”

At least that was reassuring. “And there’s nothing I can do? I’ll turn into a faery?”

“We will have to wait and see. The abilities you have now might be the extent of everything. The Sight, your hearing, the pull. You still may be able to live in this world—not pleasantly mind you, but tolerably. You will feel that constant need to be out there. Every day.” He pointed to the borderline of trees.

I sighed, trying to alleviate the pressure weighing on my chest. It didn’t work. It wasn’t just that my world was crumbling down and everything I ever knew to be true was a lie. When the impossible became possible, nothing seemed impossible. Anything was up for grabs. Nothing was for certain. “What are we supposed to tell Mom?”

“Nothing,” he decided immediately, leaving no room for argument. “Your mother doesn’t have to know anything about this unless it becomes absolutely necessary.”

I nodded without question for some reason, wanting to obey him.

“I want you to stay out of the forest, but I know that’s not possible or fair of me to demand now.” He sat there, searching his thoughts for something—answers. . .solutions. “And I’d tell you to stay away from all other faeries, but I don’t know how possible that is. Declan and Kai,” he said. “What did they say to you?”

“Not much. They just kept arguing.” He chuckled softly and shook his head as if recalling old friends. “But because I could see them Kai didn’t know what to make of me. I don’t have my wings or whatever, so he just kept staring.”

“Do they know you belong to me?” I nodded. “And they didn’t mention anything else?”

I shrugged, going over our conversation in my head. “Just that Declan has been watching over me for a few years. I’ve apparently been able to hear them for a while without being able to see them.” Which really didn’t sit well with me now that I thought about it. What had they seen or heard during all that time?

“So your abilities are coming in gradually,” he concluded.

All this time when I heard a random twig snap or a tree branch shake, when I would hear low babbling from the trees, it had been them. Through the years of sleepless nights from the subtle unexplainable pulsing, it had been Faylinn.

“I’m really a faery,” I said it aloud this time, letting it sink in and absorb in my brain.

“You’re a faery, Calliope. And with that comes a price.”

My stomach twisted. “What more could there be?”

“You can’t tell a single soul.”

• • •

Lia and I met at the theater for her movie after my conversation with my dad, but I wasn’t much company. I nearly blew her off and told her I wasn’t feeling well, which was the honest truth, but I knew she really wanted to see this movie. During the evening I think she could tell I was a little on edge. Thankfully she just brushed my behavior off as the blues over Cameron and Isla, which normally would have bothered me. I didn’t want to be
that
girl, but it was a better alternative to what was really going on with me.

When I saw Lia was eyeing me as we walked back to our cars, I realized she had said something that required a response and I had no idea what it was.

“Huh?”

“Colleges. Applying. Where are you applying?”

“Oh.” Of course it was going to be college application time soon. Was I going to be able to go to college now? “USC, UNC, Clemson,” I prattled off some of the universities I’d been thinking about. “I’ll apply to a few places in case I don’t make it in.”

“You’ll get into all of them and then you are going to have to make a decision,” she stated undoubtedly.

What if in the end the changes became too apparent and I couldn’t go to college? I was supposed to get
wings
for crying out loud. How in the world was I supposed to disguise those?

“Yeah,” I said, trying to stay focused on the conversation at hand and apparently doing very poorly. “I’ll figure that out when the time comes.”

“I think you should apply to Princeton and Columbia with me.”

I laughed. “Lia, those are colleges you spend your whole life preparing and planning for. I don’t have the grades to even be considered. They would laugh in my face.”

“Well it was worth a shot in the dark to throw it out there.” She threw her arm around me and tugged me to her side. “It would have been so fun to go to college together. Oh. Oh! What if we went and studied abroad with Matt?”

“Lia,” I chuckled. “You don’t want to study abroad. You want to go to medical school.”

She slouched her shoulders. “Well. . .yeah. . .it was just a thought. Something we could do together.”

“College probably won’t be one of those things,” I sighed.

I was going to be lucky if I could even go to college.

Becoming a faery changed everything.

I
stepped through the front doors of Walhalla High on Monday morning and felt different instantly. As if a teenage girl needed another reason to feel out of place. It took everything I had Friday night to be normal around Lia. How was I supposed to hide this ginormous elephant that now perched on my shoulders like a parrot? Lia could at least chalk it up to something that was already bugging me, but, if Cameron pulled his head out of his butt for more than five minutes to pay attention, he was going to know something was off.

Speaking of the devil, I saw him huddled with Isla by our lockers in a private conversation, their faces so close they might as well be kissing. Like I needed one more thing to distance me from him.

“You look so good today,” he murmured.

“You don’t look too shabby yourself,” Isla giggled.

“I really like this shirt. You should wear it more often.”

I realized then that I was going to have to learn to tune out conversations. My hearing was getting too sensitive. The last thing I wanted was to hear every mushy gushy conversation those two had. They could keep those to themselves.
Please, keep them to yourselves.

As much as I didn’t want to tell Cam about me, I felt the same need to tell him. What was the point of a best friend if you couldn’t tell him everything? That’s what best friends were for. To share your burdens and listen to your dirty little secrets.

Wait
. I just had to wait. Maybe nothing would come of it and I would just have the special ability to see and talk to other faeries.
Faeries
. A disbelieving laugh echoed in my head.

Just wait.

Waiting sucks.

“Hey, Calliope.” Isla smiled and lifted her hand in a gentle wave when she saw me approach.

“Hey, you two.”

“Cal, how was your weekend?” Cameron asked.

Oh, you know. I ran into a couple of hot male faeries. Found out that my dad used to be a faery and that I’m half-faery. Nothing too big. Nothing noteworthy, really.

I shrugged. “Not a whole lot. I hung out with Lia and saw a movie. What about you guys?”

“We took the boat to the lake on Saturday. Drank in some rays. Soaked up some sun. Basked in the light,” Cam prattled on, closing his locker and tucking a couple of books under his arm.

“You’re an idiot,” I chuckled. “But it sounds like you guys had fun. A lot more eventful than my weekend.”
If only you knew.

“We need to all hang out sometime,” Isla chimed. “We can go out to eat or something.” Her smile reached her eyes as they twinkled.

“Good idea, Is.” If Cam could find a way to make any name even shorter he would. He might as well have just called her I. As if Isla wasn’t a short enough name to say. “It’d be good for you two to get to know each other better.”

The three of us. For a whole night together. I could just see it now. Them on one side of the booth, while I sat on the other side.
Alone
.
How will the checks be divided?
The server will ask. And just to make the distinction even more apparent they’ll say,
we’re together
and I’ll say,
I’m separate
. I was just dripping with excitement at the thought.

“What do you say, Callie? You think you’re free to go out Saturday night?”

The me on one shoulder said,
“No, just say no, Calliope. Why torment yourself?”

The me perched on the other said, “
Don’t let him see how much it bothers you. It’ll only push him father away. Just go, Calliope!”

“Saturday. Dinner. You guys name the place,” I decided.

“Oh, you should pick, Calliope. What’s your favorite?” Isla asked, batting her unfairly long lashes.

“The Green House,” Cam said before I could say the same restaurant. “She loves their salad bar.”

“Perfect! I love that place too.” Isla smiled at me.

Perfect.
I smiled as genuinely as I could muster.

“Are you feeling better today, Cal?” I frowned, trying to place why Cam was concerned about my health. “Friday. You weren’t doing so hot,” he clarified.

“Oh, yeah. Great.” I cleared my throat. “I’m feeling a lot better. Just needed a nap.” If only a nap could have cured me.

“Oh, good,” Isla sighed. “Cameron was worried about you all weekend.” The first bell rang for school to start. Isla turned to Cam. “Shall we?”

I peered over at Cameron and a hint of something in his eyes tweaked my stomach. He gave me a smile from the corner of his mouth before he turned to Isla and accepted her hand. They walked away, leaving me wondering what the crap I had just done. How was I going to pull that night off? I suppose I had a week to prepare.

“What was that all about? Isla was extra bouncy as they walked away,” Lia said, her voice sounding over my shoulder.

I breathed out deeply. “We’re all going out Saturday night.”

“We as in. . .you, Isla and Cam?” I nodded, shoving my books in my bag. “One big happy family!” she taunted.

“Shut up,” I mumbled, but put a smile on to let her know I wasn’t really mad at her.

We began walking to class when she said, “You don’t seem better today.”

I looked up at her. “What?”

“Friday you seemed off. And today, maybe it’s the fact that you just agreed to a night of hell, but you don’t seem any better.”

I straightened up and plastered on my best
I’m completely normal face
. “I’m feeling good. I’ll survive Saturday just fine.”

“Sure you will. Because that’s the kind of person you are. You’ll pull it off without a hitch. And just think. . .maybe you’ll even get another friend out of it. If you spend actual time with Isla maybe you’ll decide you actually like her,” she said.

“I do like her,” I said. “That’s the problem. She’s really a decent human being.”

“Yeah. It’s a real shame when good friends catch a good one.”

“Hey,” I shot out. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m serious.” She held up her hands in surrender. “It’s hard. You want so badly to be happy for them because they are happy, but them being happy means they need you less and it hurts. I get it.”

She
did
get it. “Yeah.”

• • •

The idea of me being a mythical creature took quite a few days to find its way into my brain. It still hadn’t truly set in, but it existed in the it’s-possible section. I definitely wasn’t prepared to venture back out to the wild men before it did. But, now I wanted to know more and I knew my dad and I would just fight back and forth about it. Before when we talked about it, he seemed like he was holding back information. He answered my questions, but he didn’t offer anything up freely.

After school I built up the courage. “Declan?” I called out as I stepped across the threshold. I thought about calling out to Kai, but he put me too much on edge. “Declan?”

There wasn’t an answer. What if they were gone? A sinking feeling fell over me. What if I couldn’t ever find them again? I swept aside a few dangling vines and pushed on through the jungle of green. I had gone pretty far in before. Maybe they didn’t like loitering on the perimeter.

“Declan?” I hollered this time, being far enough in that neighbors wouldn’t question my hollering.

“Hey there, princess.” I spun to see Kai walking out from behind an enormous shrub. “I know you wanted Declan, but you’ll have to settle for yours truly instead.”

“Oh. Kai.” Tingles crawled up my spine. “Where’s Declan?” I questioned, forcing myself not to get hypnotized by his brooding eyes.

“Back in Faylinn.”

“Faylinn,” I stated. “So it’s an actual place? It’s not just this forest?”

He pounced around the ground, already distracted from our conversation. “You have much to learn, young one.”

I begrudging crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m getting really tired of the nicknames. You obviously know my name. Please call me by it.”

He let out a sound of amusement and smiled triumphantly at me before responding. “You’re such a faery. It comes out more and more every day.”

“What’s that supposed to—?”

“Did you get your wings yet?”

“What? No.” I shook my head.

“Your ears?” He moved closer to me and lifted his hand up to brush away my hair.

I stepped back. “No,” I said, exasperated. Had faeries never heard of personal space?

He winced at my reaction, but only for a moment, recovering quickly. “Why did you come? You were pretty shaken the last time we spoke. I figured you’d stay far away.”

He never answered any of my questions. It was taking everything I had to keep the fight inside of me. I could be mature about this.

“I wanted to know more. I talked to my dad,” I revealed.

“And you’ve come to tell me I was right?” he gloated, smoothly circling me.

“Yeah. Whatever. I’m a. . .faery, but we won’t know the extent of my features until they present themselves.
If
they present themselves
.”

“So you may never get wings or ears?” His genuine concern laced the tone of his voice. He stopped his agile stride around me, fixing me with a stare that could buckle any female’s knees.

“Do I really look that repulsive without wings?”

He cleared his throat. “It simply looks unnatural. Humans are so plain and peculiar looking. But you’re not a human so it doesn’t mix. My mind isn’t comprehending what it’s seeing.”