Girls' Night Out

Chapter One

At the risk of making myself sound like a geek extraordinaire, I was really looking forward to the first day of school. It wasn’t the first time I’d felt that way—when school was out, I had to spend way too much time in the presence of my mother, the drunk—but it was even more welcome this year than most. This year, it promised a kind of normalcy that had disappeared from my life the moment I’d set foot in Avalon, the one place in the universe where Faerie and the mortal world intersect.

You see, I’m a Faeriewalker—a rare individual who has just the right mix of Fae and mortal blood to be able to travel freely in both the mortal world and in Faerie. I can also take magic into the mortal world and technology into Faerie. My unusual powers—and my late aunt Grace’s attempts to use me as a weapon to usurp the Seelie throne—had made me very unpopular with the two Queens of Faerie, and I’d been living in a bunker-like safe house under threat of death all summer. I had reached an agreement with Titania, the Seelie Queen, and she was no longer out to kill me, but my status with Mab, the Unseelie Queen, was less clear. I had recently revealed that unlike Faeriewalkers past, I could actually sense and use magic, and that my magic could turn a Fae into a mortal. I hoped the knowledge would encourage Mab to just leave me alone as long as I didn’t bother her.

My trip to Faerie, and my revelation of my power, had certainly made me safer than I’d been since the moment I’d set foot in Avalon. However, safer wasn’t the same as safe, and my dad, who had legal custody of me, insisted I remain ensconced in my safe house under twenty-four hour guard. Whenever I

complained, he pointed out that until I was eighteen, it was his decision to make, and that ended any argument. I wished I had another power: to speed up time so I could turn eighteen already!

My dad was paranoid enough that he’d categorically refused to let me go to school like a normal person. He thought having me out in public on a predictable schedule for seven hours a day, five days a week, would be inviting trouble. I’d wheedled, cajoled, begged, and otherwise made a major pain in the butt out of myself and finally got him to break down and compromise. To keep me from feeling like I was being buried alive in my safe house, Dad had agreed that I could audit one class at Avalon University so I’d be around other kids every once in a while. Kids who were all older than me, true, but after the things I’d gone through during the endless summer between my junior and senior years, I wasn’t sure I could even relate to ordinary high school kids anymore.

At first, I’d wanted to choose a class my best friend, Kimber, or my boyfriend, Ethan, were attending, but one look at their schedules had convinced me to strike out on my own. Kimber’s a brainiac sixteen-year-old who’s already a sophomore and studying to be an engineer. Her classes were way over my head and not even remotely interesting to me. Ethan is Kimber’s older brother, but he’s just a freshman, and his schedule is full of required classes—ones I would have to take myself for credit next year when I presumably would enroll in Avalon U full time.

I ended up choosing History of Avalon, because I was woefully uninformed about the history of my adopted home and because Kimber had had the professor before and said he was really good.

I was both nervous and excited as I made my way from my safe house to the university, carrying a backpack with my textbook, a notebook, and a handful of pens over my shoulder. Finn, my bodyguard, had offered to carry it for me, but I wanted to cling to any pretense of normalcy I could, so I stubbornly insisted on carrying my own bag, even if the textbook did weigh about thirty pounds.

I’d been anxious enough to get started that I’d managed to get us to the lecture hall almost a full fifteen minutes before class was scheduled to start, but at least I wasn’t the first one there. A handful of seats in the auditorium-style lecture hall were filled, and I paused for a moment at the back of the room to decide where to sit. I glanced back over my shoulder at Finn.

“Are you going to sit with me?” I asked, hoping and praying he would say no. He was a really nice guy and all, but he wasn’t exactly unobtrusive—he was a Knight of Faerie, and he dressed like he was playing a secret service agent in an action movie, complete with dark glasses no matter the weather, indoors or out. I might as well carry a billboard saying “Look at me, I’m not normal” if he was going to sit next to me.

Finn gave me an ironic half-smile. “I’ll sit in the back.”

The few kids who were seated had taken notice of us already. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see more than one curious face watching us. Even if Finn sat in back, people were going to know he was with me, but at least I wouldn’t be flaunting it.

“Thanks,” I told him, then blew out a steadying breath and started down the stairs with an eye toward snagging a seat in the center. I didn’t have the guts to actually sit next to some stranger, but I was hoping someone would eventually end up sitting next to me. Maybe someone who would come in later and hadn’t seen me arrive with a bodyguard in tow.

Pretty soon, the classroom started to fill up, students at first trickling, then pouring in. I was used to being the new girl in school, my mother having made us move about a thousand times while I was growing up, and I knew there were a lot of freshmen, who were all as new as I was, but I still felt a pang as people came in in pairs or groups, or as friends were reunited after the summer break. I even started to feel a bit sorry for myself, sitting alone in the middle of the room with empty seats all around me. People who already knew each other were sitting in little clumps together, and the really extroverted strangers were striking up conversations, but the more introverted people, like me, picked seats that weren’t directly next to others.

When the clock struck eleven and Professor Matheson stepped in through a door at the front of the room, about three quarters of the seats were taken, and there was still no one sitting on either side of me. I told myself it didn’t matter. It took a special kind of person to make friends with someone who never went anywhere without a bodyguard, and I was lucky to have any friends at all. I shouldn’t be hoping for more. I glanced back and saw that Finn had taken an aisle seat in the back row. He probably thought he looked more inconspicuous that way, but the people near him kept turning to peek at him when he wasn’t looking.

The class started to settle down, conversations dying out as the professor arranged his lecture notes on the podium. The sudden hush made it easier to hear one of the doors at the back squealing open, and I—along with half of the class—looked over my shoulder at the new arrival, expecting to see an ordinary student running late, perhaps flustered and embarrassed by his or her not-so-silent entry.

The girl who stepped through that doorway was anything but ordinary. She was Fae, with the typical height and willowy build of her people, but that was about the only thing about her I could label typical. The Fae are mostly blond, with a few redheads here and there to spice things up. The only naturally dark-haired Fae I’d ever met was the Erlking, the leader of the Wild Hunt, and he was one of a kind.

The girl who stood in the back of the room, taking her time to look over the available seats at her leisure, not a bit flustered at being late, had long, jet-black hair with bright purple streaks in it. She wore a flimsy black camisole top—I would freeze to death wearing that in Avalon, where summer temperatures soared into the sixties, usually with mist or rain to add to the chill—paired with an ultra-short black skirt of fluffy tulle that looked almost like a tutu. The skirt revealed about twelve yards of leg, encased in purple and black striped stockings with a couple of artful tears in them, and calf-high unlaced combat boots. She finished off the outfit with about three tons of silver jewelry, including countless rings in her ears, as well as a ring through her eyebrow and a ball through her lower lip.

Clearly, this girl knew how to make a grand entrance. The fact that

practically everyone in the room was staring at her didn’t seem to faze her a bit.

She was so striking that for half a second, I failed to notice the Fae man who’d slipped through the doorway behind her, and that’s saying something. He was built like a football player and dressed much like Finn in Secret Service chic. Everything about him, including his assessing scan of the classroom, screamed bodyguard, which made me even more curious about the mysterious Fae Goth girl. Her bodyguard narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Finn. Finn didn’t exactly look at ease, either, though he remained in his seat and didn’t in any way act like I was under threat.

The Goth girl started down the center aisle, not in any hurry to take her seat even though she was late. As she approached, I felt the prickle of magic against my skin. My body instantly went on red alert, my pulse speeding, my muscles tense and at the ready. Most of the time I’d been in the presence of magic, bad things had happened, and I seemed to be having a Pavlovian response to its approach. At least that was how I explained my sudden discomfort to myself. The fact that I practiced self-defense twice a week with a Fae who used magic to shield himself—and whose magic didn’t make me the least bit uneasy—made my

explanation a bit suspect.

My sense of unease heightened when she stopped at my row and worked

her way around the people sitting near the aisle. There were two seats between me and the next person on that side, and though I’d been hoping for someone to sit next to me, I had the brief hope that the Goth girl would take the farther seat. But, of course, she dropped into the seat right beside me.

The professor started to talk, but his words all seemed to run together in my mind as the Goth girl’s magic swept over me, making me squirm in my chair. How the hell was I supposed to pay attention to a lecture when I felt like I had little stinging ants crawling all over me?

The Goth girl swung the desk arm into place, set a spiral-bound notebook and a pen on it, then turned to me and smiled.

“Hi,” she said in a low voice. “I’m Althea Mabsdotter. But my friends call me Al.” She stuck out her hand for me to shake, which was an awkward gesture in the cramped seats with the desk arms.

“Um, hi,” I said, reluctantly shaking her hand. I felt kind of rude introducing myself while the professor was talking, but I would have felt even more rude if I hadn’t. “I’m Dana Hathaway.”

She had a handshake like a guy’s, firm almost to the point of being painful.

Or maybe that was just the continued discomfort of her magic. It took me a second to fully absorb her introduction.

“Mabsdotter?” I murmured, a chill traveling down my spine. I was sitting close enough to her now that I could see the tiny red roses—the symbol of the Unseelie Court—dotting the placket of her camisole. Put that together with her last name—which she’d probably made up, since the Fae who aren’t Avalon natives don’t use last names—and her Knight bodyguard, and I came to an uncomfortable conclusion. “As in Mab’s daughter?”

“In the flesh,” she confirmed, blue eyes sparkling with amusement.

Was it a coincidence that she’d just happened to pick the seat next to me?

Or did she know who I was? And if she did know who I was, was she here on some unpleasant mission from her mother? I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder at Finn. I suspected he had recognized Mab’s daughter on sight—and had probably been expecting her, because he’d likely looked over the class roster before letting me set foot in the room. If he’d thought she was a threat, I wouldn’t be here.

“You’re the Faeriewalker, right?” Al asked, picking up her pen and doodling in her notebook.

Definitely not a coincidence that she’d sat next to me, then.

The professor was writing something on the whiteboard, and I figured I should probably be taking notes. Too bad I still hadn’t heard a word he’d said, nor did I have the concentration to read what he was writing. Not while sitting next to a genuine Faerie princess who bristled with magic and might wish me dead.

“Yeah,” I responded, because there seemed to be no point in denying it.

“You’re not here to kill me or anything, are you?”

She laughed, drawing a couple of annoyed glances from students who were actually paying attention to the class.

“You’re direct,” she said, still grinning. “I like that. And I’m here to go to school, nothing more. I’m a sophomore. I’ve been a student here since before you arrived in Avalon.”

A human girl in front of us turned around and glared. The Fae boy sitting next to her nudged her with his elbow, then bent and whispered in her ear. She turned to face front hastily, sinking low into her seat. Al smiled with smug satisfaction, and I decided immediately that I didn’t like her. She struck me as the kind of person who used her status to bully those around her, and I’ve never had much patience with bullies.

I forced myself to begin copying down the professor’s notes, although I was too distracted to absorb the words I was writing. Maybe if Al saw me taking notes, she’d start paying attention to the class and leave me alone. I was auditing a class mostly to escape the safe house and be around other people, but I did genuinely want to learn, too. I had a feeling Al’s presence would be a massive distraction.

____

Much to my relief, Al didn’t talk to me throughout the rest of the class. I didn’t think she was paying much attention, either—her notebook was covered with doodles, but no actual words—but at least she wasn’t actively trying to distract me or annoy the people sitting around us.

That didn’t mean I got a whole lot out of the class, however. Al’s magic continued to prickle my skin throughout the entire lecture. It wasn’t painful, exactly, but it wasn’t a pleasant sensation, either. I wondered what kind of magic it was, and what she was doing with it. The only other Fae I’d met who had a buzz of magic to him constantly was Lachlan, a troll who wore a human glamour so he could fit in with the humans and Fae in Avalon. I glanced at Al out of the corner of my eye, wondering if she was really who she appeared to be, or if she was wearing some kind of glamour-fueled disguise.

Whatever she was doing, I wished she would stop so I could concentrate. I wondered how the other Fae students could stand it, but I seemed to be the only one uncomfortable. I knew that the Fae could sense each other’s magic like I could, but perhaps the sensation felt different to them, or they were so used to it that it didn’t bother them like it did me.

After having looked forward to this day for weeks, I could hardly wait for class to end so I could put some distance between myself and Al’s magic. When the professor finally stopped talking, I packed up my bag in record time. I was actually eager to get back to the safe house. This was the longest, most sustained contact I’d ever had with magic, and I’d had more than enough. Al, however, had other ideas.

“Would you care to join me for lunch?” she asked, smiling at me hopefully.

“There’s a sandwich shop on the quad that serves pretty decent food, and it’s a beautiful day.”

She gestured at the windows, which showed a perfectly blue sky with only the occasional wisp of white cloud. Even in the summer, it was rare to have such a clear blue sky in Avalon, and I’d heard the weather was even gloomier in the fall and winter. It seemed a shame to retreat into the darkness of the tunnel system beneath the city, where my safe house was located. Which did I want more? To get away from the prickle of Al’s magic, or to go outside and enjoy the beautiful weather?

Of course, I could enjoy the weather without having to eat lunch with Al. It was on the tip of my tongue to say “thanks, but no thanks,” when Al added an almost plaintive-sounding “Please?” She sucked her entire lower lip, piercing and all, into her mouth, in what looked like a nervous gesture.

Call me a total sucker, but I couldn’t say no when she looked so hopeful.

She’d struck me as a bit of a bully early on, but maybe I’d misjudged her. I imagined being the daughter of a Faerie Queen meant Al’s life was even further from normal than mine was, and that maybe the reason she’d seemed kind of bitchy was because she was fronting to cover up feeling isolated. After all, we were the only two kids in class, probably the only two kids in the entire university, who had bodyguards. Maybe I should cut her some slack.

“Sure,” I said, against my better judgment. “I’d love to.”

Covering up for my mom’s alcoholism had taught me to be a really good liar, and Al beamed at me. I assumed that meant I’d done a good job of hiding my reluctance.

“Great!” she said with obvious enthusiasm. “It’ll be my treat.”

I shook my head as we headed up the stairs toward our bodyguards. “No it won’t,” I said, possibly being a little more blunt than was wise. When I was living with my mom, we’d always been strapped for cash because she couldn’t hold a job, but my dad didn’t have that problem. I’m sure Al’s mother was richer than my father, but I certainly wasn’t in the need of charity. “You don’t have to bribe me to have lunch with you.”

Al looked over her shoulder at me and frowned. “I didn’t mean it that way.

But okay. We’ll go Dutch.”

We reached the top of the stairs, our bodyguards converging on us.

“We’re going to go have lunch on the quad,” I informed Finn. “If that’s all right with you.” For a while, my dad had been so paranoid he wouldn’t let me leave the safe house without permission, but since the threat against me had eased off, I had a little more freedom now. If you considered not being able to go anywhere without a bodyguard hanging over your shoulder “freedom.” I didn’t need my dad’s permission to have lunch, nor did I need Finn’s. But just because I didn’t technically have to ask Finn whether it was okay with him to go out to lunch didn’t mean I felt right taking it for granted. My dad treated Finn like a servant, always at his beck and call—and Finn considered this treatment completely appropriate, because the Fae class system is archaic and rigid—but I refused to do the same.

The Goth look and the informal language made me hope that Al was the kind of modern girl who would ignore the class system, but the look she gave me when I consulted Finn about my schedule put that hope to rest in a hurry. She didn’t even acknowledge her Knight’s presence, much less lower herself to actually speaking to him.

Finn smiled at me, and I had the feeling he knew what I was thinking. He’d certainly heard me argue with my father about the Fae class system enough times.

“I have no other pressing plans,” he told me wryly.

Al didn’t wait for him to finish speaking before she headed for the exit, pausing only so her Knight could open the door for her. I had half a mind to tell her I’d forgotten some important appointment, but I knew I was overreacting to what I perceived as her rudeness. Presumably she’d been born and raised in Faerie, where customs were very different from those in the human world and in Avalon. A few months spent attending the university here in Avalon weren’t enough to change a lifetime’s worth of cultural training.

But I still couldn’t persuade myself to like her, and wished I’d had the guts to tell her no.

____

It was one of the prettiest days I’d seen since I’d first set foot in Avalon, and Al and I were far from the only ones who thought having lunch on the quad sounded like a good idea. There was a smattering of picnic tables outside the sandwich shop, but those seats were all taken by the time we got our food, as were the seats on the wooden benches that were sprinkled here and there along the quad. Al and I settled for an impromptu picnic at the base of a massive oak tree. I’d have loved to have sat in the warmth of the sun, but I’d inherited my skin tone from my Fae father, and I’d probably burn to a crisp by the time lunch was over.

Al’s bodyguard stood stiffly at attention as Al plopped down onto the grass with her sandwich bag. He made no attempt to be unobtrusive or to hide the fact that he was guarding her. Finn, on the other hand, leaned casually against the trunk of another oak tree, close enough that he could get to me in a couple of his large strides, but far enough away to give me a semblance of privacy. I liked Finn’s technique better.

Al sat cross-legged on the grass, her short skirt making the position . . .

inadvisable. She didn’t seem to care that she was flashing the quad, though I supposed the opaque tights kept her from being indecent. When I sat on the grass, I realized it was damp—well, duh, this was Avalon, and the grass was always damp.

It didn’t seem to bother Al, but I cast a quick, longing glance at the nearest benches, hoping a couple of seats had opened up. No such luck.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Al said, then took a huge bite of her sandwich and chewed it happily.

“I’ll bet,” I murmured. Her magic was still prickling my skin, and the damp was soaking through my jeans. My ham sandwich didn’t seem terribly appealing under the circumstances, but I took a bite anyway.

“What’s it like to be a Faeriewalker?” she asked around the bite of sandwich she was still chewing. Apparently table manners weren’t highly prized in Unseelie princesses.

I shrugged. “It’s kind of weird, I guess.” Honestly, I had no idea how to answer her question, nor did I particularly want to talk about myself. I wished again that I’d declined the lunch invitation. “Do you mind if I ask you for a favor?”

Al smiled brightly and took another bite of her sandwich. “Go ahead.”

“Is there any way you can, um, tone the magic down a bit.” I shivered, partly from the annoying sensation of her magic, partly from the damp chill of the grass.

A sunny day it might be, but the temperature was still hovering in the low sixties.

“It’s kind of uncomfortable to be around you like this.”

Al raised a pierced eyebrow. “I’d heard you could sense magic,” she said. “I guess that wasn’t just a rumor.”

“So can you tone it down?”

“It’s a glamour,” she told me. “My mom would kill me if I really did this to my hair.” She grabbed a handful of her jet-black and purple hair. “And she would kill me slowly for the piercings.” Al grinned at me, her eyes dancing with glee at the thought of her mother’s reaction to her look.

While she hadn’t directly answered my question, she hadn’t dropped the glamour, either. I supposed that meant the answer was no, which irritated me to no end. Obviously, her Goth look was more important than my comfort, but then what did I expect from a freaking princess?

“It’s kind of tough having Queen Mab for a mother,” Al continued, looking a little forlorn. “I need my little rebellions here and there.”

Once again, I chided myself for being too hard on Al. My dad, whom I’d only known for a few months now, was a big-deal Fae politician who was hoping to be elected Consul—Avalon’s top political post—in the next election. I didn’t guess being the wannabe-Consul’s daughter was anywhere near as weird and stressful as being the Unseelie Queen’s daughter, but I did have an inkling of what it was like to have a politically powerful parent. And yeah, it’s tough.

“I’ll bet,” I said sympathetically, then nibbled on my sandwich some more.

After gobbling about half her sandwich in two bites, Al seemed to have slowed down, fidgeting with it instead of eating it.

“I had to go back to Faerie over the summer,” she said, plucking a crumb off her Kaiser roll and throwing it to a lurking pigeon. “That’s the compromise I have with my mother: I can go to college in Avalon as long as I return home whenever school is out.”

I sighed, thinking about my own deal with my father. “I know all about compromises.”

Al smiled at me, but the smile quickly faded as she pulled another corner off her bread. A couple of pigeons dive-bombed the corner when she threw it onto the grass, cooing and flapping their wings at each other as more birds took notice of the possible windfall and came winging our way.

“I was really, really looking forward to coming back to school,” Al said as she watched the birds fight over the crust of bread. “But now . . .” She shrugged and fell silent. There was a suspiciously shiny look to her eyes, like she might be thinking about crying.

I’d just met Al a little more than an hour ago, and though I was trying, I hadn’t yet succeeded in making myself like her. I wasn’t ready to have a deep, personal conversation with her. I’m used to keeping to myself and playing my cards close to the vest. But Al was obviously in need of a friend, and I like to think I’m a nice person at heart.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her gently.

She sniffed daintily and frowned down at her sandwich as if surprised to find it was still there. “I think my mother had my boyfriend run out of town while I was home for the summer.”

I winced in sympathy. “Ouch.”

For all my dad’s faults, he’d been very good about tolerating my boyfriend, Ethan. Even though Ethan is Unseelie while my dad is Seelie, and even though Ethan’s dad is destined to be my dad’s main opponent in the election next year. I kept expecting my dad to put his foot down and tell me not to see Ethan anymore, but so far, so good. Of course, since I couldn’t leave my safe house without having a bodyguard with me, it wasn’t like I could get too deeply involved with Ethan. Finn might not be an official chaperon, but his presence certainly discouraged Ethan from getting too . . . demonstrative. Which I knew was bugging Ethan more the longer we dated.

“He’s a human from London,” Al continued. “He told me he wasn’t going home for the summer, and he was staying in a flat off campus. He promised he’d be waiting for me when I got back from Faerie, but when I went to his flat, they told me he’d moved out. And I found out he’d dropped out of the university, too.”

“Maybe something came up over the summer and he had to leave.”

Al snorted. “Yeah. Something like my mother, who doesn’t want me dating humans. She was furious with me when she first found out about Gary. She ordered me to stop seeing him, but part of the reason I wanted to come to Avalon U was so I could be free from her just for a little while.”

Somehow, I didn’t think it was that easy to be free from Faerie Queens or from mothers in general. Mine had followed me all the way to Avalon and, after a brief period of enforced sobriety, was back to her old ways, drinking herself stupid so that I could hardly bear to lay eyes on her. I doubted having a Faerie Queen for a mother would be much more pleasant, but sometimes it seemed like anyone would be better than my own mom.

“Do you think he went home to London?” I asked. As a Fae, Al couldn’t physically go to London to see her boyfriend, but she could at least make a phone call and get to the bottom of things.

Al nodded and tossed the rest of her sandwich—cold cuts, oozing

condiments, veggies, and all—in the direction of the patiently waiting pigeons. The large projectile sent them all winging away with cries of alarm, and the sandwich’s contents splatted on the grass. Al, who obviously didn’t care about the mess she’d just made, brushed the crumbs off her hands as the pigeons recovered their courage and swarmed back in.

“His super gave me his forwarding address. I’ve tried ringing him, but no one answers. It . . . worries me. I keep thinking, maybe my mother didn’t settle for just chasing him away. Maybe she had him killed.”

If Al were just an ordinary human, I might have laughed at the absurdity of her worry. But when we were talking about the Queen of the Unseelie Court, I wasn’t sure the worry was so absurd. The Unseelie is the darker of the two Courts, and is often associated with things evil. Not that that’s completely fair, because the Unseelie Fae are just as capable of being good people as the Seelie Fae are. But it isn’t completely unfair, either.

“Do you really think she’d have done that?” I asked, wondering how I’d allowed myself to get sucked into this conversation. It wasn’t exactly the casual, getting-to-know-you lunchtime conversation I’d been expecting.

“She’s capable of it,” Al said grimly. “But I don’t know. She’s scary enough she could probably have just said ‘boo’ and he’d have run for it.”

Wow. That made Gary sound like quite the Prince Charming. I studied my sandwich with great intensity in the hopes she wouldn’t see my opinion on my face.

“Or maybe she just offered him money,” Al continued. “He was on

scholarship and always strapped for cash.”

If she thought he would run away if her mom said boo or would likely take money to break it off with her, then Al was better off without him, but I knew better than to say so. I glanced surreptitiously at my watch, wondering how much longer I had to force myself to make friendly with her. I’d been ready to get away from her—and especially from her magic—since she’d first sat down beside me. I definitely felt a pang of sympathy for her, but not so much that I wanted to sit on the cold, damp grass with her magic making my skin crawl any longer than necessary. But Al looked like she was in no hurry to leave, even though she’d discarded her sandwich, and I was thinking I might need to suddenly “remember” a pressing appointment.

She gave me a speculative look while I was still trying to craft my lie.

“You wouldn’t by any chance be willing to take me into London to look for him, would you?” she asked, and there was no missing the hint of calculation in her eye.

I forgot about the lie I’d been trying to come up with as I gaped at her. “You have got to be kidding me,” I said, although I knew she wasn’t. My stomach clenched as I realized this was why she’d approached me in the first place. I was the only Faeriewalker in Avalon, and one of only two (that I knew of) in the entire world. Thanks to my rare power, I could take a mortal into Faerie, and I could take a Fae into the mortal world—as long as they stayed close to me, within the aura of my Faeriewalker’s power. Through some experimentation with mortal objects in Faerie, I’d determined that my aura stretched for about fifteen yards around me.

Farther away from me than that, they poofed out of existence. Which was just what would happen to Al if I took her into the mortal world and we got separated.

“I can pay,” Al said. “A lot, actually. It would be a quick trip. Just a few hours.

We’d go to Gary’s home, and—”

“No,” I said with a firm shake of my head. I told myself that I shouldn’t feel hurt over this, over the fact that she’d tried to befriend me just because she wanted to use me. I should be used to being used by now. Hell, even Ethan and Kimber had wanted to use me when they’d first met me. And maybe if Al hadn’t pretended to be interested in friendship from the beginning, it wouldn’t have stung so much.

But she had pretended, and it did hurt, even though I didn’t want to be friends with her anyway.

“Please, Dana—”

“Absolutely not!” I shoved the remains of my sandwich back into the paper bag, sure an angry flush was creeping up my neck. “It’s way too dangerous. If I took you into the mortal world and you got more than about five feet away from me, you’d be dead.” So it was an exaggeration, and she could actually get about fifteen yards from me without dying. Sue me. I thought it might discourage Al from asking anymore.

“So I’d have to stay close. I could do that.”

I had so many objections to this idea I couldn’t even begin to voice them all.

But one of those objections rose above the rest, clamoring the loudest. “I may not be an official member of the Seelie Court,” I said, because although my father was Seelie, I’d categorically refused to pledge my allegiance, “but if I were to take an Unseelie princess out into the mortal world and something went wrong, it could very easily start a war between the Courts.” Faerie wars had been started for far less cause, and had devastating effects not just on the Fae, but on the mortals unlucky enough to get caught in the middle. “I’m not about to risk that, and there’s nothing you can say to change my mind.”

I leapt to my feet, no longer caring about being polite, so pissed off I was practically vibrating with it. I doubted Al was an idiot. She had to know how risky her suggestion was, and not just to her personally. And yet she was willing to risk something that could start a war just so she could confront a boyfriend who refused to answer the phone when she called. The selfishness of it blew me away.

“Wait!” Al cried, jumping to her feet also and grabbing my arm to keep me from storming off.

Our sudden movement had startled the flock of pigeons who’d been

feasting on Al’s sandwich, and we were both buffeted by the gusts of air from their wings. I hoped one of them crapped on Al’s glamour-enhanced hair.

“Let go,” I growled. “I have to go home now.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Finn watching our interaction closely, but he didn’t come any closer. I silently thanked him for letting me handle things. From the look on his face, I suspected Al’s bodyguard would have flattened me if I’d grabbed her like she was grabbing me.

“I’m so sorry!” Al said, still holding my arm. Her blue eyes glimmered with tears as she looked at me beseechingly. “I’ve made a total hash of everything.” One of those tears leaked down her cheek, and she made no move to wipe it away. “I shouldn’t have asked that of you. I just . . .” She sniffled, finally letting go of me and staring down at the ground, the picture of repentance. “I just wanted to see Gary, to make sure he was all right. It was stupid, and I’m sorry I asked.”

She looked so sad I might have believed her, if I didn’t keep getting stuck on the suspicion that the only reason she’d approached me in the first place was because she meant to ask this very favor.

“Please forgive me,” she said, sucking her lower lip with its piercing into her mouth and making a pouty face.

I’m really not that much of a forgiving type—just ask my mom—but

something about Al kept stirring me to reluctant sympathy. I didn’t really believe she deserved to be forgiven, but I let out a sigh anyway.

“Okay,” I said. “I forgive you.”

Her face lit up, the tears vanishing so quickly I wondered if they’d been nothing more than a glamour-induced illusion. “Thank you!” she gushed, then hugged me so tight I feared my ribs would crack. Her magic surged over me even more strongly, stealing my breath.

I pulled away from the hug as soon as I could. Al was still beaming at me.

“On Friday, you’re letting me buy you lunch,” she informed me. “Just to make up for me being such a bitch today.”

Words stuck in my throat. I had zero desire to have lunch with her Friday, or any other day, for that matter. “That’s really not necessary,” I choked out.

“Of course it is,” she said firmly. “It’ll be fun. You’ll see. Maybe we can go do a little shopping together afterward. I haven’t been shopping for three months, and that’s tragic, don’t you agree?”

“Uh—”

“I’ll see you on Friday!” she said, not waiting for my agreement. She did that lip-sucking thing again, making me wonder if the ball in her lip was actually a real piercing rather than a glamour.

“See you Friday,” I heard myself saying lamely, feeling like I’d just been run over by a speeding truck.

There was a bounce in her step as Al headed down the quad, waving at me and ignoring her bodyguard as he fell into step a little behind her. Feeling vaguely sick to my stomach, I waved back at her and wondered if maybe, just to avoid her, I should just drop the damn class.