Wicked Lovely

CHAPTER 22

When Sunday morning came, Aislinn wasn't surprised to find Grams up and alert. At least she waited until after breakfast to pounce.

Aislinn sat down on the floor beside Grams' feet. She'd sat there so often over the years, letting Grams comb out her hair, listening to stories, simply being near the woman who'd raised and loved her. She didn't want to fight, but she didn't want to live in fear, either.

She kept her voice level as she said, "I'm almost grown, Grams. I don't want to run and hide."

"You don't understand…"

"I do, actually." Aislinn took Grams' hand in hers. "I really, really do. They're awful. I get that, but I can't spend my life hiding from the world because of them."

"Your mother was the same way, foolish, hardheaded."

"She was?" Aislinn paused at that revelation. She'd never had any real answers when she asked about her mother's last years.

"If she hadn't been, she'd still be here. She was foolish. Now she's dead." Grams sounded feeble, more than tired— exhausted, drained. "I can't bear to lose you too."

"I'm not going to die, Grams. She didn't die because of the faeries. She…"

"Shh." Grams looked toward the door.

Aislinn sighed. "They can't hear me in here even if they're right outside."

"You can't know that." Grams straightened her shoulders, no longer looking like the worn-out woman she had become, but like the stern disciplinarian of Aislinn's childhood. "I'm not letting you be foolish."

"I'll be eighteen next year…"

"Fine. Until then, you're still in my house. With my rules."

"Grams, I—"

"No. From now on, it's to and from school. You can take a taxi. You will let me know where you are. You will not walk around town at all hours." Grams' scowl lightened a little, but her determination did not. "Just until they stop following you. Please don't fight me, Aislinn. I can't go through that again."

And there wasn't much else to say after that.

"What about Seth?"

Grams' expression softened. "He means that much to you?"

"He does." Aislinn bit her lip, waiting. "He lives in a train. Steel walls."

Grams looked at Aislinn. Finally she relented and said, "Taxi there and back. Stay inside."

Aislinn hugged her. "I will."

"We'll give it a little longer. They can't reach you in school or in here. They can't reach you in this Seth's train." Grams nodded as she listed the safety measures, restricting but not yet impossible. "If it doesn't work, though, you'll need to stop going out. You understand?"

Although Aislinn felt guilty for not correcting Grams' mistaken beliefs about school and about Seth's, she kept her emotions as securely hidden as she did when the fey were near, saying only, "I do."

The next day, Monday, Aislinn went through school like a sleepwalker. Keenan wasn't there. No faeries walked the halls. She'd seen them outside, on the steps, on the street as the taxi drove by them, but not within the building.

Has he already had what he wanted? Was that all this was?

The way Donia had talked there was far more to it, but Aislinn couldn't focus on anything other than the blank spot in her memories. She wanted to know, needed to know what had happened. It was all she could think about as she went through the motions of classes.

At midday, she gave up and walked out the front door, not caring who saw.

She was still on the steps when she saw him: Keenan stood waiting across the street, watching her. He was smiling, gently, like he was happy to see her.

He'll tell me. I'll ask, and he'll tell what happened. He has to. She was so relieved that she went toward him, dodging cars, almost running.

She didn't even realize he was invisible until he said, "So you truly can see me?"

"I…" She stammered, stumbled over the words she'd been about to say, the questions she needed to have answered.

"Mortals can't see me unless I will it." He acted as calm as if they'd been talking about homework, as if they weren't discussing something that could get her killed.

"You see me, and they" — he pointed to a couple walking their dog down the street—"don't."

"I do," she whispered. "I've always seen faeries."

It was harder to say this time, to tell him. Faeries had terrified her as long as she could remember, but none so much as Keenan. He was the king of the awful things that she'd fled from her whole life.

"Walk with me?" he asked, although they already were.

He faded into what she now thought of as his normal glamour—dulling the shimmer of his copper hair, the rustling sound of wind through trees—and she fell in step with him, silent now, trying to think of how to ask him.

They had just passed the park when she turned to him and blurted, "Did you? Did we? Sex, I mean?"

He lowered his voice, like he were sharing secrets with her. "No. I took you home, saw you to your door. That's all. When the revelry ended, when they all left, and it was just us…

"Your word." She trembled, hoping he wasn't so cruel as to lie. "I need to know. Please."

As he smiled at her reassuringly, she could smell wild roses, fresh-cut hay, bonfires—things she didn't think she'd ever been around, but knew nonetheless in that moment.

Solemnly he nodded. "My word, Aislinn. I swore to you that your wishes would be as my own as often as I am able. I keep my vows."

"I was so afraid. I mean, not that you would" — she broke off and grimaced, realizing what she'd implied—"it's just that…"

"What can you expect of a faery, right?" He gave her a wry grin, looking surprisingly normal for a faery king. "I've read the mortals' stories of us, too. They aren't untrue."

She took a deep breath, tasting those strange summer scents on her tongue.

"But the fey I…hold sway over don't. Will not do that—violate another." He acknowledged the bows of several invisible faeries with a nod and a quicksilver smile. "It is not the way of my fey. We do not take the unwilling."

"Thank…I mean, I'm glad." She almost hugged him, her relief was so great. "You don't like those words, right?"

"Right." He laughed, and she felt like the world itself rejoiced.

She rejoiced. I'm a virgin. She knew there were other thoughts she should ponder, but that one precious sentence was all she could think. Her first time would be one she would remember, one she would choose.

As they walked on, Keenan took Aislinn's hand in his. "In time I hope you'll come to understand how much you mean to me, to my fey."

The scent of roses—wild roses—mingled with a strange briny scent: waves crashing on rocky shores, dolphins diving. She swayed, feeling the pull of those faraway waves, as if the rhythm of something beyond her was creeping inside her skin.

"It is a strange thing, this chance for openness. I've never courted anyone who could truly know me." His voice blended with the tug of foreign waters, sounding more musical with each syllable.

Aislinn stopped walking; he still held her hand, like an anchor to keep her from leaving. They were standing outside The Comix Connexion.

"We met here." He caressed her cheek with his free hand. "I chose you here. In this spot."

She smiled languidly, and suddenly she became aware that she was happier than she should be.

Focus. Something was wrong. Focus. She bit her cheek, hard. Then she said, "I gave you your dance, and you gave me your word. I know what I want from you…"

He ran his fingers through her hair. "What can I give you, Aislinn? Shall I weave flowers in your hair?"

He opened his hand, letting go of her hair. An iris blossom sat in the palm of his hand. "Shall I bring you necklaces of gold? Delicacies mortals can only dream of? I'll do all those things anyway. Don't waste your wish."

"No. I don't want any of that, Keenan." She stepped back, putting more distance between them, trying to ignore the cry of gulls that she heard under the rhythm of waves. "I just want you to leave me alone. That's all."

He sighed, and she wanted to weep at how sad she suddenly felt. Faery tricks, it's all faery tricks.

She scowled. "Don't do that."

"Do you know how many mortals I've wooed in the past nine centuries?" He stared through the window at a display for the release of yet another vampire movie.

A wistful expression on his face, he said, "I don't. I could ask Niall, probably even ask Donia."

"I don't care. I'm not interested in being one of them."

The ocean faded under the acrid taste of desert winds, searing her skin, as anger flared on his face. "How very fitting."

He laughed, softly then, like a cool breeze on her burning skin. "To finally have found you, and you don't want me. You see me, so I can be as I truly am—not a mortal, but a faery. I am still bound by other rules: I cannot tell you why you matter to me, who I am—"

"The Summer King," she interrupted, moving away from him, ready to run. She tried to keep her temper in check. He'd done the right thing by her, but that changed nothing. He was still a faery. She shouldn't have let herself forget that.

"Aaah, so you know that as well." In an inhumanly quick move, he stepped closer until they were chest to chest. In less time than it took to blink, he stood there as he truly looked—not wearing his glamour. Warmth rained over them, as if sunbeams fell from his hair like warm honey pouring slowly over her.

She gasped, feeling like her heart would burn out from racing so fast. The warmth rolled across her skin, until she was almost as dizzy as she'd been when she danced with him.

Then he stopped it, like turning off a faucet. There were no breezes, no waves, nothing but his voice. "I promised you I would do anything you asked of me within my power. What you ask is not within my power, Aislinn, but there is much that is."

Her knees felt like they'd give out; her eyes wanted to close. She had the awful temptation to ask him to do that— whatever it was—just once more, but she knew that didn't make sense.

She shoved him away, as if distance would help. "So you lied."

"No. Once a mortal girl is chosen, she cannot be unchosen. At the end you may reject me or accept me, but your mortal life is behind you." He cupped his hand in front of her, scooping the empty air and coming up with a handful of creamy liquid. Swirls of red and gold shivered in it; flecks of white floated among the other colors.

"No." She felt her temper—her lifetime of anger at faeries flare up. "I reject you, okay? Just go away."

He sighed and poured the handful of sunlight out, catching it in the other hand without looking. "You're one of us now. Summer fey. Even if you weren't, you'd still be mine, still belong with us. You drank faery wine with me. Haven't you read that in your storybooks, Aislinn? Never drink with faeries."

Though she didn't know why, his proclamation made sense. Somewhere inside she'd known she was changing— her hearing, the strange warmth just under her skin. I am one of them. But that didn't mean she had to accept it.

Despite her growing anger, she paused. "So, why did you let me go home?"

"I thought you'd be angry if you woke up with me, and" — he paused, mouth curled in a sardonic half-smile— "and I don't want you angry."

"I don't want you at all. Why can't you just leave me alone?" She fisted her hand, trying to restrain her temper, a thing that she was finding more and more difficult the past week.

He took a step closer, letting the sunlight drip onto her arm. "The rules require you to make a formal choice. If you don't agree to the test, you become one of the Summer Girls—bound to me as surely as a suckling child to its dam. Without me, you'll fade away, become a shade. It is the nature of the newly-made fey and the limitation of the Summer Girls."

Her temper—so well controlled after all these years— beat against her like a cloud of moths pushing against her skin, aching to be set free.

Control. Aislinn dug her fingernails into her palms to keep from slapping him. Focus. "I will not be a faery in your harem or anywhere else."

"So be with me, and only me: it's the only other choice." Then he bent down and kissed her, lips open against hers. It was like swallowing sunshine, that languorous feeling after too many hours on the beach. It was glorious.

She stumbled back until she bumped into the window frame.

"Stay away from me," she said, letting all that anger she'd been feeling show in her tone.

Her skin began to glow as brightly as his had. She stared down at her arms, aghast. She rubbed her forearm, as if she could wipe it away. It didn't change.

"I can't. You've belonged to me for centuries. You were born to belong to me." He stepped closer again and blew on her face as if he were blowing the head off a dandelion gone to seed.

Her eyes almost rolled back; every pleasure she'd felt under the summer sun combined into one seemingly endless caress. She leaned against the rough brick wall next to them. "Go away."

She fumbled in her pocket for the packets of salt Seth had given her and cracked them open. It was a weak throw, but the salt sprinkled over him.

He laughed. "Salt? Oh my lovely, you're such an exquisite prize."

It took more strength than she thought she had, but she pushed away from the wall. She pulled out the pepper spray: it worked on anything with eyes. She flicked the safety off, exposing the nozzle, and aimed it at his face.

"Courage and beauty," he whispered reverently. "You're perfect."

Then he faded away, joining the rest of the invisible faeries walking down the street.

He paused halfway down the block and whispered, "I'll allow this round to you, but I shall still win the game, my beautiful Aislinn."

And she heard it as clearly as if he were still beside her.