Wicked Lovely

CHAPTER 25

Aislinn didn't stop running until she was at Seth's door. She pushed it open, calling his name, and stumbled to a stop when she saw the small crowd gathered there.

"Ash?" He was across the room and had her in his arms before she could think of what to say.

"I need…" She was still panting, her hair stuck to her face and neck. The noise of clinking bottles and moving bodies barely registered as she tried to catch her breath.

No one commented, or if they did, she didn't hear it as Seth led her through the doorway to the second train car, where the tiny bathroom and his bedroom were. They stood in the hallway, outside the closed door of his room.

"Are you hurt?" He was running his hands over her arms, looking at her face and arms, checking for rips in the ridiculous clothes Donia had given her.

She shook her head. "Cold. Scared."

"Take a shower. Warm up while I get rid of everyone." He opened the door and turned on the little heater in the room. The soft whir filled the room as the heater started to glow.

She hesitated, and then nodded.

He kissed her briefly and left her there.

When Aislinn came out of the tiny bathroom, the house was silent; everyone was gone. She stood in the doorway— feeling safer now that she was here with Seth. Grams had done her best, but her fear of the faeries had made them too central—as if even the mundane things were somehow dependent on the faeries' reactions.

Seth was stretched out on his sofa, his hands over his head, his feet dangling over the arm. He didn't seem alarmed or even surprised by her panicked arrival.

Do I look different to him now?

She thought, invisible, and walked over to him. He didn't get up, didn't look at her, or speak.

He really can't see me.

She ran her fingers over his arm, pausing on his biceps.

"Is it easier to be aggressive when you're like that?" He looked right at her.

She yanked her hand away. "What? How…"

"The stuff in Donia's recipe. You're all shadowy, like the faeries outside, but I still see you." He didn't move, staying exactly as he had been when she walked into the room. "I don't mind, you know."

"I'm already as bad as them."

"No." He rolled onto his hip so there was room on the sofa for her too. "You weren't touching some stranger on the street. It's me."

She sat down on the far end of the sofa. He wrapped his legs around her—one behind her back, the other resting on her lap.

"Keenan is convinced I'm the Summer Queen."

"The what?"

"The one who can give him back the powers he lost. If he doesn't find his queen, it'll just keep getting colder. He says everyone, humans too, will die. That's what this is all about. He thinks I'm her, this queen who'll change it all." She leaned forward just a little so Boomer didn't get tangled in her hair as he made his way across the back of the sofa. "They made me a faery. I'm one of them."

"I got that when you did the invisible thing."

"They did this to me, changed me, and I'm…I don't want to be their freaking queen."

He nodded.

"I think I am, though…I don't know what to do. I met the other one tonight—the Winter Queen." She shivered, thinking of the terrible cold, the ache of it. "She's awful. She just walked up and attacked Keenan, and I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to bring her to her knees."

She told him about the ice that Beira left in her wake, the hags, the kiss that made everyone so convinced that she was their queen. Then she added, "I don't want this."

"So we find a way to undo it." He used his legs to pull her toward him so she was lying on his chest. "Or we figure out how to deal with it."

"What if I can't?" she whispered.

Seth didn't answer; he didn't promise it would be all right. He just kissed her.

She felt herself warming up, like a small glow starting somewhere near her stomach, but she didn't think anything of it until Seth pulled back and stared at her.

"You taste like sunshine. More and more every day," he whispered. He ran his fingertip over her lips.

She walked away, wanting to weep. "Is that why things changed with us? Me becoming something else?"

"No." He was calm, slow, like approaching a frightened animal.

"Seven months, Ash. For seven months, I've been waiting for you to see me. This" — he picked up her hand, which glowed like Keenan had earlier—"is not why. I fell in love with you before this."

"How was I to know?" She twisted the edge of the stupid blouse Donia had given her. "You didn't say anything."

"I said lots of things," he corrected gently. "You just didn't hear them."

"So, why now? If it's not this, why?"

"I waited." He undid the bow on net blouse, twirling the ribbon around his finger. "You kept treating me like a friend."

"You were my friend."

"Still am." He put one finger in the topmost lace and tugged the ribbon looser. "But that doesn't mean I can't be other things, too."

She swallowed hard, but she didn't move away.

He pulled the next cross of ribbon free.

"He didn't. We didn't, I mean," she stammered.

"I know. You wouldn't have gone there looking like this if you had." He looked at her, slowly letting his gaze travel up over the vinyl pants and slightly gaping blouse, until he was looking at her flushed face. "Unless you want him. If you do, Ash, tell me now."

She shook her head. "No. But when he, it's not him, it's some faery thing…"

He tipped her head up. "Don't give up. Don't leave me before you're even here."

"If I, if we…" She took a deep breath and tried to keep her words from tumbling over each other as she said, "If I wanted to stay here, be with you tonight?"

He stared at her for several seconds. "This stuff with them, it's not the right reason."

"Right." She bit the inside of her lip, embarrassed.

But like an echo, she heard Keenan's silence earlier at Rath and Ruins, his careful avoidance of her questions when she asked about faeries and mortals. There was a chance that if she was their queen, she'd lose Seth. She closed her eyes.

"Ash, I want to. I want you, but because of us, not because of something they do or don't do."

She nodded. He was right; she knew it. It didn't feel fair, though. None of it felt fair or right. The only thing that felt right was Seth.

"That doesn't mean you can't stay. Just no sex." He spoke softly, like he'd done the other morning when she was freaking out. "That still leaves a lot open."

Seth took Aislinn's hand as they walked back to the other train car, the one that he'd turned into a bedroom, but he barely held on. If she wanted to, she could turn and go the other way. She didn't. She wrapped her fingers around his so tightly it probably hurt him.

But now that they stood in the doorway, with a bed that stretched from one side of the narrow room to the other, she almost panicked. "It's…"

"Comfortable." He let go of her hand.

It really wasn't that big, a queen at most, but that left only a couple feet on either side of it. Unlike the Spartan interior of the front car, this room was a bit more dramatic. Dark purple, almost black, pillows were piled on the bed; a few had tumbled onto the floor, like shadows on the black rug. On either side of the bed were small black dressers. A sleek black stereo sat on one; a candelabra sat on the other. Wax trailed down the candles and onto the dresser.

"I could sleep out on the sofa." Seth kept his distance when he said it, smiling gently. "Give you space."

"No. I want you here. It's just that it's" — she motioned to the room—"so different from the rest of the house."

"You're the only girl who's been invited back here, ever." He walked to the stereo, his back toward her, and flipped through the discs in the wall-rack. "Just so you know."

She sat on the edge of the bed, folding a leg up in front of her, leaving the other foot on the floor. "It feels weird. Like it's more important now that I'm here."

"It should be." He stood on the opposite side of the bed, holding a clear jewel-case. "I've done it the other way, with people who didn't matter. It's not the same."

"Then why did you do it?"

"Felt good." He didn't look away, even though he seemed uncomfortable. He shrugged. "Drunk. All sorts of reasons, I guess."

"Oh." Aislinn did look away.

"It got old. There's, umm" — he cleared his throat— "some papers over there. I wanted to give them to you before…I was going to bring it up the other day…but, and, now…" He pointed.

Aislinn reached out and pulled the papers off the table with the candles. On the top sheet she read "Huntsdale Clinic." She looked over at him. "What?"

"Tests. I had them earlier this month. I get them regularly. Thought you'd want to know. I want you to know." He picked up one of the pillows, flipping it over in his hands. "I haven't been, you know, unsafe in the past, but still…things happen."

Aislinn skimmed them, test results for everything from HIV to chlamydia, all negative. "So…"

"I planned on talking about this before…" He squeezed the pillow between his hands, mashing it. "I know it's not all romantic."

"It's good." She bit her lip. "I've never…you know."

"Yeah. I know."

"There's been nothing that would, umm, put me at risk." She picked at the comforter, feeling increasingly shy.

"Why don't I go…"

"No, please, Seth" — she climbed across the bed and pulled him toward her—"stay with me."

Several hours later Aislinn felt her hands curling, gripping the comforter. She'd been kissed before but not like that, not there. If sex was any better than that, she wasn't sure she'd survive it.

All the stress, the worry, had faded away under Seth's touch.

Afterward he held her. He still had his jeans on, scratchy against her bare legs.

"I don't want to be one of them. I want this." She put her hand on his stomach. She slipped her pinky nail in the edge of his belly ring. "I want to be here, with you, go to college. I don't know what I want to be, but it's not a faery. Definitely not a faery queen. I am, though; I know it. I just don't know what to do now."

"Who says you can't still do all that even if you are a faery?"

She lifted her head to look at him.

"Donia uses the library. Keenan goes to Bishop O.C. now. Why can't you still do the things you want?" He slid a handful of her hair forward, making it fall over her shoulder onto his chest.

"But they do those things because of this game of theirs," she protested, but even as she said it, she wondered. Maybe it didn't have to be all or nothing.

"So? They had reasons; you have different reasons. Right?"

It sounded so much easier when he said it—not easy, but not impossible, either. Could she really keep her life? Maybe Keenan hadn't answered her questions because he didn't like the answers.

"I do." She laid her head back down on him, smiling. "More reasons every day."