Fate

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  James or my mystery geek? James or Mystery Geek?

  Delia had claimed it was possible to have two crushes at once, but I was skeptical. In the years before I'd dated Kane, my devotion to him had been absolute. I hadn't even indulged in celebrity crushes; I was just that focused on my dream boy. So the idea of developing not one but two new crushes was a little unfathom able, especially considering that one of the boys wasn't human and that the other one definitely knew things he shouldn't.

  Before I could fall into a black hole of self-conscious daydreams, I snapped myself out of it and tried to approach the situation with a little more objectivity. I needed more information about this boy, and that required getting a better look at his notebook, which required leaning over ever so slightly, which I did, and then it required leaning over just a little bit more …

  Whap.

  I fell out of my chair.

  Oh, the horror. The absolute never-ending horror— but at least it wasn't for nothing, because as I tumbled out of my chair, my head came just close enough to his desk to make out the words written at the top.

  Alec Talbot-Olsen.

  Okay, I thought, I have a name. It wasn't much. A little Facebook sleuthing probably could have told me the same thing, with less humiliation and fewer bruises, but at least the throbbing in my knee provided me with an ache that wasn't in any way related to Otherworld withdrawal. And my geek had a name. Granted, he was looking at me kind of sideways, and my chances of fulfilling Delia's mandate and stealthily snapping a picture weren't looking too great, but I had bigger things to worry about. Like the fact that every single person in study hall, none of whom had noticed me passing out the day before, were now looking at me like I was the lead freak in a sideshow.

  I felt a blush rising in my cheeks and tried to push it down. I couldn't afford to lose control of my emotions; I was already at my “one fire a day” limit. I scrambled to my feet and tried to pretend that the whole falling thing hadn't happened. I tried to think happy thoughts: puppies and kitties and cotton candy and unicorns … but thinking about unicorns made me think about Eze and her eerie-colored hair, and that led me back to the words I'd been trying not to think about for most of the morning.

  She reeks of mortality.

  I couldn't even survive in the mortal realm without almost concussing myself in a lame attempt to spy on a boy. How could I possibly expect to be a part of things in the Otherworld? It was beautiful. Perfect.

  Home.

  Okay, I thought, what is wrong with me? I'd just taken a nosedive in front of twenty-five other kids, and all I could think about was my not-a-dream the night before. I'd spent seventeen years in this world and only one night in the Otherworld. How could I miss it when twenty-four hours ago, I hadn't known the first thing about it? My mental image of the world of the Sidhe had always been the Nexus. I'd never understood that compared to the real Otherworld, the Nexus was practically earthly. Human. Mortal.

  She reeks of mortality.

  As the words entered my mind again, it occurred to me that in my rush out the door that morning, I'd forgotten to put on deodorant. I squeezed my arms tight to my sides in a gesture meant to guard my armpits from the world—or possibly the world from my arm pits. Either way, as I sat there my paranoia escalated until I was absolutely positive that despite my not having so much as broken a sweat, mortality wasn't the only thing I reeked of.

  “Are you … I mean … errrr … I guess …” Next to me, Alec tried to put together a coherent sentence. I figured he was probably trying to ask me if I was having some kind of armpit-clenching seizure, but when he finally got the words out, what he said was, “Are you cold?”

  “Ummm … yes.” I'd go with that answer over pit paranoia any day.

  Alec gave me a small, tentative smile and then he started unzipping his jacket. The zipper got stuck halfway down, and as he battled with it, the meaning behind his actions finally sank in.

  He was taking off his jacket to give it to me because I had said I was cold. Boys just didn't do things like that, and if they did, they were suave and smooth and expected something in return, but Alec …

  He was getting all kinds of frustrated with the zipper. With an audible huff, he attacked it once more, and it finally gave way. Unfortunately, the effort propelled him sideways, and I watched as he struggled to catch his balance, lost, and fell out of his chair, exactly as I had a few minutes earlier.

  Was it weird that I found that strangely endearing? And maybe even a little bit attractive? He fell out of his chair … for me.

  I glanced around the room, wondering if his fall had garnered as much attention as mine had. Sure enough, everyone was staring at the two of us, but this time I didn't blush at all. He was blushing enough for the both of us.

  It was a very nice blush.

  Stay away.

  The thought came unbidden, and it sounded foreign in my head. Sharp. Uncompromising. Dangerous. In fact, I'm pretty sure the correct word would have been sinister.

  Stay away from him.

  “Okay,” I murmured under my breath. “That's a little bit scary.”

  The voice in my head wasn't Adea's, it wasn't Valgius's, and it definitely wasn't mine. Someone or something was warning me away from Alec. But why? What could anyone stand to gain by keeping me away from a boy whose claim to fame was that he blushed as much as I did?

  Unless, of course, Alec's real claim to fame was something else. It was so easy to forget that he'd recognized my tattoo and known what it meant. One look at his hair pretty much did that for me. Still, cute mussiness aside, the fact remained that Alec knew something that he probably shouldn't.

  And based on the voices in my head, I could only conclude that somebody out there didn't want me to find out why. Either that, or they didn't want me to discover whatever else Alec knew.

  OMG, I thought, processing these conclusions fully. Alec might know something else. About the Other-world. About the Reckoning.

  About me.

  I glanced over at him, as if the answer to all of these questions and more lay in his expression, but his face was buried in his notebook again. From what I could see of his cheeks, he was still blushing. Despite the whirlpools of emotions swirling around in the pit of my stomach and the forefront of my mind, I found myself wanting to offer him a word or two of comfort, something along the lines of “I know how it feels” or “Been there, done that,” but then I caught sight of his jacket still lying on the ground. He'd fallen out of his chair trying to take it off for me, and while he'd been trying to regain his composure, I'd become totally and completely sidetracked by the presence of someone else's hissing voice in the private recesses of my mind.

  Maybe I was wrong, I thought, unable to tear my eyes from the jacket and what it represented. Maybe he was never going to give it to me. Maybe the voices in my head haven't messed everything up this time.

  Or maybe Alec lost the courage to give me his jacket when I'd zoned out, every aspect of my conscious being concentrated on the warning I'd been issued and the possible reasons behind it. Maybe Alec took my zoning out as an indication that I wasn't interested, and now he was hugely embarrassed that he'd tried to give me his jacket in the first place.

  After all, if I'd been him, I could guarantee that would be exactly what would have happened.

  Slowly, I reached down to pick up the jacket, completely disregarding the warning I'd been given and the fact that I could still feel another presence flickering in and out of my head, like I was a television set with bad reception. I paused, as much because of the feeling as to look up at Alec and gauge his reaction to my actions.

  “Still cold?” he asked, forgiving me for the perceived brush-off he'd probably been berating himself over for the past few minutes.

  I nodded in answer to his question, took the jacket, and slipped it on. I wasn't actually cold, but I wasn't about to turn down such a sweet offer, and I couldn't bring myself to let the voice in my head threaten me out of making a nice g
uy smile.

  Alec had a really nice smile.

  Stay.

  Away.

  From.

  Him.

  The words were more emphatic this time, delivered with an odd, staccato rhythm that would have freaked me out even if the message had been “Have a nice day.”

  Completely creeped out, I grabbed for the chain around my neck, as if I expected the necklace to protect me from whoever had pushed their way through my psychic barriers. Nothing happened. I could still feel the presence in my mind, quiet and waiting.

  I froze in my seat, my body going perfectly stiff as I remembered my tongue-in-cheek mental rant about the nonzero chance of death involved in the next few days. Of course, at the time I hadn't realized that Alec was a player, that for whatever reason, he mattered enough for somebody to warn me away.

  I shook my head once, trying to clear it of interlopers in a way that felt completely natural, but didn't prove to be effective. The movement of my head, combined with the stiffening of my upper body in response to the sheer freaky quotient of what was happening to me, resulted in my losing my balance yet again. This time I managed to catch myself before I fell out of the chair, but I still garnered a few chuckles.

  Darn those girls, I thought, never too caught up in Otherworldly troubles to focus on the fact that the popular crowd at my school enjoyed laughing at me more than they would have if I weren't Kane's pathetic little ex.

  We could take care of them for you, the voice in my head promised. We could make them stop laughing.

  Was it me, or was there a “forever” implied on the end of that sentence?

  No, I thought back vehemently. Leave them alone. Leave me alone.

  This was almost as effective as shaking my head had been.

  The sound of the bell signaling the end of study hall surprised me—mainly because, for a split second, I mistook it for a shrill scream that only I could hear. With great effort, I forced myself to stand up, and as I stood, the feeling of wrongness slid away from my body, until I realized that whoever had been in my head a moment before wasn't there now.

  As I bent down to grab my backpack, dazed and confused, I realized two things. First, that I was still wearing Alec's jacket, and second, that the chair I'd been sitting in a moment before was covered by a shadow. I glanced toward the window, where a filing cabinet, responsible for the shadow, peered back at me.

  Were the shadows I'd been seeing somehow connected to the sinister voice in my head?

  I made myself take off Alec's jacket. I fumbled with the zipper, but didn't have too much trouble with it, and as I handed the jacket back to Alec, I unzipped my bag with my other hand and pulled out my cell.

  A girl had to have her priorities, and right now I really couldn't take thinking about shadows or voices or the strong possibility that if I didn't stay away from Alec, things might get ugly.

  Instead, I flipped open my phone, expertly switched it to camera function, and took his picture just as he turned to leave the room. In what amounted to nothing less than a miracle, he didn't seem to notice.

  Feeling somewhat satisfied (and still on edge from the morning's events), I closed the phone and stuck it in my bag, lest the oblivious proctor come out of her reverie long enough to confiscate it. Right before he reached the classroom door, Alec turned and smiled at me once more, before walking slowly away.

  Completely light-headed and still more than a little off I made my way to the door, barely processing the many conversations going on around me. There was a good chance at least one of them was about me and my freakishness, but the dialogue that managed to break its way through my daze had nothing to do with my performance in study hall.

  “I love him.”

  “Me too. I love him so much.”

  “I'm totally going to be Mrs. Him.”

  I cast a sideways look at the speakers of those sentences, wondering who their him was, and why October seemed to be the new spring when it came to l-u-v.

  “Nice haircut.”

  I didn't have to look in the direction of those words to know that they were spoken by one of Alexandra Atkins's cronies, the very same girls, coincidentally enough, who'd enjoyed laughing at me so very much. This time, however, the insult wasn't aimed my way (for once). Instead, it seemed to be targeting one of the l-u-v girls, who finally stopped romanticizing long enough to process it.

  “In fact,” Jessica (the Alexling in question) continued, “that haircut is just adorable. It reminds me of my dog, you know? I just want to pet you. Or hit you with a rolled-up newspaper or something.”

  This was one part of high school I most definitely wouldn't miss.

  “Maybe next time,” the Mean Girl continued, “you can just shave your head. Believe me, bald is beautiful, at least compared to that.”

  With that, Jessica flounced out of the room.

  Hair Girl (who really didn't look that bad or canine at all) stood there, her eyes dull and shell-shocked, and her friends just shook their heads.

  “Don't pay attention to her. She's a witch.”

  “Yeah,” Hair Girl said. “And she gets away with it.”

  The other two girls began walking out of the classroom. As they stepped over the threshold and turned back to their friend, an expression that struck me as vaguely familiar and utterly alien settled over their faces. “That's just so wrong,” the two girls said in unison, their voices—dangerous and oddly sultry-sounding— burning themselves into my memory. And then the girls stepped through the doorway and out into the hall, and continued their conversation, the oddness that had descended on them a moment before suddenly gone.

  I hurried out of the classroom, shivering as I stepped through the doorway, wondering if my imagination was going overboard, or if Alec wasn't the only one involved in this mystery.

  Lunchtime could not come soon enough. And when it finally did roll around, I'd come dangerously close to convincing myself that the study-hall creepiness had been just another twisted daydream. You know—long for the Otherworld, think about James and Alec, imagine a sinister voice in my head warning me away from the latter. The daydream theory made perfect sense, except for the fact that this wasn't the first time I'd heard voices. Honestly, I was starting to think that I needed to write NO VACANCY on my forehead in permanent marker.

  Really, though, what I needed was to find out who had invaded my psychic space and why they had warned me away from Alec.

  Awww, I thought, temporarily distracted. Alec.

  Apparently, the mystical weirdness surrounding Alec didn't detract from my desire to act on Delia's Geek Theory. If anything, the mystery added to Alec's allure. I didn't know whether it was because I was part Sidhe or because I was one hundred percent teenage girl, but I couldn't put the mystery—or Alec—out of my mind.

  My mind was still in the clouds when I met my friends in the school parking lot. There was so much to tell, but before I could ask them to weigh in on the Alec mystery, I had to bring them up to speed. I had major explaining to do, and I wasn't exactly sure where to start. As the four of us piled into A-belle and Zo's car, I cleared my throat. “Hey, guys? Did anything weird happen to you during, I don't know, first hour?”

  I didn't expect the answer to be yes, because the only psychic voice any of my friends had ever heard was mine, but the question seemed like a good way to segue into the Guess-What-Happened-to-Me-in-Study-Hall topic.

  “First hour,” Zo said, mulling over my question. “It sounds vaguely familiar in that ‘happens before noon’ kind of way.”

  Zo was even less of a morning person than I was. I turned to Annabelle, knowing instinctively that Delia's version of weird would likely involve color coordination or flirtations gone bad.

  “I had English,” Annabelle said. “We talked about Beowulf.”

  “And you enjoyed it,” Zo said.

  Annabelle grinned.

  “Now, that's weird.”

  Annabelle looked straight at Zo and said something in a language
that wasn't English. Because she'd lived in about a dozen different countries growing up, A-belle knew more languages than the rest of us combined, and for the past couple of years, she'd been really into studying ancient languages. As a result, though her English was strictly PG, she often got the last word by saying something a little more profane and a lot more insulting in a language none of us could understand.

  “I'm just going to pretend you told me what a wonderful, witty cousin I am,” Zo maintained, but we all knew that Annabelle had won this round.

  “Your question raises another interesting one, though, Bailey,” Annabelle said.

  “Where are we going for lunch?” Zo guessed.

  “Did you take a photo of your geek?” That was from Delia.

  “No,” Annabelle said. “If Bailey's wanting to know if something weird happened in our first hours, that probably means something weird happened in hers.”

  I knew I could count on Annabelle to pick up on that. She was Old Reliable and Miss Observant, and I loved her for it.

  “Something did happen,” I said, and my mind went straight to the way Alec had smiled at me, even though I'd meant to express the eerier aspects of my study-hall experience.

  “Well, don't leave us hanging, Bay,” Zo said as she started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. “And where do you guys want to go?” It occurred to me that if the rest of us didn't get our bids for lunch in soon, with Zo behind the wheel, we'd inevitably end up at Coney, a restaurant where everything came with a side of chili and two sides of cheese.

  Annabelle intervened. “Let's go to Fifties,” she said decisively, and Delia and I groaned in protest, my news and the fact that I had yet to dish it temporarily forgotten. There are some things in life that take precedent over just about anything. Our joint Fifties-related trauma was one of those things. The summer we were sixteen, all four of us got jobs as carhops at Fifties, a drive-in restaurant where your food was delivered directly to your car by girls on roller skates.

  Needless to say, I'd spent the entire summer as one giant bruise, and the fifties-style burgers and fries had lost most of their appeal over the course of our carhop tenure.