“That’s it,” his tone was cheerful. “You’ve got it. Keep working on just your hand until it happens naturally, then move on to the rest of your body. Don’t forget to make your hand visible again. You might get some unwanted attention if a human sees you without it.”
I nearly squealed in delight, then remembered where I was and held it in. I was doing it, for real, like a real fae. I’d always known I was fae, but until this moment hadn’t really known what that meant. The regenerating thing happened on its own, I didn’t control it. Here was something tangible about being fae that only happened when I told it to.
“Continue working on just this tonight and you should be able to disappear completely by tomorrow. Fae will still be able to see you, it’s only humans this works on, they are so dull. But they can still hear you for now, so be careful. It should be late enough for you to go home. Tomorrow you can show me your progress. If you’ve done well enough, we will start on something else.”
“What? What something else?”
Cumat looked ruffled at my question. “I will talk to Ms. Starren and see what she prefers.”
I rolled my eyes at his back as he walked toward the door. Didn’t he feel like an idiot catering to her?
No one was around to tell me goodbye when I got into the hallway. Cumat walked me to the brick wall and gave me a small bow before leaving me standing there. I guessed that meant I was dismissed. Time to go home and eat a massive amount of food. All this concentrating had worked up an appetite.
Chapter Nine
The next morning I pulled up to headquarters early, just like Cumat had told me. Wade was the one waiting on me today. My heart gave a little thump, seeing him leaning against the wall waiting on me. I whacked the offending organ and put a scowl on my face.
“Starren had something for Cumat to do,” he explained as soon as I stopped my bike.
“Okay.” I could be civil. I really could. At least I could try. “Ready to go in?”
“Actually, Cray hasn’t found us anything that isn’t registered with the Council yet, so we have nothing to track. Starren wants you to go to school, make sure your doppelganger is doing an okay job as you.”
Well wasn’t that nice of her. Not. “I can’t stay here and work with Cumat? He’s teaching me stuff.”
“Nope. What Starren says, goes. Cumat is running errands.”
I jumped on my bike and shoved off without answering.
“Trish, come on, at least talk to me,” Wade yelled after me. I didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking back. It was so confusing to be around him right now. I could really use this day off even though I just wanted to get this whole thing over with. What were we now? Obviously not boyfriend and girlfriend. Not even friends. Teammates, I guess, but somehow that didn’t seem to cover it. I groaned and pedaled faster, trying to get my mind off the whole mess. It didn’t really work.
What happened if Cray found something while I was at school? Served them right if they needed me later and couldn’t get me out of math class. Hopefully Starren had locked the other me up in some closet. It wouldn’t do to run into myself at school. This was probably my fault though, refusing to work with Wade. Starren might have let me spend the day at headquarters learning more fae tricks if I’d had a teacher. He could be teaching me something useful right now, instead of me heading to school where I’d be trying to memorize the periodic table. How was that helpful again?
It was strange riding to school. It had only been two days, but it was almost another life. Thursday, right? Now my days were getting mixed up. I should know though. Nina had been all misty eyed this morning over the fact that it had been a week since I went missing.
Once I made it to school, it was surreal. I had always known I didn’t belong here, that I should be off in some woods somewhere with the rest of the fae, but just didn’t know what the fae world was like. Now I did. A little bit anyway.
Mrs. Hemp watched me as I walked past her to my desk, intently enough to give me the creeps. What had the other me done to attract this much attention? I settled in to listen to the story of Odysseus, which made me wonder, how many other legends were true? Most people didn’t believe fae existed, yet here I was, sitting in the middle of them. Maybe Odysseus was fae. Or the sirens were under fae. So many possibilities.
When the bell rang, I shot out of class at top speed, not giving Mrs. Hemp the chance to call my name. I stumbled through my next two classes, hardly even there.
At lunch I grabbed a tray and started through the line. Yum, tacos today. I loaded my plate with two soft shells and two hard, then slathered on the sour cream. A little extra never hurt. I turned to look around the room, actually thinking about where I should sit for the first time since I’d come to this school. I sighed. Making friends would create a great excuse for me to be gone at night, but I had no idea where to start with that. I’d never cared before. Plus whatever progress I made today would probably be destroyed by my look alike tomorrow. And really, tomorrow was all I needed if everything went well. Cray would figure out where Jaden was tonight, we’d go get him in the morning. After tomorrow, I would be free. Hopefully. If we could break our losing streak.
I started for my regular table against the wall in back, the perfect place for me. I could see everything going on but still stay under the radar.
“Trisha, wait up.”
I turned, trying not to let my face show any emotion. So far the only time someone had wanted to talk to me here it hadn’t turned out so good for me. I saw who it was. Never mind, I had to take that back. It was Rissa. She’d asked about me earlier this week. And now she was talking to me again. Twice in one week? The world really was going crazy.
“Um, hi,” I said brilliantly. What a great come back.
“Want to sit with Amy and me for lunch today?”
Sit with her and Amy? Okay, yes, it was possible for me to die. I was going to fall over dead from shock. That was something any other girl in this cafeteria would just about kill for. Problem was, it wasn’t such a good idea for me. When I’d been thinking about the need to make friends, the two most sought after girls in school hadn’t even crossed my mind as possibles. Especially since I’d spent my time here doing my best to be ignored. Sure, they’d been nice, but to ask me to sit at their table? A whole different story.
But saying no would be a major insult, resulting in attention I didn’t need right now. “Sure?”
“Great!” She linked her arm through mine and tugged me toward the diva table. We got there and she dropped her tray in her normal spot. “I got her to come,” she stated the obvious to the other girl at the table.
“Great, glad to have you, Trisha.” Amy smiled. I studied her for a moment while the two of them chatted, trying to figure out why I was here. Same dyed hair, black underneath, blond on top, check. Designer jeans, holes pre-ripped, check. Same intense green eyes, check. Why was she staring? Had she asked me something?
“Sure,” I said, looking down at my plate and hoping with all my might that she hadn’t just asked if those jeans made her look fat.
“Great,” she smiled again. This wasn’t so bad. I could do this. If she stopped saying great. Great was getting annoying. “Meet us out front after school.”
Meet them out front? Meet them out front for what? Obviously I’d missed something important. Amy stood. “Sorry, we were just finishing up and I’ve got to get to the gym. See you after school.”
“See ya,” I said. She didn’t seem to notice, she was gone, Rissa following right after her.
I just sat at the diva table for a full minute, no longer interested in my tacos. What just happened? And what had I agreed to do after school? I came-to enough to pay attention to the lunchroom. Kids were pretending not to notice me sitting at the diva table by myself, but I caught the quick glances and whispers. Suddenly the thought of eating those tacos made me sick.
The walk to the trash can by the door to the hallway felt lik
e it was farther away than the portal had been back in the woods. I ignored everyone I passed, something I’d gotten really good at doing. After dumping the contents of my tray into the trash, I slid into the hallway. Now what? I’d rushed out of class and got to lunch early, so now with me skipping the food I had way too much time, at least forty-five minutes.
Almost without thought, I wandered toward the gym. There was a small window in the swinging doors, mostly there so a person didn’t slam someone going the opposite direction. I snuck up to it and peeped through the three-inch square.
There was Amy, playing some one-on-one basketball with a girl I didn’t know. When she’d said she was heading for the gym, I’d automatically filled in the blank with cheerleader. Basketball player? Never crossed my mind.
“Who are you watching?” a voice asked from behind. I jerked back from the window and turned that way.
“Starren? What are you doing here? Did you find something?”
She walked forward and nudged me out of the way and looked through the glass. “No. Wade asked me to check up on you.”
“Wade? What does he want?”
“You first. Which one of the girls are you watching?”
How much did I want to know why Wade had asked her to spy on me? Quite a bit. “Number eighteen. Something weird happened at lunch. None of your business, just high school stuff.”
“Until we find Jaden, everything that happens in your life is my business. Is it something I need to know about?”
“No. I answered your question, now you answer mine. Why did Wade ask you to come out here?”
“I wasn’t supposed to let you see me, but I’m tired of all this nonsense. He still cares about you. Either forgive him or kick him in the teeth, either way I don’t care, just get it handled. We don’t need all this crap going on; it’s distracting both of you. Someone will get hurt.”
I snorted. “Oh yeah, he shows his feelings really well. Here honey, let’s see if this pistol works.”
Starren glared. I tapped my toes in my shoe, trying desperately to not let her see that she was intimidating me. “I don’t care how much either of your feelings get hurt, but no one is getting physically hurt while on my team. We need to get this worked out.”
“Like it’s that easy. He betrayed me.”
A kid walked by me toward a row of lockers. He was staring at me like I was crazy.
“What?” I asked him, my voice echoing a little in the hallway as I let out a little steam.
“Nothing,” he mumbled as he scooted past us.
“What’s his problem?” I asked Starren. “I’d think he’d be staring at you, not me. You’re the one that would be new to school, plus the fact there is something about you that’s… not human.” I noticed the glint to her skin. The glint I’d learned to see when I was working with Cumat. “Wait. I’m talking to myself again, aren’t I. Oh great. Now the whole school is going to think I’m crazy as well as just plain strange.”
Starren’s face hardened. “Why do you care so much about what these humans think? Why do you even come to this horrible place? You can’t be learning anything useful here.”
I waited until another kid walked by. “What’s so different about us that we shouldn’t care about them?” I was arguing just to argue now. I didn’t even know the names of ninety percent of the kids I went to school with. The only humans I specifically cared for were Dan and Nina, and my children’s home family. Sure, I didn’t hear from any of them very often, but they were still family.
“If I hadn’t seen what you can do, I wouldn’t believe you are fae. Be back to the Hall by seven a.m. tomorrow.” She turned and started to leave, then paused. “He went to Faerie, you know. Waited two days at the holding cells. He started getting upset about an hour into it and was devastated by that second day. Thought he’d killed you for real.”
“That’s his own fault,” I muttered. “He never should have hurt me in the first place.”
“You might find he had his reasons, if you took the time to talk with him.”
“Do you really think this I’m going to just forgive him?” She couldn’t. She wouldn’t forgive anyone anything, was the vibe she gave off.
“No. I just want this resolved. I can’t have two members of my team that aren’t willing to look out for each other.” She turned and left, dodging students who didn’t even know she was there.
What she’d told me didn’t make a difference. There wasn’t a good enough reason to make Wade shoot me and hope for the best. None. The waves of kids going by intensified. Starren and I must have been talking longer than I’d thought. I started slowly up the hallway toward my next class, lost in thought. Wade had been sick waiting for me? He’d gone to Faerie to be there when I arrived, to walk me through things? That wasn’t how I’d been picturing the whole murder thing since I’d woken up. I went through the rest of my classes in a daze, probably no better than my doppelganger.
Finally the last bell rang. I practically ran to my locker, threw my books in and headed for the front door, not sure whether to hope Amy and Rissa were waiting for me or not. Sure, I could just not show up, but what if they confronted the other me about it tomorrow while I was gone? That could be not good in so many different ways.
The sun was shining as I pushed through the main entrance/exit. It took my eyes a second to adjust. There they were, standing out by the road, waiting.
“Ready?” Amy asked me when I got within hearing distance.
“Sure?” I said, not liking the question on the end.
“Are you going to play in that?”
Play? Play what?
“Yes?”
“Okay then, let’s head out. Did you drive or do you want a ride?”
I pointed at the bike rack. “I rode.”
“Nice,” Rissa smiled. “I didn’t know you were green.”
Not green, just didn’t have my license yet. I’d missed my appointment to try for my driving permit - that was supposed to happen last Friday. Instead I’d spent the day lying in the woods getting rained on. What a great trade. Not that I was going to tell her that.
“You can ride with us. My dad set up a great court, he’s hoping I get a basketball scholarship.” Amy said. “Have you played much?”
Basketball? I’d agreed to backyard basketball? “Nope, I can honestly say almost never.” Much to Dan’s disappointment. He’d set us up a hoop before I’d even arrived. We had literally never used it.
I was terrible at sports. Not that I’d tried much. Most sports required a team of some kind, and I wasn’t a team player. How had this happened? I needed to learn to pay better attention when people were talking to me.
Yep, and here Amy was talking again. “I can get someone to take care of your bike for you,” before I could stop her she yelled “Hey, Kevin, you bring your truck today?”
A big guy in a football jacket turned our way. “Yeah. Need it for something?”
Amy nodded toward me. “Can you haul Trish’s bike to my house? I’ll figure out how to get it home from there later.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I interrupted. “I can catch a bus back here and pick it up later.”
“No way.” Amy led me toward the bike rack. “Which one is yours?”
“The one on the end.” At least it was a pretty nice bike. Dan had gotten it for me soon after I moved in, to go on rides with him and Nina. That didn’t really work out since I avoided them at all costs for a while, and then they just gave up. But I used it a ton on my own.
The big guy jogged off and was back in a minute, pulling up in a huge pickup, definitely not green, and pretty impractical for the city life. Guys. I unlocked my bike and wheeled it over. He jumped out of the cab, took the bike from me and hoisted it into the bed of the truck in one smooth move. “Thanks,” I said.
“You’re welcome.” He grinned at me, then stuck his hand out. “Kevin. You new?”
Not exactly.
<
br /> “New to us,” Amy saved me.
“Cool. See you in a few.” He hopped in his truck and revved the engine, nearly deafening me, then peeled out and headed up the road in a cloud of smoke. Hopefully my bike would survive. I wasn’t looking forward to telling Dan about my phone and sure didn’t want to add my bike to the casualty list.
“Let’s go. Addison is going to beat us there,” Rissa said.
Amy and Rissa walked ahead of me, talking about Kevin and his driving, then moving on to the girl’s basketball team. I walked along behind them, feeling a little out of place, but glad to be here at the same time. To think I’d been trying to find a way to skip out. This was the type of thing people were supposed to do together, not trying to stay alive while taking swings at monsters.
The girls walked up to a blue two-door Mitsubishi convertible and opened the doors in tandem. I slid into the back seat on Rissa’s side. They both hopped in and put on their seatbelts, which surprised me. I did the same.
We drove for a bit before Rissa looked at me in the rearview mirror. “So, tell us about you, Trisha. I’ve seen you around, but you never talk to anybody.”
Panic, panic. “I just moved here last year. Haven’t really had a chance to get to know anyone yet. You know how crazy it is settling in at a new school.” All truth.
“Yeah, that can be hard,” Amy said. “Rissa wouldn’t know, but I’ve moved.” They stared at me in the mirror like they were expecting me to continue, but I didn’t have anything else to say. What else was I supposed to tell her? I didn’t do this often enough to know.
“How many other girls are meeting us to play basketball?”
“Just one,” Amy said. “You’re our fourth for two on two. Thanks for coming to play.”
Rissa took a turn down a familiar street. It wasn’t my street, but it was one nearby. No way one of these rich girls lived this close to me.
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