Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
I trudge through the heavy doors to Newberry and down the hall to my room, every part of my body aching. My butt is sore from sitting on the cold ground, my thighs are twitchy from straddling Leo in the car, and my head throbs with all my suppressed emotions.
Liv is on her bed, lying on her back with her iPad propped on her bent knees.
I close the door and toss my keys onto my desk. “How did your exam go?” The exam she was so busy cramming for, she didn’t have time last night or this morning to give me the third degree.
“Nuh-uh.” She shuts off her iPad and tosses it aside. “You’re not going to distract me.”
I sigh and sink onto my bed.
“Betts, who on earth were those people you were with yesterday?”
“Well, you know Leo, and I’ve told you about Avery and Aaron—”
“Not them,” Liv huffs, sitting up. “That hot blond guy and that girl who looks like she hates the world.”
I stifle a snort. Topaz does hate the world. The Subworld. And I’m not sure I really blame her.
“They’re friends of Leo’s,” I say, even though Liv won’t find that fact particularly reassuring.
“Okay, I don’t get it.” She throws up her hands in frustration. “You said Leo broke your heart, but now you’re not only hanging out with him, you’re hanging out with his friends, too?”
“Um, yeah?” I answer with a sheepish grimace. “But I told you Leo and I were still friends.”
So, so, so, so not friends.
I flop back onto my bed so I don’t have to look Liv in the eye.
But she persists. “What were y’all doing, anyway?”
“We were, uh, looking for something—” Crap, I should’ve prepared a story in advance. “Some sort of artifact… in the chapel… an, uh, art history thing… that’s Avery’s major.”
I prop up on an elbow and chance a peek at Liv. Her left eyebrow is arched so high, it’s practically a right angle.
“An artifact in the chapel? Seriously?”
“A candlestick, to be exact. From the sixteenth century.” Might as well run with it. The more details I give, the less she’ll suspect me of lying. Which, technically, I’m not.
She blinks at me, and for a moment, she’s at a loss for words. I slip off my shoes and dig my laptop out of my backpack.
“I thought you guys were into that witchy stuff. Tarot and all that.”
“Yeah.” I shrug, my back to her as I set my laptop on my desk and plug it in to charge. “We do that, too.”
“So, are y’all, like, what—a coven or something?”
I turn just in time to catch her look of distaste. “No, we’re not a coven or anything like that.” Just a group of faeries and psychics trying to save a realm. “They’re perfectly nice, perfectly good people.” Yes, even Topaz.
I take a seat at my desk to do an email clean-out and to google sixteenth-century metalworking. I need something to keep my mind off Leo. Every time I blink, I see his gold and brown eyes gazing up into mine. And every time I breathe, I feel his hands in my hair and his lips on my neck.
But apparently, Liv isn’t through with our discussion. She sits frozen on her bed, frowning. “If they’re good, nice people, then why are you hiding them from me?”
“I’m not.” Am I?
Her frown deepens. “Are you hiding me from them?”
“What? No.” My heart twists. Her confusion and hurt reach for me like grasping hands. “No, I just… I didn’t think you were interested in any of the stuff we’re into. I mean, like, we don’t go to parties or—”
She cuts me off, “So I’m a bimbo.”
Oh god, the hole I’m digging. “Absolutely not. Who’s the one who’s always telling you how smart you are and nagging you about your grades?”
She sits up a little straighter. “My advisor said if I can manage at least a 3.4 this semester I can still get into Pi Epsilon.”
So that’s why she burst out of the advising offices looking so excited. “That’s the Environmental Science honor society, right?”
She nods, trying to hold back a smile. “But that’s a 3.4 in all my classes, not just my major.”
“You can do that, easy-peasy.”
“If I get in, I can take honors classes.” Her eyes light up. “Like that four hundred level one on invasive species.”
“Oh! More ten-legged frogs?”
“Those are mutations,” she informs me. “Not invasive species.”
I chuckle humbly. “Yeah, duh.”
A wild thought occurs to me as she hops up to get her computer.
“Hey, question for you—” I flick my screensaver on and spin in my chair to face her.
“You’ve done field studies in some of your classes, right?
Have you found any weird stuff around here, like those frogs?
” You know, plants growing sideways and fuzzy snakes?
“Oh yeah, all sorts of weird shit. In the woods, we found moss that didn’t have spores and… and these freaky mushroom things that were just—” She shudders. “Oh, and last semester in River Ecosystems, Casey swore she saw a water strider with gills.”
A thrill ripples through me. “But they’re bugs, aren’t they?”
“Uh, yeah.”
Holy shit. Did Leo and Robin come across any of those anomalies in their research? He said they didn’t know what was a normal mutation and what was a truly aberrant mutation. But Liv would, wouldn’t she? Or she could lead us to someone who could help.
If I let her.
If I told her the truth.
But I can’t.
She wrestles with her tangled charger cord. “Why do you ask?”
Because I’m foolishly daydreaming. Selfishly daydreaming. Liv is finally getting her life together. Her grades are improving and she’s not taking any more of Braden’s BS. I’m not going to shake up her whole world just because I want her help and commiseration.
“Just curious,” I say with a shrug. “It’s been a while since you’ve grossed me out.”
She giggles as she settles at her desk. “Okay, the next disgusting thing I see in my textbook, I promise to show you.”
“Thank you,” I joke. “You’re a true friend.”
I turn back to my laptop only to stare unseeing at the screen. Even if I were willing to ask Liv to join the search, there’s not enough time. It took me weeks to accept that faeries are real. It would probably take Liv months. And with Brier’s team so close, we only have days.
This time next week, I could be sitting here in this same chair, with nothing more to worry about than papers and exams, the weapon found and the fae gone.
Forever.
Because there’s no justifiable reason for them to break the laws of their realm to come back.
Tears suddenly flood my eyes, blurring the words on the screen. I clamp my lips and tighten my hands into fists, but it’s no use. The sobs have been building in my throat since my zipper got stuck and reality came crashing down.
Leo will be gone.
I close my computer and hurry to the bathroom where I hide in a stall and cry noiselessly, sniffling into a wad of toilet paper. I take a deep breath, shudder, and breathe some more. I have to get myself under control, quickly, or Liv will come looking for me.
It’s okay, I tell myself. It’s for the best. I could’ve had a relationship with Leo Hawthorn, history major from Philly, but not with Leo the Hawthorn, faerie from Nàdar. What sort of future would we have? You’re a human, Betts, and I don’t know what that means for us.
There’s no way to make this work. I just have to accept it.
Steeling myself, I emerge from the stall and splash some cold water on my swollen eyes. Fortunately, when I return to our room, Liv is busy shooting messages on her phone.
Ten minutes later, as I’m struggling to get into the right headspace to finish reading Le Morte D’Arthur, she turns to me, fingers poised over her phone. “Okay, how about pizza tomorrow night with Mia and Jenna? You know, for our girls’ night?”
Shit, I forgot. “Umm—” So many reasons to say no, and no way to explain them.
“It’ll be fun.” She waves away my hesitation. “And I promise it’ll be just us girls. In fact, I told them if the guys show up, I’m leaving.”
“Yeah? How come?”
“Because last weekend, Braden hardly said two words to me. And now all the sudden he’s all over me? I mean, come on, I know it’s only because he heard about Liam. Whenever there’s another guy around, he turns into a pathetic caveman.”
“Yeah, he was pretty handsy yesterday.” I grin, eager for a little levity. “He looked like he wanted to suplex Rime.”
“Puh-lease.” Liv laughs. “I mean, I don’t know the guy, but Rime looks like he could take down three dudes with one swing.”
Indeed. I just hope I never have to see it.
“So, anyway, you’re coming, right?”
“Um, yeah, probably,” I say noncommittally. “If I can get all my work done, I’d like to.” You know, if I can find the tracery window that leads to a forge that leads to a faerie weapon—without anyone getting hurt—then pizza would be great.
This morning, as I run out the door, I hastily stuff six crystals in my bra, all in the left cup.
Not my smartest idea. After my first class, I have to rush to the nearest restroom and transfer half the stones to the right cup.
It’s still uncomfortable, but it’s a little more balanced, and better than sitting through three packed classes without some sort of energetic protection.
Yesterday left me feeling more raw and vulnerable than ever.
A victim of a power that knows no bounds.
When Leo and I were working with the snowdrops, was I “part of the circuit,” like he said?
I felt the energy connecting him and the flowers like it was going through me, too, but I couldn’t talk to the plants like he could.
I was a cord or a battery, not a speaker.
So what does that mean? And why was he so shocked?
He was trying to hide his concern, but for god’s sake, I’m clairsentient. I could feel it.
Between classes, I distract myself by scanning every building I pass for Avery’s window. I’m not surprised I don’t find it. My Wednesdays are spent on the east end of campus, the part built in the late twentieth century. Ornate wrought-iron windows don’t go with the utilitarian architecture.