“We intend to do that.” They straightened and backed away, making gestures to let me know we were done here. “Go on back to class, but we’ll be watching you, Ethan. Stay out of trouble, you hear?”
Relieved, I stood and headed for the door. As I left I could feel the principal’s glare on my back. He’d probably hoped I’d be arrested and carted off to juvie; one less delinquent for him to deal with. I certainly gave off the image of the sullen, brooding troublemaker: ripped jeans, shirt turned inside out, pierced ears and defiant smirk firmly in place. But whatever. I wasn’t here to be a perfect student or win any trophies. I just wanted to get through the year without any major disasters. Any more major disasters.
I slipped out of the principal’s office with a sigh of relief. Another bullet dodged. I was an expert at lying to cover up the truth no one else could see. That the fey were out there and couldn’t seem to leave me alone. To keep the people around me safe, I’d become someone no one wanted to be around. I’d driven away potential friends, isolated myself and basically been a dick to anyone who tried to get close to me. Usually it worked. Once I made it clear that I wanted to be left alone, people did just that. No one wanted to deal with a hostile jerk.
Except one girl.
Dammit, I hope she’s okay. Where are you, Kenzie? I hope you didn’t get into trouble because of me.
I supposed we were lucky that we’d been gone only a week. In the Nevernever, time flows differently than in the real world. There are stories of those who vanished into Faeryland for a year and when they came home again, a hundred years had gone by and all they’d known before was changed. Losing one week was getting off pretty easy, but to everyone looking for us, we appeared to have vanished into thin air. With one exception, no one had seen or heard any trace of us from the time we left the tournament until the night we came home, several days later.
So Kenzie and I had had to come up with a really good excuse for when we got back.
* * *
“Are you sure?” I’d asked, gazing into her chocolate-brown eyes, seeing my worried reflection staring back at me. “That’s the story you want to give your dad when we get home? You decided to visit New York, and I agreed to drive you there?”
Kenzie had shrugged, the moonlight shining off her raven hair. Behind her, the great expanse of Central Park was a black-and-silver patchwork quilt, fading into the glimmering towers over the tree line. Her slim arms hung around my waist, her fingers tracing patterns in the small of my back, distracting me. “Can you think of anything better?”
“Not really.” I shivered as her fingers slipped under the hem of my shirt and brushed my skin. I resisted the urge to squirm and tried to focus. “But won’t he be mad that you just took off without telling him?”
The girl in my arms gave a bitter smile, not looking up. “He has no right to be,” she muttered. “He doesn’t care what I do. He never checks up on me. As long as I come back with all my fingers and toes, he won’t care where I’ve been. And if he does say something, I...I’ll tell him that I wanted to see New York City before I died. What is he going to do?”
My gut twisted for a different reason then. I didn’t answer, and Kenzie peeked up at me, apologetic. “What about you?” she asked, cocking her head. “What do you want to tell your family when we get home?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “My family has dealt with this before.” When we lost Meghan. “I’ll come up with something.”
She fell silent, chewing on her lip. Her soft fingers were still tracing patterns beneath my shirt, sending tremors up my spine. “Ethan?” she said finally, her voice strangely hesitant. “Um...I’m going to see you again, when we get back to the real world, right?”
“Yeah,” I whispered, knowing exactly what she meant. She wasn’t worried that I would fade from sight like one of the fey, but that I would go back to being that mean, hostile jackass who kept everyone at arm’s length. “I promise, I’m not going anywhere,” I told her, brushing a dark strand of hair from her eyes. “I’ll even do normal things like take you to dinner and go to the movies, if you want.”
Kenzie grinned. “Can I introduce you as my boyfriend?”
My stomach lurched the other way. “If you think introducing me to anyone is a good idea,” I said, shrugging. “I just hope your dad is as lenient on your boyfriends as he is on your whereabouts. You said he’s a lawyer, right?” I grimaced. “I can just see how that first meeting is going to go.”
Kenzie rose on tiptoe, her hands climbing my chest to my shoulders, and touched her lips to mine. I sucked in a breath and closed my eyes, feeling her soft mouth caress my lips, forgetting everything for a moment.
“Let me handle my dad,” she murmured when we drew back.
“Prince Ethan.” A short faery with a potato-like nose, wrinkled and stubby, padded up. The gnome was dressed in a long white coat, and one of its arms was mechanical, the fingers made of needles, tweezers, even a scalpel. “You are injured,” it stated, gesturing to the rough bandages trussed around my leg and arm where I’d been sliced open by a couple nasty faery knights. My sleeve and half my pant leg were covered in blood. “The Iron Queen has bid me to tend to your wounds. As she said, in her own words, ‘I do not want Mom and Luke freaking out the second he comes home.’ Please, sit down.”