“What changed?”
Nuala stared at me, and her voice was furious. “You, you a**hole! You ruined everything. You’ve made everything impossible.”
When they say “my heart skipped a beat,” they’re full of crap. Really, what they mean is, your heart sort of stutters and thinks about stopping for a second before it remembers that beating is good for it. Oh shit, no, Nuala. Not me. Not stupid, cocky me.
She jerked on my hands. “Shut up! I already know you’re a prick.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
Nuala spared me from having to come up with something else to say. “I was thinking about attraction. I have this theory on it. On love.” She wouldn’t look at me.
I swallowed, but managed, “This ought to be good.”
Nuala shot me a hard look. “Shut up. I don’t think love has anything to do with how the other person is. I mean, maybe a little. I think what really matters is you yourself. Like, you know, let’s say you lo—really liked a self-involved ass. That doesn’t matter. What matters is how that ass makes you feel. If you feel like the best person in the world when you’re with him, that’s what makes you like him. It really isn’t about how nice a person he is at all.”
I ran my tongue over my bottom lip. “I like it. It’s like the selfish person’s guide to love. It’s not you, baby, it’s me I’m in love with.”
Nuala smiled self-consciously at nothing in particular. “I thought you’d see what I meant.” She paused, and when she started again, it was like she couldn’t stop, like the words just kept tumbling out of her. “I like what I look like now. I like what I act like. Everyone thinks I’m going to jump you and suck out your life because I want you so bad, because you’re such a great piper. They don’t think I can resist. But I can. Here you are and you look amazing and I haven’t taken anything from you. I don’t even want to. I mean, I do, I mean, it’s killingme not to, but I don’t want you to give up any of your life for me. I’ve never done that before. I’m—proud of myself. I’m not just a leech. I’m not just another faerie. I don’t want to use you. I just want to be whoever it is that I am when I’m with you.”
I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t know how I felt. I didn’t feel like writing anything on my hands. I didn’t feel like jumping and running from the room. I didn’t feel awkward or weirded out or freezing cold or hungry or anything. I just felt like sitting here with my knees touching her knees and with my forehead leaning against our collective ball of fingers.
“I don’t want to forget this—that because I fell in love with you, I didn’t kill you,” Nuala said. Her voice was funny; it was hard for her to say what she was saying. “You don’t have to say anything. I know you’re in love with stupid, selfish Ungirlfriend and not me. That’s okay. I just—”
I leaned forward and kissed her. I know I took her by surprise because her lips were still forming a word when my lips touched them. My skin tightened with cold, just a little, as I kissed her, but no goose bumps.
I leaned back into my own chair and closed my eyes. Opened them again. Sucked in my lower lip, that tasted all of summer and Nuala, and pushed it back out again.
Nuala looked back at me.
“Was that okay?” I asked.
Her voice was so incredibly casual that I knew she had to be working hard to make it so. “It was a good kiss. I mean, don’t flatter yourself, it wasn’t the best kiss the world has ever seen, but—”
“Was it okay to kiss you,” I said. I said it really slowly and carefully, because I was trying to work it out for myself too.
Nuala just stared at me, and I stared back at her. Then she carefully unfolded my fingers from hers and pulled her knees away from my knees, and stood up. She stared at me some more from her vantage point above me, her blonde hair falling all around her face as she looked down on me like a killer angel. I just looked back at her, and I was looking so hard that I forgot to think about what my expression was.
Nuala climbed very slowly into my chair and sat down on my lap, her smooth, summer-scented legs curled up on either side of me. Holy freaking hell. I was still trying to maintain some control over my brain when she reached out and picked up my arms, one at a time, and linked them around behind her body.
Finally, she leaned toward me with a private, wicked smile on her face that turned me on like nothing ever had.
And she kissed me.
I think you might go to hell for making out with a faerie.
I kissed her back.
I woke up a second before I heard her voice.
“Wake up!” Nuala’s voice was right in my ear. “Someone’s outside.”
I opened my eyes. My right leg was asleep because Nuala was on top of it, smashed beside me in the most comfortable chair in the world. “Hell,” I hissed at her. “My leg’s all pins and needles.”
Nuala slid from my lap, landing noiselessly beside the chair, and looked down at her hand, her face surprised when she realized I still held her fingers. I used her weight to pull myself out of the chair and grimaced as my prickly foot hit the ground. I couldn’t hear anything.
What are we doing?
Nuala’s voice was barely audible. “I want to listen.”
We walked hand in hand toward the back doors. Well, Nuala walked. I limped and felt stupid for it. We stopped just on the other side of the doors, cloaked in warm darkness, standing several feet apart but still holding hands tightly. Like we were playing Red Rover, waiting for something to bust through the door and try to break through our defenses.
Now I heard what Nuala had.
Sullivan.
There were two voices outside the door, and one of them was unmistakably Sullivan: precise and savage. “ … want to know what business you have here. In the middle of the night right outside the dorms.”
The other voice was lofty, female, and somehow very familiar. “I was camping. I couldn’t sleep so I decided to walk into town.”
“Like hell you did. I saw you set the thyme on fire. I know what that does. You think I don’t know something’s going on here?”
Nuala leaned over swiftly to whisper right into my ear, her lips pressed up against my skin to keep her words from getting to anyone else. “I’ve heard her voice before. She’s been killing solitary fey.”
I didn’t have time to wonder at the idea that both Nuala and I found her voice familiar; the conversation on the other side of the door was still going.
“I think you probably think you’re a lot cleverer than you are,” the female voice said. I could almost place it, just from the condescension that dripped from it. “But you don’t really know anything. I think you should let go of my arm before I get really angry and decide to tell the cops something very unfavorable about you.”
Nuala looked at me. “Human,” she whispered.
“Oh, ma’am,” Sullivan’s voice was twenty degrees below zero. “You do not want to threaten me. I have seen so much worse than you.” A pause; scuffling. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what you were doing summoning Them right behind my kids’ dorm. Don’t give me any bullshit about camping or herbal research, either. I know. I know.”
“It’s not any of your business. If you know anything about Them, you know that you’re better off if you don’t put your nose where it might be cut off.”
Delia, I thought suddenly, and Nuala frowned at me, not recognizing the name. Dee’s aunt. I recognize her voice now. The faeries saved her life a long time ago, and she’s been helping Them ever since.
Nuala’s eyebrows arched sharply.
“Don’t tell me what I’m better off doing. I’ve given up the last two years of my life to make sure these kids don’t have to go through what I did.” Sullivan’s voice was a growl. “But all that time, I never thought I’d have to worry about a human. Tell. Me. Why are you here?”
Delia’s voice was frigid. “Fine. I was just using the music here to help me summon one of the daoine sidhe. One of them owes me a favor.”
“I must look extremely gullible to you.”
“You look very fragile to me, actually.” A long pause, and I wondered what filled it on the other side of the door. “You look like someone who has a lot to lose, and I know individuals who would be happy to help you lose it.”
Sullivan sounded grim. “You are sadly mistaken. I am delightfully unhindered by the attachments and accumulated possessions of most humans, thanks to your friends. I can, however, make you extremely uncomfortable if you don’t start telling me why you’re here.”
“I’m doing favors for the new queen,” Delia snapped. “Their politics. Things they can’t manage themselves.”
“New queen?” Sullivan’s voice sounded thin. “Eleanor?”
My heart stopped. Why did Sullivan know her name?
“Yes, Eleanor. I scratch her back and she scratches mine.”
Sullivan’s voice was strained. “Why is she here?”
Silence. Was there a nod or a head-shake in there that we couldn’t see? Or just nothing?
Then Sullivan again, sounding uneasy. “There’s a cloverhand here ?”
Delia laughed. “And to think you’re supposed to be protecting these children! You don’t know anything at all.”
Sullivan demanded, “Who is it?”
There was quiet for a minute, and then Nuala and I both jumped back from the door as it rattled on its hinges.
I barely recognized Sullivan’s voice as he snarled, “I’ve killed one of Them and I’m sure a human would be a lot easier. Don’t screw with me.”
Delia’s voice was slow, level, and dripping with venom. “Boy, take your hands off me.”
The door jumped again.
“This is all I’m going to say,” Delia said, voice weirdly muffled. “So you’d better listen: You want what They want. You want Them out of the human world, and They want us out of Theirs. I’m killing every faerie who deals with humans, and They’re going to kill every human who deals with faeries. Yeah, some of your kids”—this said with contempt—“might die. But in the long run, you’d be an idiot to interfere.”