Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception Page 4

  I looked at the man who was speaking. His pleasant voice belied his image, which was that of a bare-knuckle fighter. Though he was wearing a button-down shirt, the sleeves couldn’t hide his enormous biceps and muscled chest. He wasn’t like any school representative I’d ever imagined.

  “First prize in ensemble goes to Andrew Manx, Tina Chin—” the speaker blared, but Mom’s voice seemed louder. “Well, thanks. We’ll definitely take a look.”

  Mr. Gigantic Muscles gave me a small nod before looking back to Delia and Mom. “Well, I know you’ve had a long day, so I’ll let you go get a well-deserved rest. They should be announcing the grand prize very soon, shouldn’t they? Enjoy the reception.”

  Mom exchanged a look with me and then stared at Delia after the man had gone.

  There was more clapping behind us as awards were read. I was surprised to find that I didn’t really care if I won anything. The competition seemed so insignificant—so ordinary—in comparison to the here and now, standing next to Luke and looking at the business card the conservatory representative had left.

  “Thornking-Ash,” Delia read from the card. She sniffed. “Sounds like a funeral home.”

  I sniffed, too, but only because I smelled the same herbal smell as before. Was that freak still here?

  Luke was at my elbow, saying, “I think I’m going to have to leave early. I think I might have to go now.”

  I was about to protest or beg unabashedly for his number when I realized the clapping had gone quiet. The voice crackled on the speaker. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s six o’clock, and as promised, we’re going to announce the winners of the grand prize. Thank you everyone for competing and sharing your talent with us. The judges would like to congratulate the grand prize winners for this year’s arts festival—Deirdre Monaghan and Luke Dilling.”

  Luke whispered into my ear, close enough that his lips brushed my hair. “Tell me you want to see me again.”

  I smiled.

  three

  Hey psycho, what’s up?”

  I rolled back onto my bed, cradling the phone on my shoulder. “Nothing much.” I caught sight of the clock on my bedstand and groaned. “James, it’s not really ten o’clock, is it?” He didn’t have to answer. I could tell from the fierceness of the sun coming through the white curtains that it was late.

  “I hear,” James said, “that introverts have to sleep a lot after stressful encounters with people.”

  I sat up. “That’s true.” It was also true that I’d spent way too much time last night unable to sleep. Thinking about winning the whole freakin’ grand prize of the competition. Thinking about Luke. Thinking about Thornking-Ash. Mostly thinking about Luke. I didn’t mention that part to James.

  “So. Today’s your birthday.” James made a sound like he was chewing something. “Sorry, hangnail. Anyway. Today! The celebration of the first day you screamed.”

  “Yesterday was my birthday,” I corrected, getting out of bed. I pulled a T-shirt out of a drawer and found some jeans, cradling the phone on my shoulder. “I’m getting old.” I checked my pants from the day before for any money, and instead found the four-leaf clover that had been stuck to my phone. Good luck.

  “You were busy yesterday. I’m designating today your birthday. You can’t stop me.”

  “Okay, fine. It’s my birthday. Want to make something of it?”

  “Actually, your mom already did. In typical overbearing fashion, she’s invited me and my parents to your house for dinner and cake this evening. Normally, this is the part where I’d complain bitterly about how you let your mom arrange your life for you, but since I really like her food, I’m not going to say anything.”

  I made a face. Trust Mom to throw me a kiddie party. She’d apparently missed the memo where I officially became an adult, or maybe the memo that said you don’t arrange a teenager’s birthday like a catering event. Come to think of it, I think she missed most memos.

  “Boy, thanks, Mom,” I said.

  “Well, you could just tell her you wanted to hang out with me unofficially,” James suggested. “You’re the birthday girl. Snap the fingers. Make it happen.”

  Ha. Make it happen. It reminded me of Luke last night, of what he’d said. You know how some people can do anything? They want something, they make it happen.

  “I like that idea better,” I said slowly, distracted. I set the clover down on my bedside table, studying it—the way the sun cast a perfectly clover-shaped shadow behind it. “But you do like her food.” I cupped my hand on the edge of the table, a few inches away from the clover.

  James moaned. “Oh, it pushes me over the edge, baby.”

  Some people can do anything. Come here, clover.

  The clover fluttered in an invisible wind. Then, leaves billowing out like a miniature ship, it scuttled across the desk into my palm.

  Oh crap.

  “What, not even a laugh for that? Wow, you’re never allowed to sleep late again. You’re crankier than a fat guy in stilettos.”

  James voice brought me back to reality. It made me realize that the air-conditioning vents in the room were roaring; the central air had just kicked in. The blast from the vent had sent the clover rushing into my hand. Nothing more.

  I was oddly relieved.

  “Dee?”

  “What—yeah—no—sorry.” Movement caught my eye from my window. Down below, an unfamiliar car was pulling into the driveway. “I’m really sorry, James, but I’m totally crazy right now. I think I need breakfast or caffeine or something. Can I call you back?”

  “Yeah, of course. I’ve got practice today, but I’ll be around this afternoon.” His voice was concerned. “Are you okay?”

  I bit my lip. I had never kept anything from him before. Duh, you’re not keeping anything from him now, either. There’s nothing to keep. “I’m okay. I’m just like you said: all introverted and worn out.”

  His tone warmed slightly. “Poor Dee. Go get victuals. I’ll be ’round when you need me.” The phone clicked and I went closer to the window, pulling the curtain to the side to see who it was. I jumped slightly as I realized the driver of the car was looking up at me, craning his head out the window. Luke. How the hell did he know where I lived? Did I care?

  I scurried away from the window and tore off my T-shirt. A quick and untidy dig through my closet netted a better shirt. I’d keep the jeans. They made my butt look awesome. I put the clover back in my pocket and tore down the stairs, where I encountered the first defensive lineman: Delia.

  “That flute player is here. Who is he, anyway?”

  Good question.

  “Luke Dillon,” I said. I tried to edge past her into the kitchen but she followed, coffee cup in hand. Caffeine was her secret weapon. To foil Delia was to separate her from her coffee. It wasn’t going to happen in time to save me this morning.

  “Does he go to your school?”

  My lie wouldn’t have convinced Mom, but it worked for Delia. “He has friends there.”

  “He was quite good-looking.”

  True enough.

  Mom’s voice sounded from the kitchen—more defenders, not good—and Delia shuttled me in to be finished off for good. “Who’s good-looking?” Mom was holding the coffeepot; she refilled Delia’s cup, not realizing that she was topping off Delia’s head-demoness powers by doing so. I tried to see out, past the yellow-checked curtains above the sink.

  “The flute player who just pulled into the driveway,” Delia replied.

  Mom spun toward the window. “I didn’t see anyone come up! He hasn’t knocked, has he?”

  I said firmly, “I’m going outside.”

  Mom pointed to the counter as I was leaving. “Did you want to keep that? Dad found it on your harp case last night when he was bringing it in from the car.”

  It was a four-leaf clover, sitting on the counter next to the toaster. Like the other two I’d found, it was perfect—all leaves symmetrical—and completely unwilted despite its overnight stay in th
e car.

  “It’s not a hard question, Deirdre.” Mom pulled her standing mixer out of the cabinet and set it on the counter, no doubt preparing for my birthday cake. “You could press it in a book if you want it to stay nice.”

  I didn’t know if I wanted it to stay nice but I took it anyway, twirling the stem between my fingers. I had a prickling sensation in my stomach but I couldn’t tell what it was. Excitement? Fear? Hunger?

  “Yeah, maybe.” I went outside to meet Luke.

  He was crouching by the door of his car, eyes squinted in the white-hot sun, looking at my dog, Rye. Despite Rye’s unusual color—chalky white body and crimson red ears—he’s a typical hound dog: loyal, loving, and friendly to everyone in the world.

  Which is why his raised hackles stopped me in my tracks. Lying in the front yard, his head so low that it barely cleared the grass, Rye was staring at Luke, his lips raised almost into a snarl. Luke was calling to him in a soft voice, the pattern of it hypnotic and lulling. I guess his words could have been in a lot of different languages—but English wasn’t one of them.

  Luke saw my approach and straightened. He was wearing the same jeans as before, but his shirt today was a dark V-neck that accentuated the paleness of his hair and eyes. “Hello, lovely. You’re pretty as pretty today.”

  My cheeks warmed. “What are you doing here?”

  He shrugged with a smile. “Satisfying my curiosity.” His pale blue eyes dropped to the clover still in my fingers, and somehow he lost his smile. “Where did you get that?”

  “My mom found it. Aren’t they supposed to bring good luck?”

  “And other things.” Luke gestured at Rye. “This beast yours?”

  His tone was affectionate, though Rye gave him no reason to be—he was still crouched in the grass, hair spiked stiffly on his shoulders.

  “Rye. Yeah. He’s ancient. We’ve had him as long as I can remember, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him like this.”

  “He looks like a good dog.” Luke’s face was turned from me as he said it, but his voice sounded wistful. “Like a clever dog.”

  “He is.”

  We both started at the sound of the kitchen door opening. Delia called out, “Why don’t you both come inside? It’s hot out there!” An interrogation session was clearly in the making.

  Before I could reply, Luke shouted, “Back in an hour! We’re getting ice cream!”

  I looked at him intently.

  “You wanted saving, didn’t you?” he said.

  I didn’t know how to reply. I’d never had any real experience with boys in high school, and I had a feeling that even if I’d had, none of it would have applied to Luke Dillon.

  Luke took out his keys—no key fob, I noticed, but plenty of keys. Fifteen or twenty of them. My own key ring had two keys and a fob shaped like a fish. I wondered if your key ring said something about you.

  “Let me go get my money,” I said finally.

  Luke opened the passenger side door for me. “I’m buying. Sorry about the car. It looks bad, but the fumes usually stay on the outside.”

  I hesitated for just a minute before getting into the old Audi. Inside the car it was hot and airless, despite the fact that Luke had only just gotten out of it, and the seats were of the soft, blue, fuzzy variety that I remembered from all of my grandmother’s cars. It smelled like Luke inside; the same smell I remembered when he leaned close yesterday. The memory sent another prickling through my stomach.

  Luke climbed into the other side of the car and turned knobs and hit buttons as deftly as he’d played the flute; soon, cool air was wafting from the vents. It reminded me of the four-leaf clover, fluttering into my hand earlier. I shivered.

  “Too cold?” He turned it down and, as if reading my thoughts, looked at the four-leaf clover I still held. “You don’t need that.”

  As he backed out of the driveway, I set the clover on the dash and looked at it. “Everyone needs good luck.”

  “Not you, Dee. You manage it all by yourself. Quite impressively.” He paused at the end of the driveway, rolled down the window, and flung the clover into the road. “Where’s a good place to get ice cream?”

  “You’re chucking my luck,” I said. “And actually, I work at an ice cream shop.”

  “Sweet!” Luke paused. “Too cheesy?”

  I laughed, too late. “I didn’t realize you were trying to be funny.”

  Luke groaned as he turned right out of the driveway. “You wound me deeply with your careless words: ‘Trying to be.’”

  I grinned at him. “You’ll just have to try harder.”

  “Duly noted. Now, how do I get to this place?”

  “You’re heading the right way already. It’s about a mile up here, on the left. Dave’s Ice.” But you knew that already, didn’t you? I looked hard at him, and he looked back at me with an equally intent look before turning his eyes to the road.

  “I thought I remembered seeing it when I came in,” he said. “I remember thinking it was an ice cream day.”

  Of course it was an ice cream day. Why shouldn’t it be? It struck me that we’d come to a strange unspoken agreement. He pretended to be normal, and I pretended I believed him. I wanted to believe him. But I couldn’t. What brand of abnormal, I wasn’t sure yet. I just hoped it didn’t involve axes, gags, and the trunk of a car.

  Outside, the air looked wavy and greasy as it came up from the asphalt. The heat hung heavy in the tree tops, weighing down the leaves so that the only movement was that of automobiles, roaring slowly past them on the two-lane road. It was a day to do nothing practical, summer at its most stifling.

  “Here,” I said unnecessarily, and Luke turned into the parking lot of Dave’s Ice. It felt like I’d pulled into the lot a million times before. In a lot of ways, I’d learned more here than I had at school.

  Luke looked at the squat, concrete-block building and parked in one of the shaded spots at the back of the lot. “Why is it called Dave’s Ice?”

  “Well, they used to sell just ice to people, way back in the old days, before fridges, I guess. Then, ice, now, ice cream. Makes sense, doesn’t it? A sort of logical leap?”

  “Do you like it?”

  I was taken aback by the question. I didn’t remember anyone ever asking me that question about anything before. “I do. This’ll sound dumb, but I love making all the scoops perfect. You know, center the hot fudge, just the right number of swirls to the whipped cream, sprinkles go on in the right order so they stick perfectly …” I stopped, because he was laughing. “What?”

  “So you’re saying you’ve been a perfectionist for quite a while, then.”

  “Oh, shut up,” I told him crossly. “Are we getting ice cream or not?”

  He turned off the car, seemingly unfazed by my tone. “I’ve never seen anyone get angry as quickly as you. Come along, my frosty queen.”

  “I’m not frosty,” I protested, but I got out and followed him across the parking lot. The heat rose off the blacktop, burning my feet through the soles of my shoes. “I am curious, though.”

  Luke’s face was inscrutable. He stepped onto one of the painted lines in the lot, carefully moving along it. I stepped onto it after him, my steps as measured as a gymnast’s, as if it were a balance beam and I might fall to my death.

  “Curious about four-leaf clovers,” I persisted. “About them being good luck. And other things, you said. What other things are they good for?”

  “Feeding horses?”

  Jerk. He couldn’t hint at things and then play hard to get. It wasn’t fair. “What else?”

  His voice was level. “Scaring snakes.”

  “What else?”

  “Curing scorpion bites.”

  “What else?”

  “Seeing faeries,” Luke said. He jumped from the painted line up onto the sidewalk. “Phew. Made it.” Then he took my hand and tugged me up after him. “Now stop being so clever and let’s get some ice cream.”

  I wasn’t going to let h
im get away with that. I stopped outside the door. “Clever how?”

  He wagged a finger at me. “It’s what I like about you. You listen. You watch. It’s how you learned to do everything so well, while everyone else talked over top of everyone else. Now, would you please stop riddling me for half a moment so we can get some ice cream?”

  I relented, though my heart thumped as he led me into the frigid air-conditioning. Not normal. Not ordinary. I knew I should be running back home this second, but I was stuck. Stuck as stuck, Luke would say.

  As he looked at the menu board, I said, “I never thought I’d be the sort that went for bad boys.”

  Luke didn’t look at me, but he smiled widely, the biggest smile he’d worn all day. “No more riddling, remember? What’s good here?”

  I’d eaten enough ice cream in place of meals to answer immediately. “Chocolate Dream.”

  Sara Madison, a wine-bottle-shaped redhead who occasionally worked with me, was at the counter. She looked at Luke with considerable interest. “Can I help you?”

  He politely asked for two Chocolate Dream cones and Sara, with no acknowledgment of my presence, obligingly began to scoop, smiling at him all the while. I leaned on the counter and pretended not to be annoyed. She always flirted with any remotely attractive male who entered the shop, and Luke more than qualified. It wasn’t a personal attack. And if Luke was worth anything at all, he wouldn’t rise to the occasion. Still, I couldn’t help but glance over to see what effect the gigantically endowed Sara’s attentions were having on him. His face had the same mild expression as usual as he counted out six one-dollar bills, but I saw a glimpse of that private smile right before he took a step to close the gap between us.

  “You’ve got something on your shoulder.” While Sara watched, he lightly ran a finger across the skin of my shoulder up to my ear. My stomach dropped so far out from under me that I didn’t think I was ever going to get it back.

  He said softly, “I think I got it.” Then he turned to Sara, taking the cones. “You can keep the change. Let’s eat outside, Dee.”

  Sara’s smile had vanished, and she turned abruptly to begin cleaning the milkshake machine. I wondered if she’d say anything about it to me later. But I wondered more if Luke would ever touch me again.