Bailey Morgan [2] Fate (30 page)

“You.” My voice was one hundred percent accusation as I whirled around to face “Alec.” I could feel my body temperature rising, and it took everything I had not to let the fire leap from my blood to his flesh.

“You,” he said, repeating my greeting and offering me a shy smile, like the two of us had just exchanged terms of endearment. I had to wonder what part of the hint of flames in my hair made it seem like patronizing me was a good idea.

Wishing my position as the Third Fate came with laser eyes as well as pyrokinesis, I glared straight through him.

“We need to talk,” he said.

Oh, we'd talk all right. The palms of my hands twinged, and when I looked down, I realized that I was holding two matching flames. Each tickled and caressed my skin, and I had to actively tell myself that the hallway right outside study hall was in all likelihood not the best location for me to demonstrate the fringe benefits of my Otherworldly blood. With a great deal of effort, I clenched my fists and doused the flames.

Then, moving slowly and deliberately, I raised the pendant around my neck, angled it toward the boy in front of me, and looked down.

Even though I expected to see James's face staring back at me, I wasn't ready for it. There hadn't been any doubt in my mind, but knowing something is true
and staring down the proof are two very different things, and I couldn't help the bit of fire that leapt onto his shirt, burning a small hole in one of the shoulders.

“Ow!” James, still wearing his Alec guise, jumped back. “Hey, cut it out, Bailey.”

“Why?” I said. “Is it wrong? Are you going to
punish
me?”

James looked over his shoulder and then, without a word, he reached out, grabbed my arm, and dragged me into a nearby bathroom. It was uncharacteristically deserted, and the moment we were alone, James let go of my arm and shut the door behind us.

“Sheesh, Bay. Get it under control,” he said, shaking out his hand. “I burned myself just touching you. If you're not careful, you'll burn down the entire school.”

“Isn't that what you want?” I asked. “Don't you want me to do something wrong, so you and your little skank patrol can have an excuse to hurt me even more? And hey, if I burn down the school, I'll probably feel really bad and then I'll see that Eze and Drogan were just looking out for me when they tried to tempt, guilt, and blackmail me into leaving my entire life behind and becoming their personal butt monkey.”

“Butt monkey?” he repeated skeptically.

Clearly, his crash course in human behavior hadn't included slang used by Xander on
Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

“Bailey, I know you're angry, but—”

“What tipped you off?” I asked. “Was it the heat rolling off my body, or the fact that I hate you?”

“You don't hate me,” he said softly. “You want to. There's a difference.”

What I heard was: Please, light my pants on fire.

“Okay,” I said, and James breathed a sigh of relief … until his pants burst into flames. He yelped, and with a flick of his wrist, the fire was gone. As the flames disappeared, so did his glamour, and as the Alec visage dissolved, the expression on James's face stayed exactly the same.

“We don't have time for this,” he said. “I hurt you, and I'm sorry about that, but right now we have bigger problems.”

“We?” I repeated. “There is no we. There's me, and there's you.” My voice broke, and to keep sadness from encroaching on my anger, I babbled on. “It's bad enough that you lied to me, that you used me, but did you have to do it twice? As two different people?” I probably should have stopped there, but I didn't. “Did you have to make me like you twice? Was once just not humiliating enough?”

“It wasn't like that,” James said. “I was following orders.”

Because it made me feel so much better to know that he'd played me because someone else had told him to. This was as bad as being the girl who gets asked to prom on a dare.

“Bailey, you don't understand what it's like to be Sidhe.”

How could he say that? I'd run through the Other-world. I'd stood on the Seelie mountains and danced in the caverns of the Unseelie Court. The fact that I was part human meant that I understood what it meant to be Sidhe better than he ever could. He'd never been anything else.

I had.

“As part of the Otherworld, we're bound to the courts even before our Reckonings. The connection you feel to all of us is multiplied fourfold after several millennia in the Otherworld, and Eze and Drogan know that. They know how to use it.”

“So you had no choice?” I asked. “None whatsoever? You know, you're not making a permanent move to the Otherworld sound any more tempting here.”

“I had a choice,” James admitted. “I didn't know that I had one, but I did. They asked me to get close to you, and I did. They told me to mention your tattoo to pique your interest, and it worked. They asked me to take a human guise so that I could play on your weaknesses in the Otherworld. They asked me to form a bond with you in this world so that if worse came to worse, I could break it and hurt you enough that you might not want to stay here.”

That had been part of the plan? Make me like James enough to agree to swear off the mortal realm, or, failing that, have James-as-Alec break my heart in this one?

What Zo said about the Sidhe sucking? Triple that.

“Like I was ever interested in you,” I said, even
though I'd already admitted that I had been. “Either of you.”

“Eros and Lyria were going to work on that,” James said. “If they needed to, but that's the thing, they didn't. You liked me. Both me's.” He paused. “And I liked you.”

Like this whole thing wasn't mortifying and painful enough, he had to say that. Sure, he liked me. Just like Kane had “liked” me. Just like nobody ever really did.

“I do, Bailey. You're funny and you're sweet and it doesn't matter which form you're wearing, you're drop-dead gorgeous.”

Funny he should mention “dropping dead.” The flames began to form again at my palms, nipping at my skin, begging to be set free.

“Bailey, I made the wrong choice before. I shouldn't have misled you, and I shouldn't have tried to trick you. At first, I was just following orders and then … I wanted you to stay. I can't be Alec forever, and I don't know if Lyria and Eros have been messing with me, too, or what, but I wanted you to stay in our world, with me.”

“I'm not going to,” I told him, my resolve stronger than ever. “No matter what you say, I won't go there with you. I won't give any of you what you want.”

“I know,” James said. “And they know it too. That's why I'm here.”

I wasn't quite following his logic and I didn't particularly want to, but he kept talking, forcing his words
into my ears and leaving them bouncing around my brain, no matter how much I didn't want to listen.

“They know that they haven't won yet, that the last thing you want to do is give in to their demands and threats. They know that you've had contact with the one whose name we do not speak, and they know that two years ago you and your friends took down a full-blooded Sidhe who'd already begun to harness the power of the mortal soul.” James looked away. “And because of me, because of what I've told them, they know that your friends are the most important thing to you.”

It didn't matter that I'd told him as much myself. Anyone with half a brain could have figured that out within a couple of hours. Kiste and Cyna certainly had. Delia, Annabelle, and Zo were everything to me. That's why I was so freaked out about next year. That's why, even in the thrall of the Otherworld, I hadn't given in to the temptation to leave.

“Your friends matter to you, Bailey, and that makes them your weakness.” I was about to protest, but his next words came before I had the chance. “They also strengthen you, and that makes them a threat.” He stared at me, his eyes steady, and waited for his words to sink in.

The night before, Eze and Drogan had promised me that the longer I stayed in this world, the worse things would get. Today was Mabon, and tonight was my Reckoning, when I would be forced to choose between the courts, and—if the King of Darkness and
Queen of Light had their way—to forswear the mortal realm forever.

I wasn't ready to do it. Even if they followed through on everything they'd threatened, even if my presence in this world put everyone in danger, I wasn't sure I could just walk away, and they knew it.

But what if it wasn't the world as a whole in danger? What if it wasn't the mean girls at my high school? What if it was my friends?

“They can't,” I said. James caught my chin in his hand.

“As far as I know,” he said, “they already have.”

I'd been so set on finding James and making him pay for hurting me that I'd left Delia, Annabelle, and Zo to go to their first periods and figure things out, if they could. It hadn't occurred to me that they might be in danger or that while I was in the bathroom talking to James, someone might be out there, hurting them.

“What did they do?” I asked. “What are they doing? Why are you even telling me this? I have to go. I have to help them. I—”

“You aren't going to be able to do this alone,” James said. “I know what their plans are, and I don't care if Kiste and Cyna don't see it, this is wrong. You can think whatever awful things you want about the three of us, but at the end of the day, right and wrong matter to us. They matter to me, and so do you.”

I barely even heard his words. Maybe they were romantic. Maybe they were cheesy. Maybe they were true, and maybe they weren't, but right now that didn't
matter. All that mattered was making sure that my friends were all right, so I didn't respond to James's confession. Instead, I turned on my heels and ran out the door and down the hall, casting my mind out for the others and hoping I wasn't too late.

Annabelle? Delia? Zo? I
called out their names silently, lowering my shields completely and trying to ignore any thought that came my way that wasn't theirs.

I'm here, Bay. What's the matter?

Zo. She was okay. And, if I was reading her thoughts correctly, she was dying for an excuse to skip out on math.

The Sidhe are going after you guys,
I told her.
I need you where I can protect you. Now.

I got Zo's next thought in pictures and feelings instead of words, but the bits and pieces of memories and the desire to protect me made her thought process clear. Zo would barge out of math class, completely ignoring any consequences, not because I needed to keep her safe, but because she wasn't about to let me face any danger on my own.

Annabelle? Delia?

At first, there was no reply, and I thought my body was just going to give out, that the fact that I couldn't find their minds was going to end me then and there, but the next second, two things happened to keep me together.

The first was that Zo arrived at my side.

The second was that Annabelle ran by wearing nothing on top but a neon bra.

“Okay, somebody's taking the skanky Hollywood fashion thing a little too far,” Zo said.

“Somebody?” I repeated. “That was Annabelle.”

“Yeah, right, Bay. There aren't enough fairies in the freaking world to make Annabelle run around topless. This whole situation is just messing with your brain.”

“No,” I said. “Seriously. That was Annabelle.”

Somehow, this kind of “attack” wasn't exactly what I'd had in mind. I'd pictured something a little more sinister and a lot less lewd. I mean, what were they going to do, embarrass A-belle to death?

“Come on,” I said, tugging at Zo's sleeve, and then I took off running in the general direction in which Annabelle had streaked a moment before.

We found her in a Spanish class. She was, to put things as nicely as humanly possible, making a scene.

“Boys! Boys! Hello, boys!”

When we walked into the room, Annabelle was greeting the entire male population of the Spanish class in an up close and personal manner. As we watched, frozen in shock and morbid fascination, she walked up
to one of the most popular boys in our grade, jumped onto his lap and straddled him, burying her hands in his hair.

“This form is pleasing,” she purred. “Isn't it?”

The boy, his eyes glued on the bright pink bra, just nodded, and Annabelle brought her lips to his.

“She thinks she isn't pretty,” Annabelle said, dragging herself away from the kiss. “She thinks that boys don't like her.” She moved on to the next boy, pulling him to his feet and in close to her body. “She's wrong.”

Okay,
I thought slowly, my ability to process this turn of events severely compromised by the absurdity of it all.
Annabelle's running around in a bra kissing every boy in sight and referring to herself in the third person.

This could not end well.

“Annabelle?” Zo said, physically incapable of believing what she was seeing. She turned to me. “Annabelle?” she asked again, unable to manage more than that single, strangled word.

It must be Lyria,
I said silently.
She's Aphrodite, remember? All about the lust. She must have done something to Annabelle to make her … ummm … lusty.