The Inner Circle, Book 3 of the Glass Wall ( A YA Urban Fantasy Romance ) (27 page)

And grabbing Grace’s hand, he covered her
fingers with theatrical kisses.

As she snorted in laughter, I ducked away and
escaped to my room. And just as the door closed, Ajax zipped past
me to stand in the middle of my room, watchful and protective.

“Ajax.” I heaved a sigh of relief. “I’m glad
you’re here.”

I’d never meant it more.

Moving to my bed, I sat down. And to my
surprise, Ajax jumped up next to me.

I lifted my hand to pet him but stopped
midway when his lips twitched.

“There now,” I said a little nervously. “Good
doggie.”

At the word ‘doggie’, the fur on his spine
lifted a fraction, and his lips curled back to expose his
wicked-looking teeth.

But then I glanced into his dark eyes and
suddenly knew it was all show. Reaching over, I swallowed him in a
great big hug.

And for a brief moment, I felt his
Twinkie-size tail wag. Just once. But it was a wag all the same,
and we both knew it.

I couldn’t help but grin. “Am I growing on
you?”

This time, he showed his gums along with his
teeth, and I quickly drew back.

“You’re a brat,” I said with a scowl. I knew
he’d never really hurt me, but apparently he wasn’t in to the warm
and fuzzies. At least not yet.

Clearly, our relationship required baby
steps.

All at once tired, I lay back on my bed,
supposing it wouldn’t hurt to close my eyes for a bit.

I woke up much later.

I’d slept straight through dinner.

Everyone was in the family room watching a
movie. Even Al. But when he saw me poke my head through the
doorway, he got up to join me in the kitchen.

“We’ve made some progress this afternoon,” he
said. Pulling his Mission Control notebook out of his pocket, he
gave me an update of each operation, ticking each one off with a
jab of his finger. “Jack’s already briefed on Operation Takedown
and is on the case. And Operation Defense is under control. Those
Protector boys have fanned out to cover the area, so nothing is
going to sneak by them. They’re quite the soldiers.”

He nodded several times, clearly impressed,
and I couldn’t help but smile that he was calling the highly
trained Fae Protectors “boys”.

Flipping the page, he continued, “Operation
Gumshoe. That’s a tricky one, and we’re attacking from all angles.
Jareth dug up a few historians of the supernatural this afternoon,
and they’re looking into it, but I’m going to turn Jack loose on
that, too. It’s right up his alley.”

And then taking out his pencil, he scribbled
something on the page.

After a minute, I prompted him. “And
Operation Bloodhound?”

Had they found Melody?

Al shook his head. “No progress. She’s gone
completely off the radar.”

That apparently spurred another thought,
because he scribbled a new note.

I smiled a little. Al was certainly in his
element. As he continued to write, I took a peek at his
notebook.

On each page, he’d written ‘Highly Classified
Documents – For Your Eyes Only’.

I grinned.

Al wasn’t afraid to have fun and to be
himself. No one could ask for a better role model.

We talked for a little bit after that, and
then missing Rafael, I decided to go look for him. But first, I
headed back to my room for my sneakers and sweatshirt. Hopefully,
he’d be across the street and not bopping around in Avalon
somewhere where I couldn’t find him.

But as I opened the door to my bedroom, I
pulled up short.

Rafael was standing there in my room.

The mist swirling around him betrayed the
fact that he’d just arrived.

“I was just—” I began, but then seeing the
stricken expression on his face, I stopped abruptly. Dashing to his
side, I cried, “What is it? What happened?”

He looked down at me, unseeing for a
moment.

And then in a choked whisper, he managed to
say, “Sydney, I … had a …
dream
.”

I just
stared blankly at him. I didn’t have a clue what to say.

I don’t think he did either.

Finally, I cleared my throat and asked, “Are
you sure it was a real dream and not some kind of memory or
something?” After all, he’d never had one, so he could have made a
mistake.

His gray eyes shifted to meet mine, and the
corner of his lip twisted into a wry smile. “Do you think watching
myself play your Earth game of ping pong in Samantha’s coffee shop
with your mouse, Jerry, is a memory?”

I grinned. “Sounds like a bona fide dream to
me,” I said, heaving a sigh of relief. Having a dream wasn’t that
bad. Nothing worth freaking out over, anyway.

And then walking up to him, I stood on my
tiptoes and slid my arms around his neck. And then all at once, I
felt awkward and shy. I was new to this whole romance thing.

I almost bolted away.

But he didn’t give me time to lose my
confidence. He responded at once. Placing his hand on the back of
my neck, he rubbed my cheek absently with his thumb and pulled me
closer into his arms to rest his chin on the top of my head.

We stayed that way a moment, and then I drew
back enough to look up into his face, just inches away. He didn’t
have any makeup on. None. But I didn’t ask why.

“So what does it mean, you having a dream?” I
asked instead.

He shook his head several times and then
spoke in a voice filled with wonder. “The ability to dream, to
travel to dimensions unknown, has always been impossible for the
Fae…until now.”

Silence fell between us. But it was a cozy
silence. One in which I rested my head comfortably against his
chest.

Finally, his voice rumbled in my ear, “I
don’t have the slightest understanding of what it means,
Sydney.”

We lapsed back into silence and probably
would have stayed that way for a long time if Jerry’s wheel hadn’t
begun to squeak. Drawing apart, we both glanced over to watch the
mouse’s little feet zoom over the bars of his wheel in endless
circles.

And then Rafael’s eyes locked on the mirror
hanging over my dresser. “Mirrors act strangely around you,
Sydney.”

“Strange?” I frowned, eyeing my reflection. I
didn’t see anything unusual. Well, beyond the fact that I had a
wild hairdo and looked really tired. “I look like me,” I said.

“Do you?” he asked softly.

Raising a brow, I glanced back into the
mirror. And I was just about to say that I really looked like I
always do when I noticed that my skin seemed to be glowing.
Startled, I jerked and quickly glanced away.

“That’s just a trick of the light,” I said
stubbornly.

I didn’t want to think about it. Not now. It
was just too much.

Rafael watched me a moment, but then
apparently understanding, he dropped the subject and moved closer
to Jerry’s cage.

Immediately, Jerry hopped off his wheel and
ran to the cage door to sit on his haunches and twitch his pink
nose at Rafael.

Raising a brow, Rafael opened the cage. He’d
barely put his finger inside before Jerry jumped onto it to perch
like a parakeet.

“It’s strange how he does that,” I said, a
little on edge. Was nothing normal anymore?

“And even stranger what he’s saying,” Rafael
informed me as he drew his brows into a deep frown.

A shiver of trepidation traveled down my
spine. Swallowing, I asked, “And what’s that?”

“He says that he’s not a mouse,” Rafael
answered.

I stared at Jerry in horror, half expecting
him to turn into some otherworldly creature right then and there.
But then, with one look into his loving little eyes, my fear
dissipated in an instant.

I could never be afraid of Jerry. It just
took one look into his sweet little face to make that thought
laughable.

“Maybe he’s going senile,” I suggested,
kissing the mouse on the top of his fuzzy head. And then suddenly
curious, I asked, “What does he think he is?”

With a perplexed smile, Rafael gently
returned Jerry to his cage. And as the mouse scampered back to his
wheel to huff away, Rafael shook his head incredulously and
replied, “He says he’s a seed.”

“A seed?” I laughed.

Rafael’s gray eyes filled with warmth, and he
laughed with me. “Maybe you’re right that he’s confused,” he
agreed. “He does seem to be awfully old for a mouse.”

That made me a bit sad. I didn’t want to
think that I might lose Jerry soon, so I pulled my usual trick of
deciding not to think about it at all and deliberately switched
subjects.

“Do you think Melody might show up at work
tomorrow?” I asked.

But the instant I mentioned the word ‘work’,
Rafael insisted that I get some more sleep in order that my
injuries healed properly. And shortly after, he kissed me warmly,
patted Ajax goodnight, and disappeared.

Placing my Faraday cap firmly on my head, I
sighed and returned to bed.

At once, Ajax jumped up beside me. I was
prepared to do battle with him over who got the pillows, when to my
surprise he cuddled up at my feet.

“I missed you too, Ajax,” I said with a goofy
sentimental smile.

He lifted his head and shot me a withering
look.

Switching off the lights, I lay back in bed.
It took some time to go back to sleep, but I gradually succumbed,
lulled into a peaceful slumber by Ajax’s familiar faint snore.

The next morning found me well rested and
ready for work.

It felt strange to head to the coffee shop
when I knew that there was a Fae Mission Control Center across the
street trying to stop an alien invasion. No matter how much
everyone insisted, making lattes and bagging pastries seemed to me
a fairly useless way to help.

It began to rain slush as I hopped into Al’s
pickup truck. He’d volunteered to drop me off.

“Shouldn’t the government be involved in all
this, Al?” I asked him as we roared down the street. “I mean, this
is such a big deal! Someone would believe us, I would think.”

Wouldn’t they?

Al pursed his lips. “It’s all about getting
the right person for the right job, kiddo. Right now, our
government would laugh us off as crazies, or even if we could
convince them, they’d spend forever debating who should be in
charge.”

I knew he was right. And no one was going to
listen to us, that was for certain. And if Rafael or any of the
other Fae revealed who they really were, they’d most likely be
shackled in iron immediately while the government wasted precious
time analyzing them and discerning if they were friend or foe.

“No, the best decision they’d ever make would
be to find a real expert like Jack,” Al was saying. “And he’s
already on the case.”

Just a few months ago, I would have laughed
at the mere concept that Jack the Janitor could save Earth from an
impending invasion of the lizard people. Now, I didn’t find it
funny at all.

“Jack’ll find that portal before anyone
else,” Al predicted with a chuckle.

Still, I felt left out going to work when all
the excitement was happening back at home. “I just want to help,” I
said under my breath as we pulled up to the back of the coffee
shop.

Al heard me and reached over to tousle my
head. “You’re at the center of all of this, kiddo. You’ve uncovered
so much by just doing what you’ve been doing all along. It’s
important. You’d probably mess things up if you just stuck around
the control center watching other people work. Do your thing.
That’s why you’re here!”

I looked at him, thinking again that he might
just be one of the wisest men I’d ever met.

Waving goodbye, I watched him drive away,
thinking that if I needed to trust one human to see Earth safe, it
sure wouldn’t be some fancy Men-In-Black type agent or a president
knee-deep in politics mostly worried about his re-election.

I’d pick Al.

With a smile, I walked through the back door
of the coffee shop and ran straight into Ellison.

“And how’s the lovebird this morning?” he
asked with wide, innocent eyes.

I picked up a dish towel and threw it at
him.

He skipped around the corner, but a second
later poked his head back to grin at me mischievously.

Feeling like I was doing everything
but
helping to save the world, I clocked in. I supposed
there was one thing I
could
do, and that was to work on my
Pikachu tulpa.

Loading the dishes into the dishwasher, I
focused on the yellow Pokémon character. It was fairly easy that
morning to summon the emotion of happiness. All I had to do was
think of Rafael, and in my mind’s eye, I could see my Pikachu tulpa
skipping, dancing, and jumping with joy.

Halfway through my shift, Samantha sent one
of the baristas to fetch me to the front. Apparently, Jareth had
arrived, and Samantha deemed him to be in a ‘mood’. And since she
had to step out, she’d delegated the job of babysitting him to
me.

As it turned out, he really
was
in a
mood. One of the worst I’d seen.

Before I’d even had a chance to hang my apron
up, he appeared next to me in a poof of mist, wearing a mahogany
leather jacket and with his black hair fashioned into the style
that reminded me most of a porcupine.

“I sure hope no one saw you shift out there.
We have enough problems without people freaking out all over the
place.” But then I froze. It took just one glance up at his face to
know that something was really wrong.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

But before he could answer, Samantha’s phone
began to ring.

He watched it for several moments, and then
with a growl, strode to her desk and yanked the cord out of the
wall. Turning to me, he demanded, “Tell me why I was created,
Sydney!”

“How am I supposed to know that?” I scowled
in response, a little surprised by his attitude. “What happened?
You’re acting worse than usual.”