“I need to go.”
Without a backward glance, I escape down the hall. In my peripheral vision are the shapes of Topaz and Rime, but I can’t bear to look them in the face. Leo comes after me, calling my name, begging me not to go. But he knows better than to physically restrainme. I snag his keys from the coffee table and grab my backpack as I open the door.
Leo pleads, “Betts, don’t.”
“I’m taking your car. I’ll get it back to you…somehow.” I can’t think that far into the future. I need to get out of here, now.
Out on the landing I hear Topaz’s voice, coming from inside, “Let her go.”
“Give her a day or two,” Rime sagely adds.
Leo resists following me as I scramble down the metal stairs.
The inside of his car smells like him—like autumn leaves—that scent that I always found so calming. The man I found so calming. It was probably all a spell.
And since when do faeries drive cars?
This is insane.
I can’t even.
I make it all the way out of the apartment complex and into town before I fall apart. I pull into the deserted municipal lot by the downtown playground, throw open the door, and vomit into the grass beside the still-running car. When my stomach is empty and the clamminess fades, I drop my head onto the steering wheel and sob.
I don’t know how long I cry in Leo’s car, but eventually I run out of tears. I’m hyperventilating like a four-year-old after a tantrum, sucking in my bottom lip and shuddering. Splotches cover my cheeks, and my eyes are rimmed in red. I don’t know what to do or where to go. There isn’t a soul on earth—or fucking Fairyland—that I want to see or talk to right now.
But I don’t need auto theft on my record either.
I drive out to East Main and parallel park like a true suburbanite. It’ll have to do. Heart racing and feet pounding, I hurry up the hill and down the stairs to Avery’s apartment door. With fingers crossed, I slip Leo’s keys through the mail slot, then tear up the steps and out of sight.
I don’t stop jogging until I’ve turned the corner onto Main. There, I shoot Avery a text:I parked Leo’s car in front of the copy shop and puthis keys in your mail slot.Please let him know.As I make for my dorm, I slip my phone into my backpack. I’m not answering any replies.
World Religions starts in half an hour, but I’m in no shape to attend classes. I’m in no shape to do anything. My whole world has just gone up in flames and there isn’t a single piece of me that didn’t get burned.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
It’slike the breakup with Zander all over again, only worse. I stumble, zombie-like, through my classes and homework. To the dining hall. To the library. I may have a body, but I can’t feel it. And I may have a voice, but I haven’t used it in days.
Liv, the person I need most, put herself on my ever-growing shit list when she blabbed to Zander. I’m pretty sure she told himeverything: that I was still hanging out with Leo, that I was practicing witchcraft, that I would be at the library last Thursday night. She even tricked me into telling her Leo’s last name. I knew she was hoping Zander and I would get back together, but I never expected her to gothatfar. I feel almost as betrayed by her as I do by Leo. And by Avery and Aaron, too. They knew Leo’s secret, and they didn’t tell me. What else would explain all the weird looks and awkwardness last week at the Bobcat?
I’m all alone in my misery, with no one left to lean on.
Multiple times a day, I go through the five stages of grief. Each morning starts with denial, the memories of last Friday cloudy and dim. It was all a dream, the fantastical imaginings of a psychic’s subconscious. There’s no such thing as faeries and Leo is Leo, myfriend from Philadelphia. His ears are round and his eyes are warm and brown.
But by the time I finish my shower, I’m fully awake and reality kicks in. Faeries exist. I saw them, all three of them, with my own eyes. I touched Rime’s pointed ear. I watched as Leo replaced and removed his glamour. And when I recall that moment in his bedroom, his appearance shifting as he begged me for understanding, I get angry. No, not just angry—pissed off as hell. How dare he deceive me! What does he want with me, anyway? Why weasel his way into a human’s life? Why play with her heart?
The angrier I get, the more inclined I am to bargain. I’m a pro at the “if-only” game. If only I’d never talked to Leo in the O-Chi kitchen. If only I hadn’t gone to Avery’s that first time. If only I wasn’t the lamest psychic ever, maybe then I would’ve known he wasn’t human. I would’ve known he was lying to me. If only, if only, if only…
After going through stages one through three again and again, all before lunch, I’m exhausted. All I can do is stare out the window and sigh—classroom, library, or dorm room, it doesn’t matter which. I don’t actually register what I see outside, anyway. I can’t. It’s all blurred by a thick fog of sadness. My chest hurts so badly, it’s hard to breathe.
Was I starting to fall in love with him?
Maybe he enchanted me. What was that foreign-sounding phrase he murmured to me in bed? Some sort of incantation? A spell? Maybe my feelings for him aren’t even real. Maybe they’re just the result of magic he’s used to get me to do his will. Faeries do that kind of thing. Compulsion, they call it. Or is it mesmerization? Never mind, I think that’s vampires.
Oh god, how could I be so stupid?
Acceptance has been harder to come by, but I do have moments of sharp lucidity, often at the most awkward times. Today, while sitting in World Religions listening to a lecture about Hindu festivals, I’m struck by a thought that setsmy face aflame.
The condom!
