Jenna Black: Girls' Night Out

Of course, I could enjoy the weather without having to eat lunch with Al. It was on the tip of my tongue to say “thanks, but no thanks,” when Al added an almost plaintive-sounding “Please?” She sucked her entire lower lip, piercing and all, into her mouth, in what looked like a nervous gesture.

Call me a total sucker, but I couldn’t say no when she looked so hopeful.

She’d struck me as a bit of a bully early on, but maybe I’d misjudged her. I imagined being the daughter of a Faerie Queen meant Al’s life was even further from normal than mine was, and that maybe the reason she’d seemed kind of bitchy was because she was fronting to cover up feeling isolated. After all, we were the only two kids in class, probably the only two kids in the entire university, who had bodyguards. Maybe I should cut her some slack.

“Sure,” I said, against my better judgment. “I’d love to.”

Covering up for my mom’s alcoholism had taught me to be a really good liar, and Al beamed at me. I assumed that meant I’d done a good job of hiding my reluctance.

“Great!” she said with obvious enthusiasm. “It’ll be my treat.”

I shook my head as we headed up the stairs toward our bodyguards. “No it won’t,” I said, possibly being a little more blunt than was wise. When I was living with my mom, we’d always been strapped for cash because she couldn’t hold a job, but my dad didn’t have that problem. I’m sure Al’s mother was richer than my father, but I certainly wasn’t in the need of charity. “You don’t have to bribe me to have lunch with you.”

Al looked over her shoulder at me and frowned. “I didn’t mean it that way.

But okay. We’ll go Dutch.”

We reached the top of the stairs, our bodyguards converging on us.

“We’re going to go have lunch on the quad,” I informed Finn. “If that’s all right with you.” For a while, my dad had been so paranoid he wouldn’t let me leave the safe house without permission, but since the threat against me had eased off, I had a little more freedom now. If you considered not being able to go anywhere without a bodyguard hanging over your shoulder “freedom.” I didn’t need my dad’s permission to have lunch, nor did I need Finn’s. But just because I didn’t technically have to ask Finn whether it was okay with him to go out to lunch didn’t mean I felt right taking it for granted. My dad treated Finn like a servant, always at his beck and call—and Finn considered this treatment completely appropriate, because the Fae class system is archaic and rigid—but I refused to do the same.

The Goth look and the informal language made me hope that Al was the kind of modern girl who would ignore the class system, but the look she gave me when I consulted Finn about my schedule put that hope to rest in a hurry. She didn’t even acknowledge her Knight’s presence, much less lower herself to actually speaking to him.

Finn smiled at me, and I had the feeling he knew what I was thinking. He’d certainly heard me argue with my father about the Fae class system enough times.

“I have no other pressing plans,” he told me wryly.

Al didn’t wait for him to finish speaking before she headed for the exit, pausing only so her Knight could open the door for her. I had half a mind to tell her I’d forgotten some important appointment, but I knew I was overreacting to what I perceived as her rudeness. Presumably she’d been born and raised in Faerie, where customs were very different from those in the human world and in Avalon. A few months spent attending the university here in Avalon weren’t enough to change a lifetime’s worth of cultural training.

But I still couldn’t persuade myself to like her, and wished I’d had the guts to tell her no.

____

It was one of the prettiest days I’d seen since I’d first set foot in Avalon, and Al and I were far from the only ones who thought having lunch on the quad sounded like a good idea. There was a smattering of picnic tables outside the sandwich shop, but those seats were all taken by the time we got our food, as were the seats on the wooden benches that were sprinkled here and there along the quad. Al and I settled for an impromptu picnic at the base of a massive oak tree. I’d have loved to have sat in the warmth of the sun, but I’d inherited my skin tone from my Fae father, and I’d probably burn to a crisp by the time lunch was over.

Al’s bodyguard stood stiffly at attention as Al plopped down onto the grass with her sandwich bag. He made no attempt to be unobtrusive or to hide the fact that he was guarding her. Finn, on the other hand, leaned casually against the trunk of another oak tree, close enough that he could get to me in a couple of his large strides, but far enough away to give me a semblance of privacy. I liked Finn’s technique better.

Al sat cross-legged on the grass, her short skirt making the position . . .

inadvisable. She didn’t seem to care that she was flashing the quad, though I supposed the opaque tights kept her from being indecent. When I sat on the grass, I realized it was damp—well, duh, this was Avalon, and the grass was always damp.

It didn’t seem to bother Al, but I cast a quick, longing glance at the nearest benches, hoping a couple of seats had opened up. No such luck.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Al said, then took a huge bite of her sandwich and chewed it happily.

“I’ll bet,” I murmured. Her magic was still prickling my skin, and the damp was soaking through my jeans. My ham sandwich didn’t seem terribly appealing under the circumstances, but I took a bite anyway.

“What’s it like to be a Faeriewalker?” she asked around the bite of sandwich she was still chewing. Apparently table manners weren’t highly prized in Unseelie princesses.

I shrugged. “It’s kind of weird, I guess.” Honestly, I had no idea how to answer her question, nor did I particularly want to talk about myself. I wished again that I’d declined the lunch invitation. “Do you mind if I ask you for a favor?”

Al smiled brightly and took another bite of her sandwich. “Go ahead.”

“Is there any way you can, um, tone the magic down a bit.” I shivered, partly from the annoying sensation of her magic, partly from the damp chill of the grass.

A sunny day it might be, but the temperature was still hovering in the low sixties.

“It’s kind of uncomfortable to be around you like this.”

Al raised a pierced eyebrow. “I’d heard you could sense magic,” she said. “I guess that wasn’t just a rumor.”

“So can you tone it down?”

“It’s a glamour,” she told me. “My mom would kill me if I really did this to my hair.” She grabbed a handful of her jet-black and purple hair. “And she would kill me slowly for the piercings.” Al grinned at me, her eyes dancing with glee at the thought of her mother’s reaction to her look.

While she hadn’t directly answered my question, she hadn’t dropped the glamour, either. I supposed that meant the answer was no, which irritated me to no end. Obviously, her Goth look was more important than my comfort, but then what did I expect from a freaking princess?

“It’s kind of tough having Queen Mab for a mother,” Al continued, looking a little forlorn. “I need my little rebellions here and there.”

Once again, I chided myself for being too hard on Al. My dad, whom I’d only known for a few months now, was a big-deal Fae politician who was hoping to be elected Consul—Avalon’s top political post—in the next election. I didn’t guess being the wannabe-Consul’s daughter was anywhere near as weird and stressful as being the Unseelie Queen’s daughter, but I did have an inkling of what it was like to have a politically powerful parent. And yeah, it’s tough.