Sirensong (7 page)

I knew I was getting better, knew that if I was fighting someone who wasn’t any good, I’d probably be able to get away, but I would never, ever come close to Keane’s skill level. Being the son of a Knight, he’d been taught how to fight from an early age. He’d even started to go through training to be a Knight himself, but he wasn’t Knight material. Not because he couldn’t fight well enough—I’m sure if he’d had the whole training, he’d be ridiculously good—but because he was too much of a rebel to accept the lifestyle.

The upshot of all this is that I almost never succeed in landing a blow, and despite knowing all the right moves, I could rarely escape one of his holds unless he let me. Frustration and I have become good friends. And like any friend who’s a bad influence, frustration sometimes made me do things that were, in retrospect, stupid.

Like trying to tackle my self-defense instructor.

There isn’t a single instance I can think of in which tackling your attacker is a good self-defense move. If you have enough distance to try to tackle your attacker, you have enough distance to run like hell and maybe get away. But since doing the “correct” moves never seemed to work, every once in a while I couldn’t stop myself from trying to catch Keane by surprise.

The problem is, even if I catch him by surprise, he’s bigger, quicker, stronger, and far more experienced than I am.

My tackle surprised him enough to take him down. Unfortunately, he twisted like a cat in midair, and somehow I ended up on the bottom when we landed. The landing knocked all the wind out of me, and while I was lying there trying to breathe, he landed a light blow to my face, demonstrating just how bad a position I’d gotten myself into. Not that I didn’t already know.

Escaping one of Keane’s holds when we were both on our feet was hard enough, but escaping him when we were on the floor with him on top was impossible unless he purposely gave me an opening. As soon as I managed to drag in a full breath, he gave me one of those openings, and I went for it.

Just because he left me an opening didn’t mean he was making things easy for me, so I had to work like crazy to get free. At the last moment, just as I was trying to triumphantly jump to my feet after slipping his hold, his hand closed on the back of my T-shirt.

I mentioned that the loose T-shirts gave Keane convenient handholds. He’d certainly taken advantage of it before. But I don’t know if the T-shirt was just getting threadbare from having been worn and washed too often, or if one of us was pulling harder than usual, or if it was just the angle of the pull. Whatever it was, there was an ominous ripping sound, and I lurched forward, caught off balance and by surprise.

Keane, with his Fae reflexes, managed to grab me before I hit the floor with my face, but I could feel the cool sweep of air over the skin of my back and shoulder where my T-shirt had torn. Right where the Erlking’s mark lay.

“What the fuck?” Keane asked in a horrified whisper.

This was officially Not Good.

I tried to twist away from Keane, to pull the torn T-shirt back over the mark, but he turned me with rough hands, pulling aside the strap of the tank top so he could get a better look.

“Let go of me!” I snapped while trying to introduce his face to my elbow. I missed, of course, but Keane let go and took a couple of hasty steps away from me, like I had a contagious disease or something.

“What the fuck?” he said again, his face ashen. “Dana, what did you do?”

I considered my options. I was a pretty good liar—years of trying to cover up for my mom had given me plenty of practice—but I wasn’t sure I was creative enough to come up with a plausible explanation for the Erlking’s mark. Other than the truth, that is, and there was no way Keane was getting
that
out of me. Which left stonewalling as my only option.

“It’s none of your business,” I told Keane, rearranging the strap of my tank top so the mark was mostly covered despite the rip in my shirt. It came out harsher than I meant it to, and Keane actually flinched at my tone.

I let out a heavy sigh, trying to let the tension ease out of my body while I did. It didn’t work too well.

“Look,” I said, “if I wanted to talk about it, I wouldn’t be keeping it hidden like this. It’s between me and the Erlking, it’s complicated, and it doesn’t affect anyone but me. That’s all you need to know.”

Keane shook his head, the horror in his eyes slowly mixing with anger. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

I jutted my chin out stubbornly. “You’re not the boss of me, and that’s all you’re going to get.”

“Fine,” he said, eyes boring into me. “I guess I’ll just have to ask your father.”

Like I said, I’m a pretty good liar, but my poker face failed me just then. My dad was the absolute last person I wanted to know about the Erlking’s mark. If he found out about the mark, he wouldn’t rest until he’d wrested every single detail out of me about how I’d gotten it. And if he learned I’d snuck out of my safe house, I’d be grounded for the rest of my life. Maybe even longer.

Not that I felt bad about keeping secrets from him, mind you. He was still keeping what he thought was a whopping secret from me. He was bound by his ties to the Seelie Court not to tell me what would happen if I gave the Erlking my virginity. Thanks to the agreement the Erlking had made with Titania, there was a geis—a magical restriction—that prevented my dad from even talking about the Erlking’s secret.

But when my aunt Grace had tried to kill me, she’d been so determined to hurt me before I died that she’d severed her ties with the Seelie Court just so she could tell me the horrifying truth of what I’d agreed to. That was when I realized that as much as my dad loved me—and he did love me, I knew that—he was a Seelie Fae, too deeply devoted to his Court to consider leaving it, even to protect me.

He
had
to know what I’d promised the Erlking in order to free Ethan. And yet he hadn’t been willing to renounce the Seelie Court so he could warn me. If he was going to keep a secret like that from me, then I didn’t feel bad about hiding the Erlking’s mark.

“Shall I go talk to your father right now?” Keane prompted. “Or are you going to explain why you have something that looks suspiciously like the Erlking’s mark on your shoulder?”

I considered calling his bluff. He wasn’t generally what I’d think of as a tattletale kind of guy. But like just about everyone else in my life, he’d do any crappy thing you could name if he thought it was for my own good.

“You’re blackmailing me?” I asked, stalling as I tried to make up a half-truth that would get him off my back.

Keane shrugged, but the gesture was tight and tense. “Call it what you want. But if you’re the Erlking’s creature, then I think I have a right to know it before I travel into Faerie with you.”

“I am
not
the Erlking’s creature!”

“No? Then why do you have his mark, like a brand, on your skin?”

“You mind if I go change before we have this conversation? I don’t like standing around in a torn shirt.” I plucked at the shredded shoulder for emphasis.

Keane took a step closer to me, his jaw set. “Yes, I mind if you take a little extra time to work out the details of whatever lie you’re about to tell me.” There was a hint of a growl in his voice, and I wondered if he was mad enough to hit me in anger. I didn’t think so, despite the clenched fists and the smoke coming out of his ears, but I couldn’t help my primal instinct to take a step back.

Keane blinked, like he was surprised. Then he seemed to realize just how aggressive his body language was, and he visibly relaxed. His fists uncurled, and his shoulders lowered, but I could still see the metaphorical smoke. He wasn’t any less pissed. And he wasn’t going to give me time to think things through before I spoke.

“Start talking!” he commanded.

I wished I could squirm my way out of talking, but I couldn’t, so I tried to keep my explanation as simple as possible. “The Erlking put a spell on me when I was trying to get him to free Ethan.” I left out just
how
he’d put the spell on me, because there was no way I was telling anyone about the Erkling’s brooch. I’d used it three times to make myself invisible, and the third use had activated the mark. I hadn’t used the brooch since—despite the Erlking’s promise that it contained no other secondary spells—but I didn’t want to risk having it taken away.

I resisted the urge to reach up and touch the mark. It didn’t hurt or anything, but somehow I was always very conscious of it on my skin, knowing exactly where it was even when I couldn’t see it.

“It’s like a tracking device. He claims it’s for my own good,” I said, “because he wants me alive so I can take him into the mortal world.”

I hadn’t thought it was possible for Keane to look any more horrified, but I was wrong. Most of the people around me had accepted that the Erlking, despite being one scary dude, wanted me alive. They didn’t know that he wanted me alive so much he’d saved my life, but it was pretty obvious a dead Faeriewalker wasn’t going to do him much good. From the way Keane was looking at me, I felt sure he wasn’t as convinced as the rest.

“He knows where you are right now?” Keane asked. “He knows the location of your safe house?”

“Yeah, he knows. He’s known for a long time and he hasn’t come down here after me, so you can stop looking like the world just came to an end.”

“You’re unbelievable! You didn’t think it was important to tell anyone this shit?”

“What good would it do? No one can do anything about it.” A geis prevented the Erlking from attacking anyone in Avalon, but the geis was deactivated if someone attacked
him
. “The bottom line is he can’t attack me, and I don’t want anyone getting all protective about this and maybe giving him an excuse to hurt them.” That was, after all, how Ethan had been captured by the Wild Hunt.

Keane didn’t look convinced.

“You’re not going to tell my dad, are you?” I asked, then chewed my lip when he didn’t answer immediately.

Keane let out a heavy sigh and shook his head. “How many other secrets are you keeping?”

I didn’t want to think about that. The Erlking had once suggested that all my secrets were going to come back and bite me in the butt someday. I had a feeling he was right, but I was determined to put off dealing with it until absolutely necessary.

“Are you going to tell on me or not?” I asked, ignoring Keane’s question.

“I won’t. At least for now. But you really should tell him yourself. Have you ever considered that when you go into Faerie, the geis that keeps the Erlking from hunting anyone in Avalon won’t be in effect anymore? And that you’re not officially a member of the Seelie Court and therefore aren’t protected by the Erlking’s agreement with the Queens?”

I’m sure my face went pale. No, I hadn’t thought of that.

“There will be nothing to prevent him from hunting you, and if you’ve got the equivalent of a radio collar on you, he won’t have to look very hard to find you.”

It was true that the Erlking didn’t want to kill me. However, if he was free to hunt me, then if he captured me, he could force me to join his Wild Hunt. And then the Hunt would have its very own pet Faeriewalker to take them out into the mortal world and wreak havoc.

I swallowed hard. “I hadn’t thought of that,” I said, “but I’m sure my dad has. He wouldn’t take me into Faerie unless he’s sure the Erlking can’t get me.”

“How can he be sure when he doesn’t have all the facts?”

Geez, Keane was full of uncomfortable questions today. And I was sorely lacking in satisfying answers. Dad had assured me I’d be protected by the rules of Court etiquette. The Erlking didn’t belong to either Court, but maybe he followed their rules of etiquette anyway. I trusted my dad and his judgment.

“I’m going to go change,” I announced, because continuing this conversation wasn’t going to do anyone any good. I could feel Keane’s angry gaze on my back even after I escaped to my bedroom and closed the door behind me.

My day didn’t get any better after that. I had a lot of packing to do, and my mom called about a zillion times. I refused to answer, despite the weepy messages she left. I couldn’t face talking to her. I was too freaked out by the reality that I was leaving for Faerie the very next day, in the company of a prince who would be happy to see my dad—and me, by extension—dead, to deal with any more drama.

As if all this wasn’t enough to make me a nervous wreck, my dad came by in the afternoon and took me to a gun range to teach me how to fire the derringer. Shooting the little gun was a stark reminder that this supposedly safe trip of ours might be far more dangerous than we knew. I also discovered that I was not destined to be an expert marksman. I had to fight my instinct to close my eyes every time I pulled the trigger, and I jumped at the noise, despite the earplugs.

Dad was pretty patient with me, but I think he was regretting the impulse to give me a lethal weapon by the time we left the range.

There was one bright spot to my day, though it wasn’t the kind of bright spot that soothed my nerves: that night, Ethan and I were going on our first honest-to-goodness date. We’d planned it before the summons, and there was no way I was going to cancel. Although this being our first real date, I couldn’t help being nervous. (As if the knowledge that I would be leaving everything familiar behind and traveling to Faerie in less than twenty-four hours didn’t make me nervous enough.)

It didn’t help that this morning’s session with Keane had made me so painfully aware of all the secrets I was keeping, even from my family and my closest friends. For example, I’d never told Ethan about the Erlking’s mark. His head would probably explode if he ever found out I’d told Keane and not him. I could give Ethan some watered-down version of the story I’d given Keane, but Ethan was more likely to push for details—and I was more likely to cave to his pushing.