Shadowspell

“Did you know about Connor?” I asked, watching her face carefully in search of a lie. I don’t know whether knowing I had a half-brother would have had any effect on me, either growing up or since I came to Avalon, but it would be yet another strike against her if she’d known and hadn’t told me. And seeing as she hadn’t told my dad he had a daughter, I couldn’t help suspecting her.

“No,” she answered, and something about the pained look in her eyes convinced me she was telling the truth. “He never talked about it. I knew he’d lost someone who mattered to him to the Wild Hunt, but I didn’t know who it was, and I didn’t know whether ‘lost’ meant dead, or captured.”

“Would you have told me if you’d known?”

Back when she was drinking, Mom didn’t hesitate to lie to me. It didn’t matter how blatant the lie was, or how obviously I didn’t believe her—if it was a choice between telling the distasteful truth or making something up, she’d make something up. I suspect this particular question would have warranted a lie in her mind back then; now she told me the truth with a grimace.

“Probably not, honey,” she admitted. “What purpose could it possibly have served?”

On the one hand, I was glad she was being honest with me. On the other hand, she was honestly telling me that she wouldn’t have told me the truth.

I shook my head at her. “Why would it have had to serve a purpose? Wouldn’t I have the right to know I had a brother? I’m not a little kid anymore, Mom. You don’t need to protect my delicate sensibilities, or whatever the hell you think you need to do.”

I couldn’t miss the hurt in my mom’s eyes. Great. First I’d picked a fight with Dad, now I was going for round two with Mom. I could hardly expect myself to be Little Miss Sunshine under the circumstances, but I knew better than to lash out like that.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, looking away from the hurt in her eyes.

She reached over and patted my back. “It’s all right, honey. I know you’re angry with me. You have every right to be.”

I bit my tongue. Hard. She still didn’t have a clue why I was angry with her. After all, we’d already established that she wouldn’t admit she had a drinking problem. If she didn’t have a drinking problem, then I couldn’t be angry with her about it, right?

Someday, I was going to totally lose it and we were going to have a screaming argument about her drinking. But I didn’t have the energy for it today. I just wanted to go home, crawl into bed, and pull the covers over my head. So I kept my mouth shut and stuffed my anger back down into its hiding place, where it could fester some more.

Chapter twelve

My parents wanted me to spend the night at Dad’s house. I guess they thought I was in need of their nurturing comfort or something. If I stayed, they’d probably expect me to talk to them and let them coddle me, and I was afraid I’d lose control of my fragile temper and make the evening even uglier than it already was. Besides, though my dad obviously had money, his house wasn’t exactly huge, and my mom was in the only spare bedroom. Mom offered to sleep on the couch so I could have her room, but I refused.

Dad could have made me stay, of course. But I think he’s the kind of guy who’d rather be left alone when he’s miserable, so he understood where I was coming from.

Whatever the reason, he agreed to take me back to my safe house. Finn met us there, and when Dad left, I retreated to my suite to be alone with my thoughts.

I knew I should call Kimber to check and see how she was doing. But I knew how she was doing, and it was lousy. Calling her would be the right thing to do, but that night, I just didn’t have it in me to do the right thing. I didn’t want to face the guilt her grief would stir up. And I didn’t want to cry anymore, which I knew I’d do the moment I heard her voice. Even looking at my freshly manicured nails practically set me off, and if I’d had any nail polish remover, I’d probably have put it to use. I thought about trying to call the magic again as a way to distract myself, but I wasn’t sure I could sing even “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” right now. So instead, I went to bed way early, then lay there wide awake wondering if there was anything I could have done to save Ethan.

*   *   *

I must have fallen asleep eventually, because I woke up to the sound of someone pounding on my bedroom door. I groaned and tried to settle back down into the covers. Sleep was the greatest invention in the history of mankind. When I was sleeping, I wasn’t feeling guilty, or miserable, or sad.

The pounding on the door continued until I realized that sleep was not among my options. I have one of those alarm clocks that gradually brightens in the morning so I didn’t have to wake up to the pitch-black of the cave. When I finally forced my eyes open, I saw that the clock’s light was at its brightest, so even though it took me a moment to focus my bleary eyes, I knew immediately that it was morning.

The pounding on my door was relentless. And annoying.

“All right!” I yelled. “I’m up.” Why couldn’t Finn just let me sleep? It wasn’t like I had somewhere I had to be.

“Sorry to wake you,” Finn called through the door. He didn’t sound very sorry. “Keane’s been waiting over an hour, and I figured that was enough.”

It took like five minutes for me to process what Finn said. Then I remembered this was Tuesday morning, which is one of my regularly scheduled lesson days with Keane. A glance at the clock told me it was well after ten, and my lessons usually started at the ungodly hour of nine.