August Page 18

  “What else would it have to do with?” asked Carley. Her jaw was set in a mulish line.

  “You flirting with every guy in sight. Even the ones who are clearly interested in other girls.” Nick glanced at me, and Carley and Samuel’s faces both got very red.

  “Look, Nick, it’s not a big deal,” said Samuel casually.

  “You flirting with my girlfriend?” Nick almost shouted. “Isn’t a big deal? Forgive me if I don’t want a rich, hot, older guy making passes at her. Especially when he’s clearly trying to get with her friend.”

  I should have said something at this point, but I had no idea what. From the looks on Susan and Holt’s faces, they didn’t either.

  “I am NOT your girlfriend,” Carley stormed at Nick, throwing her own silverware down.

  “Oh yeah, you’ve made that PERFECTLY clear,” Nick yelled back. “You were all over that Jake guy. He was a drunk idiot who threw you in the ocean and you nearly died, but no big deal as long as he thought you were cute!”

  I could see tears forming in the sides of Carley’s eyes. She hung her head, embarrassed to have Nick saying stuff like that to her in front of friends.

  “Nick, let’s go outside and cool off,” I said.

  Nick shoved his chair back and stormed out. He didn’t even bother to look at Carley.

  I got up and followed him out, grabbing a fleece on my way out the door. Now that it was mid-August the Maine nights were on the chilly side.

  Nick was sitting on the steps to the porch. I had a flashback of the night when I’d come home from swimming with Holt, and Samuel had been there waiting for me. At the time I thought he was an intruder, but he’d just come to warn me about his crazy mother. Unfortunately, the warning didn’t accomplish much, and she’d ended up attacking me anyway.

  Even though Nick knew I was following him, I didn’t want to startle him, so I made sure to make a little noise as I walked down the few steps to sit next to him. His forearms were resting on his knees, and his head was bent low. I put my hand on his back, trying to soothe him.

  “That was a mistake, huh?” he asked.

  I shrugged, then realized he couldn’t see it. “Probably not the best way to start a conversation about your relationship,” I said cautiously.

  Nick laughed bitterly. “We aren’t in a relationship. That’s the point. Carley can do whatever she wants and she obviously doesn’t want to be with me.”

  “Are you kidding?” I asked. “She’s crazy about you.”

  “No, Autumn, she’s not. If she was she wouldn’t treat me as if I don’t give a damn,” he said sadly.

  “I don’t think she’s always aware of how her actions affect others,” I said, still trying to choose my words with care. Carley was a great friend of mine, but sometimes she was callous.

  “No,” said Nick. “Look, thanks for coming out here, but I’m going home. I can’t deal with watching Carley flirt.”

  Nick stood up to go.

  “Nick, her flirting doesn’t mean anything,” I said desperately. I knew that was true.

  “Whatever,” said Nick. “If that’s true she should act like it. Goodnight, Autumn.”

  He walked towards his car, and then he was gone.

  I sighed and watched him drive away, reluctant to go inside even though I knew I should. The night was so pleasant that it was a great temptation to just stay on the porch and avoid the complications indoors. I felt bad about Carley, but I honestly felt worse about Nick. He shouldn’t have gotten involved with Carley in the first place. Not if he wasn’t going to like how she treated him, and he had known her well enough to guess how that would be.

  For a while I just sat there, noticing the beautiful night. The sky was clear and filled with what looked like a million stars, there were crickets and even a few last fireflies, and from somewhere in the distance, the smell of the ocean.

  It was strong and salty, reminding me of warm days and gorgeous views. I stood up, suddenly desperate to see the water, not just smell it. I started down the driveway, telling myself that it wouldn’t take long and I was sure I’d be back before dessert was over.

  I hadn’t gotten more than five steps when I heard the door open behind me.

  “Hey, Autumn,” said Holt.

  I spun on my heel. For some reason I felt terribly guilty, and I knew my face would show it. I’d definitely suck at poker.

  “Where are you going?” he asked. He didn’t sound suspicious; just curious.

  “Nowhere,” I said. I put my hands behind my back, feeling the need to look innocent.

  “You look like you just drank vinegar,” said Holt, grinning.

  “I was just going to go for a walk,” I said. I looked longingly towards the ocean.

  “Autumn, come back in.” He reached a hand out to me.

  I looked from him to the water behind me. Every fiber of my body wanted to go. In fact, I wanted to run towards the water and not stop, not until I’d thrown myself in.

  Holt must have realized that I wasn’t going to come back to the porch, let alone inside, without help. Quickly he sprang towards me, skipping all the front steps. As he took my arm I felt the jolt of his warm fingers on my bare skin.

  I couldn’t help it, I smiled up into his eyes. Every time he was near I completely forgot about Samuel, the Winter Queen, and Sprites. The thought that I was destined for Samuel sounded ludicrous whenever I looked at him.

  “Come inside,” he said again. This time I moved with him. He put his arm around my shoulders. “Nick leave?”

  “Yeah. I couldn’t talk him out of it, or into the idea that Carley actually likes him.”

  “As opposed to just using him for sex,” asked Holt.

  “Blunt much?” I asked. But he was right. “Yeah, that’s how he feels. Personally,” I continued, even though I knew I shouldn’t, “I admire a guy who talks about his feelings openly.”

  “What do you want to know?” Holt asked.

  “What?” I said. It wasn’t what I expected him to say. I’d expected him to laugh at me.

  “What do you want to know? You were making a comment about not knowing how I felt, right? Anything you want to know, just ask.”

  I was all set to ask when the door came flying open and Samuel dashed out. He skidded to a stop when he saw us coming up the steps. Awkwardly I stepped out from the circle of Holt’s arm. Susan followed him out, carrying a plate of what looked like cookies.

  “What lit a fire under your ass?” Holt asked casually.

  “I sensed the Water Sprite,” said Samuel. “I wanted to make sure Autumn was alright.”

  I raised my eyebrows. I’d seen no sign of a Water Sprite.

  “She was on her way to meet it when I came out,” Holt replied.

  “I what?” I gasped. “I was not.” My voice sounded feeble even to me.

  “You were,” said Holt. “That’s why you were heading for the ocean.”

  I chewed my lip, thinking. What he said made sense. Until this whole Water Sprite thing, I had never really cared about the ocean. Whenever my mom would say how beautiful it was, I’d just roll my eyes. The last few days I’d felt drawn to it. I guess that’s why the Fairies always wanted to be with me. If the Water Sprite could make the ocean call to me and I was powerless to resist it, maybe I did need protecting at all times.

  “You almost walked into the water?” asked Susan, horrified.

  “I didn’t,” I said, just as Holt chorused, “I stopped her about two feet from here.”

  We smiled at each other.

  Samuel looked away.

  “This is not okay,” said Susan. She picked up her own cookie and ate it, staring around absently.

  “Give me one of those,” said Holt. He grabbed a cookie and handed one to me. “Yum; chocolate chip,” said Holt.

  “My point is,” said Susan, starting to pace, “we have to fix this.”

  “How do you want to do that?” asked Samuel. He sat down on the steps.

  “I don�
�t know,” said Susan, “but we can’t let it go on like this.”

  “Lydia and Leslie caught it before; maybe they will again,” said Samuel. I noticed that Holt shifted slightly, and I wondered if he was as uncomfortable about Lydia and Leslie as I was. Lydia had punched him, after all.

  “So, we need a plan,” said Holt. “I just don’t like our options.”

  “What are our options?” I asked. “Can we go in after it?”

  There was a moment of silence, and then I realized that none of them would look at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “We can’t fight it on its ground and win,” said Samuel.

  “So what does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means we need to get it on our territory. It means we need bait,” said Holt, looking up at me.

  I pursed my lips.

  It was obvious what they were saying, or avoiding saying. What I needed to do.

  What they weren’t saying was that I was the bait.

  Chapter Twenty

  The four of us talked until Mrs. Hightower came to find us. She said that Carley hadn’t been feeling well; apparently she hadn’t shared with her mother what had just happened with Nick, and had gone to bed early.

  Everyone thanked Mrs. Hightower for the meal. Once she’d gone back into the house we got back to talking about the plan. As far as I could tell it was going to be the exact opposite of what we had been doing before. Until then the Fairies had done everything they could to make sure that I was never alone, especially at night when the Water Sprite might take advantage of the fact that everyone else was asleep, and attack.

  Now the plan was to leave me alone until the Water Sprite sensed that I was defenseless. I protested that I could take care of myself, but Holt pointed out that that wasn’t true, because if it had been I wouldn’t have been dragged off into the water the other day. I couldn’t argue with that.

  Susan pointed out that even if the Water Sprite didn’t know they were there, they’d always be watching me. I wasn’t sure this made me feel any better.

  “I don’t want Lydia or Leslie to have any turns ‘guarding’ me,” I said. I tried to say it casually, but Samuel frowned a little.

  “I know they make you uncomfortable, Autumn, but they really are trustworthy,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, still not sure but not willing to push it without some support from the others.

  In the end it was Susan who nudged Samuel, the only one who really had a chance. My mind flashed back to the rumor that Susan had always had a thing for Samuel. Now that I saw her with him I wondered if it was true.

  “Alright,” he said. “No Lydia or Leslie, but we might need them when the time comes to actually defeat the thing,” he pointed out.

  “We can get Logan too,” said Holt. “He needs the fighting practice anyway.”

  I was surprised to hear him say it, because I hadn’t pictured Fairies as needing to be battle ready. Feeling yet again the frustration of not knowing enough about Fairy magic and customs, I tried not to blame Holt, but a little resentment crept in anyhow.

  Finally, we all broke up for the night. Holt was still going to stay with me, because we wanted the Water Sprite to attack me during the day when everyone else was awake, but he didn’t want Samuel to know, so we just kept chatting on the porch until after Samuel left.

  For the third night in a row I fell asleep, comfortable and protected in the circle of his arms.

  When I woke up in the morning he was gone, as I had known he would be; I was used to his pre-dawn disappearances by now.

  Once I was up and dressed for work, I headed downstairs. There was no sign of Carley or her mom, so I ate quickly and headed for the front door.

  Just as I was reaching to open it, a voice from behind me said, “Can I walk with you?” Carley was coming down the stairs in running shorts and a t-shirt. Her hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail. There were bags under her eyes.

  “Of course,” I replied. “I was just on my way to work.”

  Carley fell into step next to me as we headed out the door.

  “Nick’s such a jerk,” said Carley, kicking a pebble down the road. “How could he say that stuff to me? In front of Holt and Samuel! It’s awful. I can’t imagine what they must have thought of me. If he didn’t like our arrangement he should have said so. I didn’t ask him to get in a fight with Jake over my…honor. He thinks that somehow now that he has a black eye for me he has the right to tell me what to do! How dare he?”

  Carley’s rant had taken us almost to the Roths’ house. Their garden was beautiful, as always. No one but me, the Roths, and the Cheshires knew that just a month ago all of the flowers had actually been destroyed. The Roths had worked hard to regrow them and used a bit of Glamour where they couldn’t rush the process.

  “Don’t you think?” Carley asked when I didn’t answer immediately.

  “I don’t think he should have done what he did,” I said. “He shouldn’t have confronted you in front of everyone like that.”

  “But you agree with what he said?” Carley asked, incredulous.

  “I think he likes you and he wants more than hooking up and you knew that. If you didn’t want to date him you shouldn’t have used him for sex,” I said. I was a little surprised at myself, because normally I kept my opinions to myself and just let Carley vent. Who was I to tell her what to do? But I liked Nick, and I thought Carley did too.

  “If he didn’t want to hook up he shouldn’t have kissed me,” said Carley stubbornly. “He and I have no agreement and I can do what I want.”

  “Of course you can do what you want,” I said, eyeing the door to UP, UP and Away. One good thing about the summer’s ending would be that I didn’t have to work for Mrs. Fritter any more, at least for a while.

  She started to say triumphantly that she knew she could when I continued, “But if you do, you might lose Nick. And, Carley,” I continued before she could interrupt me again, “I’m not sure that flirting with Big Jake when he’s hammered is what you want.”

  Carley gasped. She couldn’t believe that I’d actually said it. To be honest I couldn’t either, but she’d wanted to talk about it and I had honestly told her what I thought.

  “I knew you’d defend him,” Carley sputtered at me.

  “What?” I said. “I’m not defending him. He shouldn’t have done what he did, but he cares about you!”

  “You’re defending him so that you can have Holt and Samuel all to yourself,” Carley cried.

  “What?” I almost yelled back. “What are you accusing me of?”

  “You don’t want competition with Samuel or Holt,” said Carley. “You want to keep both of them fawning all over you!”

  I was dumbstruck. I felt like I was having some sort of out of body experience where Carley was accusing some other girl of flirting with all the guys and I was watching nervously.

  “You aren’t even arguing,” said Carley, throwing up her hands.

  “Because…because it’s just so crazy,” I stammered. “How could you think that of me?” I realized that we were having an argument right in front of UP, UP and Away, where everyone could hear us, but there wasn’t anything I could do at this point; we were too far into it.

  “You know what, Carley? This isn’t about me,” I said. “I gotta go to work.” I marched past her and yanked the door open.

  “What do you mean it isn’t about you?” Carley yelled after me. “What do you mean?”

  But I was already inside, too pissed off to listen to any more of it. Carley thought that if I wasn’t “hogging” Samuel or Holt they would somehow magically be available to her – and not only that, she seemed to assume that if I was out of the way, her happiness with one or the other of them would inevitably follow.

  I could barely decide what to wear in the morning, let alone which guy’s Rose I would accept so that I’d spend the rest of my life with him, and here Carley was yelling at me about it as if it was just another intrigue
. With a life-sucking Water Sprite trying to attack me I just didn’t need it, and I was too angry to be fair to Carley and remember that she didn’t know a thing about the Water Sprite, the Rose, or anything else to do with the Fairies.

  Because of Carley’s wanting to talk to me – actually, wanting to accuse me of keeping Samuel and Holt from her – I hadn’t had time to think through the plan we’d come up with the night before, as I had meant to do on the walk to work this morning.

  Basically, the Fairies would take turns watching me during the day, but at a safe enough distance that the Water Sprite might try to get me down to the water again. Someone, probably Holt, would still stay with me at night. If they couldn’t catch the Water Sprite that way then tomorrow I’d actually have to go to the beach, and they’d be there, ready for a fight. They’d been vague about what they’d actually do to the Sprite, but they’d assured me, after I demanded to be assured, that it wouldn’t be killed. It sounded like they would trap it in some sort of magical net, but they wouldn’t tell me any more than that.

  “Good morning, Autumn.” Mrs. Fritter was standing behind the counter. Today she wore an eye-watering shade of yellow with pink-rimmed glasses. It was funny how at the beginning of the summer I’d liked her and now she drove me crazy. And by funny I mean tragic.

  “Autumn, I wanted to talk to you about your performance,” she said when I’d come around to the other side of the counter.

  “My what?” I said.

  “Come into the office,” said Mrs. Fritter. The only other time she’d asked me to go back to the office was when I’d accidentally lost ten bucks and she’d given me a long lecture about responsibility and how the next time it would come out of my paycheck.

  Her office was small and cramped, with lots of pictures from magazines on the walls.

  “I didn’t want to say this in front of customers,” she said, turning to look at me and crossing her hands in front of her.

  “Say what?” I asked. I hated this job, but somehow I was still nervous.

  “Autumn, your performance recently has – well, it hasn’t been good,” she informed me with a sad shake of her head. “In fact, it’s been bad.”