Parking as close to her house as possible, she snatched up her purse, leapt from the car, raced up the steps, unlocked the back door with shaking hands, slammed it shut behind her, locked it, slid the dead bolt, then collapsed in a limp little heap on the floor.
She stated unseeingly around the dark kitchen, ears straining, listening intently for any hint that it had somehow managed to follow her. How she wished she had a garage! Her car was just sitting out there like a big dilapidated powder-blue X: Here hides Gabby O'Callaghan. A sitting duck. Quack, quack.
"Oh, God, what have I done?" she whispered, horrified.
Twenty-four years of hiding, of maintaining a flawless façade, undone in a single night.
Gram would be so disappointed.
She was so disappointed. She'd stood there gaping— no, ogling the thing. And she'd justified it by feeding herself the flimsy fib that she was only staring so she could accurately identify it in the O'Callaghan Books of the Fae, or describe it if it wasn't already in there.
As if.
Do you find them attractive? Moira O'Callaghan had asked a fourteen-year-old Gabrielle over orange-ginger tea in the kitchen late one night, nearly ten years ago.
Gabby had blushed furiously, not wanting to betray the depth of her hopeless infatuation. While her high school friends dreamed of actors and rock stars and seniors with cars, she dreamed of a fairy prince that would come swooping into her life and carry her off to some exotic, beautiful land. One that would somehow transcend the innate coldbloodedness of its kind, all for love of her.
Do you? Gram pressed sternly. Ashamed, Gabby had nodded.
That's what makes them so dangerous, Gabrielle. The Fae are no better than the Hunters they send after us. They are inhumanly seductive. "Inhuman" is the word you must remember. No souls. No hearts. Do not romanticize them.
She'd been guilty of it then. She'd not thought herself guilty of it still. With the passing of her teen years, she thought she'd laid many things to rest, including her foolish infatuation with a fantasy fairy prince.
Not.
With a groan of abject misery, she forced herself up from the floor. Cowering in a limp little heap wasn't going to accomplish anything.
If you ever betray yourself, Grain had told her too many times to count, if one of them ever realizes you can see them, you must leave immediately. Don't dare waste time packing, just get in the car and go as fast and as far as you can. I'm leaving you money in a special account to be used only for that purpose. It should be more than enough to see you to safety.
Gabby clutched the edge of the kitchen counter and closed her eyes.
She didn't want to leave, damn it. This was her home, the home Grain had raised her in. Every corner was filled with precious memories. Every inch of the century-old, rambling Victorian was dear to her, from the slate roof that was always springing a new-leak, to the spacious, high-ceilinged rooms, to the archaic hot-water heating system that knocked and rattled, but steamed so cozily in the winter. And so what if she couldn't afford to heat most of the house and had to wear layers of clothing unless she was within a few feet of a radiator? So what if it still didn't have central air and the summers were swelteringly hot?
On occasion she'd been awfully tempted to dip into her escape-the-fairy fund, but she'd resisted. Things would change once she graduated and got a real job. Her finances wouldn't always be so precarious. Even an entry-level position with a law firm would enable her to start paying off her pile of student loans and begin much-needed renovations.
She spent most of her time in the octagonal turret anyway, either in the library on the first floor or in the upstairs bedroom she'd redesigned for herself when Gram had died. With all the windows open on a summer night and the ceiling fan softly winning, she could bear the heat. Besides, she loved lying in bed looking out over the sprawling lush gardens (despite the rickety wrought-iron fencing that desperately needed to be replaced). The mortgage had been paid off years ago. She'd planned never to leave, had hoped to one day fill up the too-silent rooms with children of her own.
And now, just because one dratted fairy—
Wait a minute, she thought, her eyes flying open, it didn't have fairy eyes, remember? In her panic, she'd completely forgotten about its strange eyes. They'd been a single color. Black as midnight. Black as sin but for those golden sparks.
Definitely not fairy. The Fae had iridescent eyes that changed quicksilver-fast, spanning all the colors of the rainbow. Shimmery and quixotic. Neva black-and-gold.
In fact, she thought, nibbling her lower lip pensively, it had displayed several baffling anomalies: its eyes; its human attire— really, a fairy in jeans and a T-shirt?— usually the Fae wore garments fashioned of fabrics unlike anything she'd ever seen; and its seeming emotion.