“Why?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
She shrugged. “He’s in a very precarious position. He doesn’t want to risk alienating you.”
“I need some time to think about it,” I said.
“Time is something we don’t have. I’ll give you until tomorrow,” she said, her pale blue eyes burning into mine as she rose from her seat.
I nodded. “I understand. I just have a lot to figure out.”
I blinked and she was gone, the door clicking shut the only sign of her departure.
“Come on Beth, we need to board,” a girl with springy copper ringlets says, her voice pleading.
“One more minute, he might still show,” a blonde says, turning as she looks around the crowded airport.
The redhead sighs, glancing among the swarming faces. “He would have been to see you by now. You’re acting crazy.”
The blonde is my mother. Her face is drawn, dark circles standing out under her green eyes. She bites her lip as the other girl tugs on her arm. Tears begin to fall as her shoulders slump.
“Come on, Bethy. You’re too good for him anyway.” The girl’s eyes are darting toward the departure gate where a flight attendant is taking down the sign for Flight 407.
My mother’s eyes drop to the floor and she allows the girl to tug her forward. As the redhead speaks to the flight attendant, my mother glances over her shoulder one last time before they run down the boarding ramp.
Sunlight peeked through my blinds and I rolled over to bury my head into my pillow. My head was pounding and my mouth was dry and cottony. I’d spent most of the night wide awake, only the moonbeams keeping me company. The last time I’d checked the clock, it was quarter to five. It was now almost eight and I had a class at ten.
I’d gone back and forth all night on what I would tell Niamh today. I looked at the corkboard hanging over my desk. A few awards and medals I’d won in high school hung around pictures of me and Nicole at different ages. One was us after a dance recital at six and seven years old, dressed in colorful costumes, our hair in tight curls. Another of us jumping off the diving board of her pool together at eleven and twelve.
Nicole’s engagement party itself wasn’t what was important to me. It was being there for her that mattered. She’d probably never know it wasn’t me if a decoy took my place. Not only would whoever Niamh sent be glamoured to look like me, but the entire party would be compelled to believe it was me, no matter how I behaved. It was what came after — the guilt. I’d never forget I wasn’t there and I hated the thought living with that feeling.
The memory of my mother’s face from my dream flashed in my mind. Her heartbreak and pain at feeling abandoned in every glance.
The difference between my mother’s situation and Nicole’s were astronomical. Maybe the truth was that I was afraid of going back there, to Tír na n’Óg. Back to the place where everything felt wrong and perfect at the same time. In Tír na n’Óg the sun always shone, the air was clean and none of Earth’s rules applied. It was all beautiful women and breathtaking men, dancing and feasting and, of course, plenty of seduction. Even the way the clothing felt on my skin was alluring.
If Nicole knew the truth, she would tell me to go after Aoife. I knew that much for sure. The university would possibly grant me a leave of absence, especially if one of Niamh’s people was asking for it in my place.
I climbed out of bed and sat down at my desk to turn on the computer. I typed up an email to my professor, telling him I had a family emergency and I’d be out class for at least today. My finger twitched over my mouse as I debated whether to click send or not.
I pressed send and closed my eyes. There was an application for a leave of absence on the university’s website. Shaking my head, I filled it out. There was a chance I could get thrown out of the graduate program for this. But I didn’t want a decoy taking my classes for me, it didn’t sit well. I drew up the image of my mother in Tír na n’Óg when she’d been completely normal. Her smile when she spoke to me and Liam was all the incentive I needed to send it off and shut down my computer.
I changed into some jeans and a T-shirt before heading downstairs. I felt lighter than I had in weeks. We were finally going to take steps toward making things as they should be between my parents. We would find Aoife, and this time I would destroy the amulet she wore and break the geis that kept my parents apart.
Everyone was doing their normal Monday morning thing in the kitchen. Gram was at the stove fussing over scrambled eggs. Pop sat at the table reading the newspaper. My mother sat beside him slowly spreading butter on a piece of toast.