Shadowspell (22 page)

It was the most brutal, intense sparring session I’d ever had. No doubt he was still holding back to avoid the risk of hurting me or I’d have been in pieces by the time he was through, but it wasn’t even close to fun. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he dialed up the intensity on the insults and sarcasm. According to him, I didn’t do a single thing right the entire time. Usually his drill-sergeant tactics pissed me off, but today they were cutting way deeper, to the point where I was way more hurt than angry.

I doubt we’d been at it more than about ten minutes when I decided I’d had enough. Keane, of course, didn’t give a damn what I’d decided and ignored me when I said I wanted to stop. He swung his fist at my face, but I was determined to put an end to our session right this second. So I fought my instinct to protect myself, forcing myself to hold still instead of blocking, or ducking, or dodging.

Keane realized at the last second that I wasn’t defending, and his eyes widened in a way that might have been comical if I weren’t wincing and gritting my teeth in anticipation of his punch. If he’d been human, there was no way he could have stopped the momentum of his blow, so it was a damn good thing he wasn’t human.

He cut it so close that his knuckles grazed my chin by the time he’d fully put the brakes on. Not hard enough to hurt, though, and I let out a silent breath of relief. I’d been prepared to take the hit if that was what it took to make Keane stop, but I hadn’t exactly been looking forward to it.

“What the fuck?” he shouted, his closed fist still hanging in the air.

“I said I had enough,” I told him, and was pleased by how calm and steady my voice sounded. Maybe I had a future as an actress, because I was anything but calm and steady.

Keane let out an incoherent sound of frustration, but dropped his fist.

“Get up on the wrong side of the bed?” I asked with a fair imitation of one of his sneers.

His eyes went cold. It wasn’t a look I’d ever seen on his face before. His anger had always been hot, the kind that flared up and then faded away with equal suddenness. This looked different, and a part of me wanted to take a giant step backward.

“You’re making jokes,” he said, and his voice was as cold as his eyes. “Guess this is all just some big game to you, and you take your sparring about as seriously as you take P.E. at school.”

“What? Where did
that
come from?”

He shook his head. “You know what? You’re not worth my time.”

Without another word, he stomped off the mat, then practically pulled it out from under my feet so he could roll it up.

“Geez,” I said, throwing up my hands. “I knew you didn’t like Ethan, but I didn’t expect you to throw a temper tantrum like a big baby.”

He shot to his feet, then gave the rolled-up mat a savage kick. “You think this is about
Ethan
?” He wasn’t looking quite so cold anymore, but I couldn’t say it was much of an improvement.

I blinked at him in confusion. “If this isn’t about Ethan, then what is it about?”

“You’re completely mental.” He ran his hand through his hair, and I think he pulled out a few strands in the process. Then he took a deep breath and spoke to me slowly and deliberately, like I was an idiot who had to have things explained to me in small words. “It isn’t about Ethan, it’s about
you
. What the fuck is the point of teaching you to defend yourself if you’re just going to run out and deliver yourself to your enemies?”

I saw a lot of things in his eyes just then, many of which I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to see.

He was my friend as well as my teacher, and as a friend he certainly had a right to worry about me—even if he didn’t know just how much he had to worry about. But the intensity of his reaction, the anguish in his expression … This was more than one friend worrying about another.

Damn it! I so didn’t need another complication in my life.

What do you do when someone you think of as a friend lets you see that he wants more? I did the only thing I could at the time: I ignored it.

“I didn’t ‘deliver myself to my enemies,’ ” I said. “I know I took a calculated risk when I bargained with the Erlking, but it was just something I had to do. I couldn’t let him keep Ethan when I knew I could save him. I’d have done the same for you.”

Maybe I should have kept that last part to myself, but it was true. It didn’t mean I had any interest in dating Keane, though. I’d have been just as willing to make a deal if it had been Kimber’s life on the line.

I liked Keane, but only on the infrequent occasions he wasn’t being an asshole. He was gorgeous, and, I had to admit, extremely sexy. And yeah, Kimber’s obvious interest in him had sparked an unexpected jealousy in me. But I already had one really complicated boy in my life, and now I had an even more complicated man in it, too. Adding Keane to the mix would be more than I could handle. Besides, Kimber was my best friend. What kind of friend would I be if I got involved with a guy I knew she was interested in?

“Don’t do me any favors,” Keane growled, but he’d lost a lot of the intensity.

“I’m not the type to just sit back and let other people take care of my problems for me,” I said. “I never will be. If you think that makes it a waste of your time to teach me self-defense, then I’m sure I can find someone else to teach me.”

He winced as if I’d said something cruel. I didn’t think I had.

“No, it’s not a waste of my time,” he admitted, hanging his head. “The more stupid crap you get yourself into, the more you’re going to need to defend yourself.”

I made a sound between a laugh and a snort. “Way to be tactful and supportive. With friends like you, my enemies can just sit back and enjoy the show.”

“You’re going to give me gray hair before I’m twenty.”

I shrugged. “You dye it anyway, so you’ll never notice.”

He cracked a smile at that.

“So, are we friends again?” I asked, holding out my hand for him to shake.

He gave me an unfathomable look, then took my hand and gave it a squeeze instead of a shake. “Yeah. Friends.”

He managed to say it without sounding sarcastic, and I managed to accept the words even though I knew he didn’t really believe them.

chapter twenty

Each day, I woke up expecting to hear from Ethan, but he didn’t call. I’d have told myself he was still flat on his back, except when I asked Kimber how he was doing, she told me he was much better. I was highly tempted to ask her if she knew why he wasn’t calling me, but she’d sounded both exhausted and distracted, so I decided to stick to less emotionally charged topics. She didn’t even question me about my deal with the Erlking. I didn’t know if that meant she’d already heard about the “geis,” or if she didn’t care, or what.

Almost a week passed with no word from Ethan. I saw or at least heard from my mom and dad every day, which might have been nice if everything weren’t so strained. Dad was clearly still worried, and Mom was … Well, Mom was a wreck. Sobriety wasn’t agreeing with her, not during times of stress. She even took me aside for a private chat one day when I was visiting Dad’s house and he ended up stuck on some important phone call.

Her fidgeting was worse than it had been even in her first days after the d.t.’s had passed, and I noticed with a start that she had lost weight. Her clothes hung loosely on her frame, and I saw she was no longer wearing the gold claddagh ring that I’d never before seen her take off. I could still see the impression of the band around her finger. She noticed me staring and rubbed the spot self-consciously.

“It keeps slipping off,” she said. “I’ll have to see if I can get it resized.”

“Are you on a diet?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. She’d always been just a hair on the heavy side, but she’d never cared, and I didn’t think she cared now, either.

“Not intentionally,” she said with a rueful smile. “I just haven’t been all that hungry lately.” She touched her stomach. “I always seem to lose my appetite when I’m stressed out.”

I nodded. Now I understood. In the past when she’d been stressed out, she might have lost her appetite for food, but not for alcohol. It might not be what you’d call nourishing, but it did have calories. And, come to think of it, it probably reduced her stress, too, though at a terrible cost.

I reached over and patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Please don’t be stressed about me. I’ll be fine.”

“Of course you will,” she agreed with false cheer, then fell silent and went back to her fidgeting.

I waited to see if she was going to say anything else, but she didn’t. “Is there something you wanted to talk to me about?” I finally prompted, not sure I wanted to know.

She took a deep breath, then turned to face me with a grim but determined expression. Now I felt sure I didn’t want to know.

“You understand that your father is keeping me here against my will, don’t you?” she asked.

I winced. Yeah, I knew that. She and I were both his prisoners in a way.

“Do you know why?”

That question surprised me. Of
course
I knew why. Dad forcing Mom to stay sober was one of the few really good things that had happened since I’d come to Avalon. Naturally, Mom didn’t see it that way, especially since she wouldn’t admit she had a drinking problem in the first place.

“He’s keeping you here so you’ll stay sober,” I said, bracing myself for yet another round of denial on her part.

Mom shook her head. “No. He’s keeping me here because he thinks it’s what you want.”

“Huh?”

“He’s keeping me here because you think I’m an alcoholic, and he thinks keeping me locked up without alcohol will make you happy.”

I’d never thought of it that way, but I supposed it was true. Damned if I was going to feel guilty about it, though. “Your point being?” A hint of frost entered my voice, but Mom ignored it.

“My point being that if you asked your father to release me, he probably would. I’m as much
your
prisoner as your father’s.”

I laughed, but it was a bitter, angry sound. “You want me to convince Dad to let you go so you can go back to business as usual. That’s great, Mom. Just great. You want to go back to being a pathetic drunken loser.”

She jerked back as if I’d slapped her. “Dana!”

Back when she’d been drunk all the time, I’d worked very hard to keep my rage locked tightly inside. Yelling at her or even reasoning with her when she was drunk was an exercise in futility. But she wasn’t drunk now, so I let it all out. Maybe now that she was sober—however unwillingly—she’d be able to understand just how badly her alcoholism hurt me.

“You want me to pretend it’s all right with me that you’d rather get drunk and pass out than spend time with me?”

“That’s not—”

“Or that it’s all right for you to be so drunk all the time you can’t be bothered to keep your bills paid? You think I didn’t mind having to lie for you year after year after year?”

“Enough!”

“No, it’s
not
enough!” The anger was taking on a life of its own. My fists were clenched so tight my fingers were falling asleep, and I felt like I was going to explode. “You’ve been a sorry excuse for a mother my whole life, but for the last few weeks, I thought maybe you were capable of better. And now you’re asking me to make it easy for you to go back to being—”

My mom slapped me, and it shocked me silent. She’d never hit me before in my life. She was so angry she was shaking. But the sheen of tears in her eyes said there was pain behind the anger.

“I said that’s enough,” she said hoarsely. Then she stood up, turned her back on me, and walked stiffly away.

*   *   *

I should have felt happy that I’d managed to save Ethan from the Wild Hunt, regardless of the promise I’d had to make to do it. Instead, I felt lousy. Dad was worried about me. Mom was furious with me. Keane seemed to want something from me I wasn’t able to give him. And Ethan, apparently, wasn’t speaking to me.

I finally got sick of waiting for him to call me and nerved myself up to call him instead. He didn’t answer, and though I left him a message, he didn’t call back. It kinda reminded me of the cold shoulder I’d given him after I’d seen him with Ashley at the party, but I hadn’t done anything to deserve it. Not that I knew of, at least.

When calling Ethan didn’t work, I called Kimber instead. I’d only spoken to her once since the day I’d gone to the Erlking’s house, and that conversation had been brief. I was determined this one, however, would let me get to the bottom of whatever was going on with Ethan.

It had somehow slipped my mind that Kimber hadn’t had a chance to interrogate me about just how I’d managed to free Ethan. She reminded me of the fact almost immediately.

“So, you said you had to work something out with the Erlking other than the deal we’d come up with together,” she said, and I made a chagrined face I was glad she couldn’t see. “What was it? No one seems to know.”

Yeah, and that was just the way I wanted it. So even though I felt a bit guilty about it, I gave Kimber the same lie I’d given my dad. “The Erlking put a geis on me, so I can’t tell anyone what I did.”

There was a long silence. “Uh-huh,” she finally said, and I heard the skepticism in her voice loud and clear.

I squirmed. I hadn’t felt bad about lying to my dad. I mean come on, he might be my dad, but I barely knew him. There was no way I was talking sex with him. Period.

But Kimber was my best friend, and if I was going to open up to anyone about this, it should be her. I’d told Kimber the shameful secret about my mom, and at the time I’d known her for like twenty-four hours. We were closer now, so I should be able to trust her with my new embarrassing secret.

But letting anyone know my mom was an alcoholic wasn’t half as bad as admitting what I’d promised the Erlking. Honestly, what do you call someone who promises sex in return for a favor? I knew only too well, and my face was burning just thinking about it.

“You can tell me, you know,” Kimber said quietly, and I heard the hurt in her voice. “Whatever it is, I’m not going to think less of you. You rescued Ethan when no one else was even willing to try.”