Mickey shook his head, cutting me off. “No more questions for now.”
“But it’s my turn!”
“No, if you’d kept score, you’d realize you owe me one more. I’ll collect it later.”
“Why you little…” I bit back whatever I was going to say. Instead, I looked at him—past him—to his pointy-eared shadow, and everything clicked into place.
“You’re an elf.” I said it with far more certainty than I’d ever felt about anything else in my life.
The only hint that I was right was the surprised lift of his eyebrows. I bounced up and down in my seat. “And Stuart. He’s kind of short and stubby—not as skinny as the kind with wings.”
Mickey froze. “What—what did you say?”
I clapped my hands in glee. “I’m right, aren’t I?” My grin grew so wide I was certain my smile would never be the same—much like the collar of a stretched-out t-shirt.
“That means Maeve and Bridgette—oh, and our math teacher—they’re all elves. And the girls in front of me in English are—well, those small, skinny-winged things.”
“Pixies,” Mickey said faintly.
“That’s what they’re called?”
Mickey nodded, a dazed expression on his face.
“And my art teacher—whatever she is, it creeps me out big time.”
“How—how do you know all this?” he asked as I fished around in my purse, grabbing the bottle of pain meds. If the shadows weren’t hallucinations, there wasn’t any reason not to take them.
I popped one into my mouth a bit over-enthusiastically. “And I thought I was going crazy.”
“When did you—how—”
I grinned at Mickey, too giddy to care about keeping score on questions. “As soon as I came here, I started seeing something that looked like shadows on the people here. Kind of like the whole ‘bring-to-back’ option on photoshop, know what I mean?”
At Mickey’s blank look, I added, “It was kind of like a human form superimposed on top of some shadowy other form. I thought it was the pain meds at first.” I paused. “But they’re real. I’m wasn’t seeing things!”
“You could see shadows of our forms? This whole time you could see past this,” —he gestured up and down his torso— “to our true selves?”
“Oh yes, sir elf. I see you.” If I didn’t think my smile could stretch any wider, I was wrong.
Mickey’s eyes widened to where I half-expected his eyeballs to pop out.
“Well,” he said, “it looks like you can see past the glamours.”
“If that’s what you call them, then yep. Does that make me, like, a zero zone for magic?”
“A what?”
“You know, magic doesn’t work on me—like that cream—and I can see through glamours. Am I immune to magic?”
He shook his head. When he looked up, he was smiling.
“That’s an interesting idea, but I need to do some research before I can say for sure what’s going on. Earliest I can get started is tomorrow. Until then, how about we keep this information between you and me?”
My smile shrunk in on itself as my suspicions reemerged.
“Why?”
“Because if what everything you’re saying is true, some people aren’t going to like it.”
“Why? Okay, I can see why people wouldn’t want me to be immune to magic, but it’s not as if it really changes anything.”
He shook his head. “Trust me.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t need to.
He sighed. “Fine. Just promise me you won’t say anything to anyone about everything you’ve told me here, and after I get more information—after you give me some time to figure things out—I will be your personal walking encyclopedia for all things fae and magic.”
“And no killing me?” I asked, remembering Bridgette’s comments. “And you’ll explain the whole ‘why I’m not going to survive the new queen’s investiture coronation’ thing? Does she have a thing against humans?”
Mickey smiled. “I’m not too worried about that anymore.”
“Because you’re okay with me dying or because you don’t think I’m gonna die?”
He grinned, his eyes lighting with approval. “The latter.”
“But why did you think I might die in the first place? What does the investiture have to do with me? Oh, wait, if I’m immune to magic, then her magic can’t work on me, right?”
Mickey rubbed his neck. “Why do you seem to think the queen wants to kill you?”
“Well, why else would I die during an investiture? Maybe you guys do foster care so you can sacrifice teenage human girls to the new queen, or something. Wait…you don’t actually do that, right?”
“No! No,” Mickey said, exasperated. “Just…just hold off on the questions, okay? Wait until I figure a few things out and I can explain everything without having to shoot down ridiculous questions about human sacrifices and homicidal queens.”
“Ridiculous? Well, I’d have considered fae and magic pretty ‘ridiculous’ until yesterday.” I folded my arms across my chest and glared. “I believe I’m raising some pretty valid concerns.”
“They wouldn’t be concerns if you’d wait long enough for me to get the answers I need so that I can explain everything at once without having you jump to human sacrifices.”
“Define long enough.”
“I don’t know. Give me until tomorrow, okay? And then I promise I’ll answer all of your questions.”
“No limits?”
Mickey shook his head.
“And I’m safe for now? No plots to kill me that you aren’t telling me about?”
“None that I’m aware of,” Mickey said with a twist of his mouth that was half grimace, half smile.
I eyed him. “Okay, you have a deal. I won’t tell anybody about what we’ve talked about since Seelies, and you spill your guts as soon as you get all the information you need in order to know what’s going on.”
He grasped my hand with his, an amused expression flitting across his face.
“The correct expression is ‘I swear.’”
“Fine, I swear.” Something important—something real—seemed to form out of those two words. It was an anchor of sorts, binding me to a commitment that, while I meant it, now seemed permanent in a way I hadn’t intended.
He smiled, all humor absent.
“As do I swear.”
A lid came crashing down, shutting off any escape from our promise.
Mickey turned to start the car, satisfied with the end of our conversation.
All I thought
