I glared at her. “I’m not stupid enough to tell her about what happened. I need to see my brother, and she promised me I’d be able to in a month. Which, by the way, is pretty close.”
“Really, Kella, this isn’t the time to—”
I stepped in closer to Maeve, looking up into her ice-blue eyes, ticked. “Let’s make a deal. The only way I go to a therapist without kicking and screaming and you dragging me by the hair the whole way there is if you let me call Deena about my brother. That’s it. I’ll even make the call in front of you and won’t say a word about how elves are trying to kill me. Deal?”
Maeve pursed her lips, considering. “You have a deal.”
My heart slumped back into my chest, making me realize how nervous I’d been that this wouldn’t work.
I grabbed the phone and stood by the counter, waiting.
“Do you swear you will not say a word about what happened in school?”
I rolled my eyes. “I swear I won’t stay anything about a bunch of fae teenagers trying to murder me so I won’t become the next fae queen and then getting saved by my personal elf ninja guard.”
Maeve’s lips quirked into an amused smile as she handed me Deena’s business card. I repeated the numbers in my head before dialing them. I got her answering machine.
“Hey, Deena. It’s me, Kella.” I looked up at Maeve, who was leaning against the kitchen island, arms crossed.
“Just wanted to remind you about that visit to Caleb you promised me. It’s been a month. You can call me at school aga—”
Maeve grabbed the phone out of my hands and hung it up, grabbing Deena’s business card as well.
“What’d you do that for?”
“You need to keep your contact with humans to a minimum. They don’t understand our world, and perpetuating unnecessary contact with them could complicate things.”
I glared at her. “Making plans to see my brother isn’t ‘unnecessary contact.’”
Maeve’s lips thinned. “Regardless, Deena can go through me to make arrangements. After all, I’ll be driving you.”
I shook my head. “Fine.”
“I’ve been keeping some soup warm for when you woke up.” She ladled two scoops into a bowl. “You need to eat. It will help you feel better.”
I sat down at the counter and eyed the vegetable-heavy minestrone, doubtful an excess of green beans would do anything of the sort.
But that didn’t matter, because I was in stage two of something that would.
I slipped out of my bed sometime around midnight, careful to make as little sound as possible as I tiptoed down the stairs to the kitchen phone.
Deena had called a few hours after I’d called her, but Maeve had snatched the phone off the hook at the first ring and had organized my trip to see my brother…in three weeks.
I’d either be dead or queen of the fae by then—a crazy queen with a queen-hating rebellion on her hands. Yeah, who knew how long I’d be alive after the investiture. As it was, surviving long enough to become queen was a little up in the air.
But none of that mattered. Not that Maeve screwed me into no visit until after everything went down. Not that my life was on the line—okay, maybe that mattered a little.
What mattered most, though, was Caleb and getting him better.
And so I carefully lifted the phone and dialed my caseworker’s number.
It rang. Three painfully long rings. And then the most angelic frog croak ever answered the phone. “Hello?”
“Deena,” I whisper-shouted.
“Kella? What’s going on? You got an emergency or something? ‘Cause if this ain’t an emergency, I’m hanging up right now.”
“No, it is.” I took a quick breath. I had to be careful with what I said next. “I think things are out to get me.”
“Honey?”
“Yeah, I think they’re trying to, you know…”
“Trying to what? What things? Kella, you’re making no sense.”
“I know I’m not,” I said, my voice shaking a little. “Deena, I can’t stay here.”
“Honey, you okay? What’s going on over there?”
“Deena, I need you to get me out.”
Silence.
“Kella, you need to be straight with me. What’s. Going. On.”
“I’m not safe here.”
“You’re not safe…What’s happened?” Deena’s voice lost all trace of being possessed by a frog.
“I’m in trouble. My meds…I thought they were making me see things, but I stopped taking them and nothing changed,” I said, phrasing it carefully enough not to go against the promise I made to Mickey.
A few muffled swear words made it through the phone.
“What do you mean, seeing things?”
“People here aren’t what they seem. They’re not like humans.”
“Not like humans?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn.”
The few seconds it took Deena to reply seemed to stretch out into eternity.
“I’ll be there in three hours. Give me to your foster mom. I need to talk with her.”
“That’s not a good idea. She doesn’t want me to leave.”
“Well, she don’t get a choice, now does she? Let me talk to her. Everything is going to be okay.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I repeated, fully aware that I sounded paranoid. But that was what I was going for.
Silence stretched between us before a heavy sigh crackled in my ears.
“It’ll be okay, Kella. I’ll be there in three hours. Get your stuff ready.”
I grinned as I hung up the phone.
Once I snuck upstairs, I grabbed my school bag, dumped the books out, and shoved a couple changes of clothes inside.
I grabbed my hairbrush, my toothbrush, and waited by my window, too wired to close my eyes for even a second.
Hours later, I saw the most gorgeous green minivan in existence turn onto the long driveway. I crept down the stairs again, unlocked the door, and jogged out to meet Deena, waving my hands wildly so she wouldn’t run me over.
Deena jerked to a halt and opened the door, but I ran to where she was and shooed her back in. I raced over to the passenger seat right about the time the porch light came on.
