“Why do you need to go to The Underworld?” he asked, before we’d really gotten anywhere with my training.
“Um…” I hesitated, not sure what to do. Lie. Probably not, since he was going to end up finding out when he went down to The Underworld with me. “To get my mother.”
He nodded. “I met her once. Didn’t she disappear quite a few years ago?”
“Fourteen years ago,” I said absentmindedly, my hands hovering over the crystal ball.
“And that’s where she ended up?” Nicholas asked interestedly. “In The Underworld?”
“Yeah…” I stared down at the violet ribbons, swirling inside the crystal. “That’s where she ended up.”
“How?”
Crap. “I…a…I don’t know.”
I worried he would ask more questions, but instead he picked up the Ira that was sitting on the floor to the side of us, the moss colored glass sparkling beautifully when it hit the light.
“Well, this should get us there,” Nicholas said, twisting the Ira in his hands. “Just as long as we can get you to control your Foreseer power a little bit better, which shouldn’t be too difficult, considering you can enter visions without a crystal ball.”
I didn’t say anything.
Nicholas tossed the crystal ball in the air like it was a baseball. “So who’s your father?”
Good Question. “I’m not sure exactly.”
He raised his eyebrows quizzically. “You’re not sure? How’s that possible?”
“When your mother refuses to tell anyone before she gets trapped in The Underworld,” I replied, with a small amount of bitterness because I wished she’d have told someone. I mean, why did it have to be a secret? Who was he?
“So for all you know,” Nicholas tossed the crystal ball in the air again, and it spun so quickly that when the light kissed it, it looked like a mere reflection. “Your father could have been some powerful Foreseer.” He caught the crystal ball in his hands and let out a dramatic breath. “Your father could be Dyvinius.”
I pulled a face. “Ewe. Gross. He’s like sixty.”
Nicholas shrugged, his eyes glinting mischievously. “You never know. Some girls have a thing for older guys. I mean how much older is Alex than you.”
I glared at him. “First of all, I don’t have a thing for Alex. And second of all, he’s only two years older than me. I don’t think that qualifies him as an ‘older guy.’”
“You know your second reason kind of contradicts your first. If you didn’t like him then why would it matter whether two years was a lot or not.”
“I don’t like Alex.” I assured him, but my inner conscious laughed at me.
“Whatever you say.” Nicholas balanced the crystal ball on the black and white checkerboard floor. “But I think you’re lying. And I think two years could be a lot if you think about it.”
“How do you figure?”
“Well, for starters he’s not even considered a teen anymore.”
I rolled my eyes at the silliness of his reason. “Well, how old are you?”
“The same age as you,” he replied, being evasive.
Faeries are tricky. “And how old would that be?” I asked, playing his game.
He smiled slyly as if he knew what I was up to. “Eighteen, of course.”
Of course. “Can we just get back to you teaching me, please?”
He stared at me for a moment with a slightly irritated expression. “Sure, that is unless you want to try our kiss again.” When I shook my head, he rolled the regular crystal ball—my “training ball,” as he’d explained to me earlier—toward me. I scooted back a little, concerned that if it touched me I would instantly be pulled in.
“So, until we can get you going into and out of visions that you’re intentionally trying to go into, there’s really no point in us trying to travel into The Underworld because it’s one of the most difficult places to get to,” Nicholas explained, finally getting to the point. “One false move and we could end up in the bottom of the lake, where we’d either drown or get taken to The Underworld by the Water Faeries which means we’d be prisoners there—we have to go in a specific way or we’re in trouble. Got it?”
I nodded. “So how does it work, exactly? I mean we enter The Underworld through that ball.” I nodded at the moss colored Ira Crystal Ball. “Then what? I mean how do we get the Queen to let my mom go? And how do we get her to let us go? Wouldn’t we just end up prisoners as well?”