cereal and doused it with milk and sugar. She moved with the uncanny grace of the Fae, but she looked far more human this morning than she had last night.
She was still naturally beautiful enough to make me feel like Ugly Betty by comparison, but her hair was tied up in a messy knot at the top of her head, and she was wearing faded flannel pajamas that looked like they were meant for a guy. I surreptitiously checked her feet for bunny slippers, but she wasn’t quite that human.
It was when I glanced at the clock over the stove that I nearly choked on my mouthful of cereal. It was almost noon. I couldn’t believe I’d slept that long.
“Ethan’ll be here around one,” Kimber told me. “Then we’ll take you out to conduct our … test.”
I swallowed hard. Ethan had said it wasn’t anything to be afraid of. But then again, he’d said I’d be safe in the cave last night, so he wasn’t what I’d call a reliable source. I stirred my Cheerios around in my bowl, my appetite gone.
Kimber pulled a sponge from the cabinet under the sink and used it to wash her bowl. I wasn’t surprised to find that she wasn’t the sort to leave dirty dishes lying around. She shot me a glance.
“It’s really no big deal, you know. The test.”
I nodded and tried to smile. But if I wasn’t going to trust Ethan’s word for it, I saw no reason why I should trust his sister’s.
Kimber pursed her lips. “You’re just going to look at something and tell us what you see. Real simple. Okay?”
I can’t say I was convinced, but I dropped the subject anyway. “Can I ask you a question?”
Her lips twitched in an almost-smile. “Apparently so.”
Har-dee-har-har. “Do people in Avalon always carry knives and guns around?” I remembered the shock of seeing Jason draw a gun and wondered for the umpteenth time what I’d gotten myself into.
Kimber thought about that question for a moment before she answered. I wondered what she’d decided to leave out.
“It’s not what I would call common practice,” she said. “But we are the Student Underground, and Avalon politics can get cutthroat. Literally. If we didn’t have Ethan, we might not scare anyone enough for them to bother us. But Jason wasn’t lying when he said Ethan is a prodigy. He can do amazing things now, and it’s scary to think what he’ll be like when he’s older and has more experience.” She made a sour-lemon face—inferiority complex, anyone?—before she continued.
“He’ll be a force to be reckoned with someday, and some people might prefer to reckon with him now while they still can. So he’s single-handedly made our Underground into a threat, and the rest of us are at risk by association. And that’s why we make a habit of always being armed.”
“Aren’t there, like, gun laws or something?”
She laughed. “We radicals like to think of laws as more of ‘guidelines.’ Besides, I’d rather risk someone going all technical on me about carrying a concealed weapon than be unarmed when attacked by Spriggans.”
She was being real chatty this morning, despite her obviously edited answers. I figured as long as she kept answering my questions, I’d keep asking them. “So are there a lot of Spriggan attacks in Avalon?”
I’d stopped eating my cereal, even though there were some milk-sodden O’s left in the bottom of the bowl. Kimber took the bowl from my hand and washed it while she talked.
“Not usually. Only the humanoid Fae are allowed into Avalon, though it’s a lot harder to keep Fae creatures out than it is to keep humans out. The border on the Fae side doesn’t have the kind of immigration system that you humans do.” A frown furrowed her forehead. “But the Spriggans would only take orders from Unseelie Fae. I can’t imagine why any of the Unseelie power players would want to attack our Student Underground. We’re known to favor an Unseelie candidate.”
“Maybe they were after me, ” I suggested. After all, everyone kept telling me I was in mortal danger. “Aunt Grace was attacked yesterday, and she said she thought her attackers were after me.”
Kimber raised an eyebrow at me. “She was attacked, you say?” There was no missing the skepticism in her voice.
“That’s what she said. And she had this big bruise on her face.”
Kimber snorted. “I bet you she was faking it. Even I have enough magic to heal a bruise. My guess is she