Kimber smiled at me, but there was something strangely sad about the expression. “We’ll have to lay low during the day, but tonight when it’s dark, we’ll get you out of here to somewhere safer.”
“Safer like the cave last night?” I mumbled, but though I was sure Kimber heard me, she didn’t respond.
“Grace probably has someone watching my apartment and Ethan’s, so you have to stay inside and stay away from windows.”
Sounded like a fun day. “If I’m going to skulk around in the shadows waiting for nightfall,” I said, “then I want to spend some time getting a crash course in magic. What it can do, how it works, stuff like that. I’m just about clueless.”
She didn’t look happy about the idea. “Ethan’s the magic expert in the family,” she said.
I shrugged. “I’m not asking you to show me magic. I’m asking you to tell me about it. You can do that, can’t you?”
She sighed. “Fine. But I could use another hot posset first.”
I could get used to drinking hot possets, I decided as I took a sip from my steaming mug. My mom had tried making me warm milk a couple of times when I was a kid and couldn’t sleep, but it had been totally gag-worthy. This was sooo much better.
At my insistence, Kimber had used a lot less whiskey this time, though she’d poured some extra into her own mug.
“Do your parents know you put whiskey in your posset?” I asked.
Kimber sniffed in what looked like disdain. “They wouldn’t care if they did.”
She made sure to stay between me and the living room window as we retreated into her bedroom, where the heavy curtains would guarantee no one saw me. She sat on the edge of her bed, and I sat on a comfy chair tucked into a corner under a floor lamp. On the table by the chair sat a textbook that looked like it weighed about eight tons, and a dog-eared, yellowed paperback. I was nosy enough to peek at the titles. The textbook was Calculus of a Single Variable: Early Transcendental Functions, and the paperback was … The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, which I remembered reading when I was about eight. I blinked and looked back and forth between the two books and Kimber. Her cheeks turned a delicate shade of pink.
“Sometimes I need a break from ponderous academic reading,” she said with a shrug.
“So you’re a math major?” I asked, because I couldn’t imagine anyone having a textbook like that if they weren’t really, really into math. She didn’t look like any math geek I’d ever met. Hell, Ethan had said she was two years younger than him, and Kimber had said Ethan was eighteen—which made Kimber way too young for college, unless she was some kind of a prodigy.
“I haven’t declared a major yet,” she said. “But I’m leaning toward engineering.”
A Fae engineer. It just sounded … wrong. And how many jobs were there for engineers in Avalon? It wasn’t like engineering would be a useful skill in Faerie, so if she wanted to make use of her degree, she’d have to do it here. Of course, considering the quality of her clothes and furniture, she might be one of those annoying people who don’t have to work for a living.
“And in case you’re wondering,” Kimber continued, “Ethan will be a freshman in the fall, and I’ll be a sophomore. He may have gotten the magic in the family, but I got the brains.”
The look on her face said she wasn’t happy about that, which surprised me. Considering her obvious rivalry with her brother, you’d think she’d be thrilled to be ahead of him in school.
“That must drive Ethan nuts,” I said, and yes, I was fishing.
Kimber took a sip of her posset before answering. “Actually, he couldn’t care less. He’s got the magic, and that’s what counts.”
I felt a surge of indignation on Kimber’s account. “You don’t think being incredibly smart counts for something?”
She smiled wryly. “To humans, maybe. To the Fae, not so much.” She tilted her head to one side. “In human terms, it would be like Ethan was a superstar football player, and I was the brainiac younger sister. Who gets all the glory in that situation?”
I saw her point, but still … “That sucks.”
She laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “Tell me about it.” She sobered quickly. “Actually, Ethan has a lot in common with a