heart to make Ethan wait for me out in the rain, but I didn’t want to take him up to my mother’s room, either.
“She’s pretty touchy about the Fae,” I told him. “There’s likely to be enough drama already. I don’t want her going all hysterical because you’re there.”
Ethan didn’t like it—I think he was afraid I was going to try to ditch him—but since I refused to get into the elevator with him, he finally gave up and agreed to wait for me in the lobby.
“If you’re not down in fifteen minutes, I’m coming up to get you,” he said.
“Okay,” I agreed, just to get him off my back. It would be kinda hard for him to come get me when he didn’t actually know what room my mom was in, but whatever.
I wasn’t surprised when my mom didn’t immediately answer her door. It was, after all, the middle of the night. Plus she hadn’t answered any of my calls, so why should I assume she’d answer the door?
I knocked on the door a little louder, hoping I wasn’t waking everyone else on the hallway. “Mom?” I said, not quite shouting, but speaking loud enough to have a hope of being heard. If she was passed out drunk, getting her to wake up could be a serious challenge.
Still nothing, though I thought I heard some movement. I knocked yet again, and this time I was sure I heard someone move.
“Mom? It’s me.” Like she wouldn’t know. Who else would call her “Mom”?
She mumbled something incoherent. I breathed a sigh of relief, both that she was awake, and that the bad guys hadn’t gotten to her. I knocked one more time, just to make sure she didn’t decide she was dreaming and go back to sleep. She said something else—I think, maybe, “Coming!”—and I heard footsteps approaching the door.
At the same moment, my skin started to prickle and the cameo, tucked under the neck of my shirt, started to heat. Just as my mom’s door swung open, I realized what that meant. But it was too late.
Someone shoved me from behind, sending me flying through the door and into my mother’s room. I slammed into Mom, and we both fell to the floor. By the time I managed to roll off of her and get to my feet, someone had closed the door and turned on the light.
Dread clenching in my gut, I turned to see who had just ambushed me.
Aunt Grace lounged in the doorway, looking terribly proud of herself. By her side, a disembodied arm floated in the air, holding a gun pointed at my mom. On the floor under the arm—about where you’d expect a person’s feet to be—were a pair of shoes. I gaped. Grace laughed and reached into the seemingly empty air. A moment later, the arm and the shoes were attached to a smallish, human-looking guy wearing a hooded black cloak. A cloak just like the one Aunt Grace was wearing.
“The cloaks only work when the hoods are up,” Aunt Grace explained, like we were having a friendly conversation. “And they only hide what’s behind the fabric, so one needs to keep one’s limbs tucked under to be completely unseen. They cost me a small fortune, but they were worth it.”
I couldn’t think of anything clever and witty to say, so I just stood there staring at the gun, hoping Grace’s friend didn’t have an itchy trigger finger. I swallowed hard, wishing I’d let Ethan come up to the room with me after all. Then again, I doubted Ethan was a match for Grace, and he certainly wasn’t a match for that gun.
“What do you want?” I asked, and I was surprised that I sounded almost calm. My pulse was galloping, and I’d broken out in a sweat that had nothing to do with the temperature.
She arched one graceful brow. “Don’t you know, dear?”
“You want your very own pet Faeriewalker. Well, let me tell you, your methods of winning me over aren’t lighting my fire.” Gee, that sounded kinda brave. Now, if my hands would only stop shaking, Aunt Grace might actually believe I was as brave as I sounded.
She gave me a marrow-freezing glare. “Obviously your mother didn’t teach you any manners.”
I crossed my arms over my chest—more to hide the shaking hands than to be defiant. “Apparently yours didn’t either. Or do you consider kidnapping your own niece polite?”
Grace moved so fast I couldn’t have stopped her if I’d tried. Her hand