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 sill iness 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?”
Nicholas shook his head. “No. The Queen can’t keep us there—it’s the law that comes with using the Ira—part of the reason the Queen hates it so much.
We can show up whenever we want and leave whenever we please. Of course, no one really wants to show up there.”
Law. I remembered Alex mentioning these laws once—about him having to let Nicholas take me to the City of Crystal.
I frowned. “This all sounds kind of difficult.”
“It will be,” he said, not giving me any amount of comfort. “It’ll take a lot of power and control to pull it off, and I have no idea how you’re going to get the Queen to let your mother go.”
Whoa, neither did I. Why hadn’t I thought of this problem before? I guess I would have to talk to Laylen about it and hope he knew a way. “Okay, so to practice for this extremely difficult task we’re going to try and do, we have to do what exactly? Practice going into visions through a regular crystal ball? I thought Dyvinius said going into visions could shift the world or something like that.”
“If we don’t see the vision correctly, it could,” he said. “But we’ll have to make sure we do.” This entire thing sounded so risky, and I wondered if I was being selfish for taking such a risk to save my mom. It could end up costing the world a lot if I messed up. But my mom might have answers that could save the world from whatever Stephan was planning. So it was kind of a lose-lose situation.
I stared down at the crystal ball, the violet ribbons twisting and turning in the sparkling water. “So what do I do first?”
He tapped his fingers on his lips. “First, I think we should take a break and get something to eat.” I stared at him, unblinking. “Take a break and get something to eat? We haven’t even done anything yet.”
He considered this with an amused look. “Yes, but I think it’s important that we eat something before we go, so we’re not weak from our hunger.” I felt like banging my head on the wall. “Tell me what you want to eat, and I’ll go get it.”
“What I want…hmmm.” His golden eyes twinkled.
“What I want is to go out with you and eat somewhere.”
“I can’t go anywhere,” I said.
He gave me a curious look. “Why not?”
Well, for starters because I couldn’t leave the house. And not just because I knew Alex would freak out if I did. No. There were way more risks I would be taking if I went out into public then just pissing off Alex. For one thing, after what happened with the vampires last night, I had a feeling that if I ran into any of them, and they recognize me—which let’s face it they would (hello, my eyes are violet)—then I’d be in some serious trouble. I also had to worry about running into a Death Walker or Stephan. And those were not risks I was willing to take just so I could leave the house to get something to east with faerie boy.
“Because I just can’t, okay?” I got to my feet, dusting off the back of my legs. “If you’re really hungry, I can go into the kitchen and get you something.”
“What I want is to go out with you.” His tone was light, but his eyes were determined.
“Look,” I said, losing patience. “I really want to get this done because the longer it takes you to train me, the longer my mom’s stuck in that godforsaken place.” For a brief second, and I mean a very brief second, I thought I saw the mischievous sparkle leave his eyes, like he actually understood my pain. But it happened so swiftly, I wasn’t even sure it happened.
“Fine.” He leaned back on his elbows, looking at me mischievously again. “We can eat here. Besides its better that we eat here anyway. That way we get more alone time. Just you and me and this quiet, empty room.”
I shook my head and, without saying another word, I left the room to go get him something to eat.
In the kitchen, I found Laylen standing at the counter, chopping onions on a chopping board. When he caught sight of me, he stopped, mid chop. “Wow.
You look really annoyed.”
I went over beside him and dropped my head on the counter. “Nicholas is driving me crazy. He just keeps asking questions, and then when we finally get to the part where we should start practicing, he says he’s hungry, and we should go out and get something to eat.”
Laylen gave a soft laugh and started chopping onions again. “Yeah, that sounds like Nicholas. He’s always been a little…”
I lifted my head up. “Annoying?”
Laylen laughed again. “I was going to say difficult, but yeah, annoying works. When he was younger, he went through this faze where he would answer every question with a question.”
“That sounds fun,” I said sarcastically.
Laylen shrugged, cutting the onion again. “He can’t really help it—it’s a faerie thing. They have this way about them, where they can trick you into doing things
—or saying things that you shouldn’t. That’s why you should be very careful around him.”
“Yeah, Alex warned me about that.” I fanned the front of my nose as Laylen dumped the chopped pieces of onions into a skil et, and the smell over took me. “And he told me not to take my necklace off.” Laylen scooted the onions around in the pan with a spatula. “This is probably the only time where I’m going to have to agree with Alex. You should be careful around him.” He lowered his voice. “You can’t let Nicholas know about the star.”
I nodded. “I won’t.”
The pan sizzled and it reminded me I was supposed to be getting Nicholas something to eat.
“So…what do faeries eat?”
Laylen busted up laughing.
I gave him a mystified look. “What’s so funny?” It took him a second to gather himself. “Sorry. But it’s just so funny.” He laughed again. “What do faeries eat?”