Dad pursed his lips. “I’m going to make an educated guess that it was the so-called Student Underground who kidnapped you. Am I right?”

I gave him a skeptical look. “Since I called from Ethan’s cell phone, I’d say that guess was very educated.”

He nodded. “Indeed. And how much did Ethan tell you about himself and his Underground?”

Oh, God. Please tell me I wasn’t about to hear something else I’d rather not know!

“I’ll take your silence to mean you don’t know much,” Dad said. “Ethan is the son of Alistair Leigh, who is the leading Unseelie candidate for Consul. Naturally, Ethan and his Underground support Alistair’s candidacy, so whatever he may have told you about me could well be colored by his own political leanings.”

Yep, that was something else I’d rather not have known.

So that’s why Ethan was so interested in a not-particularly-attractive, half-blood high-school girl. Not because he’d fallen in love with me at first sight. Bad enough to think he’d wanted me as just another notch on his bedpost, but to think he’d tried to seduce me for cold-blooded political purposes was unbearable.

How I wished I’d held strong last night and not let him kiss me. My mouth tasted sour, and at that moment I pretty much hated him. He’d ruined my first kiss!

I remembered how hard Kimber had tried to convince me that Ethan wasn’t good for me. She’d even told me he was attracted to my power. She’d tried her best to warn me without actually explaining what she was warning me about. Too bad she’d been busy stabbing me in the back while she’d been “helping” me.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, determined to deal with my heartbreak later. I couldn’t put my faith in Ethan or Kimber anymore; I’d never even considered putting my faith in Aunt Grace; and even if I’d wanted to put my faith in my mom, she wasn’t answering the phone. There was a limit to how much faith I could put in anyone, but my father, the stranger, sounded like the best deal available.

“Can we get out of here now?” I asked, and my dad, with a look of sympathy in his eyes, agreed.

The Stone’s Throw Inn was situated relatively low on the slopes of the mountain, and I was glad Dad had brought his car, a racy little red number that I guessed was an Italian sports car of some sort. You know: the kind that wouldn’t be caught dead doing something so crass as putting the make and model where just anyone could see them. The bucket seats were so low I felt like my butt would hit the pavement if we went over a speed bump. Not that I’d seen any sign of speed bumps anywhere in Avalon, but you get the idea.

Dad laughed as he climbed in. “I know, it’s a bit excessive for use in Avalon,” he said, patting the dashboard like it was his pet dog. “I’d love to be able to drive out into the mortal world and see how fast it can really go.”

The engine purred as he started the car and pulled out of his parking space onto the steep, curving road that would take us higher up the mountain.

“I think you’d get a handful of speeding tickets before you ever found out,” I muttered, feeling the car’s quiet power as it accelerated effortlessly despite the steepness of the road.

He laughed. “Most likely.”

I didn’t know what the speed limit was in Avalon—there never seemed to be any signs—but I bet my dad was breaking it as he zipped up the road. I tried not to white-knuckle the door handle as we zoomed around the curves. In an ill-advised moment, I glanced out the side window. On this bright, clear day I could see for miles. Unfortunately, I was seeing miles and miles of deep green forest. Faerie.

I turned away without blinking. The too-fast car ride was hard enough on my stomach without adding the nausea-inducing view through the Glimmerglass. When I faced front again, I caught my dad’s sideways glance, and I fully expected him to ask me what I saw. But he didn’t, and I was relieved. I really didn’t want to talk about the whole Faeriewalker thing right now.

Dad’s house was nowhere near as quaint as Aunt Grace’s. The entire bottom floor was a two-car garage—but in the space that would hold the second car, there was a horse stall instead. It was empty at the moment, the floor clear of straw, but a faint barn scent in the air told me the stall wasn’t just for show. Did that mean Dad made frequent trips into Faerie?

We had to take a spiral staircase to get up to the second floor, where the actual living area began. Moving in and out of this place must be a nightmare. (Says the girl who’s had to go through the torture of moving enough times to know.) Even carrying a suitcase up and down those stairs would be something of a challenge.

When we emerged from the staircase, we were in a spacious living room, with a tiny kitchen tucked into one corner. The entire wall facing the street was floor-to-ceiling windows. I tried to avoid seeing the view—you know, that whole seeing into two worlds thing—though I guessed it was spectacular. Instead, I looked around the living room, trying to get a sense of the man who was my father from the look of his home.

The stereotype of the Fae is that they’re old-fashioned (mostly because the vast majority of them are about a jillion years old). Grace’s house and Kimber’s apartment had both fit the stereotype with their antiques and conservative decor. Dad’s place did not look like the kind of house a Fae should live in. Not with those big, modern windows, or the modern art on the wall, or the Danish modern furniture. I’d always hated Danish modern, but that was my mom’s favorite, and I was beginning to guess why.