Oh, God. All these years I’d spent despising her, blaming her … And it was my fault she was a drunk.

chapter fifteen

Either I was hiding what I felt better than I thought, or my dad wasn’t very observant. He’d shattered my entire view of my mom with just a few casual words, and he didn’t even notice.

“Well, if you don’t want the champagne, how about some tea?” he asked.

I didn’t want tea. I didn’t want anything, except, maybe, not to have heard what I’d just heard. But I nodded anyway, and Dad headed off to the kitchen, giving me a few minutes to collect myself. It wasn’t nearly enough time, but I’d been dealt enough shocks in the last few days that the pain turned to numbness pretty quickly. I didn’t think the numbness would last forever, and the fallout when it wore off was probably going to be nasty, but for now, I was grateful for it.

The phone rang, the sound so mundane that it helped draw me out of my head and back into the real world. I heard my father answer from the kitchen.

“Yes, she’s here,” he said, and he sounded really amused. There was a silence, during which the tea kettle started to whistle. “Of course I did,” my father said, and the kettle’s whistle cut off abruptly. “What kind of a fool would I be if I didn’t?” He paused for whoever was on the other end to say something, and then he laughed. The sound grated on my nerves for some reason I couldn’t define. Maybe because there was a tinge of nastiness in it. Or maybe that was just my imagination. “I’ll give her your warmest regards,” my father said, “but I sincerely doubt she wishes to speak with you right now. It was good of you to call and check on her.”

There was a beep of the phone turning off, and then some clattering around in the kitchen. Dad came back into the living room with a tea service on a tray. As a general rule, the people of Avalon weren’t as British as I’d been expecting, but they did seem to love their tea.

He had already poured two cups, with their telltale little specks on the bottom that said he’d never dream of using a tea bag. I was feeling miserable enough that the tea was more appealing than usual. I plunked two lumps of sugar into my cup and stirred the contents around absently.

“Was that Ethan?” I asked, because when I added up the half of the conversation I’d heard, it only made sense if he’d been talking to Ethan.

“Yes,” my father said. “He was calling to make sure you’d made it home all right.” His smile turned sardonic. “And to find out whether I’d told you who he was, of course. Was I correct in assuming you didn’t wish to speak to him?”

I nodded and finally stopped stirring my tea. The sugar had dissolved long ago. “Would you have let me talk to him if I’d wanted to?”

His eyebrows arched in surprise. “Of course. I’m not fond of him, and I’m even less fond of his father, but I won’t dictate whom you may or may not speak to.”

I cocked my head at him. So far, he wasn’t seeming very dad-like. “There are plenty of fathers who wouldn’t let their sixteen-year-old daughters talk to guys they don’t approve of.”

He put his teacup down and turned to face me fully, his expression grave. “You are not a child, and I will endeavor never to treat you as one,” he told me.

I almost argued with him. At my age, I spent most of the time trying to convince people I wasn’t just a kid, but right now, I wanted to be. I wanted to be taken care of, to have the responsibilities taken off my shoulders, to have someone else make all the tough decisions.

If that’s what you really wanted, a little voice in my head whispered, you could have stayed with Aunt Grace in the first place. Then you wouldn’t have had to make any decisions at all.

“Do you have any questions for me?” my dad asked. “Avalon tends to overwhelm the average tourist; I can’t imagine what you must be thinking after everything that’s happened.”

I’d passed “overwhelmed” long ago. But despite all my turmoil, I did have some questions. First and foremost: “What’s to stop Aunt Grace or Ethan from kidnapping me again?”

“My resources are considerable,” he said. “You’ll always be safe in this house. Neither Grace nor Ethan is strong enough to overcome the spells I’ve placed on it.”

“What about Lachlan?”

Dad dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “Lachlan is a non-issue. He may be a physically impressive specimen, and I would not wish to face him in combat, but it would take something more sophisticated than brute force to breach my defenses.” His voice held a hint of contempt that I didn’t understand.

“But he is Fae, right? Even though he doesn’t look it?”

Dad didn’t actually wrinkle his nose, but his facial expression wasn’t far from it. “He is a creature of Faerie, but he is of the lower orders. His sort is not customarily permitted in Avalon, but with Grace championing him…”

Apparently, Dad was a snob. Lachlan might have been my jailor, but he was still one of the nicest people I’d met in Avalon. I felt almost offended by Dad’s attitude. I must have looked it, too, because he traded the nose-in-the-air expression for one of rueful amusement.

“We are a very class-conscious bunch, we Fae,” he said. The amusement faded. “You must understand that although Avalon has officially seceded from Faerie, the Fae are still Fae. We recognize one another as Seelie or Unseelie, even though technically we don’t owe allegiance to the Courts anymore. And in Faerie, the concept of all men being equal is so ridiculous as to be almost sacrilege. The Sidhe—what you think of when you think of Fae—are the aristocracy of Faerie. Lachlan is not Sidhe. I am.”