Allegiance (4 page)

I shrugged. ‘No idea—faery magic I suppose. Or maybe it’s like how a cut heals. But somehow it happens really fast.’

‘Does it hurt?’

‘About as much as poking your tongue out,’ I said with a grin. Then I pulled my top back on and went with him to the fire where I wound my arms around his waist and watched him finish cooking.

After we’d eaten we stood in front of the dancing embers, embracing. It was almost dark and completely perfect. I lay my head on his shoulder and we swayed to the music. It was strange to be here with him like this after our long years of
friendship—all the flirting, the tug and pull, like something that had been waiting its time. A little voice protested that what we were doing wasn’t right. But it was a quiet voice, buried deep; more an echo and dead easy to ignore.

‘I wonder if I’ll get to keep my wings after I turn eighteen,’ I said after a while. It was amazing how easy it was to talk about my birthday, even knowing it would be the day I would lose my immortality and be bonded to Earth to live out my days as a mortal fae. None of it mattered anymore.

But I felt Jack tense in my arms. ‘What do you think is going on here, Marla?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘One minute you’re in this deep dark place and the next you’re ravishing me.’

‘Ravishing you!’

He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. ‘What would you call it?’

Damn, he was right. ‘Maybe I got tired of waiting for you to make the first move.’

After a moment’s silence, he said, ‘There’s more to it than that.’

I sighed. ‘I don’t know, Jack… I suppose I’ve always been worried about wrecking our friendship. But that doesn’t seem to matter anymore.’

‘That’s what’s so confusing—
why
doesn’t it matter?’

I sat on the blanket, tugging on his hand to bring him down beside me.

‘Don’t you remember before I went to Faera, I said if Leif hadn’t come along it would have been you?’

‘But I was around for years before Leif and you always managed to resist me,’ he said. ‘Can’t say I know how,’ he added with a smile.

I grinned. ‘Me neither.’

‘Do you think about him?’

An uneasy feeling started in my belly. ‘Jack, I barely remember him.’

‘How’s that even possible? I remember Leif vividly and I find it hard to believe you don’t.’

The image I had of Leif was fuzzy and dull, the memories of him far away. As for my feelings for him—I didn’t have any. Unwilling to think about it, I lay back on the blanket and reached up, running my hand across Jack’s chest. ‘Jack, shouldn’t you be glad I’m not thinking about some other guy?’ I reached further and ran my fingers up through his hair, pushing his fringe gently from his eyes.

‘You’re right,’ he said, lying beside me again.

‘Of course I am,’ I whispered and wound my arms around him. He was distracted now, kissing my neck, my shoulders, the tops of my arms. I closed my eyes, buried my face into him and inhaled. His scent was familiar and comforting—Jack. I knew there was something missing, but it hardly mattered. I covered his sun-browned shoulders with kisses and allowed myself to become lost in him.

Forgetting my betrothed had in no way affected my memories of Faera, and not a day passed where I didn’t wonder about my missing twin, Lysander. My dreams were spent searching for him—through overgrown bushland and deserted train stations, down twisting roads and across stormy oceans. In and out of a collage of shifting dreamscapes, sure I could hear him calling, catching a glimpse of blond hair only to have it vanish again. I’d wake disappointed but determined to find him, wondering where to even start. Hilary and Jack had come with me to see both Lena, the adoption agent, and Ruby, the old woman I’d been left with as a baby, but both had turned into dead ends. The trouble was, aside from a birth date and name my brother was probably not even aware of, I didn’t have a thing. Even if my brother and I were to be prevented from reaching immortality, I wanted to know him and explain why he had such weird ears and bad allergies. But as the school weeks flew by, and then the months, the weather changing from warm to cool before returning to warm again, my dream of finding Lysander slowly slipped away.

One Friday morning halfway through September, Peter joined our group with some interesting news.

‘We’ve got new kids,’ he announced as he dropped to the grass and squeezed into our circle beside Abby, slinging his arm around
her shoulder. ‘Two guys and two
smokin’
girls.’ He grinned big and wide.

Abby frowned.

‘Really?’ Jack said. ‘And how do you know this?’

‘I was just at the office.’

‘What year are they in?’ I asked.

‘Ours.’

‘Impossible,’ Hilary said. ‘There’s hardly any school left.’ She was right. It was almost the holidays and we’d been inundated with work for our final exams. Once they were finished our school days were over. It made no sense for new students to be starting now.

‘Well, they’re in Year 12, I heard it with my own ears,’ Peter insisted. He continued with his admiration of the new girls. ‘You should see the blonde one—silky skin, big blue eyes, cute little bum.’

‘Geez, I’m right here,’ Abby said, twisting away from him. His arm fell from around her shoulder.

‘Look, there they are now,’ Peter said, pointing into the distance.

I looked up and sucked in a breath as I tugged Jack’s arm. A group of students was walking across the quadrangle. They were looking around, searching for something. I had no doubt that something was me. Leaning close to Jack so no one else could hear, I whispered, ‘They’re my grandparents.’

He looked at me. ‘You’re joking.’

‘I’m not.’

I stood and dragged him in the direction of my family.

‘Marla,’ Asher cried when he spotted me. He rushed over and hugged me. Then he picked me up and swung me through the
air as though I were a toddler. When I was back on my feet, I looked around quickly to see how many people had noticed—at least a dozen students besides my friends, and every one of them was either chuckling or looking intrigued.

‘How are you, my granddaughter?’ Asher continued, making no attempt to keep his voice low.

‘What a freak,’ a boy walking past said. I didn’t even have time to respond because suddenly I was swamped by all four of my grandparents. They were kissing and hugging and saying sweet things to me—in English, with charming old world accents. It would have been touching if we weren’t in public. We were attracting way too much attention, the crowd growing by the second. But my grandparents didn’t seem to notice, they just kept talking over the top of each other, making it difficult for me to keep up. My head whipped from one to the other of them.

‘The king gave us leave to come,’ Faun told me as Melody bounced beside her. ‘To visit with you, Granddaughter! For two full weeks! Is that not wonderful?’ Her sweet round face shone with joy as she took my hand.

‘Your betrothed arranged it,’ Leander added before I had time to respond.

‘Prince Leif organised…’ Melody said, before hesitating and turning to her husband. ‘Oh, what is it called Leander, that
enormous
place we are borrowing?’

‘A unit, my love,’ Leander answered, smiling at his wife.

‘Oh yes, the prince organised a unit for us, Marla,’ Melody said, her voice reminding me of the wind chimes hanging in the windows of her little river home. ‘He is completely magnificent and to think, betrothed to
my
granddaughter!’ She gripped my free hand in hers and couldn’t have looked more proud if I’d just scored full marks on my final exams.

‘The unit is directly beneath yours,’ Asher added. ‘Is that not convenient, Granddaughter?’

I opened my mouth to answer but Leander interrupted, ‘Prince Leif sent the owners on a cruise. He mentioned something about being in their debt.’

‘We came to Earth this morning,’ Asher added. ‘The moment we were given leave. Of course we went to you directly, Marla, but you were not there. The female at your door said you were at school.’

‘So we thought we might join you,’ Faun added. ‘To experience life here on Earth. Your principal… Is that the word? Yes. Your principal directed us to the market. It was closed but the woman inside allowed us entry. She gave us these school uniforms. Was that not kind of her, Marla?’

I knew Faun used the words ‘allowed’ and ‘gave’ loosely. ‘Confused’ and ‘took’ would be two more apt words, the words ‘deceived’ and ‘stole’ not really being in my grandparents’ vocabulary. The Fae had no concept of stealing. If they needed something they thanked the producer of the item and took it. I kept all these observations to myself and just agreed it was indeed very kind.

‘But, my granddaughter, how do you stand to wear them?’ Melody complained, wriggling uncomfortably. ‘They are quite intolerable!’

‘It’s a problem,’ Peter said, stepping forward from my group of friends, all of whom had followed me and Jack. He was captivated by my grandmother’s struggles. ‘Maybe you should take it off?’

Abby gave him a shove. Melody looked at him and blinked, not paying the slightest attention to Hilary’s explanation that the uniforms would be much more comfortable after they’d been washed.

‘I hope you don’t mind us coming to your school, Marla. We thought it might be a nice way to spend time with you,’ Leander said.

‘Of course I don’t mind, but I don’t think you’re going to like it.’

‘I
am
taking it off,’ Melody declared suddenly. Then before I could stop her, she pulled the shirt over her head and flung it to the breeze. ‘And this harness, it is
too
burdensome,’ she added, reaching behind her as Hilary and I simultaneously dove for the shirt, bashing our heads together in the process. ‘Faun, I do not know why that woman insisted we should wear them,’ Melody continued.

‘
Stop!
’ I cried waving my grandmother’s shirt about with one hand while rubbing the sore spot on my head with the other. Her bra was undone now. Peter and Jack were entranced—as was a fast gathering crowd. Kyle was pretending not to be interested. ‘You can’t take your clothes off here!’

‘But that boy said…’ she started, looking towards Peter and stopping just as she was about to peel the bra away.

‘He was joking,’ I said, glaring at Peter.

Peter gave me a look that said he hadn’t been joking at all.

‘Why can I not take my clothes off?’

Every one of my grandparents waited for my response.

‘You just can’t!’ I pushed the shirt back into her hands. ‘Quick, put that back on!’

Leander frowned but refastened Melody’s bra. ‘Where is the harm, Marla? Your grandmother is suffering discomfort.’

‘Outrageous,’ Melody grumbled, as she shrugged back into her school shirt.

‘I’ll say,’ Peter agreed.

I raged silently against Leif for not explaining Earth rules to my grandparents.

‘What’s going on here anyway?’ Abby demanded suddenly. ‘Who are these people, Marla?’

Her words brought my attention back to the large crowd of students gathered around us. A person undressing in public could do that. Abby’s eyes held mine. ‘I’ll explain in a minute,’ I told her, with no intention of explaining at all. Then I turned back to my grandparents. ‘You’ll have to confuse these people. They can’t be allowed to remember this.’

‘All of them?’ Asher asked, looking overwhelmed. ‘That will require much energy.’

‘All but them,’ I said, pointing out Jack and Hilary.

My grandparents went to work and when they had successfully confused everyone else, they fell exhausted to the cement. I sat down with them. The other students had all left, except Jack and Hilary who sat down beside me.

‘What are you doing here anyway?’ I asked, after I’d finished with the introductions and given my grandparents a run-down of the laws and consequences of public nudity.

‘We have come to visit you, Granddaughter. Are you not pleased to see us?’ Faun asked, looking a bit heartbroken. Asher patted his wife’s shoulder.

‘Of course I am—I just wasn’t expecting it.’ I smiled to take the hurt from her eyes.

‘Why does this human hold you so?’ Melody asked suddenly. Her narrowed eyes were fixed on Jack’s arm around my waist.