I sighed deeply, debating on how much to tell them. The two of them had insisted on coming with me to the diner—they didn’t like the idea of me going alone, even though I had been going back and forth from Nocturne Academy, to my house, to the I Scream for years. It was kind of like having two over-protective intensely gorgeous bodyguards everywhere I went and I might have gotten annoyed except I really did like having them both near me.
“No, he didn’t bother me that way,” I told Lachlan, blushing uncomfortably at the implication. “But he just…couldn’t stop staring at me. It was almost like he was hypnotized or something.” I shook my head. “I hate looking so different!”
“Hypnotized?” Bran frowned but Lachlan was nodding, as though my boss’s reaction to my new look wasn’t surprising at all.
“It may be that you have the power to fascinate,” he said. “It’s very rare but not completely unheard of in a High Sidhe female.”
“The power to fascinate? What’s that?” I asked, frowning.
“Basically it means your beauty is such that it will mesmerize some people,” Bran said. “They will have difficulty looking away from you and they may be willing to do what you ask or give you what you want for no reason other than your beauty.” He looked at Lachlan. “But I thought only the royals had that power?”
“I don’t know about that,” Lachlan said. “But it is rare. You don’t hear about it often except in old legends. They say that Elianna, the first Queen of the Realm had it. It was one way she was able to bring the Winter Court and the Summer Court together—so many Fae warriors were fascinated by her they refused to fight each other because she told them not to.”
“Of course, it doesn’t work on everyone,” Bran said. “Mostly the weak-minded. No offense to your boss,” he added apologetically.
I wished it would work on everyone. If it did, I could have just told Mr. Groperson to let us be—or even had him lower the rent to a fair price. But even though he was mean and nasty, our landlord was at least fairly sharp, I had to admit to myself. He’d managed to make a small fortune on his little apartment complex and I’d heard him bragging to one of the other tenants about how he never paid the full amount on his taxes because he fooled the IRS every year with his “creative accounting.” Clearly I wasn’t going to be able to fascinate him.
Which meant I was just going to have to suck it up and work like crazy, I told myself. I could do this— I could earn enough money to pay the double rent by next Saturday.
I had to do it. If I didn’t, my mom was going to be homeless by this time next week and it would be all my fault.
45
By the next morning, though, the fear of homelessness was the last thing on my mind. The minute I walked into second period, AP Biology, all eyes were on me.
I had managed to get out of first period by giving an excuse to my teacher, Mrs. Canody, that I was taking a new student—Lachlan—to get registered. She had done a double-take when she saw me, but I gave my now-standard explanation of hair dye and contacts, which she seemed to accept. She told me to get the notes from someone else and she would see me tomorrow.
But I had left Lachlan in the main office and I had no excuse to get out of second period. The time I had been dreading ever since my dramatic transformation had arrived—I was going to have to let classmates outside my coven see me for the first time.
I walked in with my head down, hoping just to get to my seat without anyone noticing me. And at first, I thought I was going to make it. Morganna was sitting in the middle of her “court” (as I thought of all the pretty, popular students who always danced attendance on her,) being the center of attention as always.
However, for once, she wasn’t saying anything. And maybe that was why Elian Darkwing looked away from her and stared straight at me instead.
Immediately, a curious look came over his handsome face and he got up and came over to my lab table.
“Hello, beautiful one,” he murmured smoothly. “And who might you be?”
“Uh, it’s just me, Elian—Emma Plunkett,” I said, feeling extremely uncomfortable.
I wished desperately that Bran was there to back me up, but he was apparently running late for second period, so I was all alone at my table.
Which Elian seemed to take as an invitation to lean on the table and talk to me.
“Emma?” he said, looking briefly surprised. “I didn’t recognize you. You look amazing.”
“Er…thank you.” I nodded miserably.
This used to be my fantasy—my handsome Nocturne crush noticing me at last and thinking I was the most gorgeous girl he’d ever seen. But now that it was really happening, I only wished with all my heart that it wasn’t and that I could go back to being my normal, plain, invisible self.
But there was worse to come. Other boys were abandoning Morganna’s court to come and pay tribute to me. Cedric O’Dea, a Fae guy with golden brownish-blond hair done in carelessly sexy short ringlets, was suddenly right beside Elian Darkwing, elbowing for position. And right after him came Francisco Gomez, a Drake with broad shoulders and warm chocolate brown eyes.
All of them wanted to talk to me and none of them was paying a bit of attention to Morganna anymore.
Naturally, Morganna noticed the defections from her court. I caught a glimpse of her face, white with rage, as she sat on the other side of the room. Her lips were pinched shut into an angry line and her big blue eyes were shooting hate at me as hard as she could. Surprisingly, though, she didn’t say anything—she just looked more and more pissed off.
Meanwhile, I was doing the best I could to fend off my new admirers but none of them seemed to want to take “no” for an answer.
“Tonight you will come with me to view the moon,” Elian Darkwing said in that dark, sexy voice I used to find so appealing. “We’ll watch it rise together as we drink chilled champagne.”
“Uh, no thanks,” I said quickly. “I have to work tonight—sorry.”
But Elian wasn’t listening to my reply, he was too busy glaring at Francisco who was saying,
“Come with me tonight, chica. I’ll take you flying on my Drake.”
“I don’t think so,” Cedric cut in. “She’s obviously Fae—High Sidhe if not royal, I mean, just look at her eyes—so the Edict prevents her from going out with either one of you losers. I, on the other hand, am also Fae which means that this lovely little fairy belongs with me.” He ran a hand through his carelessly tousled golden-brown curls as he spoke, grinning at me in what he doubtless thought was an extremely appealing way.
I’ve never been the kind of girl who wants boys to fight over her—it’s just not in my nature. Even back when I used to fantasize about boys paying attention to me instead of overlooking me or pretending I wasn’t there, I had never fantasized about this.
And now things were getting rough.
“I saw her first,” Elian hissed at Cedric.
“Back off—she’s Fae which makes her mine,” he snapped back.
“Both of you are too weak to claim her,” Francisco snarled. “I will take her as my own!”