Autumn (9 page)

“Autumn,” he said, “I don’t know. They haven’t told me anything.”

“You haven’t even seen them?” I heard my voice crack and tried to force myself to calm down. This wasn’t how I had expected my first meeting with Holt to go. I couldn’t even touch him!

“I haven’t seen them,” he said. “Besides Samuel, you are the first person I’ve ‘seen.’” Funny how much irony can be conveyed, even in the dark.

My hands clenched. Not even his mother had come to see him. After she had just given her older son, her heir, over to the Supreme Council, the least she could have done was visit. But no, of course not.

I started to say something, but Holt cut me off. His voice was still soft, but he sounded more confident. “Look, we don’t have much time and I don’t know...I don’t know how safe it is to talk, so, let me just get this out.”

My resolve of calming down wobbled.

“Okay....”

“I want you to make sure you are safe,” he said. “Whatever happens to me. You must be safe. If I know you are out of harm’s way, nothing else matters.”

“Holt,” I pleaded, “I’ll be safe with you. This isn’t going to last much longer. It can’t. You didn’t do anything wrong and soon they are going to see that and let you go. Your mom will come around. Susan already is....”

Holt gave a bitter laugh. “My mother is not going to come around. As for Susan, she might support me, but her hands are tied. She cannot go against my mother and none of them can go against Mrs. Cheshire. She was waiting for her chance. She’s been waiting ever since the beginning of the summer and now she has it.”

I felt like I was a rock that had been thrown into the lake and was now sinking inexorably down. I had nothing to swim with and no way to push myself back to the surface.

“Please tell me there’s something else I can do,” I whispered.

“I don’t know what you can do,” said Holt tiredly, “other than be nice to Samuel, and if the time should ever call for it....”

Silent tears spilled out of my eyes. He couldn’t see me, so I let their wet streaks fall where they would.

I knew I couldn’t speak, so I just stood there in silence. I had been picturing Holt waiting in comfort and not in some dark prison. I could feel that he wasn’t uncomfortable, but how could he possibly be happy? He hadn’t reassured me at all. Instead, after seeing him I felt that all my fears had grown.

“I’ll be back in a week,” I said, trying for the one bright spot. Samuel had told me I could see Holt once a week, and I was relieved to give Holt something to look forward to.

“See you soon,” he whispered from the darkness.

I thought of heading back into the light, knowing that no matter what, nothing could warm me.

I spent only an hour with Holt. It felt like minutes, and I resented the sound of Samuel’s voice when he called down from the top of the stairs that it was time for me to go.

“I’m going to get you light,” I said once I had managed to get my emotions under control. “Because this,” I waved my hand around to take in the darkness, “is ridiculous, even for Mrs. Cheshire.”

I knew Holt was smiling when he said, “You go get ‘em.”

I trudged back up the dark steps. Now that my eyes had adjusted and I could make out basic shapes, I didn’t have any trouble leaving the prison.

“Samuel,” I started in right when I saw him. I ignored his tired expression and the dark circles. I especially ignored the pull I still felt towards him. Once Holt was released I was sure the pull would go away.

With a slight widening of his eyes Samuel said, “Look, I’m working on getting him some light. Besides that he’s pretty comfortable. He’s fed. It’s warm. He has a bed.”

“How am I supposed to know that he has a bed if I haven’t seen it?” I snapped.

Samuel sighed and shook his head.

“Trust me, he’s being treated a lot better than most prisoners who break serious laws.”

“And I suppose I have you to thank for that?” I shot back.

Samuel’s jaw tightened and his blue eyes burned.

“You do, in fact,” he said coldly.

I chided myself. Holt had told me to be nice to Samuel and here I was doing the exact opposite. If Samuel was the only one in the Cheshire household taking care of Holt, and really given that the other Fairies in the house were Lydia, Leslie, and Mrs. Cheshire herself that wasn’t hard to believe, I did have to be nicer to Samuel.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just upset.”

Samuel’s arms twitched, almost like he wanted to hug me but had thought better of it.

“I know,” was all he said. “You should get back to see Carley. Tomorrow, after she leaves, meet Susan and me at UP UP and Away.”

I nodded. We had reached the back door, and without another word I slipped through it back onto the street.

I felt pulled in two directions. I wanted to be where Holt was, but I couldn’t, and not only that, he had warned me to keep myself safe. I didn’t even know what that meant. Safe from what? The only danger I had ever been in was from a crazed Water Sprite. Mrs. Cheshire had tried to attack the Summer Court, but that was in the past. There was no way she would risk her position of power to do it again.

Would she?

Carley and I spent a quiet last day. We both got teary-eyed, but when Nick came over and saw girls crying he threatened to leave if we didn’t stop, so we did.

Mrs. Hightower was in crazy form, getting ready for my mother to get there. My mother was due to arrive that evening so the four of us could have dinner together. Bizarrely, Mrs. Hightower had invited Nick, and because Nick would brave any situation, even one involving dinner with four females, to be around Carley, he was coming as well.

My mother had decided to drive, because, as she told me in a phone call, she had a lot of stuff. I had only packed summer clothes when I came to Castleton, because I never thought I’d be staying on into the fall. Now I was there indefinitely.

I tried not to think about it. Holt and I hadn’t had a chance to talk about our future or where we might live once we were officially together; he had been arrested before we ever had a chance.

When my mother arrived, the first thing Carley said was, “Wow, it’s like you have computer software that tells you what you’re going to look like when you’re older. Only it’s not software, it’s your mother!”

Everyone always said we looked a lot alike, same brown hair and brown eyes, except that she was taller. Luckily, my mom just laughed at Carley and gave me an evil grin before she said, “Isn’t that lovely to hear, Autumn?”

“Yeah, Mom,” I muttered, “that’s awesome.”

Mrs. Hightower and my mother chatted for most of the night. There were a couple of times when Nick tried to get Carley alone, but she wasn’t having it. Eventually she said, “Really, Nick, it’s my last night. I can’t be rude and leave Autumn.” Nick lapsed into an angry silence.

I found the chaos of the night a relief. Nowadays, I looked for anything and everything to distract me from what was happening in the Fairy world. It was difficult, because I was reminded on a daily basis that I was a Fairy and that it was only going to get worse.

Nick and Carley were destined not to resolve their relationship before she left for the fall. Soon after she told him to leave her alone, he did. He left. He said a polite good-bye to Mrs. Hightower and my mom, but he barely looked at Carley before he disappeared into the autumn night.

After Nick had left and my mother and Mrs. Hightower had gotten comfortable in the living room, still chatting away, Carley pulled me up to her room.

It gave me a pang to see it. Although she was leaving a lot of her stuff behind, she had packed up a lot of the pictures that had hung on the walls all summer, and two suitcases stood by the door. At least the pink bedspread wasn’t going anywhere.

“How could he be so rude?” she demanded, mostly to herself.

I rolled my eyes.

“Carley,” I said, “he wants to date and you don’t and he’s not going to let you walk all over him. Get over it.”

I realized how harsh I was sounding and flinched, but it was too late. Carley rounded on me.

“Look,” she said. “I know you have been a real crab lately and I do hope you straighten out whatever is going on with gorgeous Holt and gorgeous Samuel, but don’t take it out on me.”

Knowing that she had a point and being relieved at how forgiving a friend I had, I nodded and apologized.

“Now,” she said. “What is going on with those two boys?”

I shook my head. I still couldn’t tell her the truth, so I said, “I want to be with Holt, but it’s...complicated.”

“Hum,” said Carley. “I don’t know. You always look super happy when you’re with Samuel.”

I shrugged. I didn’t feel super happy. I just felt tired.

“You’ll figure it out, and you’d better keep me updated,” said Carley. “I want to know everything.”

“Of course,” I told her. “I promise to tell you everything.” And even though it was another lie, it felt good to know that Carley would be there for me no matter what.

The Hightowers left early the next day. I got up to say a bleary goodbye, then went back to bed. I started at my new school the next day and I would need all the rest I could get.

I wasn’t looking forward to meeting Samuel and Susan at UP UP and Away later in the day, mostly because it took an effort to be nice to Samuel now. It took an effort to do absolutely everything. I was sure that as long as Holt was imprisoned, nothing would feel right.

On top of that, people’s reactions to me were getting weirder. I had to actively avoid people to stop them from coming up to me as if I were a perfectly wrapped Christmas present, and talking to me for hours.

I should have been happy about giving other people happiness, but I was so stressed myself that I never quite got there.

Strange things were happening to me because I was a Fairy. My senses were heightened and everyone reacted oddly to me. I could be walking down the street and suddenly people would start to follow me, smiling. Susan and Samuel had said that my powers would appear slowly, but I wasn’t enjoying how they were appearing. People following me around was creepy.

Once, a lady was crying, and when I walked past she stopped. She was sitting on a bench with a garden at her back, and the flowers literally started blooming again, where a second before they had been wilting with the autumn cold.

I had gasped and she had looked up at me, and instantly her face brightened with a smile.

The other weird thing that was happening was the designs under my skin. Not only was it really freaky to see dancing silver designs under my skin in the shower, but I think it was how other Fairies recognized me. The designs were getting stronger.

At least they weren’t visible to humans -- which I wasn’t any more -- because my mother would have totally lost it if she had seen them. She would have thought they were tattoos, and at best she would have made us go back to live with Dad. Or she might even have decided she’d transfer me to some crazy ultraconservative school in the middle of nowhere. The night I turned seventeen she and I had a quiet dinner together. Nick was busy and there wasn’t anyone else who wanted to be there that could.

Since I had been ordered not to use my powers I couldn’t use them on my mom, to, say, do anything I wanted, which was a major bummer. She and I had agreed that I would keep working at UP UP and Away after school. It wasn’t like I expected to have much of a social life; people who transferred schools had a hard enough time even without any Fairy complications. I had my new Fairy duties and my visits to Holt to look forward to, but I was sure I would have plenty of time for UP UP and Away.

Susan, Samuel, and I agreed that we would get together twice a week. I wanted to ask why Samuel had to be there, since I was sure Susan could teach me what I needed to know on her own, but Holt had told me to be nice to Samuel, so I was.

I even bought him a hot chocolate and managed not to harass him about the Holt situation. A bit of the tension in my chest released when Samuel told me (without my having to ask) that he had spent several hours after I left the day before making sure Holt was more comfortable.

Susan had hugged him in appreciation. When I was with the two of them I studied Susan’s body language closely. There had been a time when I was sure that she liked Samuel, but none of those old signs were there. Apparently the stress of what Holt and I had done had leaked far beyond just the two of us and the Queens, to affect the whole Fairy Court.

I continued to work at the cafe, but now I never made a mistake. I was able to catch glasses when they fell out of my hand and hear people behind me without looking. I felt more capable of protecting myself. There were perks to being a Fairy.

I almost skipped to my next visit to Holt. All week I had been peppering Samuel and Susan with questions about our situation and how Holt was doing. Susan had finally had to threaten not to tutor me any more if I didn’t stop being annoying.

I stopped, but not talking about the one thing that was always on my mind was probably the hardest thing I have ever done. I wouldn’t have managed it except that by the time Susan ordered me to leave her alone about it, it was only two days until I was going back for my second visit to the Cheshires’.