Supernaturally

David huffed. “You seem to forget that I’m Evie’s legal guardian.”

“And you seem to forget that there’s absolutely nothing legal about your guardianship, considering all the documents were forged.”

“Don’t start with me about legality! An international organization acting with absolute impunity on American shores, not to mention—”

The front door flew open and Lend ran in. My heart did a happy flip in my chest, like it did every time he surprised me. His usual look, a dark-haired dark-eyed hottie, shimmered over his actual appearance, which was like water in human form.

And absolutely gorgeous.

“Evie!” He threw his arms around me, picking me up off the floor in a grip so tight I was suddenly aware that I had, in fact, sustained some serious bruisage.

I laughed through the pain, happy that at least I got some extra Lend time out of this whole mess. He put me down, holding me at arm’s length and examining me. “Are you okay?”

“Just some bruises. I’m fine, though, really.”

“How did you get away?”

Oh, crap.

Raquel and David gave me matching puzzled looks. “How did you get away?” Raquel asked. In their eagerness to bicker they had neglected to ask me. I kind of preferred that.

I bit my lip. “I, well, we were high? Really, really high. And it was this weird cloud and lightning and faerie thing. I didn’t know where it was taking me or why, and I was so scared I did the only thing I could think of.”

“Which was?” Lend prodded, worry shadowing his face.

I shrugged, a small, guilty gesture. “I took some.” Hating the concern in his eyes, I rushed on. “Only a little bit—not enough to hurt it, really, just enough to surprise it, and then we fell, and it tried to drop me, but I grabbed on and some trees broke my fall. And afterward the Cloud Freak was okay, really, it was. Just kind of pissed. And then it flew off.” I didn’t mention the erratic flight pattern. It was probably woozy.

My story was greeted with dead silence. And suddenly instead of feeling guilty, I was downright mad. Who were they to judge me? It’s not like I was going all Vivian, sucking the life out of everything around me. “I didn’t have any other options! You should be glad I had a way to defend myself.”

Lend quickly shook his head, squeezing my hand. “I am. Really. I just remember what it did to you before, and I worry that—”

“You don’t need to! It was barely anything. Promise.” Vivian had gone crazy and sucked the souls out of every paranormal she could find, under the guise of “freeing” them from this world, but really because she liked how it made her feel. Having all those souls in me after I took them from her—for a few minutes I was an immortal. It was strange and wonderful and dizzying to be that powerful, that disconnected from my mortal life. For a terrible moment I was tempted to abandon mortality entirely … to take Lend’s soul away from him. I didn’t like to think about it too much.

“Is it still inside you?” Lend asked.

I hadn’t even thought to look. A nervous pit formed in my stomach as I held out my arms, searching for anything under my skin. Nothing. But there—a tiny spark under my palm. And then it was gone. It was probably nothing. Definitely nothing.

“Nope,” I said with certainty. “Must not have taken enough for it to have an effect. Can’t see anything but plain old Evie.”

Lend grinned, pulling me in closer. “You’ve never been plain.”

David cleared his throat. “Well then, as long as you’re okay, that’s what’s important. Why don’t you two go get something to eat?”

Raquel’s lips pursed in annoyance. Apparently driving her crazy was a father-son thing for the Pirellos. Lend had the same knack for it. “I haven’t finished speaking with her,” Raquel said.

David looked ready to argue otherwise, so I jumped in. “Relax, it’s okay. She can tell me what she needs to; what’s it going to hurt?”

Lend and David wore matching frowns. There was no way Raquel and I would be able to have an actual conversation. And, unlike Lend and his dad, I liked her. A lot. I wanted to know how she’d been, find out how things went after I left, stuff like that. Suddenly my old life was sitting in the room with me, and I realized I missed parts of it.

Lish, especially, but she was gone forever.

I turned to Lend. “Why don’t you go see your mom? Ask her if she knows anything about the sylph.”

“Sylph? Really?” He looked at his dad, understanding how excited David would be over this. Or maybe Lend’s interest was based on the fact that he was half elemental. I wondered how much that world called to him, how much he wanted to know about it and therefore himself.

Best not to let him dwell on it. I wanted him to stay firmly in this world. “Yup. So your mom?” I would have offered to go with him later, but the truth was Cresseda still kind of scared me. Elemental immortals function on such a different plane than us, there’s very little that connects. Speaking to one is like trying to understand theoretical mathematics before you have your times tables down—you come away doubting you even understood what numbers were to begin with.

It was so weird to think that Lend came from Cresseda. He was so human, so connected. But that’d have to fade eventually. Would he slowly stop caring, slowly become like his mother, beautiful and strange and forever other? Or would he just snap one day—give up this life for an eternal one? How long would it be before he became like the other immortal elementals?

“She’s more likely to show up for you,” David said to Lend. I looked over at him. He was so good at hiding the pain from his son, but I could see it written in the downward turn of his shoulders.

Please, please don’t let that be me someday.

Lend seemed torn about leaving me with Raquel, but nodded. “I’ll be right back.” He hurried out the door.

“Before there are any more distractions, let me lay out the terms.” Raquel steered me to the couch and sat down. “You would be working for IPCA as a temporary, contract employee.”

“What does that even mean?”

“It means that you work for us because you want to, and only on the projects that you choose. If you want to stop, you stop. You don’t have to come back to the Center. We’ll call when we need you. There’s no obligation, no oversight other than mine. You won’t be back at IPCA, not really—you’ll simply be helping me on some things that your abilities are particularly suited to.”

I frowned. She was willing to admit that I wasn’t really dead, and she had figured out a way for me to work with them without working for them. IPCA was all about control. If they were going to relinquish it to have my special glamour-piercing vision back, they must really be changing.

“How? What did you tell them? Didn’t you get in trouble?” I asked.

“Stranger things have happened than paranormals coming back from the dead. Since we never had ‘proof’ that you were dead, my fellow Supervisors didn’t question it when I said I’d found you alive. I made it clear that you wouldn’t communicate with anyone other than me, and refused to contact you until it was unanimously agreed that you would be completely autonomous, no longer classified or regulated by IPCA.”

“You didn’t get in trouble?”

“After the severe mismanagement last April that resulted in so many deaths and disappearances, no one is left in a position to get me ‘in trouble.’”

“But they agreed to all that? Really?”

Raquel sighed, an I need a vacation one. “Honestly, we’re struggling. After Viv— After those unfortunate events, we’re severely understaffed. We haven’t been able to respond as quickly or efficiently to vampire or werewolf reports, our tracking measures seem to be failing us entirely for paranormals that usually stay in one specific area, and there are unconfirmed rumors that a troll colony has taken over a neighborhood in Sweden. Also”—she grimaced—“a poltergeist has targeted the Center and no one has been able to pinpoint its location for an extermination.”

“Basically you guys suck without me.” I couldn’t keep the smug grin from my face. It was kind of gratifying to know that, without my eyes, IPCA was falling apart.

Raquel looked at the ceiling and heaved another long-suffering sigh. “That’s one way of putting it.”

“This isn’t Evie’s problem,” David interjected. “If IPCA is tanking, I say good riddance.” My eyes narrowed involuntarily, defensiveness for my old employers flaring up. Sure, the vamps here were self-regulating, but I had nearly been killed by one as an eight-year-old. The rest of the world wasn’t a paranormal haven like this town. Things were scary. Things were deadly. And most people had absolutely no idea, which meant they had no way to protect themselves.

Raquel ignored him. “Your assignments would be simple and safe. And, as I said, entirely voluntary.”

“How is that going to work? I’m in school.” As boring as it was, I needed to do well. I had to get into Georgetown like Lend.

“We’ll work around your schedule.”

“That’s sounding suspiciously Faerie Paths dependent.”

Lend slammed the front door, his face clouded with worry. “She wouldn’t come.”

David shook his head. “She doesn’t always. Don’t take it personally.” That was interesting—did Lend not know that Cresseda wouldn’t show up for David anymore? Raquel looked sharply at Lend and then David; it was clear the wheels in her head were turning, but I had no idea why.

Lend rubbed a hand over his face, then looked at Raquel. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“I’m here to ask for Evie’s help with some projects. Yours, too, if you’re willing.”

David stood up straight and Lend’s jaw clenched; even his glamour rippled with barely contained anger. “We’re not.”

Was he answering for me? As much as I loved him, that wasn’t his call. “Lend, can I talk to you?”

He raised his eyebrows and followed me into the kitchen. The cheerful yellow walls didn’t do much for me today. He grabbed my hand, pulling me in close, his frown deepening. “You’re not seriously considering this, are you? I might have been the one they locked up, but you were just as much a prisoner there. After everything you’ve seen, how can you even think about it? And don’t you find it a little suspicious that we haven’t had any problems until Raquel showed up?”

Anger flared sharply in my chest. Sure, I had briefly thought the same thing, but she was Raquel. My Raquel. “She wouldn’t do that. She was as worried as you. Besides, what am I even doing here? Going to class, working in the diner, counting down the days until the weekend? At least with IPCA I was helping people!”

“Yes, helping people! But how many paranormals were you hurting?”

Tears stung my eyes. He didn’t understand. He never could see anything but evil in IPCA. But they’d taken me in, had taken care of me. I didn’t even want to think where I would have been without them.

“How many paranormals am I helping right now, huh? Things have changed at IPCA. I can help paranormals, too, like werewolves who don’t know what’s going on, or this troll colony—I can find them and convince them to relocate before they get in trouble!”

Lend shook his head. “We can do that with my dad.”

“We can’t! We don’t have the resources!”

“Like faeries?”

I hated that he was using my past against me. I hadn’t been sure I wanted to work for Raquel before, but for some reason his insistence that I shouldn’t was pushing me right toward it. It was all well and good for him, off at college, doing big important things for his future. A future that would last forever, even if he didn’t know it. But I was stuck here, bored and lonely, slowly burning out with nothing to show for it.

I was struggling for a comeback when the brilliant outline of a faerie door wrote itself onto the wall.

against the light, frozen with disbelief. I hadn’t seen a faerie door since that night with Vivian and Reth. I had hoped I never would again.

Lend, however, wasn’t frozen. Darting to the other side of the kitchen, he grabbed one of the cast-iron pans his dad always left out. A figure stepped out of the darkness, turning his head just in time to see Lend swing with all his might.

The faerie dove, executing a roll and jumping up several feet away. Lend turned around to close in again.

“Hey-oh, what’s this?” the faerie said with a laugh.

There was something wrong, something off about the whole thing. I narrowed my eyes at the faerie. My height, with sandy blond hair, brilliant blue eyes, dimples, and—

“Lend, stop!” Reacting to my shout, he pulled his arm up short from the swing, lost his balance, and stumbled into the granite counter. He looked at me, confused. I shook my head, feeling the same way. I had no idea how it was possible, but there was no denying what I saw underneath the boy’s skin.

Nothing.

“He’s not a faerie,” I said. I looked back at the door, but it was already gone. I had watched the whole time; he was the only thing to come out. No faerie at all.

This was impossible.

“Are you sure?” Lend still held the pan at the ready, not taking his eyes off the boy. Or guy, really. He looked about our age, maybe a year or two younger.

The non-faerie smiled at me and winked, jumping up to sit on the counter. “Not quite the reception I was expecting, but I’ll give your boy this—he’s exciting.”

Raquel rushed into the room, then fixed a scowl on Blondie. “You’re late.”

He shrugged and helped himself to an apple from the fruit bowl next to him. “I got lost.” He took a big bite, crunching loudly before he blanched and spit into the sink. With a regretful sigh, he tossed the apple to Lend, who dropped the pan in his instinctive reaction to catch it.

The metal was still clanging when David came in behind Raquel. “Who is that?”

“Not a faerie, that’s for sure,” I answered. Blondie stood up on top of the counter, his head nearly brushing the ceiling. Then, with a jaunty salute, he flipped off, landing on his feet.

I kept staring, looking for something, anything under his skin. There was no glamour. His clothes were normal, too, a light blue printed T-shirt and nice jeans. “How did you do that?” I asked.

“Lots of practice. You should see me walk on my hands.”

“The door! How did you come through a faerie door by yourself?”

“Oh, that?” He ran a hand through his curls and looked back at where the door had been. “Easy. You walk up to a wall, and”—he leaned in close, all of us leaning with him, watching breathlessly—“open sesame!” He raised both arms dramatically in the air.

Nothing happened. “Huh.” He turned around and shrugged. “Well, guess I’m stuck.”

Raquel heaved a sigh I used to know well—it was her Evie, Evie, Evie sigh. But this time she followed it up with a tired, “Jack. Please stop playing around. We’re here for business.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, eyes wide and earnest. Raquel turned around to go back into the living room and Jack tugged lightly on the end of my ponytail, then sauntered out after her.

Who on earth was this person?

Lend took my hand. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

I shook my head. I had never seen anyone who could go through a faerie door or navigate the Paths unless they were accompanied by a faerie. You couldn’t even let go of your faerie’s hand on the Paths or you’d be lost forever in the infinite darkness. I still had nightmares about being there alone.

David, Lend, and I walked cautiously into the other room, tensed for an attack. But Jack was sitting, casual as can be, on the back of the couch.

“Jack is who I was trying to tell you about, Evie.” Raquel smiled smugly at us. “Thanks to him, we can transport you to and from sites with the same speed as a faerie. You’ll never have to work with the fey.”

“How?” I had seen it with my own eyes, but I still didn’t believe it. Then something struck me. “Take off your shirt!”

“I’m not that kind of guy!” He frowned thoughtfully. “On second thought, why not?” He pulled the shirt over his head, revealing a lean torso that under other circumstances might have elicited admiration, but today was only more confusing. Once again there was absolutely nothing shimmering underneath it. So much for my theory that he was hiding something paranormal under his clothes.

I blushed angrily and looked at Raquel. “What is he? I don’t see anything!”

“He’s not ‘anything.’ Just a talented boy.”

“Then how did he make a door? How did he get through the Paths?”

“Wait, so am I allowed to put my shirt back on? Or did you want me to remove my pants, too?”

Lend and I joined forces in a dark glare. “Only if you want me to vomit,” I snapped.

Raquel’s communicator let off a small beep and she pulled it out, scanning the message. “Jack, we’ve got to go. Evie, think about my offer and we’ll talk again in a few days.” She looked up at me and smiled, this one touching her stern eyes and making her surprisingly lovely. “And it was nice to see you again.”

I threw my arms around her in a hug. “You, too.”

“David,” she said, her voice tighter as she turned to him and nodded. He nodded back, his eyes lingering on her a little longer than they needed to. “Lend.”

Lend shook his head, looking to the side in frustration.

Jack jumped off the couch, pulling his shirt back on. “Next time, if you’d like, I’ll just come without one,” he said, grinning at me. Taking Raquel’s hand, he walked up to the living room wall and put a hand on it. For the first time his face lost its cocky, playful cast, and he seemed to be straining in concentration. Far slower than it would take a faerie, the bright outline of a door formed on the wall, opening into black. Raquel and Jack walked through, and it closed behind them, leaving no evidence that it had ever existed in the first place.

Lend turned to me. “Well, that was interesting. And a waste of time. However, since I’m already here, what do you say we make up for your sucky afternoon?”

I wished I could make him understand that Raquel wasn’t just my former employer—or worse, my captor, as he seemed to view anyone who worked for IPCA. And Jack puzzled me to no end. But extra time with Lend quickly took my mind off those particular problems. “What are you thinking?”

“How about the Mall?”

“Wait—you mean the Mall, as in a bunch of museums in DC that we would wander around and I’d pretend like I understood modern art while really thinking, holy crap, a gremlin could have painted that and for all we know did, or the mall, as in picking out a new pair of shoes, eating food that’s terrible for us, and making up life stories for all the people that pass us?”

“I can see now that I must have meant the second.”

“What a smart boy.” I smiled and he pulled me close.

“I still say that guy was CIA. Spy all the way.”

I laughed, turning to face him as he parked in front of the diner. “Lend, he was like five foot nothing.”

“Exactly! You’d never suspect him. He’s the quiet, nondescript-looking guy, doesn’t seem like a threat at all until—BAM. Say good-bye to all your country’s secrets!”

“Okay, fine. He was a spy.”

“We should have gone to that movie, though. I think some explosions would have done you good, helped you relax after a hard day.”

“It’s not my fault I wasn’t allowed in without an adult and you forgot your license.”

Lend rolled his eyes. Silver shot through his nearly black hair and I laughed, shoving him.

“Knock it off. That’s creepy. Besides, if you pretend to be old to sneak me in, it’d be super gross if we started making out or something. No more gray.”

“Fine.” His hair rolled into corkscrew curls, turning a coppery red.

I laughed. “Quit it! Someone will see you.”

His eyes got serious and his hair shifted back to its normal appearance. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay? I can blow off classes tomorrow if you aren’t feeling well.”

“You really don’t have to.” Lend never missed class; I loved that he was willing to skip for me, and part of me was tempted by the offer … but I’d feel too guilty.

He sighed. “I do have a bio lab. You’re really okay? Nothing hurting from your fall? No weird side effects from the sylph?”

“I’m okay.”

“Alright. I’ll see you on Saturday.”

“Not Friday night?” I hated the whine that crept into my voice. I wouldn’t be that girlfriend, the whiny, clingy one who couldn’t have a life outside her boyfriend. Even though she totally justifiably wanted nothing more than to spend every minute of her life with him. Nope. Not that girl.

“I’ve got a group project in vertebrate anatomy, and the only time we could schedule it was then. I doubt we’ll get done early enough for me to get here at a decent hour, and if I stay in my dorm where there are no beautiful, fun distractions, I can finish up my homework and be absolutely yours all weekend. So first thing Saturday morning.”

He leaned in and kissed me. I wished he could melt away his glamour and kiss me as himself, talk to me as himself, but it wouldn’t do for someone to walk by and see me making out with a nearly invisible silhouette. The downside of dating a half-human, half-water elemental, I suppose.

Pulling back far sooner than I wanted him to (which, let’s face it, could have been several hours—I never got tired of kissing him), he got out and opened my door for me. The second I stepped out of the car, a strange chill breeze wrapped itself around me. All the hairs on my arms stood up in response. Shivering, I hugged Lend tightly, ignoring my bruises.

“Don’t do it, okay?” he whispered.

“Do what?”

“Work for IPCA again. Just—just don’t do it.”

I looked up into his face. “What if I can do some good?”

“You’re doing enough good being yourself. I worry about what might happen to you.”

I frowned, making a noncommittal noise, which he seemed to take as an agreement, judging by his smile. “I’ll see you Saturday.” He kissed me again and then waited for me to walk up the steps before getting back in his car and driving away.

Long-distance relationships? Suck. Majorly.

Sighing, I walked in and through the brightly lit diner. David bought On the Hoof a decade ago as a front for his paranormal-hiding operation. It provided jobs for paranormals in need and a good place for everyone to meet and keep track of one another. The decor was cheerful, a slightly tired fifties theme. Nona, the manager, waved at me, her gorgeous blond glamour hovering over oaky brown skin and greenish, mosslike hair. Allegedly she lived in the upstairs apartment with Arianna and me, but really she went back to the forest at night, setting down roots until the sun came up. Tree spirits—another species of paranormals I’d never met on bag-and-tag duty at IPCA. I was all about the violence and mayhem back then.

I nodded distractedly at several of the regulars, mostly vamps and werewolves, noting yet another new paranormal I’d never met, who made my heart hurt a little—she looked like a cross between Lish and a human, complete with gills on her neck and fins lining her bare legs beneath the glamour. Lately we’d been seeing more and more species neither David nor I had ever come across.

Come to think of it, a lot of new paranormals other than the werewolf or vamp variety had been visiting Nona, hanging around the diner or meeting her out back. And the sylph was certainly new. Maybe Nona would—

I shrieked, narrowly avoiding tripping over the kitchen gnome, a particularly grouchy specimen named Grnlllll. At least, I think that was her name. Or his name. Hard to tell with gnomes. Maybe that’s why she—he?—hated me. The glare seemed pretty feminine, though.

The desire to get away from Grnlllll’s baleful looks outweighed my desire to talk to Nona, and I slipped through the kitchen door. Upstairs at last, I collapsed onto the faded, floral couch.