The Unfairfolk (Valenbound Book 1) Read online

  “Ah,” Will smiles at me, his own crow’s feet deep and dignified. “She was Adam’s first wife, was she not? She wouldn’t obey him, so she was cast from the garden of Eden.”

  “Whoa,” I murmur. “Color me impressed, monsieur.”

  Will laughs softly. “I have to admit, it’s been a moment since I took theology in college.”

  “Where was that?” I ask. “Like, England?”

  “Close,” He motions for someone and a waiter pops out of the shadows to pour us water with all the alacrity of a fucking stealth jet. “Edinburgh.”

  “Uh…”

  “Scotland.”

  “Right! Okay, yeah, that makes sense.”

  “Does it?” He laughs. “I’m not exactly wearing a kilt.”

  “I think she meant the accent,” Mom intervenes charitably for me. “Us Americans tend to get them mixed up.”

  “But blindfold me and hand me two identical cheetos and I will tell you which one is the flamin’ hot one and which one is original flavor by touch alone,” I assert. Will laughs again, heartier this time.

  “That’s a learned skill, indeed.”

  The waiter brings our bread as Mom and Will catch up their days with each other, and I listen close. I know how her day will go already; burn victims, suicide attempts, things that aren’t all that great to talk about. Especially on a date. At first I think she won’t tell him any of that, but she mentions it in passing, squashed between her stories of paperwork and administering IVs. I watch him stroke his thumb across her hand slowly, comfortingly, his eyes always on her, and the heavy lead in my chest starts to feel lighter. He seems nice, and he looks like he really cares about her. A tiny voice in my head tries to tell me you can never really tell with people. They might look perfectly happy, but one wrong move, one wrong word, and they could turn and hurt you the next minute.

  Like Dad.

  I haven’t learned much in public school, but I’ve learned this down pat; you never, ever really know someone. Not even your parents. People are unpredictable, and even if they say they love you, that could all change in the blink of an eye. You can’t trust them. You can’t see into their brain, so you can’t trust them. The only person you can trust is yourself, because everyone else will lie to your face.

  I pick at my napkin, listening vaguely to Will talk about his day; something about shipments, about shareholders and ‘quarterlies’, whatever those are. Business talk, it sounds like. Come to think of it, this place is balls-to-the-wall fancy, packed with old people with money. What does this guy do for a living?

  Unlike most times, I wait for a lull in the conversation to assert myself. “How long have you guys been seeing each other?”

  Will looks over to me, faintly surprised. “Oh. You didn’t - ” He glances at Mom. “You didn’t tell her?”

  Mom’s whole face goes a light shade of pink. “I’m still…I’m sorry. I didn’t know if - I’m still so afraid, sometimes, that it’s all a dream. She deserves to know most of all, but I wasn’t sure - I’m sorry.”

  What are they talking about? Will strokes her hand with a smile.

  “You have nothing to apologize for, Rachael. I understand.”

  “But I don’t,” I chime in. Mom shoots me an apologetic smile.

  “I’m sorry, honey. Just give me a sec, okay?”

  “One whole sec -” I nod. “- in bathroom time.”

  Will gets up and moves to the empty chair next to her, and they bend their heads together and talk in quiet, even voices. I get up as gracefully as I can, which amounts to exactly one (1) case of me getting my pastel skirt stuck between my buttcheeks. It takes me roughly forty seconds of wandering the restaurant to realize people are staring because of course they are - they’re dressed in elegant black and diamond jewelry and I’m here with a baby-mode outfit of frolicking bunnies and too-big nurse loafers. Am I frumpy? Absolutely. Do I give a shit? Absolutely not. I’m here for Mom, not these six-figure fuckheads.

  It takes me thirty seconds to do my business in the bathroom stall but five minutes to fling myself in varying dramatic poses over the plush waiting chair before a very alarmed lady walks in and catches me doing an upside down dab.

  “Okay!” I declare as I bolt upright, clearing my throat. “Wow! That’s a well-made chair.”

  My intruder doesn’t buy it, but I slink away before she can call security or something equally anti-fun. As I make my way back to the table, I end up locking eyes with a man sitting in a corner booth all alone. Which, weird. He’s as handsome as Will but way younger, and he’s staring out into the restaurant watching everyone pass him. His elegant hands stir his coffee slowly. He’s got massive cheekbones and a sharply defined nose, like a dramatic painting. Dark hair, dark eyes. Maybe he’s waiting for someone? I doubt anybody’d keep a guy who looks like a Da Vinci statue waiting for long.

  And then it happens.

  Maybe the lightbulbs are breaking. Maybe they serve vodka here instead of water. Maybe that’s why I see the man’s eyes flicker. They’re supposed to be dark, but I swear I see red. Not the joke red I talked about in the car, not momentary-red-stoplight-reflection-from-the-street-outside, not the James-the-stoner-guy-in-fifth-period red, but hell red; deep, glowingly crimson irises, like pooled blood.

  Red.

  The worst color.

  I flinch away but the red eyes pivot, and the man looks at me. Right at me, slowly at me, knifing with his gaze through the crowd. We’re closer than I thought. His contact lenses are more expensive than I thought. More real. The sound of the restaurant fades. The clinking dishes, the conversation - it all fades to white noise as the man looking at me inhales and opens his fine lips, like he’s going to sing a note. Like he’s making the beginning of a song.

  I know. It’s weird and impossible and doesn’t make any sense but somehow, I know. I know the song will be horrible even before it comes out. Horrible like nails. Horrible like the end of the world. All my wants, all my fears, they detach from Mom and William and school and homework and college and all condense into this one point, right here - this one burning desire to never hear this song. I’ll do anything not to hear it. Everything in me is begging the sound not to come out, for him to stop -

  And then there’s a shove. My whole body staggers, and the waitress at my side apologizes profusely, her words punching a hole in the static for the restaurant noise to flood back into. I blink, look back, but it’s all gone. Da Vinci model just stirs his drink, smiling at another waitress that passes by.

  His eyes are dark. Dark like ink. No red at all.

  I rub my own eyes. What the fuck? Yeah, I stayed up until three last night with Ruby and movies, but that’s never made me hallucinate before. Not as vividly as that. And the feeling. The feeling stays with me, pulsing in my veins, like I just woke up from the world’s worst nightmare.

  Breathe, Lilith. Just freakin’ breathe.

  Mom watches me come back to the table, a huge smile plastered on her face, and it does miracles to blast away the lingering terrible in my veins. I’ve never seen her so freakin’ happy. There were times - when we got ice cream on summer nights, or when I said something really gut-bustingly funny, or when we opened Christmas presents together. But those were just moments. Flashes of color between the gray. Right now, it’s all color. Right now she’s a whole other person. She doesn’t smile like this; she’s usually too tired from work, too mentally drained from the ICU to ever really make more than a wilting grin. But this? This is her beaming.

  “Lilith.” Will’s got joy written all over his dignified face too. “Rachael wants to tell you something.”

  I glue on a smile, but it’s not all faked. Mom looks so goddamn happy. I’m happy for her by proxy, but I can’t help wondering; was I not enough? All those years we were together, just her and I…was I not enough to make her this happy? Was it my detentions? Was it the fact I forget to do my homework? Should I have looked at a cooking website, made more recipes for her when she got home fro
m work at 5 a.m other than just spam and eggs?

  Being this happy is just what romantic love means, I guess. I wouldn’t know. Girls like me don’t fall in love. They just worry about never finding it. Constantly. All the time. But like, quietly and to themselves.

  “Will proposed to me two weeks ago, Lili.” Mom says, her eyes blurring with tears. “But I - I wanted to wait. I wanted to introduce him to you first.”

  I look over at Will and he smiles back at me, warm and true. Maybe-true. Maybe-warm. I don’t know him. I can’t trust him. But apparently Mom can. After everything Dad did to her, to me - she can trust this one. So maybe I should, too.

  It’s always been just us.

  But this Will guy - he’ll become my step-dad. He’ll be a permanent fixture - a stranger that has total control over my life, and that terrifies me. I try to be brave, try to summon up some shred of courage from my roiling stomach.

  “That’s - that’s great, Mom.”

  “Is it?” Mom reaches her hand out and clenches mine nervously over the tablecloth. “Are you sure? Some things will change.”

  I look into her hopeful, bright sky-blue eyes. If I say ‘no, it’s not alright’, I know she’ll turn him down. She’d do anything for me, and I’d do anything for her. If just saying yes can make her this happy, forev - not forever. I’m not that naive.

  But if it can make her happy, even for a little while…

  I squeeze her hand.

  “I’m sure.”

  4

  The Journey (Or, How life is never fair to you most of all)

  Sitting in an uncomfortably large first class seat on my way to New York, I’m Definitely Not Sure anymore.

  “S’cuse me,” I stop a blonde flight attendant flawlessly carrying a tray of precarious glasses filled with sparkling champagne. “Do you have anything…smaller?”

  I motion to my seat, and she looks confused. “What do you mean, dear?”

  “You know, something normal? More cramped? A little more crust on the armrests?”

  “Crust?” She lightens. “Oh! Would you like more bread? We have leftovers from the meal service.”

  “No.” I wince. “That’s okay. Thanks anyway.”

  When she clip-clops away in her heels, I sigh and lean back into what’s basically a detached loveseat surrounded by a sleek fiberglass divider. There’s a little TV monitor embedded in the plastic, a real-polished-wood table for food and drinks, and with one push of a button the whole seat goes near-flat and I can lay down. Which I might need to do if things keep going at a whirlwind pace like this.

  I look out the window to my right - the sky’s cotton candy pink, with wisps of purple rainclouds on the horizon. Sunset. That means California’s already two hours away. Ruby’s already two hours away. I stare at my airplane-mode phone with the last text I sent her;

  if this huge metal bird goes down in flames, eat a shitty cafeteria pizza for me one last time, would ya?

  Filled with unsure neurosis, I re-check my ticket. LA to New York. Made of flimsy paper and ink. This is all real. We land at 11:30, and then I catch a connecting flight with my brand spanking new passport ‘across the pond’, as Will called it. My passport photo looks great, and by great I mean I look like I have to shit.

  I stare at my near-blank connecting ticket harder; JFK to Geneva International Airport.

  I’ve been on an airplane once or twice, when Mom took me to Georgia to visit Grandma. But it feels fucking surreal to sit in something alone, by myself, that could comfortably fit at least three people. It’s weird to have so much space when I know upwards of a hundred people behind me are squashed into tin-can sardine rows. Is this capitalism? Am I the problem? Definitely. Or, to be more precise, Will is the problem. I insisted I was fine with a coach ticket, but he wouldn’t hear it. Probably wanted to impress Mom. Not that he can any further - much more and I’m pretty sure she’ll start thinking the sun shines out his Armani bunghole.

  Not that I’m jealous or anything.

  Okay, maybe I’m a little jealous. Mom loves him a lot. That much has been made clear since the night they announced their engagement. I’d hate him for it, but I can’t. Knowing Will for a month and a half now, I’ve realized first-class is just normal for him. It’s not that he wants to impress anyone, this is just how he lives, so why shouldn’t everyone else in his soon-to-be family live like him, too? He’s never concretely told me what he does, but he describes it as ‘trade management’.

  Whatever that means, it’s gotten me here, in first class, on the way to some fancy boarding school in Switzerland.

  When Mom and Will first told me the plan I - understandably - thought it was a joke.

  “Boarding school?” I stretched across the couch in my worst sweatpants watching mindless Netflix. “I’m already bored at school, thanks.”

  But then Mom got all serious about it. She and Will would take a honeymoon across the world for five months, together. Will promised he’d take Mom to all the ancient gardens, all the Michelin-starred restaurants, all the romantic parks and underwater cave tours. He wanted her to experience the world, and goddamn did she want to. She’s always wanted to. So what was I supposed to do? Say no?

  Ruby, on the other hand, had many things to say.

  “William CUNNINGHAM?” She almost spat her PB&J on my face over the cafeteria table. “Listen; your mom’s engaged to one of the richest men on the Forbes list, or whatever. I literally just read about him at the dentist’s office. He’s got three private planes, two yachts, and seventeen vineyards. His house in Beverly Hills is worth more than the entire state of Oklahoma.” She inhales hugely. “Which means?”

  I pause and consider. “Time for the French Revolution?”

  “No!”

  “You’re right,” I pat her hand. “I’ll squeeze an Xbox out of him first. Then revolution.”

  Honestly, Ruby probably still knows more about Will than I do. He’s been friendly and nice to me, but not much else. No deep sharing or anything. The paranoia set in days ago. This could be him getting rid of me so he can do whatever he wants to Mom. I tried to tell her that, tried to express my worry, but she just smiled that sunshine-joy smile at me.

  “I’m a grown woman, Lilith,” she’d said. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

  I lean my head against the headrest and try to breathe the paranoia away. My only shred of comfort in this half-dreamy, half-guilt-ridden fantasy is the fact that no matter what class of the plane we’re in, we’re all breathing each others’ farts. That shoddy little curtain in the aisle can’t change that. The fizzing champagne can’t change that. Death and farts don’t care how much money you have - they all strike the same.

  I breathe deep. “Someone’s definitely had brussel sprouts.”

  The maybe-ten-year-old over the aisle to my right giggles. She’s adorable, with dark hair in braids - pink bows on the ends and big green eyes. She’s too young to be flying this far alone, but she is anyway. I wonder where her parents are - rich enough to put her in first class, but not rich enough to be with her, I guess. She’s been bored and squirmy the whole way, so I reach into my bag and hand her the colored pencils and notebook Mom bought me for school. I wouldn’t let William get me a laptop - didn’t entirely trust him not to bug it - but I covered that up by insisting I like handwriting actually, thanks.

  “Here,” I say to the girl. “You’re probably a better artist than I am.”

  She takes them and nods. “Yeah. I saw you drawing that dog and it was b-a-d.”

  “Gee, thanks. It was my greatest work,” I chime. She giggles, throws open the notebook, and chooses the brightest pink pencil she can find. The flight attendant swoops by again.

  “Is everything alright, Rose?” She asks. The girl doesn’t look up from her artistry.

  “She was just giving me these.” Her voice is oddly terse, like she’s used to people hovering.

  “Oh. That’s so sweet.” The attendant smiles at me.

  “That
’s me. Sweet as a button.” I poke my own cheeks. Mercifully, someone dings their seat and the flight attendant leaves me to mutter under my breath; “And dumb as a sack of rocks.”

  Sure, I’d do anything for Mom. I know that like a tattoo on my bones; permanent. I’d do anything for Mom. Full stop. I’d rob a bank for Mom. I’d do any number of illegal things to make sure she was happy and safe. I’d deffo kill a man for Mom. Hell, one time when I was seven I shoplifted a pack of sponges and put them in my Pokemon backpack because Mom cried when she couldn’t afford them. And okay, sue me; when she was still in nursing school and I was in middle school, I definitely did palm a bottle of fancy perfume off the mall’s makeup counter for her birthday. And the birthday after that.

  But this? Going to some rich-ass boarding school in Switzerland for the rest of my junior year while Mom and Will honeymoon around the world? I don’t even speak Swiss! French? Swiss-French? God. What alternate-dimension Dumbledore decided it was my life he was going to wiggle his magical fate-changing fingers in?

  “Fuck,” I whisper, and bang my head on the headrest. “If the school looks like Hogwarts I’m done for.”

  “My brother says Hogwarts isn’t real,” The girl announces, and I jump out of my skin. She’s got exceptional little bat ears. “But I want it to be real because I want an owl.”

  “Honestly, same,” I say. “Don't listen to your brother. He sounds like a di -” I catch myself. “- ngleberry.”

  The girl giggles. “Dingleberry!”

  I get the feeling I just handed her the keys to Pandora’s box, and I’m not entirely wrong, because the next time the flight attendant comes around, the girl chirps ‘Dingleberry!’ at the top of her lungs. Mortified, I pull the blanket over my head, and with all my combined knowledge of lovingly spying on Anthony Nguyen in drama practice after school with a crushing Ruby, pretend to be dead asleep.

  Turns out even swaddled in the glitzy comfort of first class, twelve-hour-long flights are still super bad. Your legs cramp, you can’t really sleep because of time changes, and no matter how much you’re tempted by the champagne that keeps going around because you’re sixteen and it’s ‘Legal in Europe’ or whatever, you know the hangover just ain’t worth it. You want to show up to your new terrifying maybe-Hogwarts boarding school not vomit-encrusted, thank you very much, and you keep trying to tell the flight attendants that but no one will listen to you. Or if they do, they think you want an extra pillow.