Mina jumped out of the car and glared at him. “You know, Jared, Tom doesn’t deserve to be turned into a toad. However, I can’t say the same for you. You are by far one of the most selfish Fae I’ve ever met. You’re mean, cruel and heartless.” She whirled around and headed up the stairs to her family’s apartment.
Jared slammed his head into the back of the driver’s seat and mentally berated himself for losing control of his emotions. He’d let his ugly side show through again. She was right. He was the one making all the terrible jokes and not taking his job seriously. But how could he, when every step they took together, every quest they finished was one more step toward the Fae being banished back to the Fae world and the gates closing forever. It was one step closer to losing her.
His knuckles cracked when he realized how upset that made him. It ripped him up inside, this wanting to tell her the truth, about him, about the curse, about why he couldn’t go back to the Fae world.
Would she shun him? Despise him? Look at him with hate? He had a problem controlling the anger that was always under the surface. Whenever Mina got through a chink in his armor, his rage snapped at her like a cornered animal.
Like now. No, he begged of himself. Not now. Sweat trickled down his brow, and he focused on breathing slowly.
It couldn’t be helped. His dark half was always there, just a thought away. Their souls called to each other, constantly searching for each other, never whole without the other. But he couldn’t give in. He couldn’t cross over to the Fae plane.
And he must make sure that Mina never went either. Or all of Fae and humankind would pay the price.
He pulled the car around the block until he was in the alley and had a full view of Mina’s bedroom window. The light flicked on, and he knew she was probably getting ready for bed. A few moments later the light flicked off, and he felt a moment’s hesitation about doing this without her.
He pulled down the driver’s side visor and looked at himself in the mirror. Somber gray eyes stared back at him, an angular jaw with a day’s worth of light stubble. He ran his fingers through his dark hair and smiled wanly.
“So, Jared, ol’ boy. She thinks we deserve to be turned into a toad. Let’s see if we can prove her right.”
Chapter 3
Jared hated school, hated the idea of school, and especially hated learning in large groups taught by an unknowledgeable teacher. Perhaps it was because the Fae could live for a really long time, and he didn’t need to study for eight hours a day, or maybe because he had accumulated such a wealth of knowledge over the years. But there was no other way.
Thankfully, it didn’t take much to show up at Lincoln Heights High with forged papers. With a little Fae persuasion, he was enrolled. He’d done it before. In fact, he was sure Mina was going to question him where he was today, since he was ditching classes once again. He would rather be in art class with her, teasing her, making her all red and flustered—enough to smash her next pottery assignment in frustration—but instead he was here.
At a different school.
And he couldn’t tell her why.
Which made him extremely irritable.
He walked down the pine-scented hall with his class sheet. He ignored the piece of paper and his locker assignment completely. Studying wasn’t his goal. Hunting the rogue Fae was. Jared found what looked like the central hallway of Lincoln Heights, and he leaned against the wall, studying the students, searching for a particular reddish blonde.
His ears picked up whispering, and his nose picked up a particular scent that he knew quite well—fear. He noticed a large corkboard to his right—with barely an inch of cork showing. It was plastered with posters. One for a missing poster for Kevin Sanders, who’d disappeared three weeks ago. There was another one for a Mitch Trujillo, who had been missing for two weeks. Jared carefully lifted the top posters and saw that there were more missing boy posters underneath announcements and ads that dated back to over a year ago.
And not all of them were from this school.
This was a very serious problem. If someone didn’t handle this Fae girl, then the humans would eventually find her…and all the Fae would be in danger of being revealed.
He shook his head angrily and went back to search for her. It was a good thing she had popped up on the Fates’ radar. He didn’t necessarily thank the Story for its added requirement of his personal involvement, but he knew it had to be taken care of.
After the first two periods of class he still hadn’t found the frog girl and he would have almost missed her, if she hadn’t stopped to take a drink at the water fountain right in front of him.
Kathleen and spent a very long time at the water fountain. In fact, so long, Jared thought maybe she was frozen. Nevertheless, after a full minute, her red-blonde head popped up and politely apologized to the boy waiting behind her. She wiped her mouth daintily and headed down the hall away from him. It was a good thing she couldn’t sense him.