“Why?”
Hector opened her door, and in an instant, he was at the trunk pulling out the luggage. There were only three bags. The rest would follow in the next day or so. These were just the essentials Shayla decided to send.
“Walk, Lilywhite.” Hector looked behind them, glaring at the gate that wasn’t shut yet before herding her up the steps with a terse one-word command: “Inside.”
At the top, she could see that a smaller door was nested inside the vast one. Hector opened it, and Lily went inside.
She pulled off her sunglasses and surveyed the hall, looking for potential exits and hiding areas. Abernathy Commandment #15: Always have a way out, more than one if possible. There weren’t any obvious egresses, unfortunately. It was a room designed for one way in and out, which made her nervous.
The foyer of the main hall was a vast high-ceilinged room. Sconces lined the walls, jutting out from the thick vines that covered the walls for as far as she could see. On either side of the room, staircases spiraled upward to the balconies that lined the second and third floors. In the center was a wide hallway. A small sign reading ADMINISTRATION was the only indication of direction.
They made it as far as the mouth of the hallway when a woman in a well-tailored suit walked toward them. “Miss Abernathy?”
Lily nodded.
The woman offered the sort of tight smile that didn’t bode well. “We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow. There are no suites presently available as a result, but if you give us an hour, we’ll get it all sorted out.”
Hector scowled, but Lily simply nodded and walked toward the plants clinging to the back wall of the massive room. Belatedly, she realized that she should’ve spoken, but there wasn’t anything that the woman could tell her that would be as useful as the plants would reveal.
“I’ll carry her bags to the office,” Hector said, drawing the woman’s gaze to him and away from her.
Lily’s affinity for earth was sacrosanct. Every new hire was told without fail that any time she needed to pause to touch nature, they must facilitate it. To do otherwise was a firing offense. They were also told exactly how horrific their deaths would be if they revealed her fae-blood tendencies to anyone outside the house. At least one employee had vanished suddenly after he’d allowed a reporter to capture a picture of her with waves seemingly bending toward her. The picture vanished, and both the reporter and her then-guard had never been seen again. Daidí left nothing to chance—at least he hadn’t until the night of her birthday when he’d invited Creed into their home.
Lily glanced down the darkened hallway. “Can I help in any way?”
The woman’s stiff smile softened into something close to approval. “I’ll get everything sorted out. You just take a look around your new home.”
“I’ll be right back,” Hector told Lily. He glanced after the woman suspiciously for a moment before following her away, dragging Lily’s bags with him like they weighed nothing.
“I’m in no rush,” Lily said.
She watched him as he walked away. Her hands absently twined into the plants, and she was grateful for this bit of the natural world inside this unfamiliar place. The plants talked in whispers and rustles, telling her of students, of sounds from the underground, of the spiders that draped the leaves in webs.
It wasn’t enough.
Once Hector turned the corner, Lily exited through the same door she’d just entered minutes prior. The woman had said Lily could look around. She hadn’t specified that she’d only meant look around inside, and when Lily didn’t have to stay inside, she didn’t.
The water in the fountain outside wasn’t pure, far from it in fact, but it was there. Lily could feel it tugging at her the way she suspected magnets drew metal. Soil and sea called to her; plants whispered to her. As she got older, she came to understand that most people didn’t hear words in the wind or feel the weight of moonlight. It had taken years for her to learn to rest without her windows wide open—and longer still to hide her need to be barefoot.
Lily walked back out of the administration building and into the courtyard. Her intent had been simply to be in the sunlight, maybe sit near the large fountain that filled the center of the circular drive, but when she walked down the steps, she saw that the gate to the grounds still yawned open like an invitation. The guard was talking to someone on his phone, and the gates were unwatched.
It was a sign.
She slid her sunglasses on and walked through the open gate as calmly as if she were walking into the theater with Daidí. She didn’t run or look around furtively. She didn’t glance back at the administration building.
Abernathy Commandment #8: Make use of opportunities that arise.
nine
LILY
Lily slipped her shoes off for a few minutes, tilted her face to the sky, and let the sun and air calm her. Like a plant, she’d wither and sicken without the elements against her skin, so she walked toward the sea, under the sun, and with the wind. If she was to move out of the comfort of her home, she’d need to find a way to balance her need for nature with the illusion of being mundane. She’d do so. She was an Abernathy, and that meant knowing how to survive in a treacherous world. Being sent to school was, in some ways, a test of her readiness to be an adult. Lily wouldn’t fail.
She followed the pull of the sea, and in no time at all, she was in downtown Belfoure. All told, it was about two miles from campus to the town, and in town there was a harbor. She could feel it tugging her close, as water always did.
Belfoure wasn’t the sort of city where a girl walking alone drew awkward attention. It was overcrowded, and she suspected that there were talented pickpockets in the morass of people that wound their way through the streets. All things considered, it was cleaner than most cities. Even if it had been dangerous, it was no matter. Lily had been taught to defend herself. If she happened to be unarmed, she’d had some interesting teachers who’d taught her how to look at the environment around her to select weapons.
Ignoring the people who clustered the streets and milled in and out of stores, Lily walked to the end of the pier. She couldn’t touch the water, but the wooden pier felt comforting under her feet and the air was relaxing on her skin.