One Black Rose - August Part 12

"Something like what?" I wanted to know.

"Something likes fighting over a silly girl. There are more important things," said Logan simply.

"I thought the prince had to have a queen to continue to rule," I said. I could feel the sweat on my palms, but I didn't want to give Logan the satisfaction of knowing that he was unnerving me, so I just continued to sit there with my hands clenched in my lap.

"The prince does need a queen, but he needs the respect of his Court a and to not get murdered by another Court too," said Logan. "Holt isn't even supposed to be with you. Samuel is."

At that moment I realized something that I had been refusing to face all summer: that Logan was nothing like his brother. I had been going along, blissfully a.s.suming that all Summer Fairies liked to dance and drink and have pretty things and give hugs and be kind, because Susan was a lot of those things. Holt wasn't all of those things (I had never seen him knock back bottles of wine like I knew Susan could), but that's still what I had thought.

But Logan definitely wasn't kind. In fact, beneath the physical resemblance he wasn't much like Holt at all.

I abruptly stood up, not sure what I was going to do, but just then Holt's door opened and in walked Samuel and Susan. Logan was still in the chair, quietly laughing.

My legs instantly gave and I landed hard back on the bed. I couldn't bring myself to look at Samuel; I didn't want to even imagine what he thought of me. I was there at his invitation to see Susan, and now he had found me sneaking into Holt's room and getting caught by his mean little brother. I couldn't even imagine how awful I would seem.

Wow. Good day for me.

Susan's smile didn't falter for a second. "So, here's where you got to."

"Yup. Right here," said Logan. "I invited Autumn in here to have a little chat. She was kind enough to humor me."

Some of the waves of embarra.s.sment rolling over me slowed. I dared to look at Samuel and Susan. They both seemed to believe what Logan was saying. I couldn't understand why he was lying to cover for me.

"What were you talking about?" asked Samuel, his voice tight. "We were sort of having an important conversation before."

Logan snorted. "Don't worry about it. You can have her back now. I'm not going to be the third prince to fall in love with her."

I hadn't really realized that Logan was also a prince, but if his older brother was, then he would be too.

"I should get going anyway," I said. I wanted to take one last look around Holt's room, but everyone was watching me and I didn't dare, so I stood up again and walked towards the door.

"Have a great day," said Logan after me.

"Yeah, you too," I murmured.

"I'll walk you home," offered Samuel.

"Yeah, I'll see you out," said Susan.

The three of us walked down the stairs, stopping at the front door. Susan gave me a hug and said, "It was nice to see you. You should come again sometime. And I don't know what Logan said, but you shouldn't let it bother you. He just misses his brother. He is a little young to understand what's going on and we've kept him out of the loop about all the Water Sprite stuff. He wouldn't know how to help anyway."

I nodded. I was suddenly very tired and just wanted to go home. "Thanks for having me," I said.

Once we were outside, the late afternoon suns.h.i.+ne cheered me up. There was just enough of a breeze that it felt good, without making me want to rub my arms from the chill. Of course, it probably didn't help that I had a Winter Prince next to me, but he was doing a good job of not giving off any cold.

"It's still probably a good idea if you stay out of the water," said Samuel. "At least for now. We need time to check some stuff out."

"Uh huh," I said.

"Are you alright?" asked Samuel, peering at me.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I said. "I just realized some stuff."

Samuel laughed. "Yeah? Like what?"

"Like, I don't know much about Fairies," I said. "Any of you." Like I had thought Logan was nice, I told myself silently, and look how wrong I was about that.

When we got to my house Samuel didn't seem ready to hurry away, but for some reason I my desire to ask him more about Fairies had vanished. Maybe I was worried it would encourage him to think that I wanted to marry Holt instead of him, but whatever it was, I was just ready for him to leave.

"So I'll stay out of the water," I said. "And make sure Carley and Nick do too."

"That'd be good," said Samuel.

Once he was gone I headed into the house with every intention of taking a nap, but I ended up talking to Mrs. Hightower for a while. She was really relieved that Mary had been found. She wasn't with the party that had found her, but she knew all about it.

Just as I was throwing myself on my bed, my phone beeped. I wasn't going to answer it. I wasn't even going to look and see who was calling.

They hung up.

Good.

It rang again.

d.a.m.n it. Persistent person.

I picked it up without bothering to see who it was, bringing the phone close to my face on the pillow. "h.e.l.lo?"

"Hi, honey," said Mom.

"Oh, hi," I said. If my eyes hadn't been pressed against the pillow I would have rolled them.

"How's it going there?"

Oh, super. Girls are getting kidnapped and drowned, Holt left, and Nick and Carley have their tongues down each other's throats half the time. How could it get better?

"It's great," I said. If no one had told her about the girls and everything else that was going on, I sure wasn't going to volunteer the information.

"Oh good. Listen, your father and I want to talk to you."

In my mind immediately flashed: that's never good a but all I said was, "Oh? About what?"

"Well, it's sort of a surprise. A good news thing," she said.

"You and Dad are not getting a divorce and will stop fighting in front of your child?" I asked. It wasn't fair of me to say it. Normally I didn't try to guilt trip them about that, but I was tired.

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line.

"No, nothing like that," my mother said finally.

"Okay," I said. "Look, I was about to go to sleep...."

"Alright," said my mom, trying for cheer. "Well, we'll talk again soon. Sometime when your dad is home."

"Where's Dad?"

"Still at work," she said.

"Love you," I said. We always end our conversations that way.

"Love you too, sweetheart," said my mom.

Before I fell asleep I sent Carley a text asking where she was. I didn't immediately get a reply, so I rolled over and was out like a light within five minutes.

When I woke up I checked my phone. Carley still hadn't answered. The clock said it was past my dinnertime, but I was barely hungry. I was too caught up in everything that had happened that day. Most of all I wondered what was happening with the Water Sprite. I was glad that Lydia and Leslie had caught it; even though I would have much preferred that they completely fail at life, they seemed to have done a good thing.

My phone buzzed.

Instead of checking it I went to wash my face and generally try to wake up, but it was no easy task. I probably could have just slept the night away. When a felt a bit more refreshed I checked my phone; this time it wasn't Carley, it was Samuel. Suddenly he and I were communicating all the time.

"Hey," he said when I called him back.

"Hey," I replied.

"Everything okay there?" He wanted to make sure no Water Sprite had gotten me.

"Yes." I crossed my legs under me on the bed and held the phone with both hands.

"You want me to come over?"

I sighed. "No, thanks. I think I'm fine. Just going to go to sleep."

I didn't feel like seeing him again that day.

The person I wanted to see was Susan, because I still felt like she's the one I could ask to tell me more about Fairies. I sent her a text, and to my surprise she offered to take a nighttime walk with me. The last time she and I had been out at night together, we had gone with Logan and Holt to swim. I sighed. That had been fun...before I had any idea what I was in for.

I grabbed a light jacket and headed outside. Even though I didn't have to worry about the Water Sprite any more, I made a conscious effort to ignore the water. Susan was meeting me outside the Roths' place, and then we would decide where we were going. As the house came into view a sigh escaped me. The flowers were harder to see at night, but still as beautiful as ever. Lights blazed in the windows, casting a warm glow onto everything outside.

Susan still wore the dress she had had on earlier, but she had wrapped a scarf around her shoulders.

"Hey," she said. "Are you okay?"

I nodded. "I just wanted to know what was going on with the Water Sprite. It would have been nice to be told."

"We really didn't know ourselves," said Susan as we started to walk. "Samuel is the only one who has come across Water Sprites before, and this one was more powerful than any he had seen."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

Susan rubbed her hands together, thinking. "This Water Sprite has done a lot of damage, which would be as expected if there weren't Fairies around. But there are. We think that it has also been targeting you, because of your relations.h.i.+p with those Fairies."

"So, what are you saying?" I asked. I didn't quite see what she was trying to get at.

"I'm saying that there has to be more to it. Something had to have been helping the Water Sprite," said Susan.

"What?" I cried. "There are more of them?"

"Not more Water Sprites," Susan answered. "We think whatever was helping it was human."

"Why would a human want a Water Sprite to attack Katie and Mary and go after me?"

"That, we don't know," said Susan. "Anyway, now you know everything I do."

I wasn't sure whether what she had told me was a good thing or not. It meant that there was still someone out there who had it in for me. I just couldn't understand why. But it also meant that the Fairies were still on the alert.

"Look," said Susan. "If I find out anything else I'll tell you. Was there something else you wanted to ask me?"

"Remember when I first found out about Holt, and you told me more about Fairies?"

"Of course," said Susan.

"I was hoping to learn a little bit more," I said. "All your personalities seem so connected to what kind of Fairies you are."

"Well, of course," said Susan, smiling. "If you met me you'd instantly guess that I was a summer Fairy."

I laughed. "That's true. You're always so bright and light."

"Exactly, and, as I said before, the Winter Court is often mistakenly thought to be the nasty Court, but they aren't."

"What do you mean?"

"It's not a good versus evil thing," said Susan. "It's just different. There are characteristics that the Summer Court has that the Winter Court doesn't, and vice versa. The Winter Court is more focused and determined than the Summer Court. That's why having the Ches.h.i.+res fighting against the Water Sprite is so important. They will battle until the end."

"But isn't that the very same thing that makes the Winter Queen so dangerous?" I asked. I wished that not everything about Fairies, for me at least, came back to the Winter Queen and the Solstice Party, but I didn't have enough other experiences to counterbalance that night.

Susan sighed. "Yes, that's part of it. And I know that the Winter Queen isn't handling whatever is happening with you, Holt, and Samuel well."

"Nothing's been happening with the three of us for a while," I muttered.

Susan shook her head. "If you didn't matter, Holt would be here. It's because you matter that he's not." She put her arm around my shoulders.

"But it's not just about me," I pointed out. "He has his whole family to worry about."

"I know," said Susan. "He's only doing what he thinks is right. Obviously he'd rather not be hurting anyone."

As far as I could tell he was just hurting me. But I wasn't going to say that to Susan. Instead I asked, "So, what you're saying is, Samuel is a good guy? Even if he hates me?"

"Samuel doesn't hate you," said Susan carefully. "He just doesn't know what to do with you. I don't think he wants to be told who to love. He especially doesn't want to love someone who doesn't love him back, if that makes sense."

"But isn't the point that he should try and win my heart?" I demanded. "Why should I love a guy who does nothing to deserve it?" I blushed.