Fairest (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale #2)(21)

“And I thought you were dead, so I think we’re even.” Mina’s fingers were numb and like ice, she started to shake from the cold. She got one shoe off but was struggling with the second.

“Here, let me.” Jared reached for her shoes to help her.

“Don’t touch me!” she screeched, and hit him with her destroyed sneaker. Her teeth were chattering now, and Jared moved closer to her.

“I won’t.” He froze inches from her, his hands up in the air, as if he was waiting to be arrested.

“What happened to the bus driver?” Mina sniffed, using her sleeve to wipe pathetically at her nose.

“Uh, I tricked him into getting off, a few stops ago, and I took his place.” Jared slowly sat down on the ground across from her and folded his hands in his lap.

“And you can just do that? Change into his form and take his place?”

Jared looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, I can, it’s that easy.”

“How did you find me? I mean, how did you know I was on the bus to begin with, and how did you…?” she trailed off, losing the ability to form coherent thoughts.

“You really think it was that hard to figure out you would ditch me as soon as we stopped? I saw it in your face. You’re like an open book, and terrible at lying. As soon as I heard the car door close, I went out the back door of the shop and watched you get on the bus. It wasn’t difficult to follow and take the place of the driver, with a little bit of Fae magic.”

“Then why the show? Why the whole over-aggressive Ogre thing?” Mina argued.

“I didn’t think you would believe me if I told you that I’m not a bad guy. I mean look at me. I wanted to prove to you that I was the good guy. At first, I was going to scare you as the Ogre, and then run in to rescue you at the last minute as me. I was trying to prove a point that not all Fae are bad.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and didn’t make eye contact. “I wasn’t planning on letting you see me change, but things got out of hand pretty fast, and I had no choice if I was going to try and save you.”

“So you were going to try and scare me off as an Ogre and then rescue me… from yourself?”

Jared looked down at his feet; he was still dripping wet and hadn’t even attempted to try to dry himself off.

“Pretty much. I wanted you to trust me.”

“By lying to me and deceiving me further?” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Yeah, that was stupid. What can I say, I’m a guy and we don’t always think things through.”

Mina rolled her eyes. “You can say that again, but this doesn’t let you off the hook. All you’ve proved to me is that you’re a prankster and a liar, and I still can’t trust you.”

“So I will have to prove it in a different way.” Jared smiled crookedly.

“No more half brain plans.”

“Hey, my plans aren’t always half brain!”

Mina just looked at him squarely, and he chuckled. He picked up something off of the embankment and handed it to her. It was the Grimoire.

“Oh, no! Now what do I do?” She immediately started to swing the notebook around to flick the water from it.

“It’s fine; it can protect itself. Just ask it to reform into another shape, it will dry.”

Mina raised an eyebrow at Jared before envisioning the Grimoire into a much smaller, sturdier leather bound book. A quick glow surrounded the book, and it shrank to fit her thought. “Wow, I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to that.” She tucked it securely into her pocket.

“You’ll have to get used to it. It’s Fae magic,” Jared said in a sour voice. He didn’t seem too thrilled about it, when he said it.

Sighing, she stood up and looked around trying to find a way to get out. The river was on her left, and the cliff that she fell from didn’t have an easy path up, it was pure shale. She looked across the river to the other side and that cliff was even higher. They were going to have to walk along the river bed until they could find a smaller slope.

But then what? She had no clue where she was. She knew the national forest covered almost a 1,000 square miles and they couldn’t have possibly gone that far into the reserve, but what if they started walking the wrong way and ended up deeper into the woods? Granted, it was dark when Jared had pulled the bus over and she’d taken off running. She couldn’t have run that far right? Their best bet was to follow the river bed and hope it led them out.

Mina wrung out her socks and tucked them into her jacket. She put on her freezing cold shoes and started to walk along the bank.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Home, I have to get out of here, my mom is going to be worried sick.”

Jared jumped up quickly to follow along behind her as they walked. It was slow going with only the rising moon to guide their steps, and Mina frequently slipped and scraped her hands and knees. It probably would have been easier in the daylight, but the forest made her jump at every little sound. After a while, Jared took the lead and they stopped often to listen for cars, or sounds of civilization, but all they could hear was the river.

“I think we’re lost,” Jared finally spoke up.

Mina didn’t answer and Jared turned to look at her. She was so tired and she could barely stand. “You are done in.” He turned to her and grabbed her shoulder, forcing her to turn to him.