A Thief of Nightshade(9)
Lipsey hopped to the floor and handed her the second boot, nearly falling over from the awkwardness of lifting it over his head. “You didn’t eat any of your soup. Where are you going? Are you going to see Tabor?”
She took a calculated breath, reminding herself that she was, after all, talking to animals. “No, I am going to find my way to the Winter Court.”
Assuming I don’t wake up in an institution first...
Aislinn
laughed,
but
quickly
tempered his amusement once he saw the expression on her face.
She rose and glared at him. “Maybe that’s why it’s so hard for you to imagine a world where magic doesn’t exist.
You’re using it as a crutch. So what if no one has ever defeated her? It doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Have you ever lost your life?” Aislinn didn’t respond. “Does that mean that you can’t?”
“You have no idea what I’ve lost,”
he sneered.
Lilly walked over to Aubrey and laid a paw on her arm; Aubrey, out of habit, jerked back. “This isn’t like your world,”
Lilly said, clearly surprised by Aubrey’s response to her touch. “It isn’t that simple.
It never is.”
“I will either get my husband back or I will die trying. How is that for simple?”
Aislinn sighed, lowering his paw for Lipsey to climb into it. As he placed the little squirrel on his shoulder, he said, “Then might I suggest you at least speak with Tabor? Surely you aren’t planning on just walking into the Fae court totally unprepared?”
“Take me to him, then.”
Chapter Five
Once ...
“ARE
YOU
EVER
PLANNING
ON
SHOWERING again?” It took a minute for Aubrey to hear Samantha.
“If you’re nice to me.” Aubrey lowered her head and sniffed. “Okay, maybe for my own comfort.” She’d been holed up in their den for two days, re-reading Nightshade.
Sam came around the corner with a cup of hot tea and handed it to Aubrey.
“You don’t look so good. You feeling all right?”
Aubrey shrugged. “Tired, maybe. I haven’t been sleeping too well.”
“Are you going tonight?”
Do I have a choice? “I said I would.”
“Don’t get so excited. You’re likely to have an aneurysm.” Sam opened the blinds, flooding the den with unwelcome light. “I thought you were looking forward to this?”
Aubrey groaned as she forced herself to stand. Her left foot was asleep and she hung on to the side of the chair while she shook it out. “I was. I have a lot on my mind, with work and just ... everything.”
She put her weight on it and grimaced, regretting her lack of movement in the last few hours. “Family stuff. I really don’t care to talk about it.”
“Drink that. Brooke again?”
Aubrey took a purposeful sip and let the tea sit in her mouth before swallowing.
She couldn’t seem to shake her exhaustion lately. “When is it ever not Brooke?”
“When it’s Grant.”
Aubrey scowled. “Funny.”
“Seriously, you know better than to take what she says personally. You are too smart for this. It took guts to do what you did.”
Aubrey did feel proud of herself for finally taking a stand and insisting that her family treat her like the adult that she was, but overall, the break from them and her carefully plotted life hadn’t been easy. As if refusing a scholarship to medical school wasn’t enough, she had also broken off a long-standing engagement to a son of one of her father’s associates. An engagement that she was certain he was just as pressured into as she’d been. Luckily for him, he could blame her for the sudden change of plans. The party Sam had so skillfully duped her into agreeing to was really the first social event she’d even considered in months. But in all honesty, it wasn’t any of her siblings that weighed on her mind, though it was family-related.
She’d found her daily routine particularly difficult after Dr. Sellars’ last lecture had dredged up demons from her past that she would have preferred to keep buried.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t anything Sam needed to concern herself with, so Aubrey used her usual excuse.
“I know. She just knows exactly what to say sometimes. It’s like she can read minds; either that or I am that predictable.”
Sam gave her a crooked smile.
“Predictable? Yeah, you are. You’re as predictable as the sunrise.”
It’s
not
predictability
...
it’s
dedication.
“You’re rationalizing this in your head right now, aren’t you? Stop it. Go get ready. Darin should be here in a little while.”
Darin,
Sam’s
boyfriend,
drove
Aubrey nuts. Unfortunately, Sam adored him, so Aubrey quietly tolerated his unemployment and lack of ambition.
“Predictable, my ass,” she muttered.
The party, a fundraiser for the arts, felt claustrophobic as always and would have seemed like a lavish event to anyone other than Aubrey, whose childhood home was three times the size of the modern mansion they’d chosen for the function. She’d started the evening just fine, far more social than she normally was, but after three hours of questions concerning her future plans, her ex-fiance and her family, enough was enough.