The Immortal Highlander

Page 4

Feeling like she’d been kicked in the stomach, Gabby watched in stricken silence as Ms. Temple accepted her spotless Mercedes from the valet, dimly registering that the fairy, blessedly, was also moving on. As the sleek pearl-colored Mercedes merged onto Fifth Street and disappeared into traffic—the job of her dreams flapping farewell on its tailpipe—Gabby’s shoulders slumped. With a gusty sigh, she turned and trudged down the street to the corner lot where simple law students not-destined-for-success-because-they-were-too-flighty could afford to park.
“ ‘Flighty,’ my ass,” she muttered, resting her head on the steering wheel. “You have no idea what my life is like. You can’t see them.”
All Ms. Temple had probably felt was a slight breeze, a moderate increase in temperature, perhaps caught a whiff of an exotic, arousing fragrance. And if, by chance, the fairy had brushed against her—although they were invisible, they were real, and were actually there—Ms. Temple would have rationalized it away somehow. Those who couldn’t see the Fae always did.
Gabby had learned the hard way that people had zero tolerance for the inexplicable. It never ceased to amaze her what flimsy excuses they dredged up to protect their perception of reality. “Gee, I guess I didn’t get enough sleep last night.” Or, “Wow, I shouldn’t have had that second (or third or fourth) beer with lunch.” If all else failed, they settled for a simple “I must have imagined it.”
How she longed for such oblivion!
She shook her head and tried to console herself with the thought that at least the fairy had been convinced and was gone. She was safe. For now.
The way Gabby figured it, the Fae were responsible for ninety-nine percent of the problems in her life. She’d take responsibility for the other one percent, but they were the reason her life this summer had been one crisis after another. They were the reason she’d begun to dread leaving her house, never knowing where one might pop up, or how badly it might startle her. Or what kind of ass she’d make of herself, trying to regroup. They were the reason her boyfriend had broken up with her fifteen days, three hours, and—she glanced broodingly at her watch—forty-two minutes ago.
Gabrielle O’Callaghan harbored a special and very personal hatred for the Fae.
“I don’t see you. I don’t see you,” she muttered beneath her breath as two mouthwatering fairy males strolled past the hood of her car. She averted her gaze, caught herself, then angled the rearview mirror and pretended to be fussing with her lipstick.
Never look away too sharply, her grandmother, Moira O’Callaghan, had always cautioned. You must act natural. You must learn to let your gaze slide over them without either hitching or pulling away too abruptly, or they’ll know you know. And they’ll take you. You must never betray that you can see them. Promise me, Gabby. I can’t lose you!
Gram had seen them, too, these creatures other people couldn’t see. Most of the women on her mom’s side did, though sometimes the “gift” skipped generations. As it had with her mom, who’d moved to Los Angeles years ago (like the people in California were less weird than fairies), leaving then–seven-year-old Gabrielle behind with Gram “until she got settled.” Jilly O’Callaghan had never gotten settled.
Why couldn’t it have skipped me? Gabby brooded. A normal life was all she’d ever wanted.
And proving damned difficult to have, even in boring Cincinnati. Gabby was beginning to think that living in the Tri-State—the geographical convergence of Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky—was a bit like living at the mystical convergence of Sunnydale’s Hellmouth.
Except the Midwest didn’t get demons and vampires—oh, no—they got fairies: dangerously seductive, inhuman, arrogant creatures that would take her and do God-only-knew-what to her if they ever figured out that she could see them.
Her family history was riddled with tales of ancestors who’d been captured by the dreaded Fae Hunters and never seen again. Some of the tales claimed they were swiftly and brutally killed by the savage Hunters, others that they were forced into slavery to the Fae.
She had no idea what actually became of those foolish enough to be taken, but she knew one thing for certain: She had no intention of ever finding out.
Later Gabby would realize that it was all the cup of coffee’s fault. Every awful thing that happened to her from that moment on could be traced directly back to that cup of coffee with the stunning simplicity of an airtight conditional argument: If not for A (said cup of coffee), then not B (blowing job interview), hence not C (having to go into work that night), and certainly not D (the horrible thing that happened to her there) . . . on to infinity.