Chapter 16
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Maybe I'm the monster if I'm making little girls cry…
I am a skank.
It's an irrefutable fact now because I'm almost completely positive good, not skank girls don't beg their student's father to ravish them in their dreams. Like. Ever. Not even when their toilet brain has decided said father would make a stunning unseelie faerie garbed in lovely midnight shades…with really soft yet firm touches…and the kind of gentle laugh that turns my tummy inside out…
I am a skank, because—dang it all and everything and everyone—I am staring at the ceiling with a tiny cat sleeping like a croissant on my stomach and shaming myself not for having the dream itself but for getting embarrassed.
How dare I?
I could have experienced the most horrific, most depraved, most wonderful fantasy. I could have staved off my touch starvation and desire for romantic connection for at least a decade had I not stopped the course of events.
Pity it felt so real I started to panic.
Pity my real world morals tainted the blissful abandon.
They say that your true character comes out when no one is watching, so one might assume—based on that conjecture—I'm a very good girl. However, I think I would kill to return to the fantasy and listen to monster-Pollux whisper good girl in my ear.
So.
Yeah.
To make matters worse, once I drag myself out of my room to have breakfast with my sweet parents, all I can think about is the wild idea that I actually do invite my dreamboy's real-world alter ego and his daughter to our Thanksgiving.
Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad. Can I please bring the hottest man I have ever met into our little home for a holiday? You know. If he wants to come. I think I'd like to sit beside him and eat mashed potatoes while his daughter rambles on about faeries.
By the way, I still haven't found any proof or anything, but they might be in a cult.
Is that cool?
Are we cool with that?
The whole drive to school, I'm waffling between desperately wanting to ask my parents if it's okay and the logic that demands associating my family with a cult is a bad idea.
It's like associating with the mafia. The deeper I go, the harder it will be to untangle myself. I need to stay in the shallows. Or else.
Logic has never heard of biceps.
Logic pales so pitifully in the face of biceps.
Pollux has got biceps. All of them. Every muscle in the designation bicep. If provided with a marker, I could graph each and every one right on his skin.
"He also blows things up in his basement lab, you nut case," I mutter as I park in my usual spot, in front of a school camera. "Right, and need I remind you, you've not actually seen him since you received that information?" My heart rate does the unthinkable and gets faster. "True. He could be hurt, and I wouldn't know it."
I should visit him after school. Walk Andromeda home and see if he's all right. For her sake. Duh.
After all, if he isn't all right, he won't be able to take care of her properly, and Alexios seems a little more devious in his cultic commitment—what with how he's asked for my soul several times now and all that. Weird that he didn't join us for movie night. Weird that Pollux hadn't been to movie night before. I best do my due diligence.
Walk Andromeda home.
Sit her father down.
Ask him about the rules his cult follows…
And, while I'm at it, I should send my mother a perfectly stale text about how one of my students has a single father who might not have anywhere to go on Thanksgiving.
Both Mom and Dad will be planning my wedding before I even get home. But, you know, I'll have the paper trail record that implies I'm little more than a worried teacher who finds it cruel that anyone might be alone on Thanksgiving.
Grabbing my purse as though I am not swiftly descending into the madness that has infected this town ever since Andromeda and Willow showed up for a tour, I unlock the front door and find a little girl standing in the shadows—blue eyes agleam.
I look behind myself at the door I just most definitely unlocked. I remember clearly locking up the back door yesterday because Zahra was providing me with a verbal Baconian essay on why we needed to go into the woods when I did it. She had references to strengthen her three main points and everything.
"Meda…how did you…" I shake my head. "Why are you…"
She wraps her fingers around my hand. "Come on, come on! I have a surprise."
The surprise is that she's a master lock picker. They teach classes. In her cult.
All the same, I follow her as she takes me past the door to my office, through the main room, and out the back door. Letting go of my hand, she dances in front of me and throws her arms wide. "Tada!"
My mouth falls open as I drag my attention toward the massive playground behind her. It sprawls, filling the entire fenced-in space, dwarfing the metal swings. At one end, a boat. At the other, the fa?ade of a mansion, complete with windows that display an elegant array of wooden furniture inside. Tucked into the middle of rock walls and slides, there's a drive-through window with Taco Bell branding, complete with an ordering menu carved into the wood signs and painted with deep purples.
It is majestic.
It is…impossible.
Dazed, I trail toward the thing and dare to touch it.
Real wood.
How much could this possibly cost? Clearly, it was made from scratch. Designed from scratch, even.
"How?" I whisper, drifting toward a polished wood slide shined and slick and blazing red. "I don't…" The rocks on the climbing wall. They're real chunks of smooth agate protected in rubber sleeves.
I…don't understand what's happening.
Maybe I'm still dreaming?
If I'm not, I need to get the right paperwork filed in accordance with playground safety. Then I also need to figure out how to inform the school board of this.
Can I mark it off as a charitable donation?
Did…did Pollux organize for this to happen? Overnight?
That can't be possible.
Even if he's that wealthy, getting people to do things in a timely manner is like herding cats. There's too much red tape and forms and miscommunications and…
And it's impossible.
It feels like my mind is splintering.
"Merry Christmas!" Andromeda cheers. "Pila and her sisters grew the wood since we couldn't take things from Faerie without waiting at least a week for the glamour to wear off and the magic to siphon away. Ollie, Brittny, Yama-nii-nii, and my mothers have some recent construction experience—even though Willow, hereby known as Mother, said ew, no, that sounds like manual labor, I'm staying home. Sephin, who is Yama-nii-nii's friend and on Uncle Cael's council, drew up the blueprints. Uncle Cael orchestrated the tasks, and I think he's submitting the right paperwork, too, so an inspector should stop by in the next few weeks." She runs to the Taco Bell window, pulls one of several large wooden containers off a back shelf, and places it on the drive-through sill. "Mother did come by during construction with some snacks and gave us some things to play fast food restaurant with today at recess. You can just use your humanity to tell the inspector that no children were playing on the equipment before he had a chance to come out. Oh." Her bright eyes flick up to meet mine. "Sephin did the blueprinting at Mother's house, and Lana made a royal decree that there had to be a Taco Bell drive through, so that's why Mother knew about it. Does that explain everything?"
Um.
No.
No, that hardly explains anything. I'm not Zahra, so even just the waterfall of all those names is getting lost on their way to where they are meant to connect in my head. It's static upstairs.
Andromeda is bubbling.
I don't think I'm responding correctly.
I'm broken. Forget Pollux's Did I break you? last night, like father, like daughter.
She is not telling me that her cult banded together and built me a playground. She simply isn't. I'm still dreaming. Except I don't think I am.
My dreams are shockingly lifelike, but…I can always tell. The dream world feels different on my skin, as though the very essence of it is pouring from my veins.
Andromeda holds a cookie out for me. I stare at her long enough for her smile to fall. "You hate it," she whispers.
I snap out of my head. "No, no, Meda. I just… I can't… How?"
Her lip juts. "I just told you how."
I crouch at the window in the wood chips I didn't even compute until now. They're fresh. The woody scent fills my chest. "No, sweetie. Really, how? How did you manage this? All in one night? How much did it possibly cost? And where did you get the money? Did Pollux really fund all of this?" Combing my fingers back through my hair, getting them stuck on my messy bun, I say, "Why didn't I get any alerts from the security sensors when cars passed them?"
Andromeda watches me. "Because. We all walked."
"You all carried all this wood here on foot?"
"Pila and her sisters grew it right here. Mom, Lana, and Uncle Cael used spells to cut it. Ollie transformed into a smaller Fenrir form to make sure the trees didn't fall on the school when we chopped them down." She shifts her weight from one foot to the other. "I'm pretty sure Uncle Cael also cast a barrier so we wouldn't bother any humans with anything that they could perceive. Among other things, Brittny was blasting Ollie's music on her phone the whole time, and it was the middle of the night."
This crouch isn't cutting it. I think I need to sit down.
Zahra is going to be here soon.
But I already know she won't be a voice of reason. After last night, she may hardly be functional today.
"You don't believe me," Andromeda whispers. "Why don't you believe me?"
"Sweetie… Faeries aren't real."
Something in Andromeda's eyes cracks. Putting the cookie back, she stuffs the container into the shelf, smudges a tear off her cheek, and murmurs, "I know humans don't believe in things as easily as the fae do…but I also thought you were supposed to be different." Sniffling, she runs back up to the school building before I can respond.
It takes me a minute to gather enough sanity to drag myself inside to check on her, but when I have, she's already gone.