Endlessly

Kari fixed her impossibly big, round brown eyes on me. “Do you want a ride? We can give you a ride! Anywhere! Fast!”

“You have a car?”

She and Donna barked their matching laughs. Torn, I looked back at Nona, who was calmly wiping the long barstool-lined counter. “We’ll talk more when I get back.”

I followed the selkies outside to a classic VW Beetle parked along the street. It was a sparkly midnight-blue convertible with white leather seats. “Seriously?” I asked. How did two creatures who spent the better part of the last few centuries as seals have a car this cool? And how pathetic did that make me that I still didn’t have one?

I slid past the passenger seat into the back, and Kari sat behind the wheel.

“How did you get a driver’s license?” I asked, curious. I was going to take a driver’s ed course in the spring, but maybe they could hook me up with an easier class.

“What’s a driver’s license?” Kari answered, before peeling out into the middle of the street.

Oh, bleep.

My eyes were squeezed shut, my fingers in a death grip around my seat belt, when the chorus of my latest favorite song played, muffled by my purse. I pried my hand free and dug out my cell. Kari took another curve at blinding speed, centrifugal force smashing me against the window.

“Slow down!” I screamed, putting the phone up to my ear. “What! I mean, hi!”

“Where are you?” Lend asked. I could hear the panic in his voice. Ah, crud, should have left him a note.

“I’m on my way to meet Raquel at the Jitterbug Café. Kari, tree!” We swerved violently and the car lifted completely off the right-side wheels before bumping back down. “Trees do not move for cars! Cars avoid trees!”

Donna’s barking laughter rang through the tiny space as she clapped her hands, delighted.

“What are you doing? Are you safe?” Lend asked, shouting over the background noise coming through my end.

“Not right now, no. Red light! Red light!” We sailed through anyway, an SUV coming so close to clipping our bumper I could have counted the other driver’s teeth, all of which were showing in a grimace of terror. “Pull over! I’m getting out!”

“But we’re not there yet,” Kari said, turning all the way back to fix her round, watery eyes on me.

“Eyes on the road! The road! Stop stop stop stop stop stop STOP!”

Kari blinked, then turned around and slammed her foot all the way down on the brakes. I flew forward as the seat belt locked and dug into my collarbone so hard I was sure I’d be bruised. A screeching sound echoed through the Beetle, and the acrid smell of burning rubber filled my nose as we came to a complete stop in the middle of the road.

“I’m gonna call you back,” I said, my voice trembling, then I hung up.

Donna jumped out and flipped her seat forward, smiling helpfully as I fell out of the car and scooted on my hands and knees to the sidewalk, resting my forehead gratefully against the freezing cement.

Okay, maybe there were some forms of transportation worse than holding a faerie’s hand.

Donna patted me on the back, her hand coming down too hard. “That was fun!” she said. “Where should we go next?”

“Nowhere with you two, ever again.”

I turned and sat down. Kari had left the car where it stopped and walked over to us. She raised her eyebrows quizzically at me. “Are you okay, Evie?”

“No! You almost killed me!”

She shook her head vehemently. “No! We’re here to keep you safe. Always safe. We’re in charge of you.” She smiled proudly.

“You aren’t—” I paused and forced my face into a calm smile. The selkies lacked any artifice or pretense. Nona dodged my questions, but maybe they wouldn’t know they needed to. “Yeah. Of course! Remind me who put you in charge of keeping me safe?”

“Nona!”

Donna nodded in agreement. “And the shiny man.”

“The shiny man?” I asked. “You mean Lend?”

“No, the shiny man with hair and eyes like sunshine.”

I held my smile firmly in place. “Reth? The faerie?”

“Faerie, yes! That’s not his name though; he’ll never tell. He’s shiny. And pretty. I like it when he talks to me.” Donna reached up and smoothed her luxurious walnut-brown hair, smiling dreamily.

“I knew it! I knew Nona was working with Reth!” I stood, shaking with fury. Despite David’s insistence that we could trust that wicked tree spirit, I’d known something was up with her for months. And now she was assigning the selkies to keep tabs on me for Reth?

“Are you angry?” Kari asked, concern pooling in her eyes like tears. “Did we do something wrong?”

I took a deep breath, the bitingly cold air filling my lungs and stinging my throat. This wasn’t their fault. The selkies were as innocent and happy as seals playing in the waves, their immortal lives nothing but an eternal game. They were just doing what they were told—what they thought was best. “No, you didn’t do anything wrong. Thanks.”

“Okay! Let’s drive more, then!”

“NO! I mean, umm, I want to walk the rest of the way to the café, since we’re almost there. But you two can go. Lend is going to come and get me, and I’m always safe with him.”

Donna frowned dubiously. “Are you sure? We can stay. I’ll braid your hair!”

“And I have nail polish in the car!” Kari said, already bouncing in anticipation.

“No, you should go tell Nona that I’m safe. She might be worried.”

“Should we wait where you can’t see us, like we do when you’re in school?”

I froze my face into a mask of a smile, but the veins in my neck felt like they were going to explode they were pounding so hard with fury. I didn’t get out of IPCA’s controlling grasp to be spied on and monitored by a tree spirit and my crazy faerie ex. “You don’t need to. I talked to Nona today and she said it was okay for you two to leave me.”

Kari’s eyes narrowed, cutting their shape from near-perfect circles to almonds. “Are you sure she said that?”

“Absolutely.”

She held my gaze for another moment, then shrugged, smile bouncing back into place. “Okay then! See you later!”

Donna waved cheerily and they both got into the car, squealing away. I watched until they turned the corner, then ran as fast as I could toward the café. When I got there, I collapsed against the dark brick exterior, my breath fogging out in pants.

How long had they been tailing me? Which other paranormals were in on it? Nona and Grnlllll for sure, but them I already suspected. Those three weird women this morning—I’d seen them once before talking to Nona. The dragon? Did she have a dragon tailing me? I looked up at the sky, paranoid, but didn’t see any white monsters snaking through the sparse clouds.

What about … Arianna? I bit my lip. She lived with me, after all. Who better to watch me than my roommate? I put my head back against the rough, uneven bricks. I wanted Lish back. I’d never, ever had to doubt her or question her motives. I knew she was my friend no matter what. It had been the two of us against the world, and sometimes I didn’t know where my place was without her to talk to.

Arianna wasn’t the friend Lish had been. She was cranky and rude, and sometimes it seemed like she hated me more than she liked me. But then again, Arianna really wasn’t the same type of paranormal as Nona and her ilk. They came that way. Arianna was forced into the paranormal realm against her will.