I drove for hours.
At the time, I had little concept of where to go; just a vague notion of the need to escape. I got on to the first highway, and allowed it to carry me for a while before I realized that Mom's car – my car, now, I guess – was in desperate need of gas.
While it refilled, I dug around for money in my mother's purse, and found a piece of paper.
It had been written on hastily, and had been from the pad of paper that lived near the phone in the cabin. The writing was difficult to read, but soon I knew that I was picking out my mother's handwriting, which was downright dreadful when she was rushing.
The note detailed the best way for me to live. She told me to go to New York City – it was close, and the fae practically passed out getting near there. The letter said that there was already an apartment leased out there – she'd been planning on having to hide me for so many years by now that she had kept something on the side.
She also told me that my bank account had enough money to keep any sensible person running for a while. Mom also gave me permission to take on her identity whenever I had to. "Feel free to forge my signature," she wrote, "And if you must, use my driver's license and credit cards. No drinking, though." I almost laughed. Just like Mom. At the very end was an "I love you, Grace. With all my heart." Perhaps that was when I starting tearing up. I just couldn't stop myself.
Here I was, running from people more powerful that I was. Suddenly the responsibility of living was dumped upon me. I needed to keep going on what my mother had left me. For all I knew, I had also now been reduced to zero parents. Oh, and if I got captured again life would suck even more. That sort of pressure makes a person crack. My mother's last tender words made me break down.
I sat there sniffling until I noticed that the gas tank was full. With that, I ran my mother's credit card through the machine and then solemnly drove off. My resolve was firm. Mom thought I could do this, and I could. I just had to be careful. I set my jaw, and off I went to New York.
The only downside to the car mom had left me was the lack of a GPS. I had no idea where I was going, and bungled around New York until I finally found the apartment building that I was supposedly going to be living in.
Mom had left instructions for the woman who owned the place that said either she or I would end up picking the keys up. This woman even had my school pictures to use as proof that I was who I said I was. She escorted me up to my apartment, and gave me a quick tour before leaving me with the keys.
The apartment was nice. It was just slightly larger than my room, and had a tiny, but homey, kitchenette installed. The bed was small, but comfortable. The bathroom was similar in nature. It even came with a lovely view of the streets below. I was somewhere nearby to Central Park in location, so I wasn't looking at dirty streets and the like. I only had a vague notion of how much this must be costing my mom.
It was when I finally looked in the fridge that I knew I needed food.
Thankfully, Mom had taken me to New York on more than one occasion. They had always been extremely short trips, but it had happened often enough that I knew where I could get food. Any large drugstore like Walgreens would do.
I found it all too easy to settle into a routine for the city. I got myself food at the Walgreen's, and what I couldn't get there I could easily make up for during the summer at the produce markets. Street fairs practically kept me clothed and fed because there one could at least haggle with the vendors.
Life was… okay. I needed a job though, and halfway through the summer I started working in a dance studio. It had been hard to persuade the owner – Charlotte Dusablon – that was indeed worthy of the job. I taught the little kids. Some of them were there because they actually had talent; most were there because mummy wanted her little angel to be a ballet dancer.
I was extremely careful – to the point where one could say that I was paranoid. I didn't want my teaching to turn into a magic show, and I didn't know how to prevent that from happening. Perhaps that was why I started practicing what I could do with my magic at home.
The first few self-taught lessons were… uneventful. At times I thought that my magic would only work in the faerieland. When I melted one of my window plants with a few hip hop moves I'd picked up from another dance teacher, I reconsidered that thought.
My control got better, and I began to get a sense of what it meant to feel the magic moving through the dance – which is harder than you might think. Focusing it to a purpose? That was much, much harder. With the magic moving through the dance, I've tossed around a few coffee cups and made some very bizarre things happen.
The point is I've never tossed one of my kids across the room because I couldn't control my magic. I'd never be able to forgive myself if something like that happened.
During the tail end of winter and a little into spring, I was paranoid enough to look twice at everyone who walked around me. I watched like a hawk for any magic and avoided people who looked like fae. There was no doubt in my mind that the fae were doing all they possibly could to drag me back into their world, and there was no way in hell that I would return.
After a while, I became less shifty and more comfortable with the fact that very few faeries were in New York. In fact, I didn't run into a single one. With my mother's money, my dream job, and a nice apartment, this was my heaven.
Too bad I'm just not that lucky.
It was in early September that the wooziness started setting in. At times, I had little dizzy spells, where I felt like I couldn't breathe. Then I couldn't touch railings anymore without a zing of pain. Things got progressively worse, until I realized what was happening. My half-fae nature was setting in. Ms. Dusablon gave me a vacation, and I headed out of the city.
The car was painful, but as I got further away from New York, the better things got. I had no idea where I was going; I just knew that I needed to get somewhere else. I went towards the Hamptons. A beach sounded great, and I knew that I would be able to take a breather nearby to the water.
I remembered that my mom had loved beaches. We'd gone on vacations to Florida and we had always spent a lot of the time on the beach. Well, that certainly made sense now.
I parked my car as close to the beach as I could get. Tossing my sneakers off, I leapt out and danced in the sand a little bit. It felt good between my toes. Grinning, I felt the wind play with my curls. I was giddy with the euphoria of no longer feeling that oppressive iron all around me.
Somewhat drunkenly, I stumbled through the sand and allowed myself to fall backwards into the gritty stuff. At that time, I could have cared less about whether or not I was making a fool of myself or my safety, really. It just felt good to be liberated of the city. Free of all other thoughts than how nice it was to have sand in my toes, to smell the water.
Slowly, I rolled myself onto my belly so I could look around. No one else was on the beach, seeing as it was cloudy today, and it threatened to rain. A little water wouldn't kill me. I laughed at the thought, and my gaze turned to the water.
Perhaps it was then that I should have stopped to consider things. But I was too busy reveling in being able to breathe. I pulled myself to my feet, and rolled up my jeans. Once that was done, I stepped into the waves that lapped at the shore.
Chilly water hit my feet, but it was not cold enough to stop my mad desire. I stepped further in. Finally, the water was reaching my knees. However that wasn't satisfactory. I looked – if for a few seconds – at my jeans, sighed and decided that I really didn't care. There were always more jeans in the world. I got to the point where the water touched my belly and ignored the strength of the pull from my soaked jeans.
The water pushed up against me in small, but strong, waves. I had to step back down into it so that the wind wouldn't chill the parts of me that were wet. But I felt happy. There was a wild contentedness in this moment.
Until something cold and clammy wrapped itself around one of my ankles, and pulled.
I went under immediately, and panic brushed away my happiness in a moment. Instinctively, I began to kick at whatever it was with my free foot. My foot struck something, hard, and I pushed away from it the moment I was freed from its grasp. Breaching the surface, I struggled in my wet clothes to get to land.
And I was further away than before.
Hastily, I pulled off my pants and shirt and without the weight I was able to move much faster. I stumbled onto shore in my undergarments, and glanced back at the waves. Women – disfigured, hideous women – peeped up from the water one by one. Like the women who had been in Marie's prediction…
My thoughts flickered back to the woman in the mirror, and she apologized for showing that scene. I had been crying by a pool in that version, when the women had grabbed my ankles and pulled me screaming into the water.
'Minus the crying and location, this is her vision. You said your visions weren't accurate,' I thought, smiling. They hadn't gotten me and that in and of itself was a triumph. However their presence denoted something much worse. The wind blew angrily now, and I shivered. Well, I wasn't going to be hanging around for long.
I turned away from the water, and was faced with five horses. "Fuck," I mumbled, looking belligerently at them. Undoubtedly they were kelpies, like Mom. If it weren't for the presence of those women – who I believed were the sick, twisted version of mermaids – I would think it was odd, but at least bound by some reasonable explanation.
Unfortunately, my life was no longer within the reach of reasonable explanations.
One of the horses let out a shrill whinny, and reared back. Inside its maw, I noted a row of razor-sharp teeth. Deadly horsies, indeed. I narrowed my eyes and attempted to dance. But the sand was too damned unstable; my focus was shattered in moments.
The semi-circle of kelpies slowly closed in tighter, and I kept backing away. The waves splashed my heels, and I suddenly knew their game plan. They were going to trap me in the water, and I wasn't seeing any clear way out.
My focus was entirely on the kelpies – seeing as I knew people generally died from injuries caused by a horse – and I forgot to notice the mermaids. This time they grabbed both my ankles, and I fell against the sand. The wind was knocked out of me. My mouth was opened in a wide O of shock.
I struggled and dug my fingers deep into the sand. No matter how I fought, they simply wouldn't let me go. I knew I was screwed.
But then I heard hooves pounding on the sand, and the kelpies dashed into the surf. I also felt the grip on my ankles disappear.
Quickly, I stood up, wiping the clumps of wet sand off my belly and legs. "Thank you I- " I looked up at my rescuer and screeched in indignation. I covered myself as fully as I could, and began to run for the car with all my might. However, the horse he rode cut me off.
"Move aside, Arion," I growled out, even though I knew I was quite useless standing here with nothing but a bra and panties on with my ability to dance completely hindered.
He looked down at me, and looked angered for a few seconds, before he sighed and the anger dissipated. "I'd love to," he said, "But I'm your protector until further notice."