0470208001339009571 1 lament- the faerie queens deception, стр. 54

I waited slow minutes while he looked at the check and counted out a tip, and then I pulled him out of the restaurant and back into the dull red light of the parking lot. With every step I took into the night, the pale moon looking down from overhead, I felt like I was shedding a skin; a weighty slab of flesh that peeled away to reveal a brilliant, light creature inside. All around me was a wall I'd spent sixteen years building, and with every thud of my heart, pieces crumbled from it. I was practically shaking by the time we reached the car, and before he could get his keys out, I kissed him. Crazy, out-of-control kissing, my mouth pressed against his, my arms linked around his neck.

Caught off guard, Luke took a moment before he wrapped his arms around me and kissed back, his fingers crumpling my shirt. There was something honest and raw in our kisses; a gasp of fear or impending loss that we couldn't

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or wouldn't acknowledge in conscious thought. He held me tightly, lifting me off my feet and sitting me on the hood of his car so I wouldn't have to stand on my tiptoes to reach him, and I tasted the skin of his neck and his face and his lips until I had no more breath, and then I linked my legs around him and kissed him some more.

Inside the car, my phone rang, quiet but clearly audible. I didn't want to get it. I didn't want this night to end, because I didn't know what tomorrow would look like. But Luke's hands dropped to his sides and he rested his face against my neck, out of breath. "You have to get that, don't you?"

I wanted to say no. But while I tried to imagine how I could justify ignoring it, Luke lifted me from the hood of the car and got his keys out of his pocket. The phone had stopped ringing by the time he retrieved it from the passenger seat, but my parents' number was still displayed under the words missed call.

Standing outside the car, shivering for no reason, I punched the redial button and pressed the phone to my ear. Luke stood behind me and crossed his arms over my chest, pressing his cheek against mine while I listened to the phone ringing.

"Deirdre? Where are you?" Mom's voice had a strange edge to it that I didn't recognize.

"At the Sticky Pig. We--"

"You need to come home. Right now."

I hadn't expected that. Maybe her chastity radar had gone off. "We just finished getting dinner.

The party--"

"Deirdre, just come home. It's important."

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The phone clicked and I stared at it for a few moments before relating the call to Luke. He released me abruptly. "Okay. Get in."

I got into the passenger seat, unhappy with the turn of events. "I don't want to go."

"I don't either," Luke said. "But something's happened. We need to go."

We made the short drive from the Sticky Pig to my parents' dark driveway in record time. Every light in the house was on, and I saw silhouettes in the kitchen window. Luke took my hand tightly and we went in together.

Mom was inside the dim yellow kitchen, pacing as restlessly as a caged tiger, her face curiously mottled. Beyond the kitchen door I could see Dad talking on the phone. Mom froze in her steps when she heard the door open, and her eyes fixed on me. "Deirdre." Her eyes traveled down my arm to the hand that Luke held and then stopped, hardening. She took two steps across the room and snatched my hand out of Luke's.

"Mom!" I snapped.

But Mom kept my hand in a pincer grip, lifting it to stare at my fingers. "You're wearing Granna's ring. This is her ring."

The look on her face scared me; I snatched my hand back. "She gave it to me on my birthday."

"You're wearing her ring," Mom repeated. "You've been wearing it all along. Since before the coma."

I shrank back from this wild-eyed creature that had

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taken the place of my mother. Luke's hand on my back steadied me. "She gave it to me, Mom. In the driveway."

Mom pointed at it wordlessly, her finger shaking, and then made her hand into a fist. Finally, she formed the words and spat them at me. "She's dead."

Strangely, I thought of the emotion I ought to feel without feeling it, as impartial as a National Geographic field researcher, carefully watching the events and chronicling them in a notebook.

Deirdre finds that she is saddened by the news of her grandmothers death, and moreover, suddenly fears for the rest of her family and friends.

But I didn't actually feel those things. I knew that I ought to, but I felt absolutely nothing at all, like I'd just walked into the kitchen and Mom had told me off for being late.

"Did you hear me?" Mom didn't even seem to notice that Luke was there. "She's dead. The hospital called us. Your father's on the phone with them now."

"How?" I finally managed.

Mom's voice shook. "Does it matter?"

"Terry?" Dad's voice, deep and calming, called from the other room. "Could you come here a second?"

Mom whirred to the other room; the kitchen seemed empty and mute without her frenzied presence. I didn't want to look at Luke. I didn't know why. Maybe because he would look at my face and see that there were no tears, that I was a terrible person. In my pocket, my phone beeped a text message; it didn't realize that this wasn't an ordinary night, and that a moment of silence was called for.

Luke reached out and caught my arm, turning me

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toward him. "You can cry later, Dee. The tears'll come later." He looked at me, eyes narrowed. "I have to go find what she was working on. Something to protect your family. I'll bring it back here."

Fear rose