Rules for Orion

chapter sixteen

Sixteen: Avery
September 3, 11:00 PM. Dwyer, VA.

We do not talk very much after that. Not at all, really. At eleven fifteen, Logan tells me I need to leave; his father is due back at eleven thirty. Punctual.
     I think, had either of us spoken, Logan would have realized what was happening and promptly stopped. He is like that.
     My lips are chapped, my hands are buzzing with skin and hair and fabric, and my blood feels fast in my veins when Logan does end up making me go. I have no idea what he will do when I am gone; he is still sitting on the desk when I turn to leave.
     I feel neither better nor worse than I have for the past weeks. I just feel warm. And less here. Which, I suppose, is better. In a way.
     Outside, there is a young boy standing on the sidewalk. I blink, and there is no one. I blink, and there is a young boy standing on the sidewalk, closer than before.
     Eamon always looks the same, but I manage to misremember something small about his appearance every time.
     Of course, he can appear however he wants, but this is his preferred form: a white-skinned (maybe-eleven-years-old) human child with jaw-length, curly black hair, bottle-green eyes, and a disturbing golden ratio.
     When not in the court, he is typically clothed the same--a vest and a knee-length skirt that looks like someone has blindly attacked a length of silver tulle with a particularly dull knife. Vines climb up and around his calves, dispersing in a ring of tiny violet flowers around his knees. The stems seem to disappear smoothly into the flesh of his ankles.
     He smiles like he wants to see me bleed. I have done something wrong.
     He is so obviously Seelie.
     Eamon tilts his head side to side as he smiles, scrunching up his nose. "Charming scene," he says.
     I do not know what makes me more uncomfortable: the fact that a three-hundred-year-old Seelie fairy has watched me making out with Logan Morcant, or the fact that I did not anticipate it in the slightest. I had not even thought about it.
     Which, again, I suppose, is a good thing.
     I look at the ground and shrug.
     "It's funny, though," Eamon says, "that it's what you're spending your time doing."
     I keep looking at the ground.
     "Because I'm under the impression that you have things to which to attend, Aedui."
     "Yes," I say.
     "And there is no help that ignorant human adolescents can provide on that matter."
     I stare and stare and stare at the ground. The crickets keep the silence from becoming a vacuum. "...Yes."
     Eamon ejects a small almost-laugh. "Especially if your physical arrangement makes it, at times, impossible for them to speak."
     "Yes."
     "I understand, that, being a hybrid," Eamon starts, and the only way he is not breaking fey laws on lies is because I understand can be dubbed a figure of speech, "you have desires that you've never been able to fulfill before."
     I say, without thinking, "That's not true."
     "Well, it really doesn't matter."
     I try not to feel anything at all.
     Eamon continues, "What matters is that if this is going to be a distraction from your task and you will not abstain, I'll have no qualms in forcing you to."
     He does not really have to threaten me. Everything I know he is capable of goes through my head in a few seconds: Illness, stealing mythos, hypnotism, and the Faery Stroke--high fey's ability to push instant death upon those they deem justly deserving of it.
     Other things, too. Worse things.
     I could not tell you why exactly the court bothers with threatening me and not just finding this manuscript themselves. Perhaps it is easier? Perhaps more fun?
     A thick, heraldic liquid of a feeling in my stomach tells me it is most likely both.
I suddenly wish very much that I was back inside.
     Eamon opens his mouth to speak again, but barely gets out half a syllable before he disappears. I think, at first, that he must be behind me, but he is not anywhere I can see. Then I realize he had seen something that I could not, possibly something that hasn't even happened yet.
     The door to Logan's house opens. He stands at the top of the steps, surveying the street with a pale pink bag slung over his shoulder.
     He does not notice me, not at first.
     He keeps looking over the street, then freezes.
     "Shouldn't you be gone by now?"
     He sounds like he's being rude, but he isn't.
     "Shouldn't you be inside?"
     "I thought I..." Logan glances down at his phone. "Never mind. I'll—see you tomorrow."
     He waves me off, I salute, and turn to keep walking back home. I expect to glance back and see him gone, back inside, but he is still sitting on the steps, holding that bag, looking at his phone, and staring intently at the place Eamon used to be standing.
     Eamon would never let himself be seen by someone who is not supposed to see him. He simply is not that careless.
     Perhaps Logan saw me standing outside of his house and speaking to no one.
     Perhaps he thinks me mad.
     But he did say he will see me tomorrow.