Interrogations
An Inkling of Magic - Chapter 11
Elspeth didn't know how much time had passed before Derek finally stirred into life again. The sun, at least, was still just as when she'd left the school, but she knew it had to be well past when she'd been expected home as her phone had been buzzing nonstop from inside her leather backpack. She'd tried freeing herself from Derek's grasp to answer the thing, but, even in sleep, his grip was almost impossible to budge. With her backpack smashed tight against him and her being unable to move enough to get at it, she could only hope that he'd wake up before Farren decided to come looking for her. Goodness forbid, he ever saw them together with Elspeth practically sitting on Derek's lap with his arm slung around her like she was a life preserver and he a drowning man. At least the tingling sensation where he had grabbed her had finally stopped, settling down to just a faint feeling of warmth.
She was just contemplating whether a sharp jab of her elbow into his side would sufficiently rouse him when a low groan came from behind her.
“Hw lng?” Derek asked, his words little more than a slurred mess and barely audible.
“What?”
“How long?” he asked again, this time a little clearer, “how long have I been out?”
“No idea,” Elspeth answered brusquely, “but judging by the way my phone has been buzzing, I'd say too long.”
He groaned again, but didn't make a move to do anything about their position.
“Mind releasing your death grip on me?” Elspeth asked in a voice that was as sarcastic as it was sweet.
“Srry,” came Derek's mumbled reply. With all the energy of a sloth, he loosed his grip around her waist and allow Elspeth to free herself.
A sigh of relief escaped her when she, once again, stood on her own two feet and relished in the feeling of no longer being restrained. She heard Derek groan from the ground below her and, soon, there was the sound of his shoes scraping against the dirty concrete as he used the wall behind him to push himself up.
“We should go,” Derek said, shaking the sleep from his head.
“My thoughts also,” Elspeth said as she started to text out an apology to her brother and a promise that she'd be home soon.
“Thanks for not getting us both killed, but I think it would be best if I went the rest of the way home by myself,” she added, still not looking up from her phone.
A hand covered hers, keeping her from pressing the 'send' button on the message she'd been frantically typing.
“That's not what I meant.”
“Look, I have enough on my plate with explaining to my worry wort brother what's taking me so long to get home from school without having to break up a fight he's bound to lose if he catches sight of you with me,” Elspeth explained, her words a little rushed in her anxiousness to get going again.
Derek shook his head.
“You're still not understanding,” he told her. “After what just happened, do you really want to go home and pretend it didn't?”
His green eyes, back to their usual vibrant colour, bored into hers, tempting her with the promise of something she'd been longing for for so long: answers.
Elspeth chewed on her bottom lip and she knew her own expression had to reflect the conflict that was raging inside of her. She was torn between forgetting everything that had just occurred for the safety of home and her desire to understand what was happening to her.
It could help you understand what's happened with Mr. Grimmlich. A voice whispered inside her head.
Elspeth frowned. The voice didn't quite sound like her own, but it didn't fully sound like anyone else's that she knew either. It was like two people were talking at once and their voices had melded into one.
A single word flitted across her mind: fae. Stiffening slightly, her eyes darted to Derek's ears and found them unchanged. They were still just as pointed as they had been moments before.
“So what will it be, Elspeth?” Derek asked in a voice as soft as an Irish mist, “leave here and continue to pretend to be something that you're not – normal...” the way he said normal grated on Elspeth's nerves and, judging by the way he paused to offer her a smirk and quirked eyebrow, he knew it. It was only when Elspeth narrowed her eyes at him that, with that playful glint in his eyes that terrified her, he finally finished what he was saying, “or come with me and finally learn the truth?”
“So help me, Derek, if this is another one of your tricks, I will find that basilisk that you claim made that glowing, yellow-green goo in Mr. Grimmlich's shop and feed you to it myself!” she growled.
She then watched as Derek's eyes cycled through so many shades of green and moods that it made her head spin trying to keep up with them all, let alone try and figure them all out. At first, they darkened at her threat, then they sparked with anger at the insinuation that she still didn't believe him about the basilisk venom followed a few more contemplative looks that she couldn't quite figure out the meaning of leading to the a reappearance of that predatory playfulness, before, finally, settling back to normal.
“No, you won't,” his smile making Elspeth want to smack it off of his face.
Before she could give into the urge though, he seemed to think better of it and the smile quickly disappeared, replaced with a more pensive, if slightly amused, expression as he added one final remark.
“But your point is well taken.”
~...~...~...~...~...~
“I thought you promised answers?” Elspeth asked when they'd walked several blocks in absolute silence.
Leaving the alley, Derek had reversed their course and taken her back in the direction they'd originally come from. They'd walked passed a confused looking Mr. Blake who just shook his head and muttered something that Elspeth thought sounded a lot like 'young people these days.'
“And you'll get them,” he assured her, his tone a cross between boredom and annoyance, “I thought patience was supposed to be a virtue?”
“It is, but, you see, we mere mortals don't have the luxury to share the same level of patience as the fae given that our lives come complete with its own self-destruct system courtesy of the second law of thermodynamics,” she replied with more snark and sarcasm than she had ever before delivered.
Derek rolled his eyes at Elspeth's dramatics, but she still caught the faint twitch at the corner of his lips. He was enjoying this. It seemed that, no matter how much snark she threw in his direction, all it accomplished was to amuse him. She didn't know whether she should be relieved that it didn't just make him angry, especially knowing now what she didn't know before about what he was, or patronized. Deciphering fae emotions was not something she'd ever thought she'd find herself tackling given she'd long given up believing they even existed.
A thought crossed her mind as they turned, yet another, corner.
“The fae are essentially immortal right?” her eyes fixed in the direction they were now going as she asked the question.
“Apart from someone or something killing us, yes,” he answered matter-of-factly before turning a little suspicious, “why?”
“So, you don't age, you basically live forever,” she continued, fighting to keep an impish smile off of her face as she did, “I was just wondering how old that might make you and how long it's taken you to come this close to graduation.”
To Elspeth's astonishment, her question was met with a burst of laughter. Not the mocking laughter she'd grown accustomed to at school whenever he appeared to be taunting or, but a genuine laugh with no falseness or cruelty hidden in it. Even more astonishing is that she rather liked the sound of his laugh. It was like being wrapped in the warmth of a summer sunbeam with no need or desire to be anywhere else.
Oh, stop it, Elspeth, this is Derek Corvelle you're thinking about, the guy that's tormented you nonstop for the past two years without explanation or apology. She chided herself, and, when she felt the rosy flush of her cheeks at having caught herself with such silly thoughts about her nemesis, she could only pray that Derek wouldn't notice or, for once, have the good sense not to comment on it.
“I assure you, I'm just as old as I look, and not secretly thousands of years old,” Derek told her, his eyes sparkling with mirth over the question, “in fact, I would think that for someone to be thousands of years old and still going to high school they are either very slow to learn or else are incredibly creepy and likely should be locked up as a predator. That, or they are mad. I think one go around of high school is sufficient enough torture.”
Elspeth snorted, “Hardly seems like torture for you. Everyone – well, almost everyone – fawning over you like you were the last chocolate bar in a candy shop.”
“It might come as a surprise to you, but I'm not especially fond of the 'fawning' as you put it,” he said.
It did come as a surprise to her, so much so that it stopped her in her tracks. The ground crunched beneath her shoes as she turned to face him.
“You really expect me to believe that?” she asked in disbelief, “it always looks like you're eating up all the attention that you get in school.”
“Most of which isn't even real,” he huffed before starting to walk away. “Now can we please keep moving?”
Elspeth didn't know what possessed her, but, before she could stop herself, she reached out and grabbed a hold of Derek's arm. Electricity shot through her as her fingers grazed his wrist, just as it had when he'd stopped her from falling the week before.
“Wha...,” she started to ask dumboundedly before shaking her head and returning to her original train of thought, “never mind. What do you mean by it's not real?”
“It's not important.”
Still holding his wrist, Elspeth repositioned herself so she was standing in front of him rather than beside, trying to get him to look at her. His head was tilted down, staring at where her hand held onto him and she couldn't see his eyes for the lock of his nearly black, brown hair that hung in his face.
“You do realize that you not wanting to give me a straight answer just makes me all the more determined to drag one out of you, right?” she asked him.
Finally, he snapped out of staring at her hand, and turned those eyes that so vividly displayed his emotions on her – not that she could decipher half of them. What she saw in them this time really ought to have frightened her, but her stubbornness had kicked in and she refused to back down. His jade green eyes danced a complicated waltz of irritation coupled with impish gaiety and, as usual, Elspeth found it difficult to keep up with them.
“I'm fae, remember?” Derek said at last, just when she was wondering what she might have to condescend to into order to get him to speak – a good stomp of his toes was sure to have garnered a reaction.
“And?”
He huffed in frustration, his free hand coming up to move the stray locks from his face before gripping a fistful of hair as he struggled with a response.
“Fae mature more slowly...”
“That explains a lot,” Elspeth blurted under her breath, interrupting him. Her eyes went wide when she realized what she'd just said aloud, but, when she opened her mouth to apologize for the outburst, she was surprised when he stopped her.
“Don't, I find your candor quite refreshing – that is, of course, when you're not accusing me of something or are too afraid to speak at all,” he told her, his eyes back to their usual, mischief filled brilliance that and that slight upturned smile that hinted at the smirk he so often wore. “What I was trying to say, was that some aspects of our magic take longer to master control of than others. Namely,....”
He paused, and, for the first time, Elspeth caught a glimpse of uncertainty. She gave him a gentle nod of encouragement, curiosity burning inside of her as to what could have put it there. Over the past few days, she'd seen many new expressions from him, but never anything that hinted at fear or lack of confidence. If there was something he had never lacked in before, it was self-assurance.
“Charm,” he told her with great reluctance. “No, not the kind you're thinking. While not completely unrelated to it, a fae's charm is a form of magic. Specifically, it's a part of the our manipulation magic and more akin to the gift of persuasion that some other magical beings possess.”
Elspeth stiffened and her already fair complexion paled even more at Derek's admission.
“No,” Derek urgently added when he saw Elspeth's reaction, “no. I've never used it on you and I couldn't even if I tried – for reasons that will be easier to understand later when we're finally able to get where we're supposed to be going rather than standing here talking at the edge of town, the fae's charm doesn't work on you. It does, however, on any normal human being – well, apart from that Irish lapdog of yours and his sister, but don't ask me why.”
“Hey! Kieran is not my lapdog!”
Derek raised an eyebrow in challenge to her indignant cry in defense of her friend, but didn't interrupt Elspeth's passionate defense.
“He's a fiercely loyal friend that I don't know what I would do without,” Elspeth said, breathing hard once she got it all out.
“Yes, just like a Labrador. Your brother trained him very well too,” he added, smirking as he said it and the glare that he received from Elspeth only made him smirk even more.
The words had hardly even left his mouth when Elspeth felt her phone buzzing and, before she even looked at the screen she knew who it was from. Sure enough, as she swiped to unlock the screen and checked her text messages there, above the half-written response she'd typed out and then forgotten about, there was a new message from Farren as if somehow summoned by Derek's mentioning of him.
“Oh shoot!” the time on her phone's clock making her panic at how long they'd been talking. It was almost six o'clock. Hurriedly, she erased her unfinished text and frantically typed and sent a response. She just prayed he hadn't already left the house to make good on his threat to come after her.
“Wherever it is you wanted to take me, we better hurry cause Farren is probably on his way to find me now,” she told Derek in a rush as she hastily put away her phone, sliding it into her pocket instead of back into her backpack where it had been. “Don't think for a second you're off the hook for explaining how you've been charming everyone all this time.”
Derek wasted no time in resuming a path in the direction they'd been heading in before Elspeth had stopped them.
“Wouldn't dream of it,” he whispered impishly in her ear as he squirted past her causing her to sprint after him in order to catch back up.
~...~...~...~...~...~
Deciding to leave the rest of her interrogations for when the threat of her brother finding her with Derek wasn't looming over their heads, Elspeth tried to figure out where it was he was leading her. After retracing their steps to where she'd first run into him, he'd lead her back where Mr. Grimmlich's store sat on Centennial Street before turning down Morris Road which ran perpendicular to it.
Oddly enough, Elspeth couldn't recall having ever gone down that way before. There wasn't a great deal down that road, as she was now discovering, and, what was on it, pretty quickly gave way to fields and rolling hills. Even the road that, in town, had been paved with barely a pothole in site had turned into washboard gravel road once they passed beyond the edge of town.
“Please tell me that I won't be having to walk home in the dark?” Elspeth moaned, her feet aching from all the walking.
“You won't be,” Derek assured her, “besides, we're nearly there now.”
Confused, she looked around her for any indication of where they might be headed, but, everywhere that she looked, all she could see were fields where tufts of green valiantly sought to erase last year's deadened growth and the signs of a winter now blissfully ended. The only thing that stood out to her was the isolated patch of dense woods that the fields surrounded. Somehow, it looked very out of place among the hills and fields of the north end of Hydendale instead of being with the rest of the woods that ran along the west side of town.
“And where, exactly, is it that we are going?” she asked, still surveying the vast emptiness before them.
“Right into the heart of the dragon's lair,” Derek muttered beneath his breath, so low that Elspeth had to strain her ears to hear it.
Dragon? Elspeth thought a tad uneasily. While she absolutely loved the fire-breathing, havoc-inducing creatures in books, she wasn't entirely certain she actually wanted to meet a real one. Well, perhaps a little, but not right after having been chased by an over-sized house cat. That was entirely enough adventure for one day, thank you very much.
“Not a literal dragon though.... right?” her voice squeaking slightly at the end.
The lack of reply from Derek didn't do anything to help her nerves either. Instead of answering her, he kept on walking and his eyes were fixed on the out of place woods that had puzzled her only moments before.
Well, look on the bright side, Els. If it is a real dragon, you likely won't have to worry about how to explain all this to Farren. Whether her mind was actually trying to be optimistic Elspeth wasn't entirely sure. What she did know though was that it was being entirely unhelpful, not that that surprised her much. She'd rather grown accustomed to the sarcastic pessimism that often plagued her thoughts.
“And here we are,” Derek said as he came to stop, his voice breaking her out of her head.
When her thoughts cleared, Elspeth saw that they were standing in front of where the woods met the road. She tracked Derek's gaze and found him staring down a long, narrow drive that lead into the heart of the woods. Leading to what, Elspeth couldn't tell as there were too many trees and the drive wasn't straight, but wound itself back with broad sweeping curves.
“I'll let you decide for yourself about the dragon,” he added before starting on down the drive.
For a while, all Elspeth could do was stare after him. Despite her burning curiosity, apprehension kept her feet glued to the gravel road. He was nearly out of sight when Elspeth heard him call back to her.
“Are you coming?”
If she hadn't been unsure before, she certainly was now by the sing-song way he'd asked it. Anytime his voice sounded like that only ever boded trouble with a capital 't', but it was much too late for her to turn back now.
“I really must be out of my mind,” she laughed humourlessly. Then, before she could think better of it, she ran down the gravel drive after him.