I drove home, my hands clutching the wheel with a white-knuckled grip as I fought to hold myself together. My mom was in the middle of gushing over my performance when the booze finally got the best of her and she conked out. I was grateful for the silence, though I knew from experience it would be quite a production to get her out of the car and into the house in her condition.
When I pulled into our driveway and contemplated the task ahead, I realized that I couldn’t live like this any longer. Nothing could possibly be worse than living with my mother, constantly lying for her, trying to cover up that she was passed out drunk when she was supposed to be meeting with my teachers or driving me to some off-campus event. Ever since I could remember, I’d lived in mortal fear that my friends at school—what friends I managed to have when we moved around so much, that is—would find out about her and decide I was some kind of freak by association. A fear that, unfortunately, I’d found out the hard way was not unfounded.
I’d been the adult in this family since I was about five, and now it was time for me to take my life into my own hands. I was going to contact my father and, unless I got some kind of vibe that said he really was an abusive pervert, I was going to go live with him. In Avalon. In the Wild City that was the crossroads between our world and Faerie, the city where magic and technology coexisted in something resembling peace. Even in Avalon, I figured, I’d have a better, more normal life than I had now with my mom.
I’ve never been so wrong about anything in my life.
chapter one
My palms were sweaty and my heart was in my throat as my plane made its descent into London. I could hardly believe I was really doing this, hardly believe I had found the courage to run away from home. I wiped my palms on my jeans and wondered if Mom had figured out I was gone yet. She’d been sleeping off one hell of a binge when I’d left the house, and sometimes she could sleep for twenty-four hours straight at times like that. I wished I could be a fly on the wall when she found the note I’d left her. Maybe losing me would finally turn on the lightbulb over her head and she’d stop drinking. But I wasn’t holding my breath.
I’d had no trouble finding and contacting my father. Mom would never have dreamed of telling me his name when she was sober, and he wasn’t listed on my birth certificate, but all it had taken were a couple of probing questions when she was in one of her drunk, chatty moods to find out his name was Seamus Stuart. The Fae, she confided, didn’t use last names in Faerie, but those who lived in Avalon had adopted the practice for the convenience of the human population.
In the grand scheme of things, Avalon is tiny, its population less than 10,000, so when I’d gone online and brought up the Avalon phone book, I’d had no trouble finding my father—he was the only Seamus Stuart listed. And when I called and asked him if he knew anyone by my mother’s name, he readily admitted he’d had a girlfriend of that name once, so I knew that I’d found the right guy.
Before that first conversation was over, he had already asked me to come to Avalon for a visit. He’d even sprung for a first-class plane ticket into London. And never once had he asked to talk to my mom, nor had he asked if I had her permission to come visit him. I’d been surprised by that at first, but then I figured she’d been right that if he could have found me, he’d have spirited me away to Avalon without a second thought. Don’t look the gift horse in the mouth, I reminded myself.
The plane hit the tarmac with a jarring thud. I took a deep breath to calm myself. It would be hours still before I would actually meet my father. Being a native of Faerie, he couldn’t set foot in the mortal world. (If he’d decided to kidnap me, he’d have had to use human accomplices to do it.) The unique magic of Avalon is that the city exists both in Faerie and