A Faerie's Curse (Creepy Hollow #6) by Rachel Morgan

out of him.”
    â€œCan’t you just ask him?” Darius says.
    I try to keep my frustration in. “He’s a close advisor to the Seelie Queen. I am one hundred percent certain he won’t approve of a group of outlaws breaking into the palace to rescue the man who enslaved our world a decade ago.”
    â€œI wasn’t suggesting you tell him that ,” Darius says. “Just, you know, say that you’re curious.”
    I raise an eyebrow. “Curious?”
    â€œOkay, you have a point,” Darius concedes. “He’s definitely not going to just tell you.”
    â€œI wonder if it might be possible to follow him,” Lumethon says. “You can keep yourself invisible so he doesn’t know.”
    â€œI could, but what about the faerie paths? I assume they’d be involved for at least part of the journey, so I’d have to touch him in order to wind up at the same destination on the other side. How will I get away with that without him noticing?”
    Lumethon looks at Gaius. “There are ways to follow him without being in physical contact.”
    Gaius nods, and I remember Ryn telling me something similar once. “Yes, there is magic that will allow you to follow him through the paths without touching him. One of those unstable spells that relies on precise enunciation of every word—and if I remember correctly, there are many words involved. It can easily go wrong, which is why it isn’t taught in schools. I’ll have to look it up.” He nods at his contraption, which lifts the quill in one spindly leg and makes a note on the scroll.
    â€œDoes Chase have anything he might want to add to this meeting?” Ana asks, looking across the table at me. “Is his situation still the same? Would you even tell us if something changed?”
    â€œOf course I would tell you. Why wouldn’t I?”
    â€œYou seem to be mighty possessive of that ring that doesn’t even belong to you. I just hope you’re not hiding anything from us.”
    Breathing in deeply, I manage to refrain from crawling across the table and punching Ana. Instead, I tug the ring off and send it spinning across the table. She slaps her hand down over it, glares at me for another moment, then picks it up and swivels her chair around to face the wall.
    I look at Gaius and mouth, What did I do wrong?
    He shrugs. “Well, that’s all for now. Some of you have work commitments, and Lumethon and Calla have a training session. I’ll see you all tomorrow morning, unless something comes up before then.”
    Everyone except Ana stands and moves toward the door. Darius complains about his boring day job and Kobe tells him to get over his laziness. Then they agree to meet later for a training session in the gym room next door. Lumethon greets me at the door, but before she can say anything further, Ana pushes her hand between us, the ring sitting on her open palm. “He says you shouldn’t wear it during training,” she tells me as I take the ring from her. “He doesn’t want to distract you.” Without waiting for a reply, she slips past me and out of the room.
    â€œI know she can be … difficult,” Lumethon says, “but give her a chance. She’s had a tough life so far, and she doesn’t trust easily.”
    I push the ring into my back pocket. “What happened, or shouldn’t I ask?”
    â€œWell, it isn’t a secret,” Lumethon says as we leave the meeting room. “She lost her whole family a year or two before The Destruction in an accidental fire. She lived with friends for a while, but … well, I won’t go into details, but it wasn’t a healthy situation. A few years after Draven’s defeat, at the age of eleven, she ran away. She survived on her own for three years, becoming particularly skilled at stealing and even more skilled at evading guardians. When someone eventually caught her,