Faery Born (Book One in the War Faery Trilogy) by Donna Joy Usher Read Free Book Online Page B

let them sort it out or it will be a constant problem,’ Mum said.
    Cecil slithered further over the edge, flicking his tongue as he tasted the air around his victim. Scruffy stared at Cecil with a wide, doggy grin as he released his own secret weapon. A smell, so potent my eyes watered, rolled over us.
    Poor Cecil, his tongue still out of his mouth, went limp. The weight of his head dragged the length of his body slithering over the edge of the table to the floor, where he lay in a pile of tumbled coils.
    When the air had cleared enough, we continued the conversation. ‘So Mum, the courting thing, what does it all mean?’
    ‘It’s like dating, but a bit more formal.’
    ‘What if I don’t want to date him?’
    ‘Don’t want to date that?’ Mum asked.
    ‘What woman of flesh and blood would not want to date that?’ Grams fanned herself with her hands. ‘I saw him at the Tri-Race Convention a few years ago. Hubba hubba.’ A knock at the front door disturbed her and she leapt out of her seat like a scared rabbit and bustled off towards her rooms.
    I shook my head at her eccentricity as I hopped up to let Sabby in. She was taking me shopping for a dress.
    ‘Pancakes?’ she said, peering past me to the diningroom table.
    ‘Help yourself.’
    ‘I shouldn’t, not if we’re going clothes shopping. I might bloat.’
    I burst out laughing and pushed her towards the table. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word bloat.’
    Scruffy waddled over to her, a pathetic look on his face as he eyed off her plate.
    ‘Now he,’ I said, ‘knows all about bloating.’
    We didn’t leave for the shops until I had filled Sabby in on the morning’s developments and then answered about a zillion questions. Even after we got to the Eynsford Department Store she kept plying me with new ones. Most of them were about Aethan, and most of them I couldn’t answer, but all of a sudden she said, ‘When are you trying out for the Advanced Academy of Witches?’
    ‘I’m not.’ I held a dress up in front of me while I studied myself in the mirror. ‘What were they thinking when they designed this?’ It had bows on the hips and shoulders.
    ‘What do you mean you’re not?’ She shoved another dress at me. It was as bad as the previous one.
    ‘Which word didn’t you understand?’
    ‘Very funny. Why aren’t you going to try out?’
    ‘I wouldn’t get in.’
    ‘You don’t know that.’
    ‘I can’t control my powers. And besides, nothing there interests me.’ The problem with that was that I didn’t know what interested me.
    I wasn’t sure if her scandalised look was for the dress I had pulled off the rack or what I’d just said. I was guessing it was for what I’d said.
    ‘Come on,’ I said before she could launch into a spiel on how wonderful the college was, ‘there’s nothing here that suits me.’ I dragged her from the shop and she thankfully left the subject alone.
    ‘Coffee?’ she asked instead.
    A man, dressed like Aethan had been – all fur and leather, caught my eye. He sat at a table in the middle of the shopping centre and cleaned his nails with a dagger. A long scar ran down the side of his face and a pile of brochures sat on the table in front of him. He didn’t look very interested in handing them out.
    ‘Hang on,’ I said to Sabby.
    I approached him warily and stared at the brochures. He lowered his dagger and eyed me through his thick, bushy eyebrows.
    ‘Nothing for you here,’ he said.
    ‘How do you know that?’
    He had a menacing feel about him. Even though he was sitting still, I had no doubt he could snap me like a twig.
    ‘You’re a girl,’ he said, starting to clean his nails again.
    I reached out and picked up a brochure. ‘Border Guards?’
    ‘That’s right,’ he said, not even looking up.
    ‘What do you do?’
    ‘We guard the borders between our magical world and the others.’
    ‘I might be interested in being a Border Guard.’ I might be, if Aethan was one.
    ‘You