Reign (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale 4)
Brody hesitated but nodded his head. “Okay. Since you’re coming with me Friday.”
“Why? What’s Friday?”
“The masquerade ball at my parents’ country club, of course.”
“A ball?” That one word made her skin crawl and her mouth go dry. Balls were full of fairy-tale possibility. It would be a sure opportunity for the Story.
“It’s that thing that you promised to attend.”
“I really need to ask more questions in the future.” Mina said, inwardly panicking but doing her best to appear excited.
“That would probably be a good thing.”
***
Scarves can be a great fashion accessory if utilized right. Incorrectly used, they’re a torture device for fashion-challenged teens. In Mina’s case, they were more the second. After her shower the next morning, she looked at three items Nan lent her the last time she’d been over—wedged heels, scarf, and lipstick—and decided to pick one. She chose the scarf, thinking it was the least dangerous of her choices. Mina felt like the simple silk scarf was choking her, but Nan always swore by them as “the perfect accessory to any outfit.”
She should have chosen the heels.
“Blech!” She glared at the chevron-patterned offensive material. This is as good as it’s going to get.
This morning Mina wouldn’t even give the ball a second thought. Her heart was soaring. Because someone knew. Brody knew.
Whether he would continue to believe her remained to be seen. He might change his mind and end up calling the psycho ward on her. But for the moment, she wasn’t alone. Which gave her a whole new outlook.
For the first night in months, she’d had a dreamless sleep.
She headed toward the kitchen to make a sandwich for lunch and made a face at her reflection every time she passed a mirror. Her bedroom mirror received a pig face; the bathroom she shot a bucktoothed expression. She’d just passed the hallway mirror with her jaw jutted out, when she caught something strange.
Had her skin seemed a bit translucent? She leaned closer to the hall mirror, within inches of the glass, and touched her face.
A polite cough spun her around. Brody stood by her front door. “Don’t worry. You look lovely.” He chuckled.
Her cheeks burned red with embarrassment. He stood there in his jeans and white V-neck shirt looking relaxed and confident.
Mina’s hair was wet from her shower, and she didn’t have a touch of makeup on. “Don’t you knock?” Mina frowned.
“Yes, and I even wait to be let in,” he nodded over to Charlie. Her brother was once again hauling a chair to the hallway, appearing ready for Operation Open Suitcase again. “He opened the door.”
“Well,” she said. “I guess that means you can come in.”
“I assumed as much.”
“So why are you here?” Mina asked, feeling dumb for having to ask why his tall handsome self graced her foyer in the middle of the afternoon.
Brody looked uncomfortable and glanced at Charlie. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “To protect you from any stray… um… Fae.”
“Oh!” Mina said, surprised. She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but her cheeks burned even hotter.
“That is, unless your problems have all gone away?”
“Uh, no.” Mina thwarted Charlie’s curiosity by pushing the door closed as soon as he opened it. She locked the door and tucked the iron skeleton key into her pocket.
He grabbed the doorknob and shook it angrily.
Brody continued, “But also to see if you’d like to come over and keep me company during a planning committee for the ball. My mom’s in charge of planning the event, and I know girls really get into this kind of thing.”
“Um, that would be most girls. Not me.”