We were going to make it in time. We had to.

“Trisha, are you okay?” Nina asked.

“Yep,” I said. She knew me too well. She didn’t look convinced but let it go.

Dan threaded through traffic and miraculously found a spot to coast to a stop near the entrance to our airline. He put the car in park and hopped out to help Nina with her bag.

By the time I got around the car, Dan had both our bags sitting on the curb. He gave Nina a hug and a quick peck, then turned and pulled me into a hug. I didn’t wiggle like usual. “You get this business handled, then just have fun with Nina, okay? You’re going to love your Aunt Wren.”

I hugged him back and pulled away. He wouldn’t be so happy if he knew the truth. I was putting his wife in danger. Maybe if I told him, he’d be able to figure something out, maybe he could keep the fae from taking me. Maybe he would ship me off to some government facility for aliens.

“Wow, I wish I was going with you, ladies. Have a great trip.”

No. Not worth the risk. What if they found out what I was and decided I was a freak? Or accepted me anyway and then the Council found a way to get to me? Either way was so not cool. I could handle this myself. “Thanks,” I said.

“You know we will.” Nina’s grin was huge. “Don’t mess the house up too much while we’re gone.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Nina stood on tiptoe and gave Dan a quick kiss on the cheek, grabbed her bag and headed for the sliding doors.

Dan and I looked at each other and shrugged, then I took off after her, afraid to lose her in all the airport craziness.

Nina was already most of the way to the check in line before I caught up. Her smile was big, like we were going on vacation, not to a crazy get away attempt. Well, as far as she knew, we were. She was probably thinking we would spend an hour with my bio family, then head off to enjoy the amazing shopping with her sister. Guilt chewed at me.

Hopefully she liked road trips. Someday I was going to have to pay them back for the return tickets that wouldn’t be used.

At the counter, Nina provided the paper tickets Dan had printed for us, her license and my school id. The attendant behind the counter didn’t look too excited about her job.

“Would you like to check your bags?” the attendant asked.

“No, we’re in a bit of a hurry, we don’t want to have to wait for them in Chicago,” Nina said. “We’ll just do carry on.”

“Please place them in the luggage rack and make sure they’ll fit,” the attendant monotoned. “Next.”

First step done, now security. Nina kept up a running commentary about things we could do in Chicago while we took off our jackets and shoes and threw them on the belt. She paused her speech to answer a text. “Wren says she’s pretty free this week! She’s going to meet us in Chicago tomorrow morning, and then we can catch an evening flight home. This is going to be awesome.”

“Uh huh,” I managed to get out. My palms started to sweat as we slowly moved forward. I nearly fainted from relief when they didn’t have the newest type of scanner like I’d seen in the movies. Just a metal detector. I’d never tried getting through one of the new ones before. I didn’t even know if it would be a problem. It never had been on field trips into the city. It just made me nervous. How different was fae physiology from humans? We lived longer and had magic, but other than that we were basically the same, right? So far no one had noticed anything at any doctor’s visits.

They couldn’t see magic on a machine. Could they?

We found our gate and sat to wait the twenty minutes until boarding time. A little surprising that Nina hadn’t been freaking out in security about the plane leaving without us. Normally she made us get everywhere way early.

“So, what are we doing? What time do you think we’ll be done today? Do you have a meeting set up? I’ve been trying to find places for us to visit. The zoo of course, what else would you like to see?” She tapped away on her phone for a second. “Wren wants to go to the aquarium with us, so we’ll wait for her on that.”

“I’m not sure how long it’s going to take. Better just not plan anything yet.” Nina’s face dropped and I wanted to slap myself for disappointing her again. But it was kinder to do it now than to wait until we were loading in the car to head to Indiana.

A strange feeling came over me, like something wasn’t right. Like someone was watching me. I looked around, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to either of us.

Weird. We waited for the boarding call, her playing on her phone, probably texting Dan and Wren both, me keeping an eye on the crowd. Talk about teenager/adult role reversal.

Finally they called boarding for our flight. I waited impatiently for the announcer to get to our row.

“Zone Two, you may now board. If you have Zone Two on your ticket, please board.”

Nina elbowed me. “That’s us, we’re in row seven.” As if I hadn’t been sitting here staring at my ticket for the last fifteen minutes. But I shouldn’t complain, she was taking this trip for me.

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After letting the attendant scan our tickets, we filed down the long, cold, collapsible tunnel into the plane.

“Here we are.” Nina stopped at our row and threw her bag up, then reached back and took mine from me, smashing it in beside hers. She gestured for me to squeeze in to the seating section first. I moved in and plopped down in the window seat. I watched them load suitcases into the hold below, waiting to get this trip started. What time was it in Chicago now? Had Jaime started dialysis yet? “What time is it?” I asked Nina.

She looked down at her phone. “10:10. Looks like we’ll be leaving right on time.”

10:10. 9:10 in Chicago. Rebecca and Jaime were probably just getting started. This was going to work. It had to work.

A voice came over the speakers and the flight attendants went out in the aisles for some kind of safety demonstration. Everyone else on the plane seemed to ignore it, but I watched carefully. This was my first time flying, I needed to know this stuff.

About halfway through the speech I felt a prickle on my skin. Nothing bad, just nothing I’d really felt before. I looked around but nothing seemed out of place. Probably just the excitement of flying.

The stewardess finished her talk and moved out of the line of sight. A minute after a voice that introduced himself as the pilot came over the speaker. Clear skies ahead, hoping to land on time. Perfect.

I leaned against the glass, staring at the ground as we slowly backed away from the gate. Pressure built in my ears.

Nina patted me on the shoulder. “So exciting!”

Not exactly the word I would use, but we could go with that. We moved out onto the tarmac. Two other planes were ahead of us in line. My fingers curled around the arm of my seat involuntarily as the first one thundered by. The other plane ahead of us moved out onto the runway, then sped away. Our turn. The plane started out slow, a great lumbering beast, but picked up speed fast. My stomach clenched.

It was only a second later that there was a slight jolt and we were in the air. I gripped the arm of my seat tighter, eyes glued to the shrinking ground. And that was it. We were flying.

“You okay, honey?” Nina asked.

“Yeah,” I answered. “Never been on a plane before.” Probably because my mom had never had any ID.

Nina’s smile covered her face. “Really? I haven’t gotten to do many first experiences with you. That’s neat. Hopefully we have a lot more of those this weekend.”

It was kind of neat. That Nina would do this for me was amazing. Like something a real mom would do. I studied her for a second while she looked past me and out the window.

I’d been pretty lucky to land a home with her and Dan. Plenty of other home experiences had taught me the difference.

I followed her lead and looked back out the window. Cars were barely visible below. How high were we? Would I heal if we plunged to the ground from this height? Probably, but Nina sure wouldn’t.

“Can you tell me yet? What the plan is for Chicago?” Nina asked.

I kept my gaze out the plane window, my stomach leaping every time we hit a slight bump. So stupid, with all had I been through. Trolls, the hyran, and now I was scared of something so normal as flying. Pathetic. I consciously loosened my grip on the armrest, my fingers aching for a second. “I don’t really want to talk about it here.” Truth. But I also didn’t want to talk about it anywhere else. Not that I was going to get away with that.

Nina glanced around the plane. “I guess this isn’t too private. But you’re going to have to get into better detail once we get off this thing, or I’m sitting us down until we can get a flight back and we’re going straight home.”

Fair enough. I nodded. Nina laid her seat back and leaned into it. “Nap time.”

I tipped my chair back too. Nina’s eyes were closed already, but every time I shut mine I got that same uneasy feeling of being watched. I let her sleep and kept an eye on the other passengers.

Nina didn’t even wake up when the attendant stopped by with drinks and snacks. I told her what Nina would want and then ate mine. The snack worked for a few minutes, but then I was eying hers. I was able to control myself for thirty minutes or so, then I gave up and ate hers too.

A tedious hour later and the fasten seatbelt light dinged on. No wonder no one else seemed all that excited about flying, this was boring. I sighed. But the light meant we were about there, right? Sitting here, my mind on little Jaime was torture. How could anyone even think about putting a kid that age in danger?

“Flight attendants, prepare for landing,” the pilot’s voice said over the speakers. I reached over and nudged Nina. “We’re almost there.” She stretched and yawned. “Did I sleep?”

“Only the entire trip,” I fake grumbled.

She grinned. “Good, I needed that. What time is it?”

“Here? 12:45.” We were cutting it close, but it would be fine. Cray would keep Starren and Wade away and the family had stayed safe without my help this long. Everything was going to be fine.

“I can’t believe I slept that long. But it has been a crazy couple of weeks.” In other words she hadn’t been sleeping because she’d been spending her nights worrying about me. Ugh, why had I started caring about stuff? It made life so much more work.

The plane sank through the clouds toward the ground.

The city formed beneath me, buildings stretching up into the smoggy sky. It looked a lot different from up here, the buildings not as tall, the streets much cleaner. Which I wasn’t supposed to know. The ground rushed up, then we were hovering over it for just a second before a slight jolt.

“Landing,” Nina said. “Glad that’s over, flying is so boring.”

I raised an eyebrow. Maybe for me, but she’d slept the whole time.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

The plane coasted nearly to a stop, then lurched forward toward a gate. Once we stopped for good, the attendant made the last of the announcements and seat belts started clicking off up and down the rows.

I wiggled past Nina and stood up in the aisle. Man, that felt good after sitting for so long. At least it felt like a long time. I didn’t sit much, other than school. I reached to grab my bag and that same feeling of warning swept through me. Something was definitely wrong. I looked around the plane. No one was even glancing our way. The man in the seat ahead of us was going after his own bag, the lady with the kid across from us was looking frazzled, trying to collect all their junk. What was going on?

“Don’t you think?” Nina was asking.

“What?”

“That it’s time to get something to eat? I’m starved.”

“Yep, you know me, always ready to eat,” I answered, not really paying attention to her yet. Something had to be going on. Still, no one stood out to me.

Nina laughed while she stood, putting an arm around my shoulders. “Sure do, I bet you’re even hungrier than I am, even if you did eat my in flight snack. Whatever it was, I didn’t even see it.”

“Can we get it to go? The food I mean?” Because no matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise, something was going on. I’d never really felt like this before. The creepy feeling. Another squint around the plane didn’t change the fact that everything looked normal.

“Sure. But what’s the hurry?” Nina grabbed her bag from the upper bin.

“Just want to get this done.” We waited together for a minute until the line ahead of us finally started to thin.

It started up again, the feeling, causing the walls of the plane to close in around me, trapping us. I took a breath, trying to fill my lungs to the max, but my chest was so tight. What was going on? What was causing this? Something was definitely not right, but I had no idea what.

“You okay?” Nina asked, her voice somewhat distant.

“Yeah,” I answered. “Just hungrier than I thought.”

Hopefully that was it. Because if not, things were about to get interesting.