Glimmers of Glass (A Glimmers Novel #1: Cinderella)

Chapter 5

The second I stepped in the door, it was clear a storm was brewing. Even someone of my undeveloped empathetic skills could tell when Reginald and Marigold Feye were about to get into a major argument. I wasn't surprised. The tension in the house had been slowly rising ever since last night's dinner, when Mom had disagreed with Dad about elven trade policy in front of his boring coworker, Charles.

I got all of three steps in and shut the door behind me before I heard Dad's voice bellowing down the stairs.

"If you don't like it, why don't you take it up with the Dwarf Coalition?" he shouted. "I'm sorry if my saving the magical world is inconvenient for your little get-togethers."

"It's not a party," Mom said. "It's a meeting with your son's teacher, and I just can't wait to explain to his Humdrum teacher that his father cares more about some stupid Dwarf Coalition than his own children. Or does it not matter to you that Daniel has been skipping class? I have no idea where he's been going or what he's been doing."

"Then why don't you parent your son?" Dad said. There was silence, and then the slamming of a door, probably the one in their bathroom.

I closed my eyes and sighed, mentally picturing the words bouncing off me and falling into the ground. Even a faerie like me who wasn't talented at reading other people's emotion tended to pick up a lot of emotional crap from other people. We were like magnets, attracting everything around us, good and bad, and my parents' fights were bad all the way through. Most faeries had good marriages, because arguments took such a toll on us. But not Reginald and Marigold. Nope, they could scream and swear with the best of them. I rolled my eyes up at the now-silent ceiling. I couldn't be more proud to be their daughter.

I walked quietly into the adjoined living room and kitchen. Daniel was there, slouched on the leather sofa with his phone between his hands. He stared intently at it. He picked up stuff even more than I did, and it sounded like whatever was happening upstairs had been going on for a while.

"Hey," I said, softly so I wouldn't startle him.

He glanced up. His face was pale and drawn, but he managed a half-smile. "Hey," he said. "Leftover pizza's in the fridge. I don't think Mom's doing dinner tonight."

But Mom was doing dinner. A moment later, I heard her footsteps clomping down the stairs. She marched into the kitchen, barely glancing at us, and started slamming pots and pans around. Sparks shot from the end of her wand, which was tucked in her hair. It was clearly only a matter of time before her head caught fire.

Daniel mumbled something about homework and stood up. I followed him, not bothering to come up with an excuse for escaping the room.

"What's the deal this time?" I said on the stairs, careful to keep my voice down.

"Nothing new," Daniel said. He sounded way too cynical for a kid his age. Then again, I had been too. "The Faerie Queen still hasn't picked an heir. The Dwarf Coalition insists that the Oracle's fountains around the city are hosting some kind of parasite, which is of course yet another probably unfounded criticism so the Dwarf King can finally get a seat on the Council. The usual."

He recited it all like he was some junior coffee-fetcher working for our dad, fully versed in the whole ordeal but bored out of his mind. I recognized the feeling. It had shadowed my days at Wishes Fulfilled before the Elle case had fallen in my lap and replaced boredom with panic.

We reached the top of the stairs and slipped silently past our parents' bedroom. When we were safely down the hall, I asked, "So what's the deal with you skipping school?"

"It's nothing," he said, in a long-suffering voice that said it was everything but that I shouldn't pry. Half of me wanted to leave it alone and applaud him for making his own choices.