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

Chapter 26

Shutting my bedroom door didn't block out the sound of my parents fighting. It wasn't the sound that was bad, though. It was all the emotions rolling off through the house in nauseating waves.

It never stopped amazing me how insensitive some faeries could be to the other faeries around them. Didn't they realize Daniel and I got a healthy dose of secondhand drama every time they started snipping at each other? I'd put on music to drown them out but then turned it off again. It was too much stimulation, so I just sat on my bed and watched the rain speckle my bedroom window

"I'm sorry this house isn't good enough for you," my dad said. A wall of anger slammed through from their bedroom to where I sat on my bed. I'd been exercising my empathic skills lately, and my throbbing head way the payoff. I hadn't felt their arguments like this in a long time.

My mom's voice was high-pitched and too fast. "You think this is about the house, Reginald? You think this is about our possessions? I'm so happy to know that's how you see me."

"What else am I supposed to think?" he said. "You don't want me to work late. You don't want me to take this special assignment for the Council. You don't want me to do anything to support our family. You want to move to goddamn New York and 'start over' in a 'real home.'"

"Not because of the house, you idiot," she said. "How is that your first conclusion? This assignment feels like trouble. I happen to have a good intuition about this kind of thing, or have you forgotten? Was my divination ability just something nice that made me look like a more attractive wife you could show off at parties, or did you want me to actually use it to help our family?"

My phone buzzed. I ignored it as my dad's voice rose.

"Someone attacked a bunch of goddamn Humdrum ghost hunters and I'm the one who has to clean that up," he yelled. "Me. Do you know how much goddamn work it takes to erase those memories and track down all the film of the incident? We still haven't found the culprit to bring him to the Tribunal. But no, you don't care about that. You want me to drop everything and move. The Oracle gave me this assignment. The Oracle. You think you're so special? You think you're as good as the Oracle?"

"Yes," Mom snapped. The pronouncement was so audacious I lost my breath for a moment. It sounded like Dad had, too.

A long silence held the house in limbo while we all waited to see what would happen next. Finally, I heard my dad's voice, and had to strain hard to hear what he said. "God," he breathed. "God, Marigold. You really have lost touch with reality."

A tiny sound near my door caught my attention. A second later, the door cracked open. Daniel's face peeked in, mostly just wide eyes and pale skin that felt as cold as mine. "Hey," he said.

"Come on in," I said. He ducked inside and closed the door behind him.

He shifted between his feet for a second. Both his hands were wrapped in tight white fists around his palm, clenching rhythmically like a heartbeat. I couldn't tell whether the tension in the air was from him or me or our parents or just the nasty mixture of all of them. I offered an encouraging smile. "What's up?" I said.

He shook out one of his hands, which instantly flooded with blood and turned back into the milky color that passed for healthy skin in the Feye family. "I was wondering if you'd do me a favor," he said. He kept his voice low, but whatever the favor was, it was important to him. He rocked forward on the balls of his feet. "You know my performance group."

He hadn't allowed me to say a word about it since the night at the restaurant. I felt almost flattered that he'd brought it up again, in an overeager kind of way that made me feel like my mom probably had the first time I'd acknowledged her in public after I'd turned twelve. "Of course," I said. "Your show was great."