Hunted by a Night Fae

Chapter 1

Eleven years later.

As the woman in front of me spoke, I found myself fascinated with the color of her sweater. It was made up of multiple colours. There were soft pinks interwoven with bright oranges, similar to the color of freshly ripened peaches, with hints of minty green strewn throughout. Any single one of the shades alone might have made for a nice sweater.

However, all three of them combined created a rather horrible shade of cat vomit.

"So Ms. O'Reilly..." She looked down at her file. "Heather, is it? What are you thinking you want to take?"

My gaze focused on the academic advisor's strained smile. She was well over forty, her teeth stained from prolonged nicotine use. Her hair, a light heavily bleached blond, was fried to the point is settled into frizzy, crimped waves around her head.

My lips tugged up into what I hoped was an apologetic smile. "Excuse me, could you repeat the question?"

Oh, shit. Her smile thinned out slowly into a frown. I straightened in my chair, trying to focus on the conversation.

"What major are you thinking of applying for?" she asked again, her tone losing some of its chipper quality.

"Oh, I'm not sure. Probably General Studies for now."

Her eyebrows lifted, looking back down at my high school transcript. "It says here you excelled in mathematics and most sciences. Why not a major in one of those fields?"

I yawned, slapping my hand over my mouth at the last minute. Getting to the school for ten in the morning had been a terrible idea. Though, it might have been a bit easier if I hadn't worked until one in the morning the night before. The academic adviser's expression—or rather, Barb's, as her name tag indicated—was turning more and more strained the longer this meeting took.

"I don't know. I want to keep my options open."

Well, more like I didn't care and was still planning on not actually attending this 'University-College' anyway. But, I felt like if I said something to that effect—things might get a bit tense. People were like that. Always getting worked up by unnecessary things. I couldn't relate. I tended to be unimpressed most of the time by everything.

Well, maybe a few things did catch my interest. Namely, people I should not be concerned with. Just not most things.

Barb's pursed her Revlon-pink lips as she regarded me. She looked more like a Barbie, I decided.

"You know, the General Studies program is actually quite unique. We can tailor it specifically to you. What career path do you find yourself interested in?"

I stared at her, my expression turning blank. I was bloody nineteen, why did everyone always expect me to know the answer to such a big question at nineteen?

"I was hoping to try out a few different things and see what piqued my interest from there. Maybe sometime later we can talk about it again?" I replied after sorting through several answers that might break what remained of Barb's patience. I wasn't lying. We could discuss it, I just wasn't planning on it. I plastered a polite smile on my face in an effort to appear genuine.

I had a feeling if I told her the only thing that excited me in the near future was that I was getting drunk tonight after work, she would likely combust. I was only at this meeting because my mother would have killed me if she found out I wasn't. She had even placed my dad as an unenthusiastic spy, since she was stuck working at the hospital. He was driving me home after his lecture. My father just so happened to work at this particular University-College, whatever that even meant.