“Absolutely.” My throat felt dry.

“We’ll definitely talk later,” she said with a grin. “Gotta go. See you at lunch.”

“Okay.”

I stood there in place as Melinda walked away, books held tightly in her arms. I tried to breathe normally.

I’d be brave. I’d march right up to him and demand to know what he was doing here. I wouldn’t let the faery king intimidate me.

But when I’d summoned up enough courage and turned to look at him again, Rhys was gone.

Maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe it wasn’t even Rhys. After all, I’d last seen him in a dimly lit forest, where he’d accused me of being evil. But just because I was half demon didn’t mean I was evil. At the time, he hadn’t seemed to understand that. Thus the unfriendly sword pointing and the whole “get out of my forest” thing.

If it was Rhys, why was he here? Maybe he was just sightseeing or something. Half an hour of wandering around in the middle of December …

Of all the places in the human world he could have picked to visit, he chose snow-covered Erin Heights?

Yeah. That made sense.

I exhaled shakily and, turning left to head to my biology class, came face-to-face with Rhys.

“Hi there,” he said. “Remember me?”

My mouth gaped open. “You …”

He ran a hand through his cropped brown hair as he waited for me to say something else. When I didn’t, he continued. “We met in my forest. You were harassing a unicorn.”

“I … I remember. And I … I wasn’t harassing it.” My body tensed, but I stayed as still as possible as I waited to see what he’d do next.

“If you say so.”

“What are you doing here?” I managed.

He shrugged. “I’m on vacation.”

“Right.”

“You don’t seem that happy to see me.”

“Last time I saw you, you tried to kill me.” My voice was so low that even I could barely hear it.