Trapped by his manners, he allowed her to take him down the hall, to the first bedroom, which she had converted into a study. She had a panel computer on a desk in the middle of the room, but a large desktop one, not the portables that the students used, complete with a hard keyboard. A bookshelf holding several books and boxes of memory sticks was behind the desk, flanked by two floor lamps. There were six paintings on the walls, all of them abstract geometric paintings. "This is where I do my correspondence courses," she told him. "I'm a student, just like you."
She showed him her bedroom next, which was larger than her study. She had a very large bed dominating the middle of the left wall, a king-size with a large oak headboard holding tiny figurines, books, and little knick-knacks that made the place look strangely homey. She had a dresser on the far wall, a smaller one on the same wall as the door that had a mirror mounted on it, a large cherrywood chest at the foot of the bed, and a pair of nightstands on either side of the bed. A wire stand of sorts was in the far corner, by a door that probably led to a bathroom, on which hung her armor. Her rifle was hanging on pegs on the wall by her armor. Four paintings were in this room, the one hanging over the bed obviously Jyslin when she was a very young child, wearing a little blue dress and holding a small little animal that looked like a gray-furred fox kit with two tails. It was not impressionist, it was a painting so carefully done that it looked like a picture.
"Now that's good," he said in sincere appreciation.
"That's me," she smiled. "When I was six, with our pet vulpar Tunny."
"Odd little animal. I've seen an animal with two tails."
"Tunny belonged to my grandparents. When they died, she came to live with us."
"She must be old."
"She's nearly fifty."
Jason gave her a surprised look as she opened a drawer in the dresser on the same wall as the door.
"They live about seventy years. She's still alive, but she sleeps a lot now. She's not as playful as she was when I was a child."
"Vulpars are truly lifetime pets," she told him as she quietly closed the door. She came up to him and put her hand on his upper arm, sliding it along his forearm, until she had a grip on his wrist. Then she chuckled ruefully. "I did not plan this," she said to him with a slightly contrite smile, but her eyes were sultry, soft, and seductive, the gray of them seeming to glow in the light of the overhead light.
This was what he was hoping to avoid. He put a hand on hers and tried to pull it away, but she simply put her other hand on his side, gripping the hand that had grabbed hers to pull it away. "Jyslin, I'm not interested."
"You're such a liar," she said with a throaty chuckle. "Look me in the eyes and tell me you're not interested in me."
That was the one thing he could not do, because he was interested in her, and she knew it. But he would not get involved with a Faey, no matter how much he liked her or how much he was attracted to her. "I can't," he told her. "I won't, Jyslin. You're a Faey. You know how I feel about Faey."
"I'm not the Imperium, Jason," she said with gentle adamance. "I'm just a girl, a girl who wants to be with you." She put her hand on his neck, and he grabbed it to pull it away. "Jason," she said with a yearning that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and produced an immediate urge within him. "I'll make you one more bet, a final challenge," she said. "Kiss me."
"What?"
"Kiss me. If you can kiss me and walk out that door, I'll never bother you again," she promised, caressing his side in a manner that made his skin hot beneath his shirt and her fingers. "But if you kiss me and can't walk out that door, we spend the night together, and you can't shut me out after tonight. You have to give me the chance to be your friend, the same way you let Symone be your friend."
He was very worried about the idea of it, but if he didn't agree, she would just keep trying, and that would sour their relationship to the point where she'd lose any chance at all with him. Kissing her would give her a chance to try to inflame his passion, and that was why she was offering the challenge. It was her one and only chance to seduce him. But the opportunity to get her out of his life was too much to ignore. He didn't like the idea of it, because he did like her, he did find her very attractive, but she was the ultimate temptation, Eve's apple, luring him down a road that would compromise his principles and turn him into the willing slave to the Imperium he did not want to become.
When he didn't immediately answer, she looped her hand around his neck and pulled him down, then kissed him. Jason had kissed many girls in his life, but he had never been kissed like that. She kissed him with such passion, such lingering tenderness, such sweet desire that his resistance against her withered in the face of her ardor. Before he knew what was happening, he had his arms around her, kissing her back with equal passion, admitting to her and to himself how attracted he was to this beautiful, interesting, sensual, intelligent, funny, and dead sexy woman. The fact that she was a Faey now meant absolutely nothing. She was a woman, and only a woman, a woman who wanted him, a woman he wanted in return.
"Mmm, I knew you'd see things my way," she purred as he kissed her neck, and as she backed them towards the bed.
It was his wildest dream, and it was his worst nightmare.
When Jyslin had jokingly put into his calendar last week that it would be a near-religious experience to make love to her, she was not joking. There was an intense sensuality about her that he was certain was a racial trait, a powerful awareness of senses, awareness of pleasure, and a strong empathic need to give as well as receive pleasure that made the night with her almost mind-boggling.
Just the memory of it made him shudder. It was dawn now, a little later than he usually slept, but then again, he hadn't had such an incredible night all those other times. He was on his stomach, and she was splayed half atop him, her arm draped over his back possessively, sleeping with her face pressed up against his shoulder. It was—there were no words for it. To call it sensual, erotic, intensely intimate, they would not do what passed between them last night proper justice. Her touch had been fire, but it was a fire that gave pleasure instead of pain, and she consumed him with it.
But it was more than the sex. Halfway into it, when she had him twisted around her finger, she touched his mind. She didn't ask to do it, and at that moment, he was utterly incapable of doing anything to stop her. She seemed so caught up in their lovemaking that it was an automatic response, and it was then that he appreciated her power as a telepath. She blew through his started defenses like they were dust and joined their minds into a symbiotic union that allowed all their feelings, thoughts, sensations, everything to pass between them. They had become a single mind in two bodies, and the intensity of their lovemaking before that was like a candle flame held up to a bonfire. To feel her pleasure in addition to his own, to know immediately what pleased her, what did not, and to feel the overpowering desire she had, an almost uncontrollable attraction to him that had caused her to go to such extremes to get closer to him, they multiplied the intimacy by an order of magnitude. She made love to him with her body and her mind, and it was an experience that had been seared forever into his memory as the single-most intense night of pleasure he had ever had. She had dropped all her defenses, joining their minds in an open connection that allowed him to look into her mind, anywhere in her mind, and see whatever he wanted. He could have learned her most embarrassing secrets, her darkest fantasies, her most treasured dreams, or her most deep-seated desires had he wished to do so, but at that moment he was too busy making love to her to even think to look.
That, more than anything, was what impressed him, now that he looked back on it. She had been fearless about it, more than willing to expose the totality of her being to him, to give to him freely everything that she was. He felt unbelievably honored that she would trust him like that, give him everything in exchange for joining their minds.
But God, what a night! He'd never be able to make love to a human woman ever again. She'd spoiled him, utterly spoiled him, because he knew that no human could ever match what he felt last night unless she was telepathic.
He yawned and tried to slide out from under her, but she suddenly grabbed hold of him and hooked the leg over the back of his own around the nearest one, wrapping him up and preventing him from going anywhere. "Mmmm, no you don't," she said in a half-awake, dreamy kind of satisfied lassitude. "I get to keep you until school."
"It's morning," he told her.
"Already? Damn," she grunted, letting go of him and rolling over on her back. "How's your nose?"
He'd suffered another nosebleed during their lovemaking, causing a rather funny interruption as she tried to stem the flow of blood, but she was so worked up that she couldn't concentrate on what she was doing.
"It's alright," he answered. "You must have hit it just right."
"I didn't hit it," she protested.
"Sometimes it just takes a touch," he told her. "A touch the wrong way to get a nose to bleeding again."
"Now that might have happened," she acceded, then she gave a throaty, sensual chuckle. "I can't wait for our next date," she told him, rolling back over and squirming up onto his back, holding him down. He looked up at her from the corner of his eye, seeing her bright, intimate smile. "Are you sure you have to go to school?"
"You can explain why I'm absent to the dean," he told her.
"I don't think snuggling is a valid reason to miss class," she laughed. "Well, my sweet one, I think I won our little bet," she purred in a sultry tone, leaning down and kissing his ear and cheek. "I don't think you minded losing," she breathed in his ear.
"I'm glad we made love," he told her honestly. "But I'm not glad for the situation. You're a Faey, and I'm a human. I just slept with the enemy, and now, if I'm not careful, I'm going to go back on all the promises I made to myself and compromise my principles."
"Hate what I stand for all you want, as long as you don't hate me," she told him seriously. "I'm more than capable of separating you from politics, Jason. At least try to do the same for me."
"That's not easy," he grunted.
"You think I'm a zealous patriot?" she asked archly. "You forget, I'm in armor because I couldn't get the job I wanted. I was pushed out by rich nobles who put their children where they wanted to go. I'm five times more qualified to be a starship engineer than most of them!" she flared. "I'm a Marine because I'm not a noble!"
He rolled over on his back, dislodging her, and she immediately climbed back on top of him, putting her elbows down on either side of his shoulders, her hands playing with his hair. "I don't care about the Imperium, Jason. I serve because I have to serve, the same as you. If I cared about the Imperium, I would have handed you over to Marci last night. If I cared about the Imperium, your little secret wouldn't be a secret."
"What secret?" he asked in confusion.
She gave him a sly smile. "I didn't seduce you only to share a near-religious experience with you," she told him. "I needed to touch your mind and have you let me do it willingly. I wanted to see if I was right."
"Right about what?" he asked suspiciously.
"Right about this," she said, tapping him on the forehead. "If Marci found out about you, the Imperium might have a conniption. There's no telling what they'd do to the humans."
"What?" he demanded.
"Think about it, Jason," she said with a slow, knowing smile. "Why can you feel it when we touch your mind? Why is that you can hide yourself from us? How could you eject Marci out of your mind? It has nothing to do with your mental discipline or your training."
He gave her an impatient look.
"Jason, you have talent," she revealed. "And it's not weak. When I joined with your mind, I found it within you, bursting at the seams to be realized."
"What?" he asked in shock.
"You're a telepath," she told him evenly. "And a damn bloody strong one. You're as strong as I am, and I'm considered in the top ten percent among Faey."
He gaped at her in disbelief.
"I did help it along," she admitted shamelessly. "It was there, but you didn't know how to use it, and it hadn't fully formed itself. I showed it how to fully express, gave you a little nudge. But it's there."
He was thunderstruck. All he could do was gape at her in awed disbelief.
"The headaches, the nosebleeds, they were symptoms of the expression of your talent," she told him with a smile. "They weren't from stress, or sinus problems. Think about it. Didn't they flare up when you were around Faey?"
He was silent, thinking back…and he realized she was right. The last few days, there were Faey around him every time the headaches got bad. And the nosebleed, that started after Vell did whatever it was he did that allowed him to slip past his defenses and pass along a telepathic message.
"B-But it was too fast—"
"That's normal," she said. "Telepathy doesn't slowly develop like you're thinking it does. It does develop, but while it does, you can't feel it, and it doesn't show up. It just bursts out when you reach a certain level, which is usually around puberty for a Faey. For me, it was when I was much younger. I've had talent for almost a long as I can remember. If you'd been born among Faey, you'd have expressed at about the same time as me."
"But, but humans never showed any kind of ability before," he argued.
"I know," she said with pursed lips. "You told me that Faey always probe you. Maybe all that telepathic contact jarred it in you. If I'm right, you'd never had expressed any talent if it weren't for the fact that we're here. It was latent within you, unable for you to touch it, but when we came along and started stimulating that part of your brain with our own power, it started to develop."
He was still awestruck, but he had recovered his wits enough to understand what she was saying. But was she right? Did he really have telepathic ability?
"Of course you do," she said with a slow smile.
He glared at her. "How—"
"I know your mind now, Jason," she told him. "And we do happen to be touching at the moment. Your defenses don't work on me like this, not anymore. I can hear your thoughts whenever we touch. And with some training, you'll be able to hear mine." She touched his face gently. "But if it bothers you, I won't do it, I promise. I can tune you out."
"What, what are you going to do?" he asked in worry.
"Train you," she smiled. "I'm not going to turn you in, Jason, don't be silly. I don't care about the Imperium. I do what I'm told because I have to. If I can get away with not telling them a word, then I will. And they can't catch me," she winked. "I'm one of the strongest telepaths on Earth," she said bluntly, but not in a boasting manner. She was simply stating fact. "They can't pull it out of me by casual scans, because none of the mindbenders on the planet, the Empress' secret police, are strong enough to breach my defenses without me knowing it. They'll never find out from me, and after some education, they'll never pick it up from you either.
"I'm supposed to tell them about this, but I'm not. You're my friend, and you're now my lover, and I'm not about to hand you over to them. I'll teach you how to control your power, and how to hide the fact that you have power from other Faey They never have to know. And as long as we don't fuck up, they never will."
He stared up at her in shock. She was going to disobey the Imperium, keep him a secret. She truly wasn't the Imperium, a loyal subject of the Empress that would do whatever she was told. The image of her as a cog in their vast machine melted away, and for the first time, he saw her not as an agent of the Empress, but as nothing other than Jyslin Shaddale.
She gave him a radiant, unbelievably tender smile. "There, see? It wasn't so hard, was it?" she asked, sliding her finger along his cheek intimately. "I told you before, Jason, I'm not interested in the Imperium. I'm interested in you. As long as I have you, what could they possibly offer me that's better?"
He was touched by her words, by her honest admission. He put his hand on her cheek, and she leaned against it, smiling down on him with her lovely gray eyes.
"Oh, if only we had a little more time," she complained in a longing manner, kissing the palm of his hand, sliding her legs against him sensually. "But you have to get to school, and I have to get to work. And I have to take you to school," she grinned. "While you're there, don't worry too much," she told him. "Remember, it takes effort to use. As long as you don't try to do anything, nobody's going to notice. You might start hearing the thoughts of people around you, and you might overhear it when Faey send to each other. Those are passive actions, they don't require effort, and nobody can tell when you're doing them."
"Why could I hear sending?"
"Jason, sending is nothing but a broadcasted thought that people who are telepathically adept can hear," she answered. "It's what you might call thinking out loud."
"I thought that Faey had to allow themselves to hear it."
"We do," she answered. "We usually tune out the thoughts we hear, but we can leave ourselves open to hear sending, because it's a little different than just eavesdropping on the surface thoughts of others." She patted his hair with a smile. "You shouldn't have too much trouble. The one way you've developed your ability is through your ability to defend yourself. Just keep that up, and no Faey is going to notice anything different about you. I'll come over after I'm off duty and start teaching you the other aspects of it. And you must learn," she told him seriously. "You have to get competent with your power and do it fast, Jason. Right now, when you have the power but haven't learned how to use it or control it, this is when you're most vulnerable. You have got to keep a lid on it and not tip your hand until I can teach you. After I teach you, no Faey will ever be able to discover your secret. I'll even teach you ways to fool them into thinking that they can hear your thoughts, so they don't probe you all the time."
He was still a little scattered, overwhelmed by the thought of it. If someone had told him that he'd just inherited a million credits, it wouldn't have registered to him in the slightest. He had telepathic ability. He was possessed of the one thing that separated the humans from the Faey, more then the color of their skin or the pointed ears that made them look elfin. A human had telepathic power, a human now possessed the one weapon against which the human race could not defend against, stand up to.
The implications were enormous, both personally and in the terms of the human race. Was he the only one? Was he some kind of fluke, or were there more humans out there with the same latent potential, which would express after the Faey stimulated it into maturity with their own power? If that were true, then the human race could stand up to the Faey. The difference in technology was extreme, but always before it was the fact that the Faey were telepathic which was the one overwhelming factor that the human race could not defeat, which allowed them to crush any kind of rebellion or resistance before it managed to get any kind of start at all. But if a sizable number of humans were telepathic, and they could somehow learn how to use their power without the Faey—
That was a pipe dream, and he knew it. As soon as the Faey realized that humans were showing telepathic ability, they would come down on the human race like a sledgehammer. They would root them out and deal with them, either with telepathic reprogramming or by killing them. That was why Jyslin got him out of that theater, because she knew what would happen, and she meant to protect him from them.
Yet another reason to be impressed with Jyslin, and be receptive to the idea of including her in his life for the immediate future. She truly was interested in him for who he was, and had demonstrated to his satisfaction that she was not the Imperium. If anything, she was willing to go against her own people on his behalf. That was certainly saying something.
"Let's get dressed before I start taking advantage of the situation and make us both late," she said with a leer, reaching down and patting him on the hip. She got off of him and went to the mirror and slicked her hair over the left side of her head as best she could, then went over to her armor and started by picking up the codpiece, the section most closely compared to a pair of metal shorts. "Why don't you wear anything under it?" he asked curiously as she stepped into the piece of armor.
"Well, we could," she admitted. "I could easily wear panties and a bra under the armor, maybe even a pair of skin-hugging shorts or a tank top, and some Faey do wear a bra. But we can't take the armor off, and that makes going to the bathroom a tricky proposition when you consider the fact that this is the base on which all the rest of the armor is built," she said, tapping the codpiece as she slipped it over her hips, the locked its seams closed. "To get this off, I have to take the armor off my legs and detach it from the stomacher and breastplate, and that takes a while. I'd pee myself long before I got enough off to go without making a mess. The crotch of the armor has a locking opening that we use when we have to go to the bathroom," she told him. "If I wore panties, it would make getting them out of the way a tricky proposition. Maya calls it the 'doorway to heaven'," Jyslin laughed. "She once had sex with her husband wearing her armor. He didn't appreciate it afterwards, once the bruises started showing up."
That was certainly logical. He nodded in understanding as he sat up. "Need help?"
She shook her head. "A Marine has to be able to get into armor with no help in five minutes. It's a drill in basic training. I can handle it, love. You need to get dressed. I have to get you to your dorm room with enough time for you to get ready for your classes."
He nodded, climbing out of bed and looking around for his clothes, which were scattered all over the room. Her dress was thrown on the floor, and he reached down and picked it up, brushing it to get the wrinkles out. "You should hang this up," he told her.
"There are hangers over there," she said, pointing at the closet as she locked the leg greaves that protected her thighs in place, securing them to the codpiece. The greaves overlapped the codpiece, forcing her to take them off before she could get the codpiece off. It really was the base of the armor. She locked the flexible metal skin that filled the space between the joints to the inside edge of the greaves on her right leg, settling the kneecap protector in place. "Less time watching me armor up and more time dressing," she told him with a sly wink.
"Sorry. I've been curious how it fits together for a while."
"Trust me, love, in a month, you'll know how it fits as well as I do," she said with another wink. Jyslin loved to wink, for some reason. "Dress."
He hung up her expensive dress, then started dressing. He had to gather his clothes from various parts of the room, but he started tending to it quickly, his mind still racing with what he had learned this eventful morning. About his telepathic gifts, about Jyslin, about everything. It was all different now, and he needed a little time to sort it out in his mind, figure out what he wanted to do.
After putting on his vest, he looked and saw that she had all her armor on from the waist down. She was settling the sollaret boot on her foot, then took up the front half of the stomacher, the piece of armor that was flexible, that was between the breastplate and the codpiece. She attached it to the breastplate's bottom edge, hooked the back half to the back of the breastplate, then latched the top buckles on the shoulders of the two breastplate sections together. Then she picked up the entire assembly and slid it over her head, pushing her head through the opening for her neck. She settled it on her shoulders easily, then sealed the side seams and then tended to attaching the base of the stomacher to the inside edge of the top of the codpiece.
"Efficient," he complemented.
"I've done this a long time, love," she told him as she reached behind her and locked the back of the stomacher to the inside back edge of the codpiece without looking. "Let me get the upper greaves on, and we can go. I can get the bracers and gauntlets on in the car."
"What car?"
"Didn't you see the Toyota parked in front of the house?" she chuckled. "That's my car."
"I thought you guys had hovercars."
"That's the Corps' vehicle," she answered. "When we first got here , we weren't allowed to bring Faey technology vehicles here for our own personal use. Most of us bought human cars when we got here, and hell, they're just as good as hovercars, so most of us never bothered to bring in our own personal cars once they lifted the ban. I have a hovercar, but I had to leave it with my parents. I know you've seen Faey in human cars."
"Well, sure, but I never much thought about what it meant."
"Well, now you do," she told him. "When you see a Faey in a human car, it's because she's off duty and she's about on personal business." She locked the two greaves around her right arm,over the flexible metal skin that protected her shoulder and armpit, flexing it a few times, then reaching for the flexible metal skin for her left shoulder. She quickly got that on, then the greaves, and then she picked up the forearm bracers and gauntlets and swept them into a small bag that was by the stand. "Alright, we can go," she said, locking the web belt that held her sidearm around her slender waist, then pulling down her rifle from the wall.
He nodded and picked up his tie, pulling it over his head. She handed him her rifle, letting him carry it, trusting him with it as they filed out of her room, then out of her house. She locked the door with a key on a small silver ring, then tucked it into one of the pouches on her web belt. "We have a stop to make before we go to your dorm," she announced.
That stop was at the guard post for the front gate. They didn't get out of her car—which surprised him that she could drive it with that armor, but then again, it showed how flexible the armor was—just pulled up the gate house and rolled down the window. "I want an entry pass for him," she called to the gate guard.
"What kind?" she asked in return.
"Unconditional," she replied. "He's going to be coming and going from now on."
She smiled knowingly. "Sure. Hold on a second. Could you look this way for me, sir?" she asked as she reached into her little cubby and took out a small camera.. She took his picture and stepped in, seating it to a base as she started typing on a holographic keyboard. "Name?"
"Jason Fox," Jyslin answered for him.
"Thank you." She typed a few more seconds, touched the screen a few times, then reached under the shelf and pulled out a small laminated card. "Here you go," she told him, handing it to Jyslin. "Just present that card to the gate guards when you come, honey, and they'll let you in," she told him. "It'll also let you into the base exchange and the comissary, and all the other places on base. Don't lose it. It's a ten credit fine to replace it."
"I'll remember that,"Jason said as he looked at it. It was in Faey, and it said he was a base resident, the "permanent resident guest" of Sergeant Jyslin Shaddale. A nice, technical term for boyfriend.
He could live with that title. He looked over at her and realized that he would very much be comfortable with that title.
"Permanent resident, eh?" he asked, putting the card in his wallet.
"Hey, I want you to have all the perks being a Marine's babe entails," she said with a wink as they pulled out onto Belle Chase Highway.
"A Marine's babe?" he asked archly.
"You are a babe," she told him, blowing a kiss at him. "You're my babe."
"Don't get me in trouble at school," he warned. "Some students are more vocal about their dissent than me."
"They're not going to see me on campus, only when I visit you in the dorm," she told him. "They don't seem to have any problem with Symone."
"Symone's different," he told her. "Everyone likes Symone."
"Well, they can all like me."
He gave her a look, then laughed. "No," he told her. "They all love Symone because she's charismatic and fun. Nobody that meets her can possibly not like her. That's not you," he said with a slight smile.
"I can so be fun," she said primly.
"Fun, yes," he agreed. "But you don't have the kind of charisma that Symone does."
"What do you mean?"
"Why don't you come by the dorm tonight and see?" he asked, leaning against the door as they got onto the West Bank Expressway, the elevated expressway that led to the bridge over the Mississippi River, back to the city.
"I certainly am coming over tonight," she told him. "We have to start your education, as quickly as possible."
"Then you'll see. Everyone is Symone's friend. To the people in the dorm, the fact that she's Faey doesn't matter. Everyone loves her, and if anyone gives her any flak, the entire dorm would take turns beating the piss out of the guy."
"Wow," she breathed.
"I don't know how the people in the dorm will react to you, but then again, if Symone says you're alright, then that's that," he said seriously. "An endorsement from Symone should be all it'll take."
"You'll have to ask her to do that."
"She'll be over after she gets off duty."
She drove him back to his dorm on Saint Charles Avenue, on the corner of the Tulane campus, and he watched the traffic go by, lost in thought. Telepathy. He had that talent. He was a human, and now he was expressing the one gift, the single advantage that the Faey had that kept the human race in slavery. But it wasn't much, because after all, he was only one man. It would take an army of telepaths to kick the Faey off Earth, an army equipped with weapons that could make the Faey retreat. In the end, it was nothing but a dangerous curse that could quite possibly get him killed, should the Faey find out about him.
It was a strange thought, that he had such a mysterious power, a power he had hated because of what it meant. But now he had it, and though it changed very little in the grand scheme of things, it changed his life a great deal. He had to be careful now, always cautious, always vigilent, to keep his dark, deadly secret. His life depended on it.
What would it be like to be telepathic? Well, from what he'd managed to figure out, he'd be able to hear the surface thoughts of the people around him. Jyslin had talked about that before. He'd be able to overhear Faey sending to each other, and from the sound of it, Jyslin was going to teach him all the tricks of it, like attacking, defending, and a way to deceive the Faey into not probing him all the time. That would be nice, a relief to him, but the rest of it…he wasn't sure how he was going to feel about that. But one thing was for sure, he'd better learn it. His life might someday depend on being able to attack and overwhelm a Faey who discovered his secret.
And on another angle, perhaps buying that airskimmer would be a very good idea. That way, he always had an escape route. He could flee up into Tennessee or Kentucky or West Virginia, states which had been completely depopulated of humans…or at least officially. There were squatters out there, humans who had fled into the uninhabited forest areas rather than accept the Faey order, or to esape being sent to a farm, or to escape after pissing off the Faey. It was lawless out there, as bad as any Mad Max movie, but that might be preferable to being reprogrammed by the Faey secret police, the Imperial Gestapo as some called them, or perhaps being dissected to find out why a human had somehow gained telepathic powers.
Yes, that was a good idea. He'd have to start looking into it. And perhaps discretely collect up the components he'd need to build a plasma rifle, and build himself his own suit of armor. If he did have to flee into the wildlands, it might behoove him to go into that chaos armed to the teeth and sporting an overwhelming advantage.
Just in case.
He blinked when he saw the dorm, and to his surprise, she went past it, past the campus, going all the way up to where Saint Charles ended, merging with Carrolton. She pulled over and patted him on the leg. "I think this is far enough away," she told him. "I don't want them to see you get out of a Faey's car. So you avoid any friction."
"I appreciate that," he said as he opened the door.
"Aat, kiss," she ordered.
He chuckled, then leaned over and gave her a lingering kiss. She actually licked his nose before he pulled away, giving him a wide, bright smile. "You have a good day at school, love. I'll be back as soon as I'm off duty. Remember, don't try anything, and if you start hearing voices in your head, don't panic. That's you overhearing the thoughts of those around you. Just listen. You'd be surprised what you can learn," she said with a wink.
"I'll be careful. Now let me out."
"Have a good, uneventful day," she told him seriously.
"Amen," he agreed.