Always Be My Banshee

by Molly White

  “You are the sweetest teddy bear of a man I have ever met,” Cordelia told him, positively beaming up at Zed. “Honestly, I’ve never seen pictures from a mind so genuinely kind. I mean, you love that woman. You love almost everybody here. It’s like being wrapped up in a big fluffy quilt made of hugs. It almost restores my faith in people.”

  “Manly and terrifying,” Zed repeated, though given the soft expression in his eyes, Brendan suspected that Cordelia had just made herself some sort of muscle-bound guardian for life.

  “Yes, honey, we all know you’re a great big brute,” Wonder Woman assured him, making him bend to kiss her neck. Wonder Woman blushed beautifully and gave him a smacking kiss. Brendan supposed he didn’t have to worry about this mayor’s intentions towards Cordelia after all.

  “Our esteemed mayor, Zed Berend, ladies and gentlemen,” Jillian said, rolling her eyes. “Bael is going to be so mad that he missed this.”

  “Nope!” A young woman in a mermaid costume held up her phone. She was so animated in her triumph, she nearly dislodged the fork stuck in her bright red wig. “I got the whole thing on video! I’ll email you the file tonight.”

  “Rude!” Zed cried. “I’m telling your maman, Sonja!”

  “Oh, I’ve already sent it to her!” the mermaid yelled back.

  “I knew I could count on you!” Jillian cried.

  “I’m sorry not to introduce myself properly,” said the mermaid. “But I swear I’ll do that tomorrow. Right now, I’ve got to get to the clinic. Will is dealing with several vomit-y kids. Next year, we need to put up a sign that says ‘one per child’ on the candied apple line.”

  Jillian pursed her lips. “I will take that under advisement, Sonja.”

  “Is that Sonja Fong?” Cordelia whispered. “Did I just meet Sonja Fong and not even realize it? In a mermaid costume? This is the weirdest day ever.”

  Brendan marveled at the absolute madness around him. He’d signed on to a bloody asylum, operated by the lunatics. Cordelia, however, had bloomed in the last few moments. Her laughter seemed to have relaxed her whole body into a far less miserable posture, her pale cheeks flushed a healthy pink. He supposed it couldn’t be all bad, if it brought her out of the mental exile she’d imposed on herself.

  Zed shook off the awkwardness and reached for Brendan’s hand. “Sorry about that.”

  “I’ll decline the handshake, if it’s all the same,” Brendan said.

  Zed eyed him suspiciously. “Are you a psychic, too?”

  “I thought it was rude to ask something like that,” Wonder Woman reminded him gently. She waggled her hand at the pair of newcomers. “Hi, I’m Dani. This one’s mate. I swear, entrances aren’t usually so dramatic around here.”

  “You know that’s not true!” Sonja called as she shuffled away in her narrow sequined mermaid skirt. “Why would you lie to these nice people?”

  “The entrances are a little dramatic around here,” Zed conceded. “And if you’re tired, you’ll probably want to get settled into your bunks before dark. That’s when the kids go home for the night and the adult celebrations start up.”

  Cordelia grimaced. “Not like in that Simpsons Grown-Up Halloween episode, right?”

  Brendan’s still heart went pitter-pat for just a moment. She knew her Simpsons. Saints help him, she knew the good episodes of the Simpsons. If he was a wee bit infatuated before, he was practically a lost cause now.

  Dani snorted. “I would say no, but I wasn’t here last year.”

  “Y’all missed the Harvest Festival; that’s when things get real rowdy,” Zed said. “On Halloween, we try to keep to as many of the traditions as we can, to keep the balance and honor the old ways. We float lanterns on the bayou. We have big bonfires and leave out the most recent fruits from the harvest as thanks. We exchange soul cakes and say prayers for our dead. And then we stay up all night getting the graveyard ready for the various versions of Día de los Muertos—putting bread and pine boughs and flowers on the headstones, that sort of thing.”

  Brendan nodded in approval. “Well, as culturally edifying as all that sounds, I do think I’ll turn in. It’s a very different hour back home.”

  Brendan didn’t mention what really worried him. No matter the time zone, it was All Hallow’s Eve, the night when the veil between the human world and the spirit world was its thinnest. The chances of him receiving a death song were incredibly high. The chance of him being visited by the random phantom of some backwoods local was higher. It was rare, but it happened. He just didn’t think he had it in him to deal with messages from the other side. He needed to be indoors and preferably unconscious before midnight struck.

  “I’ll show them their trailers,” Jillian said. “You keep an eye on things.”

  “So far, so good,” Zed told her, as if he was trying to assure her.

  Her expression was serious. “Yell for me if that changes.”

  Brendan’s brows rose. This was an oddly serious exchange between two people who seemed otherwise composed of fluff. Were they worried about poison in the sweets or something? He’d heard of that sort of thing being an urban legend that terrified American parents, but surely no one would be bold enough to tamper with children’s treats at a League function in front of dozens of witnesses.

  He slung his own bag over his shoulder and took Cordelia’s suitcases in hand.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Cordelia said.

  “You’re about ready to drop off your feet,” Brendan told her. “And it sounds like we have a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

  She looked like she might protest again, but she gave him a quiet “thank you” and slid her gloves into place as they walked across the square. While almost everyone in the crowd greeted Jillian with a cheery wave or a hug, the locals barely acknowledged him or Cordelia. Brendan wondered if they were simply too distracted by the festivities, or if strangers from the League were so commonplace now that the locals barely noticed them anymore. Either way, he was grateful. He didn’t think he had too many more introductions in him for the day.

  Jillian led them to a tidy grouping of mobile trailers meant to look like little seaside cottages, deep blue with white trim. While half of them looked very business-like and official, the rest were smaller residential units arranged in neat rows. Some had little personal touches on the porches—name plaques and wind chimes and such. Picnic tables and barbecues had been placed in the middle of the rows, he supposed to encourage casual socializing between League employees—who, in his experience, were largely unsocialized creatures.

  “This is the League’s research village,” Jillian explained. “We’ve got working buildings and the admin buildings over there. You can find me or Sonja in the central office over there. If you need anything important, go to Sonja. Important things are her department. Oh, and we don’t keep things very formal around here, so feel free to call me ‘Jillian.’”

  Jillian plucked a key from a pocket hidden in her costume’s skirts and unlocked the door of the unit farthest away from the street. “Cordelia, this is yours. Normally, we would put one of you up at the maison de fous. It seems to be the first place high-profile League employees go when they move to Mystic Bayou, but Sonja and Will just signed a long-term lease with the town. Will didn’t like the idea of sharing his family’s ancestral home with Sonja, no matter how well Sonja and his brother, Jon, got along. I’m afraid the best we can do is the newest trailer in the complex. But you’ll each have a unit all to yourself, which is more than I can say for some of our employees, who have to double up. I figured that with your abilities, living with a roommate would be uncomfortable.”

  Brendan hefted Cordelia’s suitcase onto the porch, but stayed on the ground. His mam had raised him better than to walk into a lady’s house uninvited. She gave him a strange, reserved smile, not quite a show of teeth as much as a shy upward quirk of her mouth. She followed Jillian inside, and he turned his back on the quiet conversation inside. As lovely as Jillian’s int
entionally soothing tones were, he didn’t want to eavesdrop. Brendan tuned in to the muted cheer floating through the warm, fragrant air. The research village and most of the town proper was positively surrounded by trees. This was a far cry from the rolling grassy hills and cliffs of County Clare, but he liked it. He could take or leave the heat—it wasn’t as if he was going to sweat through it—but the green was comforting.

  Jillian bid Cordelia a quiet goodnight and closed the trailer door behind her. “Sorry, you’re just across the way there.”

  “That’s all right. Ladies first.” He offered his clothed elbow to her as she trod down the porch steps.

  Jillian smiled warmly at him. “Bael is going to like you.”

  “Would that be the dragon fellow that was curled around the gazebo?” he asked as she unlocked his door.

  “It would,” Jillian replied.

  “In all my years, I’ve never met a dragon,” he said as she ushered him into the trailer. Like Cordelia’s, it was clean and nondescript; one of those modern open plan designs with cheap gray carpet, white walls, and beige furniture. It was like a large impersonal hotel room, other than the lovingly framed photos of local sights on the walls, and he was fine with that. This wasn’t home to him and wouldn’t ever be. He was here to do a job, earn his coin, and get that coin back to his sister. Besides, he’d slept in rougher places—mostly while drunk, but still, rougher places.

  “Well, there are not many dragons in Ireland,” said Jillian. “But we have some extended family settled here. I’ve got a couple of books on the subject, if you’re interested.”

  Brendan chuckled. “I’ll bet you have books on just about everything.”

  “I do, and I’ve written a couple, too,” Jillian said. “Which is a none-too-subtle segue into asking, ‘Did you read my book?’ Not to feed my ego, but because it will make the transition into living here, not to mention your job, much easier.”

  Brendan snorted. The moment he’d agreed to the job, Jillian’s book had been slapped into his hands. It had looked like any League manual, with its slate blue cover and intentionally vague title: Mystic Bayou: A Whole-Hearted Approach to a Blended Community. Jillian had gone into great detail describing what the locals called la faille and its history; which was impressive since even League scientists couldn’t give a definitive explanation for this mystical vortex, the tear in the fabric that kept this dimension separate from whatever terrifying things waited in the next dimension. He’d never been a fan of Lovecraft. There were no ley lines, no atmospheric anomalies at that spot just over the Afarpiece Swamp. It was just there, drawing supernaturals to the area like moths to a very dangerous flame. The locals understood that while la faille could appear to some as a beautiful shifting kaleidoscope of color, it was also dangerous for those who got too close, crushing organs and blood vessels with its enormous atmospheric pressures.

  Jillian explained that Mystic Bayou had grown from a small pre-Louisiana Purchase human settlement that happened to be located near the rift, to a thriving community that included droves of shifters and fae and various creatures called to the location by the rift’s energy. After a rough start that involved some ancestor of the mayor’s dropping his pants and shifting into a bear to settle that particular conflict, the humans and the non-humans settled into a relatively easy relationship. The families intermarried, shared their traditions and their magic and their protection, creating the odd mishmash of culture that was Mystic Bayou.

  The League originally thought to use the town as a model for how other communities could gracefully assimilate when modern technology eventually forced the magique out into the open. The League offered the town financial benefits and support such as medical services in exchange for cooperation. That was how Jillian came to the bayou. The League sent her to study the community, and she happened to fall in love with the local dragon-slash-sheriff.

  Unfortunately, during her first few months, it became apparent that the rift’s energy was changing, altering the residents at a DNA level. The very thing that drew shapeshifters and fae to the bayou in the first place had turned on them. Shifter babies were born into all-human families. Adults who had been human all of their lives suddenly developed the ability to shapeshift or perform fairy magic.

  While much of Jillian’s report was rather charming storytelling, she included multiple tables showing how the number of “remade magique” was increasing at an exponential rate, raising concerns about the areas surrounding the bayou and whether humans there would be affected. The League seemed very concerned about humans finding out about magique because of the rift. “Surprise! Monsters are real! Also, you might accidentally get turned into one” was not the way to ease humans into this brave new world.

  “From cover to cover,” he promised.

  “I respect a man who is prepared. Oh, and check the fridge,” Jillian said, holding up a post-it note she found on the counter that had “CHECK THE FRIDGE” in a neat, cursive hand.

  He opened the door and found multiple containers full of delicious looking stews and soups, plus a six-pack of Guinness. “I hereby pledge to marry whoever did this.”

  “Well, it was Clarissa Berend, Zed’s maman,” Jillian said. “She insists on making all of the housing as homey as possible. And you might have to fight a five-foot-six geriatric frogman for her hand. Also, you might have to fight Zed.”

  Brendan pursed his lips as he recalled the size of the bear-man in question. “I will love her from afar.”

  “Sound decision. I know that your position here won’t be comfortable, with your gift,” she said. “But anything I can do to make it easier for you, please let me know.”

  “Do people here know what I can do?” Brendan asked.

  “No, that’s the great thing about Mystic Bayou,” Jillian insisted. “Everybody’s something, so people don’t worry about it much. You’re defined by your personality, not your magie status. I’ll see you and Cordelia in the morning.”

  Clearly, Jillian was some sort of shifter, though he couldn’t tell just what, and there was a newness to her nature. He was sure she’d never had to move an entire family in the middle of the night because the villagers suspected that she was not quite human. She’d never had neighbors recoil from her at the pub, or had mothers usher their children away from her for fear of what they thought she might see. He’d love to believe that this was some Utopia where his kind could live out in the open, but he’d seen his own family fall victim to fear and prejudice too many times to hope. He just wanted to get through his assignment here with as little fuss as possible, so he could get back to Ireland with full pockets and an unbruised arse.

  Still, Jillian was a darling, so he smiled politely and said, “Thank you, Jillian.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” Jillian said. “Get some sleep.”

  Closing the door behind her, he eyed his bag near the bland beige sofa, unable to summon the strength to even think of unpacking. He walked into the sparkling clean washroom, blessing the name of Clarissa Berend. He made quick work of the shower, simply wishing to scrub the airplane filth from his skin. With a towel around his waist, he opened the window blinds and saw Cordelia’s bathroom window illuminated across the way. Cordelia had changed into nightclothes that looked far less sensible than her previous outfit—a tank top thing with razor-thin straps that bared her shoulders and long neck. She was carefully smoothing lotion over the curves of her cheeks, looking in the mirror like she expected to find something that would upset her. All he could see was smooth olive skin and graceful lines. Her hair was twisted in a dark haphazard coil on top of her head.

  It definitely felt wrong to watch her like this, with her unaware, but she was hypnotic when she was at ease. The way she moved was so naturally graceful, like a dance—oh, shite, she was looking right at him.

  She’d caught him, watching her like some sort of Peeping Tom while she was doing her bedtime grooming routine. And he had a meeting with her first thing in the morning. She
locked eyes with him and nodded, then closed the blinds, denying him a last glimpse of her face.

  He was going to need to dunk his head in the bloody coffee pot at dawn.

  3

  Cordelia

  Cordelia had lost her tolerance for waking up in strange places.

  Sitting in Jillian’s office bright and early the next morning, she buried her face in a cup of peppermint tea and prayed for it to jolt her brain into consciousness. The bright minty brew was just strong enough to mask the mineral aftertaste of the supplements she’d downed on her walk to the administrative trailer. The building was as cookie-cutter and impersonal as the rest of the campus, with most of the slick gray lobby space walled off with temporary partitions for Sonja, the mermaid from the night before who also happened to be the Director of Operations. Sonja showed up in most of the framed photographs scattered around Jillian’s space—Jillian, Sonja and a small, balding man with exceptionally long fingers; a selfie of Jillian and Sonja on an aging porch swing; an outdoor group shot in front of blooming apple trees with Jillian, Sonja, the burly mayor and his sweet-faced girlfriend, and two rather handsome men she hadn’t seen the night before. She got the distinct impression Sonja and Jillian had known each other well before their time in Mystic Bayou.

  Brendan had not made it to Jillian’s office yet. As far as she could tell, he hadn’t risen by the time she walked out of her trailer into the insistently bright Louisiana morning. She hadn’t wanted to wake him. If she was having trouble sleeping with the absence of traffic noises and an excess of crickets, she could only imagine what he was going through.

  “Are you sure you don’t want coffee, Ms. Canton?” Sonja asked, setting what looked like a pre-cut pie made out of slices of several different pies on the little side table by Jillian’s desk.

  “You can just call me Cordelia, thanks.” Cordelia offered her a shy smile, her cheeks flushing. Sonja deserved every bit of her reputation. She was clearly competent and ruthlessly stylish, even in this rough, Neiman Marcus-less environment. “Thanks, but caffeine makes it difficult to control my shield.”