Forty, Fabulous and Fae

by Melinda Chase

  I was in my mom’s room. There was her dresser across from me, with the giant mirror on top of it. A pile of clothes was on the floor next to the bed. Knowing Mom, they were probably perfectly clean outfits that she’d discarded that morning, deeming them unfit for wearing that day.

  Then there were the smells--lavender, sage, and incense, along with the soft floral of her favorite perfume.

  It must have been heaven. Everything around me had been perfectly chosen to bring me comfort while I slipped into the afterlife. Honestly, I found myself thinking that it wasn’t all that bad. If I could live in my mother’s bedroom forever, surrounded by the sights and scents that brought me the most comfort, I thought I’d be pretty okay.

  “Shannon.”

  Even her voice was still with me, soft and comforting.

  “Shannon,” she repeated. A soft, warm hand stroked my cheek a few times, and I blinked again.

  Once more, the room settled into focus, but the hazy white glow had disappeared. It all felt far too real to be heaven.

  Slowly, I turned my head, and fund my mother’s worried, but smiling, face above me. Her long red curls tickled my nose, making me want to sneeze.

  I batted them away with my hand, and then wiggled the rest of my body.

  I felt very much alive.

  “Thank God you’re awake,” Mom gasped. A wail settled in her throat, but she quickly shut it down. Instead, she crawled up into the bed next to me and wrapped me in her arms. “I thought I was going to lose you.”

  “No way,” I chuckled. “You’re stuck with me for another forty years, lady.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she sighed. Quickly, though, my mom pulled back and stared at me sternly. “What were you thinking? That spell could have killed you! It should have killed you.”

  “But it didn’t,” I pointed out. “And it definitely would have killed you. Then the fae- oh my God, the fae!”

  I sprang bolt upright, accidentally clunking Mom’s chin on the way up, and looked about in terror.

  “Ow!” She cried indignantly.

  “Where is she? What happened? Is she dead?” I demanded, the questions spewing from my mouth like a geyser.

  Mom sucked in a deep breath, bit her lip, and shook her head.

  “I don’t think she’s dead, Shan,” she sighed. “But something happened when you absorbed her spell. Something… I don’t know how to explain it. It was almost like you turned into this big ball of energy yourself, and then all of a sudden you were back, passed out on the ground, and the fae was gone. I don’t know where she went.”

  “Damn.” I shoved my face in my hands, trying not to let the terror overtake me again. The woman’s face floated behind my black eyelids, almost like it was taunting me.

  Somehow, I knew this wasn’t over. She’d be back to finish what she started, to kill an entire coven of witches.

  With a start, I remembered the way she’d spoken to me.

  “Mom,” I murmured, trying to push myself up higher on the bed.

  “Don’t sit up,” she ordered, shoving my shoulders back down. “what do you need? Coffee? Pop Tarts?”

  “No,” I shook my head. “Mom, the fae’s going to be back. She seemed very interested in me.”

  Mom sighed and nodded her head.

  “I figured,” she murmured. “I think anyone would be interested in you, baby. You may not have a deep understanding of our world just yet, but there is no one like you out there. There’s gonna be a hell of a lot of people who want to get in on what you are.”

  The tone of her voice made my stomach twist up in knots. My mom would never lie to me, but I also knew she’d never tell me something as serious as that unless she thought it was absolutely necessary for my survival.

  “Wait, where’s Hunter?” I gasped, suddenly realizing I didn’t know what had happened to him.

  Mom gritted her teeth together and rubbed a hand across her forehead.

  “Your friend disappeared right after the fae did,” she replied. “I’m afraid your Grams and I were a little bit too wrapped up in making sure you didn’t die to keep an eye on him.”

  “Mom, no, we need to find him,” I replied.

  There was a twofold reason I wanted Hunter back in front of me. One was, well, I was fairly sure I had a tiny little crush on him.

  But the second was far more important. I needed to make sure Hunter didn’t plan on flapping his lips about my secret identity as a half-fae, half-witch to anyone on that council of his. Call me crazy, but I didn’t think they’d take to kindly to my existence.

  In fact, I was pretty sure they’d make an effort to squash out my existence the first chance they got.

  “Shannon, look, I know you,” she sighed. “I know there was something about this man that you liked, and I get it, really. Trust me, do I get it. The number of men over the years that I have fallen for—”

  “Mom, that’s not what—”

  “Let me instill some motherly advice here, okay?” She interrupted. “Hunters are not good people. They’re not witches or warlocks, even. They’re humans that the witch council deemed cruel and relentless enough to turn into fae hunting monsters. Their magic was given to them. They weren’t born with it. They don’t have the same ideals of right and wrong as we do, the same notion of who’s good and who’s bad. If you get in their way when they’re going for the kill, they won’t hesitate to kill you, too.”

  Her words were cold and angry. I thought about Hunter’s face back in the cabin when he’d been trying to shove that dagger through my heart.

  That didn’t seem cold and vile to me. He seemed so human in that moment. I couldn’t imagine that he was this same type of horrid man Mom described.

  But it didn’t matter. Because I didn’t want him for the reasons she thought I did.

  “Mom, that’s not what this is,” I said quickly. “I don’t like him… okay, look, this isn’t about my feelings for Hunter. He knows what I am. He thought I was the one killing witches. That’s why he was with me. He trapped me in this cabin out in the woods, and he tried to kill me. But he couldn’t.”

  Mom’s brows knitted together in utter confusion. She blinked twice, and then adjusted the blanket underneath her over and over again as she tried to make sense of my words.

  “He didn’t want to kill you?” She murmured. “Are you absolutely sure?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “And I think that the witch council might be after him now. He failed them, after all.”

  “The council is unrelenting,” Mom sighed.

  Suddenly, the door burst open, and Grams strode in carrying a tray full of fried, greasy food. There were popovers, chicken and waffles, biscuits with country gravy, and a big mug of coffee.

  “I thought I heard voices in here,” she announced, plopping the tray down on the dresser. She came over to stand behind Mom and brushed a piece of my hair back from my face. “How ya doing, child?”

  “Okay,” I replied. But Grams just raised an eyebrow, knowing full well I was lying. “I’ll live. Isn’t that what’s important?”

  “Well, seeing as you gave us quite the scare back there, I’d say it’s pretty darn important,” she chuckled. “Now, are you hungry?”

  What is it with grandmothers and food? Why do they always bring it whenever someone’s feeling sick? It’s like their magic cure all.

  I glanced over at the tray of heavy food. As appetizing as it looked, the thought of putting anything in my mouth at that moment seemed like the worst possible idea in the entire world.

  “Maybe later,” I told her.

  “Okay,” she shrugged. “But I’m holding you to that, got it?”

  “Got it,” I laughed.

  Silence fell across the room, and Mom and Grams just stared down at me, their eyes full of tears they refused to shed in front of me.

  “Well, Elle, I suppose we should get out of here and let the girl have some rest,” Grams said.

  “Yes,” Mom replied. She bent
over and kissed my forehead softly, then straightened up, staring at me the way she had when I was a child. “Don’t get out of this bed until you’re gotten at least five more hours of sleep.”

  “Yes ma’am,” I laughed, rolling my eyes.

  But the truth was, it made me feel safe to know I was loved like that.

  Mom and Grams turned and were almost out the door by the time I remembered that I had something I desperately wanted to ask them.

  “Hey, guys, wait,” I called out. They turned back around curiously. “I was wondering… Grams, do you know what actually happened to Laslow?”

  Grams shook her head slowly, pain soaring across her face.

  “No,” she sighed. “I wish I did, baby. I wish I could give you some answers.”

  I could tell by the look in her eyes that she really wanted them. For a moment, I wrestled with whether or not I should mention my vision. I didn’t want to bring any more hardship upon them, or dredge up more past, painful memories. Especially for Grams.

  But that image of the man in the cell, chained to the wall like an animal, flashed through my head again.

  If that really was him, if he’d been locked away like that for nearly sixty-five years, I couldn’t stay silent.

  Grams needed to know. He’d been her one true love, and she deserved some answers.

  “I think I had a vision about him,” I said carefully, recalling the way they’d reacted to my last one. “I think I saw him. Grams… I think Laslow’s still alive.”

  Grams mouth popped open, and a waterfall’s worth of tears filled her eyes.

  “Are you sure?” She murmured. “Alive… I don’t… why didn’t he find me? Why didn’t he come back?”

  “He couldn’t,” I told her quickly. “I’m not totally sure what I saw, but he’s someone’s prisoner. He was chained up to a wall. And… Grams, I think he was in another world.”

  20

  Hunter

  I knew Shannon would be fine. When I saw her jump in front of the fae’s spell to save her mother, my heart stopped for a moment, but then I remembered the power I’d felt flowing through her that day in the coffee shop.

  She’d be fine.

  Everything had happened so fast in that moment. The fae had been shocked and aghast, angry that Shannon had ruined her perfect plan. But all the power that exploded out of Shannon must have scared the fae, because I blinked, and then she was gone.

  I’d watched as Shannon’s mom and grandmother had rushed over to her, terrified, and completely forgot I was there.

  Which was good. That was how it needed to be. They should forget about me, just as I should forget about Shannon.

  I was a hunter. I was meant to kill the fae, and anything else that threatened the balance of the world, that tried to send it into a place of evil. And Shannon was fae.

  But really, Shannon was unknown. And the hunters didn’t like the unknown. We’d rather kick it out of existence then risk letting it live and turning into something worse.

  I knew what would happen if I stayed. My hunter instincts would take over, and I’d try to kill Shannon again. Her mom and grandmother would stand in my way, and I’d kill them, too. It would be a horrible, messy bloodbath.

  Because if I stayed, I knew it would come down to her or me. If I didn’t kill her, the council would have me killed.

  So, while everyone was distracted with Shannon laying there on the ground, I dashed around the back of her shed and into the woods behind her house.

  And then I just kept on running. I cradled the hand the fae demon had broken. Shannon’s mom had tried to heal it, to help me, but she’d gotten distracted before she could finish the job. It hurt like hell, but I’d make it through.

  I had to get out of there. I wasn’t sure where I’d go, exactly, but I knew I had to be far away from Shannon. Let some other hunter get put on her case and forced to try and kill her. If I was right about how powerful she was, she’d kill them first, anyways.

  But it couldn’t be me. I couldn’t be the one sent to kill her. Because I was starting to think I might have feelings for this strange, unnatural woman.

  So I ran through the woods, sticks and leaves crunching under the thick soles of my boots. I just kept on running.

  Until suddenly, my feet froze, as if they were held in place by some invisible force.

  “Shit,” I murmured. I knew exactly what was about to happen. It was the same thing that had happened the first time I’d met the council, back when they’d turned me from a regular human into a fae-murdering machine.

  Just as I suspected, I started to get sucked away from the woods. It felt as if my body had been lifted into a vacuum. I was being compressed and stretched all at once as I flew through the atoms of the universe, over fields and house and cities until finally I landed on a cold stone floor. The ground was slimy with moisture underneath my hands, and I struggled to regain my breath.

  I knew exactly where I was. It was someplace I hoped I’d never have to be again.

  “Hunter,” a voice boomed from above me. “Stand.”

  Slowly, I got to my feet, wiping my hands off on my pants, and looked up at the circle of massive stone chairs above me.

  I was in the dark caves of the Hunter’s Council. Even after all this time, I’d never been able to figure out just where those caves were. They could have been anywhere on earth. Or even not on earth, for all I knew.

  I glanced at the hooded faces above me. Eleven chairs. Eleven masked figures. Three woman and eight men. I’d counted the last time I was here, using the voices to try and figure out who was who.

  The leader was a man with a deep, booming voice. His chair was always at the head of the circle, right where the twelve would have been if they were a clock.

  I’d never seen their faces or heard their names. I’d never even seen another hunter here. All I knew was that they were more powerful than I could ever hope to be. They’d even given me my magic, which meant that they controlled it.

  “Council,” I said, kneeling on the stone floor to show my respect.

  Silence hung in the air. Then, a woman to my right spoke. Her voice was high and nasally, and she was angry.

  “You failed, hunter,” she snapped. “You have never failed before. What happened? The Council demands to know.”

  “The fae was too powerful, ma’am,” I told her. “I couldn’t fight her. I’m not sure who she was, but I need backup, help. I’m afraid she’s going to keep going after witches. She has done it before, after all.”

  “We are no longer interested in the fae killer,” the leader boomed. “It would appear she has a new target, and so do you.”

  That was when my heart froze in my chest.

  I just knew they were talking about Shannon. I wasn’t even sure how they knew about her, or how much they knew, but I knew enough about this world to know that they’d see Shannon as a threat. It didn’t matter what the truth was. She was different, and insanely powerful, and in this world, different and powerful was not a good thing.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” I was trying to play dumb, hoping beyond hope that there was something else out there they needed me to do.

  Another man laughed, a deep roar from his belly. It sounded to me like an old-fashioned king laughing when he made his poor jester dance and make a fool of himself.

  The laugh of a coldhearted man.

  “Do not play dumb with us, hunter,” he demanded. “Or do you forget we hold your life in our hands?”

  To prove his point, the councilman shot his arm out and muttered something incoherently.

  Suddenly, I was brought to my knees by an invisible force, made to prostate myself in front of the council, while the dagger in my pocket shot out and hung above me, ready to slit my throat on the councilman’s smallest command.

  I held my fear in, though. I refused to give them the satisfaction of knowing that they scared me.

  Chuckles of mirth skittered about the room as members of the Hunter’s Co
uncil watched this man hold my life in my hands.

  Then, the force lifted, and the dagger clattered to the ground. I let out the breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding, and forced myself back to my knees, glaring at the man.

  “How could I forget?” I spat. “You would never let me.”

  “That is right,” he replied evenly.

  “Enough!” Barked the leader. “Hunter. You know very well I speak of the half breed. She is a danger to us all.”

  “Shannon could never be a danger,” I shouted. “She’s good, and kind. She can’t help what she was born as.”

  “I do not care about what is in her heart,” he snapped. “I care about the power that rolls through her body. It is too much power for any one person to have, witch or fae. We must do away with her.”

  That was it. Those were the words I knew were coming.

  “No,” I shook my head. “Please don’t make me do this.”

  “Hunter, I hereby order you to dispose of the half breed, by power of this council,” he boomed. “You will do it, or you will die.”

  A loud, thunderous boom filled the air, like the clap of lightning against water. Then I was sucked right back into that horrible vacuum before I could even think to protest.

  When the world fell back into place around me, I realized I was in Shannon’s backyard.

  My heart sank into my feet.

  I glanced up at the house, where I had a perfect view through her bedroom window. Ducking behind a tree, I waited to see if I could catch a glance of her through the double-paned glass.

  But she couldn’t see me. I was afraid that, if she did, she’d come down here to see me, and then I’d have no choice. We’d be alone, and I’d already learned her weaknesses.

  I’d know exactly what to do. The hunter inside of me would take over, and Shannon would be dead.

  My breath hitched at the thought. I wasn’t sure what my feelings about her were, exactly, but I knew she’d stirred something within me. A humanity of sorts, one that I’d buried long ago, well before I’d even become a hunter.

  Just as I’d hoped, Shannon appeared in front of the window to gaze out across her backyard.