Funny thing, though. This place was spotlessly clean. No signs of damage from the unwanted guests. As if they had all shown up just in the last few days. But from the sheer numbers, these pests had been around for months. Years.
It didn't make sense. It was as if a curse had been placed. Maybe magic at work?
"No way," Lance breathed.
Professor Dudley was the most likeable of his ever-present companions. Sometimes when Lance was a boy, the wizened old ghost had told him bedtime stories while the other ghosts were busy pestering his father and trying to drive his mother insane. Dudley had specialized in magic. He had tried to find a way around the curse. There had to be some other cure besides the kiss of a Faerie Princess. Logic said so.
Of course, logic said there were no such things as Fairies.
"Nope. Can't be." But Lance looked around the room, and his childhood memories conjured up an answer.
The place looked like it had been free of bugs until recently... Maybe because magic had kept them away, until recently?
The question then became: if Glori had magic, why did it stop working?
"Nah. Can't be."
Glori emerged from the back office again. "How's it going?" She had such a hopeful look on her pretty, elfin face--elfin or faerie?--that Lance didn't want to disappoint her.
But still, something started creeping up his back. He felt a chill finger brush across his face, as if...as if he had seen a ghost that he didn't recognize.
"It's going to take a while to come up with an estimate." He gestured at the rush hour of bugs all around them.
Funny--or not so funny--he just noticed now that all the bugs stayed away from Glori. Like she had an invisible shield around her. Like...magic?
"Guess we'd better take a rain check on that dinner, huh?" Glori looked a little disappointed. That was good for his ego, at least.
"Well--"
"Honestly, I'd love to spend time with you. There's just something about you." Her eyes twinkled and she shrugged, and a delightful little giggle escaped her. "It's not a pickup line, but honestly, you look...I don't know. Familiar? Anyway, I think I'm going to need a good night's sleep to deal with this in the morning." She gestured around the room.
"You're not going to be open, with all this, are you?" He felt horrified and nauseated at the thought of little children exposed to the bugs. He hated being exposed to them, and they were his livelihood.
"Don't you worry, Mr. Knight. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve. They're only temporary. I made them work while the children were here today, and I can make them work again in the morning. But I don't know how long I can keep doing it." Her smile faltered a little, and Lance saw the struggle for bravery behind her sparkling personality. "My children will be just fine until you come up with a permanent solution."
* * * *
"A few tricks up her sleeve," Lance snarled as he stumbled through his front door half an hour later. He shuddered.
This morning, he had been a firm believer that Fairies no longer existed. Kind of like wooly mammoths and the dodo bird, they might have existed once upon a time, but they were extinct now.
This evening, he was firmly convinced he had brushed up against concentrated magic, and it freaked him out. Which was kind of ironic, considering his legacy of ghosts and the Family Curse, and seeing himself in the mirror--while perched precariously on the toothbrush holder--at the dark of the moon.
"A few tricks up her sleeve," he repeated.
"Still got your brains tangled up in your jock strap?" the sheriff grumbled.
"No. The lad has finally seen the light." Sir Mortimer floated over from the corner of the ceiling where he and some of the older ghosts retreated when the younger generation indulged in television.
How they had figured out how to turn on the set and change channels, Lance didn't want to know.
"Okay, so she might be a Faerie. She has bug problems like everybody else," Lance retorted.
"Not like everybody else," Dudley whispered. He floated over and rested a chill, misty hand on Lance's shoulder. "Sorry, my boy." Wisps of hair floated like anemone antennae around his bald head that gleamed even in the darkness. His eyes were nearly hidden behind thick, foggy spectacles.
"Yeah, she's got ten times the problem. She obviously doesn't have the magic to help herself." He stomped through the entryway, down the hall into the kitchen. On a night like this, he needed a couple beers. Fast. Maybe intravenously.
"Don't help her!" the rector shouted after him.
"Have to." Lance patted his pocket where the sizable deposit check rested. He hadn't quite calculated what it would take--in terms of supplies or time--to clear up Glori's problem, but he had promised to do his best.
Knights always kept their promises, whether they wore spurs or badges or carried enough equipment to be one of the Ghostbusters.
What he wouldn't give for some Ghostbusters right now.
"He took her money," someone moaned behind him.
"Fat lot of good that does," the sheriff snarled. "Don't you know anything, boy?"
"Faerie gold," Dudley said. "It might look real in the moonlight, within the sphere of their magic, but in the light of day it will be nothing more than a handful of wet leaves." He shook his head and made tsking noises. "I'm sad to say you disappoint me, Lancelot. I thought I trained you better than that. How could you let her fool you?"
"It's not Faerie gold. It's a check, made out on the same bank I use." Lance twisted open his first beer, took a deep breath, and guzzled the contents in ten seconds flat. He gasped, slammed down the bottle, and reached for his second.
Chapter Three
"Matilda?" Glori gaped, gripping the doorknob of her front door so hard the antique brass protested and started to bend.
"Hello, dear." Matilda, Regional Coordinator for Fae Emotional, Mental and Physical Health, had made herself at home in Glori's living room.
Glori's pet parakeets perched on Matilda's shoulders. Almost two dozen jewel-toned butterflies flew dizzy, happy circles above her head. The tall, ethereal, violet-eyed woman wore a simple pair of Capri jeans and a white eyelet shirt. Her outfit, combined with the resident birds, butterflies and plants filling the room, made her seem like an advertisement for a new brand of organic butter or laundry detergent, or some such thing that Humans always found so fascinating and essential.
"I hope I got here in time," the woman continued as she stood up from the nest of pillows on the floor. All the birds and butterflies took wing. They circled Glori three or four times in greeting, then flew off to their respective resting places in the miniature jungle that filled the living room.
"In time?" Glori shook her head. Had she been thinking about Lance so much she had missed something? She sighed, and knew it was the shape of Matilda's chin, her glossy, ebony hair and the way she stood, firmly planted as if her bare feet could reach through the foundation to the bedrock, that reminded her of Lance.
Everything reminded her of Lance on the short drive home. It was disgusting. And distracting. And she had never felt so ready to fly in her whole life. What was wrong with her?
Nothing is wrong, a giggling part of her insisted. Everything is fantastic. You should have felt this way a long, long time ago.
"Yes," Matilda said. She held out her hand for Glori's and led the Fae woman through the jungle, to her sunny, glass-block kitchen. "Sit. I have some news for you." She sighed and raked her delicate, rainbow-painted fingers through her raven curls. "I hate giving this speech. It was ten times worse when I gave it to my daughters, and they breezed through it, thanks to being Halflings. How do Human women handle it?"
She laughed and sank down into the chair next to the stool where Glori had taken her perch. "I keep forgetting--I was Human once."
Glori gasped as Lance finally slid from her thoughts and her mind connected all the pieces. Her spells working backwards at the daycare. Inviting all the bugs from the surrounding neighborhoods to take up residence, inste
ad of keeping them away. The twisting in the threads of the spells woven around her daycare. The fact that she couldn't trust her own self-diagnostic spell. "You know about my spells going wonky?"
"Oh, dear." She slumped a little. "I am too late. How long have you been suffering? Why didn't you call for help?"
"It just happened this morning. Or rather, some time over the weekend." Strange, how she felt better. Not much better, but enough.
Quickly Glori explained what she had found when she went into her daycare that morning, and the battle she had endured all day to keep the roaches and other assorted pests under control so the children would be safe.
After she explained what she had managed, and that she had hired an exterminator to take care of the problem until her magic went back to normal, Glori fell silent. True, she was exhausted, but she couldn't seem to get her thoughts far from Lance Knight, or keep them away for very long. She sighed, and felt a little resentment toward Matilda for showing up. What if she had convinced Lance to come home for dinner? How could she have explained Matilda's presence? Certainly not as her cousin or sister or roommate. Ordinarily, Glori loved Matilda's visits, which were never frequent enough. With all her responsibilities as Regional Coordinator, she was lucky if she could pop in to see Glori twice a year. Yet for the first time in centuries, Matilda's timing was lousy.
What was she griping about? Matilda was here to help her. Besides, Lance had seemed in such a hurry to leave, despite his suggestions about dinner at the beginning of his visit to the daycare.
Glori sighed. Lance probably remembered he had a date already, or he decided he wanted nothing to do with a woman who could attract that many disgusting creatures. Even an exterminator had to have his limits.
"So, what's wrong with me?" she concluded. "I assume from what you said, all the problems with my magic are my fault?"
"Not exactly your fault." Matilda shrugged. "Blame heredity. Blame inbreeding and pollution. Blame your mother, who wished for a girl rather than a boy."
"Matilda!" Glori giggled, which was glorious relief from the tension building in her chest just a little while ago.
"It's that time in a woman's life, that's all. Human girls suffer through puberty. Fae women suffer the Need."
"Nooooo!" Glori covered her eyes and leaned back against the wall. "I'm too young to think about mating."
"You're 497 Human years old, and you've been living outside the Enclaves. That's enough to age and mature any Fae woman or man. Admittedly, surrounding yourself with children should buffer you wonderfully, but it happens to all of us eventually." Matilda sighed and summoned up a brave expression.
Glori would have been convinced, except for that glitter of...something in her advisor's eye. Matilda did feel sympathy for her, but obviously it hadn't been a traumatic time when she faced the Need.
"All right, how did you get through it?" She put both feet on the floor, and braced her hands on the edge of the kitchen table.
"Oh, my dear, I'm a Changeling, remember? We don't suffer the Need--which, I might add, makes a woman extremely attractive to Fae men. Men, whether Fae or Human, don't like to be hunted down and dragged to the altar. They want to be the hunters, persuading reluctant maidens to promise themselves for eternity--or the next three hundred years, whichever comes first. That's why Fae men used to spend so much time tricking Human girls and bringing them home to the Enclaves. They were more fun than Fae women. More of a challenge. Less likely to expect eternity when a man promises it to them.
"Besides, our men can't get away with anything with us, because we know when they use magic to cast a glamour or put a manikin in their places so they can slip out for a night with the boys. Men like to think they're the hunter, not the hunted. The trick is to make a man think he had to hunt you down, and keep him thinking he has to continue playing hunter, even after he's neatly hog-tied and domesticated." Her mischievous spark died and she sighed. "Living outside the Enclaves is going to make it harder to find you a decent mate. The minute you return, everyone will know you've come husband-hunting."
"I don't want to marry an Enclave wimp!" burst out of Glori before she could control herself.
"Face it. There aren't that many Fae men to begin with, and most of them live in the Enclave because...well, Fae women are able to blend in so much better in the outside world. Fae men are like carrier pigeons. They're so busy having fun and playing tricks on Humans, they get caught and clobbered and stripped of their magic before they know it. If only their ears weren't so pointy. They wouldn't stand out so badly and they could talk themselves out of trouble without that little hitch. Fae men are such good talkers..."
"Well, you know what they say--the bigger the points--" Glori clapped her hands over her mouth. Her eyes got big and she blushed so hard she turned red, then violet, then amber, and shot off rainbow-colored sparks.
Matilda laughed with her, but all too soon, their laughter faded.
"Face it, dear, you're up against the biological clock, and it's ticking down to an explosion you won't like." Matilda snapped her fingers, and Glori's teakettle floated over to the sink, to fill with water and settle back on her stove. The gas turned on and the lids on the glass tea canisters came open, one after another, bags floating across the room to be sniffed and inspected by Matilda as the two women continued talking.
"Can't I just wait it out? If I stay away from Fae men, won't the Need burn itself out? Kind of like depriving a fire of oxygen, right? I've heard of it happening."
"Some women have managed it, but they lived in Human convents, and it took the better part of three decades. And they aged while they were doing it. Not fun or pretty. And face it, darling, you're not convent material. You love carnivals and sports bars and children too much to go into seclusion. And no TV or movies allowed, if you go the total deprivation route," Matilda added. "Not even pictures of big, strong, sweaty, testosterone-enriched men. Just thinking about heroic exploits and kissing--and worse--will snap your control," she added in a sepulchral voice.
"No 'Stargate' or 'Dead Zone' or 'MacGyver' reruns? Not even 'M*A*S*H' reruns? I can't live without 'Chuck'!" Glori thought she'd faint. "But if I avoid all Fae men--"
"It's not always that easy. If a particularly handsome Human showed any sexual interest in you whatsoever on a particularly bad day--that's it. He's tied up, nice and neat, and happy about it, thank goodness. But you're bound to a Human you will probably grow tired of because you didn't choose him voluntarily. You'll be trapped by hormones. Hooked and landed. And Humans--especially the males--being as fertile as they are, you'll have a Halfling bun in the oven before you know it."
"Halflings aren't so bad. I adore all your sons and daughters. Not a bum in the bunch."
"I was smart enough to let Anselmo trap me." Matilda smirked. "He still thinks he has to work to keep me happy and protect me from other men interested in me. Commitment and a little spice are important in a happy marriage, and it reflects in the children. Breeding is everything."
"That's just it. I don't want to breed!" A horrid thought struck her hard enough to knock the breath out of her. "Oh, no. Lance!"
Or maybe it wasn't such a horrid thought at that ...
* * * *
Usually, Mortimer harassed Lance if he had more than two beers in a night. Tonight, however, the ghostly knight badgered the other spirits into helping supply Lance with...spirits. He was so sunk in thought, he didn't even notice until his second glass that his beer tasted a lot like whiskey.
Lance didn't keep whiskey in the house.
"Where did you get-- No, I don't want to know." Lance stomped into the kitchen and started to empty his glass into the sink. Then he thought better of it. The higher the alcohol level rose in his blood, the easier it was to float over the logic barriers in his brain.
Even a man who lived with ghosts and turned into a teensy little cartoon-cute mouse at the dark of the moon had a hard time accepting the concept of a real, live Faerie in this day and age.
Especially one who ran a daycare center and had a killer bug problem.
Especially one who was pure eye candy that had nothing to do with the Good Ship Lollipop.
What if he had asked Glori out tonight after all? Would he have his kiss and be free of the curse by now?
"She has to be a princess, dope," he growled, and slammed the glass down so hard it cracked. Lance muffled a curse and dumped the whiskey out into the sink and the glass into the trash, before he accidentally slit his wrist. Now was not the time to join the ghostly roundup.
"What if she is a Faerie Princess?" Dudley asked, floating down through the ceiling to join him just above the sink. "If you force her to kiss you, violence could negate the efficacy of the magic."
"What if she doesn't know she's a Faerie?" Lance mused. "What if she's a Halfling and she doesn't know what she is? Who ever heard of a Faerie Princess running a daycare? Does the magic work if she doesn't know what she is? Does she have to wish it, for me to be healed and the curse broken? What if she thinks I'm crazy when I tell her?"
The thought of Glori laughing at him, or running away shrieking in terror, sent a pain through him that had nothing to do with his burning stomach, his missed dinner, or the purely hormonal need to see her again.
* * * *
"What about birth control?" Glori blurted.
Matilda let out a yelp, startled off the step-stool she'd perched on to dig out the last bottle of chocolate syrup in Glori's highest cupboard. Her emergency stash, put aside for true crisis moments. Matilda landed with a soft thump on both feet, clutching the bottle to her chest, and glared at Glori.
"The Need is more emotional and physical than biological, right? Getting pregnant doesn't turn it off, and neither does falling in love, right?" Glori hurried on, in between bites of her triple chocolate supreme brownie sundae. "If I just get some really good birth control--and make sure he uses his own--and just have a really hot, sweaty..." Her face blazed hot, rippling through the usual color changes at near-blinding speed as her voice failed.
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