On Wednesday of their second week together, Lance came to do his evening extermination work and found Glori sitting on the front step, wringing tears out of an enormous gossamer green handkerchief and looking like she was ready to tear her hair out by the roots. He barely got the truck stopped in time before he bolted out of the driver's seat, leaped over the fence and dropped down onto the step to wrap an arm around her.
"What happened?" he demanded. "Did they finally show up? I warned them, if they ever came to harass you, I'd figure out some way to pay them back."
Every night, a few ghosts threatened to attack Glori at her daycare, while Lance wasn't there to run interference. Only reminding them that they would be hurting innocent Human children in the process kept them from haunting the daycare. They contented themselves with watering down his special formulas, breaking the hoses on his sprayers, breaking the seals on his bug traps and putting sugar in place of the poison. Lance had taken to checking the contents of his truck every morning before he headed out, to head off their sabotage.
"Who showed up?" Glori hiccupped and wiped at her eyes. Filled with tears, they glistened like jewels. She sniffed and shook her head. "It's finally happened. The children's magic isn't strong enough."
Chapter Eight
"Strong enough?" Lance flipped through the file folders in his head, trying to figure out what she referred to.
"I had fights today. Four of them. My anti-bully spells haven't just broken down, they're working in reverse!" she wailed, and flung her arms around him and hid her face in his collar.
A little bit of coaxing got the details from her.
Bradley, who was normally the sweetest little boy, decided that he didn't want to help pass out the apple slices for the morning snack. He wanted all the apple slices for himself. Usually, he was Glori's best helper, an example to the rest of the class. When she reminded him that it was good to share, he threw a handful of apple slices at her. His best friends, Tyler and Robbie, tackled him and stole the rest of the treat. One whacked Bradley with the plastic serving tray until Glori wrestled it away from him, while the other boy lobbed apple slices at the rest of the class.
Then, during playtime, Tabitha pushed little Megan down in the mud. What really frightened Glori was that there hadn't been mud in the fenced-in playground when she let the children out to play only ten minutes before. Tabitha had made fun of the jingle bells on Megan's sneakers. Megan, who normally didn't say more than three words in a row, told Tabitha to stay away because her shoes were dirty and ugly. Then she started to list everything that was wrong with the other girl, who until that moment had been her best friend. Until Tabitha threatened to push her down in the mud.
"Then the mud was just there," Glori said, between a last few sobs. "Like the magic is helping them be nasty. I set it up to work like subliminals, you know? A little voice whispers to them that it's nice to share and help people, and to ask instead of take. Things like that. My head hurts so much right now, I can't check and listen, but I'll just bet the magic is telling them to hit each other and nobody wants to be friends with them. It's working backwards."
"Just like your anti-pest spells," Lance mumbled. He barely heard himself, caught up in the heart-thudding sensation of Glori pressed tight against him so he could feel every curve, every little movement of her chest against his as she sobbed out her misery and despair.
"Now, that's what I like to see," Matilda said, coming around the corner from the playground side of the building. "A little closeness, a little tenderness, a little--" She gasped. "Glori, what happened?"
"I hope it's not the ghosts," Lance said. That slipped out when he didn't want it to. What could he do, with his attention divided between his purely male reaction to Glori pressed up close to him, and irritation with Matilda for showing up at the absolutely wrong time? Or maybe it was the right time. He couldn't decide. And that was more of a distraction.
"The ghosts?" Sparks buzzed a few orbits around Matilda's head as a frown settled in. "That pompous idiot brother of mine. Is he threatening Glori?"
"He wants me to make war, not love, when it comes to Fairies-- Sorry, when it comes to Fae," he hurried to add.
Glori sat up straight and stared, wide-eyed for several heartbeats. He watched her brimming tears shimmer through several different colors. For some funny reason, that just entranced him instead of making him shudder. The indoctrination of his childhood certainly couldn't stand up against his attraction to her. Who could hate someone like Glori?
"What's wrong?" he asked, when the staring continued.
She brushed the tears from her eyes, grinned wetly and shook her head.
"Maybe we should work on this new development so I can get going, and you can...work out your other concerns," Matilda said. "I came by to see how the pest problem was going. Are you saying you think the ghosts are adding to it?"
Glori hurried to explain how the children had begun battling between themselves over silly matters, and some of them were turning into bullies. Lance's gut twisted with guilt when she reluctantly added that several children hadn't been themselves, had refused their afternoon snacks and looked a little green when their mothers picked them up from the daycare.
He wondered if it was the extra-strength concoctions he kept pumping into the foundation and walls of her building, to kill the sleeping roaches and ants. He almost hoped it was his fault. Otherwise, Glori's healing spells were working in reverse, too. Lance didn't want that to happen to her. What was a Fae supposed to do when her magic worked backwards?
"Hey, I got an idea," he said with a grin. He hoped Matilda and Glori found it funny, too. "How about you do a spell reinforcing the one Feather-duster put on Mortimer? I figure, if your magic is working backwards to what you want, you'll actually break the spell. Or at least set the ghosts free." He shrugged.
"If only it were that simple." Some of the tension bowing Matilda's shoulders seemed to let up. "Good thinking, though. If only we could ensure that it wouldn't triple the curse, instead."
"Oh. Guess I need to learn the rules."
If he spent time with Glori, long-term, he would have to learn the rules, wouldn't he? Lance kind of liked that idea.
The problem was, they had to get through this current problem, first, before they worked on the long-term. Matilda's idea turned out to be their best bet. Glori turned off her anti-bully and healing spells, rather than dismantling them as Lance expected. Putting a spell into neutral was far safer, when it was malfunctioning, than taking it apart. When Glori was healed of her problem, she wouldn't have to go through the effort of re-making it.
The children at the daycare would simply have to take their chances with real bullies and childhood illnesses until her magic was back in working order.
"How about you set up a spell around the daycare, where it doesn't interfere with Glori's?" Lance suggested. "Maybe something to settle the kids down when they come in, and clean them up from whatever bugs--I mean, whatever germs they pick up from each other during the day?"
Glori stared at him again, her smile a little bigger than last time. Matilda nodded, her eyes bright, and nodded slowly. Lance didn't know if he liked being the center of attention, even if he seemed to have the approval of two beautiful women.
"I said this generation was a vast improvement, didn't I?" Matilda said on a half-sigh. "Lance, you have a wonderful future as a Changeling." Her smile died instantly and she sighed. "If we can clear up the curse problem. Until that magic is ridded out of your system, so to speak, there's no way you can call up your inborn magic and learn to use it."
"Changeling? Like--" He glanced at Glori. "Become a Fae?" He thought of the fury and dismay of the ghosts when he told them they had all carried a trace of Fae blood. Anything to irritate Mortimer and Willoughby. Dudley would be fascinated, but Dudley wouldn't be around to study the rules of magic over his shoulder, any more than the other ghosts would be around to gnash their misty teeth and call him a traitor. If he could ever manag
e to break the curse.
"If we manage to solve all our problems." She nodded again. "I'll put this spell up. You two get to work on taking care of the inside of the building, then I suggest you go home and get some rest. Or some fun." She winked at Glori, who blushed from pink to lavender. "Whatever it takes to recharge your batteries. And preferably not alone," she added on a half-whisper.
Lance definitely liked Matilda's branch of the family better than Mortimer's.
* * * *
The half moon spilled watery light through the kitchen window when Matilda snapped her fingers to open the lock and the back door of Lance's house. She stood for a few moments in the doorway, letting her shadow prowl ahead of her, searching the kitchen and then disengaging from her feet to go into the next room.
"Get her, boys!" a scratchy, ethereal voice tried to roar.
Flickers of translucent movement swirled around the shadow, which grew taller against the opposite wall and stood there, arms crossed, tapping a silent foot against the floor. The ghosts crashed through the shadow, through the wall, and banged into each other. This went on for nearly five minutes before Matilda sighed. Two snaps of her fingers turned the lights on through the entire house, and turned off the TV, which currently showed a rugby match. Howls of dismay quickly cut off when the attacking ghosts turned against the ones who were too engrossed in the game to join the battle.
"Enough, all of you!" Matilda trumpeted. She stomped into the house. The door slammed shut behind her. The shadow rolled off the wall and fluttered through the ghosts, back to join up with her. The ghosts grumbled and snarled, but followed the shadow. "Where are you, Mortimer? I know you're the ringleader of this motley crew."
"Matilda?" Sir Mortimer pressed both hands against his insubstantial chest and swayed, with his boots nearly four feet off the ground. "My darling little sister. How wonderful to see you."
"I'll just bet." She met the eyes of each ghost in turn, glaring, making each smoky apparition either darken with shame or go transparent and try to hide. None of them were able to escape the kitchen, which made some of them churn and go white with agitation. "Now, what's this I hear about you interfering with Lance and Glori?"
"Us? Interfere?" Dudley whimpered.
"We're just protecting the purity of our bloodline," Squire Rigley snapped at the same time.
"So you were interfering. I thought so. What was it? Watering down Lance's chemicals? Throwing a kink in Glori's protective spells? Warping the power feed? Making the electro-magnetic field around the building knot up, so she got brown-outs and power surges?"
"Didn't think of that one," someone muttered from the back of the cloudy crowd.
"Don't even think of trying it," she snapped.
"We didn't do anything to her magic," Rector Willoughby said. He pulled himself up as straight as his portly, ethereal frame would allow and affected a pose of righteous indignation. "We simply enforced the Afterlife grid around her building. In the name of protecting the innocent children, of course."
"Your Afterlife grid, as you call that pathetic tangle of power lines and short-circuits, impinged on the Fae dominance lines. You didn't shut down her magic. You put it into a series of knots that could end up killing someone. As in, the children inside that building. Do you know what happens to ghosts who cause the deaths of innocents while attempting unjustified revenge?" she said, her tone going sugary sweet and coating the blade of her furious expression.
"Uh..." Dudley raised his hand and waved it to get her attention.
Matilda sighed and nodded for him to speak.
"The ghost of the innocent victim is given power over the nincompoops who caused the death, and becomes a raging spirit. We could conceivably set up a curse worse than the one we exist under already."
"Did you think of that when these morons went sneaking off to cause trouble?"
"He's been too busy trying to figure out ways to help Lance and that twit," Mortimer grumbled.
"That 'twit' is a darling girl whom I adore. Lance couldn't do any better than to hook up with her for the next five centuries."
"No. Not on your life. Over my dead body. You can't--"
"You don't have a dead body anymore, Mortimer," Matilda sighed. "Morty. Big brother. I adored you even when I knew you were an oblivious bumbler. But you have to let go this stupid delusion. I'm very happy where I am. Lance has the chance to be a Changeling, like me, and live very happily. Glori is his soul-mate, and those don't happen very often, even among the Fae."
"Sentence that boy to an unnatural existence?" Willoughby roared. "I refuse!"
"Oh, and I suppose living with fifty ghosts and turning into a mouse at the dark of the moon is a natural existence?"
That silenced all of them for nearly a full minute. Matilda waited until some of the ghosts twitched and looked at each other. Smoke trickled from the ears of Mortimer and Willoughby. She suspected that was a bad sign they were coming up with a truly dreadful idea or argument.
"You have several options, boys. You can let Glori and Lance enjoy being together, and decide for themselves what they want. Or you can interfere and ensure Lance is locked into the curse for the rest of his unnatural life." Matilda put steel and grit into her voice that she hadn't used since her oldest son went through a rebellious decade. "Or, you can help them out and make it easier to find a way to break the curse. The less trouble Glori has with her daycare, the more energy she'll have to devote to finding a Fae princess to kiss Lance and break the spell."
"What if we don't want to?" the sheriff snarled rather sulkily. "You're our family, too. You have to help us. Why aren't you working on breaking the curse? Why didn't you try to break the curse at the beginning, you ungrateful--" He stopped, choking, with his tongue hanging out of his mouth and Mortimer's metal-gauntleted hand around his throat.
"I told Mortimer I would help him, but he never had the wit to come ask me."
"You were living with the bleeding Fairies!" her brother's ghost roared, ending on a wail.
"And then," she continued, raising her voice to silence the agreements and protests from the rest of the crowd, "I thought he wouldn't be so rude as to get married and pass the curse on to his children. But he did. To all of you. I honestly didn't think any decent woman would have him. I must admit, though ..." She softened her expression and let her voice take on a purring quality that had the ghosts straightening their ethereal clothes and stroking beards and moustaches. "The men of our family do have an enormous amount of charm."
She waited, until every ghost smiled at her. Then she glared at each of them in turn.
"And an equally enormous amount of gall and selfishness, to enslave an innocent woman and curse future generations. Well, I'm here to tell you, gentlemen--or not, as the case may be--the curse stops with Lance. Are you going to help him find a normal life, and earn some freedom in the Afterlife for yourselves?"
"Sounds good to me," a ghost in academic robes quipped from near the ceiling.
"What if we don't help him at all?" Squire Rigley asked.
"Why, I'll find a way to break the curse, but only for Lance. I'll make sure you sorry excuses for men stay locked up together, barred from the rewards of the Afterlife, forced to witness Lance's happiness without being able to make him hear or see you. And you won't be able to do anything to him or to anyone he loves. Understood?"
Silence. Finally, a few ghosts mumbled agreement, and others nodded.
They waited until she left, then they gathered around Mortimer, eyes beseeching or horrified or infuriated.
"Okay, boys." He glanced over his shoulder to make sure Matilda hadn't come back into the house to spy on him. "We can't let Lance get trapped with that twinkly little twitch of a Faerie, so we just have to make sure Matilda doesn't find out what we're doing. Easy, right? She's only a woman."
"What she doesn't know won't hurt us." Dudley shuddered. A few ghosts laughed at him, but others looked thoughtful.
"First thing we do is find Lance. If h
e's not home by now, then he's with the Faerie. Let's see if we can't pull her wings."
Chapter Nine
"Are you sure?" Glori asked.
"You got something against a moonlight picnic?" Lance took his gaze off the highway for a few seconds and flashed a grin at her.
Truth to tell, he was starting to get a little nervous. It amazed him that he had dared to talk Glori into a date tonight, after her truly rotten day. It amazed him more that she agreed after only token resistance.
He just wished there was more moonlight. The moon was at half and fading fast. Less than seven days would get him to the dark of the moon. He still hadn't told Glori the full truth about the family curse, and by now, he knew what she thought about vermin in general, rodents in particular. True, he could be a cute mouse when he wasn't in a bad mood--but shifting from two hundred pounds of muscle into five ounces of lavender-silver fur always put him in a bad mood. He bit his mother, once.
Would Glori pity him or run screaming when she saw what he became?
Lance shuddered at the mere thought of revealing his shame to her. Did he have to tell her?
If they wanted to have anything long-term, he most certainly did.
Especially if it became long-term because she liked him.
Or if she just took a long time finding someone with enough royal Fae blood to break his spell.
Lance thought about her comment about the current Fae leader being a man. Not even to break the spell could he endure a man kissing him. Especially since Glori got that weird look in her eyes when she talked about Theodosius, as if she suspected something strange or not quite savory about him.
Just what I need--a fag Fae. That thought brought a snort of rueful laughter from him.
"What?" Glori's smile went crooked, but widened a little.
"Just thinking how weird it is, us being together, driving down the highway, getting along. All my life, the ghosts have been raising me to hate the thought of someone like you. Then you come along and... Makes a guy kind of glad to know there's a little bit of magic in his blood. Know what I mean?"
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