Hunt: An Urban Faery Tale (The Faery Chronicles Book 1)

by Leslie Claire Walker

  The question put front and center what Kevin had forgotten: his father’s health. If the King had actually accepted his offer, they’d be back to square one with his dad continuing to lose his mind, eventually dying of it. Because of the King’s actions in the first place.

  Kevin swore under his breath. How could he have fucked up that badly at the start? Worse, what if he kept doing it?

  He said nothing.

  The King nodded. “Pick another choice.”

  Kevin took a deep breath, scared that everyone could hear the shudder when he exhaled. If he didn’t get a grip, he might as well just give in. He had more than his own fear to think about. He had his father. And he had Simone.

  No matter that she seemed as foreign as all the rest of them, or that she’d hurt his feelings back in the room. She’d sacrificed her life as she knew it for him to take this chance, to pay back the King for what had happened to her, too. He’d sworn he would.

  Time to be cool. Time to think.

  What had just gone down? The King had pointed out his error. The guy had helped him. Why would he do that? Because Kevin had something he and his people needed, just like he had something Kevin needed. Making that deal was in everybody’s best interests. It was the only reason they were there.

  Kevin tried again.

  “I want my father healed,” he said. “I want him whole in mind, body, and spirit. I want both of us returned tonight before midnight in the human world, to the alley with the bus that used to be Simone’s.”

  “What will you give me in return, Kevin?” the King asked. “I won’t do what you’re asking for free.”

  Which smashed all of Kevin’s cool into shards of glass. They cut deep. His hope started to bleed away, drop by drop. There was nothing he could promise the King. Nothing the bastard wanted except what he’d already asked for.

  Kevin wasn’t going to be able to get out of this mess. He wasn’t going to come up with some brilliant insight at the last minute. Some way to screw the King the wall. He was just some dude, gift or no gift.

  He shook his head to clear it. Forced himself to focus, goddammit.

  So what if he couldn’t manufacture a clear way out? Did that even matter? Or was getting out with everything he could the most important thing? His father’s health. Simone’s revenge. His own free will. If he couldn’t get that much, they were all as good as dead.

  What did he have to do?

  If he had to be what the King wanted, he’d have to figure out how to do it on his own terms and make the King think the whole thing was his idea. He’d have to figure out how to get his dad cured and out of here and how not to make himself a slave.

  He wanted to hit something. But words were the only weapons he had.

  So he countered the King’s demand. “You want me to be your magical ambassador? I’m willing to do that with conditions.”

  “There’s no room for negotiation on that matter, Kevin. Either you agree to do it, or there’s no deal.”

  Kevin held the King’s gaze. “Then what? We all sit here until next Halloween while the magic in my world dies and takes you with it?”

  The King ceded him the point. “What are your conditions?”

  “Whatever training I need, I get it in the human world. Whatever assignments I’m given, they don’t interfere with my human life—I’m not giving up who I am for you or anyone else. And I won’t risk my life.”

  The King shook his head. “I can’t promise on that last one.”

  “Then I get to choose whether I accept the risk,” Kevin said. “And if someone’s going to deliver messages to me or whatever, I want it to be someone I already know.”

  “Simone,” the King said.

  “Yes.” Kevin sneaked a glance her way. He expected some kind of reaction, but she kept her expression flat.

  “I have no objections.” The King turned to his Queen. “What say you, love?”

  “Done,” the Queen said.

  Kevin’s heart sank. It’d been too easy. All of that build up and for what? What had he forgotten? What had he missed?

  The Queen answered his unspoken question. “There’s one more thing.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  KEVIN DIDN’T KNOW what that could be, seeing as they’d made the agreement he’d come for. He’d won his father’s freedom and well-being. And he’d won his life back.

  “There are more than just commitments to be made tonight, Kevin,” the King said. “There are other rules that govern here. Didn’t Simone tell you?”

  “She said there were too many.”

  “She also told you what you would need to do to rescue your father,” the King said.

  Kevin remembered. “A tear.”

  He had to coax a tear from the King. The one thing he’d never worked out a plan to do. It wasn’t right.

  The King answered his unspoken thought. “It’s the law.”

  It was a stupid law.

  “What’s in your pocket, Kevin?” the King asked.

  The broken mirror. He pulled it out, laid out the pieces on the table atop his napkin.

  “Look in the glass and tell me what you see,” the King said.

  Kevin really didn’t want to. But he did it to shut the guy up. “My reflection.”

  “All of it?”

  “Not the parts where the broken edges are.”

  “Even though you can’t see them, they’re still there,” the King said.

  Wasn’t that obvious? What was he talking about?

  The King traced a finger along the jagged edges of the shards. “You’ve thought of me as your enemy all this time.”

  “That’s putting it kindly.”

  “I need to shed a tear to seal our bargain,” the King said. “I need your help.”

  The all-knowing, all-seeing, father-kidnapping, child-snatching, people-shredding Faery King needed his help? It had to be some kind of sick joke. Except he should’ve seen it coming, he’d known better, and the longer he railed against it, the more time ticked by. “How long until midnight in my world?”

  The King shrugged. He didn’t have a clue.

  “An hour or so,” Simone said.

  Not much time. Maybe not enough.

  “Sing me a song,” the King said. “Or tell me a tale. Tell me the saddest tale you know.”

  Kevin had never told anybody that story—at least not the whole thing. He could go on about drunk drivers, and about his dad’s absentee drinking bullshit, but he couldn’t go there.

  “Why not?” the King asked.

  Because he’d fall apart. Because he might not be able to put himself together again. If he let out everything he’d bottled up since the night his mother died, there would be nothing left of him.

  The King turned his body, shielded Kevin from the Faeries behind him. “If you can’t cry, Kevin, how can you cause me to do so?”

  So either he shared the story, or it was over. Everything he’d risked would be for nothing, unless he could find it in him to take one more risk. But in front of God and everybody?

  “It’s not for them,” he said, indicating the onlookers with a violent wave of his hand. “They don’t get to hear it.”

  “Show me, then,” the King said.

  Kevin could do that. He shut his eyes and prayed he could do that, and that he would survive it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  IT HAD RAINED outside very late that night, a gentle, soft fall the wind carried through the painted white lattice at the end of the porch. Water beaded on the petals of his mother’s flowers in their whisky barrels and slicked the smooth concrete underneath. Kevin knew that because the sound of the storm woke him up at a quarter to three.

  The harsh glare of the porch light they’d left on for his mom poured into the room through the slats of the window blinds. Which could only mean she hadn’t made it home yet.

  Weird, because whenever she hit the town with her girls she always stumbled in around one.

  Fast-forward to the knock
on the door and the way he hadn’t been able to listen anymore after the cops told him and his dad about the accident. He’d taken off. He remembered every single detail.

  How he’d slammed open the door, slipped on the slick porch and went down, scraped the palms of his hands and skinned his knees through his pajamas. He scrambled to his feet and careened off the whisky barrel where his mom had planted lilies (and would never plant them again). He ran across the lawn, past the cruiser, into the street. Into the halo of the streetlamp.

  The sky opened up. The wind gusted, blowing the shadows of branches across the lamplight, plunging him into the dark. The storm soaked him to the skin, sent a shiver through his bones. He lowered himself to the asphalt and huddled there, unable to tell the difference between the rain and the tears that streamed down his cheeks.

  Until his dad hauled him up and made him come back inside. Stripped off his wet clothes and wrapped him in a blanket that didn’t warm him.

  That hadn’t been the worst of it, though. That had come a couple of weeks later.

  After the funeral and the mob of people at the house with their casseroles and well-meaning glances and downturned mouths, knowing there wasn’t anything they could possibly say to make it better—POOF!—disappeared. The world kept on turning and they all had lives. Which was why none of them came around to stop the madness.

  First, his dad quit eating. He lost ten pounds so fast it scared Kevin shitless. When his dad started drinking, it freaked him out worse.

  Kevin poured the beer down the sink. He got smacked across the face for his trouble.

  He took cash from the nightstand drawer where his parents kept their fun money. He brought home burgers, pizza, take-out Mexican from the fancy place near River Oaks. It didn’t help.

  One night he tried to make a grilled cheese sandwich in the broiler and set off the smoke alarm. Burnt bread. Blackened cheese. God, it stank. But it got his dad into the kitchen. Cooking was the key. Kate Landon had been an awesome cook. So he learned how. Trial by fire, ha ha.

  Things were better. At least he started to know what to expect when he came home.

  Then one day while he was at school, his father packed up every single scrap of anything that reminded him of his wife and put it in the attic.

  Her orange knitted hat and scarf from the coat closet. The yellow sneakers she’d toed off and kicked under the couch. The bowl of fruit still-life she painted at her art class. Her collection of cloisonné owls from the garden window.

  And every photograph she appeared in—from the family portrait in living room to the more personal ones in Kevin’s room.

  Kevin and his mom in the backyard, her arms around him. She had on her favorite sweater, the ivory cable knit that Kevin had picked out for her birthday to make sure she got something good, because her birthday was two days before Christmas. He’d been seven.

  His mom at the beach, having waded out to her knees and turned around to wave at him. The waves rolled in slow, dusting the sand with foam. The water sparkled. So did the happiness in his mother’s eyes. She swam out with him later. They body-surfed back in.

  They found a sand dollar on the beach. It had a nick in the side. She said that made it magic. She twirled it in her fingers and made it disappear.

  The sun beat down on them in the afternoon. They burned their feet on the hot sand and bought tacos from some guy who sold them out of a cart on the sidewalk above the seawall. They had three each. He’d been ten years old.

  His father had no right to take those pictures from him. No right.

  Kevin would have screamed, thrown a goddamn punch—except his dad wasn’t there to yell at. He’d locked himself in his room with a six-pack and microwaved leftovers from the night before. Tuna with noodles and cheese. Kevin could smell it.

  He thought about calling Scott or Rude. Or just plain leaving. And he might have, except for the third thing missing from his room. The small box carefully wrapped in waxy, red paper and enough tape to secure Fort Knox, because if Kate Landon wrapped something, it would by God stay that way. The box had a card that went with it, all of it tied together six ways to Sunday with white ribbon, the kind you shredded and curled with a scissors.

  In that box was his Christmas gift, the one she’d got months early and would never get around to giving him since she was dead. And he hadn’t been able to bring himself to open it either. So he’d stalled. Wait for the right day, the right time. Christmas being less than two months away, maybe he’d be able to handle it then.

  In his father’s room, the TV switched on. Buffalo Bills vs. Somebody Else. His dad cranked the volume.

  And Kevin pulled the string on the staircase that led to the attic.

  Everything had been packed in brown cardboard file boxes. No labels. No way to tell what they held unless he went through every single one.

  He had to walk on his knees for the most part until he came to a place where he could kind of stand. That would make him clumsy. Dust coated nearly everything. That would make him sneeze.

  So he started with the express intention of keeping quiet. If his father heard, he’d storm up here and drag Kevin’s ass down. Maybe he’d even throw the boxes away. Kevin didn’t know how he knew that. He just did.

  The first box and the second and the third? All clothes. He lifted a lid, he caught a nose full of amber and spice. His mother’s perfume. The scent soaked the air. Stuck to his skin where he touched a pair of jeans or a T-shirt.

  The next boxes, papers. Her sketches from the art class. A twine-tied bunch of letters from his father. Her fucking high school diploma.

  He started kicking things that got in his way, slamming box lids, cussing under his breath and then over his breath in his out-loud voice. He could hardly see what was in the boxes anymore. He didn’t know why until he tasted salt and wet and his head stuffed up so bad he couldn’t breathe from his nose.

  He found his Christmas gift among the pictures. Right about the time his father’s first footfall sounded on the stairs.

  His dad didn’t say a word. He just shoved the tops back onto the boxes that Kevin had left off, his lips thin and tight and his face red from alcohol and fury. He had cheese sauce on his shirt.

  Kevin stuck the gift box in his pocket. He slid the card down the back of his jeans.

  “Give it over, Kevin.”

  Kevin shook his head.

  “I’m not going to ask you again.”

  “I don’t care,” Kevin said. “It’s mine.”

  His dad lunged for him, his gaze trained on that pocket and the corner of red that peeked out. It happened so fast, Kevin didn’t have time to think.

  He kneed his father in the gut. His father went down. And stayed down. Kevin had never seen the man cry. Not even at the funeral.

  His dad reached out and wrapped his fingers around Kevin’s ankle, trapping him there. He wanted out worse than anything, but he couldn’t kick out or knock his dad’s hand away. Either he stood there and waited, feeling pissed off and like an asshole and still unable to breathe through his nose, or he could sit and be still. Stock still.

  He took the second choice. He hardly dared to blink.

  After a while, his father’s sobs died down. And all that was left to do was to see what his mom had left for him. No waiting. No putting it off until he could deal. Because if he didn’t do it now, he might never be able to.

  He could imagine that red box gathering dust on a shelf or half-forgotten in a drawer somewhere, and how by keeping it like that he could keep a part of her frozen in time. Only it wouldn’t be like that. He’d be keeping part of himself stuck here and now.

  What kind of way was that to respect his mom? Would she want that? He rubbed his eyes. They stung from tears and dust.

  It took forever to work through the ribbon and the wrapping paper and the miles of tape. Inside, Kevin found a sand dollar. The same one from that day at the beach. He could tell because of the knick on the side.

  His mother had man
aged to put a hole in the top large enough to string a hemp cord through. He tied it around his neck. Then he read the card. It was silly and sentimental and totally like her.

  Kevin,

  I know you’re growing up and all. But remember I’m proud of you, and remember the magic.

  Love,

  Mom

  His father wiped his blotchy face with his hands. “I’m sorry, Kevin.”

  Kevin could finally breathe well enough to smell the beer on his breath. “Let’s not do this, okay? Let’s put some of these things back.”

  “It hurts to see them.”

  “I got that, Dad. But it hurts me not to see them. It’s like they’re proof she was here.”

  His father nodded. “She can’t be gone, Kevin.”

  “I don’t want to believe it either, Dad.”

  “She can’t be.”

  Kevin didn’t know what to say to that. Because she was. Irrevocably. The end. “At least let me have my stuff back. It can stay in my room, and you don’t have to look at it right now. Okay?”

  “Yes.” His dad pushed to his knees. He extended a hand.

  Kevin took it. It felt weird, shaking his father’s hand. Better when his dad helped him up.

  Stupid how he figured his father would be okay. That his dad would never touch his things like that again. That there wouldn’t be a fight in the driveway for the whole world to see.

  All he’d wanted to do was go to a stinking party. Where there’d be drinking. It was a party, after all.

  Dad said no. Kevin sneaked out. The End.

  Except it hadn’t been.

  His dad had figured on him doing what he’d done. He came out of the house at the exact wrong time, right when Scott pulled up and popped the lock on the passenger door, radio blaring. Right the kitchen window opened next door and the smell of meatloaf wafted out. When the neighbors across the street happened to be coming back in from their after dinner walk holding hands and looking all stupid for each other. And the kids from down the way blazed by on their skateboards, striped shirts blurring and skate wheels whirring on the concrete.