“Take those kids back to their parents first,” I said. “Please. I’ll explain in the car.”
He nodded, to my surprise. He must have called for a bigger car, because the one that waited at the park’s edge was the size of a limousine. Lucky Vance wasn’t driving. Calls from the other mages interrupted us all the way there. Drake appeared to have been given the duty of watching the kids in the back, while Anabel Colton—Vance’s cousin—sat with them. I caught a glimpse of a shy-looking girl with big grey eyes hidden behind a sweep of dark hair, before the doors closed and we drove away.
I’d had an emotionally exhausting day already, and delivering the kids back to their parents damn near finished me off. I had to wipe a couple of tears away when we parted with Swanson’s dazed-looking son, at the final stop. Vance’s younger cousin remained in the back, with Drake. I assumed he wanted to question her at the manor.
But he asked to drop Isabel off at home first.
“Don’t worry,” she said to me. “I called the Cavanaughs and asked them to set up some new wards. They’re on it. We’ll be fine.”
Still, I worried. Sure, the wards we’d had were Isabel’s, not mine, but after last time I’d left her alone, I couldn’t help but wish I was there.
I didn’t want to leave Vance yet, either. When we reached the manor, he let Drake and his cousin out of the car first. And then we were alone.
“My story,” I said. I’d given him some of the details in the car, but these weren’t things I was comfortable sharing with other people. Even Vance himself. “You never asked how I ended up in Faerie.”
“I can put two and two together,” he said. “I looked at your records. You’re listed as amongst those killed in the invasion. Your name’s on a grave in necromancer territory, as are your parents’.”
I looked away. Damn him for prying. Especially as I’d been considering giving him the information of my own free will. I’d about had it with confrontation for one day, so I just shrugged.
“Yeah.” I pushed open the door. “I’ll tell you what you need to know, then I’ll go. I have to get back to—”
His hand barred the way. “Wait. I wasn’t condemning your choice.”
My eyes stung and I shook my head. “I’m not in the mood, Vance. I kept my name because I didn’t want the faeries to take away my identity. Nobody’s ever been nosy and interfering enough to go looking. Not even Larsen.”
He looked me, a deep frown on his face. “I heard what he did. You can’t work for him anymore.”
“That’s my choice, too.” Crap. This was not how I’d imagined this conversation going. I’d imagined a lot less talking, for a start. “Now our arrangement is over, I’m free to get on with my job without having to report to you. Right?”
“If that’s what you want.” What did he want me to say? That it was okay for him to spy on me behind my back? “But you have an offer open to work here with the mages, if you’d like to.”
“You mean, work for you,” I said.
“As a freelancer,” he said. “We’d pay far above the minimal rates that Larsen does. You’d be compensated for the risks you take, and you’d be allowed to choose which jobs you take on.”
I hesitated. This was exactly what I needed. Which was precisely the problem. I worked alone. I didn’t get tangled with mages, nor anyone else. I’d almost been killed, and so had others, because of the faeries. Not to mention the hundred and one reasons working with Vance Colton on a daily basis was a really bad idea. Even if the mages’ protection would come in useful after all the enemies I’d added to my list over the last few days.
“I just nearly died,” I said. “And I still haven’t told Larsen to go fuck himself.”
Vance smiled at me. “I’d like to see that.”
There was a gleam in his eyes again. His smile invited me to ask, to push this further. To pick up where we’d left off before the fight.
“You haven’t won this,” I informed him. “I don’t take kindly to people snooping into my life.”
“Not even if they’re curious?” He tilted his head.
“You could have just asked me.”
“And received a non-answer? Up until recently, I wasn’t sure you weren’t a dangerous enemy to the mages. I had to be certain. You’re… a difficult woman to read.” The look in his eyes turned into something deeper, more intense.
“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment.”
He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. I was too startled to react as his lips lightly brushed against mine. My heart rate kicked up again, and all sensible thoughts melted away. This wasn’t a we might die in five minutes kiss. This was a tease, a promise of more, and damn, was I along for the ride.
“Lord Colton!” someone called from the manor.
Dammit. I let go of Vance’s shoulders, and he gave me a look that said quite clearly, we’ll pick this up later.
We’d better, I thought, climbing out of the car.
***
“Ready?” asked Isabel.
I nodded, opening the front door. Erwin the piskie flew in, shrieking.
“Oh my god,” I said. “I thought that faerie killed you.”
“Not dead!” he said. “Hiding.”
Would you believe I was glad to see the little bugger alive? Who’d have thought it?
First, though, I had an ex-boss to see. The red-brick building looked the same as ever, though I’d been told the majority of the mercs there had barricaded themselves inside when shit hit the fan. The necromancers had managed to keep the undead from leaving the cemetery and flooding the town, but everyone had felt the disturbance when the realms had briefly touched. The half-faeries, from what I’d seen, knew something was screwy on the other side. They’d make trouble, for sure, after Velkas had duped them. If immortality was what they really wanted, though, they’d be disappointed.
As for me, being alive was enough. I pushed open the door to the building with my head high and my sword at my waist.
“You,” said Larsen, leaning on the reception desk. Nobody else was in the lobby. I’d heard his receptionist had quit, for a start, as the rumours began to spread. Rumours I suspected Vance had encouraged, if not started.
“Surprised to see me alive?”
“No. Why would you think that?”
So he was going to play the innocent card.
“Let’s not waste time,” I said. “We both know you tried to get me killed, you despicable bastard. You damaged my property, put my flatmates in danger, and left me open to attack. I’ll certainly never be working for you again.”
Larsen’s mouth twisted into a snarl. “You’re a fool. There are no other jobs for people like you.”
“I beg to differ,” I said. “I’ve just received a generous offer from the Mage Lord himself to start a full-time freelance position.”
He gaped at me. “What?”
“You heard me. And by the way, I have faerie magic, and I know how to use it.” I removed my hand from my sword long enough to let anger fuel the blue light igniting in my palm.
Larsen paled. “That’s not allowed.”
“Says who? I don’t work for you anymore. But if you ever come near me again, you’ll regret it.”
And I left, the doors swinging shut behind me. I’d wanted to kill him, but even the Mage Lord couldn’t make me get away with murder. No. I’d have to be on my guard, but a pissed-off human was the least of my problems. Besides, I wasn’t alone.
My phone buzzed. I hit the ‘accept call’ button.
“How’d it go?” asked Vance.
“As of today, I’m a full time freelancer.”
“So you’re considering my offer?"
“Yes.” I paused. “But with conditions. I’ll tell you about them later.”
“Done,” he said. “Are you free tomorrow?”
“Of course. No job, remember?”
“How about we continue our conversation from yesterday?”
I read ‘conversati
on’ as ‘making out’. That, I could get on board with. I drew in a breath. “That seems adequate.”
His chuckle vibrated through the phone. “I’ll see you at seven tomorrow.”
Well, that was something. Or possibly a lot more than something. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t skip a little on the way home.
This wasn’t over. Now I’d drawn their attention, other faeries would come after me. I’d be a fool to expect otherwise. I still owed the Lady of the Tree a favour, for a start. And even with the new wards in place outside my house, more faeries knew about me than ever before.
Velkas had got to the mortal world without opening the veil. Which meant there were other ways. More faeries might come through. He’d pissed off a lot of people—no denying it. There’d be repercussions. Both here, and on the other side.
But for now, the day was mine. And it was about damn time I told Isabel what had really happened to me in Faerie.
***
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Fairy, Texas
by Margo Bond Collins
Chapter 1
Of all the things that frightened me about starting a new school, finding a dead guy on day one didn’t even made it into my top hundred. I guess it should have.
But I didn’t know that when I got up early that first morning and went for a run.
The best part of running is that it keeps me from crying. It doesn’t matter how bad I feel, timing the beat of my footfalls and the pace of my breathing to the music coming through my headphones always helps.
As I rounded the last bend of the caliche road that wound through the ranch, I could taste the dust in the back of my throat.
Better than tears, anyway.
I slowed down, breathing hard, and walked toward the front porch of the long, low house I now had to call home. I ducked past the living room and scurried down the hall, anxious to be alone. But instead, I ran almost smack into one of the ranch hands.
“Please, please be careful with that,” I begged the enormous man who had just tossed another cardboard box onto the top of the growing pile in my bedroom—or at least, the room that was going to be my bedroom for the foreseeable future.
He just shook his head. “I ain’t broke nothing yet,” he muttered as he left for another load.
“Haven’t broken anything,” I corrected his grammar, not quite loudly enough for him to hear me.
Mom stuck her head around the door-frame, her disheveled brown curls appearing first, followed by her blue eyes. “Laney, you be nice to Bruce. He took the whole day off from work just to help us out.” She eyed my running gear. “You’re not wearing that to school, are you? Hurry up and get ready.”
“Okay, Mom.” I used my most agreeable voice, but it took every ounce of self-control I had. I’d been working really hard to get along with Mom since we’d started the move, but it hadn’t been easy. Leaving Atlanta for the middle of nowhere, Texas, was not, in my opinion, her best idea ever.
I didn’t want my mom to be an idiot. I mean, no one does, right? But I guess it’s kind of part of the whole being-a-parent thing, at least to some degree. It’s just that Mom tried so hard to be the cool parent. Not the buying-me-alcohol-and-letting-me-have-wild-parties kind of “cool”—that’s lame. She wanted to be the kind of Mom who knows all the latest music and slang, who tried to be as much my friend as my mother. Which was fine most of the time, even if she did make me want to die every time she turned on the radio and started singing along to Christina Aguilera. (I hated to tell her that “used to be Top 20” doesn’t equal “cool.”)
But then she got back in touch with her high school sweetheart.
For as long as I could remember, it had just been Mom and me. My dad took off before I was born—I saw him a couple of times when I was younger and Mom was on a kick about me needing a male role model, but then he got remarried and had another family. Not that he’d ever had all that much interest in me to begin with. And what kind of role model would that have been, anyway?
And it wasn’t like Mom hadn’t dated along the way. There was Greg, a doctor she’d met through her job as a rep for a pharmaceutical company. Jimmy was a high-school science teacher. Matt owned a gym. And for one reason or another, each of them was “not right.”
Never in a million years would I have thought that some rancher back in Mom’s hometown in Texas would be The One.
I still wasn’t convinced. Now I kind of wished I hadn’t done my level best to get her not to join a dating site. If I hadn’t told her over and over how dangerous the internet could be for a single woman, that there were all sorts of creeps out there just waiting to prey on someone who was emotionally vulnerable, maybe she wouldn’t have decided to contact someone she already knew.
Once she started emailing John Hamilton, I relaxed a little bit. No way would Mom give up her life in Atlanta—her job, her friends—for some random guy who lived a thousand miles away in a town Mom hadn’t been back to since she left when she was eighteen, right before she had me.
I should have paid more attention. I should have tried to talk her out of seeing him when he came to Atlanta to visit. It might not have done any good, but at least then I would know I had done everything I could to save our lives.
And maybe it would have worked.
Instead, though, here I was. Moving into my new bedroom in my new stepfather’s house, while Bruce the ranch hand manhandled all my stuff.
In Fairy, Texas.
That’s right. I moved from the greater metropolitan Atlanta area to a ranch in central Texas just outside of a tiny town that was actually named “Fairy.”
And from what I’d seen so far, I wasn’t going to like it. John had taken me on a tour of the ranch the day before, and had pointed out disgusting things on the ground like cow pies and buzzard vomit. And he’d shown me the body of a dead coyote hanging from a fence. He said it kept other coyotes away from the ranch, but I’d heard a bunch of them howling when I went to bed that night. Clearly they weren’t that scared.
“That’s not your desk,” Kayla’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “It was my mom’s. And that makes it mine, not yours.”
I sighed. “Your dad said I could use it.”
“Still not yours.” She leaned against the door frame and surveyed the boxes stacked up in my new room. “You really going to unpack all that crap?” she drawled.
“That’s the plan.” I tried to ignore her as I opened another box labeled “school supplies” and emptied pencils, pens, and rulers into the desk that wasn’t really mine. I pulled out a notebook and slipped it into my backpack.
“You might as well not bother,” Kayla said, flipping her long blonde hair over her shoulder and sliding into her own room across the hall. “You’re not staying long, you know.” She slammed the door behind her.
I shut my own door and leaned my forehead against it. Bad enough my mother had married Old Flame Rancher Guy. Worse that she had moved me to Fairy. I hoped that the worst was that I had a new stepsister who was turning out to be a bitch.
I was wrong, of course.
* * *
I was about to start FHS.
Fairy High School.
When I told my best friend Leah where I was going, she had laughed. Stephen and James had joined in. “Home of the Fightin’ Fairies!” James howled. “And their drill team, The Tinkerbells!” Leah added. It had gone downhill from there.
It had also seemed a lot funnier in Atlanta, where all my friends lived. But now I was about to go take a bunch of classes with all those Fightin’ Fairies. I felt sick to my stomach.
At least Mom was here this week. She managed to get transferred when she decided to marry John, but she would be spending a lot of time on the road. Apparently not many people in her company actually want to be pharmaceutical reps in rural Texas. Go figure. Anyway, after I’d showered and chan
ged, she offered to drive me to school.
I rolled my eyes. Riding to school with Mom on day one. Social suicide—before I had a social life to kill, even.
“Or maybe you could ride with Kayla,” she said, her voice too bright to sound normal. She turned to pour herself another cup of coffee. Kayla made a face at her back.
“Maybe I could take your car?” I asked hopefully. “Since you’re going to be at home all day unpacking, you won’t really need it.” I slid in next to her and grabbed my own coffee cup from the cabinet.
“Aren’t you a little young for coffee?” John asked, as he walked into the room and gave Mom a kiss on the cheek.
Mom looked surprised and a little thoughtful.
“Never mind, Mom,” I said. “I’ll just catch a ride in with Kayla after all.” Better to distract her with the hope that Kayla and I might bond than let John convince her to ban coffee.
Kayla snarled at me while our parents weren’t looking, but her voice was pleasant enough when she spoke. “Okay. I’m leaving in fifteen minutes.”
Once we were in the car, her tone changed. “Don’t think that just because your mother married Dad means that we’re going to be all BFF or anything.”
“Yeah. I’d kind of figured that out already.”
“And don’t talk to any of my friends once we get to school.”
I stared out the window. “Wouldn’t dream of it, princess,” I muttered.
“What did you say?” Kayla’s voice dropped an octave—not quite to a growl, but almost.
“Nothing. I got it. We’re not friends. Fine.”
We didn’t speak for the rest of the drive. I stared out the window and watched the scenery—such as it was—slide by. I missed Georgia’s graceful trees lining the highway, the way their shadows rippled across my skin as I passed them. Here, the sky stretched out into forever and the shadows were like the Texas trees: scrubby and low to the ground. I felt exposed.
I crossed my arms and shivered in the air-conditioning of Kayla’s car.
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