Exile

by Caleb James

  “I do not know. I cannot see beyond my Mist. Here and there I catch a glimpse, before my love, my Mist, takes his due. And when someone steals a ride on a puka or a dream, yes, I see… for a bit, but not far and not much. Some travelers we let pass. Others….”

  “You saved me.”

  “I did, Liam Summer, for we are of the same blood, you and I, and you have important work to do. The fate of the Unsee and the balance of our worlds depends on your actions. I cannot hold my sister much longer. Her fury, her rage, and her power grows. She will soon outstrip my strength and that of the Mist. She seeks power and vengeance. They consume her. She hungers for blood and for magic.”

  “Tell me how she came to be here, how she became captive.”

  “What knowledge I have is yours. It’s not much. She was expelled from the haffling. Whether or not he survived, I cannot say. Perhaps that’s why she was thrown out. It’s possible—likely—that she killed her vessel. She is a creature of near pure magic. I grabbed her fast as she wriggled from the See back to the Unsee. My sister is brutal. I will not think what horrors would have ensued should she have passed through. Even here, I cannot stop all of her destruction.”

  “She wants more. She always wants more,” Liam said, unable to take his eyes from the thing the once beautiful queen had become.

  “Yes, power. It is her special, as mine is peace and Katye’s is love. I cannot hold her here, Liam. I must learn how she was defeated. I need this information, and we do not have much time. You are traveling between worlds. The answers are in the See. That is where she did battle and was bested. I need you to do this, to be my hero. Tell me that you will, and in return I will give you—”

  “No!”

  Lizbeta turned, her expression incredulous. “You tell me no.”

  “I will take nothing. That is what I’m telling you. Let me continue on my way, and I will seek your answer. There will be no cost. Lizbeta, you hold back horror and destruction. It is I who owe you. Tell me what you will have of me.”

  “May, she is my sister. I will not harm her. I will not kill her… but she must be contained. Even now she breaks my magic. It won’t be long.”

  Liam balked at the enormity of what was being asked. He eyed the white monster as it paced on squat, heavy limbs. The ground around it was littered with bones of magical creatures, the smell of fairy fire thick in the air. Given the chance, she will destroy us. Best to kill her. To be done with this. “Lizbeta, I will do what I can. I will do this. Tell me. You say her bonds weaken, that your magic will not hold her. Tell me how much time I have.”

  Lizbeta eyed her tethered sister. The luminescent queen’s expression was serene, but her words lit terror. “Not long. I cannot stop her hunger. I cannot read her thoughts. The collar around her neck will snap soon. I wish it were better news, and it’s not. Now go. Hurry! Though I fear no matter how quick you are, how true your course, we are already too late.”

  MAY LISTENED and watched from her comfy circle of bones and bits. With each passing day, her thoughts returned and her magic grew. She knew who and what she was. I am May, Queen of the Fey. She remembered the horrible black-haired boy and what he did to her. A flame hissed through her lips. I was tricked. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice… I’ll eat you with rice.

  At first she’d not recognized her pretty whore. Changed… but the outside is still comely. Recent events in the Mist coalesced. The bright red truck, and—This one was inside with a dark-haired human. He has traveled between worlds. I have traveled. He is changed. I am changed.

  Tricked, I was. But now I will trick. She curled on the ground, an eye on Liam and her sister clothed in a swarm of tasty little fairies. She hummed, and her mind traveled up and out through the Mist. She sang as she again entered sweet Alice’s thoughts. There were three haffling babes. Marked at birth they were. With a hey nonny-nonny and a twinkle and a twirl. With hair of black and blonde and red. They traveled between the worlds. With a hey nonny-nonny and a twinkle and a twirl.

  She looked out through Alice’s eyes and marveled at the teen’s strength and speed as she battled with an Asian man, whose hands moved like lightning and whose feet floated across the floor. What are we up to, Alice?

  Her gaze widened as Alice practiced what she’d been taught by her kung-fu sifu. I see, we train to be a warrior. Wonderful! May watched and gently pressed at the edges of Alice’s mind. She heard the girl’s thoughts and mingled them with her own. The younger boy with the auburn hair was here, dressed in dull gray. May noted how his eyes seldom left Alice. We have an admirer. In Alice’s thoughts, May tasted a delightful thread of the teen’s uncertainty about the boy…. His name is Clay. We like him. He’s our best friend. He’s too young. We still like him…. Do we like him in that way? I don’t know. Then why do I think about him when I go to sleep? Why do I wonder what it would be like to kiss him? Too young. I’m fourteen. He’s twelve. That’s gross….

  Unlike the brutal takeover she’d performed on the girl’s brother Alex, this time would be different. Isn’t this nice, Alice? See how well we fit. There’s some of you and some of me… and bit by bit, there’s more of me and less of you. Until one day it’s all of me and none of you.

  Fifteen

  AFTER FINN showed up at Slotnik’s office with a warrant, a couple of guys, and a truck to box up the records and computers in the rental office, Charlie called his older brother Michael, an NYPD detective.

  “What’s up, Charlie?”

  “I need to track someone down.”

  “You plan to get me in trouble?”

  “Not my intent. I just need a number.”

  “Fine. Why?”

  Charlie hesitated. He thought about lying, but the truth was too convoluted. “I’m trying to track down the guy I got out of that building.”

  “Right, Naked Chihuahua Guy. Are we talking boyfriend material, here?”

  “Maybe… I don’t know. I just need to know if he’s okay.”

  “Name?”

  “Liam Summer, but I’ve got a feeling he won’t have a phone.”

  “Everyone has a phone, Charlie.”

  “If he does, great… but the one I think might know where he is, is kind of famous. Guy’s name is Alex Nevus.”

  “Right… I know that name, because?”

  “He was on a reality show a few years back.”

  “And this Alex Nevus knows Naked Chihuahua Guy?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Okay, then, brother, give me five minutes, and I’ll see what I can do for you. And in exchange—”

  “Here it comes….”

  “Hey, you want a favor, it’s going to cost.”

  “How much?”

  “You pick up Gran and take her back tonight.”

  “Done.”

  “Awesome!”

  True to his word, Michael got back to Charlie with Alex Nevus’s cell number. “And you’re right about that Liam Summer… lots of Summers, fewer without the S, but not a Liam to be had. I don’t know if I’d trust someone who doesn’t have a phone. Those off-the-grid guys are usually a few apples short of a bushel.”

  Charlie smiled. Between Gran’s weird rambles over brunch and the bizarre paintings inside the wardrobe in the burned-out apartment, there was a possibility that not only was Liam off the grid, he was…. “Thanks, Michael.” And he hung up.

  Without pause he tapped in Alex Nevus’s number. He waited, wondering if the guy screened his calls, and if he left a message, what was he supposed to say. Hi, you don’t know me, but I’m a firefighter who was in your old apartment, and I saw the freaky painted closet, and I was wondering….

  “Hello?”

  “Hi. You don’t know me. My name is Charlie Fitzgerald. I’m a firefighter with the FDNY.”

  “Look, I’m a student. I’ve got no….”

  “I’m not looking for money, and please don’t hang up. I was in your old apartment on East Third.”

  “Right… I saw it on the news. You th
e one with the naked guy holding the dog?”

  “Yeah… guess it went viral.”

  “It did.”

  Charlie heard a shift in Alex’s tone. “So it’s kind of why I’m calling, and it’s going to get strange.”

  “I’m used to strange. Is this something we do over the phone, or did you want to meet?”

  “I’m on East Sixth,” Charlie said.

  “You want to meet in Washington Square? I’m at the NYU library. I could use a break, and it sounds like you’ve got questions.”

  “I do.”

  And Alex said something that let Charlie know this was not a goose chase.

  “You know that questions cost?”

  His hand shook. “I’d heard that.” And they hung up.

  Fifteen minutes later, winded and anxious, Charlie stood in front of the white arch that opened onto the start of Fifth Avenue. He scanned the Sunday scene for the dark-haired boy who’d nearly won IT a few years back and whose videos from that talent show had exploded on the Internet. I should have told him what I was wearing.

  His attention caught on two men, both in jeans, both wearing shades, one with curly blue-black hair, the other’s sparking with red and gold in the afternoon sun.

  Charlie raised a hand, and they headed toward him.

  “Alex?”

  “Charlie, this is my boyfriend, Jerod.”

  They shook hands, and Charlie was struck by the closeness between Alex and Jerod. It had nothing to do with public displays but the sense of them communicating without words.

  The three walked toward an unoccupied stretch of benches across from the fenced-off dog run.

  “I saw it on the news,” Alex said, referring to the fire. “That place was a dump, but it was our dump.”

  Charlie wondered how to broach the topic of the weird paintings inside the closet. “The guy with the dog was in your place.”

  “Okay… I don’t see what—”

  “I don’t think he was living there. No one was. The place was being torn up… rehabbed.”

  “Of course, makes sense,” Alex said.

  “How’s that? You moved out over two years ago.”

  “There’s all of these rules around rent-stabilized and rent-controlled apartments. I know them all, and if you want me to bore you, I can recite chapter and verse.”

  “He can, and he will,” Jerod warned. “Alex is an idiot savant around rules and regulations.”

  “Watch it, buddy. I may be a savant, but I ain’t no idiot.” He looked at Charlie. “Here’s the deal. The landlord leaves the place empty for a couple years, documents a certain dollars’-worth of renovation, and presto chango, no more rent stabilization.”

  “But you were getting housing assistance.”

  “True, but based on a low rent. I found that place when I was eleven. It’s a long and not terribly interesting story, but as shitty as that place was, it saved my sister and me. No bad feelings, and I’m sorry it burned. But that’s not why you’re here. You’ve got questions. And someone around here is baking cookies, and I really want one.”

  “Yeah,” Jerod said. “What is that smell?” He took off his shades and looked at Charlie. “It’s coming from you.”

  Charlie nodded. “You both smell it?”

  “Of course,” Alex said. “You have cookies in your pockets?”

  “No… the fire, the one at your old place, that’s what you’re smelling. And not everyone does.”

  Alex pocketed his shades. He looked at Jerod. “And this is where things get weird. So tell us, Charlie Fitzgerald, why do you smell like cookies, and what did you see in that fire that has you burning up with questions?”

  “What was that?” Charlie startled, his focus pulled by a blur between the two men, like something hovered back and forth around their shoulders. He had the strangest sense that Alex and Jerod weren’t the only ones in on the conversation. He thought of Gran and her tales of the good people. The blur gained substance. He squinted and caught movement, fast, a flash of a vivid orange-and-black wing, like a butterfly. “What is that?”

  “Tell me what you see,” Alex said.

  He’s talking like Gran was around Liam. He spoke the line from his dream. “Ask no questions here.”

  “Tell me what you see,” Alex repeated. “You tracked me down, and it’s not for my autograph. Tell me what you see, Charlie Fitzgerald.”

  “It’s nothing.” Has to be the light.

  “Then it’s nothing,” Jerod said.

  Charlie thought of his dream, Liam cowering in the bathtub of an apartment that wasn’t his. Was he squatting? Why was he there? “There was a closet in your old apartment. The inside was painted. It was beautiful, and…. Who painted it?”

  “My mother did. She is… was an artist.”

  “She’s dead?”

  “No, not exactly, but she doesn’t paint anymore.”

  “The people… the things in the painting.” Again the blur on Alex’s right shoulder. He narrowed his gaze. There’s something there. Alive, so fast. A flash of butterfly wing, but what it was attached to…. Not possible. Maybe this is a dream. Maybe it’s all a dream.

  Alex smiled. “Fitzgerald is one of the old Irish families. So is Nevus. They say odd things run in our blood.”

  “That’s something my Gran would say. I think it’s just a product of all that marrying cousins.” Just say it, Charlie, because the more he let the weirdness of the last day and a half wash over him, the clearer the impossible thing making faces at him from Alex’s shoulder became.

  Jerod spoke. “You know, the first time I saw her, I was convinced I’d lost my mind.”

  “Tell me what you see, Charlie,” Alex repeated. “If we’re to have this conversation, you need to take a leap. For a man who makes his living walking into buildings on fire, it shouldn’t be hard.”

  Charlie blurted, “There’s a bare-chested pitch-black fairy with swirly gold tattoos and butterfly wings on your shoulder.”

  The moment he said that, two things happened. All haziness around the six-inch-high creature vanished, and she darted across the space that separated him from Alex and kissed him on the tip of his nose.

  “She likes you,” Alex said. “Her name is Nimby. She’s been with me from birth, and thinking you’re going mad around her is par for the course. Now you’ve seen my fairy, and you saw the performances on IT.”

  “That was real?” Charlie asked. His attention pulled between the things they were telling him and the antics of the pirouetting fairy on Jerod’s shoulder.

  “It depends what you mean by ‘real.’”

  “Oh, stop already,” Jerod interjected. “You’re talking like one of them. And you.” He turned to Nimby. “Taken up ballet, have we?”

  She stopped in midturn and stuck her tongue out at him.

  “I’m haffling. Hear me talk in vague riddles,” Alex said.

  “What’s a haffling?”

  “Half human, half something that comes from somewhere else.”

  Charlie stared at Nimby, who’d resumed her interpretive dance, and then at the two handsome young men, so connected, so comfortable with the impossible. And just like storming into a house on fire, he told them everything. At the mention of Liam’s name, a worried look passed between Alex and Jerod.

  “You know him. You know Liam Summer, blond, purple eyes… handsome… no, beautiful.”

  “Yes, we’ve met,” Alex said without humor as Jerod pulled out his cell and brought up the viral image of Charlie carrying out the naked man, who in turn held a small dog tucked in his arms.

  Jerod passed the phone to Alex, who enlarged the picture with his fingers. He nodded as Nimby fluttered over his shoulder. “It could be him. Different, though…. Great ass.”

  “Give that back!” Jerod snatched his phone away. He stared at the picture. “It is, isn’t it? Damn!”

  “And?” Charlie asked as hope and anticipation bubbled. Not a dream. Weird as fucking hell, but not a dream. Something
in the two men’s expressions gave him pause. They’re worried.

  “This can’t be good,” Alex said. “You pulled him out of my old apartment… and you looked inside Marilyn’s painted closet. I should have destroyed it. I just couldn’t, and it was too big to take. I should have smashed it.”

  “No. It’s beautiful. The outside not so much anymore. But there were creatures inside… sort of like Liam, and others like your Nimby. She’s gorgeous, by the way.”

  Which bought him a second kiss. The fairy alit on his shoulder, and using his ear as a ballet barre, practiced turns and kicks.

  “And easily flattered,” Alex said. “Look, Charlie, you’re not going to like what I have to say. But you should stay far away from Liam Summer.”

  “Why?” He sounds like Gran.

  Alex was about to speak and then stopped himself.

  Jerod was less polite. “Because he can’t be trusted. Because he does what’s in his interest and his interest only.”

  The words stung, and Jerod wasn’t done.

  “Here’s the deal, Charlie. Liam Summer was told to seduce my boyfriend, and he did his damn best to do that. From what I’ve learned about the fey, present company excluded, they have their own logic and their own ways. We stupid humans have to avoid the worst mistake we can make.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Good question,” Jerod said. He stared at Charlie. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking Liam feels what you do. Liam Summer is a very handsome prostitute. It wasn’t just that he was to seduce Alex but to glamour him to the extent—and here’s where we go from just plain weird to lock-me-in-the-nut-hatch—Liam was the tool of someone so evil and mad for power, kind of like the fairy version of Hitler or the guys who go around chopping off everyone’s heads.”

  “Queen May,” Charlie said. “She’s in the Mist.”

  “You’ve seen her?”

  “In a dream… your second-to-last performance on IT.” He looked from Alex to Jerod to the fairy on his shoulder.

  Alex nodded. “That’s right. Jerod pulled a giant white fire-spitting salamander out of me on national TV.”