Love and Other Wild Things

by Molly Harper

  “I would imagine,” he said, nodding. “But you still haven’t told your family what you can do?”

  “I don’t try to hide it from them, but I don’t flaunt it either. You forget, living in a town where almost everybody is something special, that not everybody believes in this sort of thing. My mom doesn’t believe in anything she can’t quantify through a lens. My dad wouldn’t believe me, but that wouldn’t keep him from trying to turn it into some sort of business opportunity . . . for himself. Grandad and my aunt Tru know that I’m a freelance photographer. That’s all they need to know. I don’t want to see them hurt.”

  “I would like to go see the farm someday,” he said, carefully, eying her for some sort of panic response. “Once we get all this rift stuff settled, I’d like to see your grandpa’s farm, meet Trudy, all that.”

  “Have you ever left the state of Louisiana?”

  “Yes, and I’m sure the town will be okay for a week or so without me around. It would be important to me, to meet your family. You’ve already met most of mine. It’s only fair,” he told her.

  He expected her to object. He expected her to remind him that they weren’t in a relationship. But instead, she just smiled and let him pull her close, and said, “I think I would like that.”

  12

  Dani

  Dani parked her rental car on Main Street, bobbling her covered Pyrex dish as she closed the driver side door behind her. The dish was just hot enough that she needed hot pads to carry it. If she had Bael’s dragon powers, she wouldn’t need them. Of course, he could probably bake by breathing on the Pyrex.

  It was so weird to think those things about her friends, and for them to be true. She’d really expanded her weird quotient, living here in the Bayou.

  “Miss Teel!”

  Dani turned to see Maureen Sherman trotting down the sidewalk in sensible loafers and an even more sensible beige pantsuit. Dani blew an irritated breath out of her nose. Shit. Why did Maureen Sherman always show up when Dani least expected her? She was like the snotty redheaded Spanish Inquisition.

  Dani sighed. “Hi, Maureen, how are you?”

  “Just brilliant, dear. My book is really coming along. I was just at the library, doing a little research. I was just speaking with Bardie Boone. I was so sorry to hear about your difficulties. Were you really attacked while sleeping at your table? How very odd.”

  Maureen didn’t seem sorry about her difficulties. She seemed very smug about her difficulties. And not just in that “if you hadn’t been there in the first place you wouldn’t have been attacked” kind of way.

  “It wasn’t that big of a deal.”

  Maureen sniffed. “Well, research isn’t for everyone. I would say perhaps you’re better suited for field-work, but you don’t seem to excel there, either. Don’t worry, dear, I’m sure you’ll find your strong suit soon enough. Perhaps it’s baking! That smells delicious!”

  Dani’s jaw dropped. “Oh, Maureen, I’m sure I could never find anything as ‘strong’ as that pantsuit.”

  Maureen’s tinkly laugh echoed off the buildings. “Well, I really must run, I’m simply bursting with ideas. Have to get home and let the muse take over!”

  Maureen waggled her fingers as she trotted down the street toward a blue sedan.

  “I hope you do burst…” Dani muttered through a faked smile while waving. “Into flames.”

  Dani sighed. “I do not like that woman.”

  Still murmuring ill wishes against Maureen, Dani ducked into the pie shop. There was a rare lull in store traffic, with only a few older Mystic Bayou citizens drinking coffee and chatting in the booths—Jimmy Hickens, Earl Webster, Jeb Cho, and Karl Bruhl. Zed said this was all the retirement some of the seniors would tolerate, because they couldn’t stand sitting at home all day doing nothing. So they sat at the diner, doing a little more than nothing.

  “We don’t allow outside food,” Siobhan called from behind the counter.

  “I know that, Miss Siobhan,” Dani said, carefully placing the warm dish between glass cake stands. “I made something for you as a thank you for all the pie.”

  “People usually don’t bake for me.”

  Dani chirped, “I know, that’s why I thought you might enjoy it. The novelty of it.”

  Siobhan frowned.

  “What’s wrong?” Dani asked.

  “I’m trying to remember if I’ve said anything salty enough to warrant you trying to poison me.”

  Dani rolled her eyes and took out the second part of her offering, which she poured in one of the pie shop’s glasses. “This is a bottle of fresh whole milk I got from the Hickens family’s farm on the way over here.”

  “Thank you for your business!” Jimmy called from the booth.

  “The milk is unpasteurized and un-messed-around-with,” said Dani. “Which I find terrifying on a microbial level, but I understand that’s how you prefer it. I would leave it out in a wooden bowl, but I don’t have one handy.”

  Siobhan lifted her scraggly gray brow.

  “This is as close as I get to leaving out a traditional fairy gift of bread and milk. I can’t bake a decent loaf of bread to save my life. My Gramma’s was amazing, but mine always turns out all chewy. The yeast just doesn’t seem to like me.”

  Siohhan lifted the glass lid of her baking dish. “Is your Gramma the one who taught you to bake?”

  “I grew up on an apple farm. We always had extra, getting ready to go bad. Gramma was constantly coming up with ways to make sure they weren’t wasted. Apple butter, apple pies, apple jelly, cider. We sold some in the farm store, but our poor next-door-neighbor got so sick of applesauce that he went into a panic if he saw her carrying a jar. And this is her famous apple crumble.”

  Siobhan took a fork out of a nearby napkin roll and dug into the sugary topping.

  “No slicing, huh?” said Dani. “Just going to dig right in . . . nope, I respect that. I wouldn’t share, either.”

  The brownie lifted a forkful of baked apples and cinnamon to her mouth, chewing thoughtfully, like an epicure tasting wine. She tilted her head and seemed to stare off into the distance. And then Siobhan did something Dani never expected. She wept—not just gentle tears rolling down her wizened cheeks, but deep wracking sobs of grief that shook her bony shoulders. The regulars sprang up from their booth, clearly unsure of what to do in the face of the unprecedented spectacle of Siobhan crying and reaching across the counter to clutch Dani’s hand.

  Siobhan waved the older men off, hiccupping softly. “Oh, don’t fuss, I’m fine! I’m fine!”

  The regulars returned to their seats, giving Dani a mild case of stink-eye. Dani stood stock-still, not quite sure if it was safe to move. Siobhan squeezed her hand gently. “You must have missed your grandmother very much when you were making this.”

  Dani laughed, though tears sprang to her eyes. “Yeah, I was missing her. I always do. It’s probably a sense-memory thing with the cinnamon and nutmeg. Gramma sort of set me up to mourn her every Thanksgiving for the rest of my life.”

  Earl cleared his throat. “You know, my son Ash is still single. If you can bake like that…”

  “Don’t try to bust up a good thing with her and Zed,” Siobhan told him. “If Ash is meant to find somebody around here, he will.”

  “That and even with Ash’s phoenix fire, Zed would squash him like a bug,” Jeb Cho told him.

  “My boy is no lightweight!” Earl boomed.

  “What would you have done to somebody who got between you and your mate?” Karl shot back.

  Earl winced. “Never mind, honey, stay away from my son. He needs all his teeth.”

  Eating a bit more of the crumble, Siobhan took a long drink from her glass of milk and Dani tried not to visibly shudder. Siobhan stood a bit straighter. Her wrinkles smoothed out ever so slightly, her cheeks blooming pink and bright. Her hair unfrizzed and fell around her face in smoother, gray waves. Her dark blue eyes actually twinkled. She grasped Dani’s free hand and pulled he
r closer to the counter, looking deep in her eyes.

  “Thank you for offering me this gift from your table. From now on, you are blessed. Your kitchen will be a place of strength and joy in your house. Your food will never rot. Your larder will always be full. Any bread you make will be light as a feather, fluffy as a cloud.”

  Dani almost objected to the silliness of Siobhan’s statement—a loaf of her bread was once used as a door stopper for Grandad’s barn—but a warm, pleasant sensation blossomed in her chest and she knew that Siobhan had just laid down some serious fairy mojo.

  “Thank you, Siobhan.”

  “Of course, I have some thoughts about you using a little orange zest,” Siobhan said, scooping another bite on her fork.

  Dani moved the dish back across the counter toward her. “I will take it back.”

  Siobhan grabbed at the dish, quick as a snake, dragging it towards her. “It’s perfect!”

  “Damn straight,” Dani told her.

  Siobhan smirked at her and whipped an index card from her apron pocket. “I’m going to give you my blueberry pie recipe. It’s your Zed’s favorite.”

  Given the gasps of the regulars, Dani deduced that this was a considerable gesture from the cranky little brownie. Dani wasn’t sure if she was ready to try baking one of Siobhan’s recipes. Her own pie crusts were adequate, but they were nothing compared to the light, flaky miracles that Siobhan created. However, knowing how her Gramma would have reacted if someone had turned down an offered recipe, she simply said, “Thank you, ma’am.”

  While Siobhan was scribbling the exact ratio of fruit to filling in her blueberry pie, Jimmy Hickens assured her that Siobhan never shared recipes.

  “She says she doesn’t trust anybody else with her kitchen magic. My Alma has been trying to weedle the lemon meringue recipe out of her since the 1970s,” Jimmy told Dani solemnly. “Siobhan’s never given her a single ingredient.”

  “Because your Alma could burn water!” Earl cackled.

  Dani had expected Jimmy to object in his wife’s defense, but he jerked his shoulder. “It’s true. I love the woman something awful, but I’ve suffered through more holidays with food poisoning than any man alive.”

  “And that’s why I won’t give her my recipe,” Siobhan told him. “It’s for the greater good. Besides, this girl’s got the touch. You don’t bake like that without knowing how to put the right sort of strength into people.”

  Dani’s brow crinkled with confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “The work you’re doing out there in Afarpiece Swamp. You’re moving energy around, right? Taking one form of it, making it into another. That’s all cooking is, taking one thing, making it into another.” Siobhan paused to write her name at the bottom of the recipe. “But in my kitchen, it happens to be something that will give another person strength, make them healthy, ease their heartache, get them fired up. And you? Well, missy, you do it without even thinking about it, which is a great gift. Which is why you’re getting my recipe and Alma never ever will.”

  “I’d never thought of it that way,” Dani said. “Thank you.”

  Dani was still somewhat skeptical of her ability to produce Siobhan-level results, but she supposed with Siobhan’s blessing, she might be able to pull it off. She wasn’t going to make it for Zed any time soon, because if she combined her already amazing sexual prowess with making his favorite dessert, he might never let her leave his cave.

  It was nice to hike out to the rift site alone, with her own thoughts. As much as she liked staying nights with Zed, she also appreciated having some space for her own thoughts. Of course, the things she normally devoted that time to, were giving her relatively little trouble. Work was . . . complicated. Her progress with the rift was starting to feel like one step forward, two steps back. She suspected that having two dynakinetics working on the rift at once was, for a lack of a better word, “confusing” it. If she continued to feel this sort of resistance, she was going to have to have a difficult “I can’t work like this, It’s her or me” conversation.

  Then again, there was the possibility that someone besides Maureen was messing around with the rift, someone with fledgling skills who didn’t really know what they were doing, and was causing more trouble rather than helping. Sort of like the hobby astronomers who drove her mother crazy with oversized telescopes and loud, light-polluting camping equipment that disrupted Susan’s field observations.

  Something about the way Siobhan described her kitchen magic was gnawing at the corner of her mind. Siobhan had basically described energy work in her cooking. She’d referenced Dani’s work directly. What if Siobhan had decided to expand her repertoire to “dabbling” at the rift? Dani doubted that the woman who had spent decades soothing the souls of Mystic Bayou with pie would suddenly turn into a rift-ripping supervillain.

  Dani sighed, pausing for a breather, as she still couldn’t get through the fern ocean without a fight. Maybe this job was making her too suspicious.

  Work worries aside, Dani was enjoying her growing friendships around the Bayou. Her grandad’s situation seemed to have stabilized somewhat, since Trudy had made the initial payments to the creditors. Her father, well, she didn’t want to waste a nice walk through a sunny swamp thinking about Journey and his bullshit.

  And then there was Zed.

  Zed. Zed. Zed. Zed.

  As much as she wanted to deny it, she was in a relationship with the man. A real relationship, with feelings, and expectations. She wasn’t sure when the transition happened, probably when he shared his rubber fish with her, which was a super weird way to mark the beginning of a romance. But that night in his tub was the first time she shared something real with a partner, something from her past. She shared actual intimacy with Zed. And it was freaking her out more than just a little bit.

  But even with his demands for her to be open and honest with him, he wasn’t pushing her for a commitment or to tie herself down in the Bayou. And she appreciated that.

  If she was going to stay anywhere, with anyone, she could very easily see herself making a life here in the Bayou with someone like Zed—someone who made her laugh and understood her weird quirks because he had plenty of his own. Someone who appreciated the contents of her head as much as he did the contents of her bra. But after making such a big deal about not defining what they had, Dani would have to approach that conversation carefully—because the potential for Zed gloating was pretty epic.

  Dani was relieved when she arrived at the rift site and didn’t find Maureen Sherman lurking around in her judge-y pressed khakis. But the atmosphere around the clearing seemed heavier somehow, thicker to walk through. The colors that normally danced on the air were spread out much further than they were even on Dani’s first visit. The split in the air was almost visible, its aura leaking in thick ropes from the frayed edges.

  Dani walked to her rock, took her stance and prepared herself for opening to the rift. But before her internal shields could come down, Dani stumbled back with the force of the energy against her mind and landed on her butt with an “oof.”

  Her ears were ringing and she laid back on the grass to catch her breath.

  Something was wrong here. Something was very wrong.

  Panting, Dani took the time to scan the rift carefully. This wasn’t a rift, it was a gash, an intentional rip in the energetic fabric of the sky. And it was going to get bigger by the day, if left unchecked.

  Dani pictured the very ends of the rip healing, the tendrils of energy winding together and knitting into a smooth scar. There were several stops and starts. Dani actually had to stop for a water-and-granola break about an hour into her efforts.

  But finally, Dani felt like she’d managed to repair the worst of the leakage. The seepage was only slightly worse than it had been on Dani’s first day. She was exhausted and drenched in sweat by the time she was finished. But all she could think of was getting to town, warning Jillian and Zed.

  All of her work, all of Maureen’
s work, if she’d really done any, had been undone. How much of the rift’s mojo had oozed into the Bayou, wreaking who knows what sort of havoc on human genetics and the powers that the magique already had.

  Dread, cold and heavy, settled into her chest. She was definitely going to have a difficult conversation with Jillian about Maureen Sherman. There was no way someone with a “dabbler” level of talent had ripped open the rift like a cheap can of tuna. Maureen was the only other dynakinetic in town who was capable of that sort of damage—though Dani had no clue why Maureen would want to do such a thing. She had to be stopped and she had to be stopped now.

  13

  Zed

  Having an amazing office was one of the few perks of being Mystic Bayou’s mayor. Unlike Bael’s one-room sheriff’s department across the open floor-plan, Zed got an office all to himself instead of having to sit outside in the common area with the other departments. As much as he liked his coworkers, being able to shut his door on them when they were annoying him was probably what kept their working relationship friendly.

  He’d hoped to be in a much more impressive stance than leaned back in his chair with a napkin tucked into his collar when Dani saw his “seat of power” for the first time. But Jillian and Bael had brought by lunch and he wasn’t about to say no to Jillian’s grilled cheese sandwiches. She couldn’t cook much, but her grilled cheese was a work of carb-y art.