Grave Debt

by D. D. Miers

  "I can take care of that after breakfast," I told her, not wanting her to strain herself.

  "Don't be silly, I can manage," she replied dismissively, and headed outside before I could say anymore.

  "We're going to see the fairy guy today," I said as Ethan sat down and we dug into the pancakes. "What's his deal?"

  "Well, I haven't met him, yet," Ethan said. "But the couple of times the curators have found something genuinely dangerous, he's their go-to for handling it. He's a pro at securing magical artifacts, apparently. But I also hear he's got kind of a weird attitude. Probably on account of the Fae thing. It's sort of up in the air whether he'll be willing to help us."

  "You should bribe him with some of these pancakes," Cole said through a full mouth. "These are fucking amazing."

  "Yeah, damn Ethan, you have a talent," I agreed with a laugh. "I don't think I've ever had pancakes this perfect."

  Ethan grinned, deeply pleased.

  "He's tall, he's a doctor, he can cook," Cole said, focused on inhaling his pancakes as quickly as possible. "If he weren't turning into an evil monster, he'd be ideal marriage material."

  "Well, hopefully we're going to take care of that today," I said quickly.

  "Does that mean you'd give me a shot once I'm fixed?" Ethan asked Cole, leaning on his elbow with a forced grin. I felt an odd flutter of pride to see him being that forward. His voice broke a bit and I saw the nervous tension in his shoulders, but he hid it pretty well, considering.

  Cole, caught off guard, stared back at him and swallowed hard around the pancakes in his throat.

  "Down boy," he said, raising an eyebrow. "Your girlfriend is sitting right there."

  "You can give me a shot, too," I said, taking the cue from Ethan and giving him my cheesiest smile. "And that wasn't a no."

  Cole turned slowly scarlet.

  "I need to go," he said quickly, stood up, and hurried out the sliding doors to stand in the yard.

  I giggled, though I managed to hold it until he'd closed the door between us.

  "We probably shouldn't have cornered him," Ethan said, looking pensive through the sliding doors at where Cole stood under the dogwood, one hand braced on the trunk and the other on his chest like he was having a small heart attack. "I hope we didn't scare him off."

  "A centuries old evil necromancer didn't scare Cole off," I reassured him. "I'm sure he can handle a little flirting."

  "Maybe we should back off," Ethan said, chewing his lip. "I don't want him to think I'm like, predatory or something."

  "You're not predatory," I said, patiently. "I mean, except on full moons."

  "Ha ha." He rolled his eyes.

  After a few minutes, Cole came back inside and sat down, returning to his pancakes. Ethan and I remained silent, not wanting to pressure him.

  "So, uh, fairy guy," I said, picking up the conversation from earlier. "Are there are a lot of Fae just hanging around?"

  "I don't think so," Ethan said. "He's the only one I know of."

  "He lives nearby?" Cole asked, without looking up from his pancakes. "All the time?"

  "Uh, yeah," Ethan confirmed, his voice dropping into a softer register almost immediately. He was doing that thing where he acted like Cole was a skittish animal again. "He has a big house down near the ravine. He's lived there for years, far as I know."

  "Hm, unusual," Cole muttered, ignoring Ethan.

  "What's unusual?" I asked, curious.

  "Well, if he's lived among humans without trouble this long, he's probably Court Fae," Cole said casually. "And the Court Fae don't leave the Other Lands much at all these days. When they do, it's usually only for a day or so. For one to be living on this plane for years is very strange."

  "I'll be honest," I said, my confusion mirrored in Ethan's face. "I didn't even know fairies were real until like last week, and I was still under the impression that they were mostly pixies and stuff."

  Cole leaned back, putting down his fork, and considered his words for a moment.

  "Okay. Fairy primer. There are three kinds of Fae," he said at last. "Three courts. The Seelie and Unseelie, also called the Summer and Winter Courts, are constantly at war. They've been in a stalemate so long that their victories and defeats have become ritualistic mirrors of the actual seasons."

  "What's the third court?" I asked, fascinated.

  "Wild Fae," he said. "Anything that isn't Seelie or Unseelie. So your domestic Fae like domovoi and brownies, your local god and cryptids, your forest spirits and mountain guardians, and so on, are all unaligned Wild Fae, basically trying to live their lives and not get sucked into Seelie/Unseelie drama. Some people draw a line between native Wild Fae and Other Lands Wild Fae, but frankly, I don't think there's that much of a distinction."

  "Wait, what?" I said, confused.

  "I think I remember Daphne mentioning something about that," Ethan added, frowning. "They were relocating a bunch of magical things ahead of a real estate development that was moving in, and she was complaining about trying to sort out the invasive species."

  "More like refugees than invasive species," Cole said. "Most of them that are here fled the Other Lands to escape recruitment."

  "I thought they were animals," Ethan said, confused. "Most of the ones I saw certainly appeared to be animals."

  "And who was recruiting them?" I asked.

  "Who else? The courts," Cole said, and inhaled an entire pancake in one bite, choking on his hubris. When he could breathe again, he continued. "Fae intelligence is complicated. It ranges all over the place and doesn't really fit into human standards. Pixies may just seem like big bugs, but they're smart enough to not want to be drafted into a war."

  "And they came from these Other Lands to get away?" I asked.

  "Some of them," Cole confirmed. "To explain it as briefly as possible, earth is . . . uh, earth is a soap bubble. And it has other, smaller soap bubbles stuck to it. Got it?"

  I shook my head, but Cole continued.

  "The smaller bubbles are the Other Lands. Little, fractured realities. Or maybe just realities where physics and energy work really, really differently. Earth is the biggest, at least by traditional measurements, since we've got a universe and other galaxies and shit, and most of the Other Lands that have been seen and reported on by humans are a single location stretching on infinitely, like the Endless City or the forest of Tir Na Nog.

  “Some of the things I've read hypothesize that the Other Lands actually came from earth, manifested from the collective unconscious or whatever. Most of the books put the number of Other Lands around nine. But that may just be how many we've seen. The Seelie and Unseelie run around between all the Other Lands, waging their wars, and forcing any Wild Fae they encounter to join them. Earth is the only land that's ever had any success at keeping them out, and we still feel the magical feedback of their fights influencing weather and probability. And any time their fighting moves to another land, we get a wave of refugees leaving ahead of the court's arrival."

  He chugged half a glass of orange juice.

  "But, to get back to my original point about the fairy guy . . . There aren't many Wild Fae that can maintain a human shape for extended periods. Selkies, hulda, maybe. And even they aren't usually inclined to. Court Fae always look mostly human . . . to humans anyway. So this guy is probably from one of the courts. That's all."

  "If it's so easy for them to fit in with humans, why don't they leave the, uh, what did you call it?" Ethan asked.

  "The Other Lands," Cole replied with a sigh, rubbing his forehead. "And mostly because we don't let them. Fairy troops from either court can cause a huge amount of chaos and damage when they run around here. They almost always come in groups and they have a nearly biological need to cause trouble. So for pretty much all of magical history we've been perfecting ways to keep them out of this reality as much as we can. A few centuries ago, some magical groups managed to come together long enough to work out a contract that severely limits their ability to inter
fere in our plane, except for Midwinter, Midsummer, and the Equinoxes. Honestly, there's a shit ton of weird lore involved. I can find you some books on it, but I don't want to sit here talking about it all day."

  "Fair enough," I said. "I'm just still getting used to all this. I had a pretty good handle on necromancy being a thing, and then I found out about general wizardry and the magical community, and I was just starting to figure that out, and now there's like, other dimensions? Which fairies come from? And they cause the seasons?"

  "They . . . they don't cause the seasons," Cole stammered quickly. "It . . . it's just . . .it's a cyclical, symbolic thing—"

  "Whatever," I said. I didn’t want to get sidetracked again. "I'd just like a day or two with no looming existential threat to process all this, you know?"

  "Yeah, same," Ethan said with a tired nod. "But we need to get going. Like I said, the guy keeps weird hours. If we want to talk to him today, we need to get there soon, or we'll have to wait until late tonight."

  We finished breakfast quickly and hurried out. Ethan's offer to Cole still hung, unresolved and unaddressed between us, but I was afraid to bring it up and distress him. Ethan and I filled the quiet of the car ride with meaningless chatter about types of Wild Fae he'd encountered with the curators.

  "So, domovoi and trasgu are basically the same," I summarized, trying to keep it straight. "Leave food out for them and they clean the house for you. Hobs clean the house for you, but if you leave them a reward, they get pissed off and leave. Brownies expect rewards, but if you try to watch them work, they get pissed off and leave."

  "Yeah, you've got it," Ethan said. "Trying to remember all the rules is the worst, right? Especially when you don't know where they came from. Around here a lot of families brought their house spirits with them when they immigrated to America, and the house has changed hands a dozen times since then, so figuring out what kind of spirit it is can be an absolute pain."

  "What's the worst one you've had?" I asked, curious, as Ethan drove on toward the outside of town.

  "Oh man," he laughed. "One of my first trips out with the curators was to investigate a 'poltergeist' haunting a big old house out in Wethersfield. Just causing small mischief, unmaking beds, laughing in empty rooms, you know. We figured out pretty fast that it was a house spirit, and we thought it was a variety of Finnish Haltija. It turned out to be a Japanese Zashiki-Warashi. They don't clean or anything. They usually cause mischief even when they're happy, but they are good luck. And when they leave a house, it's an omen of crazy bad things on the way. We'd almost driven it out before we figured out what it was, which could have been disastrous for the family."

  "Oh shit," I said. "But you managed to make it stay?"

  "Yeah, and taught the family how to deal with it," Ethan said. "Which is basically to just ignore it. Once they knew it wasn't going to go all paranormal activity on them they didn't mind the occasional weirdness so much. It gives the house character. We're almost there, by the way."

  We'd entered a nice residential area, the street winding past large, old houses with spacious yards and impeccable landscaping. Many of the homes had historical plaques out front declaring the year they were built, many of which began with 17 and 18. Definitely above all our pay grades. Ethan squinted at all the addresses, counting until he found the right one.

  The Jeep turned down the long, tree-lined drive of a large Second Empire home set back from the road and sheltered by several huge old oaks.

  It had two stories plus an attic below a dark mansard roof. It was all brick and white trim, with towers flanking the large front door and tall, arched windows. The brick crawled with ivy, and the garden grew slightly wild, though it was still maintained, the grass kept at a manageable length. The bittersweet vine and Russian olive that troubled the neighbors had no presence here. There was a large Japanese maple, probably older than I was, and autumn red even at this time of the year. The flower beds closer to the house swelled with dark purple ornamental sweet potato, deep burgundy coleus, and black velvet petunias. Crimson king basil and chocolate mint hid in the shade of the other plants, filling the air with their scent. Moonflowers, night flox, and night-blooming jasmine added small splashes of brighter color, though they were all closed up at this time of day.

  We parked the Jeep and walked up through the strange garden to knock on the heavy solid wooden doors.

  "Now remember," Ethan said, as we waited for the guy to answer. "Fae are tricky, so try to be as polite as you can, and if he tries to get a rise out of you, don't take the bait. He knows of me and the curators, so I'll try to do most of the talking."

  Cole and I nodded and wondered what to expect. I pictured some little old man, like a gnome, all mischievous and funny, though Cole's descriptions of the court had me imagining fantasy elves. Then again, he'd been living with humans all this time. He'd probably just look like a guy, right?

  We heard the click of the door unlocking, and I braced myself to find out. The door swung open, revealing a tall, willowy young man with long, blond hair whom I recognized instantly.

  "You?" I said, confusion leaving me momentarily dumbfounded. A second ticked past and I inhaled sharply as I began to put together the pieces. "You."

  He looked back at me, clearly as surprised to see me as I was to see him. His eyes shot to Cole and Ethan. He slammed the door between us.

  Chapter 13

  "Hey!" I shouted, my suspicion instantly rocketing up into angry certainty. I hammered on the door. "You get back out here right now!"

  "You know him?" Ethan asked, looking confused.

  "Yeah, I know him!" I said, through gritted teeth. "And if he did what I think he did, I'm going to kill him!"

  "I would not suggest that," Cole said evenly.

  "What did he do?" Ethan asked, perplexed.

  "He's Greenwood! He was my uncle's estate lawyer," I struggled to explain, still beating on the door. "Or I thought he was, anyway! He was the one who showed me the candle! And if he's Fae, if he's working with the curators and was there specifically for the candle in the first place, then he knew exactly what he was doing when he convinced me to touch it!"

  "Oh," Ethan said. "Well that's not good."

  "He's trying to escape out the back," Cole said, scratching his face and leaning over the porch railing.

  "Get him!" I shouted, leaping the banister and running around the house. Ethan ran past me a second later, shedding his clothes as he shifted. I caught a glimpse of Greenwood's startled expression through the bushes before Ethan, on all fours and the size of a small bear, tackled him.

  I hurried to catch up, and found Ethan laying on top of Greenwood, tail wagging as he gave me a proud doggy smile. Greenwood squirmed and struggled.

  "Release me immediately!" he demanded. "You cannot imagine the wrath I can bring down on you if I chose!"

  "I'll let you go as soon as you tell me why the hell you put that candle in my hands!" I said, standing over him. "Do you have any idea what you put me through? I've nearly died like three times in the past week!"

  Cole wandered over at an easy saunter. "You're better off just spilling the beans, dude," he said. "You don't really want to be stuck outside come midday, do you? Also, judging by the fact that you tried to run away on foot, you've either had most of your powers sealed or you're trying to keep a low profile, so smiting us probably wouldn't be in your best interest. Either way, it's more convenient to cooperate."

  "Ugh." Greenwood made a half-disgusted, half-resigned sound, and shoved at Ethan's furry bulk again. "Would you at least do me the favor of removing your pet before I answer?"

  "Do you promise not to run?" I asked.

  "You have my word," Greenwood said, with a weary sigh.

  Ethan stood and moved away from Greenwood. The bedraggled lawyer’s neatly pressed tan slacks and crisp, white, collared shirt were now grass-stained and covered in wolf hair. He grimaced in displeasure and waved a hand at himself. In an instant, the mess vanished. He picked th
e leaves out of his hair in the more conventional manner as he strode past us, muttering. I followed close behind him. Ethan lingered in the bushes to shift back and collect his clothing.

  He was as gorgeous as I remembered him, though my attraction to him was slightly soured by the realization that all of this was his fault. He wasn't rugged and muscular like Ethan or tough and wiry like Cole. He had a refined grace that reminded me of the love interests from regency romances, all polished masculine beauty. He had angular, aristocratic features and the greenest eyes I'd ever seen. His hair was the color of honey in sunlight, tied in a low pony tail with a dark green ribbon, falling over his shoulder in subtle waves. Cute as he undeniably was, I was strongly inclined to kick his ass.

  He led us back into the house, through a high-ceilinged, finely decorated foyer and into a formal dining room, the table set with empty china.

  "Talk already," I said, impatiently. "What were you really up to in that funeral parlor?"

  "I was about to have dinner," he said casually, gesturing at the table. "You're welcome to join me."

  "Isn't it a bit early?" I asked, as he sat down at the head of the table, snapping his cloth napkin with a practiced gesture as he settled it on his lap.

  "I prefer to be asleep during midday," he said. "Daylight hours disagree with me."

  "All the more reason we should settle this quickly, then," I said, pulling out the closest chair to me and sitting down. Ethan and Cole took the seats next to me.

  The dishes on the table were still empty, though Greenwood seemed ready to eat. I waited, half expecting servants to appear with food. Instead, Greenwood rapped twice on the table. The sound was strangely loud and echoed more than it seemed the room should allow. A second later, the dishes on the table were filled almost to overflowing with the most delicious looking food I'd ever seen, unfolding into existence like flowers blooming or flowing in like water from a tap. Within moments there was a small feast in front of us.