The Modern Fae's Guide to Surviving Humanity

by Joshua Palmatier

  What the hell was she up to? Jack pressed his face against the bars of his cell. Most fae races had no problems with iron, but for pureblooded Celtic sidhe, it was worse than kryptonite. It burned them on contact, disrupted their spells and let anybody who knew what to look for—human or otherwise—see through their illusions. Even so, most people would’ve dismissed what he saw as hallucination. The doctor’s aura crackled with the green static of rising magic. The kittens in the next cage whimpered, further tainting the air with their piss.

  “I’d have to put him down.” She sang, and her crystalline soprano transformed a statement into a spell. “But I can fix him. I’ll operate and neuter him for free. When I’m done, he’ll be the perfect pet.”

  “No!” Jack screamed. She wanted to castrate him! Lobotomize him! “No! No! Noooooo!”

  Rika wrenched her gaze from the fae and slammed both hands against his cage, almost knocking him over. Her fingers locked around the narrow bars as if she knew their power. He held his breath.

  “He doesn’t have a concussion,” she panted. “His pupils are the same size.”

  The sidhe’s nostrils flared, but her tone remained mild. “That’s a human marker, dear.”

  “Rika, honey, you’re upset,” Wes said. “But you got to listen to the doctor. She’s only got the cat’s best interest at heart.”

  “She wants to destroy me!” he howled, ramming the cage door.

  “See, he wasn’t acting like that a minute ago,” Wes said. Beneath her concerned-doctor disguise, the sidhe’s eyes blazed with triumph. Pureblooded Celtic fae couldn’t lie outright, but all her misdirection and medical mumbo jumbo led to a single conclusion—and the harder he protested, the more it looked like she was right.

  “He’s scared,” Rika objected. “He can tell something’s wrong.”

  “There is something wrong—with him. Look at him,” Wes said. “How could you live with yourself if something bad happened to that boy because you thought you knew better than the doctor? But that’s not going to happen, because the doctor’s going to operate, and you’re going to be right here waiting for him when she gets done.”

  It was a hell of an exit line. Dr. Kellas didn’t try to top it; she left. Wes hurried after her. Jack wanted to scratch him. Why’d he have to put that thought in Rika’s head? Jack didn’t want sympathy; he wanted her to run after them, delay them, not stand in front of his cage chewing her thumb.

  “I don’t understand. Nobody just goes in and operates. This isn’t a TV show. You need X-rays and blood tests … all that stuff.”

  He needed to get out of there. He rolled onto his back and shoved the wire latch with both front paws. White hot pain jolted his arms. “mmOWWW!”

  “What’re you doing?”

  What’s it look like? Damn thing was stuck. He should’ve expected it with giant vet techs smacking it around all day. He positioned his paws closer to the base of the handle and gritted his teeth. His paws slipped—the handle was too slick. What now? Oh.

  “You’re bleeding!” she keened. Grown cats covered their ears. Dogs on the other side of the building bayed in response. But nobody came running, not Wes, not the other volunteers. Had the sidhe enthralled them all? Shit.

  He licked blood and lymph off his fore pads. He would’ve given anything to do a partial shift—thumbs to clench, palms that were only fractionally hamburger. But for half-breeds like him, it was all or nothing—never a good idea with humans around.

  “Dr. Kellas should be taking care of your poor paws, not, not—”

  Humans always got hysterical. At least he didn’t have to worry about iron unmasking him. Shapeshifting was in his DNA; no spells or glamour required. When he was a cat, he was a cat in everything but mind. Unfortunately. More strength would’ve been a plus. He bellied up to the door, hooked his claws on either side of the handle and pulled. This time he saw red stars, but the hook was free of the bar, and he was pretty sure he still had all his claws.

  “You popped the catch,” Rika gasped, dropping to her knees. Blocking the door.

  Snarl later. Right now he needed to free the bolt. He pushed his muzzle through the bars on the far side of the latch and tried gnawing it. Bad idea. Scratching didn’t help, either. He was too close to focus on the bolt, and his human brain couldn’t compensate for distance the way it did for color, but from its position relative to his whiskers, it was as warped as the rest of the handle.

  “You’re problem-solving! I knew you were special.”

  He nodded. Got that right. Carefully, he fitted his right paw to the hook. Pushing it was like grinding a broken blister over the head of a nail.

  “Do it again,” she demanded. “Nod if you understand what I’m saying.”

  Sure.

  “Omigod, are you a … ? No!” She jumped to her feet and paced like she was the one in the cage. “Don’t go there. Remember what happened the last time you thought you found a bakeneko—and that was your mom, not Cruella de Vet.”

  He got Cruella, but Bach E. What?

  “Latches and nodding—they’re just tricks. He can’t do magic, or he’d have blasted the door. He’s got one tail, he walks on four legs, and he can’t talk. Face it, he’s only an animal.” She whirled. Her forehead knotted and mouth strained. She kicked the floor. “But that doesn’t give her the right to cut him up.”

  So save me! “Me-e-ew.”

  Nobody did pitiful like Jack Tibbert. She practically melted over his cage. “Don’t cry, baby. I won’t let her hurt you. I’ll turn you loose first.”

  Yes!

  “No. They’ll crucify me over a cat. They’ll strip my community service credits. My grade point’ll tank and … oh God! I put the shelter on all my college applications!”

  His jaw sagged. Fate worse than death here, and you’re angsting about grades? Hissing in disgust, he checked his hind legs. The pads weren’t as raw as the ones in front. He dropped to the cage floor and poked his right leg through the bars.

  “It’s my word against hers, and she’s the vet of the day. Wait, that’s it—get another vet.” She pulled out her phone and mauled the screen. “C’mon, Dr. Vygotsky, be home. Be home. Noooooo,” she moaned. “Don’t transfer me to the answering service!”

  Not enough leverage. He needed a better angle.

  One of the kittens chirped.

  The zombie filling the doorway had a fluffy towel slung over his left arm. He was dressed like the surgeons who had operated on Jack’s mom. A blue smock covered his scrubs and layered latex gloves extended past his thick wrists to clasp the ribbed ends of his sleeves. A shower cap was pulled low on his forehead, and a blue paper mask stretched from ear to ear. The dark eyes between had forgotten how to blink.

  Rika’s eyebrows drew together in a frown. “What’s with the gown, Wes? It’s not sterile in here.”

  Wes ignored her. Under the sidhe’s spell, he couldn’t tell her the point wasn’t hygiene; it was making sure he wouldn’t touch iron, even by chance. As if Jack’d leave it to chance. He hunched in the center of the cage and extended his aching claws.

  “Stop, Wes, listen to me. We can’t do this. This cat is special.”

  “Yes, it is,” he rumbled in tones much deeper than his usual fluting drawl. He would’ve walked over her if she hadn’t stumbled out of his way. She grabbed his towel arm. He shoved her aside. She staggered into the corner cages. The bars rang, and cats mrow-ed in alarm.

  “Wes?” her voice wobbled. “What’s wrong?”

  Six feet away.

  “No!”

  Four feet. Two. Wes jerked the latch. Jack sprang.

  Right into the towel. He twisted, trying to escape, but somehow that made it worse. The more he struggled, the tighter the towel wrapped around him, binding his legs to his body.

  “Wesley Ernesto Perez, put him down!”

  Ponderously, without ever easing his hold on the towel, Wes turned. “This cat needs immediate surgery.”

  “He does not.” Rika reached
for him but flinched before connecting. “Please,” she begged, “Dr. Kellas made a mistake. He’s totally okay.”

  “Stop deluding yourself, dear,” he said in a ghastly echo of the fae’s human voice. “You’re a child. She’s a doctor.”

  “So was Frankenstein!” Rika yelled at his back.

  It didn’t have any more effect than Jack’s efforts to wriggle free. He snapped at Wes’s fingers, but he couldn’t turn his head, and the spell on Wes’s mind hadn’t affected his reflexes. Panic stole Jack’s breath. His cat form didn’t stand a chance against Dr. Kellas and her pet thrall. He needed to shift, but he couldn’t, and rolled up tighter than a burrito, his bones would be crushed, his organs pulped inside him. He’d seen what happened to his brother.

  Calm down! They wouldn’t kill him like this. Dr. Kellas had to at least pretend to operate, if only because of Rika. Who’d insist on a second opinion. A sick chuckle sputtered from his throat, and he could breathe again.

  His timing sucked. The surgical prep room greeted him with a nose-burning rush of wintergreen. Inside was an unholy hybrid of doctor’s office and operating theater, complete with built-in desks, rolling stools, and pole-mounted machines with dangling wires and menacing robotic arms. Thick translucent plastic covered the rectangular table in the center of the room, obscuring the gray surface beneath. Steel, and a lot of it. That was something, at least.

  Dr. Kellas wasn’t wearing a mask—nothing to get in the way of her voice. The rest of her was as iron-proof as her thrall. She had no trouble tapping the enormous syringe in her gloved right hand.

  Wes set him on the table. Jack tensed, sweating the milliseconds until the towel loosened. Dr. Kellas couldn’t inject him blind: the needle might miss. But the vet tech’s heavy hands never lifted from his back. The syringe homed in on his flank, growing larger as it approached like some cheesy special effect.

  The double doors to the hallway crashed into the wall and scrub sink with teeth-jarring clangs.

  “Dr. Kellas,” Rika trilled, “I brought the towels you asked for.”

  The doctor whirled, hissing denial. Her hold on Wes wavered. Jack flailed free of the towel, shifting to his human form as he fell behind the table. He landed catlike on all fours and yanked the plastic free.

  “Don’t let him escape,” the sidhe ordered.

  Wes had him in a wrestler’s bear hug before the plastic hit the floor. Jack was five-foot-eight and a hundred forty pounds of lean muscle and dirty tricks, but hoisted a foot off the ground with Wes’s meaty fists locked under his ribs, none of it mattered. He kicked, elbowed, and strained against the table—he tore at Wes’s gloves and the back of his neck. He tried everything short of eye-gouging, but it was like beating on a tree.

  “Leave, Rika,” Dr. Kellas thundered. “Shelter volunteers aren’t allowed in surgery.”

  Her voice resonated with power. The sound and the giant needle in her right hand—not to mention the naked guy dangling in midair on the other side of the operating table—should’ve sent Rika running. Instead, she stood transfixed. Her gaze trailed from his shaggy seal brown hair, past his blue eyes and the beard he was trying to grow, past the darkening bruise wrapped around his left shoulder, to lock on the white, palm-shaped birthmark bleached into the permanent tan of his chest. It was the same white and light brown he wore in feline form, if not in the same places.

  “Bakeneko,” she breathed. “You’re a bakeneko. Why didn’t you say—”

  Dr. Kellas grabbed Rika’s chin in her left hand. Pointed claws strained her latex gloves. “Erika Nakamura, hear me. That isn’t human; it’s a cat; a pretty little cat that needs an operation right now.”

  “Rika, don’t listen!” Jack cried. “She’s trying to hypnotize you!”

  “Let go of me!” Rika shrieked the same instant. She slammed the towels into the doctor’s right arm. Syringe and towels dropped to the floor. Before the vet could react, Rika grabbed her wrist in one hand and chopped the inside of her elbow with the other.

  Spitting fury, the fae retreated. She hadn’t drawn blood, but the sound magic of the Celtic fae didn’t need it. Her voice soared, producing notes and harmonics that couldn’t, shouldn’t flow from a human throat. “He’s a cat who needs fixing. Fixed, he’ll be the perfect pet. Docile and friendly, he’ll never roam or mark or claw.”

  Rika’s perspiration grew musky with fear. Jack shouted, “Grab the table! Iron breaks the spell!”

  Rika shook her head, not listening. Soon she’d succumb, and there’d be two humans against him, as well as the fae. The big artery leading to his legs pulsed beneath Wes’s fist—another shift-killing hold. Jack needed a weapon. Where were the damned instruments? They were steel. If he could just reach one …

  “Stop it!” Rika’s scream knifed through the fae’s song. She snatched a metal tray off the drain board and swung it into Dr. Kellas’s side. “He’s a person, not a pet!”

  Dr. Kellas screeched. She grabbed the red plastic hazmat bin from the floor next to the sink. Wielding it like a shield, she thrust and dodged. Her poisonous music swelled once more. “Cat, little girl. Little girls love cats. Cat, cat, caaaat …”

  “Don’t patronize me!” Rika slammed the bin, grazing the doctor’s jaw on her upswing. Jack flinched at the smell of seared meat. Dr. Kellas stumbled, dropping the bin. The burly arms around Jack’s waist trembled, but not enough. The sidhe caught herself on one of the rolling machines, and her lips parted on a deadly, expanding pearl of sound.

  “Let them go!”

  The tray swept down. The fae ducked. Her sleeve snagged on a protruding knob, and when she tried to swerve, her foot caught in one of the trailing cords. She fell into the gap between the sink and the built-ins. Her head struck the side of an overhead cabinet and the counter beneath it. She crumpled to the floor.

  With a soft grunt, Wes flopped forward, pinning Jack against the table. He weighed as much as a tree, too.

  “Help,” Jack wheezed.

  “Are they dead?” Rika blubbered. “Did I kill them?”

  Here it comes, the freakout we’ve all been waiting for. Resigning himself to the inevitable, Jack crawled out from under the vet tech. He slumped against the table, amazed he was still in one piece and breathing. Breathing was vastly underrated.

  Cold air on unfurred skin—not so much. “Where do they keep the scrubs?”

  “You didn’t answer.” Rika glared at him, clutching the warped tray to her chest.

  “They’ll be fine.” As a precaution, Jack stripped Wes’s cap, mask and gloves. The more places he was touching iron when he woke, the better.

  “How can you tell?”

  She didn’t need to know he could hear their heartbeats. There was a slim chance she’d suppress the whole cat-to-person thing. “His chest’s moving. So’s hers.”

  “Breathing. Right.” Speaking of breathing, hers sounded ragged.

  “Scrubs,” he repeated firmly.

  The tray landed beside the sink with an angry clank. “I just saved your skinny butt. Would it kill you to say thank you first?”

  “Thank you, with hearts and flowers and whatever else you need. Now can we get back to clothes? Hel-lo—naked guy here.”

  She ooop-ed and covered her eyes. Her free hand pointed over her shoulder. “Tech station. Bottom drawer.”

  “Thanks.” He kicked the plastic ahead of him. He didn’t want to step in the splinters of the doctor’s hypodermic, or anything else on the floor, not with red smudges marking his trail. At least they had scrubs his size. He couldn’t help a sigh of relief as he pulled the pants over his junk. He was going to have nightmares about this for years.

  “How long before they wake up?”

  “How should I know? I’m not a doctor.” I’m just trying to look like one.

  “Oh God, I hit a doctor,” Rika moaned.

  Jack pulled the top over his head. It felt like he’d strained every muscle in his body, and now they were straining back. He’d better steal a full bot
tle of painkillers.

  “I could be arrested! Go to jail! I’ll be grounded for life! I might as well quit school and apply to McDonald’s right now. I’ll never get into college.”

  “Enough with the drama already. Say she attacked you. Bandages? Booties?”

  Her hand dropped. The expression on her face was tragic. “But Wes …”

  “Won’t remember a thing. He wasn’t himself when he hit you.”

  Rika swallowed, nodded. Tears spiked her lashes. He wished …

  He’d wished a lot of things since his mom died.

  He pulled bandages and antibiotic ointment from an overhead cabinet. He was taking too long—Sleeping Behemoth was already starting to twitch—but he needed to deal with his feet. His boots were on the other side of the park, hidden in the restroom building with the rest of his gear. If he doubled up on the booties, he should be able to make it. He just had to find them. He kneed a small rolling stool away from another set of drawers.

  “Why’d Dr. Kellas go after you? Do you know each other?”

  “I don’t associate with mongrels.”

  The fae’s words sizzled with contempt. She inched up the wall. Her cap disappeared, and thick, inky tresses poured past her hips. Her glamour had dissipated, baring the inhuman symmetry of her features, the raw burn on her chin, the sharp facets of her cat-green eye.

  Jack blinked. Her right eye glittered green around a cat’s slit pupil. Her other eye was nothing but pupil. That’s a human marker, dear.

  “Rika, run!” Jack upended an IV pole, and thrust the wheels at Dr. Kellas’s chest. The base was heavy enough for steel. If he could surround her with iron, maybe they could escape. The fae snorted, lips drawn back in a lop-sided sneer.

  “Stay!” she commanded. Dissonance spread from the word like blackness from the abyss. “I need to sterilize this abomination before he pollutes the clowder. Curs like him can’t be allowed to breed. I became a veterinarian to stop this kind of filth from spreading.”

  Sweat popped on Jack’s forehead and dribbled chills down his back. Not lying wasn’t the same as telling the truth. Hitting her head must’ve short-circuited something in her brain. She was saying what she felt without any filter or control. If that happened to her magic …