“Maybe?” I said, sounding unsure. I hadn’t really thought about it.
“Dark Fae live in a hell-like realm,” Matthew said. “They’re like goblins and dwarfs and other monsters that thrive in the dark. They like to torment humans and they are enemies with the Light Fae.”
My own personal fantasy encyclopedia.
“How about their court?” I asked.
“The Winter Court is probably the strongest, and then the Autumn Court. Light Fae have the Summer Court as the strongest and then the Spring Court.”
“What about Halflings?”
“Just what it sounds like,” Jackson interrupted before Matthew could explain.
“Thank you, Mister know-it-all,” I said.
“Halflings are the results of human and Fae crossing, of course,” Matthew agreed. “They have varying degrees of Fae magic and glamour. Most of the lore says that Halflings must choose whether to live with the Fae or be killed. Goblins are a noticeable exception, known to exchange Halflings for human babies they take back to Faerie to torment.”
“How do you know all of this?” I asked.
“Mythological background is important when choosing an avatar,” Matthew said. “I can tell you about warlocks, orcs, sorcerers, mages, dragons, elves, and dwarves. The list goes on.”
“I need to know about the Fae for this game.”
“Are you really going to play a game online?” Jackson asked.
He knew how introverted I was in person.
“It’s all anonymous online, so maybe?” I said, still sounding unsure.
“You should get a new laptop if you seriously want to play,” Jackson said. “Your little netbook would choke on the graphics.”
Jackson was a computer nerd as well as mechanical.
“We can go buy one this weekend,” Matthew said, getting excited.
“I thought you were sick,” I reminded him.
“I’m sick today. Tomorrow, I’ll be fine,” he said.
“I haven’t even played the game yet. What if I don’t like it? It would be a waste,” I said.
I hated shopping, the crowds, helpful sale staff and I was also broke. Buying rice was okay on Daddy’s credit card but I drew the line at a top-of-the-line gaming laptop that I knew Jackson would insist I get.
“I’ll think about it,” I hedged.
“So what kind of Fae avatar are you going to be?” asked Matthew.
“I don’t know. What do you think would be best?” I asked. He was an expert.
“Light Fae, of course,” he said.
“But I thought the Dark Fae were, like, dark,” I said, slipping my hands under my thick, black hair to lift it up on the pillow to dry more. Matthew grunted as he got some in the face.
“They do tend to have dark hair and eyes,” Matthew said, “But they’re evil. And you, Evie-baby, are as sweet as they come.”
What a crock of shit.
“I am not sweet,” I protested.
“Sweeter than cinnamon buns,” teased Jackson, snuggling me closer between them.
“Sugar and spice and everything nice,” Matthew lamely added.
“It’s like you two don’t know me at all,” I said. “I’m going to pick the Winter Fae. I’ll be something vile, with three eyes and a horn and green-coloured skin.”
“You can glamour it all away if you want, but you’ll still be good on the inside,” Matthew said.
“I’ll curse anyone that dares to think so,” I said.
“Like Maleficent?”
“She was bad,” I said, proving my point.
“Sure,” Jackson said. “A hot kind of bad. I didn’t think horns would do it for me, but hers were some sexy headgear. Maybe Matthew has a good thing going with these fantasy games?”
“You do know that all the sexy avatars are fat, middle-aged men in real life?” I said.
“Not true,” Matthew protested.
I didn’t want to crush his gaming-boy fantasies.
“I’m sure one or two of them are merely in their early forties,” I said.
“What are we going to do with her?” Matthew asked, tightening his grip on my body.
Oh, hell no. It was too late to escape. They had me in their clutches.
“Don’t you dare, sweetkins,” I told him, using my stern voice. I didn’t have to pull it out too often with him.
“If you want to be a bad girl, you must be punished,” Jackson said.
Hands snuck under the blanket to my poorly protected body.
“No, no!” I protested. “I’ll be good,” I promised.
The twins tickled me mercilessly. I laughed and laughed, the merriment completely out of my control. They kept at it until the blanket and pillows had been tossed off the bed and I was on all fours, trying to crawl to escape.
Jackson snagged my ankle, chaining me to the bed.
Matthew crawled over my body and whispered in my ear.
“Beg for mercy, Evie-baby.”
“Uncle, uncle!” I screeched when Jackson started tickling my feet. They were my biggest weakness and he knew it.
Jackson released me, and I scrambled off the bed.
“Go sleep in your own bedrooms,” I told them. “You’re disturbing Lady Antebellum.”
The rat was fast asleep in her nest.
“We want breakfast in the morning,” Matthew said.
Penance for crying mercy.
“Cinnamon buns it is,” I announced.
Jackson groaned. “We have a game on Monday.”
I have some softness in my soul. There would be eggs for Jackson and steel-cut oats for Matthew. They would just be in suspense until the morning.
“Playtime is over, children. It’s time for bed,” I said shooing them towards the door.
The boys leaned down to kiss me goodnight on the forehead.
“Going to have to let us grow up someday,” Matthew said, closing the door on my surprised face.
When had that happened?
I checked on Lady Antebellum one more time, topping up her food and water.
The twins were adults. I knew that. It’s just they were always going to be my baby brothers, enough years between us that I wasn’t quite ready to think of them as men yet. Both were still in high-school.
I remembered them as two blonde-haired cherubs dressed in identical cashmere sweaters that they didn’t dare scratch at because they were trying to make their best impression on my mom. I had tormented them back then as well, peeling off my jean jacket and prancing around in short sleeves. I had asked for a big glass of ice water and gulped it all down in front of them, throwing it up in the toilet minutes later and staring at the twin sets of brown eyes that had walked into the bathroom to witness my humiliation.
Jackson had held my hair up and Matthew poured me a small glass of tap water to sip and spit. The three of us hadn’t said a word to our parents.
I made myself go back to the ensuite to detangle my hair, still wet enough to make the process easy. I braided it, so it would stay that way while I slept. Too quickly finished with that chore, I brushed my teeth, flossed, tweezed my brows, clipped my toenails and sat on my bed, contemplating if my unwanted guests would have given up already.
It sucked having to switch shifts all the time with working midnights at the lab and day shifts at a couple of restaurants. I was more of a night owl, naturally, and trying to shut your mind down to rest when your body was ready to go to work was difficult.
The secret to a good night’s sleep was sitting in the kitchen, and my mother would be glad to make it for me.
I knocked on her bedroom door. She came out, wheeling a walker.
“What is that?” I asked, stupidly.
“It’s temporary,” my mother said.
I stared at the metal contraption like it was a ball-and-chain set. I was so busy looking at her walker that I didn’t even notice the bruises on her face for a full minute. It was only after she cleared her throat that I looked up.
“
What is that?” I repeated.
“It’s temporary,” my mother repeated.
My stepfather laughed behind us. “Is this stimulating conversation going to continue in the hallway, or do you want to come in?”
He broke the tension, something he was always rather good at doing. The time I had been swearing while he taught me to fish, he had introduced me to silly, crazy euphemisms to replace swear words. Fudge sticks was the least of them.
My stepfather was a good man. He would never hit my mother. I knew she had fallen, but I was having difficulty processing how quickly that had progressed to a walker. She was in her late forties.
“I wanted hot chocolate. Can’t sleep,” I said.
“Kitchen,” my mother directed.
I didn’t move, still frozen in shock.
My stepfather grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Should we let your mother go first? She’s a demon on wheels. Don’t want to get run over. The tread marks are a bunny-itch to get out.”
Euphemisms. I started moving, stepping to the side of the hallway so my mother and her new walker could go first.
My stepfather held me back, letting my mother get out of easy hearing distance.
“She slipped in the shower when you were at work. The doctor suggested this as a precaution until we see if it was a one time slip or if she is losing some muscle control.”
People slip in the shower all the time. There’s soap and it's slippery. They slip. Heads are bumped. Curses are said. They put those stupid animal-shaped, rubber tread stickers on the shower floor.
“How long?” I asked.
My stepfather tugged me along to the kitchen. His hand felt strong. He may have a corporate job, but he spent his weekends teaching football to his sons personally. He was ten years older than my mother, although his fit body made him look closer to her age. That was, until the walker.
“I was hoping for a week. How long do you think she’ll last?” he asked.
“Before she bends metal with her bare hands and throws the destroyed walker across the front lawn?” I said. “Three days. I hope that’s a rental with insurance.”
“Do you know what she said when the doctor suggested a disabled parking sticker?”
“No!” I said. “He didn’t!”
I thought Dr. Jansen knew my mother better after all these years.
“She ripped the paper up in front of him and suggested he take the coffee she made him to go.”
“Dr. Jansen is one of the best,” I protested.
“It was one of his interns. Jansen was on vacation this week.”
Mollified, I entered the kitchen. Mom was going to be in a rare mood.
I get all my attitude from her and she knows it. She works harder at trying to be pleasant to everyone and she has this acceptance I could never replicate. She genuinely loves my stepfather and the twins and me, of course. She doesn’t push away the people she loves, unlike me.
The walker was abandoned next to the kitchen entrance and my mother was standing precariously on a chair to reach the cupboard over the sink.
My stepfather ran past me to provide her with stability. I think he reprimanded her for being reckless, but he kept it quiet enough that I couldn’t hear. I got out the pot, mugs and milk.
“Do you want any?” I called over to my stepfather. He could be a bit of a health nut, like Matthew.
“Yes,” he said, taking the chocolate from my mother and putting it on the counter so he could help her down next.
“There’s whipping cream in the back fridge,” my mother said.
“I’ll get it,” called Jackson, walking past the kitchen entrance to the back. Matthew walked into the kitchen.
“I thought you were sleeping off your sugar coma,” I said.
“Mom bought the high percentage cocoa bittersweet for mine,” he said.
Dark hot chocolate. Omigod, chocolate heaven.
“I want that, but add sugar to mine,” I said.
My mother rolled her eyes. “Get more mugs.”
My stepfather grabbed the container of heavy cream from Jackson and took it over to the stand mixer on the counter. He hooked up the whip and poured the cream in with a generous helping of sugar. Everything was organic because that made indulging in whipped cream somehow more acceptable.
I didn’t care. He could buy his milk squeezed by hand as long as I got my hot chocolate.
“Thought you were sleeping,” Jackson said, snagging a chair from the kitchen island to sit. Matthew and I followed.
“Shift change,” I explained.
“It’s Friday night at 9 pm. Why would any of you be sleeping?” my stepfather asked.
“We have a game Monday,” Jackson said.
As if that was the reason. The boys were staying in because of me and I had gotten grumpy and sent them to their rooms.
“You can take the jeep,” their father offered.
“Tyler called me,” Jackson said.
Underaged sex and drinking, no thanks.
“Could you drop me off at the apartment on the way?” I asked.
“You’re leaving?” my mother asked, heating milk in a big pot.
“I’ll be back for dinner on Sunday,” I said. “I promised Jeff that I would record the growth room temperatures tomorrow morning.”
“Working on the weekend again for that lab weasel?” my stepfather disparaged. He was friends with my boss, which is partly why I got the job, but they weren’t close friends. I may have had something to do with that.
“It will only take half an hour,” I said. “Besides, I have to be at the lab building for the new phase one.”
“Eve, I thought we agreed you were done with those experiments,” my mother said, stirring the pot more vigorously than it required.
“Yes,” my stepfather agreed. “It’s not worth the money they pay for you to risk your health on those treatments. You aren’t even sick.”
“That’s the whole point. They need healthy volunteers to run drug levels in phase one,” I told him. “This new drug inhibits the huntin protein,” I said, excited. None of the other drugs I’d seen acted like this one. My connections at the lab kept me in the quick of things and the Johnston lab was putting out new biological treatments every year.
Something had to work, or at least, slow things down for my mother. I would do whatever I could to push that research along. Ai Lung would understand the need to do something.
“You owe us breakfast,” Matthew said.
“No welshing,” Jackson added.
My stepfather brought over the bowl of freshly made whipped cream and a handful of spoons. “What’s this about Eve’s honour?” he asked.
“Those two dishonourable brats tickled me until I cried uncle,” I said. “It was totally unfair.”
“Tickled?” my stepfather asked, digging into the whipped cream with a spoon to take the first taste.
“They made me laugh,” I said.
“A truly heinous crime,” my stepfather agreed.
“I strained something with such an unnatural activity,” I whined.
My mother had even less sympathy. “You don’t need to worry about a little sprain if you keep poisoning yourself with those experimental drugs.”
This was not a new argument, nor one I would win. My mother wasn’t Ai Lung. She believed that the only life I should be fighting to live was my own.
“I’ll make breakfast on Sunday and stay overnight after dinner,” I compromised, getting up to grab a mug as my mother poured them out from the pot. The guys all followed me, everyone taking a few undoctored sips of appreciation to leave enough room for whipped cream.
“I want pancakes,” Matthew said.
I shot him a suspicious look. He knew my mother made the best pancakes.
“Wake me when you get back and I’ll help,” my mother said.
Matthew was the best kind of tricky bastard. I hadn’t gotten enough time to spend with my mother and I was thrown off by seeing her with the w
alker. It would be nice to have some mother and daughter time on Sunday before the rest of them got up.
“It’s a date,” I said. “Mmm... this is so good,” I told my mother.
Jackson winked at me. “Welcome to the dark side, Evie-baby,” he said.
“Speaking of the dark side...” Matthew said. “Dad, Evie-baby needs a new laptop.”
“She has a card,” my stepfather said, using his spoon to portion out perfect bites of hot chocolate and whipped cream. He had some cream on his mustache.
My mother looked at the mustache and sighed, but she didn’t embarrass the rest of us by cleaning it up for him. “Eve, do you need money?”
I shot Matthew another dirty look. He was going to need a shower if this kept up.
“I had some unexpected expenses,” I said.
The twins and my stepfather all whipped out their wallets.
This time when I gave the twins both a dirty look they caught it and put their money away. I had enough money to take care of myself normally and even a little extra to splurge on my secret indulgences, of which the unopened tubes of lipstick in my purse were one. I could always take an extra shift when I needed more but right now I didn’t have the money to buy a loaf of bread and I had an empty fridge to come home to tonight.
“I’ll pay you back,” I told my stepfather. He knew I meant it. I took five twenties and stuffed them in my bathrobe. I preferred to use cash over my credit card.
“No,” he said. I knew he meant it.
My stepfather might be a softie when it came to my mother, but he put his foot down when it came to my welfare. If he could take back the offer of meeting his lab friend when I had begged, I’m sure he would have done it. Sometimes, I wondered how I ever convinced him and my mother to let me move out on my own.
“Fine, I’ll invest your payments into a high-interest savings account and gift it back to you on your twenty-fifth wedding anniversary,” I said.
“With that length of time, you would be better off in a medium risk, mixed securities investment fund,” my stepfather proposed.
I finished my hot chocolate. All of us just ignored him when he spoke financial gibberish.
“I’ll do the dishes,” Jackson offered. “Get ready to go,” he told me.
“I’ll help,” I said. “I only need a minute to throw on my jeans and hoodie but we need to give Matthew enough time to primp.”
No Faerie Tale Love (Faerie Series Book 1) Page 10