Tooth and Nail

by Jennifer Safrey

  “Touche,” he said.

  “Didn’t expect The Root to have fitness facilities.”

  “Employee benefits.”

  “Ah,” I said, nodding. “I should have known. This is a massive culture, a massive operation. What were you doing?”

  “Taekwondo poomse. Forms,” he clarified.

  “Nice.”

  “You should try it. Martial arts would be good training for you.”

  “I’m lacking in grace,” I said, “in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “I’ve noticed quite a bit.”

  I ignored his implication, which was easier than it could have been since I had come here for a reason. “Mahoney saw a fae, a tooth collector,” I said, “and he’s trying to find her.”

  Svein sat down on the floor in front of me and leaned back on his forearms. “Before you explain what you know, would you mind explaining how you know?”

  “I went to his place.”

  “Uninvited, I assume.”

  “He might have invited me in,” I said, “had he been there.”

  He sighed and leaned over on one arm so he could rub his eyes with his other hand. “Now, who’s doing whose job?” he asked. “You need to let me do this kind of thing.”

  “You would have just done the same thing I did. Besides, I wanted to do it myself. He pissed me off.”

  “All the more reason,” he said.

  “For your information, I was Miss Calm, Cool and Collected. Until he came home.”

  He closed his eyes and didn’t open them.

  “He’s got pictures,” I said. “Drawings of a tooth faerie. One very specific tooth faerie. I don’t know when or how, but he saw her, and it was a long time ago.”

  “Only children too young to have a fully developed memory can see us,” he said, opening his eyes again and leaning forward, crossing his arms on his knees. “How could he remember?”

  “I don’t know, but he did, and does, and he’s still looking for her. In the pictures, she had wings, and her hair and clothes were kind of 1980s.”

  “He was born in 1980,” Svein said. “I remember that from the file.”

  “Huh,” I said. “I thought he was much younger than me.”

  “Even you must realize how intimidating you are to the average man, human or fae.”

  “I don’t intimidate you.”

  “I’m not average.”

  No argument there. “Well, Mahoney saw a damn fae,” I said, “and he’s still looking for her. Judging by the literature in his den of iniquity, he’s as obsessed with fae as with politicians, if not more. He wants to find her, and show the world the tooth faeries exist.”

  “The tooth faerie,” Svein corrected me. “The folklore in this country is that there’s one Santa Claus, one Easter bunny, and one tooth faerie. I’m betting he thinks the one he saw is the one.”

  “Still doesn’t explain how he was able to see her at all. What can we get from his background? Can I see his file?”

  “I remember most of it,” Svein said. “I only did it recently and there wasn’t much on his childhood. He was an only child, like you. Two parents, average home. We caught all his teeth. He must have seen the faerie at his home, as nearly impossible as that is.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t blinking. Maybe she was careless and screwed up. Should we look her up, pay her a visit and ask her?”

  “I don’t see the point,” Svein said. “Fae are supposed to report in when they’ve been compromised, and they would, because the greater good is more important than one fae’s screw-up. It isn’t in his collection file, and frankly, if it was, it would make his file a historical one. There hasn’t been a time in recent history that any of us have been seen. We’re well trained and our abilities are natural—more natural than yours, since you’re half fae. It would have been as instinctive as breathing for the fae to have been blinking at little Mahoney’s home that night.”

  “Yet he was old enough to lose a tooth, so his memory was developed, and he shouldn’t have seen her,” I said. “Unless…”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t you tell me he was home schooled?”

  “So?”

  “So he wasn’t out in the world with his peers as early as other kids. So maybe he stayed innocent...just a little longer than other kids.”

  “And he saw her,” Svein said, nodding. “And he could remember her.”

  I thought again of Cindy Lou Who. Little Juliette’s parents probably assured her she’d seen only a dream and she had believed them, the thin memory of me dissolving into her vast imagination. “I wonder who he told,” I said. “I wonder who told him he was crazy, told him to stop making things up. But he held on to his conviction.”

  “This might also explain why you can’t glamour him,” Svein said. “He saw a fae when not only was he old enough to see her in the first place, but old enough to recognize her as a faerie of some kind. Sounds like after seeing her face in person, he’s immune to glamour.”

  “Like if you’re exposed to mononucleosis early, and you develop immunity,” I said. “Which would have been nice for me. Having mono sucked.”

  “The question is,” Svein said, “how are you in the picture?”

  “He saw me that night at Watergate. I dropped a tooth and he saw it. He thinks I’m him. He thinks I’m a fellow hunter, that I saw a faerie also as a child. He thinks I’m closer than he is to the answer.” Give me something, tell me something.

  “That puts you in the clear,” Svein said, standing. “Excellent work. Now we can go back to dealing with Dr. Clayton full time and put the D.C. Digger behind us.”

  “How can I?” I looked up at him. “He’s after Avery.”

  “Is there something on Avery to find?”

  I didn’t like his tone. Not one bit. “Absolutely not.”

  “Then you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  “But Avery’s father was a good politician too, a good man, and the media tore him apart on something he had nothing to do with. Even when it came out he’d done nothing, his career was ruined. Mahoney could do that to Avery.”

  “Other journalists could do that to Avery.”

  “Most of them have quit trying by now,” I said. “But if Mahoney thinks I’m holding out, for all I know, he could make something up.”

  “So you make something up,” Svein said. “Tell him you saw the tooth faerie when you were a kid and she did the hokey pokey with you and took you to her ice cream castle. That ought to shut him up.”

  “Tell him a lie?”

  “Well, you’re saying the Digger could lie, so beat him to it. Counter his punch with one of your own. You’re good at that.”

  I let my head drop. “Ouch,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. My stomach hurts.”

  He put out his hand, and I took it so he could haul me upright. Too close to him, I took a step back.

  “Don’t worry about Mahoney,” Svein assured me as he reached for his crumpled T-shirt on a nearby chair and tugged it on. “He’s nothing. Clayton’s the problem. I have a few ideas, and we need to make a plan.”

  “Yeah, that,” I said. “I’ve got some interesting things to say on the topic of the good dentist.”

  “What?” he said, and it was clear in his voice that he knew he wouldn’t like what came next.

  “Tomorrow,” I said, opening the door. “I’m inviting you to a powwow. Someone’s holding out on me.”

  I paused and watched Svein tug on his sneakers. “If no tooth collector in recent history has given us away,” I asked, “how come you sent me to Watergate? Teaching me a lesson couldn’t be worth the risk.”

  “I followed you.”

  My mouth hung open. “I hate you,” I finally said, letting the door slam in his face. I heard him laughing as I headed back down the hall.

  CHAPTER 17

  When I got home, I was a half dozen different emotions by then: confused, defeated, jumpy. Angry at Riley Clayton.
Strangely sympathetic to Greg Mahoney.

  Surprised to see Avery at the kitchen table, cell phone at his ear, yellow legal pad in front of him.

  Not that I should have been surprised. It wasn’t like I didn’t live there. But I was afraid that all the happenings of the day were on open display on my face, and I didn’t have the energy to create a careful mask. And I didn’t want to add guilt to my simmering emotion pot—the low, quiet, slow guilt that comes with lying by omission.

  He nodded at me to acknowledge my presence but he didn’t lift his eyes from his notepad. I moved around him and opened the cabinet over the sink. I filled a mug with hot water and put it in the microwave. Then I tuned in to Avery’s half of the conversation.

  I wished I didn’t. I heard, “kids,” “arson,” “shooting,” “underage,” “violence.”

  I didn’t know if it was the scorching pain in my gut from the beating I took or the bruised tailbone I got from falling through a brick wall, but whatever it was that was preoccupying my mind was keeping it from processing full sentences. The isolated words in Avery’s calm, assuring voice twisted in an out-of-control cyclone in my head.

  The microwave beeped several annoyed times and I didn’t make a move to get my mug. I was grounding a chai teabag in my fist into sweet-smelling shreds. Avery clicked off, placed his phone next to him on the table, and wrote down some notes.

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “The office.”

  “Not the campaign office.”

  “No, my office.”

  “Why?”

  Avery still didn’t look up, and his pen kept on moving. “Consulting on a few cases.”

  “Why?” I asked. “You’re on leave. You’re kind of busy. What, they can’t do their jobs without you?”

  Avery quirked a brow. “There are a few cases right now that are delicate. They wanted my opinion on how to proceed.”

  “Well, tell them you don’t have time.”

  He finally looked at me. “Why would I do that?”

  I backtracked, because I really didn’t have a reason that I could tell him. “You’ve got a lot going on. You don’t need this too.”

  “This has nothing to do with what I need,” he said. “But I appreciate what sounds like concern. So let me tell you what’s going on.”

  Please don’t, I thought.

  “Have you noticed an increase in violence in this area that’s perpetrated by kids?”

  Yes. “No.”

  “It’s all over the news,” he said. “That school shooting. Some kid just set a vacant building on fire. A girl tried to kill her brother. These are little kids, Gemma. Only in the last couple of weeks.”

  Brian’s dead eyes drifted in front of my own. “So…”

  “So, these cases are landing on the desks of my associates. These should be isolated, unusual cases that we could put senior people on. But they’re piling up, and the less experienced attorneys are having to handle these scenarios. What caused the violence? Should they be tried as adults?”

  “Should they?” I asked, not knowing myself.

  “It’s a case-by-case decision.”

  “And so everyone needs your help?”

  “I’m senior,” Avery said. “I’ve had a few instances in my career when I’ve had to prosecute underage felons. So they’re looking for my advice.”

  “I thought you said you were leaving this behind to campaign,” I said. “That’s what you said you were doing.”

  I heard desperation in my voice. But it was too late, because he’d heard it too. His expression hardened into a stone wall of determination. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked. “There’s a problem in this city. I don’t know where it’s coming from, or even if it’s coming from the same place for every one of these messed-up kids, but this is my job. You want me to walk away from that?”

  “You already did,” I pointed out. I stepped on the trash can pedal. The lid flipped up, hit the wall behind it, and slapped down. My tossed teabag bounced off onto the floor. “Let your office handle it. They’re capable, and you have enough right now. You have more than enough. You’re exhausted. Why are you adding more grief?”

  “Because when I see a problem,” he said, his voice tight, “and especially when I see a tragedy, I do what I can to stop it. I do everything. I have to. That’s my mentality, and that’s what it has been my whole life. What I’m always thinking is, if I don’t do it, who will?”

  I will, I thought.

  But then I thought, I wouldn’t have, if I hadn’t been talked into it. Frederica, Reese, Svein. They’d had to explain, demonstrate, even guilt me into accepting my destiny of birth.

  Avery had no destiny, no responsibility other than to himself. He was free to make his own choices, and faced with a choice, he always went with—without advice or compulsion or even a second thought—what he thought was the right way.

  I was a promise to the fae to protect them. But Avery was a protector of humanity, and that included me.

  “You’re not the only fighter in this house, Gemma,” Avery said. “Unfortunately, the opponent isn’t limited to rules of a game. This is reality and it’s dark and disgusting and I’m not going to watch it float by me like a parade. It’s my responsibility.”

  Suddenly, I wished it was him and not me. If my battle was his to fight, he’d win. He wouldn’t have the conflicts I had, or mess up the way I did. He’d have a better plan than me. He’d more clearly see the victory in front of him. He was what I needed to be. And I wished I could ask him how.

  His jaw was set stiff, and his shoulders were squared back, and I felt bad for the fae, who didn’t have Avery on their side.

  Avery abruptly rose, shoved the chair back so hard that it momentarily teetered on one leg, crossed the room to where I was standing, grasped my shoulders and kissed me.

  Hard. Edging on rough.

  I could do rough. I smiled beneath his lips. He didn’t have anything to prove to me, didn’t need to show me he was any kind of hero.

  But, I thought as he tugged my shirt over my head and tossed it over my shoulder, that didn’t mean I couldn’t let him show me. Over and over again.

  >=<

  “Thank you for meeting me today.”

  I was holding very small court in a back booth at a little bistro at 10th and Constitution. I got there twenty minutes before any of them so I could watch them as they arrived. My mother arrived with a perfumed kiss, a tote bag, and a puzzled expression when I informed her that two others would be joining us. Frederica had swept in wearing a pale green floaty top, lightweight beige gauchos and brown ballerina flats, serene and content to wait for the last of the guests. Svein had strode in, frowned at the crowded table, and slid in beside Frederica and across from me, the bench creaking under him.

  I’d introduced both Frederica and Svein to my mother, and by their mutual nods, they all silently acknowledged each other as fae. Then I’d taken orders, got our sandwiches, but when I returned to the table, there’d been no indication they’d said one word to one another in my absence.

  Frederica smiled. My mother raised her brows. Svein leaned back, his foot in its engineer boot protruding into the aisle.

  “Riley Clayton,” I said.

  “I knew Riley Clayton,” my mother said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Good start,” even though it wasn’t good at all. I had been hoping, despite her reaction on the phone, that my mother couldn’t confirm a connection to Clayton, but at the same time, I was hoping that with a little cooperation, I could glue together the broken pieces of Clayton’s story.

  “I don’t understand,” my mother said. “Do you know him?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “He’s my new dentist. And he’s a fae threat.”

  My mother put a hand to her forehead. “A threat.” She took a deep breath. “I knew they hadn’t just recruited you to collect. I knew this would happen.”

  “With Clayton?” I asked.

  “Yes, I worried
about Clayton for a while,” she said. “But to me, it didn’t matter who a threat would be and what form it would take. All I know is that you’re in danger now, and I abandoned my family and my heritage thirty years ago to make sure this wouldn’t happen. So that you,” she said, pointing a finger at Frederica, “wouldn’t get her and put her on the front line as our race’s only weapon.” My mother’s shaking voice rose in pitch, but dropped in volume, mindful of fellow diners. “I respect what we are and I respect the dream but I will not let my daughter die for you.”

  “Bethany,” Frederica said, and stopped, letting my mother’s name float there in the air, as if its magical vibrations could soothe my mother’s soul. After a few moments, when my mother’s tremors had subsided a bit, she continued. “Gemma is a smart, brave, wily human, and a cunning and strong fae. She is not the warrior of an earlier time. We’re not tossing her in the middle of an uncivilized and violent fray. We have faith in her to neutralize the threat without bloodshed on either side.”

  My bruised gut hurt with my every inhalation.

  “You think modern day is more civilized?” my mother asked Frederica. “You’re delusional. This world is more unpredictable and more perilous than ever. You know that as well as I do. Earth is on a well-worn path to self-destruction, and you know that means the Olde Way, more than ever, is the savior. My daughter, as bright and strong as she is, can’t be alone out there. No one can.”

  I’d never heard my mother talk this way, and I suddenly realized my fighter’s instinct hadn’t just come from my father. “It’s done, Mom,” I said quietly, leaning into her. “I’m doing this now. I have to do this. No one is making me. The fae gave me a choice, and I accepted. I’m on this. I’ll be okay. I love you,” I said. “I’ll be okay. But I need to hear about Clayton. I need to learn how to stop him.”

  My mother put her arm around me and hugged me, glaring at Frederica, then at Svein. “What do you need to know?” she asked, kissing me on the cheek like I was a child. After the batterings of the last few days, it felt good. When Avery had hugged me last night upon his return home, the pain in my bruised abs had made me squeak. I’d told him I had a stomachache, and he’d put me to bed with chicken soup and crackers.