Flightless (Fairy, Texas Book 2)

by Margo Bond Collins

  Mason didn’t need me here any longer. He and Kayla were talking softly. I could share my part of the story—if I even needed to—when they were done.

  I closed my eyes, and just like that, I knew how to trace the power I felt in my hands back to their source, somewhere deep inside me. I felt it there, what was left of all the power I had drained from the demons who had attacked me with Bartlef.

  It was just sitting there, waiting for me to take hold of it, a well of fairy-demon power so deep that I couldn’t see the bottom of it. Behind my eyelids, I examined it carefully. To my inner eyes, it looked dark, shot through with the silvery color of Josh’s eyes. The color I had seen around my hands.

  I studied it until I was certain I had the feel of it, that I could find it again when I needed it.

  When I opened my eyes, I gasped.

  I saw lines of power everywhere.

  They were concentrated around Mason, glowing blue, but they flowed off of Kayla, too, and hers were hot pink.

  Of course.

  Outside Kayla’s window, I saw more power lines, running bright green from trees and through the grass, and small, sharp pinpricks of light that I suspected were insects.

  I drifted toward the glass in the window to take a closer look at what I was seeing outside, and the movement caught Mason’s attention.

  This time, he was the one who gasped. Kayla spun around, her mouth falling open when she saw me.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Look at yourself,” Mason said in tones of awe.

  Holding my arm out in front of me, I saw what he meant. I was glowing. Not softly—not the gentle shimmer that covered almost everything in the ethereal realm, but with a light so harsh that it almost hurt my eyes.

  That’s when I realized that the lines of power I was seeing all converged in one spot: me. The light shining so brightly from me was made up of that convergence.

  “Oh, no,” I whispered.

  “What does it mean?” Kayla asked, at the same time that Mason whispered, “Nala.”

  “I think,” I said, holding my arms out in front of me palm-up and staring down at myself, “that it means that we are all in much bigger trouble than I ever expected.”

  Chapter Eight

  Josh

  “You had lunch with your father? Why?” I hated the fact that Laney’s misery affected me, and that dislike came out sounding like anger. “What did he want?”

  Laney’s jaw clenched and she blinked back tears, but I didn’t try to soften my response. It would only lead to conversations I wasn’t ready to have yet.

  “Man, that isn’t even the biggest part of what’s happened today,” Mason cut in.

  “But it is part of what Josh needs to know,” Laney said quietly. “I don’t know what he wanted, exactly.” She blew out a breath and her voice steadied. “Something about wanting to get to know me. But then he started asking all sorts of weird questions, like where I was the night Bartlef died, and how well I’d gotten to know Fairy, and if I’d made any special friends.” Laney did bunny-ear air-quotes around the words, but I got the feeling that it still didn’t fully convey how creepy she thought the man had been.

  “Yeah, but anyone’s dad could ask stuff like that,” Kayla interjected. “My dad asks stuff like that all the time. I mean, not the stuff about Bartlef, exactly, but he did ask if I was okay when he found out the school counselor had died. And that business about special friends could just be some weird dad-code for boyfriend, or something.”

  A muscle in my jaw jumped as my teeth clenched, almost against my will. Despite our decision earlier not to tell Kayla all our secrets, apparently Kayla and Mason had gone behind my back and done it anyway.

  I guess losing my wings really did mean losing any authority or influence I might have had before.

  The thought hurt, though I didn’t want to show it.

  In any case, Kayla seemed to have taken the news well.

  I wondered if it would have any effect on her latest mind-wipe—and how she might feel if she suddenly remembered all the horrible things that had happened in the last few months.

  “Or it could be that Laney’s dad knows everything about us and was fishing for confirmation—or additional information.” Mason’s posture was as laid-back as ever, slumped in a chair with one leg stretched out in front of him, but I’d known him all my life. I could tell how tense he was from the way one finger tapped against that leg, the way his eyes narrowed.

  “So what happened next?” I asked.

  A long, silent moment passed before Laney began speaking. “I decided that we should tell Kayla, after all.”

  “I agreed,” Mason added, more than a little defensively.

  Laney glanced at him, but didn’t respond to his assertion. “So we went back to our house to find her.”

  As the story spilled out of her, she grew increasingly more eloquent, finally standing up and holding her arm out and using hand gestures to demonstrate the flow of power back into her.

  “Show me,” I said shortly.

  Stopping mid-sentence, Laney stared at me, wide-eyed. “Okay.”

  “Take me into the ether and show me.” I held out my hand. It was the first time I had touched her since I had started back to school.

  Her touch was tentative at first, but then she grasped my hand more firmly and closed her eyes.

  A long moment passed.

  “What’s going on?” Kayla whispered to Mason.

  Laney blew out a harsh breath. “I can’t do it.” She frowned. “I don’t know why. I can see the power, but I can’t reach it, can’t use it.”

  “Here.” I took her hand in mine and shifted us into the ethereal. I had always been good at moving from one realm to the other—and that, at least, didn’t require wings.

  Laney flew without wings once. Maybe that doesn’t really require wings, either.

  I closed my own eyes and shoved the hopeful thought down under a black cloud of rage. Laney was different. The regular rules didn’t apply to her.

  She was not a source of hope.

  Not about anything.

  When I opened my eyes, I almost took that back.

  Laney was incandescent, glowing so brightly that she almost hurt my eyes.

  She was right—she radiated power, and although I couldn’t see where the power lines were coming from, I could tell that she was the endpoint for them and they poured into her at almost every point of her body, gathering at a midpoint right above her abdomen.

  She had been studying me, too, when she reached out the hand I wasn’t holding and brushed it against my chest, just above my heart. It wasn’t a tender gesture—her face was scrunched up in confusion and she tilted her head first one way and then another, as if trying to see something more clearly.

  “What is this?” she asked softly.

  I wasn’t sure she was asking me, anyway, so I didn’t answer. I couldn’t see anything special about the spot. I couldn’t see much of anything about myself in the ethereal any longer. When I had my wings, I had been able to see some of my own power glowing from my body when I was in the ether. Nothing like Laney’s, of course, but it was the same life-power that all the People had.

  Now there was nothing. Just a flat, empty space where that power used to shine.

  At least as far as I could tell, anyway.

  Clearly Laney saw something else.

  “What is it?” I finally asked.

  She shook her head without taking her eyes off me. “I’m not sure. But it’s strange. I don’t think it should be here.”

  I was about to ask her more questions when Mason and Kayla popped through to our side of the ethereal. “Your dad just pulled up in the driveway,” Mason said.

  I nodded. If we told him what was going on with Laney, he would want to take it to the Council and our one remaining Oma. “You want Oma Elaine to know about this?” I asked Laney.

  “Not yet.” She shook her head. “I don’t even know if there’s reall
y a problem. I would feel stupid if I called in all that help, and it turned out to be nothing.

  I nodded agreement and pulled us back out of the ether. Mason and Kayla followed.

  “So what do we do next?” Mason asked.

  They all stared at me, waiting for my input. Wings or not—adherence to the decisions I made or not, for that matter—I guess I was still somehow in charge of this little group. I stared at the floor for a minute, then nodded as I made a decision. “We need more information about why Mr. Hamilton doesn’t want him around. Kayla, you see what you can find out from your dad.” She nodded, and I paused, not sure how to word this next bit.

  Finally, under the weight of everyone’s expectant stares, I simply forged ahead. “Laney, is your mom still out of town? How long until she gets back?”

  “A while. This is some sort of training thing she’s doing back in Atlanta,” she responded warily.

  “You talk to her pretty often, though? When do you think you’ll hear from her again?”

  She nodded. “Tomorrow, maybe the day after.”

  “Good. I think it’s time you started finding out about your heritage.” When she blinked at me, I knew I’d been right—she had been trying to ignore the implications of her actions with Bartlef and Biet.

  No time to soften it now. Part of me didn’t want to—and I let that part take control of my mouth as I spoke. “Look, we can’t play stupid any longer. You flew, Laney, and you used some kind of magic. Everyone here might be calling you nala, but what they’re missing—or at least, what no one is discussing—is the fact that all this means that you are one of us. Somewhere along the way, you have Fairy blood in your genetic makeup. You can’t be nala unless you’re one of the People.”

  I paused to let the words sink in. “You are going to have to find out if it’s from your mom’s side or your dad’s. We need to know if he might be dangerous.”

  Laney

  There it was. The one thing I hadn’t wanted to admit, even to myself.

  My powers—even if I hadn’t had any indication at all that they were going to show up again, even under Oma Elaine’s tutelage—had to have come from somewhere. And the People of Fairy, Texas, whether they were called fairies or demons or any other name, were, in fact, a people. A clan. Genetically connected.

  Both my parents had grown up here.

  John Hamilton had been Mom’s high school sweetheart, and they had reconnected after his first wife died. That’s why we had come back to Fairy in the first place. For her to marry him.

  Right?

  So where did Thomas Gunn fit into all this?

  My stomach clenched. Suddenly, nothing I knew seemed definite.

  I stared around at the three other people in the room. I wanted to say “my friends,” but even that wasn’t definite. He tried to hide it, at least sometimes, but Josh was still furious with me over having lost his wings. Kayla was warming up to me, especially now that she was in on the big Fairy secret, but it was still touch-and-go with her. After all, I had kissed her boyfriend. Half the school still assumed I had been having sex with him. And now that he was back together with Kayla, Mason had been keeping his distance for just that reason.

  I felt more alone than I had in a long time.

  It might be comforting to talk to Mom about some of this.

  Not all of it, of course. Not until I found out whether or not she knew about the People. If I could protect her, keep her from being drawn into this business, I would. Knowing about the demon-fairy People of Fairy, Texas, was dangerous.

  Everyone watched me intently as I made eye contact with each of them. “Okay. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  Mason leaned forward. “And then what? So what if you’re one of us?” He turned to Josh. “What will it change if we know that for sure?”

  Regarding his friend through narrowed eyes, Josh said, “For one thing, it’ll give us information about why Laney’s father is here. If he’s not one of the People—if the bloodline is through Laney’s mom—then him showing up here might just be weird timing. But if he is, then he might have bigger plans. If that’s the case, then we need to know.”

  “What if it’s neither of them?” Kayla’s interjection made me frown.

  “What do you mean?” Josh asked her.

  “I mean, what if Laney’s some kind of throwback or something? What if both her parents have fairy blood, but her parents don’t know? That’s possible, right?”

  Mason’s gobsmacked expression suggested he hadn’t considered the possibility before. I knew I hadn’t. But Josh was nodding. “It’s possible,” he said. “Not all mixed-blood children inherit the powers that come from their fairy heritage.”

  “Right,” Kayla continued. “It’s basic genetics. If two of those no-powers children had a child of their own, it could inherit the power-gene from both sides and end up having powers that the parents don’t have.”

  “My head is hurting,” Mason muttered.

  “She’s right.” Josh took a deep breath. “It’s a possibility we need to keep in mind. But for now, let’s go on the assumption that at least one of the parents involved knows something. We need to find out what that something is.”

  I nodded. I didn’t like the idea of having to bug Mom for details about her family, especially when she was so reticent to talk about them on her own. But this was something I needed to know.

  “I guess I should see Gunn again, too,” I suggested. “See if I can get anything out of him.”

  “Only if you can get more information than you give.” Josh raised an eyebrow at me, and I shrugged.

  “I’ll do what I can.” This was getting to be more difficult by the minute.

  Then again, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of being saddled with all the fairy power in the world in the middle of my stomach. “I don’t think Gunn showed back up in Fairy right now by accident,” I said. “Somehow, the business with Bartlef got his attention. We need to find out why.”

  The slam of the front door cut off any further conversation. By the time Mr. Bevington made it back to Josh’s room, we were all sitting around with video game controls in our hands and some game—I didn’t know what, or how to play—on the screen in front of us.

  “It’s good to see you all here,” Josh’s dad said. “We’ve missed you around here.” He put a hand on my shoulder and smiled to let me know the words were meant for me, in particular. The smile I gave him in return felt a little sickly, and definitely fake, but I appreciated his kindness, anyway.

  He frowned, but moved out of the room. “You kids have fun.”

  After he was gone, we all set down the game controllers.

  “We need to start watching Gunn,” Josh said thoughtfully. “If he’s here for any reason other than getting to know you, we might be able to find out that way.”

  “I don’t even know where he’s staying.” I chewed on my bottom lip as I pulled up his number on my phone. “This is all I’ve got.”

  Josh copied the 214-area-code number into his own phone. “I’ll see what I can find out about it.”

  “Next time you meet with him, I’ll follow when he leaves,” Mason offered.

  “Me, too,” Kayla said, not about to let Mason go alone.

  “We have a plan, then.” Josh turned to me. “Call your dad and set up a time to meet with him. We’ll take care of the rest.”

  With the plan in place, it seemed a good time to leave.

  I wanted to say something to Josh—something that might let us start getting back to a place where we could at least be friends—but he herded us out the front door before I could think of anything to say.

  Besides, I needed to think about what I had seen when we had been in the ethereal plane together.

  From what I had seen so far, every living thing exuded some kind of energy, even the tiny, sparkling insects in the grass.

  Except Josh.

  Not anymore, anyway.

  Instead, right above Josh’s heart, a d
ark mass pulsated, sucking light and energy into it without giving out any in return.

  It was horrible.

  And I was certain it was killing him.

  Chapter Nine

  Josh

  A week later, I sat in my pickup in the middle of a parking lot. Even though Fairy wasn’t exactly like other towns in Texas, dirty, dented pickups were more common than thunderstorms in spring. I watched Laney walk into Garcia’s Mexican Restaurant with her dad for another Saturday lunch. We had chosen that particular spot to make it easier for everyone to play their parts because—unlike many other places downtown—Garcia’s was set back from the main road and had its own tiny parking lot in the front.

  It had been a hard, strange week, with all of us trying to pretend that everything was normal at school and at home, even though we knew it wasn’t.

  Laney’s mother still wasn’t back from her latest business trip—her longest yet—and Laney had announced that any conversation about her possible heritage as one of the People had to happen in person.

  Other than the one phone call she had made to Gunn to set up this meeting, none of us had seen or heard from him. No one was telling us anything, either. Laney said John had cut off her tentative questions, telling her to ask her mom when she got home.

  We had all met again to discuss whether or not to involve the Council, but we still didn’t know anything definite.

  And the last time we had involved adults, people had died. We all hoped to avoid that this time.

  So we moved ahead with our plan to gather information.

  The thought of Laney alone in the restaurant with Gunn provoked conflicting emotions in me.

  On one hand, I was still furious with her—so angry that I could feel the rage pulsing through me every time I considered it. So enraged that I sometimes wanted to make her hurt the way I did.

  I knew it wasn’t logical. Laney hadn’t caused my pain. Bartlef had. But Bartlef was dead, and I didn’t have anyone else to take it out on.

  On the other hand, I sometimes remembered that I loved her—had loved her, anyway, and maybe still did. But that love was always overwhelmed by the anger.