by Laura Kirwan
Natalie withered under Meaghan’s stony glare and looked down at her feet. Her face was bright red.
Jamie broke his silence. “Of course he knows. It took you a couple of days to figure out something was weird about this place. He’s been here on and off for nearly thirty years.” He scowled at her. “He needed you to step up and he knew there wasn’t any other way. Russ has been there for Matthew for a long time.”
And you haven’t. Meaghan could almost hear the unspoken words. Now it was her turn to blush and look away.
No one spoke and Meaghan felt the numbness return. Her own brother had blown up her entire life. With magic. So she could protect the world from scary things from other dimensions. Anger seemed pathetically inadequate to convey what she was feeling at the moment. She poured another shot of whiskey into her empty plastic cup and drained it in one gulp. She didn’t even cough this time.
“The mediator thing,” Meaghan said, looking at Jamie for his reaction. “That’s how Matthew got hooked up with you and your father?”
Jamie nodded. He refused to make eye contact with anyone, Meaghan noticed. He looked ready to bolt at the slightest provocation.
“How did you know we were refugees?” he asked, staring at his knees.
“I figured it out the first time I met you,” she said gently. “Russ told me the rough outlines of the story when I asked, but I knew you’d fled from somewhere and the generic name . . .” Meaghan took a deep breath. No point in shying away from it now. “And something my mother told me in a dream I had right before I met you. About the war starting.”
Jamie glanced up at her. He was more than merely wary, she realized. He was ashamed. Of what she might think of him.
“The war?” Natalie asked in a high choked voice. “We . . . don’t . . . that was something else entirely. The war . . .” She fell silent under Meaghan’s withering glare.
Meaghan saw Jamie and Kady exchange confused glances. They didn’t know what Natalie was talking about either. No time to worry about it now, Meaghan thought. She wanted to know about Jamie.
Meaghan continued. “I figured I’d found a highly dramatic way of telling myself something I already knew. I hit on Bosnia, that general conflict, based on your age and appearance and when you got here.”
Jamie nodded, allowing her to hold his gaze.
“And your father’s accent seemed to confirm it,” Meaghan said.
Jamie’s brow furrowed in a scowl. “You met my father?”
Meaghan nodded. “He dropped off some honey at our house for Russ and then we saw him at the farmers’ market.”
Jamie’s eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened. “Was he drunk?”
A rush of maternal feeling for Jamie swept through Meaghan. They’d taken both his parents from him. His father had, for all practical purposes, died at the same time his mother had. But John kept walking around as a broken reminder of what Jamie had lost.
“No,” she answered. “He appeared to be sober. Both times.”
“Something new,” Jamie said, his voice bitter.
After a long moment, Meaghan said, “I’m sorry. There’s no tactful way to ask this. But I have to know. What are you?”
Jamie’s mouth twitched into a humorless grin. “Not human. But I guess you already figured that out.”
“Well, yes,” Meaghan said, unsure how to respond. “The . . . uh . . . wings kind of gave it away. And your . . . height.”
Kady snorted, choking back a laugh, and the tension broke. Unable to contain herself, Kady burst out laughing and Natalie joined her. Jamie grinned for the first time since before their meeting with Emily, and started laughing too.
The weirdness of the day broke over Meaghan and she lost it. Huge belly laughs shook her. She could feel the tears not far behind, but she resisted them. She could weep when she got home. Right now laughing was what everybody needed.
Guffawing, as tears streamed down her face, Kady slapped Jamie’s arm. “The wings,” she gasped. “Your height.” She choked unable to say more.
Natalie and Jamie laughed so hard they couldn’t speak. After a bit, Meaghan started coughing and everyone settled down as she caught her breath.
“I needed that,” Jamie said, dabbing his eyes with his shirtsleeve.
Meaghan grabbed a tissue out of the box on her desk, then handed the box to Jamie. Everyone wiped their eyes and blew their noses and regained a bit of composure.
She sat back in her chair and surveyed her staff. Jamie, in particular, looked much calmer. “So,” she said. “Now that we all feel better—”
Jamie finished her sentence for her. “You still need to know what I am.”
Meaghan nodded.
Jamie nodded in response. “Okay.” He took a deep breath. “Here goes. I’m one of several different species that are the source of human stories about . . . fairies, pixies, gnomes . . . et al.”
Meaghan smiled. “Et al? You may not be human, but you’re definitely an attorney.”
Jamie grinned back. “There’s a lawyer joke in there somewhere.”
“So,” Meaghan said, not letting him get off track. “You’re a . . .” For a moment she saw him in her mind, as clear as a photograph, hovering naked in front of her, leering. She felt her face get hot. “You’re not Tinkerbell, I know that.”
“No. Not by a long shot,” he said. “We call ourselves a name I can’t really say with human vocal cords. When I’m . . . like that I have an extra set and can make sounds humans can’t make.”
“Is there something approximate in human?” She’d never referred to “human” as a language before.
“Your dad called us Fahraya.”
“Is that the source for the word fairy?”
Jamie shook his head. “No. Fairy legends existed long before we showed up. Our contribution to the folklore are the wings. Our name sounds different when we say it, but with human vocal cords and preconceived notions . . .” He shrugged.
Meaghan nodded. The Southwest was full of bastardized Spanish and Indian names for things that sounded very little like the original word. If English speakers could screw up Spanish that badly, imagine what they could do with a language that required an extra set of vocal cords to pronounce.
“The name I get,” she said. “But you . . .” Again she had to push the image of naked, flying Jamie out of her head. “I wouldn’t describe what you looked like as a . . . well, you know. The whole Peter Pan ‘I do believe in fairies’ thing. Not at all like that.”
Kady jumped in. “More badass, less pixie dust.”
Jamie looked out the window behind Meaghan’s head, the look of shame back on his face. “More brutal. And more blood. So much blood. Think the Stone Age with wings.” He shook his head. “Yeah, it’s a mystery. The first time I ran across the human conception of fairies, I decided you were all crazy.”
He looked back at Meaghan, meeting her gaze. “When I got here, I was filthy, wearing untanned skins, matted greasy hair down my back. Your father and your brother had to teach me how to be human. How to sleep in a bed, bathe, use a toilet, eat at a table.” He looked down at his feet, his face flushed. The shame was back.
Meaghan gave him a few moments, then continued her questioning. “I assume you weren’t always called Jamie. How did you pick that?” She wanted to ask about John too, but he was obviously a sore topic, so she let it go.
“My Fahrayan name was . . . I can’t really pronounce it without the vocal cords. With a human voice it sounds something like ‘Zhu-may.’ It’s what Matthew called me that first day we met. So, Matthew and Russ started calling me Jamie. When I was ready to go to school and Matthew had to get paperwork forged, I wanted a normal human name.” He poured the last of the whiskey into his cup and drained it in one gulp. “Matthew had already gone with John Smith for my father—something to do with a friend of a friend dying and them being able to use his identity, so Matthew chose James Smith for me. I wanted Keele, but . . .” Jamie paused, staring past Meaghan’s shoul
der and out the window. “I guess he figured my father had lost enough and he didn’t want him to lose me too.” He snorted in disgust. “Like he gives a shit.”
She knew how that felt, so she didn’t contradict him. But I’m pretty sure you’re wrong, she thought. “So,” she said, trying to lighten the mood, “how does the amulet work?”
Natalie jumped in before Jamie could answer. “It’s magic,” she said.
They all broke up laughing again.
Chapter 18
By five o’clock, everyone was exhausted and Meaghan decided to call it a day. She planned on grilling Russ hard when she got home. She still couldn’t process how she felt about his involvement in bringing her to Eldrich.
Jamie had walked to work that morning, his standard practice on the mornings he didn’t take the kids to day care, and had used a city car to drive to court. He drank more of the whiskey than the others and was in obvious pain from the battering he’d given himself trying to escape the file room, so Meaghan drove him home.
“Do you want to come in and meet Patrice and the kids?” he asked as they turned onto his street.
“Okay, but only a quick visit. I have to get home and pummel my brother. I assume she knows about . . . you know?”
Jamie smiled and nodded. “She knows. She wants to meet you. Just for a minute.”
Meaghan parked the car in front of Jamie’s house. It had a picket fence. A white picket fence. The All-American guy. Except he wasn’t.
Meaghan grabbed his trench coat and briefcase from the backseat while he climbed out of the car. Patrice waited on the front porch, still wearing her blue scrubs from work. Small, no more than five foot two or so, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, she was even lovelier in person than in her photo.
She had her arms folded across her chest, her lips pressed tightly together. As Meaghan got closer, she saw tears in Patrice’s eyes as she watched Jamie limp up the front walk.
“Hi, honey, I’m home,” he said with a weak smile. He had finally allowed Natalie to dab a vile-smelling salve on the cut on his cheek, and it looked better. But the salve hadn’t done anything to reduce the beginnings of an impressive shiner.
“Natalie called and told me what happened,” Patrice said. “Let me see your eye.”
He tried to wave her off the way he’d waved off Natalie.
“James,” she said. “Hold still.”
It was a command and Jamie obeyed. She probed the injured tissue with gentle fingers, scowling.
“Why didn’t you ice this?” she demanded.
“There was a lot going on,” Jamie said with a sheepish look.
Patrice snorted. “If I ever get my hands on that bitch Emily—”
“She’s dangerous,” Jamie said, his voice sharp. “Stay away from her.” He pointed over his shoulder. “This is Meaghan, by the way.”
Patrice gave her a warm smile. “Thank you. Natalie told me what you did. It’s . . . I know it’s a lot to take in.”
“Yes,” Meaghan said. “It is. I’m glad to meet you, but right now you need to take care of your husband. We can visit another time.”
“Where are the kids?” Jamie asked.
“Over at Annie’s,” Patrice said. Meaghan wondered if it was the same Annie who worked in city hall, the woman who just seemed to know when the mayor entered the building. Maybe she used a crystal ball, Meaghan thought. My deputy can fly and my office manager keeps hex bags around to protect us from the spell-casting city council director and the resident ghosts, so why not? She shivered and turned her attention back to Jamie and Patrice.
“I figured you might need a little quiet,” Patrice continued. “Come on, big guy. Let’s get you into a hot bath.” She pulled his arm over her shoulders and turned back to Meaghan. “We’ll have you over for dinner when the dust settles a little, okay?”
“Sounds great. I’ll see you then.” Meaghan started down the front walk to the car. She turned back to the house and said, “Jamie, if you need tomorrow off, take it, okay?”
He nodded and waved. Patrice led him into the house as Meaghan drove away.
She barely noticed the road, driving on autopilot while her mind churned. She intended to interrogate Russ when she got home. He, at the very least, owed her some answers. But the person Meaghan most wanted to talk with was her father. It was bad enough finding out that the fairy tales were true, in a dark horrible way, and the world really was full of monsters and magic. But Meaghan had also learned that she had a destiny. A big one. Protecting the world. And the one person who truly understood what lay before her no longer recognized her and slipped further out of reach every day.
When she got home, Russ was waiting on the back porch with a glass of white wine and a nervous look on his face. Natalie must have called Russ after she talked to Patrice.
“Hey, sis.” He held the wine glass out to her. “I thought you might need this. Weird day at the office?”
Meaghan glared at him, ignoring the offered wine as she walked past him into the house.
“Meg, I—”
She cut him off. “Back off. I need to change my clothes and I need a few minutes alone.”
“But, I—”
“I can’t deal with you right now,” she said, feeling her anger at Russ come roaring back. “You blew up my entire life. You didn’t trust me enough to even try to tell me the truth. You never gave me a chance to choose this life. You just dumped it on me. A glass of wine isn’t going to fix it.”
Meaghan stomped up the stairs to her bedroom. She pushed the door shut behind her, kicked off her shoes, and leaned against the door frame, her eyes shut. The flare of anger faded away and she felt numb again.
She pushed herself away from the door and dropped her bag on the bed. The black suit went back into the closet and she pulled on jeans and a T-shirt. She used the bathroom and washed her hands, unable to look at herself in the mirror.
Walking out of the bathroom, she noticed the cardboard boxes lined up along the base of the window seat. Five of them, old, battered, and dusty. These weren’t boxes she’d brought with her from Arizona.
She heard a quiet knock on the door. She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath. Don’t rip his head off, she told herself.
“Come in, Russ.”
The door creaked open a few inches. Russ stuck his head in. “I’m sorry to bug you. You have every right to be angry with me. And we can talk about it whenever you’re ready. But in the meantime, do you want to come down for dinner? I can make you a tray if you’d rather be alone.”
Meaghan realized she didn’t want to be alone. If she had a Destiny with a capital D, she wanted to spread the burden around as much as she could. She turned to face him. “I’ll come down. I’m still really mad at you, but not as much as I thought I’d be.” She pointed behind her at the boxes. “What’s this?”
“Some of Dad’s stuff. Journals and photos and stuff. I brought them over from his office.”
“Office?” Meaghan asked. “In city hall?”
“No. The room over the garage. It’s been locked up since he got sick. He kept notes on everything and I thought since you can’t talk to him about it, this was the next best thing.”
Matthew could help her after all. She felt relief flood over her followed by the crushing wave of emotion she’d been pushing back all afternoon.
Here’s the freak-out, she thought, and then conscious thought left her and the tears turned into shaking sobs. Russ helped her to the edge of the bed and sat her down. He sat next to her, an arm around her shoulders. He didn’t try to tell her it would be okay or that she shouldn’t cry. He merely let her wail. It occurred to her, when the storm began to pass, that he’d been here himself, once upon a time, trying to come to terms with a rational world blown to pieces.
When the crying slowed to sniffles, Russ got up, grabbed the box of tissues from the bathroom, and handed it to her.
“I’ve cried more in the week I’ve been here than I have in ye
ars.” Meaghan blew her nose hard, several times. “Let’s go eat. I’ll look at Dad’s stuff later.” She looked up at her brother, at the worried look on his tired, lined face. She took Russ’s hand and squeezed it. “I haven’t forgiven you yet, you big doofus, but I will. And it’s not like I would have believed you if you’d tried to tell me. I’m scared and weirded out and I have a zillion questions, but right now I need some normal. For a little while at least.”
He smiled and nodded. “Okay. Not that things are ever very normal around here. C’mon. I made meatloaf. With bacon on top.”
“Bacon is good,” she said in a small voice. “It’s not magical bacon, is it?”
“No more magical than usual,” he replied.
Chapter 19
Meaghan got through dinner in a haze. Russ didn’t try to engage her in conversation, and Matthew still didn’t recognize her, so what little talk there was concerned Matthew’s weekly visit to his occupational therapist the next morning.
The food helped, though. Russ had made quintessential comfort food—meatloaf and mashed potatoes. The prosaic hominess of the heavy meal grounded her in a way the whiskey at her office hadn’t.
She offered to do the dishes, dreading the moment when she was alone with her thoughts again. The warm water and the clatter of the plates and cutlery as she rinsed them and loaded them into the dishwasher soothed her raw nerves.
Dishes done, she said goodnight to Matthew, who would be asleep before too long, and left her father and brother in the living room watching TV. She’d planned to grill Russ, but now she intended to go to the source—Matthew’s journals and files.
Meaghan flipped on the bedside lamps and the lamp next to the window seat and took a closer look at the boxes. They were dated. She picked the oldest box, dated from 1976, and opened it.
On top was a sealed envelope with her name on it in Matthew’s handwriting. She opened it with care. The paper was much newer than the stuff beneath it and it appeared to be added to the box much later.
January 1, 2011
Dearest Meaghan,
If you’re reading this, Meg, it means I’m either dead or so far gone I may as well be. I’m sorry I can’t convey this story in person, that I can’t be there to help you. But considering our history, maybe that’s for the best.