A Fairy Tale

by Shanna Swendson

  Upstairs, he unlocked his apartment door and hesitated a moment with his hand on the knob. “Here, let me help,” she said.

  “No, I’ve got it.” He took a deep breath and opened the door, then turned back to face her. “I think I’ll be okay from here.”

  “Let me know if you need anything,” she said with forced brightness. She felt about a ton lighter once his door closed behind him and she returned to the shelter of Emily’s apartment.

  And then she wished she’d kept him around because now she didn’t have anything to distract her from all the thoughts raging in her head—the lost dreams, pointless sacrifices, unnamed debts, and uncertain future.

  Twenty-eight

  Maeve’s Lobby

  A Moment Later

  “Such insolence!” Maeve sputtered at Eamon. “You owe me obedience. I don’t need to explain myself to one such as you.”

  Eamon glared at Maeve. “I am not a member of your court.” He straightened his shoulders, and it seemed to Emily that he grew taller. “I would never bow to you.”

  Maeve’s eyes went so icy that they could have emitted freeze rays. Her voice dropped to a sinister whisper. “If you are not a member of my court, why do you spend so much time here?” Her gaze flicked to Emily, who shivered at the sudden blast of cold that struck her. “It’s the girl, isn’t it? You’ve become fond of the human girl.”

  She moved forward in a walk that was practically a slither until she was eye-to-eye with Eamon. “When you enter my court, you come under my rule, and I will not tolerate traitors,” she spat. Then she raised her voice and shrieked, “Seize him! He will tell us how to find Sophie Drake.”

  Before Eamon could react, he was swarmed by henchmen, one of whom bound his arms against his sides with a silver chain. Another moved his hand, and Eamon slumped limply to the ground. The henchmen hauled him away.

  Without thinking, Emily rushed forward and slapped Maeve hard across the face. “You bitch!” she screamed. “You have no right! He’s free!”

  The look on Maeve’s face should have scared Emily, but she was too outraged to feel fear. Was this what it was like to be Sophie? Whatever it was, they could sell this feeling as a drug. She was invincible. “And while I’m at it,” she continued while Maeve was still too stunned to speak, “you had no right to grab me. You also have no right to whatever it is you want from my sister, and I am sick of getting caught up in your stupid little power trip.”

  Instead of yelling, Maeve smiled sweetly. “You ignorant, insignificant, pathetic little human,” she said in a voice that made saccharine seem sour in comparison. “You have no idea what is happening here, no idea at all. Stay out of matters that don’t concern you.”

  Still riding the adrenaline high, Emily snorted in derision. “Don’t concern me? This concerns me a lot, in every meaning of the word. Considering that I’m being held prisoner and you’re trying to do God knows what to my sister, yeah, it concerns me. And I’m pretty damned concerned about what all this means.”

  “I have had enough of your insolence.” Maeve reached out and touched Emily’s forehead. The last thing Emily heard as the darkness closed in was Maeve’s voice saying, “Your sister will pay for her defiance.”

  Twenty-nine

  The Antique Shop

  Friday, noon

  Sophie did not want to join the enchantresses. She had so much more to worry about than humoring a pair of dotty old ladies. Yes, the magic had been helpful the night before, but she didn’t think that committee meetings about how to handle the fairy situation would be of much use. Unfortunately, the fairies took debts and obligations very seriously, and if she didn’t carry through on what she’d promised Tallulah, she might be asked for something even worse. She went to the antique shop the next day.

  As the bells on the door jangled at Sophie’s entrance, Athena looked up. She was dressed in gingham and denim trimmed with eyelet lace today. Sophie let Beau off his leash, and he went straight to his bed.

  “You’ve reconsidered?” Athena said.

  “I have.”

  Athena clapped her hands excitedly. “I knew you’d come around.”

  “I wouldn’t really say that I’ve come around,” Sophie said, already regretting this move. She suspected it was about to complicate her life even further. “It’s more of an obligation.”

  Athena made a “tsk, tsk” sound and said, “I’d have thought you’d know better than to oblige yourself to their kind.”

  “This is a very old obligation.” Sophie sighed. She might as well come out with it instead of wasting time talking in circles. “It turns out I was wrong, about everything. Tallulah didn’t take Emily, and Emily wasn’t the price for my training. It’s Maeve who has Emily, and no one seems to know why. But Tallulah has called in the debt I owe her, and she said I had to accept the offer I was extended yesterday. So here I am. Quite reluctantly, to be honest.”

  “Oh, my. I’d better call Amelia. But in the meantime, you can start learning some basics.” She went behind the counter and brought out a stack of binders. “I created a curriculum,” she said as she handed the binders to Sophie.

  Of course you did, Sophie thought. She opened the first binder with some trepidation, not sure what to expect of a magical training course. It turned out to be along the lines of “Dick and Jane Learn to Channel Mystical Forces,” complete with short, simple sentences and colorful illustrations on laminated pages.

  “I wrote that for Amelia’s daughter, years ago,” Athena said. “I don’t mean to insult your intelligence. You can sit at that table over there and I’ll be back in a moment.”

  Sophie sat and read about how Hortense realized she had magical power when she knocked her brother Mortimer away from her toys without touching him. Her mother then taught her to use her power properly. Younger brother Mortimer mostly served as the person Hortense didn’t magically kill for being an idiot. Sophie got the impression that Amelia’s daughter had a younger brother who’d been in danger of being turned into a toad.

  “Oh, Hortense, honey, there are so many other ways to deal with younger siblings,” Sophie muttered as she read. Or were there? Had everything she’d done actually been magic and not just intimidation and wits?

  She looked up to see Athena standing in front of her. “Amelia should be here soon. Do you have any questions about what you’ve read?”

  “I think I figured out most of this for myself without realizing it involved magic.”

  “You have good instincts, and your association with the fairies may have taught you more than you realized. I’m surprised they didn’t recognize what you were. When did you stop visiting the fairy realm?”

  “Before I was eighteen.”

  “Ah, that explains it. Your power wasn’t fully developed then. You may have had stirrings, but they wouldn’t have thought to look for magic in you.”

  “I didn’t think to look for magic in me, but it’s probably always been there. For instance, I’ve always thought I just had a forceful personality. People usually do what I want them to do. I suppose I was making them do it.”

  Athena nodded. “Yes, Emily told us that about you.”

  “Before last night, I’d never consciously tried to get through any door I knew was locked, but I’ve also never been locked out of the house or my car—or have I?”

  “And I would bet that things generally go your way. You get what you want.”

  Sophie sighed dejectedly. “I just thought I was clever and good and people liked me—or feared me.”

  With a wry smirk, Athena asked, “Is it any worse that you were doing magic all that time?”

  “It makes me reevaluate everything I thought I knew about myself.”

  Athena patted her reassuringly on the shoulder. “All of us should do that from time to time, magic or not.”

  The bell on the door rang, and they looked up to see Amelia entering. “I hear you’ve agreed to join us,” she said to Sophie.

  “For the time being.
I don’t know yet if this will have to be a permanent arrangement.”

  “I suppose that will depend on what else Tallulah demands of you,” Amelia said, taking a seat at the table.

  “I briefed her,” Athena said, joining Sophie and Amelia at the table. “Now, why don’t you tell us what happened last night to change your mind about your magical abilities?”

  Sophie was about to deny that anything other than Tallulah’s demand had happened, but she recalled letting it slip that she hadn’t tried opening a locked door until last night. Drat. She must have really been rattled. “As I mentioned, I had a meeting with Tallulah. While we were talking, two fae men who’d been part of Tallulah’s group tried to capture me.” She went on to describe the fight in detail. In spite of her earlier reluctance, it felt good to get it off her chest, to verify that it hadn’t been a nightmare. “It seemed like I was able to undo any spell they tried on me, and I could also affect them,” she concluded.

  Amelia nodded. “Our magic usually trumps fairy magic. Their magic is actually rather ephemeral. It’s mostly about illusion.”

  Sophie rubbed the burn on her wrist, which was starting to itch. “It felt real enough.”

  “Oh, it can be real. It’s just that they’re more accustomed to glamour than to doing anything real, which means they’re not as good at it. We could do glamour if we wished, but we focus on practical matters.”

  “Would that include opening locked doors?”

  “Yes,” Athena said. “Magic allows you to manipulate things as well as people.”

  “How do you resist the temptation to use magic all the time?” Sophie asked.

  “Who says we do?” Amelia asked with graceful shrug. “We don’t make a show of it, but we may simplify our lives somewhat.”

  “Isn’t that cheating?”

  “What do you call what you’ve been doing all along?”

  “I didn’t know I was using magic. I was just being me.”

  “Using magic is just being me. It’s a shame to waste a gift.”

  “Yes, it is,” Sophie said with a sigh, though she wasn’t talking about magic. One of the many things she was trying not to think about was the fact that she’d given up her dance career for what turned out to be a misconception. Her heart would break if she let herself consider what she’d lost. A thought occurred to her, and she asked, “Does Emily have this power?”

  “A little,” Athena said. “If our priority hadn’t been protecting her from the fairies, we might have tried teaching her, but she wasn’t our ideal candidate, for a number of reasons. The magic is much stronger in you, just as her hair is redder.”

  “And she’s so much taller.”

  Athena looked at her for a moment before saying, “Yes, I suppose she is. I hadn’t thought about that, but then I’ve never seen you two next to each other.” Sophie stared at her, waiting for a laugh or some other sign that she was joking, but she seemed to be deadly serious. The height difference was usually the first thing anyone noticed about the Drake sisters.

  The tinkling of the bell on the door interrupted the conversation, and the sisters got up to greet the customer. The customer was a ditherer, unable to choose between a blue or a pink flowered teapot but not willing to listen to the shopkeepers’ suggestions about which piece was more valuable. At this rate, she’d never leave, and Sophie had more important things to deal with. She thought it was as good an opportunity as any to test her magical persuasive ability. In the past, she’d always spoken with people when convincing them to do what she wanted, but this time, she sent out a silent suggestion that the customer pick the blue teapot and get out of there. A moment later, the woman held up the blue teapot and said, “I’ll take this one.”

  When the customer was gone, Amelia turned to Sophie and said, “If you hadn’t done that, I would have, though I would have played fair and suggested the less expensive item.”

  “I didn’t see the price tags. I was going by the colors she wore. I thought she’d like that one better,” Sophie said.

  The sisters exchanged a look, and Athena said with a grin, “I told you she’d be good.”

  They returned to the table, and Amelia said, “Now that we’ve discussed Sophie, I have news. There’s a market tonight at Belvedere Castle. That’s our best chance to gather intelligence and see what Maeve’s up to. You’ll join us, of course, Sophie.”

  “What do we have to trade?” Athena mused, knitting her brow in concentration. “If I’d had more warning, I could have made something.”

  “We won’t bring anything,” Amelia said. “We’ve got all the currency we should need.”

  “Do we?” Athena asked, then she followed her sister’s gaze to Sophie. “Ah, yes.”

  “Are you going to trade me to the fairies?” Sophie asked.

  “No, but you are a fairy-taught dancer. The fairies love nothing more than a good dance. Ballet should enthrall them, especially danced by one with fairy skills.”

  “I might as well get some use out of it,” Sophie said, swallowing a lump in her throat. She rose and snapped her fingers to summon Beau. “I suppose I’ll see you tonight at midnight at Belvedere Castle.”

  Athena walked her to the door. “I’m looking forward to seeing you dance. Emily said you’re wonderful.”

  Sophie gave her a smile, then hurried out the door and up the stairs before any of the tears welling in her eyes could fall. She let them spill silently as she walked back, wiping them away when she reached Emily’s block. She was letting herself into Emily’s apartment when Michael appeared on the upper landing. “Sophie,” he said, his voice grave. “I’ve just heard from Tanaka.” Instead of finishing the thought, he came downstairs, moving slowly. He was dressed to go out, she noticed.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Let’s go inside.”

  “No, tell me now.”

  She knew it was bad when he took her hand in his good one. Then he said, “They may have found Emily.”

  Thirty

  The Morgue

  Friday, 4:00 p.m.

  As a detective, Michael had seen a number of people go through the experience of identifying a loved one’s body. He’d even gone through it a few times himself, when they found a body that someone thought might have been Jen’s. Sophie was as eerily composed in this situation as he’d expected her to be.

  She did go terribly pale when she saw the sheet-covered body, so pale that he saw for the first time that she had a slight dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. He put his arm around her shoulders and was surprised when she didn’t step away or shrug it off. She nodded to the attendant, who pulled back the sheet covering the corpse’s face.

  As soon as he saw the face, Michael’s breath caught in his throat. He wished he’d learned to swear so he’d have the vocabulary for dealing with a situation like this. No, no, no, no, no, he repeated inside his head instead of swearing. The tangle of red curls lying on that slab, the waxy pale face that not too long ago had been grinning at him while forcing him to eat soup, it was all wrong, so horribly wrong. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

  Then the initial shock ebbed enough for him to remember that this wasn’t about him, that he was standing with his arm around Emily’s sister. He squeezed Sophie’s shoulder, pulling her tight to his side. “I’m sorry, Sophie,” he whispered hoarsely. “We’ll get whoever did this.”

  Tanaka caught Michael’s eye, and Michael nodded grimly. Sophie still hadn’t said anything. “Sophie?” Tanaka said gently, “We need you to make an ID for us. Is this your sister?”

  Sophie looked up at Michael with dry eyes and an expression that said quite clearly that she thought he was crazy. She gave the body a sidelong glance, looked back at him, and then she gave a tiny gasp followed by a long exhalation, as though she’d just realized something. She turned back to face the body, shook her head and said, “That’s not Emily.”

  Michael closed his eyes and stifled a groan. Victims’ loved ones sometime
s clung desperately to denial. He could have fingerprint, dental record, and even DNA matches, and they’d swear they’d never before seen that body in the morgue. Sophie hadn’t struck him as the type to go into denial, but everyone had a breaking point. “Sophie, I know this is tough,” he began, but then he did a double take at the corpse. It wasn’t Emily. There were superficial similarities, but when he really looked at the body, it wasn’t much at all like her. “No, it’s not Emily,” he agreed.

  It was Tanaka’s turn to do a double take. “Are you sure? She looks just like the photo you gave me.” He frowned as he looked at the body. “Then again, yeah, I can see the differences now that you mention it. I’m sorry to drag you in here and put you through this, Sophie.”

  “I understand,” she said softly. “You needed a definite answer. Thank you for trying.”

  “She might be one of the other missing girls,” Michael suggested.

  “She does fit physically,” Tanaka said. “We’ll contact the families of the other missing women and see if any of them can identify her. Thank you for coming down here, Sophie. I’ll talk to you later, Rev.” He gave Michael a look and a head gesture that said very clearly, “Take care of her,” and Michael nodded.

  “Are you okay?” Michael asked as they waited for a cab. “I know it’s rough going into that place, and looking at dead bodies is never fun, even if it’s not someone you know.”

  “I’m just tired,” she said with a weak smile. “This hasn’t been the best week ever.” A cab arrived a moment later, cutting off his chance to follow up on that.