by Rob Cornell
These guys were pros.
Chapter Six
THE FAIRY ZIPPED BACKWARD IN surprise and slammed against the wall. His wings stopped flapping and he dropped to the floor. One of his wings had bent, and the light that normally ran through it faded. His jaw clenched, his expression a cross of pain and fear.
Jessie didn’t so much as start. Though her heartbeat did quicken. She rolled her eyes and played it cool. “Seriously, guys? You couldn’t just have knocked?”
The trio ignored her. Two of them had their sidearms drawn and pointed at the fairy. The third held what looked like a TV remote from Jessie’s vantage point. Then his gloved hand thumbed a trigger on the device and a pair of wires with those electrode thingies shot out and plugged into the fairy’s bony chest.
The fairy jittered. His wings stretched straight back, except for the bent end of the one. Spittle sprayed from his mouth. He collapsed to the floor, his head knocking hard against the wood planks—possibly the only spot not cushioned with scattered clothes. After that, he didn’t move.
A beat of silence followed. The hint of ozone from the Taser didn’t last long against the sweaty stink permeating the apartment. This was definitely not the kind of place she imagined a fairy would live, but she had gotten used to surprises like this. The creatures who had found their way to the mortal plane didn’t always match the myths behind their names. Like this fairy, who, according to the old stories, should have stood less than a foot tall and lived among the trees.
Jessie shot to her feet. The rush of blood and pain to her head almost knocked her over. She stumbled, braced herself on the nightstand, and kept her feet. “You didn’t have to do that.”
The two thugs holding pistols pivoted their aim at her.
For an instant, she doubted herself. Maybe these guys weren’t from the Agency.
Her chest pinched as her last breath leaked away and she could draw another. Her skin turned cold. The faint tinnitus left over from the raid at the unicorn mansion three years ago rang in her right ear. Stress tended to make it worse.
When Wertz walked through the door, Jessie gasped and dropped back to sitting on the edge of the bed. She covered her face with her hands and rubbed at her eyes. Tremors rolled through her body. She steadied herself and let her hands fall to her lap so she could glare at Wertz. “Christ, dude, tell the goons to lower their guns.”
Wertz quietly swung the door shut behind him. The damage from getting kicked in wouldn’t let the door latch. The gnome leaned his three-foot-tall body against it to hold it closed. He didn’t say anything. He stared at Jessie as he straightened his silk, flower-print tie. It matched his custom-tailored little suit nicely—a miniature Mr. GQ.
“I don’t like that look,” Jessie said. “Lighten up, okay?”
One of Wertz’s cheeks twitched under his eye. Otherwise, he remained still.
“Are you gonna stand there gaping at me all day, or are we going back to the house?”
The agent with the Taser dropped the device to the floor and drew his own sidearm, joining his buddies in what looked too much like a firing squad for Jessie’s taste. She felt her hands shaking and wrung them together to make them stop. No dice.
“You’re not going to have them shoot me.”
Wertz’s lips pressed together, squeezing the color out of them. His hard gaze continued to pelt Jessie with silent accusations. Silent now, but she had heard them all before.
You’re reckless, Jessie.
You don’t take your role as the Return seriously.
You think of no one but yourself.
And the real juicy one, which he’d only used once, but she knew he thought all the time—Your father would be ashamed.
She looked away. She couldn’t stand the look anymore. Mostly because she knew he was right, at least part of the time. Though she would never accept the one about her dad. Wertz was talking out of his ass on that one.
“I get it,” she said while she stared at her boots—the fairy hadn’t even taken those off. What a gent indeed. “You’re pissed. What else is new these days?”
She heard a long breath slid out Wertz’s nostrils. “We’re not having this conversation here. Return the fairy and let’s go.”
Jessie’s gut clenched. Wow, did this feel familiar. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I don’t care. He’s a liability now. That’s on you. Besides, from the looks of this place, you’ll be doing him a favor.”
Jessie looked up at Wertz. Amazing how smug a man the same size as a ventriloquist dummy could act. “I’m not your puppet,” she said, and nearly added that he could pass as one, though. “I’m the Return. I decide who stays and who goes.”
Wertz quirked up one eyebrow. “Really? Because according to prophecy, we’re all supposed to go eventually. The Agency is simply helping prioritize.”
“Make me barf.” She rolled her eyes. “Can we go now so you can tell all about how much of a disappointment I am to you?” She held up a hand before Wertz could respond. “Oh, wait. I’m a legal adult now. I don’t have to obey you anymore.”
The lines at the corners of Wertz’s eyes deepened, as did the ones around his mouth. He looked tired and old. Shaking his head, he said, “Your age is just a number, Jess. You’ve been forced to grow up fast. You’ve been an adult for a while now.”
“Except you continue to treat me like a kid.”
“No. I try to keep you focused. You are the Chosen One. You can’t shirk that, no matter how much you want to.”
Jessie waved a hand as if trying to clear the air of a wicked stink—one worse than the apartment’s original rank smell. “We’ve talked this in circles. You obviously have no idea where I’m coming from. If you won’t listen, I’m not wasting my breath.”
Wertz set his jaw. “Fine.” He nodded at one of the agents.
The agent turned his aim back to the unconscious fairy on the floor.
Jessie scrambled back to her feet. The few hits of adrenaline she’d gotten since Wertz’s team stormed the apartment had managed to numb her headache somewhat. But a dry taste, like chalk dust, coated the inside of her mouth. “What are you doing?”
“Like I said, he’s a liability. If you won’t Return him, I have to make him disappear.”
Cornered again. But this was different than the unicorn in a huge way. The fairy was still alive. She had no reason not to Return him. For all she knew, he’d be all for it if he could speak for himself at the moment. The real reason she didn’t want to do it was because Wertz had ordered her to. God damn but she was tired of taking orders.
How long would she have to go on like this? Until she had sent back every supernatural on the planet? Seriously?
Impossible.
She’d go insane first.
But that’s what the prophecy said, and to hell with what she wanted.
“Whatever, dude.” She crouched down next to the fairy. He had a name, damn it. He had told her it last night, but the alcoholic haze kept it from her. She stroked his rosy cheek, watched the rise and fall of his flat chest. “Thanks for not being a creepazoid. Hope it’s nice wherever you’re going.”
Then she sent him on his way to fairyland.
Chapter Seven
ELKA DREAMED ABOUT HER FATHER again.
The blood.
The ravaged flesh.
The firecracker smell thick in the air from gunfire.
And the girl’s face. The one who stared right at Elka. The one Elka had been sure had seen her, or sensed her somehow through the glamour. The face of the girl who took everyone from Elka, not even leaving behind her father’s corpse for her to mourn over.
Next came the girl, standing over her father, hands outstretched over his beautiful white form marred by spatters of red and the puckered holes oozing more of it. The sparks of blue light. The electric tingle in the air. The smell of a thunder storm. Then the blue light coalescing around her father, his horn shimmering in its cast until it became so bright she
couldn’t see him inside of it anymore. After that, the light turned into a blue mist that left nothing of her father’s body behind.
Gone.
Like that.
Elka watched it all from the small cubby behind the mirror, which wasn’t really a mirror at all, but a magical glamour that only a unicorn could see or pass through. Old magic, passed down from thousands of generations of her proud people.
When Elka awoke from the dream, she could still smell the electric ozone left behind by the girl’s power—whatever kind of wicked power it was. Just for a second. Then it was gone. She was back in her apartment bedroom, with walls so close she sometimes felt like she was back in that cubby, helpless to watch her father’s murder and the defiling of his body.
She did not wake with a start or a gasp. She had the dream enough times in the last three years that it no longer scared her. But her cheeks grew warm and she clutched at her sheets with white-knuckled fists, the urge to strangle the life out of someone strong in her blood.
In the moment, any victim would have sufficed. But it was her, the girl with the black hair and the haunted eyes, whose neck Elka really wanted to feel in her grip.
She didn’t have time for revenge fantasies, though. The beeping alarm clock started up only a minute after she woke up. She didn’t really need the alarm. She always woke up a few minutes before it went off. But she couldn’t afford to be late for work, either. Kenny liked to fire his girls almost as much as he liked to fondle them.
Out of bed, into the shower, quick smoke before brushing her teeth while she examined her human face in the mirror, checking for any flaws she might want to work on. She had a few acne scars left over from her teen years, but she kept those to keep from looking too perfect. It wasn’t in a unicorn’s nature to accept flaws in any of their features. Elka didn’t have that luxury anymore. She needed to fit in far more than to look beautiful.
Still, she wasn’t going to let herself completely fall apart. She smoothed out a few lines around her eyes that a girl in her early twenties shouldn’t have anyway. Stress had a way of aging even a unicorn. Her hairline looked a little uneven. She let several long, red strands grow to match the length of the rest of her hair, filling things out nicely.
Then she examined her freckles. Several times she thought about getting rid of them. When she was a kid, the boys would make fun of her, call her freckle face as if it were the most ingenious and original insult ever imagined. She would run home crying and beg her father to let her get rid of them, but he insisted she couldn’t. Not without drawing suspicion. Freckles simply didn’t disappear overnight. Besides, he had said, he loved her freckles, loved her just the way she was.
Since then, she kept them no matter how many times she resolved to finally wipe them out. Not only because someone might notice, but because of her father. If he watched her from the Bright Beyond, he would surely weep to see his little girl get rid of one of his favorite features of her human form.
Elka took a deep hit from her cigarette and blew smoke at her reflection.
She dressed in her uniform—the tight little shorts and the scrap of fabric that qualified as a tank top. She brushed her red hair straight while it was still wet, otherwise it would curl into wild ringlets at the ends that looked unkempt rather than pretty. She used to use a curling iron, but had no patience or time for that these days.
As always, Elka arrived at work ten minutes early. She parked around the back of the building. When she cut the engine, the car did its routine sputter and shimmy, the tremors rattling right up through the steering wheel. One of these days, that would be the Pontiac’s last sound before going eternally silent. Unless Elka magically came up with the money to take it into the shop.
The radio blared Slash’s guitar solo from “Welcome to the Jungle” while Elka went through her routine of sucking down two cigarettes, waiting until the last possible minute to trudge into the restaurant to serve hot wings and cheap beer to guys who thought they had the pick-up lines she had never heard before. And who treated her like she was just another thing they could order from the menu.
When she punched in, Kenny came out of his little office and tapped his watch. “Cutting it a little close, Elsa?” he said like he did every day she came in, including the purposeful and pointless mispronunciation of her name.
“Check the clock,” Elka said. “Right on time.”
Kenny stood a foot taller than Elka and he liked to rub that in by moving in close to tower over her, putting his chest right in her face. He wore the standard manager’s polo-style shirt for the restaurant with “Chuggers” embroidered in bright yellow on the breast. On the opposite of the logo, Kenny wore his plastic name tag. The first “n” in his name had worn off some, making it look more like a “v.” He had long hair that he kept swept back except for one piece that hung almost in his eye, as if it had come loose accidentally. But since that “loose” lock hung in the exact same spot every day, Elka and the other girls knew there was nothing accidental about it.
He thought he looked sexy. Unfortunately, no one had told him the eighties had ended over twenty years ago.
“You know, I see you sitting out there in your car. Why don’t you come in, clock an extra ten minutes? Or you could hang with me in my office. I don’t mind.”
His gaze dropped to Elka’s chest. A common male reaction when she wore her work shirt. But unlike most men, Kenny didn’t bother bringing his eyes back up.
“Much as I love my job,” Elka said, “I treasure my alone time.”
“From what I can tell, all your time is alone time.” Still staring at her chest, his lips parted in a smile that showed his teeth. He had especially pointy incisors, which made him look like a jackal when he grinned. “You live alone. You drive alone. You go home alone.”
The hairs on the nape of Elka’s neck stood on end.”You been stalking me, Kenny? How do you know I don’t have a boyfriend?” She thought her voice hitched, but hoped Kenny hadn’t noticed.
His smile grew wider. He had noticed.
“I don’t need to stalk you. I can smell the loneliness on you.” He bent his head and sniffed her hair.
Every inch of Elka’s skin quivered. “This is a good way to get yourself a sexual harassment suit,” she said. But they both knew it was a hollow threat. Elka needed this job to survive. Kenny knew she lived paycheck to paycheck. Early on she had made the mistake of asking him for a cash advance to cover a few utilities she’d fallen behind on. Since then, he held his knowledge of her dire straits like a trump card at a poker tournament. Now, it seemed like he wanted to play that card.
Kenny chuckled like a cartoon character. “Fifteen years I’ve worked here. Started off bussing tables. Mopped floor. Worked my way up to the kitchen. Now I’m top dog. Never once have I had any problem with the girls.”
“That’s because they’re all afraid to lose their jobs.” Elka felt woozy. How had she stumbled into this conversation with her shift barely started? She just wanted to get on with her job. But she needed to be careful what she said. Sad to say, despite all the trouble he gave them, none of the other girls would stand up for Elka against Kenny.
“Aren’t you?” he whispered. His breath smelled like peanuts.
A sour taste filled Elka’s mouth. She bit back what she really wanted to say. She felt her cheeks flush. Next time she woke up from the dream about her father and felt the need to strangle someone, she would imagine Kenny, his pretty-boy face turning red, his tongue lolling out his jackal’s mouth, and his eyes bugging as the capillaries in them burst.
Thinking about that calmed her some.
“Can I get to work now?” she asked.
He trailed his fingers along her bare arm. To Elka it felt like he left a trail of slime down her skin. She shivered. Kenny must have taken the shiver to mean he’d aroused her because he stepped closer to her until she could smell the fabric softener on his shirt. He ran his fingers through her hair.
“It’s so true,”
he said, “what they say about the reds. You’re a fiery lass, aren’t you?”
I will break your arm. I will pry out your teeth. I will pierce your heart with my horn.
If only he knew what she truly was.
Maybe it was time he found out.
She slid her palm up his abs and to his chest. “You have no idea.”
His lips curled away from his teeth in what could have been a smile, but also made him look like a hungry vampire—the second most dangerous creature next to humans. “Finally won you over, have I?”
“Why fight it, right? You want to keep me company when I drive home tonight?”
His breath quickened. The peanut smell wafted over her as if she’d stepped into a dive bar. If Elka had to guess, she would lay odds he had a huge erection right now. “How about I take you to my cave? We’ll have more room to roll.”
She seriously wondered if he had been stalking her. As far as she knew, he had never been anywhere near her apartment. How could he know how small it was? Was he assuming based on her financial situation? Probably. Still made her edgy, though.
Elka started to protest going to his place. She wanted him on her turf. Then she thought better. Her demonstration could get messy. If she went to his place, she could walk away and leave the mess behind.
“Sure,” she said. “That sounds perfect. Now let me get to work. I need my tips.”
His gaze moved down the short hall that led to the kitchen. The sizzle of the deep fryers created a background white noise to the rest of the commotion from the cooks—clanking pots or shouting back orders to confirm with the waitresses. They were caught up in their jobs. No one had noticed Kenny and Elka standing outside the manager’s office.
He turned his attention back to Elka. He pressed his body against hers, forcing her to tilt back her head or get smothered between his pecs. His hand reached around and gripped her butt. The grab startled a short squeak out of Elka. But his hand touching her there didn’t sicken her a fraction as much as the hard feel of him against her thigh.