Fairy, Texas

by Margo Bond Collins

  “You don’t have be, like, invited in or anything?”

  He laughed quietly. “We’re not vampires, Laney.”

  I didn't answer that.

  We stepped into the darkened room. Josh left the light off so that just the dim sunlight filtering in through the blinds illuminated our path to the darkroom. The door clicked behind us, locked once again.

  “So no silver bullets, either?”

  “Well, yeah. A silver bullet could hurt us. But it could hurt anyone, right? So no, not especially. That’s werewolves, anyway.”

  “Stake through the heart?”

  “Vampires.”

  “So it wouldn’t kill you?”

  “Well, yeah. But you’d have to catch me first.” And just like that, he was gone.

  I spun around. “Josh?”

  “Behind you.”

  “Gah! What was that?”

  “I just shifted into the ethereal plane entirely.”

  “Oh.” Okay. That was weird.

  “So, yeah. Stake through the heart could work if you could catch me, just like it would kill you.”

  “What about just regular bullets?”

  He stopped and looked into my eyes. “You know, Laney, I’m really hoping you don’t end up needing to kill any of us.”

  “Well, I hope so, too. But I at least want to know how to do it.”

  “We’re not all that different. If it would kill you, it would probably kill us.”

  “Just probably?”

  He sighed. “We heal faster than humans. And if we’re not too damaged to shift, we heal even faster than that in the ethereal.”

  “So how could I keep one of you from shifting?”

  He looked around nervously. “Laney, I could get into trouble for telling you any of this.” His voice dropped. “And you don’t want to know what happens to People who talk to norms about us without the Abba’s permission.”

  “Like Quentin?”

  He looked startled. “Yeah. Like Quentin.”

  “You know what? Actually, I do want to know what happened to him. So does Sarah.”

  His eyes took on a haunted look. “I can’t tell you that. Not right now. We don’t have much time, and I have a lot I need to show you. Just trust me, okay?”

  “I don’t know if I can.”

  He didn’t say anything. He just stared into my eyes.

  I heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Okay. Fine. I’ll try to trust you.”

  “Good.” Josh started to open the door to the darkroom, but stopped and looked around.

  “Actually, I think I’d better do this next bit out here,” he said.

  I blinked in confusion as his entire form seemed to shimmer for a moment, then solidify again. He stood completely still, waiting for my response

  His wings stretched out on either side of him, fully extended from some point in his back, almost brushing the walls with the tips. I think that until that moment, I hadn’t completely believed what was going on. Not really.

  But there was no denying the fifteen-foot wingspan in front of my eyes.

  And these weren’t the horrible black leather wings that I’d seen on Bartlef.

  They were glorious.

  Chapter Nine

  Josh’s wings matched his eyes—silver, with shimmers of blue and green skating across their surface. They shone like patent leather. My breath left my body in an oof.

  “Could I . . . can I . . . would it be okay if I touched one?” I whispered.

  Josh shrugged a little self-consciously and his right wing lifted a bit with his shoulder. “Okay.”

  I reached one finger out and stroked an expanse of the wing. It felt like silk, stretched out on a frame.

  “Can you fly?” I asked, awed.

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “But we’re only supposed to do it in the ethereal.”

  I ran my palm down the edge of his wing, feeling the ridge of bone underneath my hand. Josh shivered.

  “Can you feel that?”

  “Yes.” His voice was strained.

  “They’re beautiful.”

  “Thanks.” He closed his eyes for a moment, shimmered again, and the wings were gone.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “There’s more.” He held out his hand and waited for me to take it, then opened the darkroom and stepped inside. He locked the door behind us.

  “I can’t imagine more after that,” I said. I looked around. Again, the smell of chemicals almost made my eyes water. “And I can’t actually imagine what you can show me in here that you couldn’t show me in the main room.”

  “Nothing, really,” he said. “I just feel better having a couple of locked doors between us and the rest of the world. Bad enough I’m telling you all this. If some other norm walked in on us, Bartlef would have my head. And then you’d have to deal with Mason all on your own.”

  I started to ask if “have my head” was just a figure of speech, but then decided I didn’t really want to know.

  “So what else?” I asked.

  “This.” Again, Josh closed his eyes and shimmered. I waited for the wings to appear again, but they didn’t. Instead, when he opened his eyes they almost glowed, they were so bright.

  In fact, his entire body glowed. I felt myself drawn to the warmth of him. I took a step closer. I drew in a deep breath. The chemical smell of the darkroom was gone. I smelled something warm and spicy. I leaned in closer.

  “It’s a glamour,” Josh said. “It draws norms to us.”

  I held myself completely still. “Like pheromones?”

  “More like a moth to the flame,” he muttered. He leaned closer, so that we stood less than an inch apart. He bent down and touched his lips to mine.

  My eyes fluttered closed and I leaned closer so that we were pressed against each other. His kiss was slow, like his smile, and seeped into me until I could feel myself glowing along with him. When he broke away from me, I looked down and was oddly unsurprised to see my arm shining gently in the dark next to his.

  “So you can all do that?” I asked breathlessly.

  “Um...” Josh took a deep breath himself, shaking his head as if to clear it. “I don’t know. It’s not usually . . . like that.” He looked down at his own arm, which had wrapped itself around my waist. “It’s never been quite like that,” he whispered, as if to himself.

  I started to ask him what he meant, but at that moment I heard the outer door to the classroom open. I spun away from Josh and stared at the darkroom door.

  “No problem,” I heard Mr. Carlson say. “I’ll just get it out of the darkroom.” The doorknob jiggled.

  I gasped, and Josh clamped his hand down over my mouth.

  “Shh,” he hissed. Then he grabbed me and pulled me back so that I was pressed against him. I heard him mutter a couple of words, but I couldn’t tell what they were. And then, just as the door opened, the whole room shimmered. When Mr. Carlson walked in, it was like looking at him through a hazy veil of white gauze. I started to step toward him to say something, to try to explain to him, but Josh kept hold of me, and I quickly realized that Mr. Carlson had no idea we were there. He pulled a roll of film down from the shelf and left the room again, locking the door behind him. I heard his footsteps leave the classroom and the main door click shut again.

  I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “What was that?” I whispered.

  Josh let go of me and took a half-step back. The air around me shimmered again and my vision cleared.

  Josh frowned and spoke in a normal voice. “We were in the ethereal plane. I took you through with me.”

  “So is that another of your powers?” I asked.

  He shook his head slowly. “No. In fact, as far as I know, no one’s ever taken a norm through to the ethereal before.” He face was chalky and pale.

  “So that’s a big deal?” I asked.

  “I have no idea,” he said, “But I think maybe we ought to stop here for today.”

  “Is there more
I need to know?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But I think that maybe there’s more that I need to know before I tell you anything else.” When he reached for the door, his hand was shaking.

  * * * *

  I was absolutely starving by the time I got through my next class, so I scarfed down the sandwich I’d brought for lunch between classes. Then my stomach hurt. In history class, Natalie and Scott kept teasing me about running off with Josh. Sarah watched me with worry in her eyes, but she didn’t say anything. And in Spanish, Andrew kept looking at me with hangdog eyes.

  It was an awful afternoon, made worse by the fact that I couldn’t concentrate on anything anyone said to me. I just kept remembering the feel of Josh’s lips on mine, his wing under my fingertip. And once I felt myself starting to glow again. I clamped down on my thoughts and hoped like crazy no one noticed.

  In the moments when I could quit thinking about Josh, I thought about my reaction to him and tried to figure out what it might mean. Somehow, I didn’t think my extreme reaction to him went very far toward the “Laney’s not the Yatah” theory. And when I wasn’t trying to figure that out, I was thinking about how to get out of going with Mason to sell ads.

  So my thoughts chased each other around in circles and I tried to look like I was paying attention to the teachers.

  I hadn’t figured anything out by the last class period.

  “Hey!” Mason said cheerfully as I walked into the yearbook room for the second time that day. He just looked so normal. Like any cute high school guy. A popular football player with a great smile. I hated knowing that every time he spoke to me, he had a secret agenda.

  “I hear you’re stuck with me for the next week, Harris,” he said with a grin.

  I aimed for normal, too. “Yep,” I said. “You and my oh-so-cheerful home environment.” I avoided looking toward Kayla.

  “Cynthia and I are leaving, Mr. Carlson,” she said loudly.

  “Bye, Kayla,” he said absently.

  “Ready?” Mason asked.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.” If only he knew.

  And then the rest of the afternoon went exactly as usual. Mason didn’t flirt with me any more than usual—that is, he flirted outrageously, but no more than he did with all the other girls I saw him talk to. If I hadn’t seen him in that room with Bartlef, seen the picture of him with wings, heard him talking about who I “belonged” to, I wouldn’t have believed that he was capable of being involved in a plot like that. He just seemed so open. Honest. Straightforward.

  Except that I had heard and seen all of that.

  “You’re awful quiet today, Harris,” he said after about half an hour of driving from one real-estate office to the next.

  “Hm? I am?” I shook my head. And I thought I’d been doing so well.

  “Yeah. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing in particular.” Just trying to ignore the fact that you want to make me the mother of your child.

  “I heard Kayla talking about giving her dad a reason to ground you,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “She said you spent last period yesterday with Bevington.”

  I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. “Yeah.”

  “So that’s why you blew me off?” I swear, he sounded hurt.

  Ack! What would I say to that under normal circumstances? “I didn’t blow you off, Mason. Josh and I just had some stuff to talk about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Nothing important.”

  “Important enough to skip out on me?”

  I turned my head and looked at him straight on. “It was nothing, okay? And honestly, it’s none of your business. I’ll make up the time selling ads, so you have nothing to worry about.” I put an edge of anger in my voice, and this time I didn’t have to try to do it.

  His voice dropped. “I worry about you,” he said softly.

  “You don’t have any reason to,” I said, staring out the window.

  “If you say so.” He swung the pickup into a parking lot.

  “Just drop it, Mason.”

  He shrugged. “Okay. For now.”

  We didn’t really speak for the next hour. Despite the awkwardness between us, we actually worked well together as a team. Almost everyone bought an ad from us. Even with the missing day, we were doing better than any of the others on the yearbook staff.

  So I had relaxed some by the time we pulled into the driveway at the ranch house. Mason put the truck into park and left the engine idling. When I reached out to open the door, he leaned over and grabbed my hand to stop me. Surprised, I looked up into his face.

  “I just want you to know that I’m worried about you, Laney,” he said seriously. I felt heat move from his hand into mine.

  Oh, no.

  I grew perfectly still and stared up at him. His blue eyes darkened an entire shade.

  This is just a glamour, I told myself. Just a glamour. Don’t respond.

  But it was almost impossible not to respond. Whereas Josh’s kiss had been all sunshine and light, Mason’s was dark, pulling me down to meet him. I felt like I was drowning, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to come up for air.

  “Stop,” I finally gasped, pushing him away.

  “Okay,” he said, pulling back and taking a deep breath of his own. “Okay.” He looked at me. “I’m sorry if that was out of line, Laney.” His voice was soft. “But it just . . . felt right.”

  “I’ve got to go,” I said desperately.

  He nodded. “See you tomorrow, Laney.”

  I scooted out of the truck.

  There were simply not enough curse words in the universe for this.

  As I walked into the house, I heard the door to Kayla’s room slam. I rolled my eyes and headed toward my own bedroom. But as I drew closer, I heard Kayla sobbing. Tentatively, I opened her door and poked my head in.

  “You okay?” I asked quietly.

  She looked up at me, her face tear-streaked. “Why?” she demanded. “Why do you have to have Mason, too? Why can’t you just take Josh Bevington and leave Mason alone?”

  I blinked, unsure what to say. I didn’t think she’d believe me if I said Okay—not after she’d just seen me making out with Mason in our front driveway.

  “I wish you would hurry up and give him what he wants so he would just dump you, too,” she said, and threw herself face down into her pillow.

  “Oh,” I said. “Oh, God. Kayla. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “Just go away!” Her voice was muffled by the pillow.

  I stood in the doorway, undecided.

  “I said, go away!” Kayla screamed, and threw a pillow at me.

  I ducked back out and shut the door behind me.

  So, Kayla had given Mason what he wanted and he’d dumped her? Ouch. No wonder she hated me.

  Of course, I’d feel more sorry for her if she hadn’t tried so hard to make my life miserable ever since I got to Fairy.

  I went into my own room and collapsed onto the bed.

  Chapter Ten

  The next day, Josh didn’t even look at me when he slid into his seat in English.

  “Hey,” I whispered. He didn’t respond, but I saw the muscle in his jaw twitch.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “Kayla’s talking.”

  “About what?” I was genuinely confused.

  “You and Mason.”

  Oh. That.

  “It wasn’t anything!” I said.

  “Miss Harris?” the teacher said, “Do you have something you’d like to share with the rest of the class?”

  For one hysterical moment, I considered saying Yes. Mason kissed me just like Josh knew he would and now Josh is mad at me for it even though he showed me his wings yesterday and knows I’m not interested in Mason. Yeah. That would go over real well. It was all I could do to keep from snickering.

  “No, ma’am,” I said aloud.

  At lunch, every
one at my table quizzed me about Mason’s kiss. Except Andrew, of course. He just scowled at everyone.

  “Rate it,” Scott said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “The kiss. On a scale of one to ten. Rate it.”

  “One being you’d rather chew on a dead rat,” Natalie said with a giggle, “and ten being ‘more, more, more!’”

  “I refuse to participate in this,” I said, in an attempt to maintain my dignity.

  “At least a seven, then,” Ally said. “If it was terrible you’d just come out and say so.”

  “I’m not listening to you,” I said.

  “Oh, and y’all should have seen Josh’s reaction,” Ally said. “He wouldn’t even talk to her.”

  I was going to kill Kayla.

  By the end of the day, I couldn’t walk down the hall without hearing whispers about me and Mason Collier.

  I couldn’t find Josh anywhere, either.

  Not that that meant anything, since Josh could just vanish into another world.

  I wished I could do that. By myself, I mean.

  I was silent on the walk from the yearbook room to Mason’s truck, but as soon as we both got in, I turned to him. “So,” I said. “I assume you’ve heard?”

  He had the good sense to blush. “Yeah. Apparently Kayla’s talking about us.”

  I nodded. “She had some pretty choice things to say to me about you, too.” No need to tell him that she’d merely implied those things—or that she’d been sobbing at the time. I might not like her much, but it didn’t cost me anything to let her keep a little of her dignity.

  Mason’s blush grew deeper. “She did?”

  “Yep. And I’ve got to say, it’s pretty tacky for you to start kissing me in her front yard.”

  He looked uncomfortable. “I know. It’s just that. . .” his voice trailed off.

  “Yes?”

  “I had to quit seeing her.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, my . . . my father told me I needed to break up with her.”

  “Any reason in particular for that?”

  “Not really.”

  “So did you like her?”

  He let out a little sigh. “Yeah. I did.”

  Huh. I’d be willing to bet a million dollars that Bartlef was the one who had told him to break it off with Kayla.