by Luna Lindsey
“Are you sure?”
“Quite.”
“Well, I would never laugh at you. I was quite interested in what you said, and disappointed you ran out without even leaving your name.”
Trey shook his head. “I doubt that. This faerie stuff, it’s just make-believe bullshit, right?”
“‘fraid not. We’re serious about pixies.”
He laughed. She’d finally broken the ice. “Are you in the habit of stalking your support group attendees? Is that part of making them feel safe?” His voice had grown casual, joking.
“You caught me. I actually have two bottles of chuck at home already. This was just an excuse to chat with you.”
“Well this bottle will be $3.26.”
“Remember when two-buck-chuck was actually two bucks?” she asked, handing him a five-dollar bill.
“Yeah. Tastes like it should cost ten times as much.”
“Would you like to share this bottle with me sometime?”
“Maybe. Lynne, right?”
“Actually, it’s Jina. I give my middle name in those meetings.”
His eyes grew wide. “What, you don’t trust them either?”
“No, especially not the weird ones.”
He chuckled. “What happened to respect?”
“Even I have my limits.” He seemed to take this personally, and she clarified, “You are not one of the weird ones. I believe you, I really do… Trey.” She made a point of looking at his nametag so he didn’t get spooked by her sudden knowledge of his name. “You have questions about what you see, and maybe I can answer them.”
Trey glanced at the clock, and thought about it for a minute. “Okay. I get off work in an hour,” he said. “How about coffee instead of wine? There’s a good place a couple of blocks around the corner. El Diablo Coffee.”
“Yeah, I think I’ve been there before. See you in an hour.”
She collected her bag and dropped it off in her car before heading down the street. She hoped he’d actually show. She was looking forward to going out to a nice Broadway restaurant for dinner with Sandy, and didn’t want to wait around all afternoon.
As she walked, she thought she caught a glimpse of a man wearing a striped scarf, but when she turned her head there was no one.
At El Diablo, red devils glared down from bright yellow walls. In the murals, demons tormented sinful coffee drinkers by offering them more coffee.
Jina waited near the door. When Trey showed up, she ordered a Cortadito, two shots of espresso with caramelized sugar, milk, and foam. Trey ordered a Mexican hot chocolate. Most cities are lucky to have genuine Mexican food, but only in Seattle could you expect to find authentic Latino coffee.
Both drinks came in mugs with a devil face drawn in the foam. Jina’s devil winked at her.
They walked to a quiet corner with a couch and colorful comfy chairs. Trey took the couch. Two cupids kissed on the wall behind him.
“So were you really stalking me?” he started.
“Stalking is a strong word. Looking for you, yes. I believe your story. That you see them.”
“You do? Then why did you laugh?” Trey took a sip of his drink and winced from a burnt tongue.
“You keep saying that. Do you really think after listening to Kimberly without cracking a smile, that I would laugh at you?”
“I could swear…”
“It’s possible you remember that happening. They can… make you see things that aren’t really there. And Gretel – she was the girl sitting next to me – she thinks that goth girl was one of them.”
“You mean a faerie?”
“Yes,” Jina said, her voice as serious as she could make it.
“I couldn’t tell…”
“She had her face covered, remember? Like this.” Jina pulled her hair down over her eyes. “She could have been hiding anything.”
“You really believe this shit.”
“And you don’t?” Jina said, fixing her hair. “You said you saw them. Look, a few years ago, back in Michigan, me and two friends were kidnapped by one of them. They can make you think you’re…” Jina trailed off at the painful memory. “They can make you think anything.”
“Kidnapped? They do that sort of thing?” Trey set his drink down and looked thoughtful.
Jina picked at the foam in her coffee. “Yeah.” Suddenly the devil-face didn’t seem so cute anymore. She poked out its winking eye.
“Sorry, I find it hard to believe.”
“Why? Given all the weird things you’ve seen in your life? Faerie abduction stories used to be as common as alien abduction stories are today. Which is probably where that Tom guy got the idea that aliens and faeries are the same thing.” Jina shrugged. “Who knows, maybe they are.”
“What about Kimberly and Bluebelle?”
“She’s… a silly girl.” Jina leaned back and rested her chin on one hand. “There are no sparkly, pretty faeries or beautiful, pure-of-heart Rivendell elves. That group you went to, that’s just a front. Those flyers attract all kinds of people. We’re looking for those who have seen, and been hurt, by real fae. So we watch the front-group until we discover people like you, people who seem serious. People whose stories match what we know…”
She paused a moment to let it sink in, then continued. “Normally I wouldn’t track you down like this, but… A guy like you is rare. You didn’t seem like you were coming back.”
“You’re right. I wasn’t planning to go back. So it’s a front for what?” He picked his drink back up.
“For a real support group, just like the flyer promised. It’s like an Al-Anon meeting, only instead of talking about our abusive alcoholic spouses, we talk about faeries. It’s invite-only, so people like Tom and Kimberly don’t show up. So no one laughs.”
“All my life, I’ve been seeing these weird creatures.” He motioned with his head at one of the cupids painted beside him. “At worst they’ve been harmless. And a few times, they’ve helped me out.”
“What do you mean?” Jina asked.
“That pastor’s wife? The one with the tail?” He smiled; Jina didn’t. “She chased off some bullies after Sunday School. Most adults don’t have the power to tame mean kids for long, but she did.”
Jina cocked an eyebrow. “Really?” She’d never heard anyone say anything positive about a faerie before. Some of the old fairytales ended well, but not many, and those were just stories. “Maybe she did something terrible to the bullies.”
“Not that I could tell. If anything, they seemed happier after she confronted them. Better adjusted. They weren’t afraid of her.”
Here was a man who’d spent his whole life watching them, and he wasn’t afraid. Or traumatized. Jina had always suspected there may be benevolent fae, but no one had ever talked about it.
No one with good experiences would waste their time on a support group.
Trey took a long, slow sip from his cup. “So. I guess I don’t need support.”
Jina needed to keep his interest. “You must have questions, or you wouldn’t have come in the first place. Wouldn’t you like to meet people who don’t think you’re crazy? Besides, you have a special talent. One we need. Not all of us can see them like you can, not unless they want to be seen.”
“How did you know there was a faerie at the meeting?”
“Gretel is clairvoyant. She can see auras and know what they are in a fuzzy sense. She doesn’t see them clearly like you do.”
“I thought your support group was anonymous, one of the rules, don’t talk about Fae Club.”
Jina laughed. “Gretel wasn’t a newcomer. She’s a friend, a housemate. So it’s different. She doesn’t mind who knows, as long as, you know, they believe in faeries, too.”
Trey smiled in return. “I’ll think about it.”
“How’s your coffee?”
“Hot chocolate. It’s tasty. Spicy. I’m pretty sure there’s cinnamon in here.”
“Cinnamon, like the color of your eyes?”
<
br /> Trey blushed.
“Maybe I should get your number this time, in case I scare you away again, so I can find you.”
“Yeah, that’d be fine.” Trey fished his wallet out of his back pocket and handed her a card. It said, “Trey Roberts Carroll, Fire Sculptor”, and had a website and contact information.
“I knew you were an artist. Burning Man?”
“Of course. How did you guess?”
“Where else would you find giant metal sculptures that spit fire?”
“In the backyards of Bellevue sprawl where rich software geeks like to keep reminders of the burn. I sell to people like that, now and then.”
“I’ll have to check it out. I know someone who’s rich, but I don’t think she likes sculpture so much. Or fire.”
Trey interjected suddenly, “So you really think there was a faerie there, and she made me think people laughed?”
“Yes. I swear to you, no one laughed. I didn’t laugh.”
He nodded slowly, staring at his chocolate.
“Okay, I’ll come to your meeting. When is it?”
Jina pulled out a card of her own, with a pink flaming phoenix. It said “Fates of Surrender”. She wrote the time and an address on the back of the card and handed it to him.
“Fates of Surrender, what’s that?”
“My band. We’re playing Saturday night at Neumo’s. Want to come?”
“I think I’ve heard of you. But I have to work on Saturday night.”
Jina tried not to let her disappointment show. “Come to the meeting, and maybe we can hook up after that. Okay?”
“Deal.”
A strong, smart man. Sexy, too. Her dual-motives towards him warred within her. Maybe he would take her to Burning Man. He’d make a fine addition to the team.
The thought that really followed her, the entire drive home, was the image of a satyr in a church dress, chasing off bullies to protect a sobbing little boy.
CHAPTER 8
*
SANDY SET DOWN HER STICKY sweet and sour chicken. The white takeout container almost fell over with the weight of the fork. She leaned back on the rose-colored antique couch and rubbed her tummy.
She was eager to change the subject again. Sure, they used to talk about bands and movies, and occasionally politics, but she just hadn’t had time to keep up with pop culture. Half the things Jina talked about were on the internet, and Sandy never, ever had time for that.
“I still wish we would have gone out,” Jina said. “Change of scenery. Better food.”
“Maybe next time,” Sandy said. “All day we’ve been watching the redcap, waiting for it to poop rainbows. Now that we have glamour, there are experiments to run. After that, those books I ordered from eBay came in and two of them are in Croatian and I have to find a translator.”
“Yep,” Jina said. “Work, work, work.”
“You were working on something today, too. How did that go?”
“I found that faesight guy. His name is Trey Carroll. We had coffee and I convinced him to come to a Second Circle meeting.”
“I can’t wait to meet him. We need all the recruits we can get. Especially with talents like his.” If they had someone with faesight, she could send him out and get a lot of classification done, and maybe figure out why no one ever reported seeing Native American spirits anymore. Except maybe Sasquatch. Everyone saw Sasquatch. But maybe that was an animal.
“I don’t know much about him yet, but he’s really nice. He knows a lot about the fae, after all these years seeing them. He got me to thinking. Is there a good way to tell the difference between seelie and unseelie faeries?”
“Only by their actions. Why?” Sandy eyed the chicken and considered taking another bite.
“One of the fae protected him when he was a kid. He says not many of them are like Haun and Scarf.”
“Unseelie and seelie. That’s a difference without distinction. Even in the old tales, a seelie faerie is just as likely to kill you as an unseelie. It’s just that the seelie might give you a present first. If one of them helped Travis, it must have wanted something.”
“Trey. His name is Trey. He said she never took anything from him. You’re probably right. But… What if we’re wrong? What if we get really good at this, kill a lot of faeborn, and some of them turn out to be innocent?”
“I mean… I guess…” Sandy trailed off. “No, Jina. The fae are far too slippery. We can’t really trust any of them. Come on, let’s clean this up and get down to the lab and test out that glamour.”
“This was really cool,” Jina said, helping Sandy take trash to the kitchen. “We should do it more often.”
“Sure,” Sandy said. It had been really fun, even though they’d had a hard time finding things to talk about.
In the lab, the redcap now slept, curled in a ball in the bottom of the jar. Gretel napped and Sandy let her sleep. Sandy poured herself a little drink and offered Hollis some.
Jina came down the stairs, guitar and notebook in hand. Unlike Sandy’s notebook, Jina’s did not contain raw data, only lyrics and poems, all to be part of the spell. She sat in one of the wheelie office chairs, and propped her old acoustic guitar on her knee.
Sandy recalled a simpler time, when all they had to worry about were term paper due dates, when Jina would sit in her living room, with that same guitar.
Her memories were so close to the surface. She was grateful for the buffer the Lonach provided, like a shield, like the wards that kept that little redcap in the jar. She took another sip and then set the glass down when Jina eyed it.
“Gretel, wake up.” Sandy nudged Gretel in her chair until she was alert. “Is everyone ready?”
Every member of the Ordo nodded in assent.
“It should be easy for Jina to create an orb of light that we can all see. Gretel, you write down everything you see in terms of aura and psychic energies, both on the demon and on Jina. Okay, I’m turning off the wards… Now.”
Jina spent a little too long tuning the guitar. “It helps me focus,” she explained. When she began playing, she made up the words as she went.
Shimmer bright,
Orbal sprite,
Cast this room,
In faerie light.
As she sang, a brief flash of soft light flickered into being, then faded. Jina cleared her throat and repeated the lyrics, louder, with more emotion. This time, a red glimmer appeared in the middle of the space between Jina and the glamour generator. White sparks dripped from it like rain.
A smile spread out slowly on Sandy’s face. It was working. They had a source of glamour.
Then a smaller black spark, and a moment later a green one, began to intertwine within the red light, swirling around, leaving traces of their movement in lines.
The spell was taking shape. Jina wove the glamour like it was second nature. Now they could do anything.
The red light elongated, thinning, becoming oblong in form. Then the green light began at the bottom and gave shape: A stem. The black light took on the task of giving shape to the top, outlining a singular, perfect rose.
At that point everything happened at once.
The redcap awoke with a snarl and slammed against the unwarded glass, shattering it inside the cage.
Gretel screamed, “It’s got loose!”, and flung her notebook at the cage as if she’d seen a bug.
Hollis calmly got up and started walking towards the warding apparatus.
Jina stopped playing her guitar.
The redcap squealed like a rat when its skin touched the cage bars. It couldn’t get out, at least. Its eyes took on a fierce glare, and the rose fell to the floor, shattering into a million pieces as if it were made of glass.
Hollis didn’t make it to reset the wards. Everyone doubled over in pain as the faerie shouted, “Pity me more, glass on the floor, set me free, or I’ll kill you four!”
Sandy’s world became a blur of hurt, whether physical or emotional, she couldn’t quite tell. She wa
nted to lash out but found herself paralyzed in terror.
Hollis tried to stand and reached for the switch on the warding device, but the redcap merely laughed at him as he fell back to the floor.
“Pity me! Set me free!” the nykk said, jumping up and down in the cage in a little tantrum. The bars shook, and out of fear, Sandy almost reached out to open the lock.
But the sound of Jina’s guitar stopped her.
Pity we’ve not, she sang.
Mercy’s all rot.
You’re on your back,
Tied in a knot.
The redcap whined and Sandy risked a glance up. Its legs were tied around its arms which were looped around its head. It choked and sputtered, trying to breathe.
With great effort, Hollis reached the switch. The red light on the lid of the now-broken jar began to blink again, the wards back on.
“Emergency backup initiated. Cage wards activated,” he grunted. Then he kicked the cage violently and the faerie rolled around helplessly in the broken glass, its face turning blue.
Sandy whirled on Jina. “What the fuck was that, a rose?”
He had lured her in with roses.
“Sorry Sandy, I didn’t do it on purpose. I let the glamour go where it wanted.”
“You. Know. How I feel. About roses.” Sandy threw her notebook at Jina and stomped up the stairs.
The spell worked. But it didn’t matter. There were serious problems to fix, like how to release the glamour without letting out the faerie’s own magic.
Sandy was beyond the ability to focus on her work, even in light of this huge success. Images of roses flashed in front of her eyes, and the feelings she’d successfully fought for so many years flooded back.
She had a bottle of Glenlivet in a safe place in her room. By the time she was done drinking, there was no need to replace the cork.
CHAPTER 9
*
“NOW, WHEN WE GET TO THE CITY, the people are not going to be friendly. You just have to let the Spirit guide you… Ezra, are you listening? Ezra!”
Elder Noah had been going on for hours, making him memorize scripture, lecturing him on how to speak to a crowd. It was long past dinner, and Ezra was pretty sure they’d skipped lunch. He wasn’t sure how this missionary thing was going to work out for him.