Woe for a Faerie

by Bokerah Brumley

  We were balance keepers. When things went too far one way, we knocked it all back the other way. I was The List Keeper, the leader of the balance keepers. The List was the tally sheet. It was a map to all the paranormal creatures in the area surrounding New Haven City. The Boss unbalanced so much of what I had worked for.

  I tucked the phone in my pocket and strode across the platform. I lingered here and there, keeping my eyes on the two guys who followed me. I could more than handle them if I needed to, but I wanted Vic to run their priors. I needed to know if they belonged on ‘the list’ or if they were common criminals. I brushed my fingertips across the key at my neck. There was much at stake.

  They followed me into the subway car for a short ride. They sat at the other end and pretended not to watch me. I acted like I didn’t see them and then decided to fake a nap.

  When the car lurched to a stop at the secondary New Haven City substation, I startled. I might have pulled off the nap farce a bit too convincingly. If I sat still for more than five seconds, I fell asleep. I was a priest by day and the List Keeper by night. Being a mortal superhero-priest was exhausting. I stood and made my way to the door, a grin plastered across my face as I followed a crowd of other passengers out of the car.

  I checked the progress of the men who tailed me. They kept up better than I expected.

  I intended to bore them to death while Frank and I played chess. I hoped they liked twiddling their thumbs. That was all the information I planned to give them.

  Through the station and up onto the street, where the cold stung my nostrils and brought a flood of tears. I blinked away the moisture. When my eyes cleared, I checked my watch. I was almost on time. That was good for my particular brand of clergy.

  About my age, but less fit, Frank already sat at the concrete square table. Frank had a family. I didn’t. I had time to exercise. A tan and blue afghan lay in a haphazard pile next to his feet. Strange. He didn’t usually bring a blanket along, but I suppose he earned an occasional eccentricity.

  Frank shifted on the bench and then scrubbed his hands across the stubble that salt-and-peppered the lower half of his face. The man had a perpetual five o’clock shadow.

  “Frank,” I said.

  His head jerked upward. “Jason,” he said, as he stood and offered his meaty palm. He raised an eyebrow. “Glasses?”

  “Yeah. For today.” I shook his hand and slid into the single-person bench across from him. Frank stayed standing next to my shoulder. I adjusted the chess pieces on the checkerboard tabletop.

  “Beard’s getting gray,” he said. I only shrugged. It was the truth. No use arguing.

  Frank glanced down at me. “Hey.” He tilted his head toward the direction I had come. “Did you know there are two guys…”

  “Yeah,” I waved across the table. “Sit. I’ll explain.” Frank’s eyebrows drew together, but he did as he was told, settling across from me. I said, “I’m being followed.”

  Frank crossed his arms and did not look impressed with that explanation. “I gathered,” he deadpanned. “Want me to do something about it?”

  “No, it’s fine. I’m collecting info on them. They aren’t the smartest.” I moved the white pawn in front of me, two spaces forward. “They’re from The Boss.”

  “The List?” He studied the board and moved a black pawn one space.

  My fingers brushed against the key at my throat. “Possibly. Maybe something ex-feathered.” I made another move. The Bishop was my favorite piece.

  Frank shifted in his seat, and his gaze jumped to mine. “The woman you found?”

  I gave a small nod.

  “Why would they want her?”

  “That,” I answered, “I don’t know yet.”

  Hours passed, and the thugs lost interest and wandered farther and farther away, until they faded back into the city.

  Frank caught me up on news of his son’s adventures at seminary. And I caught him up on Woe and her adjustment to mortality. It pleased Frank that she succeeded where others had not.

  I hadn’t told him about Arún. He didn’t need to know realm-crossing was popular with the paranormal and supernatural folks. Frank knew about The List—of its existence—but he didn’t know how extensive it was.

  By the end of the fifth game, I played the white pieces again and my backside was numb. I had nearly forgotten about the creeps sneaking around behind us. I scowled to cover the grin.

  “Checkmate,” I said. This had been my Tuesday for the past year. I guess the extra attendees distracted Frank. He wasn’t playing as well as he normally did. “You okay?” I asked.

  He studied the board and then growled several low curses. “Fine,” he said. “I have something I need to give you anyway. They gone?”

  “Seem to be.”

  He flicked the ebony king and the marble piece fell over. The resulting smack was so loud it startled a small flock of pigeons that had gathered on the ground beside us.

  I tilted my head. “What’s really wrong?”

  He sighed. “I’ve been having a tough time sleeping.” He picked up the knit cover and placed it over his lap.

  I tucked the pieces into little maroon velvet bags. “Me, too.”

  Frank probably didn’t spend all his nights thinking about a gorgeous woman.

  I wanted her. It kept me awake, wrestling with thoughts and desires I thought had long since disappeared.

  If she didn’t always seem so damned inviting. She couldn’t possibly know what sort of subliminal signals she kept sending. Surely, she’d stop if she knew.

  When I wasn’t sleepless over that, I jumped from rooftop to rooftop and chasing after creatures as varied as resurrected gargoyles to were-everything probably wasn’t what gave Frank his aches and pains. I hadn’t yet taken Vic up on the offer to make me a concoction similar to the one she had been drinking for the last fifty years.

  “I was out Saturday night.” He grimaced. “I couldn’t sleep. I heard somebody scream in the park. Chased it down.”

  “Trying to play the hero?”

  “Old habits die hard.”

  “Or live as long as you let them.”

  Frank gave me a look and then shrugged. “When I got there, I found this.” He reached beneath the cover on his lap and drew a book from beneath it. He handed it to me.

  The cover read, “A History of Peafowl.”

  I glanced at Frank. He gave a little nod. When I opened the book, an ivory feather nearly fell out. In my periphery, Frank nodded again. This was what he wanted me to see.

  The feather was as lovely as Woe’s but bright white. It had a mother-of-pearl sheen. I placed it gently on the table between us. At first glance, it resembled an average white peacock quill. The only remarkable thing about it was the length. However, at second glance, blues and purples danced over the circle of the eye in patterns I had not seen before. I smoothed my hand over the colors and the mirage disappeared.

  I asked, “There was a scream?”

  “Not the first time it’s happened, either,” Frank said, piling the cover along the edge of the table, fashioning a privacy fence.

  “Was there a body?”

  “No bodies by the feather, but there were a few found in the park last night,” he answered. “Jason?”

  “Hmm,” I said, frowning at the feather. I had seen white feathers before, flight feathers, not peacock tail feathers. Certainly not peacock tail feathers dusted with magic.

  Frank cleared his throat. “Jason, I don’t think this one came from an angel.”

  No kidding. I always knew when an angel fell. It was an inherited gift. Members of my family had been involved in major paranormal and supernatural cleansing throughout history.

  Sometimes doing the cleansing… Sometimes saving the hunted.

  Our genes reacted to paranormal beings and our brains processed the sensations as smells. Magic smelled of rotting fish. The scent of demons became the stench of stagnant water. Fresh laundry scents meant angels nearby. We coul
d sniff out the supernatural like bloodhounds. I closed Frank’s book.

  But this...

  This was different. I couldn’t define this. It was all mixed up, everything at once. It certainly wasn’t a bird, although whatever it was wanted us to believe it was an average bird.

  11

  Psychic Vibes

  Arún

  The afternoon doorman nodded as I jogged around the block for the third time. Winter jogging in New Haven City wasn’t as popular a past time as it was in the spring. Any inhabitant who bothered chose the park. My goal was to avoid the park at all costs. It brought Woe close in my mind. Though I’d been up for hours, most inhabitants hadn’t, and they stepped into the outside world sleep-confused and bleary-eyed.

  I wore a knit cap to hide my pointed ears. Yet pedestrians gave me strange looks as I blew by them. I could never tell if it was because of my lack of color or my size. I had grown tired of pacing the perimeter of my home.

  Woe filled my mind, and I had too much pent-up energy. Despite my desire to keep to myself in the world of mortals, the yearning for Woe had driven me outside.

  Woe…

  The way the moonlight kissed her bare skin, the way the shadows hid her, as though darkness herself conspired to wrap the broken woman in modesty.

  Woe…

  The briefest flash of indignation that crossed her face when Vic had forced her to take medicine, a hint of the magnificent creature she would become. When she learned what she was capable of, Woe would be fierce. Fiery. Appealing.

  Woe…

  I didn’t know what I had expected, but Woe embodied the dark and the raw; the opposite of any Fae maiden I could have chosen. Perhaps that created the hardest part of it all. The realization that I had to ignore the connection that had formed and the understanding that she might be my ideal mate.

  The blare of a horn brought me up short, teetering on the edge of the curb of a busy intersection. I wasn’t myself. Woe had my insides twisted up in knots. Mired in a bond that I hadn’t wanted, it remained. Permanently, as far as I knew.

  Woe would never return my love. I would never ask her to become the future queen of my people, the healer of our blight. I didn’t know what that would mean for her. It was too big of a burden for me to carry, and to ask her to carry it…

  No. Fae problems were Fae problems. There had to be another way to cure the blight. Our scientists and our healers would work together to find it.

  I shook my head, pushing harder, faster. Another lap around the block. The wind stung my face and made my eyes burn. Maybe I was trying to outrun my responsibilities, but I sprinted until my thighs burned, and my stomach turned over and over, writhing in hunger.

  By the twentieth lap, I had elicited the attention of old men as they played a game on a checked board. Physical exertion didn’t impact the Fae as much as it did humans, and I hadn’t yet broken a sweat.

  By the twenty-fifth lap, the sun was high overhead, my shadow had reduced to shade as large as the soles of my shoes, and the scent of Italian seasonings wafted from the pizzeria on the corner.

  The weariness that came along with aerobics had dulled my frustrations slightly, but the endorphins had stirred them up again. I had to admit that the Fates conspired against me, and it was time for lunch.

  Against my better judgement, I decided to try a mortal restaurant. I didn’t want to confuse my existence with petty relationships, but Woe had already driven me from my home. I might as well use the opportunity.

  Following the delicious scent, I ducked into the small, hole-in-the-wall restaurant. A handful of people ate at tables spread throughout. One nondescript woman read a book, periodically pushing her glasses back in place on the bridge of her nose. Seated in the booth next to the reader, a flaxen-haired business woman clicked her nails against the table’s surface. Others accomplished tasks on their handheld screens.

  A young, dark-haired woman situated behind the cash register waved at me, and her gaze traveled the length of me. Twice. The name on the nametag had been smudged off.

  “I saw you running,” she gushed when I reached the counter. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone go around that many times. Are you even sweaty? That was pretty impressive. I bet you have a six pack.” She winked. “What can I get for you?”

  She wasn’t Woe, and her attention grated against my sensibilities. It wasn’t kind of me. I showed my teeth, meaning to smile, but her enthusiasm wilted, so it must have been a snarl instead.

  Turning my attention to the menu, I said, “I’ll have an EV pizza.” A group of a dozen teenagers meandered in, talking and laughing. The noise filled the previously quiet dining room. They positioned themselves behind me in line.

  “To go,” I added. “Please.”

  She glanced down at her keyboard and poked two buttons. “One Every Vegetable pizza coming up. Name?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your name? We’ll call it when your order is ready.”

  “Oh.” I thought a moment. “Aaron.” That was close enough.

  She quoted the price, and I handed her a one-hundred-dollar bill.

  “Keep the change.” My ill-temper wasn’t her fault. The money didn’t make up for it, but it probably helped.

  “Really?” She beamed at me as though she’d been given something incredible.

  “Sure.”

  “Thank you so much.” She punched in the amount and then counted the change into her pocket. “That will be right out, sir.”

  She moved on to the gaggle behind me.

  As I waited for my order, I tensed. Something caught my attention, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. It hid itself in the telepathic energies from the customers. Slowly, I turned to face the room. Everything in me hummed with warning.

  Nothing amiss. It was as though each particle that floated in the air had a vibration, a resonance that made sense to the overall picture. Yet…

  One of these things was not like the others.

  The group of youth pushed small tables together and working out their seating arrangement. Otherwise, the same handful of diners minded their own business.

  I scanned the crowd. Ordinary everything.

  And one thing that wanted desperately to be camouflaged by the mundane.

  It was out there. A mental power that stuck out among the restaurant customers like anise seed in a Star-Blossom tart. A putrid raisin in a handful of mortal normalcy.

  I couldn’t locate the source of the extrasensory energy.

  “Aaron,” called the cashier, drawing me away from my hunt. She held a medium-sized pizza box. The reader exited the restaurant then, and the edge to the air went with her. It had been her. She’d hidden in plain sight.

  “Listen.” I noted the direction she went and then leaned toward the cashier as though I had a secret. “Can you do me a favor?”

  She brightened.

  “Can you hang on to that for a minute?” I touched the side of the box.

  The cashier’s expression fell, but a puzzled look crossed her face. “What?”

  Already moving toward the door, I added, “I just saw someone I know, and I don’t want to carry that with me.”

  “Sure,” she said, drawing it out.

  “I’ll be right back.” I tossed the words over my shoulder, and she marched back into the kitchen and shoved the box into the warmer.

  At that moment, the flaxen-haired business woman stepped in front of me. “Well, Aaron, can I buy you a drink? I’ve been watching you a long time. What do you say?”

  I peered through the glass shop front, trying to catch a glimpse of the reader as she left. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”

  “Of course you do,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

  For a moment, the top of her ear looked pointed. Yet, when I blinked, the mirage disappeared. “Thank you

  I dashed around the business woman and out the door, determined to ask the reader her name. It could be nothing, but I didn’t be
lieve it. She had talent or skills, and she had a magic that wasn’t often found in New Haven City. When my feet hit the sidewalk, I caught a glimpse of her before she ducked around a corner. She was headed toward New Haven City park.

  I jogged after her, careful to keep pace but not so fast that I attracted the wrong kind of attention. At the corner, I headed the same direction she did.

  She caught sight of me and jumped up onto the wrought iron fence that marked the edge of that side of the park. She disappeared into the underbrush.

  I hurried after her, leaping up and over the same way she’d gone to land on a walking path made of pea gravel. Yet the walkway was empty every direction. She wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

  Except the flaxen-haired business woman stepped into the clearing to stare at me. I stared toward her, puzzled by her reappearance.

  An animalistic scream split the air.

  I spun away and ran toward the anguished sound, coming around a bend that lead to a clearing. A dried fountain, prepped for the harsh winter, took up the center of the manmade glade. Yet no mortals milled about the open places. None laid on the ground.

  In the distance, a white peacock sat in the upper most branches of a tall oak tree. I couldn’t determine what had occurred. It stretched out and released its shrill call once more.

  A premonition ticked at the edge of my consciousness, and I pushed it away. In the land of the mortals, that talent didn’t help. They never made sensible, logic-based decisions. Feelings ruled here.

  And I didn’t want to know what came next, but one thing was certain: the balance of New Haven City had tipped and not in a good way.

  That settled it. I needed to see Woe. And soon.

  Returning to the pizzeria, I kept circling back to one thing.

  At least Woe was safe with the priest and his band of balance keepers.

  12

  Attack