Tales from Shady Grove: Stories from the Trailerverse, Volume One

by Kimbra Swain

  “Hey, Miss Bryant,” I said stopping her before she hung up.

  “Hm?”

  “You probably want to wear a little more clothing than what you had on at the bar,” I mentioned.

  “It’s a farm, Sheriff Riggs. I know what to wear to a farm,” she quipped, then the line went dead.

  I laughed hard. She cracked me up. Feisty as hell. Maynard watched me. “She coming?” he asked.

  “Yeah, she’s on the way,” I continued to laugh at her.

  “Dude, what’s so funny?” he said.

  “Nothing. She is whiskey in a teacup,” I said.

  “What’s that mean?” he asked. “Never heard that.”

  I chuckled. “It means she’s all porcelain with a pretty exterior. She’s even got some gold flake on her edges, but instead of a warm soothing tea, she’s a hard bite of whiskey.”

  “That’s pretty damn accurate,” he said. “I like it.”

  “She won’t,” I said.

  “Hell no. You better not say it to her either,” he warned. “She’s got a temper.”

  “I bet, but part of me wants to see it,” I said.

  He shook his head and returned to talk to the mayor. “It’s your death,” he called back to me.

  Waiting in the drive for her to arrive, I began to get nervous. I didn’t know why. Actually, I did. The deepest parts of me wanted Grace to like me. Not as anything sexual. With Stephanie, I had all that I needed. I wanted Grace to be comfortable with me.

  The big black truck rumbled up the driveway. She climbed out wearing tight jeans and a button up plaid shirt over a white tank top. She wore green and tan duck boots with the laces dangling loose. Her hair was pulled back through a red cap with a script white A on the front.

  “Sorry. It took longer than I thought to get ready,” she said. She looked nervous.

  “It’s no problem. Do you have a weak stomach? These animals are pretty torn up,” she said.

  “It’s fine,” she muttered refusing to make eye contact with me.

  She followed me out behind the barn to view the carnage. Troy and the mayor had gone inside to call back to headquarters with some information on what we found. Seventeen cows laid in the field in various forms of butchery. Most of them were ripped to pieces. I looked back at Grace. Her eyes widened at the sight of all of it. She covered her mouth and turned green.

  I moved toward her, and she threw her hand between us. “Don’t you touch me,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  “I was just going to help. Look, Miss Bryant, I don’t know why you think I am here, but…”

  “I don’t care why you are here. Just give me these tasks to complete so the Sanhedrin will stay off my back. This stupid deal is souring by the moment,” she said.

  Not knowing how to respond to her anger, I focused on the task at hand. “Do you notice anything out of the ordinary? Maybe some fairy creature did this.”

  She walked up to the closest body. She stared intently at it. I knew that fairies could shift sight and see things in the magical spectrum. She stepped back from the dead animal, stumbling. This time I reached her before she fell on her ass. Shoving me away from her, she shouted, “Don’t touch me!” My fingers felt like ice after the skin to skin contact. I was normally extremely warm. Overly so, but her skin was frigid.

  “I’m sorry. It’s muddy here. I was just trying to help,” I said.

  She wrinkled her nose at me. Spinning around, she marched out of the field with me on her heels.

  “Wait! Miss Bryant. I’m sorry. Please. I’ll let you fall on your ass next time. I’ll get a good laugh out of it,” I teased.

  “I don't see anything. I don’t know if it’s a fairy or not,” she said, as she continued to walk away.

  Running around her, I placed my palms in the air to get her to stop. “Miss Bryant, please. You saw something,” I said. “It scared you.”

  “No. I didn’t. Please tell Jeremiah I came when you called, but you get one thing straight Dylan Riggs. You can’t call me whenever you want to call me. I’m not a dog.”

  “Sure, you are. You are an outright bitch,” I replied. In an instant, my face stung with icy cold. I rubbed my cheek.

  “How dare you?” she screamed.

  I gritted my teeth. “I tried being nice. I thought maybe if I said something mean you would respond. Damn, that hurt. I didn’t mean it.”

  She looked more hurt than me. Then, I saw it again. Fear.

  Brushing past my shoulder, she made a beeline to her truck. “I won’t hurt you. I swear on my life.” I don’t know what possessed me to say it, but I did. I knew very well that Jeremiah had brought me here to contain her. She made me feel things that I shouldn’t. I chalked that up to her fairy ways, but she seemed different. Even different from Stephanie.

  It worked because she stopped. She leaned on the door of her truck but refused to look at me. “Why would you say that?”

  “I told Jeremiah the same thing,” I said. After touching her twice now, I knew that she had to know who I was.

  “As if a mere human could harm me,” she said.

  She didn’t know. “And yet, the Sanhedrin brought me here for something.”

  “Why would you even care about me? You don’t know the things I’ve done,” she said.

  “I don’t need to know. I meant what I said,” I replied.

  Her eyes met mine. Swirling pools of aquamarine reflected back at me. The eye color change caught me off guard. She noticed, then grimaced. When she opened her eyes again, they were a deep brown.

  “It was something unnatural. Something not of this realm,” she said. “I don’t know what though. I don’t have the skills that most of my kind do. Jeremiah was stupid to think I could help you with anything. It’s just their way of keeping tabs on me.”

  “At least I know now that I don’t need to search the woods for a rabid dog or something,” I said. “That helps.” The lie settled like a weight on my heart. In the days to come, I knew I would have to continue to lie to her, but still somehow keep her in my trust. At that moment, I hated the Sanhedrin for it. The last thing I wanted to do was to lie to Grace. Thankfully, she seemed oblivious to the lie and what I was.

  “Do you need anything else, Mr. Riggs?” she asked.

  “Dylan, please call me Dylan,” I said.

  “Dylan,” she muttered.

  “No, that’s all. Thank you, Miss Bryant,” I replied.

  She nodded then climbed into the truck. I moved away from it as she fired the beast up. It didn’t have mufflers, so it sounded like a freight train. The window sank down, a gorgeous smile crossed her face. “It’s Grace,” she said, then rolled up the window.

  I watched the fairy queen pull away in her huge pickup. I tried convincing myself that what I felt was a passing infatuation with something I shouldn’t and couldn’t have, but it felt very different. Dangerously different.

  27

  Stephanie disappeared to work for several days. She called me a couple of times to tell me that she wouldn’t be back home. Instead of sitting at home alone, I decided to grab a beer at Hot Tin.

  I pulled up to the bar which seemed moderately busy. Nothing like the night I took Stephanie home with me the first time. Slipping into my dark brown leather jacket, I entered the bar. Several people were leaving as I walked in. Nestor saw me enter, but his eyes flashed with concern. They darted to the pool table where I saw Stephanie. Her back was to me, but she stood between the open legs of a man sitting on a bar stool. His hands sank low over her ass as she leaned in locking lips with him.

  Anger surged through me, but I remembered my station in the town. I was the sheriff. I couldn’t beat the hell of the guy like I wanted. I flexed my fists feeling the heat build-up in them. Stephanie definitely wanted what she was getting from him.

  Quietly, I slipped out the door feeling like a fool for believing the fairy tale I’d built for myself. I knew better. I’d met a lot of fairies in my day. None of them were worth the tim
e or effort. I don’t know why I thought this new life would offer a different outcome.

  I jumped in my Camaro and decided to drive around before going home. My anger might soothe with a high-speed adrenaline kick. I turned toward the center of town to hit the state highway leading out of town to the west. I had a long straight drag to test out the speed of the car. As I passed by the town square, I saw a figure seated on a park bench.

  Her feminine curves stood out in the darkness. She watched me as I drove past. Jamming the car into gear, I squealed the tires. The car lurched forward into the darkness. I didn’t look back. Grace was just as much fairy as Stephanie, if not worse. She was a queen. The pain in my ass that I had to work with after agreeing to this deal.

  Speed. I needed more speed.

  I pressed the gas harder into the floor. The car zoomed forward with abandon. The rush of adrenaline flowed like fire through my veins. To my right, I caught a flash of white. I slammed the brakes as a huge white unicorn crossed the road just in front of me. It stopped on the other side of the road looking back at me. Then it dashed off into the darkness of the forest. I stepped out of the car in disbelief. A pair of headlights approached bringing me out of my trance.

  The driver rolled down their window. It was Mable, the woman that worked at the grocery store. “Oh, Sheriff Riggs, I’m glad it’s you. The bridge is out up there. I almost ran into the swamp,” she said.

  “Are you okay, Miss Sanders?” I asked, pulling out my cell phone.

  “Yes, I’m fine, but you better get someone out there before someone gets hurt,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am. Right away,” I said, climbing back into the car. Rushing forward more cautiously, I came upon the bridge which looked like it washed out with the rain from earlier. I called the department. Troy and many of our small force arrived to block off the road. The state arrived to help. It would likely be weeks before they could get the bridge repaired.

  I stood on the edge watching the water rush by, and I remembered my anger. The fury of dashed hopes was a bitter pill. However, not many people or fairies in this world could say they were saved by a white unicorn. I’d heard tales that they existed. Shady Grove never ceased to amaze me.

  “Go on home, Dylan. We have it under control,” Troy assured me.

  I sat waiting for her to come home. Stephanie called me a couple of days after I saw her at the bar. She said she would be returning today. I took the afternoon off, so I could confront her when she arrived.

  “Hey baby, I didn’t expect you to be home,” she purred as she dropped her bags. She swayed her hips as she approached me.

  “I didn’t expect to see you at the bar with your tongue down another man’s throat,” I said.

  She threw her head back and laughed. “You saw that?”

  “Yes. You need to get your things and go,” I ordered.

  “Sorry, sweetheart. That’s not going to happen. I actually get a little respect in this town now that I’m the sheriff’s girlfriend. I’m not leaving,” she said.

  “I won’t stand by while you fuck whomever you want,” I growled.

  “Yes, you will. Want me to tell you why?” she purred as she stepped closer to me. She ran her hand over my crotch and squeezed. “Because if you kick me out, I will tell her you are lying to her. I will tell the fairy queen you were brought here to kill her. She will hate you forever, or she will strike you down. She’s one of the few in this world that can.”

  “You wouldn’t,” I snarled as she continued to rub against me.

  “I would. Dylan, did you really think I was your happily ever after?” she laughed. “How naïve.”

  “Get your hands off me,” I protested.

  “We are good in bed. I enjoy fucking you,” she pouted. “Besides, you aren’t a one-woman man. Are you?”

  She was right. I had never been one. Until I moved here with the pipe dream that Jeremiah fed me, I’d never even considered it. She had me by the balls. “If I let you stay, you won’t tell her?” I asked.

  She smiled. “I swear it.”

  28

  Grace stood at the edge of the broken bridge as I pulled up in my cruiser. I reminded myself that she was more dangerous than Stephanie. Grace could kill me, but my instincts screamed at me that she was different. I wouldn’t allow myself to believe the lie again. I was here to do a job. To see it through until I could find a way out of it.

  “Don’t jump,” I quipped, as I climbed out of the car. The rushing water had settled, leaving a twenty-foot drop down to the creek below.

  She turned around to me with a huge smile on her face. “I doubt it would hurt me, Sheriff Riggs,” she said.

  “Dylan,” I corrected her.

  “Right, Dylan,” I said. “Why did you call me out here?”

  “This wasn’t natural,” she said.

  “What?” I said looking at the broken bridge.

  “Troll, I think. Very mad troll,” she said. “This is bad.”

  “Why do you think that?” I asked, curious as to her methods of deduction.

  “Along the edges here, there are claw marks,” she bent down to point at the obvious streaks along the edges of the cracked concrete. I had missed them in the darkness.

  “This happened several nights ago. The night I saw you sitting in the town square on the bench. I found it that night,” I said. “But I didn’t see this in the dark. Thanks, Grace.”

  She stood up next to me, looking down at me. “You are welcome. I figured I owed you one after bailing on you the other day.”

  “You don’t owe me anything. We can work together. I help you. You help me,” I said, turning my back to the hole in the broken bridge.

  She nodded. I felt the concrete shift at my feet. Before I could lunge forward, the piece I stood on began to drop with the pull of gravity. I fought back the urge to ignite the beast inside of me. Part of my deal with the Sanhedrin was that Grace couldn’t know who or what I was. As I fell to what I was assured to be a very unfortunate landing, a delicate hand rushed toward me.

  In slow motion, I watched as pale, icy fingers clamped down around my wrist. My body jerked hard as her arm reached its full length. She nearly lost her grip, but her long nails dug into my wrist as she held on to me. Half of her body hung over the edge of the bridge. Her platinum hair swirled around her head. Piercing blue eyes stared down at me in fear. The tattoo on her arm had shifted from black and red to blue and silver. The tendrils of silver reached all the way up her arm and across her chest.

  I felt the subtle shift of power as she yanked on my arm. My entire body flew up from the dangling position. She stood as the momentum carried us backward, but with no way to stop myself, I plowed into her carrying us both back to the ground.

  Trying to ignore the softness of her body beneath me, I looked down at her. The fear still swirled in her eyes. I touched her soft cheek. “Don’t be afraid of me,” I said.

  “They brought you here to kill me,” she said, breathing heavily from the exertion.

  “I swore to not hurt you,” I said, trying not to focus on how good her body felt beneath mine.

  “Please, get off of me,” she begged.

  I rolled off of her onto my back, looking up at the blue sky above us. White puffy clouds floated by. “Thank you for saving me,” I said, knowing that she didn’t. Another lie on top of all the rest. I hated myself for it.

  “Ah, it’s not too far down. You probably would have survived,” she said. I had to lean up to look to see if she was serious. I saw a smile flirting with the edges of her eyes.

  “Yeah. Just a few broken bones. No big deal,” I replied. She laughed, and it was magical. I wanted to make her do it again. “I suppose I owe you a favor now.” I waggled my eyebrows at her.

  She pushed up off the pavement in a hurry. “Oh, hell no. Don’t you get any ideas, Sheriff Riggs,” she said. She tried to hide her giggle. I jumped up to follow her as she retreated to her truck. She jumped in quickly. She was trying to get away f
rom me. The fairy queen couldn’t handle a flirt.

  “Dylan,” I reminded her.

  “Dylan,” she repeated. “Have a good day.” I watched her glamour shift back into place. She watched me as it did to see how I would react. I didn’t change my gaze. She tilted her head sideways, then shifted into reverse.

  “Grace, wait. What am I supposed to do about the troll?” I asked.

  “Not my department. Good luck,” she smiled. She backed up the truck, then headed back toward town.

  I watched her go with the nagging in my heart that our friendship would be built on lies. I vowed to be truthful with her as much as I could. She was different. She went out of her way to keep me from plunging to what would have been a human death. It had nothing to do with her body tensed and breathing heavily beneath me or how it awakened my body in return.

  “Snap out of it, Riggs. She’s a fairy queen,” I reminded myself. “Just like Stephanie.”

  I dialed Jeremiah who pulled up thirty minutes later in his Buick. I showed him the marks that Grace had found.

  “She showed you this?” he asked.

  “Yep. Called me out here this morning,” I said.

  “How did she know to come look at it?” he asked.

  “Grace isn’t really forthcoming with information. I was just glad that she called,” I said.

  “If you are going to do your job here, Dylan, you need to question everything she does,” he scolded.

  I brushed my sandy blonde hair back out of my eyes. “Yes, I know all too well.”

  “How’s Stephanie?”

  My eyes shot to his. He knew. I didn’t know how, but he knew. “I’ve got a fuck buddy,” I played it off.

  “Heh,” he said.

  “It’s none of your business and has nothing to do with our agreement,” I said.

  “No, it doesn’t, but I suggest you tread lightly with that one,” he said.

  “It’s too late for that,” I sighed.

  His demeanor shifted. “The Sanhedrin will track down the troll and dispose of it. Thanks for the tip. That’s exactly why you are here.”