I groaned and stood up, bracing myself on one knee as I straightened out. “Hey Foster, is your
friend
coming to pick up the dogs?” The bastard laughed at me. “You know, since you’re just watching them for a friend. For what? Two months now?”
Foster smiled slightly and flexed his wings.
“They’ve been here for two months,” I said.
He shrugged and his narrow lips pulled up in a grin.
“They could reach pony size, not that I need to tell you that.”
Foster shrugged again, bowed, and took off with one graceful flap of his pale white wings. “You know how it is. Aideen wants to keep them. You’ll thank her one day. Cu siths make the best guard dogs.” He laughed again as he flew to the back room in pursuit of the green blurs.
I glanced at the holes in my jeans from the cu sith teeth and the small trickle of blood staining said holes. “Oh yes, thank you, thank you.” My confidence in Foster’s judgment went down a few notches. “You’d better rent a storage space, Foster, they’re not staying here!”
As evening closed in on an otherwise uneventful day, the bells on the front door jingled. A familiar balding tuft of gray hair bounced down the aisle of occult artifacts, blending seamlessly with bundled packs of pale feathers along the top shelf and contrasting with the dark wood of the shelves below. I stifled a laugh as one of the cu siths shot out of the back room and latched onto Frank’s shoelace, dragged it under his other foot and caused an impressive stumble and shout.
“What are you doing here on a Saturday, Frank?” He was normally working at Walgreens on any given Saturday.
Frank suddenly found the woodwork on the ceiling fascinating. His plain brown eyes, crowned by gray wooly caterpillars, rolled back down to meet my questioning look. He set a thin brown paper bag on the display case and tapped it a few times.
“Uh-huh, and?” I said.
“Isortaneedajob.”
“Huh?”
He sighed. “I sort of need a job, just part time you know.”
I don’t think I responded right away. Frank started pacing back and forth in front of the counter, looking up every few steps while my brain worked on ways to avoid that train wreck.
“What happened to Walgreens?” I spoke slowly, still trying to figure out how to say no.
Frank scratched his chin. “Well, I had a disagreement with the boss and, well …”
Silence.
“You got fired?”
He blew out a noisy breath. “Yeah, I sort of hit on a customer, who turned out to be a mystery shopper and some big anti-sexual harassment spokesman and-”
“Spokesperson,” I said with a smile.
“-apparently she complained and I got canned.”
“Your boss had been looking for a way to fire you for a year. I’m surprised you held on this long.”
“Thanks,” he said with a lopsided smile. “You know, if I’m here part time, you’ll have more free time to do, well, whatever it is you do outside of the shop. You know, piss off vampires, talk to fairies, track down priceless grimoires, mystical artifacts …” his laughter began to break through his own commentary.
Maybe Frank was being sarcastic as his list went on and on, but I actually did need more time to do those, well, most of those, things. I could already piss off vampires in seconds flat and I
really
didn’t need more time for that.
A moment later I noticed Cara had appeared on the counter and was staring at Frank. Cara was Foster’s mom. It is also good to note, she made our lower deadbolt. The Fae like to call normal people commoners, as all fairies and their critters are sight unseen for most of the world, unless a fairy chooses to gift someone with the Sight. Of course, the Sight opens up some sights that aren’t really a gift at all. Unless you consider pissing yourself and running away screaming a gift, which some do.
I picked up the bag and opened it to the sounds of crinkling paper and the sweet smell of a new book.
I read the title of the book out loud.
“Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book,
hmm …”
My lips twitched as Cara glared at the book, then at Frank. I wished Frank could see the scowl on her face as she said, “Unbelievable.”
Frank laughed as he took the book out of my hands and started rifling through the pages. “This is my favorite one.” He held the book up beside his face. “It reminds me of the little bugs you’re always talking about.”
“Oh, that’s quite enough!” Cara reached into a small leather pouch on her hip and held out a tiny o-shaped stone in her palm. My eyes widened as her lips moved and a thick syrupy liquid spread out from the hollow in the stone. She moved the stone to her other hand as she finished the incantation and flung the goo at Frank’s eyes.
He yelped and stumbled backwards into a spinner rack full of tea leaves. His fists ground into his eyes as he regained his balance.
Cara hopped forward and in the blink of an eye she mushroomed to human size, if human size is almost seven feet tall with wings brushing the ceiling. Her transformation was ringed in a shimmering explosion of fairy dust.
I backed away from the enormous fairy. I sneezed, and then my eyes ran up and down the huge gray and white wings, patterned like an Atlas moth, right down to the snake’s head markings near the wing tips. “Holy shit.” I didn’t envy Frank. His first peek of the Fae world was going to be an unpleasant one.
Frank lowered his fists and screamed like an adolescent girl. I was so fixated on Cara’s immense size I almost missed Frank’s expression as his eyes jumped between her chest, her head, her wings, and back to her chest. His scream died and he looked torn between admiration and utter terror. He was seeing a fairy for the very first time. Only instead of a small, docile butterfly, she was taller than him and armed with two sheathed swords longer than his arms.
Cara took a deep breath and leaned into Frank’s face. “I’ll show you a stupid little bug, little man.”
“Mom, Cara, come on now,” I said.
“That’s not your Mom,” Frank said.
“Not my literal Mom,” I said. “She’s just …” I sighed and rubbed my hand over my face. “Another time.”
Frank nodded slightly as his eyes locked on Cara’s chest, heaving beneath the silver cuirass of her armor.
I’d never seen Cara lose her temper like she did then. She growled as she picked Frank up by his shirt and belt and hurled him at the front door like he weighed five pounds. His scream pitched into the high squeal range as he hit the door feet first and skidded onto the sidewalk on his ass. The top of his body was still lying inside the store and my jaw relaxed when I heard him groan. Good, the new help wasn’t dead.
Cara flashed back to normal the instant Frank left her hands.
“Wow, Mom, that was impressive.” I raised an eyebrow and sneezed through the residual fairy dust. “You got big.”
She blew a strand of white hair away from her face. “Sorry, boy, I’m a little out of sorts today. You’d better take some antihistamine. I know you’re allergic to all this dust.” I heard a calamity outside the front of the shop. A sound like concrete cracking, bricks falling, and the creak of stressed metal.
Cara’s thin face and delicate angled eyes smiled so sweetly I almost could have forgotten she’d just thrown a full grown man fifteen feet out my front door. I slid
Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book
onto the shelf of books behind the counter and jogged to the window before I stopped and stared with my jaw slack. Something had accelerated the growth of an oak tree sapling by about forty years or so. Frank’s old green rust-bucket of a car was teetering on some thick middle branches about twenty feet in the air. As branches aren’t made to hold cars, a huge crack was followed by a large crunch as Frank’s car took its final bow.
“Huh,” I said, “that’s something I haven’t seen before.” I sneezed again as pressure started building in my sinuses, and cursed when a half circle of tourists starting forming around the car. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it was easy to see they were pointing at the tree and the car’s remains.
I watched with a mixture of awe and worry as a man in a precisely cut black suit and black parrot head umbrella floated out of the sky toward Frank’s deceased car. He pulled a small spiral pad out of his pocket before he settled on the ground and flipped the cover open with his index finger. The umbrella vanished as soon as he opened his hand. He scribbled something across the pad with his finger, glared at me, pointed at the tree, and started walking toward the shop.
“Edgar’s here,” I said as I wiped my nose.
Cara cursed and flew to the back.
“Don’t think you’re sticking me with the ticket!” I said as the fairy disappeared through the door. I grumbled and dug a small blister pack of green pills out of my pocket, popped two out, and chewed them up.
Frank was stirring, and the groaning had stopped. Edgar placed his spiral notepad back in his jacket, helped Frank stand up, and ushered him through the door before I even thought to help the poor guy up. Frank’s eyes were wide and shooting around the shop erratically. He looked pale next to the short black hair and desert sand of Edgar’s skin.
“What’s going on here?” Edgar said as he let go of Frank.
Cara landed on the shelf beside him and said, “Job interview.”
“Thanks for coming back,” I said. My voice had grown nasally and my head was throbbing.
“I wouldn’t strand you, boy, not with the likes of him.”
If Edgar was offended, or if he’d even heard her, he didn’t show it. He casually pulled out his notepad again and poised his finger over the page. “So, what happened … necromancer?” Edgar’s face turned sour and the word oozed out of his mouth. I half expected him to pull out a bottle of mouthwash. To my great annoyance, Edgar’s distaste was shared by a lot of people in our little community.
I ignored the slight as best I could and said, “Well, Frank here has the Sight, and he’s hired.”
“What?” Cara said.
Frank’s eyebrow caterpillars attacked each other as his expression warred between horror and elation. He finally settled on wide-eyed, deer in the headlights, and said, “I won’t regret this—I mean you,
you
won’t regret this.” He nodded repeatedly.
Edgar flipped to the back of his notepad and his fingers danced over the page. “Alright, he’ll be registered with the Watchers. As I said, what happened?”
I delegated to Cara, and as she recited the story, a flicker of silver energy shot between Edgar’s finger and the notepad. When she finished talking, Edgar tore the ticket off and set it on the shelf beside Cara.
“We’ll have a cleanup crew here in a minute. I’ll contain the situation in the meantime. There’re going to be a lot of unexplained scars in the morning.” Edgar snapped the spiral notepad closed and nodded to Frank as he left through the front door.
“What did he mean by scars?” Frank said. He was staring at me, not even glancing at Cara.
“When the Watchers alter memories it leaves behind scars or tattoos, depending on what they have to do,” I said. “And covering up the memory of something like, oh, a giant oak tree appearing in a split second, you can imagine that’s messy.”
“With a bill like this, you’d think it was the end of the bloody world,” Cara said as she stared at the ticket and shook her head. “Watchers, I know we need them, but sometimes I’d really just like to kill them.”
“What’s a Watcher?” Frank said. His eyes were locked on Cara as she fluttered to the back room with the ticket in tow.
I waved my hand dismissively. “Edgar’s a Watcher. I’ll tell you about them later. Let me give you a ride home.”
Frank took a shaky step toward the front door.
“I’m parked out back,” I said and sneezed again. “Oh God, shoot me.”
He turned toward the back room. I put my hand out to give him some support and walked him to the back.
“Sit down for a second. I think some sugar might help with the shock.”
He pulled out a chair at the small, round Formica table and collapsed into it. His head was constantly shaking back and forth. Frank reached out for the bag of Oreos I pulled from the closet. I followed it up with a cola and all he said was, “Thanks.” He almost curled up into a ball when Foster landed on the table beside him.
I grinned and said, “Frank, this is Foster. Foster, Frank.”
“Greetings, Frank!” Foster said.
Frank nodded weakly and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Come on Frank, you already knew vampires were real. Are fairies really that surprising?”
He stared at his hands and shook his head. I’m pretty sure it was a shake of disbelief more than an actual response.
“This is the new guy?” Foster said.
“Yep.”
“Mom doesn’t like him.”
“I gathered. You know he’s sitting right there?”
Foster shrugged. “You know Mom’s never going to let you keep him.”
“Well, if someone wants to keep the cu siths, someone should convince her Frank should work here.”
Foster stared at me for awhile before he said, “Damn. You’re good.”
***
I sighed as the antihistamines started to break up the explosion of crap in my sinuses.
“What’s wrong with you?” Frank said as I led him out the back door.
“Allergies. Fairy dust is a bitch. Regular dust? No problem. Fairy dust? Stand the hell back.”
“But you live with them.”
“Well, they don’t normally explode like a pollen bomb.” As we got closer to my car I stopped. “That’s a pisser.”
“What?” Frank said.
“Flat tire.” I kicked the front driver’s side tire.
“Um, Damian?” Frank said as he walked to the passenger side.
“Yeah?”
“You’ve got four flat tires.”
“Goddamn vamps!” I blew out a breath and shook my head. There were four uniform slashes on each tire’s sidewall from vampire claws, or possibly a very determined gerbil.
We went back inside and sat down at the small table again while I called a cab for Frank. He collapsed into a chair once more and began phase two of The Assault on Oreo Mountain. Cara retired to the clock while Frank eyed the room behind a small fortress of cookies, nervously watching for more rogue fairies.
“I’ll leave you to recover from your … incident,” Foster said.