Authors: Ruth Vincent
It was so recently that I’d made the trip out to his club—only three days ago—and yet it seemed like a different lifetime. If he was grateful to me for what I’d done, maybe he would help me find a magical healing fix for Eva.
I grabbed a pen from the cup on the counter, unfurled the message scroll and turned it over to the blank side. Weighing down the ends with two coffee mugs so I could write, I stared at the blank little sheet—like an oversized fortune-cookie slip.
What should I tell him? His place or mine? I honestly didn’t know which would be better—which would be safer.
The club was at least public; then again, if the cops got wind that I’d gone there—it would look bad for my case—they’d think I was conspiring with Obadiah.
“My place, tonight, 10:00 p.m.,” I wrote on the slip and stuffed it back into the vial around the pigeon’s leg.
The pigeon cooed enigmatically.
I hoped I wouldn’t regret this.
I
jumped when the buzzer to our apartment rang. Never mind that I was the one who had invited Obadiah over.
Hesitantly, I got up from my chair.
Maybe it wasn’t Obadiah, I thought. Maybe he’d decided not to come after all. It could be just a delivery guy, lost, searching for some other apartment, I told myself, walking towards the door.
I lifted back the little silver flap of the peephole.
There was Obadiah, standing on the welcome mat.
I peered through the tiny opening, watching him.
He was dressed more casually than when I’d last seen him. Still, the cravat tied beneath the open V of his shirt gave him an old-world style, even in blue jeans. He was shifting from foot to foot, his hands in his pockets. I wondered if he knew I was standing right here on the other side of the door. I wondered if he could hear me breathing.
Then I saw him momentarily adjust the cravat at his neck and smooth down his wayward black hair.
He was trying to look nice for me.
Huh.
He straightened, and I swore he peered right through the peephole. He must have seen me, because his eyes brightened.
A peculiar feeling filled me as I heard him call my name.
Praying I was making the right choice, I opened the door.
Obadiah’s face broke out into a smile when he saw me. Then he straightened his posture, clasped his hands behind his back, and the mask of reserve came down over him again.
“I’m terribly sorry to bother you at home,” he said. “I really wanted to call. But our phones . . .”
“ . . . might be tapped. I know. You make a good point,” I interrupted him. “Well, come in.”
He walked past me towards the rack of coats and I could smell him—the spice of his cologne, old-fashioned and refined, mixed with something warm and masculine. I felt myself flush and suddenly I didn’t know what to do with my hands.
Act normal,
I told myself.
Take his coat, do what you invited him over to do—pick his brain about magic solutions for Eva.
But I’d involuntarily smiled as I looked at him, and my cheeks flushed.
I noticed he glanced around the apartment, taking everything in, in his quick, intelligent way. He was probably learning all sort of things about me and Eva from our apartment—the cheap furniture, the posters we’d hung on the wall, what books we kept on our shelves. I kind of wondered what sort of judgments he was forming about me from seeing all this, but he didn’t say anything.
“Sorry the place is such a mess,” I said, eying the stack of dishes Eva had left in the sink. It was a sight that used to annoy me. Now it just gave me a deep pang of loneliness in my chest. I couldn’t bring myself to do them—as if that would make it real that she was gone.
Obadiah waved his hand. “Mab, with all you’ve been through in the past three days, the last thing you need to do is apologize for the state of your housekeeping.”
“You want anything to drink?” I asked, awkwardly knitting my fingers.
“If you’re having . . .” he said in his gentlemanly way.
I opened the kitchen cabinets. Truth be told, I didn’t drink—maybe it was the Fey in me, but I didn’t react well to alcohol. Eva had some bottles tucked over the fridge, but I didn’t know what they were, and I didn’t want to open them without her being there. Even though—knowing Eva—she would have been thrilled to know I had a boy over.
I eyed Eva’s cocoa tin sitting on the countertop, just where she’d left it the other day. I’d never used it—Eva was the one who was good with food stuff, but on impulse I reached for it.
“I’ll make us hot chocolate,” I said.
I fingered the tin. It was one of those fancy gourmet varieties, with gold swirling cursive on the label. I poured milk into a pan and began to heat it, squinting at the scrawling directions. I opened the cocoa mix. A chocolaty smell wafted up. I closed my eyes and inhaled, trying to calm my nerves.
Obadiah took a seat, watching me. The little Ikea table looked small and flimsy with his tall, hulking torso and long legs stretched out underneath it, like a child’s table that he’d gamely sat down at.
“Have you talked to the hospital?” he asked in his rich, articulate voice; I could hear the genuine concern in his tone.
“I just called again twenty minutes ago,” I said, stirring the milk. “The nurse said Eva is out of the E.R. now, which I guess is good, but they say she’s in a coma. They’re going to let her have visitors starting tomorrow, though.”
“Well, that’s good, I guess . . . I mean, that she can have visitors.”
“Yeah . . .”
A beat of awkward silence passed between us. There was so much I wanted to ask him I didn’t even know where to begin.
He spoke first. “I have been trying to figure out who gave Elixir to your friend. I talked to my staff. They said they saw Eva with a young man.”
“But was it Ramsey?” I asked.
“I asked my staff and no one caught his name.”
“What did they say he looked like?”
If I found out he lied to me about where he was that night
. . . My fists clenched.
“Tall, skinny, hipster was all they said.” Obadiah shrugged.
“That could be Ramsey.”
“That could be half of Brooklyn.” Obadiah sighed. “But what makes me suspicious is my Wolfman employee, Reuben—he said the light flashed ‘human’ when the man entered, but that he smelled funny, like no human Reuben had ever encountered.”
“Ramsey told me he never took Eva to the club. I don’t know whether or not I believe him.”
“I don’t know either,” Obadiah replied, “but whether it was him or someone else, I have no idea how they got the Elixir to give her. I checked every vial in my possession after you left, and none of them are missing—that’s what’s so strange about it. But rest assured, Mab”—he looked up at me—“I will get to the bottom of this. I don’t let bad things happen on my watch.”
I studied his dark eyes, so earnest and determined, and I felt touched that he cared so much about what happened to my best friend. I mean, who was Eva to him? At first, I thought maybe he was just trying to cover his ass, since the accident happened at his club. But the more I looked at him the more I realized he was serious—he cared. I swallowed at the lump in my throat.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
The milk was finally hot. I whisked in the cocoa mix and began to pour it into the mugs. It was hard to pour out of a pot. My hands were trembling. The scalding-hot milk sloshed out—spilling all over the counter and burning my hand.
“Dammit!”
“Here, let me,” said Obadiah, rising from his chair. Suddenly he was behind me, his arms around mine, almost touching, as he took the pot from my hands and poured the two mugs without spilling a drop.
Was this man never nervous? Or was he just never awkward, unlike me?
“Thanks,” I muttered.
He stepped back from me and our eyes met. He was so close I could feel his sigh on my neck. We lingered for an instant, and then he stepped away, sitting down in the chair by the kitchen table again with the grace of a panther.
He studied me, his gaze searching.
“The detective offered you a deal, didn’t he?”
I froze with the mug still in my hand. I nodded.
“And you refused?”
He sounded stunned as he said it, incredulous.
“You thought I would have said yes to something like that?”
Obadiah didn’t respond. His eyes veered off towards the darkened window and I could tell the answer was yes.
“You really thought I would put the blame on an innocent person?” I said, feeling angry. “You don’t think too highly of me, do you?”
Obadiah turned and looked at me.
“I think much higher of you now.”
It was a real, sincere compliment. And compliments always made me uncomfortable. I blushed and shuffled with the mug.
“Anyone would have done the same under the circumstances,” I said quickly, turning away from him, busying myself with the steaming chocolate. “Look, I’m going out of my mind right now, worried about my best friend—but I was with you when she fell—I know you didn’t push her.”
“Most people would have said I did,” Obadiah replied. “They’d testify against me to save their own ass, and I wouldn’t blame them.”
“But that’s horrible; that’s lying!”
“True, but plenty of people do it all the time.”
I shrugged, but I knew he was right.
“I couldn’t have lived with myself if I let you take the blame,” I said quietly.
I took a seat beside him at the table.
I could feel his eyes on my skin like a palpable heat. It was as if he was trying to see inside me, see into the part of my being I kept hidden—that little kernel of my old self that was just barely still alive—the fairy part.
“You know you could go to prison for this if, god forbid, your roommate were to . . .”
I didn’t want him to say “die,” so I cut him off.
“Yeah, I know,” I said quickly. “Reggie, my boss, thinks I’m being an idiot. I’m sure my parents are going to freak out when I tell them too.”
“Maybe you are being foolish. I mean, you’re willing to risk jail time for someone you just met three days ago?”
Why was he playing devil’s advocate against himself? I didn’t understand it.
“It’s not for you, don’t flatter yourself,” I said. “It’s just because it’s the right thing to do.”
I gazed down at the floor. Obadiah’s arm was stretched across the table, so near mine that I almost brushed it when I went to grab my mug. The steaming-hot smell of chocolate rose up from the cup and I gazed down into it—it gave me an excuse not to look at him, but I could feel he was staring at me.
“I’ve never known a fairy to be like you,” he said at last. “Most fairies wouldn’t stick out their neck like that for each other, not to mention a human.”
“You have a pretty low opinion of my kind, don’t you?”
He scowled, but didn’t say anything, raising the cup to his lips.
“Look, after what you said they did to you, I can’t blame you. But we’re not all like that.”
“I’m not saying fairies can’t be good, kind, generous,” Obadiah replied, his voice rich and soothing, setting down the cup. “I saw it for myself, even as a prisoner. But they’re good to their own, kind and generous to those like themselves. For a fairy to help a stranger, a human . . . that’s . . .” His voice trailed off, and I could tell he could still barely believe it. “I just never would have expected it, that’s all. When you entered my club, I didn’t know how a fairy could also be human. Maybe I’m starting to understand it now. What you did, Mab—that was
human
decency.”
There was a beat of silence between us and I swallowed hard.
“Well, I’m glad I could help improve your opinion of fairies,” I said awkwardly. I pushed away my empty mug. “There’s something I wanted to ask you,” I added, looking up at him.
For a moment, I was distracted from what I was about to say. His dark eyes were so earnest, so full of empathy as he gazed across the table at me.
“The reason I asked you to come over here is that I thought, if Elixir could cause Eva’s fall, could it help heal her too? Could we do a healing spell, if we gave her more Elixir? You said you use magic to help people. Well, Eva needs our help right now.”
Obadiah was quiet for a moment, and then shook his head.
“We could try,” he said at last, folding his hands, “but unfortunately, there’s no guarantee it will work. You said she was in a coma, right?”
I nodded, and thinking about it, my initial optimism began to flicker. We couldn’t just give Elixir to Eva if she was unconscious—she couldn’t hold the intention required for doing a spell. But what if
we
took the Elixir and tried to do a healing spell on her?
“Could we do it for her?” I asked desperately. “Could we hold an intention for her?”