It was probably his imagination, but three bubbles looked like they were breaking off from the others to drift toward Alex and Zoe—which was impossible when he thought about it, because wasn't the breeze blowing in the
opposite
direction?
"Here," he said, struggling to free the blanket from under their feet. "If someone's coming, you should wear this."
He was too late. The damn bubbles sped up as if they knew he was trying to shield her. Two burst on her shoulder before he could pull her behind him.
"Ugh," said Zoe as a third actually followed her around him and burst in her face. The smoke clung to her skin for a second, like a ghostly squid had latched onto her. Then—hard as it was to credit—the smoke seemed to disappear into her pores. Zoe scrubbed at her face with the shirt he'd finally handed her.
"Doesn't that figure," she said in a disgusted tone. "Someone blows a bubble full of nastiness, and it breaks on me. My life is just too crappy for words!"
"Of course it's not," Alex said, amazed to hear her speak this way.
Zoe's mouth twisted. "It's true. The world is a dark, dark place. Full of liars and disappointment. Full of more crap than any person should have to take. I don't know why I didn't see it before. I must have been too stupid, too weak and stupid to face the truth. Nobody can help us. Not angels. Not fairies. Assuming they weren't some delusion I made up. Anyway, they don't care. They're hiding in my freaking purse. We're stuck out here in the crap pile all by ourselves."
"Zoe!" Alex said in shock, gripping her shoulders in the hope of shaking her out of whatever strange fit this was. "You know you don't believe that. You always look on the bright side!"
"Puke the bright side," she said.
Alex was trying to get beyond a wordless stammer when every hair on his nape stood up.
It's time to come home, son
, said a voice that ran into his ears like acid.
Alex spun in a circle to see where the speaker was, but everywhere and nowhere was the best he could guess. Even Zoe's purse, which was now wriggling in a truly disturbing fashion, didn't seem to be the source of the sound.
"Did you hear that?" he asked Zoe, goose bumps chasing across his skin. "It sounded like someone was talking right in my ear."
Zoe wrinkled her nose and shook her head doubtfully.
You can't keep her
, the voice continued.
I'm not going to let this human be the ball and chain that traps you here
.
With no one visible to speak to, Alex turned to the pack of beachball-size bubbles bobbing by the falls. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
Don't bother pretending. I saw the way you touched her. I know you think you care.
"I do care. But I have no idea why you do."
Zoe clutched his arm, her eyes round with a fear that belonged to her no more than her earlier self-disgust. This, after all, was the woman who'd faced a room full of falling rocks without turning a hair. "Alex, who are you talking to?"
"You don't hear that?"
She can't hear what's meant for the ears of our kind alone. Let her go, Magnus, or I'll make sure there's nothing left of her to care about. Take a good look in her eyes. You can see the woman you love is already slipping away. What do you think will happen if I loose the rest of my spells on her? Who will she be when all her confidence is gone?
"No!" yelled a voice so shrill it made his teeth ache. Alex's heart nearly had a spasm. A tiny winged man, no bigger than his finger, had popped into the air in front of him. Alex blinked hard, but he was still there. He was wearing a little green outfit and waving a sword.
"You can't harm our Zoe!" he cried. "Florrie, go call the queen!"
Omigod
, Alex thought, staggering back a step from this vision.
They are real
.
He had no chance to catch his breath, because an instant later the air was filled with hundreds of fairies, their wings buzzing like a horde of bees as they flew in perfect formation. They all carried tiny swords, as if they'd raided a cocktail party of froufrou drinks—except that these swords weren't colored plastic. These swords were shining stingers of steel.
"To me!" cried a lovely soprano from the vanguard of the attacking force. "We must break the spell bubbles with our swords."
They dive-bombed the things en masse, darting in and away so quickly not a single fairy was splashed. Despite their success, Alex could see the danger wasn't over. Once the bubbles were broken, the dark smoke remained, coiling together in an angry mass.
An oily claw of vapor reached out for the nearest jewel-colored Tinkerbell, missing her by inches.
"Sing!" ordered the soprano fairy, the queen to judge by her twinkling crown. "Black magic cannot withstand the sound of fairy joy."
At once the fairies burst into song, and it was as if the most beautiful boys and girls choir the universe had ever known were singing the most beautiful music ever composed. Alex began to weep at the sound of it. If the voice he'd heard behind the falls had been acid, this was pure love, the kind of love that didn't know how to be disappointed, the kind that loved for the simple pleasure of being loving, the kind that asked nothing except to be allowed to love more. He found himself wishing his mother were there to hear it. She'd understand why his soul was flying. She'd understand why this felt like home.
He opened his mouth, and a note came out, not a song, just a note that opened his whole body—his throat, his heart, the channels of energy that ran down his legs—as if he'd rooted in the earth and drawn up its power. The tingle of it streaming through him was almost painful.
A screech of outrage cut through the sparkle-clouded air, too harsh to have come from Zoe's fairies.
This isn't over
, warned the voice behind the falls.
You won't get away with betraying your liege—again
!
Happily, the voice appeared to be mistaken. As the fairies' song continued, the smoke shrank to the size of a pea and then disappeared, which caused a concerted shout of triumph to burst out from Zoe's rescuers. The noise sounded like The Chipmunks winning the Superbowl.
Alex was still reeling from all he'd seen when the fairy with the purple wings and the yellow crown left the celebration to fly up to him.
She hovered no more than a foot away, twinkling like some acid-induced Disney hallucination, studying him with an intensity that left him tongue-tied. His face felt odd where his tears were drying, but he didn't bother to wipe them off, not when his measure was being taken by something that might be able to turn him into Mickey Mouse.
"You sang with us," the fairy finally said in a musing tone. "That was considerate. You may have my name if you like."
"I would be honored," he said a little breathlessly.
Apparently, this was the correct response. She nodded regally. "I am Queen Rajel. You may call on me if you need help."
"I think maybe Zoe does."
Zoe was looking dazed. Queen Rajel flew up and down and around her body like a dragonfly physician—studying her aura, Alex supposed. Zoe didn't move except to rub her eyes.
"She will recover," the queen pronounced once she was finished. "She didn't soak up enough of the doubt spell for it to last. If she hadn't had a weak spot, it wouldn't have affected her this much." She darted back to Alex's face and peered at him sternly. "You must tell her what the evil one said to you. Our Zoe needs to be warned."
"I will," Alex said, "but who was—"
He was talking to empty air. Every fairy in the glade had vanished simultaneously.
Boy
, Alex thought, unable to form a single thought more rational than that.
Zoe tried to remember what had happened after she and Alex made love, but her mind was fuzzy, as if she'd been woken too abruptly from a troubling dream. She remembered seeing the bubbles, and Alex shaking her, and a terrible ache like an unsuspected wound opening in her chest. Hurt had issued from it dark as oil smoke to blot out the sky.
She was a stupid, stupid woman. Couldn't even fall in love with a man who wouldn't break her heart.
"Zoe." Alex squeezed her wrist. They sat in his Audi outside her gallery. Corky was cuddled against her breasts, his cold pink nose tickling her throat. His purr was a low vibration under her stroking fingers, much more comforting than her thoughts. Alex turned off the car's engine.
She didn't remember him driving here. She'd been lost in that awful dream where the whole world seemed horrible. She rubbed one hand uncomfortably down her thigh, like she had something stuck to her energy that needed peeling off.
"You should take a shower," Alex said. "Use that sea salt scrub you used to like."
It was exactly what she'd have thought of if she'd been in her right mind. The crystals in the sea salt cleansed more than the body.
"I will," she said, and began to open the door.
"Wait," said Alex, stopping her. When she settled back in the leather seat, his expression turned sheepish. "Your, um, fairies told me to make sure you knew what I'd heard."
The idea that her fairies had been speaking to him was almost as strange as the tale he told. Zoe felt her eyes getting wider, but at least her amazement was serving to clear her mind.
"You're certain the name the voice called was
Magnus
?"
"I'm certain, and there can't be that many Magnuses hereabouts. She also called him her son."
Zoe pinched her lip. "I don't know if Magnus's mother is alive or dead."
"You think this might be a ghost?"
"I don't know. I didn't think a poltergeist could fill a room with rocks. Maybe I've been underestimating what the local spirits can do."
"Please don't start calling yourself stupid again."
He looked so worried she had to be amused. "I won't. Though I do wish I'd seen Queen Rajel and her troops attack. That must have been a sight with all their little swords."
"It was." He rubbed his chin on the back of his hand. "I feel like I ought to be apologizing. I mean, I always believed you were talking to something when you talked to fairies. I just didn't know they were really…
fairies
,"
Zoe
smiled at his consternation. "I should go. Take that shower." She hesitated. "Will you and Bryan be okay at the inn?"
Alex's face flushed a shade darker. "Bryan is looking for a new hotel. I told him I'd meet him at the Longhorn Grill after I saw you."
"He's liable to guess what happened between us, you know."
"I know."
"He's also liable not to like it, in case you hadn't figured out how serious he is about you."
Alex gripped the wheel and stared straight ahead. "I know that, too." The skin across his knuckles whitened. "I'm sorry, Zoe. I always seem to get what ought to be simple tangled up."
Zoe sighed quietly. If she'd doubted Alex was hung up on Bryan, too, she couldn't now.
"It's all right," she said, reaching for the door handle. "It's not like I know what I want, either."
By the time Zoe walked back to her own car, she realized there was one thing she knew she wanted: straight answers from her manager.
Refusing to consider whether getting them was a good idea, she drove to Magnus's Earth-friendly earthship house. She'd only been here once before, for a wine and Cheetos party he'd thrown for his proteges. It had been their first Halloween together, about a month after he'd started managing her. Magnus had been a little high on salsa music and Mexican beer. He'd danced with her in the moonlight with the red rocks stretching out on the horizon and the other guests laughing inside. He'd called her a fairy princess and threatened to lock her in a magic pumpkin so he could keep her all to himself. His words had seemed more silliness than flirtation, but if Zoe could date her crush on him to any moment, that was the one. He'd made her feel special. Not strange. Not gifted. Just special.
Of course, it had been some other woman he'd spent the next full moon with.
She tried to wipe the memory from her face as she proceeded up his succulent-lined walk. She didn't need to be thinking about why she was an idiot when she faced him.
His thick front door swung open at her knock. Surprised that he'd be letting his nice cool air out, Zoe called his name and walked into his long glassed hall. The combined living room and kitchen opened to her left, its ceiling slanting up fifteen feet to meet the tall windows. Magnus sat on a bright blue, modern couch in its shadowed rear, his torso canted over his sprawled knees. He looked up as she entered, but didn't speak.
Strangely, Zoe found she couldn't speak, either. Magnus didn't look like himself. Oh, he was still handsome, still sexy enough to make her grind her teeth against the unfairness of the universe, but the crackling energy that made him
him
had obviously sunk to a depressed ebb. As she approached, she saw he was flipping a DVD case for
The Simpsons
over and over in his hands, as if the thought of putting the disc into the player and possibly laughing was too much for him.
Even more telling, a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream was melting into soup on the coffee table next to his brass replica of Aladdin's lamp. Magnus was a junk food junkie, but the spoon didn't even look like he'd picked it up.
When she was close enough to have touched him, he sagged back into the couch. His eyes were hollow, his five o'clock bristle way darker than Alex's. Zoe didn't think she'd ever seen him unshaven. Her insides squirmed with interest, which—after the rather remarkable boinkfest she'd had with Alex—made her want to eat that ice cream herself.
No one who'd refused to have actual sex with her should have the right to look that mouth-wateringly masculine.
She supposed her expression wasn't the friendliest. Magnus stared at her for a long, tired moment before his chest lifted on a sigh. "I have nothing to say to you," he said. "I wish I did, but I don't."
"Why don't you wait until I ask my questions first."
"As you wish." He threw
The Simpsons
listlessly onto the cushion beside him, the opposite of an invitation to sit.