Fairyville (8 page)

Alex brought her attention back to him by the simple act of flipping a page in his notebook. "Did you notice anything odd? Anyone who might have spoken to Mrs. Pruitt? Either to witness her acting strangely, or maybe someone who could have given her the idea that her real son was gone?"

Dr. Kerry leaned back in the armchair, apparently not having thought of that. After a moment, she shook her head reluctantly. "It was a quiet night except for Mrs. Pruitt coming into the ER in early labor. FG isn't like a big city hospital. We had a patient die that night, but that was just old age. They'd transferred him the week before from a nursing home." She rubbed her lips, her eyes focused five years ago. "I think that lady who talks to ghosts was sitting with him, the one who's got a shop in town. We see her now and then, helping patients 'cross over.' " She made the quote marks with her fingers. "Honestly, though, I'm not sure that counts as odd in Fairyville."

Goosebumps prickled down Alex's arms. "Do you remember the woman's name?"

"Chloe something. No. Zoe. Zoe Clare, like clairvoyant. But she's nice for one of those weirdos. She told me my Grandma Ellen was watching over me. She sang the little song Grams used to put me to sleep with." Alisha's eyes went misty. "I wasn't even paying her. She just said Grams had asked her to pass it on. I don't think a woman like that would be putting crazy theories into Mrs. Pruitt's head."

"No doubt you're right." His throat gone tight, Alex closed his notebook and tucked it into his breast pocket. "Thanks so much for being patient with our questions."

Alisha Kerry looked surprised to see him rising from the couch, and maybe even disappointed. "You sure I can't offer you some ice tea before you go? It's hot out there."

Alex was sweltering where he was, despite the ranch's powerful AC. "We're good, but thank you for asking. We'll contact you if we have more questions."

"You can have my pager," Alisha said, scribbling the number on the corner of an old magazine.

Alex accepted the scrap of torn paper.

"Thank you," he said, not meeting her eyes this time. She wasn't being obvious, but he still knew what he'd find in her expression, and it had nothing to do with Oscar Pruitt's parentage. If he'd met her in a bar, he'd probably have encouraged her. Alisha Kerry was his type in a lot of ways. Smart, pretty, hungry for human connection. Most of all, she didn't seem to have a lot of expectations. She was the kind of woman he could spend a weekend with, the kind who might wish he'd stick around, but who wouldn't bother crying when he left.

Alex always left. That was a constant you could take to the bank.

His lip curled in self-contempt as he and Bryan escaped into the bright sunshine. Sweat immediately popped out beneath his clothes, but it felt better than being inside that gloomy house. When he opened the door to the Audi, the metal handle nearly burned his skin. The interior was too hot to get in.

"Well, that didn't get us very far," Bryan observed across the Audi's roof. "She confirmed what we suspected. Lizanne Pruitt is nuts."

Alex stood in the street with the car doors open, a hook of memory tugging at his consciousness. A red-tailed hawk floated on a thermal high above the slightly shabby suburban homes. The memory was something to do with babies being expected to die but then recovering.

He pulled out his cell phone as it came to him.

"I have to call my mother," he explained to Bryan. "I'll be done in a few minutes."

Amanda Goodbody lived in San Diego. She'd moved there after her youngest son had been metaphorically run out of Fairyville on a rail. Though she loved all her boys, Alex was her baby. His behavior fifteen years ago might have disappointed her, but she adored him no matter what. She'd had a hard time forgiving people who couldn't find it in themselves to forgive him.

She picked up after the second ring.

"Sweetie!" she cried. "How lovely to hear your voice!"

"You haven't heard it yet," he teased, turning slightly away from Bryan. Taking the hint, though it hadn't been deliberate, Bryan got into the sun-baked car.

"I saw it on the caller ID! Thanks again for my phone. I'm really enjoying it. I'm in the garden talking to you!"

Alex felt his heart well up with love with her, picturing her among her beloved peonies. "I'm glad you like the present, though I don't know how I'll top it for your next birthday."

"You don't have to," she assured him. "I'll still be grateful for it then. Your father says I spend so much time talking on it, he thinks I've been reborn as a teenager."

"Good." Alex propped his hips back against the hot metal of car. "Mom, I have a question I need to ask. You used to tell me a story about when I was born, about how I got sick in the hospital."

"Lord, yes," she said. "That was a terrible time. You were a preemie, and that Fairyville General wasn't the showplace it is today. You picked up some sort of antibiotic-resistant infection: nosocomial something or other, they called it. I remember sitting by your incubator hour after hour, knowing it must be bad because the nurses didn't kick me out. You were just a quivering, hairless kitten, too weak to cry, and me praying and praying until I thought my prayer would fall off."

"But I got better."

"Yes, you did, and to this day nobody quite knows why. I remember nodding off with your tiny fist clenched around my pinkie, and then when I woke up you were all right. The nurses thought it was wishful thinking, but when I finally convinced them to check your vitals, they were crying right along with me."

"So you actually thought I would die."

"Yes, I did, and I suspect that's part of the reason you're precious to me now."

Alex shoved his hand through his hair, unsure where to go with this next.

"Why do you want to know, sweetie?" his mother asked into the pause. "I hope your doctor hasn't found something wrong."

"It's a case," Alex said. "Just a thread I wanted to track down. I'm healthy as a horse, like always."

"Well, I'm sure you'll solve whatever it is. You tell that nice Bryan fellow 'hello' from me."

Alex smiled, because Bryan was always that 'nice Bryan fellow' to his mom.

"I will," he promised, then said "I love you" and hung up.

His hands were shaking just a little when he slid the key into the ignition.

"Everything all right?" Bryan asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Just a weird coincidence."

Except his gut was telling him it was more than that. He thought of his older brothers: Jason, Mark, and Steve. None of them had caused his mom the trouble Alex had. All of them had played sports, but none had excelled to the extent that Alex did. They were TV warriors now, every one slowly going soft. They'd all settled down with nice, cookie-baking wives, whom they seemed to have no trotible being faithful to. Alex doubted they'd kissed a man on the cheek other than their father, much less gone adventuring the way Alex had. Hell, the idea that Alex worked for himself was exotic enough for them. Alex loved his brothers, but there were huge portions of his life that were as alien from theirs as the Milky Way.

I'm different from them
, he thought, his stomach clenching uneasily.
Probably as different as Oscar Pruitt is from his relatives
.

"Where to now?" Bryan asked, his tone carefully light.

Alex considered swinging by the hospital to see if they could track down more former staff. His other choice was to find Zoe. See what she might have noticed with her "extra" senses on the night Oscar was born.

These ideas had barely run through his mind before he dismissed them—the latter because he wasn't ready to face his old high school flame, and the former because he didn't hold out much hope for it paying off. This case was already steeped in Fairyville weirdness. His mother's confidence notwithstanding, they'd never solve it by following the book. No, they'd have to rely on subtler forms of guidance.

Like maybe praying for a decent lead.

He shook his head at the thought. His focus was all over the place today. He needed to get himself together before they tackled anything.

"We're going back to the inn," he decided. "I need to think for a while."

He glanced at Bryan just as the other man turned his face to the window. Bryan's elbow was on the armrest, his hand covering his sensual, half-Italian mouth. Despite the barrier, Alex could tell he was smiling. The knowing expression made Alex realize he was warm from more than the near-century temperatures. His zipper was clutching his cock a good bit tighter than it had before.

It seemed Bryan had guessed what his partner needed besides "thinking."

Magnus lived in what humans colorfully termed an "earth ship." It was a small one-bedroom house with its backside dug into the ground, built with recycled materials like automobile tires and cans. Solar panels enhanced the energy conservation of the three-foot walls, but living green hadn't been his incentive for buying it.

His incentive for buying it had been the unobstructed view of the town's red rocks. Fairy was a lush, green cradle, cloying in its sweetness. This landscape reminded him he wasn't there, reminded him, too, that the Earth itself was a power object.

Tonight he was more pleased than ever that nothing stood between him and the stark formation called the Giant's Teeth—nothing except the scrub and dirt of national park land.

He watched both through the single window that ran the length of his home, drinking in the beauty of the sunset until the last blood-red glimmer disappeared and the land went black.

When it did, he couldn't restrain a shiver. His soul felt as if a similar shadow had snapped over it.

"You won't lose her," he said quietly, his fingers pressed to the sun-warmed glass. "She's still your friend."

He shut his eyes to the darkness. He'd known for some time that he loved Zoe, but he hadn't known how deeply until she turned away today. Friendship truly wasn't enough to ease the ache inside him, but it was better than never seeing her again.

"Stop," he whispered, feeling the first tinge of hopelessness beginning to stain his spirit, like an octopus's ink clouding a sunlit sea. He knew the basic laws by which all realms operated, Fairy or otherwise. Hopelessness drew more reasons to lose hope as surely as magnets drew iron filings. Joy was its only cure, but sometimes—like now—joy needed help to bloom.

Knowing he couldn't reach for it on his own, he turned to the simplest magic, the one that demanded no rituals or spells, the first and purest any child of Fairy learned.

"Send me sweeter thoughts," he murmured to the Will-Be. "I am the child of your maker, and I am willing to receive."

The Will-Be wasn't a being or a realm. It was a sphere of influence, discrete unto itself but overlapping the worlds of matter and spirit. The Will-Be was the nonplace where wishes first began coming true. Magnus pictured it as a limitless metaphysical storehouse for possibilities that hadn't yet taken form. Every desire—assuming its birth had been intense and focused—existed, ghostlike, in this not-quite-real domain, waiting for its summoner to welcome it. The way its summoner did this was to embrace two things. The first was faith in the mechanism that brought desires into being. The second was belief that the summoner was worthy of the gift. So long as these qualities could be sufficiently sustained, no desire was too big for the Will-Be to gratify.