by Kimbra Swain
Sight for Sore Eyes
Fairy Tales of a Trailer Park Queen, Book 8
Kimbra Swain
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Kimbra Swain
Sight for Sore Eyes, Fairy Tales of a Trailer Park Queen, Book 8 ©2018, Kimbra Swain / Crimson Sun Press, LLC
[email protected]
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.
Book Cover by: https://www.ts95studios.com
Formatting by Serendipity Formats: https://serendipityformats.wixsite.com/formats
Editing by Carol Tietsworth: https://www.facebook.com/Editing-by-Carol-Tietsworth-328303247526664/
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
A Note From The Author
Character List
Other Minor Characters
Acknowledgments
About the Author
“Well?” I asked, staring at the man across from me. He rocked back and forth once under my gaze. From time to time, I could be very intimidating. However, I had no intentions of harming Troy Maynard. But, this was a conversation that should have been had long before now.
We sat together in the living room of my new farmhouse. Levi, Winnie, Aydan and I had only been living here a week. Levi’s father had been staying with us as a guest, as well. Seeing him drop by after we had been told he was dead was quite a shock to add to all the others in our recent experiences.
“Grace, I don’t know what to tell you other than when we got to the back of the trailer, Robin had Winnie. She was going to kill her unless Dylan got in the jar. You know he went willingly because he loved Winnie,” he said.
“Loves Winnie,” I corrected.
He shook his head. “Loves Winnie. Right. Well, he shrank down to a small black bird, then flew into the jar. She put a spell on the kids so they wouldn’t remember it and dismissed me.”
“He died in that jar,” I said.
“Yes, but you know he’s just ash until we can get him back. Then he can rise,” Troy said. He held an empty glass of tea with both hands between his spread legs. The ice clicked around in the tumbler as he moved it. I was making him very nervous. Amanda didn’t come with him, but Mark did. He was outside with Winnie and Levi. The two brownies zipped around them leaving sparkling trails behind them. Aydan slept quietly in a bassinet sitting next to me. He was a delightful child that rarely cried. I was blessed. Except for the part where his father was trapped in a jar, possibly already dead.
Standing up, I walked away from the twitchy werewolf to watch the children playing outside. “The jar broke in Summer when I got it back from Rhiannon. He didn’t rise,” I said. After looking back to when the jar exploded, I suspected the jar was a fake.
I watched his reflection in the window. He closed his eyes tightly. His body shook with a sob for a moment, then he sat the empty glass on the coffee table. Running his hand through his hair, I could tell the news disturbed him. Troy and Dylan had been partners in the Sheriff’s Department. Dylan willingly flew into that jar the night that Troy and Amanda got married. He missed his best friend, but the news I’d just delivered broke his hope.
My hope was very nearly broken as well. The hope that one day Dylan would return to us.
“Damn. I’m so sorry, Grace,” he managed to say before his voice cracked.
“It wasn’t your fault. I don’t blame you. I just wanted to know what happened in that trailer,” I said turning to him.
“What can I do?” he asked.
“More than anything I need you to do your job. I need Amanda to continue to coordinate the shifters moving to town. I need to know who is who. The fairy influx has slowed since Fordele and his people arrived, but we are still getting new shifters. I can feel the fairies in the town, but with the shifters I actually have to get a look at them to know what they are. I just want everyone to be safe. We have to put this thing with Dylan aside for the bigger picture,” I said. That bigger picture was a tapestry woven through time with tales of kings, knights, sorceresses, and bards. I still hadn't figured out how a trailer park queen managed to work herself into that portrait.
Now that I fully understood the bigger picture, I knew what I had to do. I knew Winter needed a monarch. If it had to be me, then so be it. However, taking it back from Brockton wouldn’t be an easy task. Not to mention, my heart was in Shady Grove. I loved this town and these people. It was my sworn duty to protect them. I would do it or die trying. It’s an old cliché, but it was one that applied in this situation.
When I looked at my children, I knew that I had to make this world a better place for fairy kind and shifters alike, even the humans that interacted with them like my Winnie. If that meant here or in the Otherworld, I was going to do it. Hopefully, I’d do it better than my father had, which seemed to be the whole point. I think in the end he saw it that way, too.
A burst of noise came from the back door as two six-year-old children ran through the house. The pounding of their feet was accompanied by their laughter.
“Hey! No running inside,” Levi called out to them as they rushed up the stairs to Winnie’s room. Remy and the contractors managed to recreate the feel of her old room at Dylan’s house. Unicorns and rainbows.
“This is such a girl room. Gag!” I heard Mark say. Kids. That was about the only thing that would make me smile these days.
“You can get out,” I heard Winnie reply.
“Wynonna Riggs, you be nice or I’ll get a switch,” I yelled up to her. Lord knows I’d never switch that child, but it was a good threat. Remy had completed the paperwork while I was gone to change her last name from Jones to Riggs. It was what Dylan had wanted. He had signed the papers long before the night he left us.
“Yes, ma’am,” she replied.
“Sorry,” I said, looking back to Troy.
“It’s fine. He missed her while she was gone,” he said.
“Grace, you need anything?” Levi asked. He had been my constant companion. Every time I turned around he was trying to get something for me or do something to help. God bless it. I don’t know what I’d do without him, but he was trying too hard. I couldn’t convince him otherwise. I stared at him for a moment too long. He picked up on what I was thinking immediately. “I’m only trying to help.”
“I know. The kids are fine. Sit with us,” I said. He walked over to sit on the couch next to
where Aydan was sleeping. He looked down into the crib. If all of us didn’t know better, you would have thought Aydan was his child as much as he watched after him and helped me with him. About the only thing he couldn’t do was feed him which required the boobs that Levi just didn’t have. Thank the gods below.
This time my bond with Levi was much different. Because I had offered my blood to him in return for his, we seemed more on the same level. A partnership that I didn’t expect to have. However, my bard was deeply changed to the point that even his aura felt different. He matured in the Otherworld, but not by choice. He still hadn’t shown me the scars that I knew were there. The emotional scars were evident, but I was sure I hadn’t seen all of what he kept wrapped up inside himself. I hoped that one day he would give that to me. Not because I needed it, but because he needed to do it. I just hoped it didn’t break me in the process. I couldn’t imagine what he endured in order to save Winnie.
“Is there anything else besides the jar?” I asked. “Anything that might clarify what happened?”
“I can’t think of anything,” Troy said. “I just don’t understand why he didn’t rise.”
“What jar?” Levi asked.
“When Robin was in the trailer with Winnie, she made Dylan get in a jar. With the lack of oxygen, he died, then turned to ash. When I was in the Otherworld, Rhiannon had a jar she claimed to be Dylan. I took it from her, but when it broke and the ashes were exposed to the air again, he didn’t rise. So, either Robin gave Rhiannon a fake jar, or he’s really gone,” I said.
Levi had something to tell me, but I wasn’t sure what it was. “Like a mason jar?” he asked.
“Yes, it was a blue-tinted one in fact,” I said.
“Grace, Brockton has a jar of ash,” Levi said.
Nestor held my hand tightly as my truck approached us. We stood in the middle of the road as we had once before. This time, we had the book, Levi’s songbook that we had retrieved from the Summer realm. It came along with Levi’s ex-girlfriend, Riley, who had laid low in town since we had returned. Riley always was a smart girl. I tried to attribute that to Jeremiah, not Rhiannon.
Our right hands were linked, but our left hands held the songbook between us. You would have thought we were in church sharing a hymnal. When we got it back and read the instructions, it was a matter of semantics. It wasn’t that Levi read the spell wrong or remembered it wrong. He had just interpreted it incorrectly. It seemed that the most powerful spells in the book required that you have the book with you. It was too big to carry around, but Mike, the Vaping Solomonar, was working on a solution for us. He had proven to have insight into things that I would never have expected. For example, if he hadn’t given me the blue quartz, Astor would be dead. I still hadn’t gotten the whole story as to how they chose him over Elaine. He wasn’t happy that his life was valued over a female, but I, for one, was glad it was him.
The truck approached us slowly, but I still tensed not trusting the driver. Astor was driving it. He and Levi had taken to each other pretty well after they argued about Levi casting a spell on him the day Aydan was born. Once they got it out of their system they became the best of friends. It wasn’t the same friendship Levi had with Dylan. I think in many ways Levi looked to Dylan as a mentor. Astor was a peer who was aware of the modern world but was not immersed in it. Levi had experience in this realm after introducing Finley to the modern world, now he was instructing the ginger knight, an instruction which included several driving lessons. I wasn’t confident in his skills. The tattoo on my arm flared with glowing red power as they approached. My brunette-haired glamour was firmly back in place now that I was back in Shady Grove.
“What’s that about?” Nestor asked feeling the power well up inside of me.
“Just in case Sir Knight’s driving skills aren’t up to par,” I said.
Nestor laughed, but I felt his hand tighten around mine.
The truck stopped short about five feet from us, then Astor jumped out to aid Levi. My bard approached, playing his song on his Lute since he had bashed the guitar on the last attempt at warding Shady Grove. Levi’s smile spread across his face in confidence that it would work this time. He felt a great sense of responsibility about the ward and had begged me several times to set up the necessary townsfolk to complete the spell After resting up from our trip to Summer and the birth of my child, we decided to attempt the spell once again.
Levi strummed the last note on his instrument, then placed his hand on the book as the last note petered out. Looking through my sight, I watched the protection ward pop into place. The thrum of power around us could be felt without sight. Nestor and I closed the book together completing the circle.
“Here goes nothing,” I said.
Nestor and I released hands, and I held on to the book.
The ward stayed in place.
“Yes!” Levi exclaimed, swinging the Lute onto his back.
“Well done, Bard,” Astor complimented him.
I blinked, then suddenly the intense tingle of fairy skin to skin contact made my knees week. Levi had me wrapped up in his strong arms. One of his hands rested on my neck sending the waves of connection through us. The intensity of our bond was much, much stronger this time around. Thankfully, there was no need to swap power. Otherwise, well, let’s just say that would have been a bad idea.
“You did it,” I whispered to him, trying to gather my wits.
“We did it,” he replied with a kiss to my cheek. “Thank you for believing in me.”
“Always,” I replied. Astor stood with his hands on his hips watching the exchange intently. He never once said anything to Levi or me, but every time Levi touched me, you could tell that it bothered the knight. He remained calm during all things which was part of the reason I found him attractive. Steady, confident, and strong. How could you not adore him? Even though I knew Astor’s affections for me were based on a myth, he still felt them truly. He wasn’t capable of a false thought. Neither Levi or I wanted to disrespect that. Basically, we didn’t talk about it. As for when Dylan returned, Astor might be disappointed, but I had the feeling that he would never truly show it other than through small mannerisms. A wrinkled forehead or the twitch of his hand. I’d had a week to watch him as he hovered around my house much like Levi. It was funny to watch them step on each other’s proverbial toes.
Just as quickly as Levi’s power had overwhelmed me, he withdrew it to shake hands with Nestor. We loaded into the truck and headed back into town. I watched as the tether to the book stretched from the barrier to it no matter which way we turned. Once we arrived at the sparkling vape shop, we deposited the book into its place in my vault. The tether to the barrier held, and I knew our town was finally closed off from the human world. Should anyone who didn’t belong here try to cross the barrier, Levi would know. And what Levi knew, I knew. Mostly.
We hurried home so that I could feed Aydan who, despite my will to keep him small, was growing by leaps and bounds. Tabitha took a look at him, and she said that it must be his father’s bloodline spurring his growth. Thankfully, he ate like a normal baby otherwise I was sure my breasts wouldn’t be able to keep up. My one-week-old baby looked to be one month old. Tabitha carefully tracked his growth so that we could stay on top of it. I didn’t know how I was going to explain his growth to Winnie who was excited about being a big sister. If this kept up, Aydan would be bigger and mature faster than she did.
“How is he?” Levi asked after Tabitha left. She was checking in on us every other day, if not more often depending on what we had going on in town.
“Great. Growing too fast,” I said.
“Mayor Jenkins asked about you today,” Levi said.
“I haven’t spoken to him since we got back. I suppose I should go into town and make the rounds,” I said. Honestly, this house felt nice and safe. I didn’t want to leave it, but there were things to be done.
“Everyone knows what you’ve been through,” Levi said.
“I kno
w, but still. If I’m going to do this, I’ve got to do it right. We need to get a council meeting scheduled and call Tennyson to bring any information he’s gotten from the Otherworld since we left,” I said. “Have you talked to him?”
“Yes,” he said. Levi had been taking a lot of responsibility for the town. After his captivity, I thought he might need time to recover, but he assured me that he needed to be proactive after the things that had happened with Brockton. A tale that he still wasn’t ready to tell. Our connection may be intense, but he could still hide what he wanted from me. I wouldn’t want to take that privacy from him, but I, as his Queen and his friend, worried about him.
“Did he have any new information?” I asked.
“He said he would come to talk to you in a couple of days. He’s out of town,” Levi said.
“Where?” I asked.
“He didn’t say. It doesn’t matter who he was in the life before this one. In this life, he’s a mob boss, Grace,” Levi said.
“I know,” I said as I placed Aydan down into his bassinet. It wouldn’t be long before it would be too small for him. “Where is Winnie?”
“She’s upstairs playing with Bramble and Briar. I made her a peanut butter sandwich for lunch,” he said.
“She’s so picky about what she eats,” I huffed.
“All kids her age are like that,” Levi said.
“I suppose,” I replied. “Not that I would know.”
“I was a kid once, so I remember,” Levi smiled.
