Chad and I both said, “Fine.”
So much for a chatty reunion with Grandpa.
What were you thinking, Allie? Oh, right. You weren’t thinking. As usual. In the awkward silence that followed, Chad stared at Grandpa Claude, who sipped his coffee and stared at me. I ignored them both and stared at the humongous menu, trying to corral my racing thoughts. I needed a plan. I couldn’t just blurt out, “Chad’s a faery and he thinks I’m one too.”
The waitress showed up. “What’ll it be, honey?”
I ordered ice tea. Chad looked at me and said, “Can I have a hot fudge sundae?”
I checked my wallet to make sure I had enough money and nodded. When the waitress left, I remembered my manners and asked my grandfather, “Are you feeling better?”
“You mean the cancer?” he said.
“Yes.”
“I’m in remission,” he said. “New experimental drug. The docs are using me for a lab rat.”
In fact, he did look much healthier than the last time I’d seen him. Even though his face looked gaunt, his skin had a healthy glow.
“Wow.” I tried to sound enthusiastic, but it felt phony. I had nothing in common with this man except for Faye, the daughter who hated him. “That’s great.”
Grandpa Claude’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “So, is that why you’re here? To check on my health?”
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Before I could stammer out an appropriate answer, his opaque black eyes turned fierce. He slapped the table with the flat of his hand. I jumped like a scared little bunny. Strangely, Chad just looked at him and smiled.
Grandpa Claude glanced over at Chad then back at me. “Stop playing games. You think I don’t know what he is?”
Chad shot me a smug look.
“I, uh, I . . . ”
“Spit it out, girl!”
Okay, so far, nobody had said the “F” word. Were we even on the same page? Could it be Grandpa Claude was talking about something else entirely? Time to find out.
I took a deep breath and jumped in with both feet.
“Faery?” I asked in a whisper, pointing my index finger at Chad.
The corner of Grandpa Claude’s mouth twitched in amusement. “Yeah,” he said. “Pure, unadulterated faery.”
The waitress was approaching. Chad stiffened, jerked his thumb in my direction and mouthed,
“Her too?”
Grandpa Claude’s smile vanished. He nodded once.
Chad jabbed a bony elbow into my side. “Told ya.”
In dazed silence, I watched the waitress unload the tray. “Anything else, sweetheart?” she asked my stern-looking grandfather.
Grandpa Claude? Sweetheart? I stifled a snicker. I was tempted to beg the waitress to stay because I had no idea what to say next.
Chad attacked his sundae with single-minded ferocity, barely coming up for air. I must have looked as stressed out as I felt because my grandfather took a bite of pie, and set his fork down. “Cat got your tongue?”
Okay, let’s just say I wasn’t exactly embracing the idea of my faeryhood (or whatever it’s called) even though Beck had given me a heads-up a few scant hours ago.
But, I was sure of one thing. Nobody was leaving until I got some answers.
I glanced around to make sure the booth behind us was vacant before I whispered, “I’ve heard of family secrets, but this is ridiculous. So, who’s my faery connection?
You or Melia? ”
The words felt strange in my mouth, like when you eat oysters for the first time. Grandpa Claude tilted his head back and looked at me down his long, long nose. If I’m not mistaken, he gave a little snort of disgust. “Most definitely not me.”
His high and mighty attitude pushed all my buttons. He needed a reality check. I leaned forward and glared at him. “Okay, so, I guess that means you and a faery named Melia fooled around and had a kid together. Right?”
At my words, his gaze shifted and he stared out the window for what seemed like eternity. When he looked back at me, his eyes had changed. They held a sadness I hadn’t seen before. He jabbed his fingers through his neatly-combed hair until it poked out like that thingy on top of a rooster’s head. He said, “I was barely more than a grown kid, and I’d never met anyone like Melia.”
Unwilling to let him skip a single detail, I said, “Start at the beginning.”
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Chapter Eight
Claude Emerson was just twenty-five when he decided to drive to Seattle to visit a friend. It was Friday night after work, and he was tired. About 40 miles east of Seattle, he couldn’t keep his eyes open. He pulled off the freeway onto a deserted logging road for a quick nap.
“I fell asleep,” he said, “and had a dream so real, it seems like it happened last night. In my dream, I was walking down a path in the forest and heard a woman laughing. I walked around a bend in the trail and saw her standing next to a pond. She wore a green dress and had white flowers in her long, dark hair. The fragrance from the flowers was so strong, I could smell them from where I was standing. She held out her arms and smiled. ‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ she said.”
His voice faded away, and he swallowed hard.
Caught up in the story, I said, “Was it Melia?”
Grandpa Claude took a sip of coffee, patted his mouth with the napkin and ignored my question.
“I walked toward her like I had no will of my own. I couldn’t not go to her. That’s how strong the attraction was. I was just one step away, when a rapping on the car window jerked me out of the dream.”
His story became even stranger.
“A green-eyed girl, wearing jeans and a tank top, was peering into my window. She was what you youngsters call a ‘hot chick,’” Grandpa Claude said.
“So, was that Melia?” I asked, wondering if he’d ever get to the point. Before he could answer, Chad spoke up. “They both were.”
“Bingo,” Grandpa said.
“Oh.” I was embarrassed that Chad figured it out before I did.
I waited for Grandpa to finish the rest of the story. His face was flushed. Whoa! Was Grandpa Claude thinking about the X-rated parts? If so, I hoped he would tone it down for Chad’s sake. Not that I was dying to hear about my grandfather’s sex life.
“So, uh, you two got together?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah, we got together all right. I couldn’t resist her.”
He glanced at down over at Chad and then back at me. “If you know what I mean.”
I nodded as if I’d had tons of experience enchanting, then seducing members of the opposite sex.
“Is Melia a forest faery?” Chad piped up.
Grandpa studied Chad’s face curiously. “Yeah, she is. Turned out forest faeries don’t make good wives.”
“Actually, it’s very difficult for faeries to live with mortals.” Chad sounded like a mini college professor, only with the voice of a kid.
Grandpa Claude sighed deeply. “Tell me about it.”
His bitter words hung in the air like a dark cloud, heavy with rain. He wrapped a hand around his coffee mug. That’s when I noticed the ring. A wide silver band, it was on the ring finger of his left hand and inscribed with strange, squiggly lines. Even though I wanted to hear more about Melia, I couldn’t take my eyes off the ring. I leaned forward to get a closer look. Some of the marks looked like the letter M with wings. Others seemed to be stylized stars and partial hearts hanging from lamp posts.
“That ring you’re wearing,” I said. “I’ve never seen symbols like that.”
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His fingers tightened around the mug and he grimaced. “It’s a hand fasting ring. The symbols are called runes. Melia has one too.”
“Hand fasting?”
“It’s like a trial marriage.” He pursed his lips in disgust. “Obviously, ours didn’t work out.”
“Do the marks mean something special?”
“‘Hearts as one.’ That’s what the runes spell. Our hearts are as one,” he said. I sen
sed he was about to shut down before I got the whole story. “Faye told me her mother died when she was ten. Why would she say that?”
“That’s when Melia left. She tried to take Faye. I wouldn’t let her.”
And broke Faye’s heart, I thought. Probably Melia’s too. I licked my suddenly dry lips. “How did you stop her?”
Grandpa Claude’s eyes were as expressionless as cold, black marbles. “I locked Faye in a room filled with iron.”
Chad gasped. I looked down at him, puzzled. Why was I the only person in the room not getting it?
Chad narrowed his eyes and glared at Grandpa. “How could you do that? She was just a little kid.”
“What? What?” I said.
Chad said, “Faeries can’t tolerate iron. It burns them. Melia wouldn’t have been able to enter that room.”
“Oh.” All the puzzle pieces came together in a horrifying image. I swallowed hard as a wave of pity crashed over me. Silently cursing my vivid imagination, I could see Faye and Melia, crying out for each other, but unable to touch without iron searing their flesh. I had to blink hard to hold back my own tears.
But then, I glanced at the man sitting across from me, sipping his coffee and discussing this act of cruelty like he was talking about the weather. My sense of sadness spun quickly into outrage. I gripped the edge of the table and enunciated each word carefully. “So, if faeries are burned by iron and you locked Faye in a room filled with iron . . .”
Before I could say another word, Grandpa Claude broke in. “She knew not to touch it. She wasn’t hurt. Besides, it also made her forget. When I let her out, she thought her mother died.”
I was so furious, I could barely speak. “Because that’s what you told her. Right?” I threw some money on the table. “Come on, Chad. We’re leaving.”
As we walked away, my grandfather muttered, “I should have known you couldn’t handle the truth.”
I stopped and whirled around to face him. “I can’t handle the truth? You were married to Melia for years. You knew what she was. You had a child with her, and then you deliberately locked your daughter in a room full of iron to separate her from her mother. Sounds to me like you can’t handle the truth.”
When we reached the car, Chad scrambled into the back seat. I backed carefully out of the parking lot, even though I felt like stomping down on the accelerator. As I pulled onto the street, I sucked in air and tried to calm down. I glanced at Chad’s face in the rear-view mirror. He was blinking hard, like he was trying to fight back tears.
Was he blaming himself for this whole Grandpa Claude mess? Had I already screwed up my first day on the job?
“Hey, buddy,” I said, merging onto the highway. “None of this is your fault. I wanted to know. I needed to know. Just takes some getting used to. Right?”
His head bobbed once. After an audible gulp, he said, “Tell me about it. I had to find out 284
everything by myself. I always knew I was different. My parents made me go to counseling, so I thought I was a nut job. What else could I think?”
He paused for a moment. “They said I could talk to the counselor guy about anything I wanted.”
“So, did you?”
Chad gave a snort of disgust. “Yeah, right. Like I’m gonna say, ‘Hey, doc, I think I’m a faery.’”
“But you figured it out on your own. You’re one smart kid, Chad.”
“I figured it out, but, I couldn’t tell anyone. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I knew you were like me even though . . . ” his voice trailed off.
“Even though I didn’t know it,” I finished.
We stayed silent for a while. All I could think about was my mother, her hatred of Grandpa Claude and her messed-up life. But, hold it. The one person in the world I could talk to about faeries, was in the back seat of my car.
“I wonder if Faye really doesn’t remember or of if she’s faking it,” I mused.
“Hard to say,” Chad said. “When Melia couldn’t get to her daughter, maybe she used some sort of spell to make Faye forget.”
“Could she do that? I mean, if Faye was in a room full of iron, would that even work?”
“Dunno,” Chad said. “Maybe Faye doesn’t want to remember. It sounds like she really did believe it when your grandpa told her Melia was dead.”
“I guess that why she’s so screwed up.”
“Maybe. But living in a travel trailer doesn’t help.”
Without thinking, I launched into defensive mode. “We do the best we can. Not everybody can afford to live in a real house.”
“I’m not talking about that. I meant, living in something that’s made of metal doesn’t help.”
“Oh,” I said, chagrined. “Sorry. But, I think the trailer’s made of aluminum, not iron. Are faeries affected by aluminum?”
“No, but I’ll bet there’s steel somewhere under the subfloor, in the supports. Steel is an alloy of iron, you know.”
“If I have faery blood too, why doesn’t it bother me?”
Chad thought for a moment. “I heard what happened that day last fall. The school thing.”
I wasn’t sure where he was going. “Your dad told you, huh?”
“No, I heard it from a friend of mine. His sister’s best friend was there. She said you used magic on those bad people. That you did something to Shane Boldt, like a spell or something and made him fly backward. She said if you hadn’t been there, a bunch of kids would have died.”
I said something noncommittal.
Chad continued in a rush. “So, to answer your question, I think the metal in your trailer doesn’t affect you, because you have special powers your mother doesn’t have.
You’re different from her…stronger. Maybe you inherited something from your dad that made you different.”
“What about you? If you’re a changeling, how can you be around iron?”
Chad shrugged. “I’ve been sick all my life, so it probably is affecting me. When I get in a car, I feel like my blood is fizzing.”
“Like Alka-Seltzer?”
He nodded. “I used to get really car sick, but not so much anymore. Maybe I’ve built up immunity or something.”
Chad’s earlier comment had planted a dark seed of suspicion in the dim recesses of my brain. All at once, it sprouted and flourished.
I held up a hand. “Back up a sec. This older sister of your friend…was her name Caitlyn or 285
Lexie?”
“It was Caitlyn.”
“Ha!” I shouted. “I knew I couldn’t trust Nicole!”
“Who’s Nicole?”
“Never mind.” I shook my head in disgust. Nicole was Beck’s twin sister. She’d placed her hand on a bible held by her mother, and sworn she’d never tell a single soul what really happened that day. Except for her BFF apparently. Hmmm, I wondered if Caitlyn knew Nicole’s eyes glow in the dark, and she could leave her physical body and do a little astral travelling when she was bored, like during Mass. I’d bet Nicole hadn’t mention those little tidbits to her BFF. Nicole and I were overdue for a little chat.
We got back to Peacock Flats just in time to go to the fruit stand for the late afternoon rush. When I slipped behind the counter, Mercedes was ringing up a box of peaches. She pointed to Mrs. Prentice, an old lady whose husband drove her to the fruit stand each day to buy corn for dinner.
“She’s baaack!,” Mercedes announced in a loud whisper.
“Chad,” I said. “Grab a plastic bag and come with me.”
Chad trailed behind me as I ambushed Mrs. Prentice before she could ignore the sign, printed in English and Spanish, PLEASE DO NOT PEEL THE CORN!
“Oh, hi, Miz Prentice,” I gushed. “Let me pick out some good corn for you. How many ears do you want?”
She peered at me over the top of her glasses and pinched her lips until they disappeared in a narrow white line, letting me know I’d spoiled her fun. She loved to strip the husks back on the corn, and check to make sure the kernels went clear to the end
of the cob. Then, she threw the rejects back on the pile and nobody else would buy them. My job was to keep that from happening.
“Two and they better be good or I’m bringing them back,” she said, glaring at me. I smiled sweetly. “Have I ever let you down?”
“Humph!”
I picked out two plump ears of corn and dropped them into the plastic bag held by Chad.
“Anything else? How about some nice fresh tomatoes?”
“Three and they . . . ”
“Better be good,” I finished.
After what seemed like an eternity of inspecting every tomato in the pile for defects, I guided Mrs. Prentice toward the cash register and then carried the produce to her Lincoln Town Car. It was the same every day. Mr. Prentice would smile pleasantly, pop the trunk open and say, “Thank you, Allie Emerson.” I guess old people like to stick to a routine.
After the Prentices pulled away, Mercedes said, “Hey, your mom was here looking for you. She had a guy with her. Somebody I’ve never seen before.”
I groaned and my heart sank. Not another boyfriend. According to my calculations, Faye had been through every loser in the valley. Had she started importing them from west of the Cascades?
Mercedes looked at my expression and added hastily, “I don’t think she had the hots for him or anything like that.”
“Why? Did he look normal?”
Mercedes giggled. “No, silly. Remember who you’re dealing with. Mercedes Trujillo knows these things.”
“Was she on her way to work?”
Faye worked as a waitress at Bea’s Honey Pot Diner, and I knew she was working the dinner shift tonight.
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“Yeah, wanna use my cell phone to call her?”
I did, and that’s when I found out the guy with my mother wasn’t another loser boyfriend. (Huge sigh of relief) No, it was Special Agent Dennis McCarty of the FBI, and he would be stopping by to see me soon.
Great. Just great.
When Dennis McCarty showed up, it usually meant somebody was trying to kill me. 287
Chapter Nine
Moon Spun Page 5
