"Since we don't have much time..." Harry liked Lanie, even if her tendency toward clowning frustrated him. "What does being a guardian mean for you, specifically? Because we found out just a few days ago that Bethany's mother was a guardian, and she fought down the dimensional...intruder, I guess you'd call it, that Angela says you faced, but she lost."
"That's the first I've heard of it." Lanie's smile flattened to a frown of concentration. She nodded slowly, her eyes hooded, gaze turned inward. "Have you heard about the epidemic of lost boys in Neighborlee?" She waited until both Bethany and Harry shook their heads.
"There's a bad habit of little kids, toddlers, showing up out of nowhere, abandoned, lost, whatever, around Neighborlee. Most of the time, they end up in the children's home. Some, like me, get adopted. The ones who show signs of unusual talents usually get snatched by a group of people devoted to training them.
"Anyway, that battle two years ago didn't end the threat. Angela was pretty sure the thingamabob was just wounded. It's either curled up under Neighborlee, regaining its power, or it's retreated back to whatever dimension it came from, waiting until it can break through all the way."
She rested her chin on her fist and studied Bethany. "I remember when your mom died. There was this feeling in the air. My friends and I felt it. The energy was so disturbed, so uneven, we couldn't track it down to its source. If we had known, if we had joined forces with her..." She rested a hand on Bethany's on the table, squeezing it. "We were just kids, still figuring out what we could do, but we would have helped."
"You said your friends? How many of you are there?" Harry asked.
"In town here, just Kurt, Felicity, and Kurt's girlfriend, Jane. She's one of the kids who got snatched away from the orphanage. All her pals and their teachers are spread out over the country, looking for more dimensional invaders. We've been tracking down all the lost boys, going through the orphanage archives. I guess we need to check the descendants of those who didn't show powers. Just in case." She studied Bethany long enough, the girl twitched a little. "What sort of powers might you have, and you don't even know?"
"I'm a freak of nature. I just found out Dad has faerie blood, and now I'm learning Mom is from another dimension or whatever." Bethany pouted, but mischief sparkled in her eyes.
"Faerie blood, huh?" Lanie turned her gaze to Harry. "Something freaky is bound to happen, with all the Fae in town. Have you run into Maurice yet, or Will and Phill?"
"Oh, yeah." Harry shuddered, thinking about Maurice's exile, and scolded himself yet again for indulging in self-pity so often. At least he could live a fairly normal life, with a little concentration and extra alertness.
"Tell you what. I'll get Kurt and Jane and Felicity together, and we'll catch up with you, and have a good long talk about guardians and whatever. The Evil Overlord just walked in, and I was on my way to the powder room when I got distracted. Later?"
"Sure. Thanks." Bethany watched Lanie pivot out from the table and zoom down the aisle, heading toward the restrooms at the back of the diner. "Wow, just when you think you have your hometown figured out."
"Yeah. As a Fae, you kind of assume there's very little to surprise you." Harry traded grins with her, and flipped the Ether Lexicon open. "We might find some surprises in here, too."
"That's my cue to get us something to eat and leave you to study in peace." She patted his hand and slid out of the booth, hurrying to the kitchen before Harry could reply.
By the time Bethany returned with their lunch, which she cooked herself, Harry had enough general information to confirm his theory. With enough time and research and study, he might have a fix for Bethany's problem or question, and an answer to what she was--Fae or guardian or some new, wonderful amalgam.
"At least you're not a mule," he said between bites of fries drenched in chili, onions and chipotle cheese.
"A what?" Bethany giggled.
"Sorry. A dead end, technically. When two species close enough to interbreed, but still very different do breed, sometimes the offspring is unable to reproduce, or inherits no talents at all. My theory is that you have both powers or magics or whatever you call it, and they're sort of fighting each other. Using up energy, trying for dominance in you, so there's no power left over for you to learn how to use them and...do things."
"Okay, I can be either a sorceress or one of the X-Men, but I can't be both."
"Why not? I think that's what you are, but you have to learn to get completely in the driver's seat and stop the two sides of your heritage from battling and wasting all that energy." Harry closed the Ether Lexicon, with a half-dozen bookmarks inserted to help him return to the spots he hadn't fully studied yet, and willed it to go into the waiting dimension. "There's a blockage. You need magic or guardian power to get around it. But you can't access that power or magic until you get through or around or destroy the blockage. Catch 22."
"Like getting an Equity job. You have to be a member of Equity to get a job, but you can't join Equity until you have an Equity job." Bethany nodded slowly, her gaze unfocused, one fry raised and a long string of melted cheese slowly dripping off it. "But miracles do happen. There's always a loophole--I'm proof of that. We'll find the answer."
Harry froze as her gaze focused again and locked with his. Something burst hot and tingling inside him when Bethany said we, as if it were the most important thing in the world for them to be partnered in this.
In everything, Harry decided a moment later, mesmerized by Bethany's slowly widening, sparkling, scorching smile. She believed in him. She trusted him. And he would do it for her, no matter what.
Thursday, December 20
Lori wrapped her arms tight around herself, shivering even though she wasn't cold at all. Then she sighed in pure pleasure when Brick slid an arm around her shoulders and brought her closer. They stood at the top of a hill in the Metroparks that let them look down on the center of Neighborlee, watching as evening crept in. It promised to be a clear night, and all the Christmas decorations filling the town came on, spreading down the streets like ripples in a pond. Lori understood that this was all work done by hand, weeks of hanging lights and planning colors and designs. This was magic of a type beyond her talents and strength.
"We certainly don't have anything like this back home," she said.
Yes, definitely, if she had to stay in the Human realms to be free of the aunties and whichever appropriate, non-Need-bound husband they had chosen for her, she could be very happy here, right here, and never go anywhere else on the planet. With Brick, of course.
Or maybe not?
He moved his arm off her shoulders and stepped away just enough that a chilly finger of breeze slipped between them.
"I don't believe you." His voice sounded odd. Strained. He didn't look at her as he spoke, but still looked over the town, his brows drawing together like he glared at something.
"Believe me." She turned to look at the town, shivering from something beyond the cold. Something very unpleasant. What did I just do wrong? Why is he angry? She felt the buzzing in the air, of a storm about to explode across the scene, yet the sky stayed clear and darkened in ripples like the tide coming in.
"Where do you live? Another planet?" His voice tightened, with a growl underlying it.
"You wouldn't understand." Lori fought the urge to back away about ten steps.
"Why don't you try me? Take a chance? You know all about me, but I don't know much about you. Funny, I let you ride with me, you're so big on doing everything, helping, experiencing everything, like it's your first Christmas ever. And that just doesn't make sense."
"If I told you, you wouldn't believe me. I wish you could, but despite everything you've said, you wouldn't. And I don't want to lose you." She moved over to stand in front of him, make him actually look at her instead of glaring down on the town, to see how much his words hurt her. But Brick just glared through her, like she wasn't there at all, like she was invisible.
"Lose me?" He sneered. "Wh
at makes you think you have me? You know what? You're too good to be true. You're the perfect woman, so giving and excited about things that matter to me, and then you close up on me. You say things that don't make any sense and don't fit the person you've worked so hard to make me think you are. You've got holes in your story, sister."
"It's no story, it's the truth. And they're not holes, they're just things that would blow your mind." Lori clenched her fists, feeling magic buzz in her fingertips.
It would be so easy, frighteningly easy, to perform some flashy magic. Lift him to the top of a tree, turn the snowy clearing around them into summertime, open a dimensional slit and take him into another world. But she couldn't do that. Not if she wanted to protect Brick's sanity. Just because he talked about faeries and his great-grandmother and the weirdness of Neighborlee like it was fun and normal, that didn't mean, when faced with the reality of magic and the Fae, that he wouldn't go insane. She couldn't do that to him.
"Everything just makes me think it's all a scam. A pretty elaborate one, with a lot of work and prep behind it, but a scam all the same. Well, guess what? I might be a Willis, but I don't have anything but tradition and influence and the family name. No money, no estates, it's all honorary. And a lot of responsibility."
The air darkened with the force of his lie. Lori blinked and took a step back, feeling scorched by the anger that spewed from his lips. Why did he think he had to lie to her? Why was he so furious with her? What had she done, except try to protect him?
"You didn't do your homework, sister."
"You think I'm here to steal from you? To lie and trick you?" She shuddered and took another step back. "You're not the man I thought you were." She gasped as insight and a few puzzle pieces came together in her head. "That's why you kept dropping those papers talking about that money, isn't it? To test me."
"Yeah, and did you look at those papers?"
"The last time I did, but they didn't make any sense to me. Talking about banks and balances and debts. I didn't understand."
"If you were the rich woman you keep trying to make me think you are, you'd understand the economics and legal terms and banking principles. But you're nothing but a fraud. You lasted longer than the others, but you're still a liar and cheat, under all the pretty--"
Brick froze, the air sparkling and buzzing in ten shades of green and orange as Lori halted time around him.
She clenched her fists and gasped through her nose and walked a dozen rapid, nearly blinding fast circles around him. She wanted to pound him. She wanted to turn him into something embarrassing, and have all his friends see, and have him know what was going on, so he would shrivel up with mortal embarrassment.
"No, no, no," she whispered, her whole body so tight with her fury it stole her breath and nearly paralyzed her vocal chords. Lori shuddered, terrified by the rage that tore through her.
She took another step back from Brick, shaking. Tears filled her eyes, as sorrow replaced rage. Lori nearly went to her knees. This wasn't like her at all. She never got this upset. She never got this hurt. What had happened? Why did what he thought of her mean so much that his bad opinion could hurt? Why did his suspicions and accusations hurt, when they weren't true?
Because, she realized with another shudder that nearly took her to her knees in the churned snow, because Brick meant so much to her. Because she had opened up her heart to him and let him in. She felt as if they had started to graft themselves to each other, and he had pulled away, tearing everything open, leaving her raw all over, and raw inside.
All she knew in that moment was that she had to get away from Brick. Some place quiet and solitary, where she could think. Where nobody could find her. She slashed at the air with a trembling fingertip, splitting a dimensional slit open, and stepped through. The air flashed as it sealed up again.
The buzz of power lingered and reverberated, chiming off the bedrock of Neighborlee. A light snow fell. A deer tiptoed out from the shelter of the trees, approached Brick and nuzzled his outstretched hand. It didn't like the taste of his leather glove, so it retreated back into the shadows.
Night finished falling, and moonlight slowly crept among the trees until it touched Brick's hair. There was a soft ringing sound as the final force and fury of Lori's magic expended itself. He gasped and stumbled forward. He closed his mouth, swallowing hard against the dryness and the awful taste, like he had his mouth open for hours. He blinked and looked around.
"Lori?" he called, his voice cracking with the force of the fury that had buzzed in his vocal chords just a few seconds ago.
No, not seconds. He shivered as he looked around the moonlit clearing and saw the ring of tracks from small feet that circled him, multiple times. He knew enough about reading tracks to see the agitation in her staggering steps, despite the light snow that grew a little thicker and faster around him.
"Thanks a lot, Neighborlee. You've done it again," he murmured, and wrapped his arms around himself, feeling as if he had stood still for hours in the cold. From the darkness and his sense of time, that was exactly what had happened.
The question was how it had happened, and what had happened to Lori. Brick remembered what he had been saying to her. Chances were good she hadn't run off for help.
Had she done this to him? He snorted disbelieving laughter as the idea came clear to his mind. That would explain an awful lot, wouldn't it?
"What? She has magic--she is magic--and she's come out of some magical world to experience Christmas for the first time? Yeah, right." Brick shook his head and headed down the hill to his truck. His feet were soaking wet, and if he didn't get those boots off and his feet under a blast of warm air soon, he was going to have pneumonia for a Christmas present.
He couldn't believe what he had just imagined about Lori, even if it neatly explained everything. Despite the 'normal' weirdness of Neighborlee, it was just too farfetched.
Or was it?
Deep inside where the cold hadn't quite penetrated, he shivered as something beyond his brain made an enormous, galaxy-spanning intuitive leap, proposing something his conscious mind hesitated to accept. If Lori had done this to him, froze him in time before she vanished, then maybe his theory about her wasn't so off. But what did that imply, for him and her?
Besides the fact he had made an enormous mistake?
And just how was he going to find her so they could straighten things out between them?
Because he knew one thing, just as strong and certain as the ice filtering through his blood: he wanted Lori back. She was right and he was wrong. She did have him, and maybe she hadn't lost him, but he had lost her, and that meant all was wrong with the world.
Friday, December 21
"What do you think?" Holly stepped back from the arrangement she had been fussing over during the entire dreaming time.
Maurice bit his tongue and just nodded and smiled. That seemed to be all Holly wanted. She flung her arms around him, kissed him on both cheeks, and turned back to the long table loaded with flowers, ferns, ribbons, and those sharp little sticks that went into flower arrangements to hold kitschy little decorations like silver wedding bells and champagne bottles and sparklers. He had never thought there was so much junk related to wedding decorations in the entire planet.
Tomorrow was Jeri and Jon-Tom's wedding, and Holly had been asked to decorate for that one as well. She had been so encouraged by the compliments and how well her decorations for Diane and Troy's wedding had turned out, she was talking about taking on wedding planning as a sideline business.
The problem was that Holly went into blue funks when no one was around except Maurice. He suspected it was because she was surrounded by wedding talk and wedding preparations and wedding details and time-consuming considerations like the flowers, but none of the details were for her wedding.
He didn't know if he was doing her any good by giving her hope during her dreams. When they were together in the dreaming realms, he tried to explain the details of his exile,
and she seemed to understand. She sometimes came into the dreams a little depressed, a holdover from her waking time as a librarian whom everyone considered a pal, a confidant, but not a girl a guy wanted to date.
It didn't help that she seemed to be getting a lot of sympathy from the older women of Neighborlee, who constantly told her variations of, "Don't you worry, sweetie. Those other girls might be the kind that men date and fool around with, but you're the kind of girl a man finally brings home to his mother."
Maurice agreed with Holly's infuriated wail: How could a guy know he wanted to take her home to his mother if he never dated her?
He didn't know if it was a good thing that Holly was able to shake off her blue funk from such advice soon after they met up in her dreams. Maybe she was developing a split personality, to a dangerous degree. The magic that let them meet in her dreams and kept her from remembering or seeing him in her waking hours was effectively splitting her realities, further and further apart the longer they were together. Maybe it was splitting her mind and her soul. What kind of damage was the magic doing, keeping her dreams from being available to her waking mind?
"It's perfect," Holly whispered, as she cleared away all the supplies and possible decorations, and walked around the flower arrangement she had designed for Jeri and Jon-Tom's wedding. "I managed to remember most of the details when I was working out Diane and Troy's decorations, so I'll remember most of this when I wake up." She bit her lip and turned to Maurice, the first glimmer of doubt darkening her sparkling eyes. "You think?"
"I promise." He hoped Angela wouldn't give him any assignments all day. He would use up most of his allotment of magic, manipulating Holly's hand, so she wrote and sketched while she was still asleep. He wouldn't even be able to flutter around Holly, riding on her shoulder and looking ahead, keeping disaster away during the following day. Just like with Diane and Troy's wedding, he would have to spend most of the day sacked out, magic-less and drowsy, on the shelf behind the counter at Divine's Emporium, until Angela went over to the church to help with decorations that evening. Then he would ride on her shoulder, saving what little energy he had regained, so he could watch over Holly while she climbed ladders and directed work crews.
Have Yourself a Faerie Little Christmas Page 19
