Boys who carried the small bumps of cartilage that would become the Wing Ridge were more precious than gold.
The women of The Folk had a hard time with pregnancy and even when they were able to deliver a healthy baby, it was usually a girl. Alvin had been the last son of pure blood born to parents of The Folk in nearly ten years.
If the child wasn’t given the blessing of The Folk, he’d wither and die.
Bringing a healthy boy, especially one whose veins flowed with seventy-five percent Folk Blood, to The Realm and presenting him to the Prince for a blessing would get Alvin back into the good graces of his father.
A city girl like FayeLynn couldn’t travel alone in The Realm.
Alvin needed FayeLynn, and she needed him.
She had no idea how powerful Drake was and she’d need all the protection she could get.
The thought of Drake’s child roaming the human world, or The Realm, without ample protection from The Folk made a shiver run up his spine.
Drake had been trying to take over The Realm for nearly a decade and his rule would mean disaster for The Folk. So far, Alvin’s father had been able to keep Drake’s quest for power under control, but he was aging and with Alvin exiled to the human world, he was without an heir.
Alvin was sure his absence hadn’t gone unnoticed. Especially to Drake. His banishment created a power vacuum the bastard would use to his advantage.
Talking FayeLynn into a journey into The Realm might not be easy, especially since she didn’t even know she was a hybrid until today. It would take some time and some serious sales talk, but being a bona fide member of The Folk, Alvin had his charms along with a secret weapon.
His psychic abilities allowed him to see deep inside FayeLynn’s soul, and he had no doubt that she was going to blossom into a fantastic mother, one who’d do anything for her child. He planned to use her maternal instinct to talk her into doing the right thing for all three of them.
The child wouldn’t have to live in The Realm, not unless he made the choice to live among The Folk once he reached his majority but he’d have to be blessed by The Folk, just as he had been, just as FayeLynn had been.
Alvin couldn’t re-enter The Realm without help. FayeLynn, with her growing belly and her Wing Ridge, could get past the guards without any trouble. The Folk always offered sanctuary to any expecting or new mother who was one of them, no questions asked.
Without him, FayeLynn and her child would be alone. Without protection.
She needed him and he needed her baby.
CHAPTER 3
FayeLynn couldn’t stop shaking.
No one came into the café for nearly an hour after Alvin left and for once, she was glad to sacrifice the tips for the silence.
What the hell was he talking about?
She wanted to ignore his warning, erase the reading from her mind and write him off as just another weirdo who’d landed in town and was making his money by giving dire readings to build a business base. But he didn’t seem crazy. He didn’t seem predatory. Quite the opposite, Alvin had seemed genuinely concerned.
By the time second shift arrived, she was ready to leave. She got into her car and drove straight to her dad’s office. It was easy to find a parking place. The University didn’t have many summer classes and most of them were in the morning. By this time in the afternoon, the campus was nearly deserted.
He was sitting at his desk. Both corners and the loveseat across from his desk were piled with papers and books and photocopied articles. “Pops?”
“FayeLynn, to what do I owe this pleasure?” He rose and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close to his chest. She inhaled the smell of him—the stale Camels from last night, old books and aftershave that reminded her of pine trees after a cold rain—and kissed him on the cheek.
“I need to talk to you about something. Can we talk?”
He closed the door behind her and cleared a space on the sagging loveseat. “Sure.”
She had no idea where to begin. Like last night, there didn’t seem to be a good beginning thread. “I met a guy named Alvin today. He said I should ask you about Mom.”
Her Pops froze, his eyes went wide. “Did he know your mother?”
“I don’t think so. This is where it gets sort of weird.”
Her dad leaned back in his desk chair and smiled. He loved it when things took a strange turn. As a professor of Celtic Mythology, the paranormal was his bread and butter.
After a deep breath, she said, “He said I should tell you that I’d done a favor for The Folk and was repaid with a reading. He told me that the baby I’m carrying belongs to The Folk.”
His face fell. Instead of a gradual change, it was more like an avalanche. “I never imagined…” His voice trailed off and he looked out the small window. “I never thought…”
FayeLynn had been scared yesterday but now, after meeting Alvin and seeing the look on Pop’s face when she told him about the reading, she was terrified. It was if she was surrounded by people speaking a different language, all of them talking about her, and she couldn’t understand a word of it.
“You never thought what?” Her stomach flipped, roiled, churned with anxiety. “Let me in on the secret.”
“It’s past time I told you more about your mother,” he said, never taking his eyes off the mountains outside the window. “I should’ve have explained everything sooner.”
A shiver ran up her spine. Something about the way he said “everything” made her wonder if she was prepared for whatever it might be.
“You might not believe what I’m about to tell you but I promise you, as outrageous as it seems, it’s the absolute truth.” He bent and dug a pack of Camels from a bottom drawer and lit one. He took a long drag and blew out the smoke out the window before continuing. “Your mother wasn’t like other women. She was unique, unlike anyone I’d ever met before or have met since.”
“I think most people feel that way about their spouse.”
He shook his head and sighed. “That’s not what I mean. She was really different.”
“How’s that?”
“She wasn’t human.”
For years, since she’d been old enough to remember, she’d been hungry for details about her mother, and now, when she thought her father might finally give her a few, instead he was spouting crazy notions that made no sense, just like Alvin.
“You’d better explain.”
“Your mother was a fairy.”
What the hell? Seriously?
FayeLynn had enough to worry about without this added nonsense. Her father loved to talk Druids and polytheism but he was an academic, and as much as he tended to get lost in the stories he loved so much, she’d always thought he understood that they weren’t real. They were only stories, created by people who had no real understanding of science, a way to cope with the elements and the unexplained things that happened to them. “Mom was a fairy? Like Tinkerbell? With wings and shit? There’s no such thing, not outside of your books and stories.” She rose and grabbed her purse. “I can’t believe you’d joke about something like that.”
Even though she normally loved to listen to tales of banshees and giants, now wasn’t the time. She was facing the biggest uphill climb of her life and like usual, he was diving into one of his stories as a way to cope. It wasn’t the first time she’d felt like she was the parent and her father was the child.
He grabbed her arm. “Please, FayeLynn. Hear me out.”
She rolled her eyes, a pet peeve of her dad’s, and sighed. “Ten minutes.” She slumped back into the loveseat.
“I was in Scotland working on my Masters.” He eased into the chair behind his desk.
She already knew that part. “And you met Mom in a pub called The Purple Weasel. She was singing Loch Lomond.”
He smiled, his face alight with the memory of her mother. “That she was, in a voice so beautiful, so ethereal. I should have known then.”
Ethereal. The word bounced arou
nd in her brain for the second time in only a couple of days.
“Known what?”
He reached across the table and took his daughter’s hand in his. “That she wasn’t of this world.” He laced his fingers with FayeLynn’s. “After she finished her set, I bought her a drink and invited her to my table. I was in love with her before she ever sat down. I can’t explain what that feels like except to say that when it happens, you’ll know it.”
FayeLynn wasn’t sure she wanted to know. It sounded overwhelming. “Then you married her and brought her back to the US and she died when I was six months old.”
“There’s more to it than that. A lot more.”
“Then I’m going to need a beer,” she said. It wasn’t until she opened the tiny fridge tucked beneath a book case that she remembered. No beer. Not for a long time. “On second thought, maybe I’ll stick to water.” She opened a bottle and took a deep sip before returning to her seat. “I’m ready.”
“Your mother was part of an ancient race. Fairies, at least the ones in Scotland, aren’t like the ones you see on Disney movies or on those postcards they sell at the New Age shops. They’re much more complex.”
FayeLynn had never been a fairy kind of girl. She preferred Doc Martens to magic wands, black to pink and Monster High to Tinkerbell. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning they have their own society, their own rules and unfortunately, their own prejudices.”
She was more confused than ever. Not that she’d ever given fairies a lot of thought, but she was pretty sure she didn’t have them pegged as bigoted. “The black fairies don’t like the white ones?”
Pops shook his head. “There aren’t any black fairies,” her dad said, his voice totally serious. “The prejudices aren’t based on color, rather the kind of magic the fairies use. Like ours, it’s a complicated society. Some of the fairies use magic that preys on emotions like fear or anger while others use joy and comfort.”
“Do all of them look similar?”
They’re all white, very white, and most of them live in the British Isles although there are some colonies here in the States.”
FayeLynn reached into her pocket and felt the familiar outline of her cell phone. The more her father talked, the crazier it all seemed. “This can’t be real. Am I having some sort of psychotic break?” She tried to keep her voice calm, but on the inside she was beginning to shake with fear.
He picked up a cigarette lighter and flicked it several times, igniting and the extinguishing the flame. “I assure you that both of us are mentally stable and as sane as ever.”
Crazy people never knew they were crazy. Wasn’t that a big part of the problem?
“It’s more than just the fairy part,” he said.
Of course it was. Discovering that your mother was a mythological creature wasn’t enough.
“In order to marry her, I had to make a promise, one I’ve regretted every day, but I had no choice.”
FayeLynn was afraid to ask but she didn’t have much choice. “What was it?”
“That the first male child born of my line would be returned to The Folk.”
“But you didn’t have a boy.”
Her father gritted his teeth, his features looked as if they were chiseled from stone. “But you might.”
It sounded like something out of the leather-bound fairy tale book she’d had as a child. It was the only thing she owned that had once belonged to her mother. It wasn’t a regular book, not like the ones her friends had or the ones on the library shelf at her school. It was heavy, filled with illustrations that were both terrifying and comforting, scary and exhilarating. The pages smelled like rosemary and thyme. Every night, before bed, her dad had read her a story, sometimes two, and even though the book was impossibly thick, after years and years of stories, they should’ve run out of new ones but they never did.
“You’re saying that if this child is a boy, he’ll belong to the Fairies?”
“They prefer to be called The Folk and yes, he will.”
“But you made that promise, not me.”
“Doesn’t matter. The Folk take vows very seriously, even if they span generations.”
“But how will they even know about him?”
“They always know.”
She shook her head. “I’m not giving my kid to The Folk, and that’s final.” With each passing hour, the baby became more real to her. Instead of just a concept, she was beginning to see it as a person, a small helpless human being she was responsible for keeping safe.
“You’ll need to be very careful. They’re clever and they might trick you into giving him up.”
This conversation was becoming stranger by the second.
“I seriously doubt that,” she muttered.
Maybe fairies, or The Folk, did exist. Maybe her father was sane and maybe her mother wasn’t exactly human, but the years she’d spend in a tourist café had taught her a lot about people, and she was confident that no one could trick her into anything, especially something like giving up her own kid.
“They’re not like us; they’re crafty, clever. A simple paragraph can turn into a logic puzzle. A conversation can become a labyrinth.”
“But how do we even know I’m carrying one of The Folk? If I believe what you’re telling me about mom, I’m only half-fairy, so my baby will only be a quarter.”
“Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple. You need a crash course in The Folk. Maybe this weekend you, and I can go over everything I’ve learned over the years.”
“Okay,” she said. “But there’s no hurry. We have months until I even find out the gender of the baby, much less deliver it.”
Her father shook his head. “That’s the thing. This pregnancy won’t last as long as a human one. You’ll be lucky if you make it to four months.”
As if motherhood wasn’t going to be sudden enough.
***
Alvin was worried about FayeLynn.
He had his own agenda, but it was second to making sure she was okay. That was a first. His father has always told him that he was the most selfish person in the kingdom, and, for the most part, he’d worn that criticism as a badge of honor. It kept the women from having unrealistic ideas about settling down. But FayeLynn was different. Back in his world, he would’ve been busy trying to figure out how to get into her pants, but even though he was very attracted to her, he knew she needed a champion more than she needed a lover.
Even if she hadn’t been pregnant, with the worry vibes she was emitting, he would’ve helped her anyway. She’s done him a favor by offering the coffee, but even if he’d had to pay full price, he still would’ve given her a reading. He’d known the moment he saw her that she was in trouble and it pulled at him in a way he didn’t understand.
He wanted to do right by her, no matter the cost.
The baby, along with a ticket home, was just a big bonus.
FayeLynn was totally unprepared. Not only was she young, she seemed wholly unaware that she wasn’t who she thought she was. She had no idea what kind of danger she’d stumbled into when she’d conceived her baby. Her son. The son the Dark Prince had wanted for years. The son he’d do anything to protect.
While Alvin should be patting himself on the back for not being a selfish prick, for once, he was too busy worrying about FayeLynn and the fate of her baby. He hoped she’d talk to her father, and he hoped the man would tell her the truth. Without that, he wasn’t sure there was anything he could do.
The rain was coming down harder now, thunder immediately followed by sharp cuts of lightning. He needed to find someplace to keep dry.
***
FayeLynn needed to clear her head. After gassing up her car, she headed north, past Weaverville and Mars Hill, until she was only a few miles from the Tennessee state line. She pulled into an overlook and parked the car. Totally alone, she pulled a tattered blanket from her trunk and walked to the edge. Sitting on the blanket, she kicked off her shoes and stretched until her toes felt th
e tickle of the tender spring grass.
The past forty-eight hours had kicked her ass. She felt as if she could sleep for a month and still not feel rested.
The morning’s storms had blown out, leaving behind the fresh smell of spring. Looking out across the mountains, the trees were cloaked in a yellowish spring green and it reminded her of the life just beginning inside her.
I’m pregnant.
The sentence played over and over again in her head, like a pop song she just couldn’t shake.
She didn’t know what was easier to swallow: pregnancy or being half-fairy.
Was a human-fairy hybrid even possible?
A week ago, she’d have said it was silly, childish, nothing more than fancy, but now, after talking to both her father and that strange man who’d come into the café, it was starting to make sense. FayeLynn absently rubbed her neck. She easily found the ridge just between her shoulder blades. For as long as she could remember, it had been there. A small line that ran just above her spine, beginning at the base of her neck and ending just below her waist.
When she’d been a child, just before she’d started kindergarten, she’d gone to the pediatrician to get her immunizations, she hadn’t realized that she was the only kid who had the ridge. The doctor had run her hand along it several times, called in another doctor and then insisted on an X-ray. FayeLynn remembered feeling scared, alone, and different. After a thorough examination and lots of discussion, the doctor had decided it was only cartilage and while she couldn’t explain its presence, she saw no reason to worry.
In the car, on the way home, her dad had been visibly shaken. Even though she was only a little kid, he couldn’t hide the sweat pouring off his brow or the way his hands trembled on the steering wheel. It was the last time she’d ever visited a doctor.
Now she understood why: She was a fairy.
She rubbed her palm across the flat of her stomach.
Was she imagining things or did it already feel tighter? Is my baby bump already growing? Impossible.
Her mind flashed back to what her father said earlier. If he was right, she only had two months until the baby was born.
Paranormal Magic (Shades of Prey Book 1) Page 60
