Make Willing the Prey (Dreams by Streetlight)

by Lindsey, Luna

Jina’s mouth hung open, and she felt like she had been run over by a tow truck. The sudden urge to laugh struck her, and she wasn’t sure why. She was having enough trouble remembering who she was. She shook her head which helped a little. Ah yes, the spell. It worked.

  A door creaked on unused hinges in a nearby hallway. The smell of fresh, outside air touched her nose, and the staleness slowly left the room. Sandy sat, looking as empty as before, but with a little smile on her face.

  Lewis still held on to her for dear life.

  “Hey,” she shook him a little. “Lewis, come on, let’s get out of here while we can.”

  Full of aches, she stood. She helped Sandy to her feet first, then Lewis.

  She followed the waft of cool air to the hallway, and, leading the others like children, stumbled out onto the cracked concrete porch. Daylight stung her eyes.

  No one had a phone, and no one had a car. Walking slowly, she led them down the street towards Sandy’s apartment.

  Epilogue

  Sandy sat in her living room surrounded by cold iron, books, firelight, and cleaning supplies.

  Gaudy knickknacks lined the mantle, rested on window sills, and hung over doorways. Her apartment was a museum displaying iron objects acquired from thrift stores and antique malls: horseshoes, candlesticks, skillets, nails, rusty farm tools, hammer heads, and decorative crosses.

  But they did not make her feel safe. The fire warmed the room, but it did not take the chill from her heart. The books made her feel smarter, but no less confused.

  And though the cleaning solutions smelled strong, they did not make her feel clean.

  She vigorously muttered a repetitive chant as she polished an intricate silver frame with tarnish remover and salt. She wasn’t merely cleaning the physical surface of this mirror – she also was cleansing its energies.

  The three had found themselves in a world that had moved on without them. What had only been a few days to Jina and Sandy had been six months outside. They’d been reported missing, searched for, and given up on. They’d been dropped from the rolls of the University. Jina’s roommate had packed up her stuff and shipped it to her family. Sandy’s family had continued paying her rent in the hopes she would be home soon.

  Upon their sudden return, they had little in the way of explanation as to where they’d been for so long. At first they tried to tell the truth, but when no one believed them, their abduction turned into a spontaneous and irresponsible road trip across North America. It fit expectations far better than the truth ever could.

  Lewis had it worse – he’d been missing for nearly a year. His hold on reality was inconsistent, so he never knew when to shut up about his story. Everyone thought he was crazy. And in part, he was.

  Jina visited Lewis every day at the hospital, as often as they let her. His treatment for PTSD was going well, and soon he learned to lie about the specifics of his experiences. The doctors were good, but Jina and Sandy were his best support group because they believed him. He was scheduled to be released soon.

  They had all spent the last few months piecing their lives back together, in one way or another. For her, that meant trying to get back into school, hoping to shift coursework from World History to Mythology with a focus on European fairy lore. In the meantime, she made do with a wide variety of personal studies – including her experimentation on this mirror.

  The silver vines of the frame now shone as if new. Sandy smiled in appreciation. Resuming her chant, she selected a clean rag and sprayed cleaner on the dusty glass.

  The mirror reminded Sandy of him. But for some reason, she took comfort in looking at it. From the moment she had first seen it in the seelie room, she felt drawn to it. Now she hoped to use it to track him down Perrihaunisplaun and mete out justice for crimes she could never describe to the police.

  It had come into her possession through a strange event. Four months ago, she had received a letter from an estate lawyer. One Hans Perry, formerly of 6th Street, had named her his wife in his will. Mr. Perry had been dead for over forty years, so the lawyer was happy to finally find her. Even though her supposed husband had died before Sandy was born, no other Sandra Ella Windham existed, so the inheritance was hers.

  She had inherited the house, a bank account with a few thousand dollars, and a stock portfolio worth just over a million.

  Even though Jina had banished Perrihaunisplaun from the house forever, nothing could make her go back there. Instead she hired a crew to empty its belongings. She had all loose items boxed and delivered to a storage shed. Another crew fixed up the house, and she sold it.

  Most of the antiques were useless to her, so she sold them through an estate broker.

  Everything from the seelie room, she kept. Most of it lay packed away in storage.

  Then there were the books…

  Someday, when she finished school, she planned to buy a house and set aside a room as a dedicated library. For now, she let the books pile around her apartment. There were so many of them that they lined every wall. Some were rare, very expensive. Others were unique, and she could find no reference even to their existence. The collection also included a number of handwritten journals. She had even added to the collection, shopping around for anything she could find about the fae.

  She had already read dozens of the dusty old tomes, and had learned much. The difficult part was sorting fact from fiction. Did faeries really steal toradh, energy, from food, leaving it empty of any nutritional value? Where did they live? How did faerie magic work exactly? Were there really different breeds or species, like nymphs, sprites, and selkie? Or were those just human tales interpreting what people saw through their various cultural filters?

  One thing was sure – faeries were real, they were evil, and Sandy hated them.

  The mirror was probably about as clean as she could make it. Its reflective surface would always be marred where flecks of mercury had gone missing from the back. If anything, it added to the beauty of the antique. It made it seem real.

  She set the mirror down gently on the coffee table, and flipped her notebook open to the right spot. This was where she tracked any information that could be useful in locating, manipulating, binding, hurting, and destroying faeries. The pages were wrinkled and worn with overuse.

  Jina had written a spell there for her. It included his true name, which by all accounts and prior experience would create a bond he could not escape. She’d be angry to learn Sandy was experimenting without her, but Sandy had always imagined herself doing this thing, this one act, herself. They had all been his victims, but he had taken the most from her. He had destroyed her dignity, possessed her soul, controlled her very desires. He had violated her in a way that no crisis hotline or rape councilor would ever understand.

  No amount of inheritance money would make up for what he’d done to her.

  Gripping the mirror in anger, she began a new chant.

  Mirror shiny, mirror bright,

  Reflect to me just one tonight,

  Mirror shiny, mirror true,

  Scry to me a face of blue,

  Mirror shiny, mirror tame,

  Use the power of his name,

  Mirror shiny, mirror show,

  The Perrihaunisplaun I know.

  She braced herself when she saw a vision start to coalesce. His image formed clearly, but instead of fear or rage, she felt…

  Gritting her teeth, she resisted it. Remnants of his spell, of being him, assailed her. It was like being there all over again, being in his mind, wanting what he wanted. She took a deep breath and tried to ground herself.

  For some reason she could only see him. His surroundings were black. He casually spoke to someone.

  “I don’t need your money, Niglith. No, stop, stop. You can owe me.”

  She couldn’t hear the other half of the conversation.

  “Nonsense. I’ll be fair, you know I will be. I know I’m a liar, but honestly, it was too much fun, catching her. What a lovely girl, and so much fun in be
d.”

  Who were they talking about?

  “And such a challenge, making her marry me. I’ve never had so much excitement.”

  Sandy fumed. Unless he was a serial polygamist, he most certain was talking about her.

  “Fine, fine, I’ll swear on it. I swear I won’t make you pay me any more than the agreed upon winnings of the bet, no matter how long it takes you to pay up. Interest-free.”

  Bet? What the hell? She’d been kidnapped, terrorized, and tortured, her life fucked up forever, all because of a stupid bet? Was human life so cheap to these fucking faeries?

  “No problem, Niglith. Yeah, sure. See you later.”

  Now Perrihaunisplaun seemed to be alone. Suddenly she could see his surroundings. He sat in a small cluttered room with bare wood walls, a sink, a chair, a desk, and a bed. He seemed to be playing with something shiny.

  Abruptly he looked up at her and smiled.

  “Hello, Sandy…”

  Her breath caught in her throat. Suddenly she wished very much that Jina was here.

  “First you banish me away from you and bar me from my own home. And then you call me up. Pardon me for being confused by your erratic behavior. Do you miss me? Want me back?”

  “I… I…”

  He chuckled. “Don’t worry. I can’t really hear you. Or see you. This is just a message. Think of it like an answering machine. Nevertheless, I’m touched that you’d be interested in following up on me.”

  Even though she knew he couldn’t hear her, she growled. “I want to kill you for what you’ve done, you fucking bastard!”

  “It’s kind of nice to be the one with a stalker for once.” He grinned in that horrible, wicked way. She couldn’t avoid remembering how he felt when he smiled like that. Her cheeks turned red with shame.

  “I hope you liked my gift. I didn’t need any of that old stuff anyway, and since I can’t use my house anymore, well… It’s the least I can do to take care of my lovely wife.”

  Sandy repressed the urge to throw the mirror across the room.

  “Now I’m stuck living in an abandoned shack, so far from home. It’s cold here and the roof leaks, but most of all, I miss you.”

  “I hope you rot in your misery,” she hissed.

  “Well darling, it was good chatting with you. Goodnight my love. Don’t be a stranger!”

  With a wave, his face vanished and she was left staring at her own reflection.

  She’d find him. She’d find him and destroy him, somehow. And in the meantime, she’d practice by killing every other faerie she found.

  Text copyright ©1997, 2010 by Luna Flesher Lindsey

  Cover art and illustrations copyright ©2010 by Elizabeth Lindsey

  Cover and book layout design copyright ©2010 by Luna Flesher Lindsey

  All rights reserved. Published by Luna Lindsey Publishing.

  This publication is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws, and all rights are reserved, including resale rights: you are not allowed to give or sell this ebook to anyone else.

  No part of this ebook may be reproduced in any form, outside of that which is allowed by your license to this rightfully purchased ebook, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Please visit my website www.lunalindsey.com

  First digital publication: August 2010

  Second digital publication: January 2011

  Published in the U.S.A.