by Blythe Baker
Even still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had changed, and the longer I thought about it, the more convinced I became that it was the fact that I was a faery.
Was he frightened of me? Did he despise me? Was he like those on the council of eleven who had it out for my mother, and was he so jealous of me and my power that he was planning my demise?
I shook my head, trying to clear it of those terrible thoughts.
Lucan’s not like that. He wouldn’t do that.
I swallowed hard, my throat tightening like someone was closing their hand around it.
That’s what I thought about Cain, too, and he turned on me.
The thought of Cain brought on another whole layer of pain that I hadn’t expected.
I wished Athena was with me. She’d been sleeping so soundly when I left that evening that I didn’t have the heart to wake her, but in that moment, I wished I had someone to help me get out of my own thoughts. They just kept circling around themselves.
Cain knew I was a faery, and he tried to protect me by not saying anything. I discovered the truth about myself, and went after his sister. His sister died because of me. He exiled me from his life. My secret got out. Lucan became distant in the same way that Cain was…
All because I was a faery.
This truth about myself was literally starting to ruin my life.
Why had I been so thoughtless and determined? Why was I so impatient to learn the truth that I let my own secrets become exposed? I did everything I could to find out about my mother, my father, that others in my life were able to see right through the façade I’d so carefully constructed around myself in order to hide that secret.
I tried as hard as I could to focus on the road ahead of me, but my thoughts were making it incredibly difficult.
These two men who had started to mean so much to me…they’d turned their backs on me. Was this just the way it was all along? Had I put too much trust in them from the beginning, and just misread all their actions toward me?
It was so confusing, and I just wanted to forget about it all.
A flicker of movement up ahead caught my eye, and my eyes widened as something dark and hulking crossed over my path on the road.
My body reacted before my mind did; my foot slammed on the brakes and I gripped the steering wheel for dear life as the car skidded to a halt.
The dark, shadowed figure stood mere feet from my headlights, as still as a statue.
I sat there, my arms shaking, my breath coming in gasps, staring at this shape in front of me.
It wasn’t clear, even in the bright lights from my SUV, who or what it was. It looked like a man, but seemed too tall, and too wide, to really be a man. A dark shape encircled his head, like a hat, and the flapping shadow around his body was almost like a cape. And even though I couldn’t see eyes, I could feel them boring into me, twisting in through my soul.
It was like my mind was suddenly filled with icy splinters of fear and rage. I wanted to turn my eyes from this man, but I couldn’t. They were locked, as if by magic to his frame.
My throat was closing. I was choking.
The shadows were going to consume me.
And then the shape moved away, silently, gliding across the pavement to the grass along the side of the road, before it disappeared through the dark shroud of the trees.
Panting, I stared after it, sweat starting to bead up on my face.
I felt like I had just escaped death incarnate.
I didn’t wait. I put my foot on the gas and sped off, hoping to put as much distance between myself and that shape as I could.
Memories flooded back, memories of golden eyes watching me from the forest when I first arrived in Faerywood Falls, and bats flying off into the night after being hidden among the trees.
I was never alone in these forests, was I?
I somehow managed to get home in one piece, and I was almost positive that the shadowed figure hadn’t followed after me. I hadn’t felt that gaze on me again.
My knees were still weak as I climbed out of the SUV, and I wasn’t sure they’d hold me as I walked up the steps to my front porch, clinging to the railing.
My mouth was dry, and my back was slick with cold sweat.
As I pushed open the door, I glanced over my shoulder…just to be sure.
There wasn’t anyone there.
Whoa, you look awful, Athena said.
I looked back inside as I closed the door and found her stretched out in front of the woodstove. There were some glowing embers inside from the logs I’d thrown in before I left for Lucan’s house.
She stared at me over her back, the fine, soft fur obscuring her snout and eyes partially.
Normally I would have found it equally hilarious and adorable…but I was too shaken to really notice.
“Thanks,” I said, pulling my coat off and tossing it over the back of a chair in the small kitchen area. “That’s what everyone likes to hear when they get home.”
Athena rolled over and got to her feet, padding across the worn hardwood floor to me. What happened?
I sank down into the chair and looked at her. My knee jumping, I tried to regain my composure. “I…don’t really know,” I said, rubbing a hand over my face. My eyes were suddenly so heavy, and my chest so tight. I just wanted to lie down…
Did Lucan say something? Is everyone alright? Athena asked.
“Lucan?” I asked, my eyebrows coming together. “Right. No, I saw something on the way back from his house. A…shape. Like a man, but it was a lot bigger than any man should be. And he was all shadows. I couldn’t see his eyes, but this feeling inside of me…”
I grabbed at the front of my shirt, my fingers knotting in the cotton blend as if I could wrench the pain out of my heart.
Athena jumped deftly up onto the table, her dark eyes fixed on me, glinting with concern. Did he hurt you? Did he use magic?
“I don’t think so…” I said. “But Lucan did warn me that there was some kind of creature lurking in the forest recently. Something that nearly killed one of his shape shifters.”
Athena’s eyes widened, her pupils dilating. That’s no easy feat, she said.
“Definitely not…” I said. “That had to have been what he was talking about.”
There was a knock on the door that nearly made me jump out of my skin. I knocked my knee against the underside of the table, biting back a yelp as I got to my feet.
My heart was hammering against my chest as I walked to the door, massaging my kneecap.
When I pulled it open, I saw Mrs. Bickford standing on the other side, vibrantly colored clothing draped over her arm.
Pushing past me, she said, “I’m glad you’re home, Marianne. I wanted to ask your opinion about these.”
She lifted a strangely shaped dress into the air. It was covered in purple sequins and…feathers?
I knew that the pure dislike for whatever she was holding was clear on my face, and I tried not to let my lip curl too much. “Um…it’s…well, it’s interesting,” I said. “What’s it for, exactly?”
Mrs. Bickford lowered the dress and huffed, rolling her eyes. “For your aunt’s Halloween party, of course,” Mrs. Bickford said. “I thought I might go as a peacock. Or what would you think about a tiger?”
She held up an equally ugly dress made of orange and black sequins. It looked like it weighed a hundred pounds, and was probably more uncomfortable than wearing a burlap sack.
“Oh, right, the party…” I said, rubbing the back of my neck with my tense fingers. The muscles beneath them ached. “I’d completely forgotten.”
“Your aunt is so sweet to hold such a big party every year,” Mrs. Bickford said. “So, what do you think?”
I stared between them like I actually cared.
Really, more than anything, I just want her to leave, I thought.
Then just pick one. The sooner you do, the sooner she’ll leave, Athena said.
I glanced sideways at the fo
x, still seated on the table with her fluffy tail wrapped around her paws. So you can hear me again, huh?
Magic must be flowing the right way through the forest tonight, she said.
I smirked ever so slightly. “Well, Mrs. Bickford, I think they’re both equally lovely,” which was to say, not at all, “So I think you’ll be as happy in one as you would be in the other.”
She smiled, staring between the two hideous dresses. “So, what are you going as?” she asked, looking up at me.
“Me?” I asked. “Oh, I don’t know yet.”
Mrs. Bickford looked at me like I’d grown four eyes. “Don’t know yet? This is such a big party, though. People spend months making their costumes for it.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, I’ve just been kind of busy.”
“I’m sure you have something in here,” Mrs. Bickford said. She looked all around the place, and her eyes brightened when they fell on a thin blanket that I’d tossed over the back of the sofa for some color. She hurried over and pulled it off.
Returning to me, she tossed it over my shoulders, arranging it like a shawl. “There we are. You could go as a little old maid.” She smiled up at me.
“Yes, I could,” I said, pinching the shawl. “That’s true.”
“And if you wear some slippers and a little floral dress, it would just complete the set,” Mrs. Bickford said. With a happy sigh, she smiled at me. “This is always such a fun time. Faerywood Falls isn’t usually a very exciting place, so we like to liven things up like this. And I think it’s a good way for us Gifted to spend time with the Ungifted in town without raising too much suspicion, you know?” She giggled. “Last year, for instance, I dressed up as a ghost, and said that my husband was there in spirit with me. All the Ungifted thought it was sweet, but what they didn’t know was that he actually was with me. He’s always tagging along…aren’t you, Jim?” she asked, glancing back over her shoulder.
I smirked in Jim’s general direction. Sometimes it was easy for me to forget that he was, indeed, always there with her.
A disheartened look passed over Mrs. Bickford’s face.
“But it is sad that there have been so many deaths the last few months. I imagine the whole party will be more somber than usual,” Mrs. Bickford said, adjusting the shawl over my shoulders, brushing away some of Athena’s fine, dark fur that seemed to cling to everything I owned. “I’m sure that some of the Bennet family won’t be there. I can’t imagine they’ll feel much like attending a party after everything that just happened.”
I looked over at Mrs. Bickford as she wandered over to my kitchen and pulled open the drawers until she stumbled upon my drawer for towels and oven mitts.
“Look, you could wear one of these doilies in your hair,” she said, holding it up for me.
Her comment, though, seemed to be just the thing I needed to clear my head.
Mrs. Bickford was a bit of a town gossip, wasn’t she? She always seemed to know what was going on with everyone, all the time. It was clear she knew something was happening with Harriet Bennet’s family.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek, looking sidelong at Mrs. Bickford out of the corner of my eye.
I was living up to everyone’s expectations of a sneaky faery, wasn’t I?
“So, have you heard anything about all that?” I asked as casually as I could, pulling the blanket off my shoulders. “Harriet Bennet’s death, I mean.”
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Bickford said, glancing at me as she pulled open another drawer. “Have these drawers been sticking? I think it’s the cold. Mine needed a good sanding. But yes, I was curious about it too, so I called up my friend Jean whose son is a deputy on the force with Sheriff Garland.”
Bingo. This is exactly what I was looking for.
“Really?” I asked, walking over to her. “Hey, would you like some tea? Or coffee? It’s been so cold, and I’m just chilled to the bone.”
“That’d be lovely, dear,” Mrs. Bickford said.
“And what about some cookies?” I asked, reaching into my fridge and pulling some chocolate chip cookies that I’d brought home from the Lodge earlier that day. “Aunt Candace made these fresh this morning.”
“Oh, you’re too kind to me.” She looked up, an expression on her face like a mother scolding a child. “Yes, Jim, I know that you miss cookies most.”
“Sorry, Mr. Bickford,” I said, laying the cookies out on the table. “I wish I had some ghost cookies I could share with you.”
Mrs. Bickford smiled a crooked grin. “He says thank you,” she said as she took her seat at the table.
I quickly filled up my electric kettle and set it on to heat up. With my back to her, I pulled some tea bags out of the ceramic canister I kept them in, and said, “So what did you hear about Harriet Bennet? I hadn’t heard anything other than what the newspaper said about it.”
“Oh, it was just terrible,” Mrs. Bickford said, even though her face said it was anything but. She picked up a cookie off the plate and broke a tiny piece off. “Jean was telling me that her son told her that it was a complicated case, not to mention gruesome. They have determined it was definitely a murder.”
“Really?” I asked, also picking up a cookie and nibbling on it.
She nodded, her eyes growing wide. “They don’t really know much more than that, but there were definitely wounds of some sort involved. Jean was too grossed out to talk about that much, but she did say that there were footprints found around the body…but the strange thing is that they were only around the body. None walking to it, and none walking away from it. It’s like there wasn’t even another living person there aside from the victim in the first place.”
“How strange,” I said, my own brows furrowing.
“Exactly what I said,” Mrs. Bickford said, biting down on her cookie, little crumbs of cookie scattering across the table.
“How could someone have come and gone unseen like that?” I asked aloud. “Without leaving evidence behind? They’re sure it was a murder?”
“Definitely,” Mrs. Bickford said. She leaned forward across the table, closer to me, and dropped her voice. “Do you want to know my theory?”
“Sure,” I said, my heart skipping a beat. This was the best lead I had so far, so I was willing to hear out her crazy ideas if it meant getting closer to the truth.
“There are others out there that are like us…like me, really. People that are Gifted and have a close kindship with ghosts,” she said.
“You mean ghost talkers and ghost wakers, right?” I asked. I had enough experiences with ghost wakers to last me a whole lifetime. And then some.
She shook her head. “I mean something different entirely. I have never met one, and I’m not sure if these sorts of Gifted even exist or ever have…but there’s a legend among those in my circles about something called a ghost walker.”
“A ghost walker?” I asked.
She nodded. “They look like ordinary people most of the time, but they are really neither alive nor dead.”
“How?” I asked.
She shrugged. “We have no idea. And the other thing that’s strange…and this is why I think that this is how Harriet Bennet died…these ghost walkers apparently have the ability to fade in and out of invisibility, almost as if they pass from the plain of the living to that of the dead in the same breath. That is, if they even breathe at all in the first place.”
I leaned back in my chair, breaking the cookie in my hand in half, pretending to examine it. “That seems impossible,” I said.
“Oh, I’m well aware,” she said. “Like I said, they’re so rare that nobody is even sure that they exist in the first place.”
The theory seemed crazy, but if I’d learned anything in my time living in Faerywood Falls, it was to almost expect the crazy.
“A ghost walker, huh?” I said. “That would answer a lot of the questions, wouldn’t it?”
“My point exactly,” Mrs. Bickford said. “The whole thing about the footprints bein
g there, and then not there…that seems to be the most baffling thing. And this would explain all that.”
Maybe she was right. But I had no way of knowing without doing some more investigating. And that was going to require doing a little reconnaissance.
And that meant talking to people.
Good thing my aunt was having such a big party the following night.
10
Halloween was one of those holidays that as a child, I had found myself way too excited about. It wasn’t because of the creepy crawlies, or because of the haunted houses and stories. It was because of the dressing up, the candy, and the fun times walking through our small neighborhood with my mom and friends.
I had dressed up as every imaginable mythical creature over the years; one year I was a witch with a pointed hat and broomstick; the next, I was a black cat with little ears and whiskers painted on with my mom’s eyeliner. I remembered being a mermaid once, and wondered if they, like all the other Gifted races in Faerywood Falls, were actually real, too.
This year, though, knowing everything I did about the Gifted races, and about magic, and about the people of Faerywood Falls, I decided to go a different way with my costume.
Athena and I both knew it was probably best for her to pass on the party, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want to be nearby. Before the party even started, she and I went over to the Lodge, mostly so I could help Aunt Candace get everything all arranged the way she wanted.
We decided that Athena could spend the evening in the coat room behind the scenes, and that way she and I could still communicate telepathically. It had been way easier the whole day, easier than it had ever been every other time we’d tried.
Halloween is one of those days that the Gifted can’t resist showing off a little, Athena said. Despite everything having gone the way it has in the past month or so, they know that the Ungifted will write off anything unusual as a hoax, and so they don’t fear stretching their wings, so to speak.
That made a lot of sense to me, really. The Ungifted would likely just find it more exciting, and add it to the many reasons why they already loved the holiday.
