by Emma Holly
"You can have my pager," Alisha said, scribbling the number on the corner of an old magazine.
Alex accepted the scrap of torn paper.
"Thank you," he said, not meeting her eyes this time. She wasn't being obvious, but he still knew what he'd find in her expression, and it had nothing to do with Oscar Pruitt's parentage. If he'd met her in a bar, he'd probably have encouraged her. Alisha Kerry was his type in a lot of ways. Smart, pretty, hungry for human connection. Most of all, she didn't seem to have a lot of expectations. She was the kind of woman he could spend a weekend with, the kind who might wish he'd stick around, but who wouldn't bother crying when he left.
Alex always left. That was a constant you could take to the bank.
His lip curled in self-contempt as he and Bryan escaped into the bright sunshine. Sweat immediately popped out beneath his clothes, but it felt better than being inside that gloomy house. When he opened the door to the Audi, the metal handle nearly burned his skin. The interior was too hot to get in.
"Well, that didn't get us very far," Bryan observed across the Audi's roof. "She confirmed what we suspected. Lizanne Pruitt is nuts."
Alex stood in the street with the car doors open, a hook of memory tugging at his consciousness. A red-tailed hawk floated on a thermal high above the slightly shabby suburban homes. The memory was something to do with babies being expected to die but then recovering.
He pulled out his cell phone as it came to him.
"I have to call my mother," he explained to Bryan. "I'll be done in a few minutes."
Amanda Goodbody lived in San Diego. She'd moved there after her youngest son had been metaphorically run out of Fairyville on a rail. Though she loved all her boys, Alex was her baby. His behavior fifteen years ago might have disappointed her, but she adored him no matter what. She'd had a hard time forgiving people who couldn't find it in themselves to forgive him.
She picked up after the second ring.
"Sweetie!" she cried. "How lovely to hear your voice!"
"You haven't heard it yet," he teased, turning slightly away from Bryan. Taking the hint, though it hadn't been deliberate, Bryan got into the sun-baked car.
"I saw it on the caller ID! Thanks again for my phone. I'm really enjoying it. I'm in the garden talking to you!"
Alex felt his heart well up with love with her, picturing her among her beloved peonies. "I'm glad you like the present, though I don't know how I'll top it for your next birthday."
"You don't have to," she assured him. "I'll still be grateful for it then. Your father says I spend so much time talking on it, he thinks I've been reborn as a teenager."
"Good." Alex propped his hips back against the hot metal of car. "Mom, I have a question I need to ask. You used to tell me a story about when I was born, about how I got sick in the hospital."
"Lord, yes," she said. "That was a terrible time. You were a preemie, and that Fairyville General wasn't the showplace it is today. You picked up some sort of antibiotic-resistant infection: nosocomial something or other, they called it. I remember sitting by your incubator hour after hour, knowing it must be bad because the nurses didn't kick me out. You were just a quivering, hairless kitten, too weak to cry, and me praying and praying until I thought my prayer would fall off."
"But I got better."
"Yes, you did, and to this day nobody quite knows why. I remember nodding off with your tiny fist clenched around my pinkie, and then when I woke up you were all right. The nurses thought it was wishful thinking, but when I finally convinced them to check your vitals, they were crying right along with me."
"So you actually thought I would die."
"Yes, I did, and I suspect that's part of the reason you're precious to me now."
Alex shoved his hand through his hair, unsure where to go with this next.
"Why do you want to know, sweetie?" his mother asked into the pause. "I hope your doctor hasn't found something wrong."
"It's a case," Alex said. "Just a thread I wanted to track down. I'm healthy as a horse, like always."
"Well, I'm sure you'll solve whatever it is. You tell that nice Bryan fellow 'hello' from me."
Alex smiled, because Bryan was always that 'nice Bryan fellow' to his mom.
"I will," he promised, then said "I love you" and hung up.
His hands were shaking just a little when he slid the key into the ignition.
"Everything all right?" Bryan asked.
"Yeah," he said. "Just a weird coincidence."
Except his gut was telling him it was more than that. He thought of his older brothers: Jason, Mark, and Steve. None of them had caused his mom the trouble Alex had. All of them had played sports, but none had excelled to the extent that Alex did. They were TV warriors now, every one slowly going soft. They'd all settled down with nice, cookie-baking wives, whom they seemed to have no trotible being faithful to. Alex doubted they'd kissed a man on the cheek other than their father, much less gone adventuring the way Alex had. Hell, the idea that Alex worked for himself was exotic enough for them. Alex loved his brothers, but there were huge portions of his life that were as alien from theirs as the Milky Way.
I'm different from them, he thought, his stomach clenching uneasily. Probably as different as Oscar Pruitt is from his relatives.
"Where to now?" Bryan asked, his tone carefully light.
Alex considered swinging by the hospital to see if they could track down more former staff. His other choice was to find Zoe. See what she might have noticed with her "extra" senses on the night Oscar was born.
These ideas had barely run through his mind before he dismissed them—the latter because he wasn't ready to face his old high school flame, and the former because he didn't hold out much hope for it paying off. This case was already steeped in Fairyville weirdness. His mother's confidence notwithstanding, they'd never solve it by following the book. No, they'd have to rely on subtler forms of guidance.
Like maybe praying for a decent lead.
He shook his head at the thought. His focus was all over the place today. He needed to get himself together before they tackled anything.
"We're going back to the inn," he decided. "I need to think for a while."
He glanced at Bryan just as the other man turned his face to the window. Bryan's elbow was on the armrest, his hand covering his sensual, half-Italian mouth. Despite the barrier, Alex could tell he was smiling. The knowing expression made Alex realize he was warm from more than the near-century temperatures. His zipper was clutching his cock a good bit tighter than it had before.
It seemed Bryan had guessed what his partner needed besides "thinking."
* * *
Chapter Four
Magnus lived in what humans colorfully termed an "earth ship." It was a small one-bedroom house with its backside dug into the ground, built with recycled materials like automobile tires and cans. Solar panels enhanced the energy conservation of the three-foot walls, but living green hadn't been his incentive for buying it.
His incentive for buying it had been the unobstructed view of the town's red rocks. Fairy was a lush, green cradle, cloying in its sweetness. This landscape reminded him he wasn't there, reminded him, too, that the Earth itself was a power object.
Tonight he was more pleased than ever that nothing stood between him and the stark formation called the Giant's Teeth—nothing except the scrub and dirt of national park land.
He watched both through the single window that ran the length of his home, drinking in the beauty of the sunset until the last blood-red glimmer disappeared and the land went black.
When it did, he couldn't restrain a shiver. His soul felt as if a similar shadow had snapped over it.
"You won't lose her," he said quietly, his fingers pressed to the sun-warmed glass. "She's still your friend."
He shut his eyes to the darkness. He'd known for some time that he loved Zoe, but he hadn't known how deeply until she turned away today. Friendship truly wasn't enough to ease the
ache inside him, but it was better than never seeing her again.
"Stop," he whispered, feeling the first tinge of hopelessness beginning to stain his spirit, like an octopus's ink clouding a sunlit sea. He knew the basic laws by which all realms operated, Fairy or otherwise. Hopelessness drew more reasons to lose hope as surely as magnets drew iron filings. Joy was its only cure, but sometimes—like now—joy needed help to bloom.
Knowing he couldn't reach for it on his own, he turned to the simplest magic, the one that demanded no rituals or spells, the first and purest any child of Fairy learned.
"Send me sweeter thoughts," he murmured to the Will-Be. "I am the child of your maker, and I am willing to receive."
The Will-Be wasn't a being or a realm. It was a sphere of influence, discrete unto itself but overlapping the worlds of matter and spirit. The Will-Be was the nonplace where wishes first began coming true. Magnus pictured it as a limitless metaphysical storehouse for possibilities that hadn't yet taken form. Every desire—assuming its birth had been intense and focused—existed, ghostlike, in this not-quite-real domain, waiting for its summoner to welcome it. The way its summoner did this was to embrace two things. The first was faith in the mechanism that brought desires into being. The second was belief that the summoner was worthy of the gift. So long as these qualities could be sufficiently sustained, no desire was too big for the Will-Be to gratify.
In Fairy, as long as the request didn't oppose an edict of the queen, the process was quick and easy. In the human realm, coaxing wishes into manifestation took more time than most beings had patience for. Magnus was still working on his ability to wait gracefully, but he knew frustration slowed the magic, and despair shut it down entirely—because what did that emotion represent but a lack of faith?
Magnus couldn't afford to despair over the prospect of losing Zoe's friendship. Yes, his fear would take time to appear. Everything happened slower in the human realm. But feeding it even a little would lead him in a direction he didn't want to go. Far better, and far easier, to stop the dread when it was small.
"I am clever," he said, determined to head off his gloom. "I have wooed many women and won their hearts. Surely keeping one woman's fondness isn't that different. I love Zoe, after all, and love is a good, strong magic, perhaps the oldest magic of all. Caring for her need not lower my spirits, not when it's so clearly an advantage."
His breath came easier with the soothing, and his heart didn't feel so heavy in his chest. Opening his eyes, he noticed a field of energy wavering outside the window, a heatlike shimmer in cool, moon blue. Magnus smiled at the sign that he was making progress. As he did, a tendril licked against the glass. The Will-Be was coming close enough to taste his thoughts.
"Just an idea," he petitioned politely. "A little help getting Zoe to feel easy with me again."
The Will-Be gathered against the glass, taking on a shape Magnus recognized.
"Perfect!" he exclaimed, delight tugging at his lips. "That's even better than I asked for."
Zoe floated naked in the hot tub on the deck behind her adobe house, her arms and neck draped limply over the padded rim. She didn't fear being spied on. None of her neighbors were close, in addition to which, Fairyville had an ordinance against commercial lights shining after ten. Left undisturbed, the stars were twinkling crystals on a field of ebon)'. Coupled with the sea salt she'd thrown into the roiling water, the view of the undimmed heavens acted as a balm. She felt her upsets drain away—at least, as much as they were going to.
No amount of sea salt could tell her what to do about her sexy manager.
It didn't seem she could forget him. Magnus called to her emotions and her body too much for that. Being friends had already proven painful, and yet the thought of not being friends appealed to her even less. At lunch, Teresa had suggested she try to seduce him, just go for it and get him out of her system. On the face of it, this appeared to be her best option. Magnus had kissed her—more than kissed her, strictly speaking—and surely a seduction had a chance of success. The problem was, even if she did succeed, she was far from certain one night with Magnus would put her itch to rest.
She'd heard the wistful sighs of Magnus's former lovers. Although none spoke of him resentfully—an accomplishment she attributed to his sunny charm—she couldn't doubt he was a hard act to follow.
Regrettably, she couldn't convince herself she'd last any longer than Magnus's previous one-night stands. Even ignoring his warning, her history wasn't reassuring on that subject. She hadn't held on to Alex when they were kids, and she wasn't so insecure that she didn't know he'd wanted her quite a bit.
Her toes curled beneath the water at a memory: her and Alex making out in the back of his mother's hideous wood-paneled station wagon. As she recalled, it had been the night before a big game. They'd been dating six months by then, starting a week and two days after she'd been assigned to tutor him in calculus. He'd been a typical I'll-never-use-this jock, whereas she'd been grades ahead. The match had been perfect—in more ways than one.
Other boys before Alex had thought that hanging with a psychic was cool… until they realized she wouldn't, or couldn't, tell them which teachers were going to give pop quizzes. The dead came to Zoe with their own agendas, so hungry to communicate with their loved ones that they'd gravitate to anyone who could hear. Most boys, no matter how brave they thought they were, were creeped out by the idea that Zoe didn't just see ghosts, she drew them—a teenage pied piper to the deceased. Boys like that wanted a normal girl they could take to dances. They wanted a girl they could get to second base with without wondering if their Aunt Ida was watching from the Other Side.
Alex was the first boy Zoe met who was more interested in her than in what she could do. Oh, her gifts were what had sparked his curiosity, but it was her he called on the phone each night to talk for hours. All the extras she could do and see he simply took in stride. To Zoe, this was a miracle of the highest order: not to be doubted or viewed as a freak. Alex could have been ugly and obnoxious, and he'd still have earned a friend for life. That he was the hottest boy in school, a championship quarterback over whom Zoe had been struggling not to sigh, earned him her devotion almost before he'd known he wanted it.
Happily for her, his attraction hadn't taken long to match hers. The three-year age difference had bothered him from the first, but he hadn't been able to resist her bumbling overtures. Naturally, him having to fight his honorable intentions had made the relationship all the more romantic to her.
He'd been very careful not to "despoil" her, as he'd put it. They'd kissed—a lot—and he'd touched her breasts under her bra, but the closest they'd come to actual sex was grinding against each other with all their clothes on. This had gotten them so excited, they'd both been able to climax, a feat Zoe could only marvel at today. None of her partners since had managed anything like it.
That night, though, like most nights when she was fifteen, Alex was the only male in her world. That night in the beat-up Ford Country Squire, she'd made up her mind to touch his penis with her bare hand, a decision he was trying to argue her out of between their usual deep and desperate French kisses.
"It's too much," he'd gasped, his lower body pressing hers insistently into the station wagon's thin carpet. "If you take it out, I'll want to put it inside you."
"I won't let you," Zoe promised, though when his teeth scraped lightly over the skin beneath one ear, she wasn't quite as sure.
"You're wearing a skirt tonight. That's only panties between you and me."
"I'll stop you," she said more firmly. "I just want to see it. I want to feel what happens to it when you come."
Alex groaned into the neck of her pink-and-white-striped spandex halter, the one she'd worn to persuade him to go along with her idea. It clung to what breasts she had with formidable faithfulness, but so far it wasn't living up to the hopes she had for it.
"I probably shouldn't before a game anyway. The coach said we should refrain."
"T
he coach isn't you. Remember what happened the last time we 'refrained?' You fumbled twice on important plays."
She wasn't certain Alex heard her. He was licking her nipple through the halter's stretchy cloth, which instantly hardened it. Then—as if this evidence of her responsiveness was too much for his control—he groaned and sucked most of her breast hard into his mouth.
It was a rough thing to do, and not his usual style, but Zoe couldn't have loved it more. Her back bowed off the cargo area's floor as she thrust her hands into his sun-streaked hair. A line of fire had ignited between her nipple and her sex, tightening the sensations welling there. He groaned again and tugged at her more fiercely. What he was doing felt so good that, for a startled second, she thought she was going to come from that.
When he let her go, her moan of protest was sincere.
"I didn't refrain that night," he panted in his dark, rough voice, the voice that made him sound like a full grown man. "I got so crazy not doing it with you that I jacked off five times in a row as soon as I got home."
Fresh heat flushed through her to her toes. She had to swallow before she could make her own confession, and that was only in a whisper. "I've done it five times in a row myself, but I didn't know boys could get off that often."
Alex's breath caught at her words. Clearly, he hadn't thought about her needing release, too. He stared at her, his eyes burning in the soft illumination of the dome light.
"Jesus," he finally said, forgetting she'd asked him not to curse in front of her.
The bulge in his jeans pressed snug against her panties, so huge it frightened her. She was more excited than afraid, though, and she laid her palm gently over it. She'd never touched him that directly before. He jerked, but didn't jerk away.
"Let me take it out," she coaxed softly. "Aren't you tired of driving home with sticky underwear?"
"Zoe…"
She heard his resistance crumbling. "Who else is going to let me? All the other boys think I'm weird."
