by Lexi George
She looked around, taking in the neat, well-maintained landing and surrounding grounds. Someone lived here, someone who took good care of the place. Sassy felt a thrill of elation. She’d made it. She was out of the woods.
A worn path ran from the riverbank up a steep, grassy hill. Sassy trudged up the slope, her leg muscles trembling from the long hike. At the top, she found a high, thorny hedge. The impenetrable bramble wall disappeared into the darkness.
A prickle of unease slithered down her spine. What was the purpose of that barbed barrier? Was the owner trying to keep someone in . . . or out?
For heaven’s sake, it was a hedge. The Randolphs lived next door to Mama and Daddy Joel. They had some perfectly huge leylandii bushes bordering their estate, and she’d never given them a second thought. It was about privacy and nothing more.
She hurried down the narrow lane that ran beside the spiny enclosure and came to a greenery arch. A twig gate artfully fashioned in the shape of a spider’s web provided entry to the property. The wrought-iron lamppost beside the gate was unlit. Sassy peered through the opening and saw a lush flower garden. Someone had a green thumb and a passion for growing things. Roses, wisteria, and honeysuckle scented the air. A white gravel walkway wound between blooming shrubs to the cottage beyond, a fairy-tale structure with ivy shrouded walls, deep-set windows, and a roof like a fallen cake.
The windows of the cottage were dark. No one was home. Disappointing, but she’d made it this far on her own. With any luck, the house would be unlocked. She would wait inside. The owner wouldn’t mind. Anyone who lived in such a darling little house had to be a sweetie pie.
Sassy unlatched the gate and slipped into the garden. Bushes lined the footpath, cleverly pruned to resemble animals. Here a sleek hound posed, legs outstretched, in pursuit of a startled hare. There a turtle swam through an airy sea. On the other side of the placid reptile, a large tabby lifted a greenery paw to wash its smiling face. Beyond the cat, a dragon spread an enormous pair of leafy wings. The effect was charming and altogether whimsical.
Or it might have been in the daylight. At night, the topiary animals appeared sinister and watchful. Sassy eyed the dwelling with misgiving, her disquiet returning. Up close, the gingerbread house didn’t seem quite as delightful. The empty windows stared at her like lidless eyes.
A metallic ping startled her, the sound loud in the hushed garden.
“It’s a wind chime, silly,” Sassy muttered. “You’re letting your imagination run away with you.”
She shook off her apprehension, marched past the frozen animal tableau and up to the front door.
She lifted the brass knocker and banged it against the painted wood. The sound echoed in the darkness.
“Hello? Is anyone home?” Sassy turned the handle and pushed. The door was locked. “Hello?”
She held her breath, listening, and thought she heard something.
“Hal-loo?”
She climbed down from the stoop and repeated her hello. A faint response came from somewhere in the back. Sassy grew alarmed. What if an elderly person lived here? Sassy volunteered twice a week at the senior rehab center in Fairhope, and she knew from experience how fragile old bones could be. One of her favorite patients, Miss Tessie Lou Hilton, had broken her foot stepping off a curb.
What if the owner of the little house had ventured out to feed the cat or water the flowers and turned an ankle? He or she could have been lying back there, helpless and in pain, for hours or days.
Sassy hurried to the back of the house and found a cobblestone patio partially shaded by dogwood trees and redbuds, but no sign of the owner. Drifts of lantana nestled against the foundation. Flower boxes hung from window sills, blooms leeched of color in the moonlight. At the back door, a copper turret provided shelter from wind and rain. Bird feeders hung from tree branches. The wind chime that had startled her moments before jangled in the slight breeze. She inhaled the light scent of Confederate jasmine and located the source, a mass of white blossoms tumbling over a low, broken stone wall. On the other side of the rock fence was a single towering tree with pale bark. An elaborately carved staircase with a vine railing wound around the massive trunk and disappeared into the high, spreading branches.
Sassy half expected a troop of elves to plop out of the tree like overripe apples, singing tra-la-la-lolly.
The back lot was large, several acres surrounded by the bristling hedge. Industrial lights, one in each corner and another in the middle, cast a milky glow over the property. Two commercial-grade greenhouses made of galvanized steel and glass sat beside a large vegetable garden. Sassy readjusted her earlier opinion of the owner. Not a casual gardener and, more than likely, not a senior citizen. Gardening was more than a passion for whoever lived here. It was a business, a flourishing business, judging from the size and quality of the garden centers.
A slight sound drew her attention to a large storage building underneath the tree. The windowless hut was quaint, fashioned in the same style as the house, and equipped with a sturdy door and crowned by a thatched roof. The wooden bar on the door was latched. Could the owner have accidentally gotten locked in the shed?
Sassy scurried across the damp lawn. “Hello? Is someone in there? Hello?”
The breeze shifted and she caught the sickly odor of decay. “Pee-yew, what is that smell?”
She neared the hut and recoiled. Someone had piled a rotting heap of animal carcasses around the perimeter of the outbuilding. At her feet, a dead raccoon grinned up at her from the jumble of bones, hollow eyes unseeing. The bodies were stacked on top of one another in a moldering ring, as though pushing against some unseen boundary. Ugh.
Holding her breath, Sassy tried to step over the grisly barricade and slammed, nose first, into an invisible barrier. Sparks shot up with a loud, crackling sound, and Sassy flew through the air. She landed on her back. Stunned, she blinked up at the starry sky. She must have walked into a hidden power line. It was a miracle she hadn’t been killed. Righteous indignation surged through her. Those poor little animals hadn’t been so lucky. They’d wandered into the same trap and been electrocuted. She’d report this to Alabama Power. It was her civic duty.
High up in the tree, a Chinese lantern swayed in the breeze, glowing with a soft, misty light. The lantern flared pink and faded again.
Sassy sat up, her shocked gaze on the flickering lamp. Not a lantern; a metal cage. Beneath the hutch, a length of coiled copper pipe emptied into a curved glass container. Inside the pen, a dozen shining moths fluttered in alarm.
Sassy’s brain processed what it was seeing, and rebelled. Moths didn’t glow and sparkle like they’d been dipped in diamond dust and moonlight. Why, from a distance, they almost looked like . . .
Her heart thudded unevenly. No.
No. Way.
Inside the cage, a tiny winged creature wilted with a sharp trill and dropped to the floor. With a metallic grinding of gears, the metal container sprang to life. The copper piping shook, and a blob of colored liquid dropped from the tip of the tubing into the waiting receptacle with a musical ching.
The glass jar beneath the cage blazed blue and went dark. It was a trap, like the invisible fence. Someone, someone sick and twisted, was distilling—
The mechanism jerked to life again, and the prisoners wailed in despair. Exhaustion forgotten, Sassy jumped to her feet and pounded up the narrow, winding staircase that circled the tree. At the top of the steps was a small wooden platform.
The birdcage hanging from the tree limb was wrought iron, the kind available from any home or craft store. A hole had been cut in the top of the cage and covered with delicate wire mesh that had been sliced down the middle. Directly above the opening was a saucer that contained some kind of a syrupy liquid. Something tempting to fairies, Sassy suspected in growing outrage and horror. Bluebell nectar, honey cakes, or wine; the perfect offering to attract the tiny creatures. Lured by the promise of the sugary treat, they’d flutter up to the device to take a sip, like hummingbir
ds at a feeder, never suspecting the fluid was laced with something wicked. Drugged and lethargic, the fairies would tumble through the wire slit into the cage below.
If Sassy remembered her fairy lore correctly, iron was poisonous to the fae. Once inside the coop there would be no escape.
Hurrying across the little deck, Sassy knocked the saucer off the stand and jerked open the door of the hutch. The fairies swarmed out, shedding thick puffs of fairy dust into the air. The glittering particles blew into Sassy’s eyes, climbed up her nose, and coated her throat.
She sneezed. “Oh, my goodness, you’re welcome. Now, go away. Shoo. I think I’m allergic.”
The fairies ignored her and twittered around her head like a flock of excited sparrows. Sassy coughed and stepped back. Her right foot slipped off the boards, and she teetered on the edge of the tree stand, arms windmilling. She made a wild grab to keep from falling, her hand closing around the pipe and the mason jar dangling from the bottom of the fairy trap.
“Mother-of-pearl, that was close,” she said, pulling herself back onto the platform.
The glass jar came off in her hand. Sassy stared at the container with a mixture of fascination and revulsion. Fairy goo, she was holding a pot of concentrated fairy goo. She looked inside the container. It was gross and macabre, but she couldn’t help it. Like when she was eight years old and she stuck a straight pin in the vinyl pool toy Daddy Joel had bought her.
Curiosity killed more than the cat. Curiosity had killed her inflatable killer whale.
The stuff swirling against the glass was shimmering and viscous, like jellied starlight. Sassy tilted the jar to take a better look. The liquid shot out of the jar and squirted her in the face.
Disoriented and blind, Sassy staggered and fell off the platform, bouncing from branch to branch on the way down. She crashed through the thatched roof of the little hut and landed on the concrete floor.
With a groan, Sassy sat up. She was bruised and battered, she’d bonked her head on a limb as she fell, and there was a lump the size of an orange on her left ankle.
The shed was empty except for a pile of grimy blankets in one corner and a bucket of some kind. Good Lord, the smell was awful, a nauseating combination of sewage, rotten food, and body odor. Surely that bucket wasn’t a chamber pot? How medieval.
The interior of the little building was surprisingly well-lit. Glancing down, Sassy realized she was the light source. Her body was luminous.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have looked in that jar.”
The mound of rags stirred and rose from the floor. Shining eyes blinked at her from beneath a greasy snarl of long black hair.
“What jar, Sweetness and Light?” the man asked with a drunken sneer.
Sassy screamed.
Chapter Five
The man reeled across the shed and threw himself down beside her. He reeked of sour sweat and worse. He jerked her close and slapped a grimy hand over her mouth. He smelled horrible. Sassy thought she might faint from the stink.
“Shut your yap. She’ll hear you.” His words were sluggish. “She don’t like noise.” His grip tightened. “Well? If I let go, will you be quiet?”
Sassy nodded and he released her.
“All righty, then.” He propped himself on his elbows, as if sitting up was too much effort. “I was out of it. Didn’t realize I had company. She puts something in the food and water.”
“You mean someone’s drugged you? That’s awful.” He was filthy and he smelled, but his eyes were beautiful, a deep glowing purple. “You should have them arrested.”
He chuckled. “I’ll do worse than that, if I get out of here. You got a name, Lollipop?”
“Sassy Peterson.”
“Peterson, huh? Any relation to Trey?”
“He was my brother. You knew him?”
“We met.” He pushed to a sitting position and gave her a tipsy half bow. “Evan Beck, at your service.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Dunno.” He scratched his black beard. “What day is it?”
“The fifteenth.”
“Of April?”
“Goodness, no. It’s the fifteenth of May.”
“Then I’ve been here more than a month.” He tugged a lock of matted hair. “That’s why the old biddy’s unhappy with me. The fatted calf ain’t fattening up fast enough.”
Sassy stared at him in horror. “You aren’t seriously suggesting this person intends to eat you.”
“’Fraid so.”
“But why?”
He shrugged. “I got in her way.”
“What about your friends . . . your family, won’t they be looking for you?”
“I’ve got a sister, but she thinks I left town.” He pushed a knotted hank of hair out of his eyes and gave her the once-over. “You’re a tasty little piece. She must be saving you for dessert. What’d you do to piss her off?”
“I didn’t do anything. I fell out of the tree. The roof broke my fall.”
“What the hell were you doing in a tree?”
“Freeing the fairies,” Sassy said. “I opened the cage and let them out.”
Evan jumped up. “You what?”
“I had to do something. They were dying.”
“Oh, shit. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a goddamn do-gooder.”
“I suppose you would have left them there?”
“Damn straight.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“The hell I don’t.”
Sassy shook her head. “It’s the stress talking. Very understandable, after what you’ve been through.”
“You don’t know shit about me, sugar tits.”
Sassy stiffened. “Don’t be vulgar.”
“Cut the crap, prissy britches. You drank the witch’s fairy juice. That’s why you’re lit up like a Christmas tree. Well, you’re in the shitter now, babe. The witch don’t take kindly to meddlers.”
“I did not drink it,” Sassy said, indignant at the suggestion. “The jar came loose and the fairy gunk hit me in the face. It was an accident.”
“You got splooged. That’s your story?” Ignoring her gasp of outrage, Evan dumped the contents of the bucket on the floor and turned it upside down.
“Where are you going?” Sassy said.
“Either you broke the spell the old hag put around the shed when you opened the jar, or she didn’t bother to shield the roof. I’m out of here.”
“You can’t leave me.”
“Oh, yeah? Watch me.”
He hefted his body through the hole in the ceiling and disappeared.
“Come back,” Sassy cried, rolling to her knees.
She froze as a chilling howl shattered the quiet night. Oh, God, it was the thing from the road. It would take more than a few overgrown sticker bushes to keep that nightmare out. Sassy gritted her teeth and dragged herself over to the upended bucket. Ignoring the ring of ooze leaking from underneath the slop jar, she put her hands on the metal bottom and pushed to her feet. The blood rushed to her sore ankle, and she winced in pain.
She was looking up at the ceiling, trying to judge the distance, when Evan stuck his head back through the gap in the straw.
“Shag your ass, Lollipop, unless you wanna get et.”
“I can’t. I think I broke my ankle when I fell.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“No, I’m not, and stop swearing. I don’t like it.”
Evan let loose a blistering stream of foul words in response, and dropped back through the hole.
“Where did you come from, Miss Goody Two-shoes, the moon? You’re about to be a Sassy sandwich, and you’re bitching about my language. I’ve met a lot of supers in my time, but you take the prize.”
“Supers? I don’t know what you mean.”
There was a loud crash from the direction of the cottage, followed by a grinding snarl.
Evan’s head snapped up. “Hear that? That’s the witch. Now we’r
e both screwed. No good deed goes unpunished.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You are such a Lollipop.”
“How did she catch you?” Sassy asked.
“She tricked me. She was the cutest little granny you ever saw before she broke out in ugly.”
“Cheesy Pete,” Sassy said, remembering her fairy tales. “She’s been cursed. That’s why she trapped the fairies, to break the spell.”
“Or maybe she likes a glass of fairy juice with her Cheerios.” His teeth flashed white in his dirty, bearded face. “And you drank it. She’s gonna love you.”
“I told you, I did not drink the—”
“Whatever.” Evan grabbed her around the waist and lifted her up. He was surprisingly strong. “Get a move on. We’re running out of time.”
Sassy grabbed the thatching and tried to pull herself up. Her throbbing ankle made her sick to her stomach and she was uncomfortably aware that her bottom was sticking in Evan’s face.
“Oh, my goodness, this is awkward,” Sassy said. “I expect you to be a gentleman and not look up my dress.”
“News flash, Lollipop. I’ve got more important things on my mind right now than your Tiffany twat. Staying alive, for starters.”
“Tiffany—” Sassy spluttered. “You are the crudest man.”
“Babe, this is me being nice. Move it.”
Ignoring her indignant protests, Evan put his hands on Sassy’s butt and pushed. She shot through the hole like a cork out of a champagne bottle and belly-flopped onto the roof. The impact jolted her bad ankle. She pressed her face against the scratchy straw, gritting her teeth to keep from screaming.
Evan hoisted himself out of the shed. “See, I was right. The shield doesn’t reach the roof. I could have busted out of this shit box weeks ago.”
Sassy lifted her head. She did see. A network of shimmering lines surrounded the shed and ended some six feet off the ground. The spell was clearly visible. Why hadn’t she seen it before?
It had to be the fairy funk.
“Don’t sit there.” Evan yanked Sassy upright, ignoring her cry of pain. “Let’s get out of here. And turn down the wattage. You’re lit up like a freaking airport runway.”
