by Sarina Dorie
Yamil gave me my tips—forty-five dollars and a couple more weird-looking coins. They weren’t American, but I didn’t know other countries’ denominations, nor did I suspect any coin from our world showed a witch on them. Still, the cash alone was a pretty good score for an unemployed art teacher. I was lucky when I got any tips at all for caricatures and sideshows like this.
My handsome admirer from the day before found me backstage while I was packing up. Thistledown flicked his red velvet cape over his shoulder. “Marvelous performance. I knew you would convince them.”
I paused. “Convince them of what?”
“That you’re worthy of our school.” He extended his hand. “Pardon me, I don’t believe I’ve properly introduced myself. I’m Julian Thistledown. Pleased to make your acquaintance.” He shook my hand enthusiastically.
“Hi, I’m Clarissa Lawrence.” I was exhausted and didn’t feel like conversation no matter how hot he was.
“Yes, I know.”
He kept shaking my hand. “Are you free after this? I would love to take you back to my place and ravish you.”
My eyes widened. That seemed a little forward.
“Oh bother! Did I say that out loud?” He chuckled. “I meant, take you out to lunch. Freudian slip.”
I was flattered a good-looking guy wanted to date me, but I wasn’t convinced he was right for me. I tugged my hand out of his. “Maybe another time. I’m pretty busy right now.”
He cleared his throat. “Not that I mean to be presumptuous, but you and Thatch—well—onstage, ahem. You and Felix Thatch aren’t involved, are you?”
I grimaced. “Hardly. It was just part of the show.”
“Right. Good. Glad to hear it. So, what do you say to dinner? It doesn’t have to be today.” He grinned, his teeth perfectly straight and white. I think my dad would have wanted me to date him for his tooth brushing skills alone.
Bumblebub entered the backstage area, saving me from answering. An entourage of witches followed him. There were eight of us behind the greenroom curtain, crowding the little space and huddling around the costume rack. Thatch stood next to Bumblebub’s right elbow. His lips drew back into a sneer.
“Good day to you, Miss Lawrence,” Bumblebub said. “Mighty fine show out there.”
“Thank you,” I said with a nervous laugh. “Does that mean I’m less at risk of being killed by witches?”
He took my hand in his, patting it in a grandfatherly way. “Is that why you tried to skedaddle yesterday? You weren’t never in danger. We’re here to help you, not hurt you.”
The vamp with the bob muttered under her breath. “Speak for yourself.” She didn’t wear a witch’s hat. It probably would have messed her immaculate hair.
An older woman elbowed the vamp in the ribs and pursued her lips. “Ignore Vega, dear. She’s just being difficult.”
“Which is to say, being her usual self,” Julian Thistledown said with a chuckle.
There were so many of them crowding around and talking amongst themselves it was hard to focus on any of them.
“I’d like to remedy last night’s embarrassing mishap by offering you a formal apology,” Bumblebub said. His eyes twinkled, and he tugged at his curly mustache. “Please allow me to present to you with a letter free of typos written on the appropriate parchment. It’s my intention to invite you to teach at my school.”
“Teach what?” Thatch snapped. “She hasn’t graduated with a degree in teaching yet. She can’t even do magic without assistance.”
“You, yourself said it, Felix. She’s proficient in arts and crafts. That’s sufficient.”
“Fine arts and crafts. Not the dark arts. She is completely ill-suited for our school. She’d be better off having her powers stripped before she harms someone beyond repair.”
“You would say that,” I pointed at him. “You’ve been following me, undermining me at every turn in my life.” My suspicions crystalized as I spoke. “Each time something horrible happens in my life, something magical, you’re there. You’re probably the one killing people too.”
He lifted his nose at that. “I wouldn’t sink so low as to waste my magic on Morties. Especially considering you are quite capable of killing them yourself.” He raised an eyebrow. He didn’t say my sister’s name, but I felt the accusation in his eyes. “My duty is simply to clean up the messes made by immature Witchkin. Like you.”
The words stung. I didn’t want it to be true. It would have been so much easier if I could blame him. I looked to Bumblebub.
The old man chewed on his mustache. “Felix is speaking the truth. His duty outside our campus is to investigate magical anomalies and cover them up if they’re Witchkin related. We invite any children who have come of age and have nowhere else to go to attend our school. That’s what he does—sniff around for magic in the human world. As soon as I suspected your … parentage, I tasked him to keep an eye on you. I’m afraid the two of you have gotten off on the wrong foot.”
Bumblebub didn’t know about me or my parentage. He’d been caught off guard when he’d learned Thatch had known about me. Then again, maybe he couldn’t admit he hadn’t known or else the Raven Queen might be able to claim me. Even so, Thatch was no ally.
I shook my head. “No, Felix Thatch was going to sell me to those birds. You saw it last night.” I looked to the other witches.
“An act. A delay,” Bumblebub smiled kindly. “I reckon if Thatch’s powers in divination hadn’t told him what to do at the exact moment of your imminent demise, you’d have fallen into the hands of the Raven Queen.”
“Divination?” I repeated.
Thatch coughed, indignant as a cat. “The least you could do is pretend to be thankful.”
I crossed my arms. I didn’t doubt divination was possible. It was just that I suspected there was far more to the story than that. His convenient premonition was a little too hard to believe.
“Hey! Keep it down back here!” Yamil shouted from the wing. “Take your Lord of the Rings fan club outside. I’ve got other performers who need this space.” He jerked a thumb toward the curtain. The way his eyebrows came together was as formidable as any Fae queen.
Bumblebub tucked my hand into the crook of his elbow and led me out the stage exit and onto the path. “Someone be a dear and get her bag. Thatch?”
Thatch sighed dramatically and reached for it. I was about to object, but Julian Thistledown dove for it and heaved it over his shoulder. “I’ve got this.”
Bumblebub walked with me along the path that was supposed to be closed to the public. We passed a security guard who should have asked to see our performer I.D.s, but he stared past us like he didn’t see the group of witches. Most of Bumblebub’s entourage followed at a respectful distance. Except for Thatch. He tailed right behind us.
“You’ve got an important decision ahead of you,” Bumblebub said. “In order to be safe from the Raven Court, as well as from any other Fae you stumble upon, you’re gonna need to make a choice, darlin’. Either you can live in our world and learn to master your powers, or you must allow us to drain your magic and turn you mortal, rendering you normal and safe.”
“And who might receive these powers?” Thatch drawled out. “Who has earned the right to perform this task?”
Bumblebub went on. “It is a difficult decision, I know.”
No, it wasn’t! Not for me, anyway. “Magic. I choose magic,” I said quickly.
Bumblebub eyed me over his spectacles, his smile amused. “This ain’t no decision to make lightly. You’ve only experienced a taste of magic, a taste of the dangers of our world. If you become one of us, you’ll only experience a heap more.”
I was practically jumping up and down in my eagerness. “Danger, that’s my middle name.”
Thatch snorted. “You don’t understand the price. This isn’t Macy’s. Magic isn’t on sale for a buy-one-get-one-free special. You won’t be handed magic on a silver platter.”
>
A sad smile laced Bumblebub’s lips. “You have never experienced shame, humiliation, or rejection in this world compared to what awaits you in ours.”
“Rejection, that’s my other middle name,” I said. Obviously, he had no idea what my middle school and high school years had been like. Teaching thus far hadn’t been a whole lot better. Not every day was teaching sex education, but it wasn’t the dream job of being an art teacher either.
“You’re going to be miserable in our world,” Thatch said. “It’s because of who your mother is. She didn’t do you any favors.”
Those were fighting words. I was ready to bitch slap him right then and there. “My mom is a great person. I hate how everyone here keeps dissing her. I don’t care what her past was. She’s obviously a different person now.”
Whatever the Raven Queen had taught her, whatever her foster mother had done, she wasn’t that kind of witch anymore. She’d tried to protect me—albeit, in her misguided way—but she’d never tortured me or tried to use me like a wicked witch would have done. For the last week, she had refrained from making me drink her potions. She’d allowed me to make my own path.
The two men exchanged glances.
“What?” I asked.
Bumblebub patted my arm. “It’s true. You have a difficult road ahead of you if you choose to become a witch. I suggest you go home and have a long talk with your mother before you come to your final decision.” He said the word mother in a funny sort of way, as though he was mocking the word. “We’ll be in touch. Come along, Felix.”
Thatch didn’t come along like a well-trained puppy. His fists were balled up at his sides, and he stalked toward me. “Do you remember what I told you last night? That I hate you and your mother?”
I nodded.
“That was an understatement. I’ll be watching you, Miss Lawrence. I’ll be waiting for you to slip up with your magic and accidentally kill someone. And when I do catch you, I’m going to make your life miserable.” He turned away and stalked off.
“That’s cheery.” I tried to laugh it off, but my voice got caught in the lump in my throat.
Bumblebub chuckled, his belly bouncing up and down. “Golly, what a relief! And here I thought things might be awkward for the two of you to work at the same school. How thundering nice to have someone looking out for you.”
“Um,” I said. Was he serious? “I am pretty sure that wasn’t meant as something nice.”
He waved a hand at Thatch airily. “He must like you—he didn’t kill you for humiliating him on stage. Unless, of course, he plans on doing that later.” He tugged on his beard. “No, no, he wouldn’t do that. He works for me now, not the Raven Queen. He’s given up his vengeful and murderous ways. Silly of me to even think such a thing, even if it was only for two shakes of a lamb’s tail. As I said before, we’ll be in touch.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Daughter of a @#&itch
Considering everything that had happened, I thought it best not to linger any longer at Oregon Country Fair. The surrealism of the temporary hippie village in the woods was enough to be overwhelming under normal circumstances, but with real fairies, witches and magic, it rose to a whole new level.
I wanted to get home to my mother and have that talk with her. She’d be worried about me. I hadn’t called her. I hadn’t come home. For all I knew, she might have gone to Daisy’s house looking for me. After she was done fussing, I would ask her questions, and I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
The shuttle ride back into Eugene was hot and overcrowded. I was lucky I got a seat on the bus. I sat, squished against a window in the heat with my duffle bag on my lap as a man in khakis and a Hawaiian shirt texted on his phone the entire time. My phone was dead, no surprise since I hadn’t had the chance to recharge it. The excitement and flutter of power in my belly slipped away as we departed from the fair. Every muscle in my body weighed me into my seat.
“Could I use your phone to call my mom?” I asked the man next to me.
He scowled, like I was putting him out by asking such a thing. He held the phone out to me. I dialed the number, but my mom didn’t pick up. The phone cut out before I could leave a voicemail. The screen was blank.
I handed the cell back to him. “I think the battery is dead.” I suspected I had something to do with it. I tried not to look guilty.
He cursed loudly and complained for the next ten minutes. I didn’t expect I was going to have better luck with anyone else’s electronics. It had to be my magic. I stared out the window for the following thirty-five minutes, trying not to fall asleep in the muggy heat.
I transferred to public transportation downtown and waited at the bus mall. The stench of urine welcomed me back to the real world. Litter rolled into brick buildings like suburban tumbleweeds, lifting the spell of wonder I’d been living in. A car pulled up to a man standing across the street from the library and they exchanged packages. I was certain they had done more than swap books. Reality sank me deeper in the realm of banal urban life, and I wondered if everything I’d experienced at Oregon Country Fair had been a dream. Maybe someone had slipped mushrooms into my drink or given me an LSD omelet for breakfast.
Weirdest of all had been the Witchkins’ reactions to my mom. All those things they had said about her didn’t add up. She would never have been a student of the Queen of Pain. Also, people liked her. She’d been on the PTA when I’d been in middle school. The woman they’d hinted at had sounded wicked, though I didn’t know what she had done to warrant such a reputation.
A niggling suspicion wormed its way into my mind, but I ignored it.
By the time I got home, it was six o’clock. It would be sunset in another three hours, but the sun was low enough on the horizon to cast everything in a bright orange blaze. Long blue shadows stretched over the street like fingers. My mom’s house, a two-bedroom built in the 1940s, was nestled between two larger houses. A white picket fence enclosed the front yard and the back. What the house lacked in size, it made up in backyard space. Mom had put her Master Gardener skills to use. The windows were open, and the aroma of garlic bread and spaghetti wafted out into the street as I walked up the path of blooming flowers.
I unlocked the front door and set my duffle bag next to the couch.
“Welcome home, honey. Dinner is ready whenever you are,” Mom called from the other room. She had that edge to her voice, the one that told me she was about to chide me for not calling her.
I passed the shelves of plants in the living room and found her in the kitchen. Her red hair was up in a bun. She wore the green apron I’d bought her for her birthday, the one that said, “Kiss me, I’m Irish.”
She set a casserole dish with homemade manicotti on the stove and picked up the spatula. I hoped it wasn’t drugged or enchanted or whatever she did with her food. She turned to me. Her smile faded. The spatula tumbled out of her hand, plopping onto the floor. She waved a hand in the air, her fingers dancing like she was spelling out words in sign language. I’d seen hints of these gestures from her before, but never anything so elaborate. The school crest glittered in front of me before fading.
Her expression was grim. “The Witchkin found you?”
I nodded.
She rushed forward and hugged me. “Sweetie, what happened? How did this happen?” She patted my hair. “Look at you, your makeup is all smeared and your hair is a mess. Did they hurt you? Did they force you to join them? It was that dreadful man, wasn’t it? Felix Thatch?”
I had to laugh. This was the mom I knew, fussing and worrying. She wasn’t an evil woman. Whether it was my intuition or twenty-two years with my parental unit, I knew her goodness to the depths of my bones. She might be overprotective and smothering, but everything she did was out of love. She couldn’t be what they said she was.
If I was right, there was only one other possibility.
A lump lodged in my throat. “Mom, am I … adopted?”
She pulled back, smoothing a hand over my face.
“Tell the truth,” I said. “Please.”
I wanted her to deny it, but her stricken expression said it all. Tears filled her eyes. “Oh, sweetie! It doesn’t make me love you any less.”
My knees went weak, and she held me even tighter. My voice came out scratchy and high. “I don’t understand. I thought you were my real mother. We both have red hair. And we’re both short.” It was stupid to keep denying it, but these were the reasons I hadn’t ever guessed the truth.
“That’s why the Witchkin chose me. No one would suspect. And we’d already adopted Missy by that point.” She stroked my back, making me feel better.
I laid my head on her shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was a secret. You were never supposed to know.” She swallowed. “I’m your fairy godmother. I was meant to raise you as my own child.”
I pulled away. “No way.” A fairy godmother?
“How much do you know about the Unseen?”
“The Raven Queen used that word earlier today, the Unseen Realm. I still don’t know what—”
“The Raven Queen! Oh God! And you made it out without being snatched up by that evil succubus?” She started to hyperventilate. “I never wanted you to go to that fair. That’s where you went, wasn’t it?”
I gave an abridged version of what had happened at the fair. All the while, her face grew more stricken. Lucifer brushed against her leg.
She took my hand and we walked out into the backyard. The cat followed us out. Her property wasn’t as large as the yard where I’d grown up, but it took up two lots. We stepped past the patio and garden boxes. Magenta rhododendrons and pale pink roses grew along the edges of the yard. It was late in the season for rhodies, but my mom always managed to make her neighbors jealous with her green thumb.
“Do you know why I bought this house?” she asked.
“You said you liked the yard.” I wasn’t sure what this had to do with me being adopted.
She tugged me over to the corner. She placed her hand against the oak tree. “This tree. It’s so old. He has so much wisdom and strength.”
