“The clinic is closing?” Janet seemed to wilt. Her mouth gaped in stunned astonishment. She might not have heard the second statement after the shock of the first. “They can’t do that to the community. Why weren’t the employees told first?”
“Not my decision. I just heard about it. But if I were you, I’d start checking my options. In this town there aren’t many.” Phelma Jo ripped the check off the pad and handed it to the woman with great satisfaction. “There, that should get things rolling.”
Janet Boland took the paper without even looking at it as she stumbled out of the office.
“Haywood, get on that nonprofit setup.”
“Certainly, Phelma Jo. I’ll make sure you are listed as primary trustee and registered agent. You can list this charity at the top of your good works in the mayoral campaign literature. It will look as if the whole thing was your idea.”
“And put Ms. Boland’s name as the sole employee.”
“Already done. The Carricks will get no credit for this, and Thistle Down will be unemployed, homeless, and probably in jail by nightfall.”
“When did you learn to read, Thistle?” Dick asked when they left the City Council meeting together.
Dusty and Chase wandered off together in animated conversation.
Several things today were hanging at in Dick’s mind. He addressed the first of them to the woman walking beside him.
“I’ve always been able to read some. Just not well,” she said, looking away with a blush.
“The Pixie I knew as a child couldn’t read, had no need to.” Was that disappointment, suspicion, or anger rising up to nearly choke him?
“It’s something we all have to learn eventually,” she said, still not looking directly at him. “Dusty taught me a lot more than street signs could. She had nothing better to do with her time while she was sick. And she was so lonely being homeschooled that teaching me basic reading and numbers helped her pass the time. Kept her mind active when she was too tired to do her own schoolwork.”
“Oh . . . I thought . . . I don’t know what to think.”
“I truly am a Pixie in exile. I am, Dick. You were the first to believe me. Why don’t you now?” Then she turned those fabulous purple eyes up to him. Moisture made bright drops on her lashes that caught the overhead lights and turned to sparkling crystals.
He stumbled on the smooth marble floor. He wanted to fall deeply into those eyes, allow his soul to merge with hers. He wanted all the hopes and promises she held out to him.
“You told me that Pixies can’t read.”
“I was young then. I hadn’t ventured much beyond The Ten Acre Wood. But later, when I did, Alder showed me street signs and how to puzzle out the symbols so they meant something. I knew all the streets and the stop signs, and even when to cross on a green light.” She nibbled on her lip. “Then Dusty taught me more. I know that her museum is the Skene County Historical Museum, and that I landed in Memorial Fountain—named because it’s dedicated to the men from Skene Falls who died during World War I. I know this because I read the signs and I understand them. Just as I read the paper you gave me last night. What did you think when you wrote out my statement? That Dusty would make me memorize it.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I thought you’d bring it to me and I’d help. But then the explosion happened, and I didn’t think anymore.” Hope blossomed inside Dick, soothing a bit of the irritation.
“Dusty found the paper on the computer desk when we got home. It had my name on it, so she gave it to me. I read it over and over and over until I knew it and could speak it without hesitation because you needed me to be strong and confident when I said it. Dusty helped me with some of the bigger words, but I read most of it by myself, because I needed to help you, be your friend.”
“I . . . um . . .” How did he express his doubts?
“You can’t sign that contract! You’ll ruin this town if you do,” a strange voice hissed around them; distant but still clear and precise. Obviously spoken loudly, with vehemence, muted by distance and mazes of walls and vents between them and the voice.
“I’ll be saving this town if I do.”
“Who said that?” Dick asked.
“Where did he say that?” Thistle added to his question.
They both looked around. The big room was empty, all the exit doors closed to keep the natural air-conditioning inside.
“If you were still a Pixie, how would you find the speakers?” Dick asked quietly, so that his words wouldn’t carry as clearly as the other man’s.
Thistle pointed to a small grate up near the ten-foothigh ceiling.
“Chase said this place was full of redundant ventilation shafts and whispering corners,” Dick mused.
“I think I can follow the sounds,” Thistle said.
“How? You’re too big to fit inside.”
“Because I’ve done it before. I know the path of that shaft. Come on.” She grabbed his hand and led him to the exit right under the grating.
The strength of her grip tingled all the way to his shoulder. A sense of well-being and purpose filled him. The muted light seemed to sparkle with life and energy.
Enthusiastically, he matched her running pace as they headed up a nearly forgotten staircase full of spiderwebs and dust that made him sneeze. His footsteps creaked on the aging wooden risers. He kept his left hand tight on the banister in case something gave way. Thistle still claimed possession of his right hand.
She bounced lightly up each step hardly making a sound or raising a puff of dust.
Thistle paused at the first landing. She looked up, pressing her ear against the wall. Then, on a giggle, she pointed to the next grating. Dick guessed that it was placed directly above the one in the ground-floor meeting room.
“Onward and upward,” he said, and sneezed.
“Shush.” She placed a finger on her lips, then touched his own with the same finger.
He kissed the finger. Instinct or impulse?
She smiled, then set forth again, moving up the next set of steps. She kept her gaze on the internal wall. But she kept flicking pleased glances toward him.
He couldn’t watch anything but her, the way her hips swayed beneath the draped skirt of her green-and-white outfit, the way her slender feet barely caressed each step, the luster of her hair, even in this dim and forgotten back stairwell. She seemed to float. Or fly.
The close air made him a bit dizzy. He thought he saw double leaf-shaped wings across her back. And had her skin turned faintly lavender?
He closed his eyes and shook his head briefly. If her capillaries were very close to the skin and suffused with blood, her naturally pale face would take on more color, he told himself. When he looked again, all seemed normal. Just a trick of the light and the windowless stairwell on a hot and humid day.
God, he wished it would rain.
“Here,” Thistle whispered. She stood with her ear pressed close to a steel fire door.
Dick noticed that she kept a few careful inches between herself and the metal. Her hand reached for the door lever, but she jerked it back as if burned.
“Is that a not-so-subtle way of saying a gentleman should always open a door for a lady?” He tried the latch. It refused to budge. He jiggled it a bit. It still resisted pressure.
“We’re locked out. And that’s a major violation of fire codes,” he muttered, standing back a bit and surveying the door from all angles, as if that would give him some clues for getting through it.
“Let me try something,” Thistle said quietly. She swallowed deeply and pressed her finger close to the tiny key slit in the handle.
Suddenly the entire stairwell filled with sparkling lights, dancing and arcing in magnificent whorls and spirals.
Dick’s mouth opened. “Is that Pixie dust?”
“I . . . I . . . help,” Thistle moaned. Her arm flexed again and again as she tried to remove her finger from the lock.
“What?” Dick hung back, uncertain what he ne
eded to do.
“Help me. The iron . . .” Thistle slumped, her finger still stuck to the metal. The bright starbursts moved faster, more frantic and erratic in their patterns as they faded.
“Huh?” Dick caught her around the waist, then gently grabbed her wrist and pulled. Her hand came away with a popping sound.
The whirling, colored pinpoints of light vanished. Thistle collapsed against him, head lolling on his shoulder.
He held her tightly, too worried about her paler than usual face and rapid but shallow breathing to relish the close contact.
After a moment she stirred, eyelashes fluttering as if awakening from a deep sleep. “Thank you.”
“What do you need?”
“Water.” Her voice sound weak and scratchy.
“Down we go, then. I know where the water fountain is on the ground floor. Can you walk?”
“I . . . I think so.” She broke away from him and took one step. Her knees buckled.
He caught her as she slid toward the edge of the steps. “Um, maybe you should sit. I’ll go find you a bottle of water.” He guided her onto the first step and sat beside her.
“Don’t leave me alone.” She clung to his suit jacket lapels with new intensity.
“Never.” He looked into her deep purple eyes, losing his concentration in their luminosity. “Thistle,” he breathed.
“Dick.” She looked up at him, mouth slightly parted.
A new awareness wrapped them in an isolation bubble. Nothing existed but the flowery scent of her skin, the warmth of her body pressed against him, and the tingles of excitement bubbling in his veins.
As if drawn together by magnets, he lowered his mouth to hers as she reached up to him. The first touch invited more. He deepened the kiss. They melted together. As she opened her mouth to accept him, he forgot where he ended and she began. The lines of self dissolved.
Gradually they withdrew, lingering here, renewing there. Until finally he remembered to breathe. Still she clung to him.
He wasn’t sure he could stand on his own.
“If you’d just hold me up a while. That little bit of magic drained me terribly.” She rested her forehead on his chest.
“Magic, huh? That kiss was magic.” He lifted her chin with his finger and coaxed her into another softer, more tender kiss.
She withdrew before he did and looked at the door, puzzled.
“Pixie dust should open any lock. I’ve never met resistance like that, no matter how much iron was in the lock.”
“What would do that?” He brought them both up to their feet again, pinning her to his side with an arm around her waist.
“Another Pixie locked it.”
“Another Pixie?” Dick needed to sit again. The world spun crazily for a moment. Logic and preconceived notions crashed against her words like matter and antimatter in a supercollider.
“Another Pixie is working against us.”
“Who?” He looked around the stairwell half expecting to see a tiny being flitting about, laughing at their antics. He blushed that their kiss might have been observed.
“If I knew who, I’d know how to counter it. If I was still a Pixie.” She studied her fingers.
“I think you’re still a Pixie, just a little disoriented. That sparkling dust wasn’t normal.”
“It’s just a trick. Not real magic. Not like enticing clouds our way and tickling them until they spill rain like laughter.”
“You can do that?”
“Silly, not anymore. I’m human now. I have limits. But that other Pixie doesn’t. He’s got more power than a Pixie should have.” She paled again. “The magic tasted . . . hot like fire. Like Faery magic, not Pixie tricks.”
“Well we aren’t going to find out anything trapped in this stairwell. We need to get you outside and find you something to drink.” He dropped a kiss on her nose and gently led her downstairs and back into reality.
Twenty-two
“I DID IT, JOE. I READ THE ENTIRE statement you wrote, and I only stumbled once,” Dusty announced as she skidded into her boss’ office.
He looked up from the stacks of paperwork on his desk with bleak eyes, rimmed in red and shadowed with black smudges beneath. “Did it do any good?”
He didn’t sound hopeful.
“I don’t know. Everyone listened, but the mayor explained how the money from the sale of the timber would save the clinic and replace some of the teachers.”
“Crap.” Joe buried his hands in his face. “I just wish I knew who is behind this and why they are in such a damned hurry.”
“I don’t know. I wish I did. I almost think it’s a vendetta against the museum, trying to get us to cancel the Ball.”
“We need that fund-raiser. Grants are drying up, school field trips are getting fewer, so admission fees are down. We just don’t have enough income to keep this place running without the money from the Masque Ball.”
“The grant committee . . . ?”
“Haven’t heard back from their inspection yet. Oh, Dusty, I don’t know what to do.”
“You’ll figure it out, Joe. You always do.” She reached across the desk to clasp his hand. He returned her grip with a light squeeze as he rose and came around the desk without releasing her.
“Thanks. It would help if you’d marry me . . .” He stood too close, pressing his body against hers, lowering his head, ready to claim a kiss.
“No, Joe.” She stepped away from him. Alarm built pressure in her chest. He meant it this time. She was sure. All she felt was a sense of being trapped in this room with him. “You are just tired and alone, and lonely. Me marrying you won’t help this financial crisis.” She retreated toward the door, nearly tripping over a stack of books on the floor.
“But you’d help the lonely part. I’d cope better. The girls love you. The courts . . .” He followed her.
Her breathing became panicky. The room was too small. He left no space between them. “Joe, you and Monica are going to have to work out custody on your own. Outside of court. Talk to the social workers at child welfare. Monica deserted them when they were tiny and needed a mom most. She might be better able to cope now, but you are the only real parent they know. Talk to Monica and work out a fair visitation. When you’ve done that, you can talk to me again about marriage. Not before.”
Dusty held her head high and turned to go, masking the quivering fear in her belly. She had to face the real possibility that he might be serious and she had to examine her own feelings, her own need to hide from the emotional and physical intimacies of marriage.
For once she resisted the urge to run down to the basement and hide. Instead she took up residence behind her computer screen and started searching the Internet. She had to find an alternate venue for the Masque Ball. Now. The likelihood of stopping or delaying the logging of The Ten Acre Wood looked highly unlikely.
Half an hour later she slapped the desk beside the keyboard. “Dammit, we moved the Ball from all of these rental locations because they are too small and expensive!”
“Ms. Carrick?” Meggie asked from the doorway. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, of course, Meggie. I’m just upset.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you curse before. Not even the time the four year old went potty on the upstairs carpet.”
“Oh.”
“I had an idea when I started filling out an application for the community college,” Meggie said hesitantly, almost as if embarrassed to let Dusty know she applied or that she might have an idea beyond makeup and fashion. “Maybe if we offered them a percentage of the take, they’d let us hold the Ball on campus. They’ve got a really nice arboretum and rose garden for the botany and forestry students to practice on. And I think there’s a cement circle there for the dancers.”
Dusty felt like smacking her head against the desk. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because you’re stressed.” Meggie shrugged. “There’s another tour group gathering. I’ll take it
while you make some phone calls.” She dashed off to the front of the museum.
Just as Dusty reached for the phone, it rang. She stared at it a moment as if an alien being interrupted her train of thought. Should she answer it or get Joe to call the college on the other line?
The insistent jangle stopped abruptly.
“Ms. Carrick, Mr. Wheatland wants to talk to you,” M’velle called from somewhere in the maze of rooms.
Dusty bit her lip in hesitation. So much easier to let social contacts slide around her than deal with life. Then she reached for the receiver, determined to break a lifetime of habits that led to greater and greater isolation.
“Good afternoon, Hay.” She smiled while she spoke, a trick a college professor encouraged her to try. It worked. She really was pleased to hear from him.
“I hate to do this, but I’m afraid I’ll be a little late picking you up this evening. I’m stuck at the office until seven. I’ll understand if you want to cancel our date.” He sounded anxious and sad.
Relief warred with disappointment. She really had enjoyed her date with Hay. They had a lot of common interests. Especially the history of the town.
“Seven is fine. Why not pick me up at home instead of the museum.”
“You trust me enough to give me your address?” His voice brightened with surprise and delight.
“Of course.” She rattled off the address and phone number. “What did you have in mind?”
“Hot dogs from a street vendor and a walk along the river promenade. I want to see some of the pioneer landmarks we talked about last time. Wear comfortable shoes.”
Hot Dogs? Nonorganic, processed meat from dubious sources? She remembered the smell of the grilling staple of the American diet and her mouth watered. She didn’t have to make a regular habit of eating them, but she should try them at least once. In the name of research, of course.
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