by Erica Ridley
Nothing happened.
Unsettled, Trevor glanced over his shoulder at the empty hallway. Something had to be up. First, there was no way Berrymellow would be late to an appointment with the board. Second, what were the chances that the creepiest creeper who ever creeped would choose this, of all moments, to give up his stalking habit?
Trevor tried to shake off his case of nerves. He’d won, and he was damn well going to celebrate. He’d grab his briefcase and his laptop and head on over to Dunlap Draughts to wait for the others.
Once inside his office, his gaze fell on the handmade wings he’d created for Daisy, and his gut twisted. He lifted them to his chest and sighed. If only she were here to celebrate with him. If only he hadn’t thrown away the ring! If only Berrymellow hadn’t—
“I suppose you think you’re pretty special.” Berrymellow!
Trevor whipped toward his open doorway. His erstwhile nemesis stood framed in the doorway, a battered manila envelope in his hands.
Berrymellow ripped a strip off one side, peered into the gap, and smiled.
Trevor held out his hand. “Hand it over right now, Berrymellow. Trust me when I say that you do not know what you are dealing with.”
Berrymellow shook his head. “I have nothing left to lose. Trust me when I say you’ll never see your little fairy ever again.” He began to reach inside the envelope for the ring. “Don’t worry, Masterson. I’ll kiss her goodbye for you.”
With a strangled cry, Trevor lunged forward. Pain slammed his knuckles as his fist made contact with a concrete block instead of Berrymellow’s head.
“I knew it was magic,” Berrymellow crowed, his fingers locked in a death grip around the rumpled envelope. “I scavenged it from your office last night. Just wait until I tell the board members who it belongs to and why.” His eyes glittered with triumph. “Told you you’d be going down. There’s no way they’ll let a fairy-lover keep tenure.”
Trevor massaged his knuckles and glared at Berrymellow’s triumphant expression. The rest of the world seemed to fade into black and white except for the dull tan of the manila envelope. That ring meant Daisy. And Berrymellow held the envelope in the palms of his hands.
Trevor’s fingers flexed around rhinestone-studded cardboard wings as he took a deep breath. He’d wished for a do-over, and here it was.
He could join his colleagues for end-of-semester happy hour, remain professional and impassive during Berrymellow’s decreasingly wild accusations—after all, Trevor was a fairy lover—and smile placidly as his colleague was carted out in a straitjacket.
Or he could slug Berrymellow in the face, seize the ring, and go get the girl.
No contest.
Trevor’s hands whipped out and snatched the open envelope. Berrymellow clawed at Trevor’s arms and grappled for the crumpled manila. Trevor slapped him across the face with one piece of button-studded poster board, knocking his head against the conference room door with a thud. Before Berrymellow had a chance to struggle to his feet, Trevor reached inside the envelope and slipped on the ring.
Everything went black.
Had Berrymellow somehow managed to knock him out?
No. As Trevor’s eyes adjusted to the murky darkness, uneven shapes loomed into focus. To his right dropped a sheer cliff, its bottomless depth mere inches from his feet. Even as he stood frozen in place, clutching his cardboard wings, pebbles clattered down the precipitous side and disappeared into the shadows below.
“Daisy?” he called, jumping when a piercing echo screamed back from the cliff and faded into the impenetrable murk.
An inky fog obscured the view to his left, its undulating darkness too thick to see through. An odd, sinister chill curled out from the pulsing blackness, rustling the loose rocks toward the edge of the cliff and sending goosebumps skittering down his spine.
Directly in front of him was a shoulder-high slab of jagged rock, crowned by a dark, scraggy cave. Nothing moved but the creepy texture of black wind scraping across his hair, throbbing cool and humid against the back of his neck.
“Trevor?” came a disbelieving voice from overhead.
His name ricocheted off the rocks and disappeared into the humid bank of shadows. Several more pebbles skated down from the overhang below the cave, bouncing on his feet and tumbling over the edge of the cliff. He rolled back his shoulders, determined to lay eyes on her if it was the last thing he ever did. And by the looks of this place, seeing her might very well be the last thing he ever did.
He tugged up the wrist straps as high as they would go and held out his arms in what he hoped was a wing-like position. And then he called her name.
If she rejected him now, after seeing him here, wherever here was… If she rejected him now, after seeing him wearing homemade wings of his own, he’d know the chase was over, the chance lost, their love a dream he could never have.
If she didn’t take one look at the naked anguish lining his face and run straight into his arms, his heart would crumble into ash and disappear into the icy blackness of the wind.
He waited for what felt like forever. He waited until his fingertips grew cold and his arms ached from holding them straight out at his sides. He waited until he saw her.
Daisy’s face, wide-eyed and pale, rose above the overhang.
He held out his arms as far as they would reach, displaying both glittering sets of handmade wings. He sucked in a breath and waited some more.
Her gaze took in his eyes, his face, his wings, and she said…
Nothing.
The ice crystals pelting his cheeks from the wind were nothing compared to the chill seeping from his chest. His grand apology was too little, too late. He was too late. Too little. Not enough. Unwanted.
The wings flopped downward, Trevor’s arms lying dead and heavy at his sides.
Slowly, Daisy stepped to the edge of the overhang. She turned her back to him. At first, Trevor thought she was rejecting him with symbolism of her own—but then he realized it was much, much worse than that.
She had wings of her own. Real wings.
She didn’t need his. She didn’t need him. Not when she already had everything she ever wanted. She’d achieved her goals on her own. Without him. She could care less about his ridiculous apology or the monstrous rhinestone-and-rubber-cement poster board wings falling from his limp fingers to be lost forever to the cliffs below.
Daisy stared into the mouth of the cave, afraid that when she turned back around to look over the edge, she’d discover the vision of Trevor only existed in her mind.
“I’m sorry,” he shouted up at her, the wind snatching away his words as soon as they touched her ears. “But I can’t take no for an answer!”
She froze, suddenly unable to move. He was really there. He was really here. With her.
“Listen,” he yelled. “I don’t mind you out toothfairying or magic wand manufacturing or whatever career path you want to pursue. It’s a big part of your life. I get that. But I want to be a big part of your life, too.”
Her eyes increased their rapid blinking. The stupid man didn’t yet realize she’d rather have him than an entire mountain of magic wands.
“You can work full time as a fairy,” he called out, “or a part-time neurophysicist, or you can be a stay-at-home—uh, whatever. It’s totally up to you. Your mom says there’s no marriage in Nether-Netherland. I get that, too. We do have weddings on Earth, though, so if one day you think you might want to participate in a human ceremony, my parents would totally love to—God, listen to me. I’m babbling, and it’s all coming out ass backward. Here’s what I really want to say.”
For a moment all she could hear was her own breathing and the blustering of the wind. And then his voice enveloped her once again.
“You don’t have to give up your world, your family, your friends. It’s cool if you need your nights to collect teeth, as long as you spend your days with me. And maybe weekends. And holidays.” He let out a strangled sound, half cough, half laugh.
“Stay as long as you want. A month, a year, forever. Your parents can visit anytime. I’ve got a futon. Hell, Maeve can come, too. She can hang out in the front yard. Screw the neighbors. I’ll let her eat their grass.”
She whirled around to face him, unable to bear the hopeless desperation in his voice when he had just lifted the despair from her heart. She dropped to her knees, scraping them on the hard ground. Her fingers curled over the edge of the jagged rock.
“Why do you want me so bad?” she called down to him, sure he could hear the joy in her tone. “All I ever did was screw things up for you in my quest to be magical.”
“Are you kidding?” He stared up at her, his dark gaze earnest and intense. “You’re one of the smartest, most competent people I’ve ever known. I’m not sure you realize how much you don’t rely on magic. You didn’t use it when you were helping with my research. You talk to people in their native language, no matter what language that might be. You built that dentition spectrometer thing yourself, which took serious brains. You’ve got logic, creativity, and perseverance. It’s the stuff between your ears that makes you successful, not your wand. You’re magical all on your own.”
She stared at him, her gossamer wings suddenly awkward and heavy.
He didn’t care about her wand engineering because it made her magical, he cared because she cared. He was even willing to spend forever after with an apprentice tooth fairy as long as it made her happy. He had no idea what she’d gone through to get here, and as it turns out, it didn’t matter. He loved her anyway.
Her heart accelerated against her ribs, sending a pulse of warmth throughout her entire body. No wonder he had displayed a perplexing immunity to ForgetMe orbs from the start. He hadn’t become her One True Love. He’d been her One True Love all along.
No magic in the universe could alter a force as powerful as that.
“You’re pretty magical yourself,” she called down to the keeper of her heart, her voice imbued with delight. “I tried to list all the reasons we shouldn’t be together, but I couldn’t think of anything strong enough to keep us apart.”
“Yeah? In that case…” He dropped to one knee, glanced at his hand, and swore. “Shit. Not only doesn’t it have a diamond, it was your ring in the first place.”
She tilted her ear toward him. “What?”
“Nothing, never mind, there’s time for that later. I think.” He got back on both feet and brushed off his knees. “Where are we? And will you please come down from there so we can stop shouting?”
“I can’t,” she admitted. “I’m afraid of falling over the edge of the cliff. Or worse.”
“Or worse? What’s worse than falling off a cliff?”
“Tumbling into the Edge of Nothing.”
“The what?” He cast a nervous look over his shoulder.
“The Edge of Nothing,” she repeated. “Pick up a stick and poke at the black fog and you’ll see what I mean. But be careful not to let the Nothing get you.”
“How can ‘nothing’ get me?” Frowning, he knelt for a stick.
She covered her eyes with her hands. When she heard nothing more, she forced her fingers to spread just enough to let her peek between them.
He held a long, knobby stick like a knight with a jousting rod. He gave a quick stab into the darkness. When he pulled the stick back out, only half of it remained. The part that had dipped into the swirling blackness was just… nothing.
“Holy shit!” Dropping the stick from his hands, he jumped back from the Nothing and toppled over the sheer cliff on the other side, arms thrashing against the rocks as he fell.
Chapter 29
Daisy screamed.
She squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn’t have to watch her one true love flailing to his death. She waited, tense, muscles twitching, but the only sound she heard was her own hitching breaths.
Pebbles fell from her perch to the rocks below.
Then she heard it. The syncopated rhythm of someone panting for air. Her eyes flew open in time to see Trevor swing one leg up over the side of the cliff, both arms grappling for purchase, his fingertips perilously close to the Nothing.
He managed to scramble up the side and crawl back onto the three-foot-wide stretch of rock between Nothingness and the bottomless canyon below.
Daisy reeled, convinced her heart would implode if it didn’t stop its thunderous beating.
“Don’t move,” he shouted as he made his way to the jagged incline below the mouth of the cave. “I’m coming up there. If my legs stop shaking long enough to let me.”
“If you fall over a cliff again,” she yelled down, “I’ll never forgive you.”
He hauled himself up the uneven rock face bit by bit until at last he flopped next to her, his hands and arms and legs scratched and bleeding under his ripped and dirty clothes.
She threw her arms around him and cried.
He brushed the hair from her face with his soft, warm fingers and pressed his lips to the top of her head. They lay there for a moment, holding each other, sharing warmth and breathing in each other’s scent.
“I missed you,” he said, his mouth hot against her hair.
“Me too. I wish I had a wand.” She sat up, tearing off strips of her ceremonial gown to clean his wounds. “I’d patch you up in no time.”
“You came to a place like this without a wand?” he asked doubtfully. “Let’s go get one. Where’s Bubbles?”
“He’s not here. And it wouldn’t matter anyway. Magic doesn’t work on the Edge of Nothing.”
“Sure, it does.” He tugged a silver band off his pinky finger. “I came here using magic.”
“Anybody can come here. Nobody can leave. That’s why it’s such an effective place to be banished.” She flung a pebble off the side of the overhang and watched it disappear into the murky shadows. “Allegedly, there’s a labyrinthine trail between the two worlds, with the cliff on one side and the Edge of Nothing on the other. The Elders know the secret pathway, but nobody who’s been banished here has ever escaped alive.”
Startled, he pulled himself into a sitting position to stare at her. “You got banished from Nether-Netherland?”
She nodded miserably. “For being a neurophysicist capable of engineering false magic. And now you’re stuck here with me.”
He lifted her hand with his and laced their fingers together. “If I had to get banished anywhere, at least it’s with the woman I love.” He kissed her forehead, then peered over her shoulder into the darkness of the cave. “Don’t suppose there’s anything to eat?”
She stared at him. “It’s the Edge of Nothing, not the Edge of Refrigerator.”
He cradled her face in his hands and dipped his head down for a kiss. “I know how we can pass the time,” he said, his voice low and sultry. “Let’s pretend it’s just you and me, alone on a deserted island, with nothing else to do but make love.”
Her lips parted. Before she could reply in kind, growing noise shattered the eerie silence. Footfalls and hoofbeats echoed through the swirling wind, accompanied by a murmuring crescendo of voices.
His mouth lifted from hers. He glanced up over his shoulder and muttered, “So much for alone time.”
Were the Elders on a banishing rampage today, sending trolls to drop off yet another convicted scientist? Daisy struggled to sit up so she could see, too.
Her jaw dropped open. Not trolls. Jackalopes.
What in Hades were jackalopes doing there?
“DAISY LE FEY,” shouted a loud baritone voice.
She poked her head up above the side of the overhang. “Yes?”
“On behalf of the Pearly States, your presence is hereby requested as a material witness in the trial of one”—he paused to check his clipboard—”Vivian Valdemeer. Come with me, please.”
Daisy shot a horrified glance toward Trevor. No way was she going anywhere unless the man she loved was coming, too.
He struggled to his feet and reached down to help pull her up. “What abou
t me?” he called back. “I don’t suppose you’d let me hitch a ride back into town, too?”
“What’s your name?” asked the jackalope, one floppy ear obscuring his expression.
“Trevor Masterson.”
Daisy gripped his hand a little tighter as the herd crowded the base of the overhang.
The jackalope shuffled his papers. “Trevor Masterson previously of Nuevo Arenal, Costa Rica?”
His eyebrows lifted. “I pitched a tent there once.”
The jackalope consulted his clipboard. “You are also on the subpoena list. I’m afraid you’ll have to come with us.”
“Thank God.” Trevor handed Daisy down to a waiting jackalope. “Playing ‘deserted island’ wouldn’t be as much fun by myself.”
“So,” Daisy said as she and Trevor were bundled in the back of a narrow wooden cart. She wasn’t sure if the jackalopes chose such a conveyance because even the Elders’ magic didn’t work out here, or because they just didn’t trust her with a where-frog. Maybe both. “What did you say Vivian was indicted for?”
“Criminal Negligence of Proper Tooth Request Verification Procedures.” The jackalope gave a sharp nod to the rest of his army and they headed down the winding trail. “It’s been all over the news. The authorities were tipped off by a comment written on a complaint form.”
“Wow,” Trevor said, impressed. “That’s lucky.”
Daisy burst out laughing as the pieces clicked together. “That’s not luck. That’s me spending two hours filling out comment cards down at the Pearly States local headquarters.”
“Good one!”
She shook her head. “I dreamed of bringing Vivian down with the power of my pen, but I doubt a charge like that even carries a fine.”
He cast her a commiserative look and held her closer.
She snuggled against his shoulder. She rested her face against his chest and listened to the soft, steady beating of his heart. He leaned his cheek against the top of her head and held her close for several hours, both of them napping on and off.
