Tooth and Nail

by Jennifer Safrey

  “I was only there to keep an eye on your emotional reactions. There was a team of people for the physical stuff.”

  I stared daggers into his strong, broad back. “A team of people watched me rip off my shirt?”

  “Butterfly agents. Up until now,” he said, “the Butterfly Room’s only been used by fae who need to bind one of their abilities for some personal reason, and then eventually to regain it. You were the first to ever undergo a complete awakening. We needed a team in case something went wrong.”

  I wriggled into the tattered remains of my shirt, and realized I was still mostly out of it. I huffed with aggravation. “Well, then I hope they knew what they were doing.”

  “All indications are normal,” he said and yanked his own black T-shirt off. He tossed it over his shoulder. I caught it and stared at it a moment, fighting the urge to hold it up to my nose before I pulled it over my head. As I pushed my left arm through, I caught a glimpse of my watch, and swore.

  “I have to get out of here,” I said, hoisting myself to my feet. I swayed a little but managed to stay upright.

  “Not a good idea,” Svein said, turning and hooking a thumb through his belt loop. Now that he was the one without a shirt, I nearly reconsidered his words, maybe just to linger a few minutes more…

  “Are you doing that thing on me again?” I demanded, trying to remember what Reese said. “Glamour?”

  “No,” he said, the corner of his mouth quirking up a bit. “I’m not. And what’s more, even if I was, you’re immune to it now. So whatever you’re thinking, it’s all you, sweetheart.”

  I shook my head in disgust, but I wasn’t sure whether it was at him or at myself. “I have to leave,” I repeated.

  “Again, not a good idea. You’re still weak, and you need to have your first training, to begin to learn control over your new capabilities.”

  “I’m sure it can wait until tomorrow,” I said. I’d been here long enough, and I was emotionally wrung out. And Avery was actually going to make it home tonight early for a rare dinner together. I needed to pick up Thai food, head home, and put it on nice plates. Avery would know full well that I didn’t cook it, but neither one of us let that get in the way of a good meal.

  “It can’t wait.”

  “Well, it’s going to have to.” The door to the padded cell of the Butterfly Room was open now, so I went through it, pushed open the second door, and leaned against the armchair in the office. Svein followed me.

  “Letting you leave now would be like handing you a loaded gun and sending you home without telling you how to not use it.”

  “I know, I know. I have powers now.” I wiggled my fingers in front of my face. “Whatever they are, I’ll keep a lid on them until tomorrow.”

  “You need to stay on an even keel,” he said. “No matter what your boyfriend says or does in the next 24 hours, you need to stay completely neutral.”

  “Won’t be too hard. He doesn’t get on my nerves in an entire year as much as you have in the past two hours,” I told him. “And what do you know about my boyfriend anyway?”

  “It’s my job to find things out,” he reminded me. “And I’m completely against you leaving right now.”

  “Well, you’re not the boss of me.”

  I put my hand on the doorknob and he grabbed my wrist. I glared at him.

  “No extreme emotion tonight,” he said. “Good or bad. Just take it easy. Don’t watch a sad movie on TV, don’t argue with your mother on the phone, don’t talk or even think about anyone or anything that will affect you on any deep level. Just eat your dinner and go to sleep.”

  “You told me in the Butterfly Room to go with my emotions, and now you’re telling me to squash them?” I tried to wrench my wrist out of his grip but Svein only tightened his fingers. “In case you’ve forgotten—and based on your nasty comments thus far, I’m sure you haven’t—I’m supposed to catch a bad guy. I need my anger to do that.”

  “You’ll battle our threat out of necessity, not anger,” he said. “But that remains to be seen. Tonight, no emotion.”

  I opened my mouth to speak but he interjected. “If you can’t do that,” he said, very softly, “then Avery McCormack will find out the hard way who Gemma Fae Cross really is. And your recklessness will not only have consequences on your love life, but it will have consequences for all of us.”

  He released his hold on me but I didn’t move, a wave of fear rippling through my body, settling in my shoulder blades and heating up.

  My secrets were piling one on top of another. Secrets that I needed to keep from everyone. Including Avery.

  What had I done?

  I spent my life emoting all over everyone I met. I held nothing in, and I was comfortable letting everyone know my opinions. Now I found that everything for me and for all the fae depended on my emotional control?

  I had no idea how to control what I was now. But Svein had just said I had to. I had just become a different being physically, and I had to become a different being emotionally, and somehow this was supposed to be my destiny?

  “What have I done?” I whispered.

  My back itched and burned.

  Oh, God. Avery. What could this to do his career? What would this do to us? What would this do to me?

  “Fear,” Svein said quietly, “is the hardest to control. Fear and anger.”

  Why couldn’t have I thought this through a little longer? My mother had asked me to wait before making any decisions. For thirty years I didn’t know I was fae. I couldn’t even think it over for a day? Two days? Gemma, going in swinging. As usual.

  My shoulder blades spasmed and contracted back, once, twice.

  “What’s happening to me?” I demanded.

  “You’re tough, Gemma,” he said, putting his hands on both my shoulders. “Control the fear. Don’t fight it. Accept it.”

  I tried, I really did. But I could only grit my teeth and tighten my jaw and push against my frightening thoughts. Fighting was the only way I knew to suppress an emotion, and this time, I realized I was going to lose.

  My shoulders stretched back, as if someone pulled me hard from behind, and I hit the wall.

  This time, Svein was the one who swore. He pushed the desk up against one wall and the armchair against another wall and stood on it, giving me all the floor space the tiny room would allow.

  I had no time to turn and see what pulled me. My back ripped open. I screamed at the excruciating pain, but by the end of my scream, it was over. I was heavier, leaning back, standing on my toes in an effort to stay upright, and I twisted my head to look behind me.

  Wings.

  Huge, gossamer wings. Silky and pale pink and as delicate as spider webs. Yet they were powerful, still threatening to topple me.

  I didn’t pass out. I wanted to. I wanted to think this should have shocked me but apparently my mind had transformed along with my body.

  In the Butterfly Room. You’ll emerge with wings …

  Could I move them? I wiggled my fingers first. How did I wiggle my fingers? With intention, and my brain understood, and my fingers wiggled.

  Intention. I’ll just move my wings, I thought. Close them, and open them.

  I did.

  In the cramped room, my right wing brushed the wall when it reopened, and I felt it. I felt it.

  Wings!

  “Looks like both of us have lost our shirts now,” Svein said, but he didn’t appear angry to see the back of his T-shirt, on me, torn completely through. Instead, he grinned.

  I laughed out a sob, and drew in a breath. I closed my wings. I opened them. And I couldn’t stop laughing.

  >=<

  I stumbled into the kitchen, my hands full of takeout cartons. Maybe I went a little overboard on the food, but in my tardiness and my guilt, I figured the more food I bought, the more Avery and I could linger over eating and increase our time together.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I said, dumping everything on the counter. I considered making up an
excuse, but the thing about Avery was that he wouldn’t ask for one.

  Which, I realized, was going to make it a lot easier to lie to him.

  I felt sick inside.

  “How was your day?” I asked, opening the overhead cabinet to find our “good” dishes. The good dishes were the ones with a black-and-purple flowered border. The “regular” dishes were plain white. Both sets cost about the same.

  “My day,” Avery said. He took silverware out of its drawer and the dishes out of my hands, kissed my lips, and began to set the table. “Today was a door-to-door day. I drank a cup of tea at each of the first twenty homes, and had to use the bathroom at the next twenty. I had an informal chat with the League of Women Voters that went pretty well, and I worked on a Rotary Club luncheon speech for next week. Then, while I was waiting for you, I updated my blog to answer voters’ questions. I’m not completely sure why it’s important to some voters if I have a pet and what my astrological sign is, but I did answer everything.”

  He folded two napkins and slid them under our silverware. I liked how he did that, as if the moment I put this food down on the table, we weren’t going to crunch our napkins in one hand and shovel rice into our mouths with forks in our other hand.

  Avery had changed into jeans and an ancient American University sweatshirt, and his feet were bare. I always thought he had nice toes. Who was I kidding? He had nice everything. My heart melted a little.

  “And you?” he asked, pouring Diet Coke into two tall glasses. “Busy day?”

  I didn’t want to lie. I didn’t want to lie.

  “Well, yes, now that you ask. My new mentor Svein, a mostly unpleasant fae who I may or may not be physically attracted to, needed to teach me how to control my wing burst and retraction by controlling my anger and fear. Then I had to borrow a hoodie from a nice guy in The Root Center of Collection Headquarters and run to the Gap to buy a shirt to wear home since I destroyed mine during my transformation. Then I had to stash a five-inch-thick training manual under the stairs in the hallway of our building, and shove my new bells-and-whistles super-smart holographic Fae Phone into a zippered pocket of my cargo pants so you won’t find them.”

  That wasn’t what I said. What I said was this: “I stayed late at the gym.”

  It was only the first lie, but knowing how many more were lined up behind it, I felt sick again.

  Maybe—maybe I could just tell him? I glanced over my shoulder at him. Still standing, he took a few gulps of his soda, then winked at me. He did love me. I was sure of that.

  But this whole thing, my new life mission, was too freaky for anyone. His campaign was the most important thing in the world to him—and it was important to me too, really, to not deprive Congress and the American people of his intelligence, ideas and vision. He was poised on the brink of becoming someone in a position to make a real and lasting mark on history, and he’d worked a long time to get there. His father had been in the same position but, through no fault of his own, had become entangled in a scandal that the public might have been able to forgive but just couldn’t quite forget.

  Avery saw with his own eyes how one wrong move could kill the most promising campaign. So I was pretty damn sure he wouldn’t want to be publicly involved with a woman claiming to be a tooth faerie. Fae. His ambition wouldn’t survive that.

  Would our relationship survive? My father left his fae wife and his half-fae daughter. Sure, he stuck it out for a few years, but he clearly hadn’t been up to the task of spending his life with us. He’d bolted.

  What made Avery any different?

  After all, he was human.

  I was an adult engaged in a mature relationship. I knew relationships sometimes had to end, and I’d been on both sides of that scenario. It hurt, but that was life, and love.

  But if Avery ever left me, I could not let it be for the same reason why my father left me.

  What had Reese said? Most fae don’t do the collection thing for long. I could put in my time, catch a bad guy for them, transform my fae side back into dormancy, and be normal again in no time.

  “Dinner’s up,” I said, and carried two serving dishes to the table. Avery wasted no time digging into the chicken satay, piling it on his plate.

  “Hey, you could leave some for the rest of us,” I said.

  “Or you could quit dawdling and take some.”

  Or, I thought, I can get you to give me yours. Svein told me the glamour was the easiest fae talent—just pick a target, and intend the glamour in their direction. It was possible to exude the glamour in a way that would enrapture an entire room of people, which is clearly what Frederica had done to get my attention at Smiley’s, but that required considerable practice. Doing it on one person, Svein had said, came naturally.

  I worked up a little mojo, and the skin on my face tingled. I stared at Avery, willing him to look up, but his plate of food was commanding his full attention—which was my fault, wasn’t it, for being late and causing his stomach to cry out in distress.

  I cleared my throat with authority—twice—and he finally looked up.

  “Can I,” I asked quietly, “have one of your chicken skewers?”

  He blinked once. “Take them all,” he said, and put his three on my plate. “Do you need anything else?”

  “No,” I said. “Not at the moment.”

  “Gemma,” he said, dropping his fork and dragging his chair until it hit mine, “I want you.”

  I raised a brow.

  He crushed me to him, kissing me, pushing his hands through my hair. He broke off the kiss, and held my face in his hands. “Right now,” he said.

  “Don’t you want to finish eating?”

  He pushed our dishes aside and lifted me onto the table. He pushed his body between my legs and kissed my neck. “No,” he said. “Please.”

  He tugged at the button of my cargo pants, and I lifted my behind to let him slide them down my legs.

  I considered the morality of seducing my man with magical powers. But when Avery’s fingers slid inside my panties and across my skin, I decided morality was overrated.

  >=<

  That was on Friday night. Sunday afternoon, Avery and I were still in bed.

  Well, “still” was overstating it a bit. We did leave the bed to shower and eat, but every time we left to satisfy a basic need, we returned to satisfy our favorite need.

  As for the morality conundrum, I had cast it aside. I only used the glamour on Avery at dinner that first night. Everything that came after was a byproduct of the realization that it had been a very long time since we had spent a few days together in bed. Okay, okay, I did use the glamour one more time, when he looked as if he was getting sleepy, and believe me, I heard no complaints.

  Avery had cleared his calendar for the weekend, and he was more relaxed than I’d seen him since he’d announced to me that he was running for Congress, so I didn’t feel one bit guilty for prompting his spontaneous time off.

  He dozed, surrounded with various Sunday sections of The Washington Post and The New York Times, so I slid out of bed and headed for the bathroom, intending a nice, long shower.

  I scrutinized my face in the mirror. It was true. I really didn’t look any different. Judging from the number of times Avery had very recently run his hands and tongue over every inch of my back, it was clear that my wings were folded up in there nice and tight and completely invisible to anyone.

  Right now, what I looked like with wings was my secret. Mine and Svein’s.

  I scowled. Stupid Svein had popped up unbidden in my mind a few times this weekend—maybe just once or twice at totally inappropriate times—but also because he’d instructed me to call yesterday morning and I kind of hadn’t. Because I was kind of busy.

  But we could start training tomorrow, as far as I was concerned. We all needed a weekend off. Sure, I was off all the time because I was jobless, but Svein didn’t know that. I was pretty sure he didn’t know that. Anyway, I was doing all right on my own with cont
rolling these wings. Hard to feel afraid or angry when you were doing the wild thing for forty-eight hours. Waiting until Monday morning to call seemed reasonable.

  Svein had also told me to read the manual immediately. Since I wasn’t inclined to drag that massive binder into bed with Avery and start highlighting, that too would have to wait until tomorrow.

  I stared at myself in the mirror. If I aimed my glamour at my reflection, would I fall in love with myself? Certainly worth a try. I intended—and though I wasn’t overwhelmed by a sudden urge to kiss the glass, I did notice the glow coming through my skin. It was subtle. I was sparkling from within. Thin but distinct rings of silver circled my brown irises, brightening my eyes. Very cool.

  Busy examining my face, I was startled to hear chimes coming from the kitchen. I followed the sound, padding down the hallway. The chimes rang scales, up and down, and I discovered it was coming from my cargo pants, abandoned on the tile floor the other evening. But my cell was turned off, and I realized it was my new cell phone, which I’d dubbed my Fae Phone.

  I flipped it open and hit OK to read the new message.

  It was an address. Just a street address. No explanation.

  Was this some kind of code? Was I being summoned for training?

  Or …

  I remembered Svein talking to the agent at The Root, and asking him to send him an address to his Fae Phone for tooth collection that evening. So clearly, this was an address for collection.

  For me.

  With no training.

  I scrolled through the phone’s preprogrammed numbers and found one for The Root switchboard. When it began to ring on the other end, I quietly slipped out onto the porch and pulled the door mostly closed. The late-morning air was warmer than I’d expected; April in Virginia was unpredictable.

  “Root, Jason speaking.”

  “Jason,” I said. “Um, hi. This is Gemma Cross. I haven’t met you yet, but …”

  “Right, Gemma. I’ve heard all about you.”

  Of course.

  “I just sent you an assignment for tonight,” he said. “Do you need any clarification?”

  “Well, it’s just that I haven’t gotten around to talking to Svein, and …”