Tooth and Nail

by Jennifer Safrey

  “The more I thought about it,” he said, “the more I realized I just had to do this. You understand.”

  Um.

  “So I contacted TV-Spree. You’ve heard of them, haven’t you?”

  TV-Spree was a national home-shopping station based in D.C. It sprang into being only a couple of years ago, but it was now one of the big ones. The last time I had channel-surfed, I found TV-Spree selling self-cleaning toasters. I paused a moment, watching the number counter ding higher and higher as thousands leaped on the chance to update their kitchens with an appliance they suddenly couldn’t live without.

  “I pitched the toothpaste to them,” Clayton said. “They don’t have any other products to compete with it, and a few executives took it home. When their kids refused to go back to their old toothpaste, they signed me on. So if you tune in, you can see me on TV. I’m going to expose your tooth to a curing light so this can set, okay?”

  He rolled away from me and left the room. I stared at the ceiling, trying to process what he’d just told me. TV-Spree meant millions of people. Millions. I saw, in my mind’s eye, the TV number counter going up and up and up. I saw mountains of brown cardboard boxes filled with orders being loaded onto idling trucks. Then I saw Juliette, my little Cindy Lou Who, eagerly holding out a pink toothbrush for her mother to squeeze on a blob of Smile Wide.

  I clenched my hands into fists, and my back itched and burned and quivered violently. No, no, breathe and—oh, the hell with it. I sat up, pushed the table of instruments away from my lap and swung my legs over to the side.

  “Good idea, go ahead and stretch your legs,” Clayton said as he returned holding something that looked disturbingly like a ray gun. “That chair’s not the most comfortable thing. It’s particularly hard on the back.”

  My back was shaking so hard, my shoulders hunched up. Anticipating a confrontation, I’d practiced all morning with wing control. I was much better now than I was when they burst out at the fundraiser, but this anger, laced with sticky fear, was so potent that I had to let it out somehow, and the vehicle I went with was my mouth. “I know what you’re doing,” I said.

  “Good,” he said. “Then you know this will beep every ten seconds. When you hear it beep four times, we’ll be done. Sit down and you’ll be out of here before you know it.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said. “I know what you’re doing with the toothpaste, and what you’re doing to kids’ teeth. I know.”

  “This is forty seconds of light,” he said. “Almost done.”

  I sat. It was insane, but I did. If he assaulted me, I could fight back, because I’d expect it.

  He leaned over me and the machine went beep.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Clayton squinted and rubbed at the tooth one last time. “That,” he said, “is good work.”

  He handed me a mirror, but I didn’t even need to look. He was right.

  Then I dropped the mirror in my lap. “I know,” I repeated.

  “And I know,” he said, rolling his chair back and resting an elbow on his countertop, “that you were sent to stop me.” He peeled off his gloves and tossed them into the wastebasket. One caught on the rim and hung there. “The fabled and supposedly rare half-breed, right in front of me.”

  “Listen,” I said. “This is harming kids. I can’t imagine what your reasons are to interfere with the Olde Way mission, but you’re taking innocence away from kids.”

  “I knew they would send you to stop me,” he said.

  I pushed the armrest up and stood over him for a bit of advantage, but he continued as if I were a no bigger threat than a squashable spider. “I tried to get to you first.”

  “What?”

  “I knew you’d come, so I came up with all different ways to stop you,” he said. “I had a list of plans and defensive schemes to keep you from ruining what I was doing. In fact, when I decided to switch offices, I came here, where you were a patient, so I would have you in plain sight. But I didn’t have to do anything.”

  He stood and leaned into me. I willed myself not to move. “Because,” he said, “you’re too late.”

  I hissed in a breath.

  “Maybe it took them a while to find you?” he asked, smiling gently. “The morning fae always do find who they’re looking for. They’re an incredible network of resourceful beings. But I kept a low profile, and it took them just as long to find me, and now I’m sorry to say you’re just too late.”

  “I’m here now,” I said, and set my jaw.

  “And what are you going to do?” he asked. “Smile Wide is being mass manufactured and shipped to TV-Spree warehouses all over this country. On Monday night, I’ll be making my television debut. With express overnight shipping, kids all over the country will be using Smile Wide before bedtime Tuesday. It’s a done deal, Gemma.”

  My gaze darted around the room, as if anything in here could prove him wrong.

  “Kids, their innocence doesn’t last very long anyway,” he said, his tone as soothing as if he were talking to a fussy toddler. “No big deal.”

  “That’s why they deserve to keep their innocence!” I cried. “Because it doesn’t last long.”

  “So what?” Clayton took a step toward me. “I lost mine earlier than I should have. I turned out okay.”

  “This is okay?”

  “Wouldn’t you say you turned out okay?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  He stood and turned on the faucet to wash his hands. I watched every move he made. I’d trained for years on how to watch an opponent, every twitch and every blink.

  As he dried his hands, he asked, “How’s your dad?”

  My breathing stopped.

  “Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry, I forgot. He left when you were what? Seven? Eight? Must have been a real innocence-killer for you.”

  He smiled. “Are you coming after me for all those children who won’t even miss what they’ll lose? Or are you coming after me so you can reconcile with yourself that your own innocence was lost too soon?”

  His words crawled under my skin like roaches and made me want to scream and tear them off me. I wanted to hit him hard, do damage that I didn’t even think I was capable of. I didn’t know how he knew anything about me, and I wanted to demand answers. But I steeled myself. It was an inner struggle against my nature to instinctively act, but I won. He didn’t deserve to see how deep he’d cut. “You’re a threat to the Olde Way,” I said, willing the muscles in my face to not betray me. “It’s my job to take care of it.”

  “I’ll have Rebecca bill you,” he said. “Your tooth might be sensitive to heat and cold for a couple of weeks, and I wouldn’t go tearing into any hard foods for a while. Just use the teeth on the side.”

  “Do you think I’ll just go away forever?” I asked. “This isn’t done.”

  “Go home,” he said. “Go home to your mother so she’s not lonely.”

  I didn’t think about it. I just swung. I leaned into the punch and my fist crashed into his jaw. He doubled over, then the power of his wing burst pulled him upright. Momentarily transfixed by his change, I was startled when he grabbed the neck of my T-shirt, pushed me into the wall and held me there, his face close to mine.

  “Gemma,” he whispered, “I’m a fair man. You aren’t my problem. You can’t help who you are or where you came from any more than I can, and you and I are exactly the same.”

  “I’m nothing like you,” I spat. I felt my wingtips break from my back and shove hard against the wall, desperate to open, but Clayton had me pinned so tight that they jammed up, stretching the open flesh of my back. I was being crushed from the front and the back, like I was in a panini press. His white coat had risen to accommodate his wings, which had torn through the shirt underneath.

  “This isn’t between you and me,” he said in that same whisper.

  “If not you,” I asked, “then who? Your midnight fae hell spawn pals?”

&nbs
p; He furrowed his brow, bemused for a moment, but he tightened his grip even more on me as he did so. My toes lifted off the floor. Then he laughed. “Is that what your stupid fool fae think? That I’m a demon?” He laughed harder, but didn’t loosen his hold. “They haven’t figured me out at all. I guarantee you, Gemma, I work alone. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if the dark fae decide to pick up where I leave off. Go home.”

  I lifted my closed fist but he slammed it against the wall next to my head, my knuckles clacking hard. He held my wrist there. His strength was indomitable. If he backed off, allowed my wings to emerge, I would have my own power. I had learned from Svein that body strength nearly doubled when winged. I would equal Clayton. But he didn’t let me go, and I remained trapped and squirming.

  “You had all this time, your whole life,” he said. “You had your chance.””

  Then before I could hiss a vitriolic reply, he punched me hard in the gut. I was a boxer, and I knew how to steel my stomach, but his supernatural strength brought hot tears to my eyes. He dropped me and I collapsed on the floor, clutching at myself, breathing hard and ragged. My back quickly sealed over.

  “Get out,” he said. “And don’t come back until it’s time for your six-month cleaning.”

  I crawled toward the doorway and hoisted myself up. My air was coming shallow, from my chest, because if I ventured to draw in a deeper breath, it would send me smashing back to the floor in agony.

  When I was in the waiting room, I paused to lean on the reception desk, slowly trying to straighten up enough to walk out the front door.

  I stumbled out and gulped in the fresh air so hard, I choked. I coughed twice and the spasms tightened my brutalized muscles. I wrapped an arm around myself. I wanted to sit somewhere and not move. But I didn’t want the good dentist to find me still here when he left for home.

  A sheet of Washington Post blew up the street and wrapped itself around my calves. I was grateful—pulling the paper off me would allow me an excuse to double over without necessarily looking like I was battling ripping pain. I bent my knees to drop a hand closer to my lower legs, and pinched a corner of the damp paper. I was about to release it back into the D.C. wind when I saw it.

  A black-and-white, crinkled mug shot. There were words too, but I didn’t have the mental wherewithal to string them together properly: arrest, arson, damage, one woman dead. Trey Sawyer stared up at me.

  I gasped, and it hurt.

  From Trey’s eyes, the child school shooter stared up at me. From Trey’s eyes, little Brian stared up at me.

  In that cold, dead gaze, dark fae stared up at me.

  CHAPTER 16

  The bakery was closed when I arrived, so I flipped through my key ring to find the right one. I let myself in and locked it behind me, and walked, wincing, with one arm around my torso.

  Licking two fingers and placing them on the iron wings, I opened the door that materialized.

  When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I turned right and wandered down the corridor, squinting into dark-windowed doors, until one opened and a fae guy came out. He stopped short when he saw me, then approached me.

  “Gemma,” he said, alarmed at my hunched-over posture. “Do you need help?”

  At this moment, I wasn’t creeped out by the fact that I was an instantly recognizable fae star. Instead, I was relieved to have found a friendly face. “Is there a bathroom?” I asked.

  “Of course. Follow me.”

  I walked behind him down one hallway, then we turned right and headed down one more. The hallways and doors were dark but not a scary, abandoned dark—it was the companionable, familiar dark of a room where kids are playing hide and seek. Each of our footsteps seemed to echo with distant music. The music and magic of a fae house.

  The man stopped in front of a door and opened it a crack, flipping on a light. “Let me or anyone here know if there’s anything we can do.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I assured him. “It’s nothing that ibuprofen and some water can’t fix.”

  “Try a hot bath,” he suggested, and left me to my privacy.

  Flipping the light on, I widened my eyes. I’d been expecting a kind of bunker bathroom, strictly utility. But this was a four-star luxury. A bathtub with whirlpool jets gleamed invitingly. A plush white bath mat lay beside it, and when I flipped a switch on another wall, red heat lamps came to life overhead. Wooden racks offered soft pink towels. A gold-edged mirror reflected my pale face back at me.

  I’d almost gone straight home but I didn’t want to risk running into Avery. A bad day at the gym would explain this to him, but I didn’t feel like lying again. A safe house by its very name had seemed like the best place to go.

  I rummaged behind the bathroom mirror, finding lots of shampoos and body lotions and mouthwashes until I located some single-dose packets of ibuprofens.

  “Take two for temporary relief of headache, cramps, muscle aches”—yep—“and toothache.” Oh, the irony.

  I swallowed two tablets back with some water, then after a moment’s hesitation, ripped open a second packet and tossed back one more pill. The dosage instructions didn’t include “relief of pain from crazed winged superhuman beating the shit out of you,” but I considered this self-prescribed off-label use. I doubted it would help.

  Crumpling the Dixie cup and leaning against the sink, I breathed in and out through my nose. I thought it might be a good idea to hang around near the toilet until my nausea passed.

  I bared my teeth in the mirror, ran my tongue around the previously damaged, now-perfect one. Damn. He was a good dentist.

  What had Svein said to me? Living in this day and age, my fight would naturally be different than those who came before. Less bloody, less romantic. But modern-day technology and industry offered an enormous base for Clayton’s poison. TV-Spree coupled with inevitable online ordering suddenly made Clayton possibly the fae’s most dangerous, most far-reaching essence adversary of all time.

  Well, at least I’d cemented my place in morning fae folklore. I sincerely hoped it wasn’t the tale of my violent death that kept my descendants riveted.

  My Fae Phone vibrated, and I fished it out of my khaki cargo pants pocket. “Hello?” I said, but the buzzing continued to tickle my other hip. I threw the Fae Phone onto the bath rug and pulled out my regular cell. This was ridiculous. As a warrior of historical legend, I should have had, at the very least, merited a personal assistant to deal with this crap while I was busy getting smacked around. “Hello?”

  “Got anything for me?”

  I let out a breath. Great. Here came the two of the one-two, and I stood right in its way.

  “No,” I said. “How the hell did you get my cell phone number?”

  “I’m just good,” Greg Mahoney said into my ear, his voice cracking on the suave word choice.

  Along with the bile, I tasted fear in my mouth. I still didn’t know what or how much Mahoney knew about me. “Well, to answer your question, the only thing I’ve ‘got’ for you is a hang-up.”

  “Why won’t you work with me?” he coaxed.

  “What makes you think I have any information about anything? I don’t even have a job right now. I’m the least interesting person you ever met.”

  “You know what I’m looking for,” he said. “You know what I’m after. We can break the story together,” he added in a rush. “If you want to share the spotlight, I’m willing to consider it, work out a deal. But if you don’t want to go public, at least give me whatever evidence you’ve got so I can.”

  He kept asking the same thing. Tell me something, give me something, talk to me. He was on to me, but not completely. What piece was he missing?

  “For the last time,” I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, weirdo. Leave me alone and go away.”

  “Give me something.” Mahoney’s voice turned hard and angry, as if I were the instigator in this back-and-forth. “Give me something or I’ll find something on McCormack, I swear. I’ll be in tou
ch.”

  He hung up, and I threw the phone down hard. It bounced off the other one on the floor. Then I screamed as loud as I could.

  Hot pain in my back overpowered the sharp pain in front, and my wings burst out, hitting and dropping a framed watercolor of peaceful lilacs.

  I’d already removed my shirt to assess my deranged-dentist damage, so at least I didn’t ruin another shirt. I stepped into the dry tub, and lowered myself onto the cold porcelain. I leaned over with a groan, grabbed the Fae Phone off the floor, and pressed a few buttons.

  “Nilsen.”

  I didn’t bother with niceties. Not that we ever exchanged any. “What did you get on Greg Mahoney?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Listen,” I said, “I’ve not had a good day.”

  “What happened?”

  “Some other time. Right now, I need to know what you learned about him.”

  Svein paused, and I was about to scream a second time when I realized he hadn’t hung up. I heard him shuffling papers. “Greg Mahoney is the D.C. Digger.”

  “Old news.”

  “Home schooled until eighteen, Boston University grad, bookkeeping day job. He doesn’t live far from you. He’s over by Rosslyn station. He does his writing from home, but he takes to the streets to find his dirt. He’s got regular hangouts. Bars popular with politicians, fundraisers, press conferences. He goes out walking at night to smoke and walk his dog. And he’s spent more than one late night in the past week watching your building.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “If you weren’t already off the collection rotation,” Svein said, “I’d have recommended it after finding that out. Political blog or not, I’m pretty sure it’s not Avery he’s watching for at 1 a.m.”

  “He knows something about me. He told me at the fundraiser that he saw me with a tooth.” I paused. My heartbeat was slowing, as rationalization and reason took over to calm me. “He called me.”

  “Just now?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “The same. I didn’t let on that I had any idea what he was talking about. Then when he realized I wasn’t caving, he threatened again to slander Avery and hung up on me.”