A Fairy Tale

by Shanna Swendson

  Wednesday, 3 p.m.

  A persistent buzzing sound penetrated Michael Murray’s sleep. He swatted at it to make it stop, but his arm was trapped and didn’t work. Something wet touched his face, and he opened his eyes to find himself staring eye-to-eye with a glaring, slobbering bulldog. The dog barked once, as if to make sure he was awake. The buzzing noise repeated, and Michael gradually realized it was the front-door intercom.

  “Hush,” he told the dog sleepily. “Maybe if we pretend we’re not home, they’ll go away. Anyone who needs to see me has a key.”

  The dog grunted and sprawled on the floor beside the sofa. Michael let himself drift back to sleep when the buzzing stopped. He hadn’t completely lost consciousness when there was a polite rapping on his apartment door and a female voice called, “Detective Murray?”

  That was harder to ignore. If someone had made it past the front door, then he ought to see who it was. With a groan, he struggled to sit up and then get to his feet. That would have been easier if his right arm weren’t in a sling and if he didn’t have to worry about stepping on the dog. The painkillers that made his head fuzzy didn’t help matters, nor did the fact that he was about a quart low on coffee for the day. Come to think of it, he hadn’t had any. He couldn’t be expected to function. Once he was standing, he waited a second to make sure he could remain vertical, then he staggered to the entryway.

  Peering through the peephole, he saw a woman. She didn’t look too threatening, and both of her hands were visible, so she was apparently unarmed, unless her umbrella concealed a weapon. That didn’t make it any easier for him to open the door. Putting his hand on the knob, knowing there was a stranger on the other side, made his heart beat faster and beads of sweat break out on his forehead. Gritting his teeth, he unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door.

  He instinctively made a mental note of the woman standing there, as though he was filling out a report: Caucasian female, somewhere between early twenties and mid thirties—she could have passed for eighteen physically, but there was a stillness about her that indicated greater maturity. About five foot three, slim build, red-gold hair, just past shoulder length, loose curls. Blue eyes. Wearing a flowered dress with a long, full skirt, a pale blue cardigan sweater, and flat shoes. He ran his good hand over hair that hadn’t seen a comb in days in an attempt to smooth it as he suddenly felt intensely conscious of just how awful he must look.

  “Detective Murray?” she said in a honeyed drawl. “I’m so sorry to disturb you. I’m Sophie Drake, Emily’s sister.”

  He remembered Emily talking about her sister, though from the way Emily had described her, he’d expected an armored Amazon holding a sword in one hand, a bullwhip in the other, and shooting death rays from her eyes, not this pretty little thing.

  “Emily, your downstairs neighbor?” she prompted, and he realized he’d just been standing there, staring at her.

  “I thought you’d be taller,” he said without thinking.

  “Yes, well, genes can be funny that way. I understand you have Emily’s spare key.”

  His head was gradually clearing, and that request put him instantly on high alert. “How did you get up here?” he asked suspiciously.

  She waved a casual hand down the hallway. “Oh, one of your neighbors was nice enough to let me in. He even carried my bag upstairs for me.”

  Michael gritted his teeth. He was always lecturing his neighbors about not letting strangers inside. Sophie Drake—or whoever she really was—didn’t look like a serial killer or a burglar, but you never could tell.

  “I really am Emily’s sister,” she said, as though he’d spoken out loud. “Would you like to see my ID?”

  She wasn’t what he’d expected, but she did look like a miniature version of Emily, and he recognized her umbrella as the gift Emily had bought for her sister last Christmas. When opened, it would have a painting of ballet dancers on it. Closed, there was a glimpse of a foot in a ballet shoe. “That’s not necessary,” he said. “But why do you need Emily’s key? Is she not home?”

  “No, she’s missing, and I need to make sure Beauregard’s okay.”

  “Beauregard?”

  “Her dog.”

  “Oh, Beau.” He really shouldn’t be having a conversation like this on a coffee-free day. “He’s fine. He’s here.” Responding to his name, Beau waddled up to the door and stuck his head out from behind Michael’s legs. “See, here he is.”

  “Oh, good. That’s a relief. I hope you don’t mind watching him a while longer. Again, I’m sorry to have disturbed you.” She turned to go, grasping the handle of her suitcase.

  His painkiller-fogged brain finally caught up with the conversation. “Wait, you said Emily’s missing?”

  She turned back. “She didn’t show up for the matinee today.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s on the Internet.”

  He had to grab the door frame to steady himself as his legs threatened to go out from under him. He was pretty sure he was awake, so this couldn’t be another nightmare. “Oh. No, she wouldn’t miss a performance,” he said numbly.

  “Definitely not,” she agreed. “I could see her becoming scarce if she’d been a flop, but girls who’ve spent years trying to get a big break on Broadway don’t run away after getting rave reviews. Something has to be wrong.”

  He felt like he was living a horrible flashback about another actress who’d missed another performance. “She didn’t come to walk Beau this morning like she said she would. I should have noticed that. I should have known something was wrong.” A wave of dizziness struck him, making him sway. He’d have preferred to blame the painkillers and general weakness after his injury, but he knew it was probably a minor panic attack.

  Sophie steadied him with a hand on his arm. “Oh dear, are you all right?”

  “I’m just—I,” he stammered.

  She dropped her umbrella, put her arm around his waist, and bustled him inside, settling him on the sofa with a pillow behind his back. “You’ve had a shock,” she said. “I’ll make some tea.”

  Moving with a brisk efficiency, like she already knew where everything was and had no intention of wasting a single movement, she headed to the kitchen alcove that opened from the living room, filled a kettle, and put it on the stove. While the water heated, she went back to the entryway and brought in her umbrella and a suitcase big enough that she could have traveled inside it and been less cramped than in a coach seat. Michael had the disconcerting feeling that he’d completely lost control of the situation. He hadn’t even invited her inside, and yet there she was with her luggage, and she’d taken over his kitchen.

  Once he was past the initial shock, his instincts and training kicked in. “Have you notified the police yet?” he called into the kitchen.

  She poured water into mugs, then came back out to the living room. “I just got off the airplane,” she said, raising one delicately arched eyebrow. “And doesn’t an adult have to be missing for a certain amount of time before the police will take a report? They’d probably laugh at me if I called so soon.”

  “It depends on the circumstances. When there are strong indications that she didn’t leave of her own accord, the sooner we take action, the better. I can make the call. If I say it’s something worth looking into, that may make it a greater priority.”

  She blinked. “Oh. Well, that’s very kind of you. But I don’t want to be a bother.”

  It wasn’t the first time he’d heard that from a relative of a crime victim, and in his experience, those were the people who either called him every other hour or turned out to be the perpetrators. He couldn’t imagine Sophie Drake fitting into either category, so he wasn’t sure why she was declining his help. Maybe it was a Southern thing, a polite demurral for propriety’s sake. “It’s no bother, really,” he insisted. “I just have to make a phone call.”

  She hesitated, then said, “Well, in that case, I would appreciate any help you can offer.” With that, she h
eaded back into the kitchen.

  He called the precinct and ignored the good-natured teasing about goldbricking before he reported the situation. While he spoke, he kept an eye on Sophie in the kitchen. To convince his colleagues that this was serious, he couldn’t mince words, but he hated talking so bluntly about his concerns in front of Sophie.

  A burst of classical piano music filled the room, and both he and the dog jumped, startled, while Sophie groaned out loud as she went to the purse she’d left on the coffee table and took out her phone. He got distracted while trying to simultaneously follow two conversations. “Oh, hello, Donna,” she said into the phone. “Did you get my message? No, I’m afraid you’ll have to. You see, I’m already in New York, so there’s no way I can host the meeting tonight. Donna, honey, I’m sure you can do it. They’ll probably beg you to take over permanently. Okay then. Take care. Bye-bye!” As she switched off her phone, she muttered, “You’d think I was the only one in the entire town who could host a book club meeting.”

  Michael forced his attention back to his own phone call and said, “I could bring her over if you like… Yeah, my place is fine. Okay, whenever you can get someone here.”

  As he hung up, Sophie brought over two steaming mugs, set one on a coaster on the coffee table, then handed him the other, making sure he had a secure hold before she let go. She sat on the other end of the sofa and picked up her own mug as she slipped one foot out of its shoe and tucked it up under her other leg. “Do the police think it’s anything to worry about?” she asked, turning to face him.

  He took a sip of syrupy sweet tea. It wasn’t the coffee that would have really sharpened his mind, but it did revive him somewhat. “They’ll look into it.”

  A flicker of something—he wasn’t sure what—crossed her face, but she nodded serenely and said, “I’m sure they’re horribly backed up, so it may be a day or so, right?”

  “No, they said they’d get someone right over. I convinced them that this was serious.”

  She opened her mouth to respond, but another burst of piano music rang out and she reached for her phone. “Oh, hi, Mama,” she said into it. “Yes, I thought I’d pay a surprise visit to Emily. I just had to see her show. No, you should be fine. Bess is there all day with Nana and puts her to bed. You’ll just need to pop in a few times during the day. Now, I have to run. I’ll talk to you later. Love you.”

  Michael watched her as the cheery smile she’d put on during the call faded. “You haven’t told your mother about Emily?”

  She switched the phone off and put it back in her purse before giving him a pitying look. “Oh, honey, no, and you should be glad of it. The last thing you need is my mother up here, fussing around in a panic, and that’s exactly what would happen if she knew.”

  “Won’t she find out eventually?”

  Her other foot came out of its shoe and was tucked up under her skirt. “I’m not sure my mother knows how to work the Internet, she doesn’t believe in television, and she hasn’t touched a newspaper since Daddy died. We’re safe for a few days.” She studied him with a steady gaze, then said, “I didn’t realize you weren’t well, or I wouldn’t have bothered you. What happened, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I knocked on a door. I guess they weren’t happy to see me,” he said, remembering too late that shrugging was a bad idea.

  “Oh, dear. I hope it wasn’t too serious.”

  “Nothing that a week in the ICU couldn’t take care of.”

  “And Emily’s making you dog-sit in your condition?”

  “Actually, I think Emily’s making the dog neighbor-sit.”

  A smile threatened to curve Sophie’s lips, and she took a sip of tea before saying dryly, “I’m sure he’s quite helpful around the house—cooking for you, cleaning up, changing your bandages.”

  “With some help from Emily. That’s why I’m pulling any strings I can for her.”

  She put her feet back in her shoes, leaned forward to put her mug on the table, then stood up. “After all that hard work, Beau could probably use a walk. I’ll take him out while we’re waiting for the police to get here. Where do you keep his leash?”

  At the word “walk,” Beau tried to make himself invisible. “There’s a hook by the door,” Michael said. He found it odd that she was so concerned about a dog at a time like this, but she was flitting about the apartment so rapidly he couldn’t quite focus on her enough to ask about that. Maybe she was just trying to distract herself from worrying about her sister, he reasoned.

  She found the leash and came over to the sofa. “Come on, Beauregard, let’s go out.” Beau edged his way under the coffee table, and Sophie turned to Michael, frowning. “I thought dogs liked walks.”

  “That would be normal dogs. Beau is either the laziest dog alive or an agoraphobic. He hates going out.”

  “Come on, Beau,” she urged, sounding frantic, like she needed to go out far more than Beau did. A knock on the door interrupted her coaxing. Michael shifted his weight forward onto his feet so he could stand, alarmed about not having heard the downstairs buzzer, but she put a hand on his knee and said, “No, don’t get up. I’ll get it,” and headed to the entryway.

  Before he could warn her to find out who it was first, she opened the door and Gene Tanaka, his training supervisor from his first year as a detective, stepped inside. Tanaka was a bear of a man, shorter than Michael but still towering over Sophie, and broad-shouldered enough to fill the entryway. “Hello, ma’am,” he said to Sophie, then he addressed Michael as he came into the living room. “Hey, Rev, I heard you called for some backup.”

  “That was fast,” Michael said. “I feel special.”

  Sophie froze behind Tanaka. “You mean, this is the police, already?” she blurted, and the look on her face was panicked, not pleased.

  Five

  The Realm—The Ballroom

  Not much later

  For a moment, Emily forgot she was being pursued. When she stepped through the balcony doors, it was as though she’d walked into the kind of movie she and Sophie used to watch on rainy Saturdays. She’d moved from the Doris Day universe to the world of thirties musicals. Glamorous couples in evening attire swirled around an Art Deco ballroom to the sounds of an ethereal orchestra. Waitresses in black uniforms with frilly white aprons moved around the perimeter of the room, where more fairies sat lounging at tables and drinking champagne—or the fairy equivalent.

  The scene would have been more familiar to Emily in black and white, but this version had been inaccurately colorized, which was what told her she was still in fairyland. The skin tones weren’t quite human and the hair colors not only didn’t appear in nature, they were beyond anything that could come out of a bottle. The clothing hues were just a little too deeply saturated to be real. Combined with the highly polished floor, the mirrored walls and pillars, and the bubbles wafting through the air, the effect of all the color, sound, and motion was disorienting.

  Remembering that there were people following her, Emily ducked behind a potted palm and looked for another way out. She scanned the room’s walls, but every time she thought she saw a door, it turned out to be a reflection from somewhere else. The only way to find the exit was to work her way around the room.

  And that would be a problem, she realized when she glanced down at herself. The green dress she’d worn at Maeve’s party would have stood out here, but that glamour had faded, leaving her in jeans and a T-shirt, which were even more incongruous. She’d be spotted as an outsider the moment she ventured out from behind her palm.

  She was pondering whether she could crawl around the room under tables when she noticed that her legs were now draped in blush-pink silk. This room’s glamour must have kicked in. Her skin was fair and her hair was bright enough that she might be able to slip through the crowd without immediately being recognized as human. Keeping to the outside of the mirrored pillars that ringed the dance floor, she strolled casually around the room. It reminded her of a carnival funh
ouse. She practically had to touch the mirrored wall to be certain whether what she saw was real or a reflection, and there were times when she was fairly certain she saw something in a reflection that wasn’t in the room.

  A woman approached her, and Emily tensed. This woman was tall and quite sexy in a dress made of pale pink fabric almost the color of her skin that clung to every curve so that she appeared naked while being fully clothed, and she was heading so directly toward Emily that it would be terribly obvious if Emily tried to avoid her. Emily’s only hope was to act like she belonged there and was on her way to an important destination. She forced herself to keep walking as though she didn’t see the woman, but the woman didn’t veer off her path. Emily was a split second from walking into a mirror before she realized that she was approaching her own reflection.

  She paused to admire herself for a moment. “I have got to find a dress like this,” she murmured. Then she noticed movement in the reflection and turned to see that some men in Maeve’s Rat Pack style attire had entered through the balcony doors. They’d caught up with her, and she still hadn’t found an exit.

  She hoped they’d look for someone trying to hide, not for someone in the middle of the dance floor. She stuck her umbrella point-first into a palm tree’s pot, then grabbed a tuxedoed fairy man who bore a striking resemblance to an otherworldly Clark Gable. “Dance with me, handsome,” she purred. He obliged by pulling her into a dance hold and sweeping her onto the floor.

  She and her partner hadn’t even made one circuit of the floor before the music trailed off into silence. There were angry mutterings as the dancers stopped, and a voice rang out from near the bandstand, saying, “How dare you enter our domain?”

  A man and woman who looked a lot like Nick and Nora Charles from the Thin Man movies stood on the stage by the band, glaring at Maeve’s people. One of Maeve’s men stepped forward. “We seek a fugitive on behalf of her majesty,” he said.

  The fairy Emily thought of as “Nora” laughed harshly. “Her majesty? Do you mean Maeve? I do not recall her earning that title. She rules only her own little court. She has no power here.”