Fairy, Texas

by Margo Bond Collins

  “Let go of me, Mason,” I said. “I’ll just hurt you.”

  “No, you won’t,” he said. Pain laced his words.

  “Dammit, Mason!” I said. “Let go!” I pulled my hands away from his, but he wouldn’t loosen his grasp.

  “No,” he gasped. “If you’re going to hurt someone, it’s going to be me. But I don’t believe you’ll do it.”

  The silver light crackled around us with the smell of ozone, and for a heartbeat I felt myself pulling Mason’s power out of him.

  But in the end, I couldn’t. He wouldn’t let go and I couldn’t hurt him. So we fell from the air and landed on the stage. He wrapped his arms around me while all the other demons backed away slowly, hands in the air as if to ward me off. Without speaking, they began filing from the auditorium as quickly as they could. The few who looked back avoided making eye contact with me.

  In the end, I was left on the stage with Mason, Mr. Bevington and my friends. The bodies of demons sprawled around us. I sobbed into Mason’s chest while Josh’s father rushed over to his son, gathering him up and holding him close.

  “He’s alive,” Mr. Bevington said.

  I stared at him, incomprehension clouding my mind.

  “Josh is alive,” he said more slowly. Then he winked out of our world, though I could still see his gauzy form outlined in ether as he held his son in the plane that might heal him.

  * * * *

  Four days later, I stood in the Texas September heat at Sarah Watkins’ funeral. The landscape around me was burned by the sun to a sere brown, the end of a long, hot summer.

  The end of any chance I’d had of happiness in Fairy.

  Bartlef and Biet were dead. So was Sarah. And Oma Raina. Quentin, Sarah’s boyfriend, was emaciated and ill.

  Mr. Bevington had taken Josh to a hospital with a demon doctor and left him, then had come back to help with the clean-up. He had mind-wiped my surviving friends and family.

  Except it hadn’t worked on Kayla. So in the end, we told her the truth. When we were done talking, she stared at all of us for a long time and then burst into tears and flung herself into Mason’s arms.

  He looked at us helplessly over her head, his hand absentmindedly stroking her hair.

  I shrugged. “Your problem, Mase,” I said.

  He looked down at her, and his eyes grew gentle.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess she is.”

  In the end, Mr. Bevington had staged a car crash. Josh, Kayla, Sarah and I were supposedly in Josh’s car, Bartlef and Biet in the other.

  A head-on collision had killed the counselor, the teacher, and Sarah. Josh had been severely injured.

  Miraculously, Kayla and I had walked away with only a few minor bruises.

  In the hospital, Mom clutched me and sobbed in relief. I had wrapped my arms around her waist and laid my head on her shoulder, wishing I could cry, too. I wanted to ask her if she knew about the demons of Fairy. I didn’t. I was afraid to hear the answer, I think.

  At Sarah’s funeral service, Natalie tried to speak but broke down sobbing and had to be led from the pulpit. At the graveside, she glared at me while Scott and Andrew avoided looking at me at all. I knew they didn’t remember what had happened, but it didn’t matter—they still blamed me.

  I didn’t go to Bartlef or Biet’s funerals.

  At school, the human students offered awkward condolences. The demon students avoided me. Except Mason, who followed me around telling me that what had happened wasn’t my fault. And there was always at least one adult demon hovering near me, supposedly hidden in the ethereal plane.

  But I could always see them.

  And Josh lay silent and still, not waking. The huge gashes on his back where his wings were once attached had been stitched closed. The faint silver light that had always surrounded him was gone, transferred to me. The doctors at the hospital didn’t have any explanation for his continuing coma.

  None of us did.

  His father sat at his bedside, watching and waiting.

  I joined him in the afternoons, after school let out. Mr. Carlson had excused me from selling any more ads.

  “What does ‘nala’ mean?” I asked Mr. Bevington, about a week into our vigil.

  “Vampire,” he said. His voice held no inflection whatsoever.

  I nodded. That was as good a word as any for what I had done to the demons. I could still feel their power crackling inside me. Mr. Bevington said he could see it when he looked at me. He wanted to find someone to teach me how to use it; although he had more Power than anyone had known before, and had taken over the Fairy conclave, he didn’t have the skills to teach me himself. A teacher from another enclave offered to take me in, and I agreed to meet with her once a week, albeit grudgingly.

  I had a lot to learn about being a demon. Half-demon. Whatever.

  “So am I the Yatah?” I asked the new teacher, Oma Elaine, the first time I met her. She was old and small, like Oma Raina had been.

  She shook her head. “I do not know.”

  “Am I human?”

  She shrugged. “Not anymore.”

  “Am I a demon?”

  She shook her head again, and squinted her eyes as she peered at me. “Unlikely, child. I see no part of you in the ethereal.”

  “But I have power.”

  She nodded.

  So I belonged in neither world.

  Perfect.

  And life moved on. I went to classes, did my homework, visited Josh at the hospital. In yearbook, Mr. Carlson assigned another photographer to teach me how to develop black-and-white film. I was glad to get away from Mason and his anxious reassurances, and more than glad to get away from the way he and Kayla had started cooing at each other all the time. She still snarled at me, though. Same old Kayla.

  * * * *

  Josh finally woke up almost a month after Sarah’s funeral.

  His father and I were in his room, sitting, as usual, in silence. I had my homework out in front of me. Mom had stopped trying to convince me to quit spending so much time at the hospital. I bent over my geometry book, trying to remember the formula for finding the hypotenuse of a right triangle, when a scratchy voice interrupted my thoughts.

  “Hey, Laney,” Josh said.

  My head jerked up and I stared at him.

  “So are you going to talk to me, or what?” His eyes sparkled.

  “Josh!” Mr. Bevington said. “Hi, son. How are you feeling?”

  “Um, a little strange,” he said, rolling his shoulders.

  All the color drained out of his father’s face. “Josh, there’s something I need to tell you,” he said.

  Josh nodded. “I know, Dad,” he said gently.

  Mr. Bevington glanced around furtively to make sure no humans were listening when he whispered, “It’s about your wings.”

  Josh placed his hand over his father’s. “I know, Dad,” he repeated softly, soothingly. “I know.”

  Mr. Bevington’s eyes filled up with tears.

  “Can I have a moment with Laney, Dad?” Josh asked.

  He nodded and moved out of the room, dashing the tears away with the back of his hand.

  I moved closer to Josh.

  “How you doing?” he asked me.

  “I think that should be my question,” I responded quietly.

  He smiled. “Yeah, maybe so.”

  “So what do you remember?” I asked him.

  His face grew solemn. “Everything, I think.”

  “They’re calling me ‘Nala’ now,” I said.

  “But not Yatah anymore?”

  “No.”

  He grinned, that slow, sure smile I remembered from before. “Well. We don’t have a prophecy covering a nala,” he said.

  I smiled back. “That’s one good thing, then.”

  His smile faded. “Yeah. One.” His shoulders twitched again.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Only when I realize they’re gone. I try to move th
em, and nothing.”

  I swallowed. “I am so sorry I couldn’t get to you sooner, Josh,” I said.

  “Don’t, Laney.” He reached out and twined his fingers in mine. “Haven’t you figured it out yet?”

  I looked at him quizzically.

  “We’re in this together. Both of us. Half of the same whole.” His fingers tightened around mine and his voice grew hoarse. “And as long as you’re here, it doesn’t matter whether or not I have wings.” He pulled me down until our lips met. “I love you, Laney Harris.”

  “I love you too,” I whispered.

  Epilogue

  The next afternoon, I developed the canister of film from the night of the attack. On the roll was one picture of me and Sarah. She had leaned over the concrete barrier, I had stood on my tiptoes. I swished the photographic paper around in the developing solution, watching as the image faded in, becoming darker and darker. Our faces smiled back at me. In Sarah’s eyes I imagined I could see a hint of worry, of fear as she prepared to betray me in her attempt to save Quentin.

  “It worked,” I whispered to her. “He’s alive.” I paused. “I hope it was worth it.”

  And in the background, I saw the smudge of a shadow. I watched as the image resolved, cleared into a definite shape looming over us, sweeping out from my back and stretching behind me in a clean arc of darkness, highlighted against the white of the concrete barrier. Undeniable.

  Wings.

  The End.

  Acknowledgments

  As always, there are more thanks due than I will ever remember to offer. First and foremost to my family for their love, support, and generosity—without their help, this book would never have been written, or more importantly, proofread! On that count, special thanks to Gigi and Elson. To my editor Cyn, who is fabulous. To all the staff at Solstice Publishing—they make their jobs seem easy, though I know they’re not. Special thanks to Melissa and Kate for their continuing support. To Jenn, for image manipulation help above and beyond the call of friendship! To Deborah Melanie, for doing so much on the cover. To Deb Christie, for keeping me sane (and connected to the outside world). To Melanie Karsak, for sharing her own experiences in this publishing journey. To the Taylors, for so often helping me find the right words. And as always, to Isabel, for being the most wonderful person in my world. This book is dedicated to the memory of my brother Nate, who left too soon. May love and light follow you forever.

  Author’s Note

  Although the town of Fairy, Texas actually exists, I have taken a number of creative liberties with it; indeed, with the exception of its geographical placement, the town that Laney moves to bears little resemblance to the one on the map. It is, instead, an amalgamation of all the small Texas towns in my experience, combined with a healthy dose of imagination.

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