by Leah Cutter
“What?” Nora asked, looking up. Her brother had gone back to putting away the things on his desk.
“Then don’t. No one’s asked you to. No one’s forcing you to.”
“Kostya asked me,” Nora said, a little defensive.
“Yeah? So?”
Nora sighed and sat back, thinking. Dale was right. She could turn her back on magic and all of this easily enough. Kostya would go home, or make a new home, and continue his feud with the fairies.
However, Dale was also wrong. He didn’t see how she couldn’t refuse this gift. It was inside her, now. The knowledge burned brighter than any power.
Besides, what would happen when the fairies came again? Nora needed to be able to defend her family. “What about you?” she finally asked, pushing her thoughts aside.
“What about me?” Dale asked. After a moment under Nora’s stare he sighed. “I don’t like Kostya,” he admitted. “I don’t trust him. And I don’t trust the fairies.”
“He said they wouldn’t hurt you.”
“How does he know for sure?” Dale pointed out. “Plus, he said the fairies were good with illusions. How do we know what we saw was even real? Maybe he’s the one who’s good with illusions.”
Nora knew Dale had a point. Still. “Aren’t you curious about the fairy machines?”
As if against his will, Dale turned to the pirate box that contained the one piece of fairy machinery he already had. He sighed. “Yeah, I am. I don’t care about any old queen or that weird Kostya. But that clockwork is beautiful.”
“Then you should talk with Queen Adele,” Nora said.
“No.”
“Why?”
Dale shrugged and turned back to his desk. “We should go see Mom. Meet her after her appointment,” he said, deliberately changing the subject.
“Why would we do that?” Nora asked, bewildered.
“She’s going back to the cardiologist.”
“It’s just a checkup.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Of course. Why would Mom lie?”
“Gee, I don’t know. Because she doesn’t want to worry us? Think, Nor. What happens to us if something’s wrong? There’s no one to take care of us here.”
Nora nodded slowly. “We could call Dad,” she said. Sure, Mom and Dad fought sometimes. All parents did. She just wanted to see him and be a family again.
“You don’t get it,” Dale said.
“Neither do you.”
Dale sighed. “And you’re ugly.”
Nora tried to suppress her smile. “And you’re stupid.”
“Demented.”
“Stinky.”
They grinned at each other. Everything was going to be all right.
***
“Nora! Dale! Breakfast!” Denise called from the kitchen as she expertly flipped the coconut pancakes. She’d already set the table with milk and juice for the kids, coffee for herself. The smell of bacon mingled with the sweet smell of coconut. Denise had been surprised that the twins hadn’t come running once she’d started cooking. Though they loved these pancakes, she couldn’t always afford to make them.
Denise finished the first batch, sliding two onto Nora’s plate, three onto Dale’s, and one small one onto her own, then started the next batch. “Nora! Dale! Now!” Denise called, annoyed that their breakfasts, and hers, were getting cold.
Dale stumbled into the kitchen, hair perfectly combed but his shirt skewed, as if Nora had grabbed it and he’d wrenched away. He still wore the pirate scarf. “Smells great, Mom!” he exclaimed, diving for his seat. He dumped a huge spoonful of Whipped Heaven—mascarpone, cocoa, and cream—onto his plate and started shoveling food into his mouth as if he hadn’t eaten in a week.
“Breathe, young man,” Denise warned him. Dale’s cheeks looked a little puffy: a sure sign he was on the verge of another growth spurt. She idly wondered how tall he’d get.
“Dale!” Nora called.
Dale stuffed another forkful into his mouth and stood up.
“Dale,” Denise warned. “Chew and swallow first.”
Dale did as he was told, then said, “I have to, ah, help her. Okay?”
“All right, but hurry up or all the food will be cold.”
Dale raced out of the kitchen and down the hall. Over the quiet ticking of the kitchen clock came frenzied whispering.
Just as Denise finished the second batch of pancakes, Nora and Dale both came in.
“Wow, Mom, coconut pancakes?” Nora walked over to where Denise stood by the stove and hugged her from behind. “I love you.”
Denise looked from one of her children to the other. Nora met her gaze, but Dale looked guiltily down at his plate.
“All right. What’s going on?” Denise asked, putting the spatula down and folding her arms over her chest.
“Nothing!” Nora protested in patently false, wide-eyed innocence.
“Everything’s fine,” Dale told her.
Denise winced. Dale’s words held a flavor of defiance. But now he stared at Nora, not her.
“It’s the appointment, isn’t it?” Denise asked quietly, picking up the spatula again and sliding more pancakes onto all of their plates.
“We were going to meet you at the doctor’s office,” Dale explained. Then he glared at Nora. “At least, I wanted to.”
“There’s no need,” Denise assured him. “The appointment’s just a routine checkup. I’ll go in, the doctor will ask me some questions, run a couple tests, and tell me to come back in six months. Then he’ll charge me a month’s rent for ten minutes of his time.”
“Really?” Dale asked. He looked more uncertain and lost than Denise had seen him in a while. He’d grown up so much—sometimes she didn’t see her little boy there.
Denise wished, more than anything, that she could go to him and hold him as she had when he’d been small. He’d grown out of hugs and cuddles so quickly. Bitterness tinged her regret. She blamed Chris, who’d ridiculed anything tender as unmanly. “Yes,” she said earnestly, trying to at least banish her boy’s fears with her absolute confidence. “I promise. Nothing is wrong.”
Dale and Nora exchanged looks. Denise wondered if she read this one correctly. Nora was saying, See. Told you, while Dale continued to stubbornly not accept it. Finally the twins came to some kind of draw and resumed eating.
“Should we have pizza tonight to celebrate the end of school?” Denise suggested.
“Yes! Pizza,” Dale said, nodding. “That’s good grub,” he added in his pirate voice.
“You’re deranged,” Nora told him, laughing.
“You’re even more so,” Dale continued, ginning.
After breakfast, Denise went to her office. It was really just a glorified mudroom at the back of the house. An old desk that Eli had gifted her with blocked the door to the yard. Denise hoped she’d be able to take it with them when they moved: It was acres of smooth wood, heavy and solid. Milk crates made up her bookcase. The only homey touch was a set of silver wind chimes hanging in the corner that her father had made for her. Denise couldn’t see the road from her desk, just a strip of trees at the end of a large expanse of grass. She sat down in the hard kitchen chair she used as her desk chair to check her email as well as her bank account. Still no money yet from her latest client. They weren’t too late. Denise sighed and put in a reminder to send them a note tomorrow about late payment. On the brighter side of things, an old client had sent her a request to a bid on a new project. Denise eagerly opened the email and looked at the details, then at her calendar. Could she swing this?
A soft beep brought Denise back from her calculations. “Nora! Dale! Time to go!” She dismissed the timer and pushed herself back from her desk. “Let’s go!” she called, walking out of the office and down the hall. The doors to both of the kids’ rooms were shut. Had they gone from their fake insults to real ones?
Denise knocked on each. “Thirty seconds,” she warned. When they’d first moved to this house, she’d set her al
arm earlier, giving them all a five-minute snooze. The kids had too quickly learned they didn’t need to pay attention to her first call and ignored the others as well. Denise counted to ten. When no one appeared, she said, “Don’t make me come in there and drag you out.” She’d never had to resort to such a tactic, but the twins knew she meant it.
Furious whispering met Denise’s request. Then the door to Nora’s room opened and both twins came out. Nora closed the door to her room deliberately.
“I know, I know, no peeking,” Denise said, trying to tease.
“Good,” Nora said seriously, then rapidly walked down the hall.
What was up with the twins? This wasn’t excitement over the last day of school. They were planning something.
Denise took a deep breath. She had to trust them. They weren’t adults, not yet, but the only way they’d get there was if they had her respect.
At the twins’ request, Denise didn’t walk with them to the bus stop. She watched them walk down the road from the kitchen window as she did the breakfast dishes. They continued to argue intensely. Nora wanted Dale to do something. What, Denise had no idea.
After Denise finished the dishes as well as her second cup of coffee, she went back to her office. She wondered if a storm was brewing—clouds covered the sky and the wind kept blowing the trees around.
When the timer went off for the doctor’s appointment, Denise was ready for a break. She stood and stretched. Maybe she could get a new chair when she finished this job.
As Denise pulled out of the driveway, a faded brown sedan drove up. Denise didn’t know the man sitting in the driver’s seat—short, balding, with an accountant’s black-rimmed glasses. When he saw that she was leaving, he drove away.
Maybe he was some kind of salesman.
He wasn’t looking for her or her family.
She was just being paranoid.
***
Doctor Jan turned out to be an older woman with close, sandy curls, a big nose, man-sized hands, and skin roughened and red from being outside. She also asked Denise more questions than Denise had expected about her level of stress since moving, her diet, and what she did for exercise.
What surprised Denise the most was that Doctor Jan had the equipment to diagnose her pacemaker remotely. She attached two cold diodes to Denise’s chest. The wires ran to what looked like a bar-code scanner.
Doctor Jan frowned at the readings. She came closer and stood beside Denise so she could also see the screen.
“You see this?” Dr. Jan said, stabbing a fat finger at a display that looked like a gas gauge, with the needle in the center, half empty. “That’s your battery. When did you have the last one replaced?”
“Two years ago,” Denise said, equally puzzled. The surgeon had assured her that it would last for seven to ten years.
“And you haven’t been doing any kind of extraordinary exercise or anything that would cause your heart to beat quite fast for a long time?”
“What do you mean?” Denise asked, puzzled.
“Excessive exercising, like training for a marathon, running for three to four hours a day or more, for months at a time.”
Denise shook her head. Even when she’d been with Chris and scared, though it had seemed like a lifetime, it hadn’t been for more than a few months.
Doctor Jan disconnected the machine, put it on a side table, then turned back to Denise. “Now, I know you said everything’s fine. But I want to give you a chance to think about it. Have you felt faint recently? World grow dark around the edges?”
Denise suddenly remembered the time standing on the side of the road, waiting for the twins’ bus. She slowly nodded. “Yes. A few days ago.” She told the doctor about the incident.
“You said you have kids. They been worried?”
“Yes,” Denise sighed.
The doctor turned Denise’s face up and examined it closely. “You’re naturally pale. I think, now, you’re unnaturally pale. You’re going to have to replace that battery sooner rather than later.”
“I’ll schedule something before the end of the month,” Denise promised.
“End of the week would be better,” Doctor Jan replied.
“I—I need to check with my kids,” Denise said, faltering. “Is it really that bad?”
“If I could, I’d have you go in today,” Doctor Jan said. “Battery could go out at any time. But you’d fight me on that. So, end of the week. You feel weak or dizzy, you call 911. Immediately. Your kids know what to do?”
Denise gulped. “Yes.” As long as their cell phone reception at the house didn’t die.
In a haze, Denise set up an appointment with the surgeon for three days hence, on Friday. When Denise got back to the car, she already had a list of clients in mind whom she would be billing. She needed that money. Now.
***
Adele could barely contain her fury when she heard about the warriors’ failure. That damn interfering dwarf. And they knew about the Maker before Adele had had a chance to find her and bring her to their side. Because the Maker had defended her brother against the fairies, it was going to be even harder to win her over. “Damn them all!”
“Please,” Cornelius said. “Lower your voice.”
Adele bit her lip and paused in the center of the room. It was just the two of them in the outer chamber he’d hustled her into after the warriors’ report. Both doors leading to the throne room stayed shut, even after her outburst. Like most of the rooms in the palace, a strip of white wood divided the walls. The top half was painted a pale ivory, with delicate gold vines and ivy decorating it, while the bottom half was a deep blue. Adele knew Imogene had chosen colors she thought calming. Adele found them suffocating.
Like most of the furniture in the palace, the long couch between the two doors was backless, making it easier to sit on with wings. Red, blue, gold, and cream strips ran from the arms and across the seat. When Cornelius sat, he patted the place next to him. Adele stubbornly continued standing.
“You need to turn this failure to an advantage,” Cornelius told her seriously. “There are already murmurings in the court about your qualifications as ruler.”
Adele scoffed. “And who would take my place? Those fops from the southern kingdom? Gideon? You?”
Cornelius bowed his head slowly. “There’s been talk.”
Adele drew herself up. “Would you take my kingdom from me, old friend?”
“Not willingly, no,” Cornelius said, shaking his head. “And not while you continue to listen to reason,” he added pointedly.
“Fine,” Adele said, flouncing down on the seat next to him. “Give me your counsel, O wise one.”
Cornelius chuckled. “Who says warriors never listen?” he teased.
It was an old joke between them—warriors, like Adele, only fought and never listened, whereas royals, like Cornelius, only talked and never listened.
However, Adele wasn’t prepared to be amused that day. “How do I kill Kostya?” she asked.
“Wrong focus,” Cornelius replied. “How do you capture the heart of the human Tinker, as well as his sister, the Maker? They could be strong allies. Though traditionally, fairy kingdoms don’t make alliances, you should also be asking how the southern kingdom could be useful.”
Adele turned the questions over in her mind. Cornelius, as always, used words like a weapon. Of course, he was right. She’d already planned on securing the allegiance of the Maker. Also, capturing the Tinker shouldn’t have been the duty of the warriors. The Tinker wasn’t a subject to be ordered to attend the court, but a foreigner who should have been wooed by an ambassador.
As for the fairies from the southern kingdom, their arrival had been timed so poorly. Because of Thaddeus’ death and her own precarious position, Adele hadn’t shown them all the courtesies she should.
“The kingdom must sparkle,” Adele said, testing out the implications. Not only did the clockwork have to capture the Tinker’s imagination, her entire underworld country mus
t as well. She should also take the southerners on a tour of the factory; she recalled their whispered comments about it.
“Exactly. And he must see you in your best light.”
Adele understood what Cornelius implying. She was proud of her heritage as warrior caste. However, when she appeared in court, she usually covered up, like a royal. Cornelius and the others preferred her that way. It was one of the reasons why she pitied him when he took her hand and looked at her with soft eyes. Thaddeus had loved her for who she was, not the mask she wore for the court.
“If you ever need anything...” Cornelius started, then faltered.
“I know who to come to, old friend,” Adele said. She patted his hand, then let go. Thaddeus had taught her how to lie, as well. She stood, restless again, but this time, with a plan. “I must go tend to my kingdom.”
“Very good, my Queen,” Cornelius said, also standing and bowing his head.
Adele almost felt sorry for him as she swept from the room. He didn’t understand what he could never have. She couldn’t dismiss him, though, or even hold him at arm’s length. His insights were too valuable.
Turning a critical eye to the palace, Adele summoned servants, directing them to banish the dirt from every corner. She added glamours to the empty hallways, sprouting fantastic portraits and paintings along each wall. Vases of flowers bloomed in nooks and on staircase landings.
The path from the northern gate to the palace received a more austere touch—plain wood and brick instead of a dirt path and hedged walls. The grand fountain at the foot of the stairs filled with bubbling clear water, sweeping away the dirt and cobwebs. Adele then brightened the ceiling with more color and lights.
Chapter Seven
The diner where Robert had arranged their first meeting served breakfast starting at eight, Chris discovered. He decided to eat there on the off chance Robert also stopped by, as he’d seemed very comfortable there.
However, the pancakes had too much salt and lay in Chris’ stomach like bricks, mingling unpleasantly with the fatty bacon. The coffee was more like black acid—Chris couldn’t pour in enough sugar to sweeten it. The insolent college dropout behind the counter refused to meet Chris’ eye and refill his cup.
