Spandex, Spells and Shadows

by Melinda Chase

  “I want to go home!” The woman screamed. Suddenly, a flash of white light shot out of her hands, lighting up her face so I could clearly see her ivory skin and dark brown hair. The light arced out from her figure and turned into a webbing that I had only seen once before.

  My magic did the exact same thing. My half-fae magic.

  “Oh my God!” I screeched, just as the vision dissolved and the break room reappeared around me. “Dammit!”

  But it was too late. Once a vision was over, it was gone for good.

  The memory, though, would forever be imprinted in my brain. The memory of another half fae, just like me.

  I looked back down at the little fairy necklace in my hand.

  “I’m gonna find you,” I murmured to the necklace.

  2

  I managed to make small talk and keep myself semi-sane throughout dinner. It was our weekly family get together, which meant I was able to distract myself with talk about Auntie Deedee’s soda shoppe or some of the newest witchy gossip courtesy of Marcella.

  It wasn’t until I laid down in my bed that night that my mind started to go a hundred miles an hour, and memories of my vision flooded back to me.

  I kept replaying it over and over in my head, not that there was very much to go on. I saw the two moons hanging high in the sky, then the woman running and screaming, then the burst of bright white magic that emanated from her.

  It meant everything and nothing all at once. There was one thing I knew for sure- the fae woman had been in Portland at one time or another. I’d managed to casually ask Grams how long it had been since anyone had cleaned up the Lost and Found bin, chalking it all up to what a mess the thing was, and she told me it had been about a year.

  Which, again, was not much to go on.

  As it had nearly every day for the last two months, my mind went to Hunter.

  I didn’t know why, but I had this immovable surety that he’d know what to do. After all, finding people was sort of his gig for a living.

  And then he’d kill them, but I chose not to think about that for the time being.

  I wasn’t supposed to see him. Actually, his words were: “Don’t come to me unless you’re going to die, and even then, don’t come to me because I’ll probably kill you myself.”

  Terrifying words. But the deeply haunted expression in his gray eyes as he spoke them told me that he truly didn’t want them to come true.

  Hunter wouldn’t kill me. He’d resist the orders, no matter what.

  It was one a.m. by the time I decided that I needed to see him, under the guise of finding this half fae woman.

  Honestly, I really just needed to see him. If it hadn’t been for this, I was sure I would have managed to find some other excuse to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night and drive over to the hotel he was staying at.

  Surprisingly, my new Prius was nearly silent as I pulled out of the driveway. I’d bought it at the used car lot about three weeks before, decided that it was too immature for a forty-year-old to keep using her Mom’s and Grandma’s cars whenever she needed to go somewhere.

  “Evening, ma’am,” the late shift valet said as I pulled up to the Kimpton River Place Hotel.

  Hunter clearly had money somehow, because this place was fancy. It was the kind of hotel I used to insist Kenneth and I stay at whenever we went on vacation. Back when I was still a D.A. and cared a lot more about frivolous things like that.

  “Thanks.” I handed the valet my keys, took the ticket, and then nearly skipped inside. I was way more excited than my brain would have cared to admit.

  It was only once I was in the lobby that I realized I didn’t know what room Hunter was in. And this hotel was far too big for me to go door to door knocking until I found him.

  But I was a witch now. So I found a tucked away corner, closed my eyes, and concentrated.

  “Inviene,” I murmured.

  The number “413” popped into my mind, and I knew that’s where Hunter was.

  As the elevator climbed the floors quickly, nervous excitement rose in my chest. My hands started to tremble with barely concealed anxiety, and those stupid butterflies settled in my stomach.

  I was nervous to see Hunter. I was never nervous for anyone, but Hunter was a whole different ball game.

  Especially now.

  Before I knew it, I was in front of room 413 with my hand raised to knock, but I couldn’t do it.

  But then determination filled me. I almost knocked.

  My knuckles never made contact with the door, though. Once again, I couldn’t do it.

  “Come on, Shannon,” I spat to myself. “Get it together. What are you, five?”

  I had to shove away the knowledge that I was nervous in a whole different way now. Hunter was under magical, inescapable orders to kill me, and I had just voluntarily come to his hotel room in the middle of the night.

  It was a stupid move.

  Even so, I forced myself to knock on his door, rapping three times, just loud enough to wake him up. Normally, I would have found it pretty rude to wake someone like that, but when it came to Hunter, half of my normal inhibitions were magically stripped away.

  Before I knew it, the door swung open with angry voracity, and Hunter was in front of me, fully dressed in a loose black plaid shirt and dark blue denim jeans. His gray eyes were like lightning as they stared directly at me- no, through me. The scruffy brown beard I was used to seeing was gone, shaven off that morning, leaving behind a light, five o’clock shadow.

  I liked him better that way.

  I smiled softly at Hunter, even though his eyes were hard, and prayed he wasn’t about to kill me right then and there.

  “Hello?” He called. His gray eyes flicked away from me and looked off down the hallway in confusion.

  For a second, my expression matched his confusion, before I remembered the spell.

  “Right, you can’t see me!” I gasped.

  Hunter’s brow furrowed and his gaze glanced back towards me, but I could see now how it was hollow and empty, staring right through me.

  “Shannon?” He asked.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” I chuckled. “I’ve got a cloaking spell on. You can’t see me.”

  “You’ve got a… smart,” he laughed as understanding dawned on him. Quickly, though, it was followed by intense anger. “Why are you here? You know I could kill you.”

  One of the doors a few rooms down swung open, and a burly, shirtless man stuck his head out to glare at us angrily.

  “Not in the hallway,” I ordered, suddenly aware of the content of our discussion. Probably not something we needed the laypeople to overhear. “Inside.”

  Taking advantage of the fact that he couldn’t see me, and therefore couldn’t stop me, I pushed past Hunter and into the room.

  It was gorgeous, but I barely paused to notice the clean white sheets or the marble bathroom. What I was drawn to were the little touches of Hunter that littered the space. A bottle of half-drunk Jack Daniels, a pair of jeans strewn over the desk chair, a map of Portland laid out across the bed, next to stacks of papers and a few books.

  I caught sight of the titles, and instantly knew they had come from the magical library. A History of Hunters one read.

  The next one was titled: Rebellions Against the Council- A Millenia Long Fight.

  He was trying to figure out how to get out of his Hunter’s Bond.

  “Where are you?” Hunter demanded, closing the door and dashing over to sweep the books off the bed, probably hoping I hadn’t already seen them.

  “Right here,” I told him, lifting my hand in the air out of habit. “Just in front of the bed.”

  “Okay,” he murmured, though his gray eyes still flicked around the room, landing on nothing as they searched for me. “Well, the spell worked, whatever it was.”

  “Good to know,” I laughed.

  The tension was there, though. It laid beneath our words, filling the space like a third party. It wasn’t just the te
nsion of the Council’s orders, though.

  It was a tension between us. One filled with words unsaid and feelings unfelt, things we should have and would have confessed to if he wasn’t a hunter and I wasn’t a halfling.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Shannon,” Hunter finally sighed, rubbing a hand down his face and plopping on the bed.

  It was then that I realized how tired he looked. Not even just regular old tired, but absolutely exhausted, as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

  I realized with a start that I was that weight. He was exhausted because it took everything in him not to kill me.

  “I had to see you,” I murmured, chancing it and stepping across the floor towards him. Sorrow sat in my chest, heavy and huge, reminding me of how this would have worked if we were two different people.

  I could see it all. How, if I was still the Boston D.A. and he was just some private detective, this late night rendezvous would go so differently. I’d walk across the tiled floor and put a hand to his cheek. But he wouldn’t pull away. He’d lean into the touch and tell me he wanted me, he wanted to be with me, and we should try this out.

  I’d protest, of course, telling him I was newly divorced and I shouldn’t start dating yet, out of respect for my ex. But then he’d remind me that Kenneth hadn’t shown nearly that same amount of respect when he’d been screwing someone else before the divorce papers even hit my desk.

  I’d relent. He’d be right, of course.

  We wouldn’t fall into bed just then, though. This wasn’t the movies, and people didn’t actually do that. But we’d be there, together, letting our feelings out of their cages completely.

  “But I am,” I murmured.

  And then, I lived out just a tiny little part of my fantasy, forgetting for a moment that I came here to ask him how to find a half fae. I came forward until I was standing right in front of him. He could feel me there, could probably hear me breathing, and looked up, managing to nearly make eye contact with me.

  Ever so slowly, I lifted my hand out and cupped his cheek, feeling the warmth of his skin and the roughness of the beard that was coming in. His eyes fell closed of their own accord, and Hunter tilted his face and brought one of his own, rough hands up to caress my own.

  For a brief second, we stayed there, locked together like a real couple, breathing in and out in the same rhythm. We could almost forget.

  Almost.

  “Why are you here, Shannon?” Hunter finally asked, his voice not much more than a whisper. He pulled away, opened his eyes, and looked right up at me. Cloaking spell or not, I knew he was seeing me in that moment.

  I stepped away and sucked in a deep breath before making my confession.

  “There’s another half fae here in Portland. I need your help to find her.”

  3

  “You… Another… How?” The words spilled out of his mouth, at once sharp and confused, as he tried to put the pieces together.

  Admittedly, the fact that he couldn’t see me made things a bit strange, seeing as he spent most of the time looking around, trying to find me and still not being able to.

  “I had a vision,” I explained. “I was going through the Lost and Found, and there was this necklace, oh, wait, here.”

  I produced the necklace from my pocket and held it out to him, but his eyes just searched the space where I stood.

  “Here what?” He asked.

  “This spell is good,” I muttered. I dropped the necklace from my hand, and watched Hunter’s eyes widen, probably as it appeared right at his feet.

  “Oh wow,” he breathed, picking it up and examining it with the intensity of a jewel thief. “You said this was at the Lost and Found at the store?”

  “Yep. Do you know whose it is?”

  “Not exactly.” He shook his head. “But I can tell you one thing- this is elven made. See this?”

  He laid the chain across his hand and shifted his palm back and forth, so the little pink crystals caught the light, glimmering away as if someone had painted them with sparkles.

  “What is it?” I prompted when Hunter said nothing, and instead stared down at the jewels with hunger.

  “Stones of Aphrodite,” he replied. “That’s our name for them, at least. The elves call them something else, but it’s too hard for me to pronounce. I’m not very good with Elvish. Point is, these crystals are from the fae realm- not here.”

  “Woah,” I breathed, overcome with awe for a brief moment. This was the first time I’d seen something from there, the other world, that wasn’t a living, breathing monster out for blood.

  I’d known the necklace was too gorgeous to be from this world. It was just too perfect.

  “I don’t know how to find the halfling, though,” Hunter announced, curling the necklace back up in his palm and holding his hand out, a clear indication that I should take it back.

  “But you find fae for a living,” I pointed out. “How is this any different?”

  I took the necklace back, admiring the way it felt in my palm now that I knew it was from another world.

  Admittedly, it did feel different. The weight of it was far too light had it been made out of silver, like I thought before. The stones and the little fairy on the end were smooth, almost too much so.

  And it sent little sparks of magic up and down my arm. They were hardly noticeable if I wasn’t looking for them, but now that I was…

  The power it held was amazing.

  “I used to find fae for a living,” Hunter reminded me, his tone biting and angry.

  “Right, sorry,” I replied, stepping back at the dark cloud of anger that I could see pass over his expression. I don’t know if Hunter heard my footsteps, or if he somehow just knew I’d moved away, but he licked his chapped lips and shook his head quickly.

  “No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have snapped,” he sighed. “It’s a reflex.”

  Silence hung between us for a few moments.

  I don’t know if it was because I was cloaked and comfortable in his inability to see me, or if I would have done it anyways, but I found myself watching his face. Just watching, observing every little flicker of pain and fear that sat there, no matter how hard he tried to hide it.

  He was carrying so much. My heart yearned to reach out to him, to hold and comfort him.

  To thank him.

  This was all for me. He could have just killed me, gotten his task over with, and moved on.

  “Maybe you should have killed me,” I found myself whispering.

  Hunter’s head snapped up at my words, and somehow, even through the cloaking spell, he managed to find my eyes so he could hold my gaze. His own were cold and hard, but held me with so much levity I couldn’t possibly force myself to look away, no matter how badly I wanted to.

  “No.”

  It was only one word. One single, tiny word. The simplest one of them all, really. Toddlers said it all the time- no.

  But tonight, that one word held the world in its two letters.

  I tried to form a response, but a million emotions had already bubbled up within me. I generally hated emotions with a fiery, burning passion, but these ones were okay. I felt happy. And grateful.

  And a little bit sad. For Hunter, and for myself.

  This man had given up so much, and we couldn’t even… I wasn’t sure what the ending to that sentence was supposed to be. Whatever it was, though, it was too far out of reach for my liking.

  “So, how do we find this other halfling?” I asked, directing the conversation back into what I figured was a much safer zone.

  “Well, assuming that finding her is like finding another fae, we use her magic,” he replied. “That was how I tracked fae. Of course, I was normally looking for them because they’d done something, so I knew where they’d been and when they’d used magic. I wasn’t going off of a necklace.”

  “And it doesn’t have magic in it?” I guessed, already dreading the answer.

  “Not hers,” he sighed. “I cou
ld probably tell you which fae made it, though.”

  “Which is wholly unhelpful,” I muttered angrily.

  It wasn’t directed at him, and we both knew it. I wasn’t even sure it was directed at the situation itself.

  This whole thing- faes, witches, halflings, murders, and war- was starting to really make me angry. But when I got down to the very bottom of that emotion, I knew what my problem really was.

  Hunter and I were forced to be completely separate, even when we were in the same room, alone, with nothing stopping us from leaping towards one another and having some big, romantic scene like the ones in Mom’s novels.

  However, if we did that, he’d probably kill me at some point. I could already see his hands balling up into fists, straining as he did his best to keep me alive.

  “You’ll find her, Shannon.”

  There wasn’t an ounce of doubt in his voice. But that didn’t help about fifty ounces from creeping into mine.

  “I don’t even know why I want to find her so badly,” I murmured. “What’s going to happen? Oh, yep, there’s another halfling in existence. Great. That still doesn’t change the fact that the Council wants me dead and half the faes in existence probably want to kidnap me and use my magic for some sort of nefarious reason. None of that changes if I find her. So why find her in the first place?”

  I could feel myself edging toward the cliff, the one I loved to jump off of when I was stressed. I’d fall about a hundred feet, babbling and ranting all the way, only to splat at the bottom, covering craggy rocks in my inner musings and managing nothing but my own metaphorical death.

  Hunter sensed it, too. Somehow, he managed to find my body, and he stepped forward until he was right in my face, staring at me with those deeply serious eyes of his.

  I could hardly concentrate, though, because I was hyper aware of his two rough, warm hands that were now resting on my hips.

  “Because she’s like you,” he murmured, so close that his hot breath rolled over my lips, caressing them gently. “And you have questions. But it’s not just that. You don’t want to feel so alone in the world anymore.”