Spandex, Spells and Shadows

by Melinda Chase

  “Are you…” Mom started to say, but then trailed off. Neither one of us knew what the correct ending to that question was.

  “I’m going for a walk,” I announced.

  Before she could even respond, I was out the door.

  And I did walk. For miles and miles and over two hours. I was thinking about everything and nothing all at once but, to no one’s surprise, I ended up at the little duck pond in the park, watching a mallard swim in circles as he fished for something to eat.

  The sun was starting to set, casting the sky in the prettiest pinks and oranges, and making the pond look like something out of an old painting. If anyone had some sense in them, they’d paint that duck pond the way it looked right then.

  Little ripples spread out as the mallard took a rather risky looking dive, and I decided to count them to try and distract myself from Marcella’s words.

  “One,” I whispered. “Two. Three.”

  Suddenly, the ripples started to grow, becoming far wider and stronger than they should have been, and I got that familiar feeling as a vision came on. I didn’t even have a moment to think about how strange it was, how I hadn’t touched a single thing, and how I really wasn’t in the mood to see something I hadn’t prepared for. I got no choice at all, because it was too late. The vision was already there.

  I was still in the human world. That much I could tell as the walls of a bar formed around me, complete with neon red lights and harsh pop music that blared so loudly I could hardly hear my own thoughts.

  “The hipsters,” I muttered as I read a sign that said: “Proudly serving gluten-free beer!”

  How anyone liked beer in the first place was beyond me, but to take out the gluten? That made it seem like sewer water.

  People were scattered all over, seated at tall tables and at the bar itself. There was a neon sign above the bar that read “Here for a Good Time, Not a Long Time.”

  “What can I get you?” A smooth, low female voice said. I watched as the bartender walked up to the customer and slapped a towel over her shoulder, leaning across the bar to talk to him.

  And then I gasped.

  It was the halfling.

  “Where am I?” I demanded to the table next to me, briefly forgetting that they couldn’t see or hear me. That was just how these visions worked.

  Lucky for me, they had a cheap paper bar menu in front of them, and I caught the name—Jake’s Pub.

  I knew where it was, too. Which was why I didn’t even panic as I was yanked out of the vision and plopped back down in front of the duck pond.

  I could find the halfling now. Jake’s Pub was about two miles away, closer than even Hunter’s hotel.

  Maybe my magic wasn’t so out of control after all.

  6

  My walk was over. I practically ran home, where I found Mom and Deedee in the kitchen, sipping on margaritas and talking about some woman who’d bothered them at the shop that day.

  “She said, ‘ma’am, I shouldn’t have to have the receipt to return this sage,’” Mom was saying. “And I’m looking at this sage, right, and half of it’s burned! So I said: ‘Lady, you clearly used this bundle.’”

  “And not once, either,” Deedee chuckled. “You don’t burn half a sage bundle in one use!”

  “That’s what I’m saying! Shannon, what the hell happened to you?”

  “What?” I asked breathlessly, whipping around to check my reflection in the hall mirror.

  I looked awful. My hair was mussed up and there were at least four leaves in it, that I could see, and half the buttons on my white blouse had somehow come undone, only to be re-buttoned in the wrong order.

  “I bet I know!” Marcella singsonged, striding into the kitchen and pouring out a huge helping of the blended margaritas. She turned and winked at me, clearly thinking we had some sort of inside joke going.

  Oh God, she thinks I was sleeping with Hunter, I realized with a start.

  “No,” I told her, pointing my finger sternly.

  “No what?” Deedee demanded.

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. “I need to talk to you guys. Where’s Grams?”

  “Picking up a pizza,” Mom replied. “Apparently she’d being deprived of pepperoni ever since we started trying to cook more meals at home.”

  “That was her idea,” I pointed out.

  “I know!” Mom shook her hands in the air in thanks.

  “Fine, we’ll tell her later. There’s another halfling in Portland.”

  My words were not followed by the cries of excitement I had expected. Instead, I was met with three pairs of wide, terrified eyes.

  “Aren’t you guys going to say something?” I prompted.

  “No.” Mom shook her head before she downed the last of the margarita.

  “No?” I asked, confused. “I saw her. Trust me, I know she’s a halfling.”

  “Oh, that I don’t doubt,” she replied. “I mean, no, we are not going to go find her. I’m not running a halfway house for halflings over here.”

  Anger flared at my mom’s automatic dismissal, but I chose to push it down and attempt to reason this out with her like the adults we were.

  “I’m not asking you to take her in,” I replied. “She’s not an orphan. I just want to find her and tell her the truth about who she is.”

  “You mean she doesn’t already know?” Deedee asked in astonishment.

  “She looked young,” I shrugged. “Maybe thirty? She’s a bartender over at Jake’s Pub. I highly doubt she knows she’s actually a half magical being from another world.”

  “Is she a witch?” Marcella didn’t have the same look of uncertainty Mom and Deedee did. Instead, she just looked curious. She was tossing an orange back and forth in her hands as she mulled over this new information.

  “I don’t know.” I realized I hadn’t thought about that, beyond the understanding that she was part fae. “Can that happen? A fae and a human?”

  “No idea,” Marcella shrugged. “Truth is, kiddo, all of this is up in the air right now. Can happen, should happen, will happen. We don’t know any of it.”

  “Hold on, Marcella, you’re not seriously saying that Shannon should find this woman?” Deedee asked, stepping in between us and turning to face the witch head-on. “We don’t know anything about her. What if she’s evil?”

  Marcella glanced over Deedee’s shoulder at me, and I realized with a start that this woman was important to both of us in a way Mom and Deedee could never understand. Grams too, assuming she was on their side.

  Marcella and I both had fae blood running through our veins unhindered. Mom’s had been taken away from her long ago, or she might have understood our dilemma. There was something different about being part fae that made you want to run and find everyone else like you so you could compare notes, like in college.

  Do you have this weird vision thing?

  Does your magic listen to you?

  It was just like this afternoon, when Mom had been at her wit’s end with my magic. I had too, if I’m being honest.

  But Marcella understood, because her magic acted the same way mine did.

  Deedee was still glaring at the witch with the fire of a thousand suns, but understanding started to dawn on my mom.

  “Shannon, do you think finding this halfling will make you happy?” There wasn’t an ounce of judgment in her clear green eyes. Just curiosity.

  “Yes.” I didn’t hesitate. The answer rolled off my tongue, as natural as breathing. “I don’t know why. But it will.”

  “Fine,” Mom relented. “Then I guess you’d better start by figuring out how much this woman knows.”

  She turned and marched right out of the living room.

  “Aren’t you going to help?” I called after her.

  “You’re the one with the visions,” she hollered back. “You figure it out.”

  “I don’t like this,” Deedee sighed, walking out of the room after Mom. “Not one little bit.”

  When both of the
m were gone, Marcella came straight up to me, so close I could smell her coconut shampoo.

  “It doesn’t matter what they want or like, Shannon,” she murmured. “You’re in this alone, and they know it. None of us can understand you, and none of us can really help you. Follow your gut.”

  She patted my cheek and smiled softly.

  Strangely, it felt like a goodbye. At least, that was what my gut said. I watched the witch walk out of the room, and I couldn’t help but feel a little abandoned. I didn’t even know why. She was my biggest supporter right now. If anything, I should be feeling the opposite.

  I figured out why when I woke up the next morning to find Marcella had left just as quickly as she had come. The couch was neat, with the throw blanket and pillow placed just at the edge, and nothing else but a note addressed to Grams. Mom found me early the next morning, staring at that empty couch, which seemed poetically and ridiculously reflective of the strange emptiness in my heart, as if I could will Marcella back.

  “It’s just what she does, kiddo,” Mom murmured, patting my back gently. “She likes to think she’s a regular Mary Poppins that way, flitting in and out of people’s lives whenever she likes. We’ll see her again.”

  What I didn’t say, and what I desperately wanted to, was that I wanted the witch back already. I knew it’d probably hurt my mom’s feelings if I voiced it aloud, so I didn’t, but Marcella had become a sort of a mother figure to me over the last month or so. I hardly knew her, and yet, I felt like she’d been there all my life.

  There was only one explanation. It was the fae blood that ran through her veins, making her feel at once just like me and so different, too.

  “You’d better come back soon,” I murmured to the empty couch. Somehow, I knew that Marcella could hear me, wherever she was.

  Grams was annoyed, as I expected, when she woke up to find Marcella gone.

  “Always popping in and out of people’s lives,” Grams was muttering angrily as she traipsed around the kitchen, halfway cleaning things before leaving them dirty and moving on abruptly to another task. There was an entire sink full of half washed dishes, and the cabinets spotless on the bottoms, while dust was still visible on the tops.

  “I’m heading out for the day!” I called as I all but ran out the door.

  “Have fun!” Grams called back, momentarily putting on a cheery voice. I heard her go straight back to her angry grumbling the minute I opened the door, though.

  Mom and Deedee were at the store today, which meant I had a whole ten hours to see what I could find out about the halfling. And the first place I started was Jake’s Pub. I’d assumed it was closed, but I was not so pleasantly surprised to find out it was the kind of place that liked to service the day drinking alcoholics.

  “At least that means they’re open,” I muttered to myself as I swung open the slightly grimy door and walked inside.

  The place was neat and modern, but I could see the typical effects of a bar scattered about. Peanuts and pretzels were in the middle of the tables and along the bar, and a few tired-looking people were scattered about, nursing half drunk whiskeys and daydreaming, judging by the far off looks in their eyes.

  I slipped over to the bar, despite the fact that there didn’t seem to be a bartender present at the moment, and hopped up on one of the stools.

  College me probably would have loved this place, though not in the middle of the day. I would have had no problem dipping my hand into the bowl of pretzels and popping a few salty treats in my mouth before ordering a vodka soda. It had been my go-to drink in my early twenties because I thought it made me seem sophisticated.

  “What can I get you?” A smooth, recognizable voice swirled around me, and I turned to find my target just a few feet away, staring at me impatiently from behind the bar.

  It seemed luck was on my side. I hadn’t imagined it would be that easy.

  “Uh, tonic water, please,” I said. “With a lime.”

  The bartender raised a plucked brown eyebrow up high, giving me distinct Miranda Priestly vibes. “You’re in a bar.”

  “I know,” I replied quickly, realizing that it did make me seem pretty suspicious to be ordering a drink like that. “I, uh, used to be an alcoholic. I’m not anymore, I’m sober, so, uh, sometimes I just go to bars on my days off. Live out the good ole’ days again, you know?”

  I had to literally force myself not to wince. I dug the nails of my left hand into my right wrist so hard I nearly cried out in pain. That was, quite possibly, the stupidest thing I’d ever said in my entire life.

  I really wished I’d taken the opportunity to talk to a few more private eyes back in Boston. Maybe they would have given me some tips on how to not act like a complete idiot when trailing someone.

  “Okay, lady,” the bartender laughed.

  But it wasn’t a “haha” kind of laugh. It was more like a “you’re a total freaking weirdo but I’m going to give you what you want because I don’t want to deal with your idiocy today” kind of laugh.

  She grabbed a glass, filled it with tonic water, and dropped a lime in it before plopping it in front of me.

  “Thanks,” I replied, forking over a twenty. “Keep the change.”

  “On a two dollar drink?”

  “Yeah,” I shrugged. “Bartending’s hard work.”

  Somehow, those words were the trick, and they got her to open up.

  “Tell me about it,” she grinned, bending over the bar to whisper to me like we were old buddies. “That guy over there comes in every time I’ve got a shift. Won’t let anybody else serve him. And you know what he orders?”

  “What?”

  “A dirty shirley! Like he’s some college kid.” She turned away, laughing, and stuffed the twenty into the cash register.

  “Terrible drink,” I wrinkled my nose. “I’m Shannon, by the way.”

  “Nice to meet you, Shannon. I’m Tanya. And my shift is over.” She pointed up at the clock, which read one p.m. already, before ripping off her little black apron and stuffing it behind the counter.

  “Oh, uh, great! Have a good day!” I might have been imagining it, but I was pretty sure my voice just went up about four thousand octaves.

  I watched Tanya plod to the back and grab a purse before she turned around and headed out the front door. For a moment I just sat there, frozen, totally unsure what I should do.

  I could come back another day, but that felt too far away for me. I wanted to know what Tanya knew, and I wanted it now.

  As I watched her walk out the door, I was suddenly overcome with this urge.

  Like a crazy person.

  Before I even knew what I was doing, I downed the last of my tonic water, slammed the glass down on the counter, and hurried out the door after her.

  7

  To her credit, Tanya seemed to lead a totally boring life. Which either lent itself as evidence to her ignorance, or she knew exactly what she was and wanted to make sure no one else knew.

  Yeah, I know. I was making completely baseless assumptions at this point. But I was also trying to stave off the urge to leap out of my car, dash over to her, and announce that she was a half fae.

  That probably wasn’t a very smart thing to do, so I managed to keep a lid on it.

  I followed Tanya all the way to the other side of Portland, making sure to stay at least two cars behind her, where she parked in front of an old apartment building and went inside.

  And then she stayed there for the next two hours. I debated whether or not I should have followed her, but apartment buildings are hard to trail someone in, and I didn’t really have a good explanation ready to explain why she’d never seen me in there before. So, I just waited in my car, pretending I was on a stakeout, only lacking the donuts, chips, sodas, and everything else that made a stakeout actually fun.

  When Tanya finally did come out, she’d changed from the plain black t-shirt and jeans she’d worn that morning and into a loose white tank top and purple yoga pants.


  I fully expected her to go to her car, but it appeared I hadn’t yet learned not to have expectations at all, because Tanya started walking down the street, phone in hand.

  “Shoot!” I gasped, scrambling to get out of my car. I yanked my purse over my shoulder and hit the lock button before I’d even stood up, but I managed to catch Tanya right before she turned the corner onto a much busier street.

  She was hard to tail in the crowd of people who were coming and going from their offices, in search of a late afternoon pick me up, but I managed to keep my eyes on her white tank top as she headed into a yoga studio. I hopped across the street and watched her take a class through the paned glass window, reminding myself that I was displaying what would absolutely be deemed stalker behavior in the eyes of the law. I kept waiting for something- though I wasn’t sure what.

  Maybe I wanted her to cast a spell, or walk into a magic shop. At least that way I’d know she was aware of her witchy side.

  If she had a witchy side.

  But she didn’t. After the yoga studio, she went into the juice bar two stores down, and then the cafe across the street. Finally, carrying her cold pressed juice and a fresh croissant, she walked into one of the many bookstores in Portland.

  This time, I had to follow her inside, lest I lose her completely in the darkened, second hand store.

  The moment I walked in, I had to remind myself that I was still on a mission. The scent of yellowed paper and old books was intoxicating, and my soul wanted to disappear into those shelves forever, reading the poetic words of storytelling masters and forgetting all about real life.

  But I couldn’t do that. Instead, I kept about two aisles of distance between Tanya and I at all times, watching as she browsed the shelves, chewing on her pastry and sipping on her drink.

  To my utter dismay, she didn’t seem interested in anything supernatural. She perused the section on naturalism and sustainability before hopping over to classic women’s literature, and then finally onto the business section way in the back of the store.

  Admittedly, that section caught me up a little bit. I found myself forgetting that I was supposed to be watching someone as I glanced over titles of books made specifically for entrepreneurs, subconsciously looking for information that would help make Magic for Real even better.