by Brie Tart
Helen leaned in closer to the opening, but her shaking hand slipped. The latch scraped against the door jam like a soft train whistle. Shit. But maybe Dylan wasn’t paying attention. Maybe he wouldn’t catch it.
“I have to go.” A bed squeaked as someone sat on it.
Helen gritted her teeth as her heartrate picked up. It made sense Dylan would know some supernatural jargon if he had a past working in the fae world. But everything about that phone call made it seem like he’d never lost touch with it. Did he play a part in Tommy’s murder, or in burning down Carver Investigations?
Stay cool, Hel. She couldn’t give herself away. He knew how to read her too well. One slip and… She opened the door the rest of the way and forced a tired smile at her boyfriend. “Hey.”
“Hey babe.” Dylan hopped up from where he laid down, like he’d been there the whole night waiting for her to come home. “How was the night? Any progress?”
“Same old stuff. Nothing big yet.” Helen shut the door behind her and peeled off her jacket.
The surge of AC felt good. She stood in front of it awhile, letting it blow on her back as she picked apart Dylan’s phone call in her head. She could be certain of two things: Dylan was still involved with the fae, and he was in touch with the people searching for her. He hadn’t seemed happy about it, though, like a reluctant lackey.
Her panic escalated as she realized she’d left him alone with Lucy every day, which gave him the ultimate leverage over her. No. Dylan would never do anything to hurt his own daughter. What about turning Helen in? He’d had plenty of chances and never acted on them. That was before they hit a rough patch. She needed to play nice with him ‘til she knew more. Then what?
“Damn, did you have to chase somebody?” Dylan pinched his nose and fanned the air in front of him. “You’re soaked, and you stink like you were at the gym for a few hours.”
Helen gave him a too-tense shrug. “It’s been hot.”
“It’s September.” Dylan raised a confused eyebrow at her.
“The leather jacket doesn’t help.”
“Then take the Honda next time. With what this guy is paying, you can afford to run the AC for a few hours.”
“I like the bike better.” Helen clenched her fists at her sides as she edged around Dylan toward the bathroom. Rein it in.
“This story is nice, but I’m not buying it.” Dylan crossed his arms over his chest. “You haven’t answered any of my texts. I’ve almost called twice, but I figured you were busy working, so I shouldn’t bug you.”
Dylan was usually smarter than Helen gave him credit for, much smarter. Helen thought she’d have more time to think of a story. She hadn’t had much time to think of anything besides Yoel’s lessons the past few days. The frenzy of questions streaming through her head wasn’t helping. Of all the times he had to push her…
“Who were you just talking to?” Helen snapped. So much for playing nice.
“Someone called to check on me.” Dylan narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you looking into Tommy and the fire?”
“I haven’t done anything,” Helen said in a rush. She had to back off, make him think everything was status quo. “I’ve been doing the job and blowing off steam.”
“By picking fights?”
“Why do you care?”
“With everything that’s happened, I worry. I like knowing what’s going on.”
“We’ve laid low. You said you took care of it.” Helen’s voice got louder, despite her best efforts. “The danger should be gone, right?”
Lucy squirmed in her pillow nest and turned over.
“You’ve got a temper, and a long history of not thinking before you do something,” Dylan said, his volume rising to match. “I don’t want you putting us in danger.”
“I don’t either!” A different kind of heat bubbled up in her blood, overcoming her panic. Red haze crept from the corners of her vision. Chill, Hellfire. She took a deep breath, and let it out slow. She could still recover this. “You can’t keep all these secrets, then give me the third degree. That’s not fair.”
“Why’re you so scared of questions if you’ve got nothing to hide?”
“I’m not scared, you need to back off! I just lost Tommy, then somebody burned my home down less than a week after. I need space to deal with that.”
Lucy groaned and sat up. “Too loud.”
Helen scooped her daughter out of the bed and held her on her hip. She shifted her weight from side to side and rocked the toddler with her. Helen’s blood raced while Lucy breathed slow and steady. The girl was solid and calm against her sparking nerves. She needed that red to fade from her vision as she looked at Dylan, needed her anxiety to settle so she wouldn’t do something she’d regret later.
“Shush Mam.” Lucy hummed against her mother as she patted the woman’s sternum.
“Okay, I get it. Losing him has been hard on all of us.” Dylan held up his empty palms in surrender as he dropped his voice to the whisper it was before. He came up alongside Helen and ran his fingers down her slick arm, the one holding Lucy. “Just be careful and let me know if you’re in trouble. I don’t want to lose you too.”
“I’m not goin’ anywhere.” Helen meant it as much as she could at that moment. She hugged Lucy tighter, unsure of what lay ahead.
On Helen’s visit to Yoel’s shop the next day, she packed an extra set of clothes in her saddle bags. Once the machete drills and lore lectures ended, she changed into them after washing up in the bookstore bathroom. A mole had made his way into her family, her safe-zone. She couldn’t afford to be sloppy anymore.
CHAPTER 10
Another week of lessons came and went before Yoel announced Helen would have her first “exam.” The day of Helen’s test, Yoel sent her a rare text message: “Go here today. Dress comfortably.” An address followed. She looked it up, and it belonged to a big state park.
Comfortably, huh? The revolving pairs of jeans and tank tops she’d worn under her jacket and boots should do fine. She stuck with more of the same as she packed her saddlebags with the usual change of clothes and headed to the park.
Helen pulled into one of the small parking lots by the front office reserved for campers, hikers, and tourists. Yoel waited against the bike rack. He wore a loosely fitted pair of khaki cargo pants over his laced up boots, and a black polo shirt under his baggy bomber jacket. Even dressed down, he exuded the same air of reserved formality. She parked her motorcycle and approached Yoel with her hands tucked in her pockets. Early fall gave the breeze a bite, and nothing but the outdoors surrounded them. Why had Yoel chosen the horde of trees, shrubs, and boardwalks for Helen’s big test?
“Where’s your ride?” Helen had never seen Yoel drive anything before. Knowing his style, she searched the parking lot for something ritzy but practical like a BMW.
Yoel waved toward a red and white cruiser bicycle chained to the rack beside him, complete with a fabric basket.
“Really?” Helen flicked one of the bike’s handlebars. “Do you even own a car?”
“Not yet. I haven’t needed one since coming here.”
“If you don’t have a car, how do you go do your...collecting?”
“Flying, buses, trains, tube lines, walking, to name a few. When I need a car, I get a rental or use a taxi,” Yoel said. One side of his jacket bulged more than the other. Was he carrying something in there? “The world does offer more than your motorbike.”
“Not half as fun.” Helen tilted her chin at the path heading further into the woods. “We heading in?”
“Yes. Let’s hurry before it gets too dark.” Yoel started toward the trees, and Helen followed. “You brought your knife, I trust?”
“Always.”
“Good. Keep it on hand.”
Yoel led Helen on a trek through roughly paved walkways surrounded by patchy woods, over boardwalks that hung over moss-covered boulders, until their way branched into a series of meandering dirt trails. He stayed quiet instead of
shooting off a list of rapidfire questions. Helen didn’t push her luck by asking for them as she mentally combed through everything she’d learned the last couple weeks.
Yoel stopped at the first fork and glanced back at Helen. “Which way?”
“For what?” Helen looked down at each of the paths. They all seemed near identical, with similar wear from a day of feet stomping on them. The path to the left, Hickory Trail, had new green sprouts growing every yard or two.
Yoel didn’t answer, waiting expectantly.
The green chutes on Hickory Trail stuck out, so she examined the trees next. The bark on them had small mushroom heads growing out of it like mini platforms. Yoel said something about this. Seelie fae had an enhancing effect on the natural world around them, whether they meant to or not. Helen ventured further down that route and her stomach bubbled with the same nausea as whenever Yoel opened his safe to his Seelie artifacts.
“Here.” Helen pointed and took lead, hiking after the new plant-life.
Yoel grinned easy and proud as he kept step beside her.
* * *
They hiked for an hour or so as Helen watched for more new growths and monitored her gut’s reaction to the area. Her stomach jumped at every cluster of bizarre plant life the same way it did when suffering through her daughter’s favorite Bubblegum Pop hits. The mysterious line of sprouts and toadstools led them off the trail, and ran alongside a single pair of footprints.
“Looks like it’s alone.” Helen’s blood kicked up as she grabbed her switchblade and flipped the blade out.
“Not quite.” Yoel knelt and traced one of the shoe marks. “Fae creatures don’t tend to leave tracks unless luring a victim.”
“It knows we’re here?”
“No.” Yoel frowned. “They’re with a target.”
“And?” Helen ventured ahead. “I’m learning to kill those bastards, not play hero.”
“Strategically it makes a world of difference. The victim might become a hostage or a weapon.” Yoel closed the distance between them in a few strides. “Is your first thought to cut through them regardless?”
“I’ll be careful. But ain’t it better that one person goes down than letting the fae get away and hurt a lot more?”
“Would you think that if it were someone you knew rather than a stranger?”
Helen stayed quiet as that sank in. She wouldn’t think that way if Tommy, Dylan, or Lucy was in trouble. The realization didn’t affect her pace as she soldiered up the slope of the hill they came to, but it brought another dose of cold reality to her situation. She couldn’t treat fae like another thrill ride down the highway, or some job that ended in a paycheck.
Bile crawled up her esophagus. She had to hide her mouth in her elbow to keep from spewing. She put her other arm out, stopping Yoel against it. They were close. She searched the woods. The fae had to be in sight soon.
Yoel searched the assorted foliage and twisting branches between the steep slope to the left of them and the rock face on their right. The direction of the hill turned a corner to a small ledge, offering anyone on it plenty of privacy and a stunning view of the purple sky left in the wake of the recent sunset.
“See, I told you this spot was perfect,” a young woman said with a smooth Christmas bell voice. It grated against Helen’s nerves and spiked her nausea.
“Yeah, this view is amazing,” someone else replied without agitating Helen’s stomach.
Helen inched forward and peeked from behind the curve in the rock side. A young man no older than his late teens sat with a fancy camera aimed at the hilly landscape sprawled in front of them. A willowy brunette in a pink maxi dress leaned on his arm. Were they a boyfriend and girlfriend pair taking in the sights, or the fae and their victim?
“Yes, amazing.” The girlfriend, as Helen dubbed her, stared at the photographer’s face instead of the sunset as if he were an angel and she was captive to his charms.
The two appeared normal enough, but Yoel had said fae could change themselves to look however they wanted with an illusion magic called “glamour.” The pudgy boyfriend hadn’t set off Helen’s extra sense like his fawning lady had. It had to be the model-pretty girlfriend. But what kind was she?
Yoel came up behind Helen, his boots hardly brushing against the grass. Neither of them could speak at this distance without alerting the love birds. Helen lifted her knife as she got it ready. Yoel grabbed her wrist and lowered it. Not yet.
“Thanks for bringing me here,” the boyfriend said as he snapped more pictures. “This hike was a great idea.”
“Like that cove in the Keys, or the lighthouses in Maine?”
“And the Blue Ridge National Park.” He kept his attention on the landscape as he talked. “It’s like I get all my best pictures with you. If I brought you to the last wedding I did, maybe I’d get more jobs.”
“You shouldn’t have to worry about doing weddings and birthday parties.” The girlfriend pet his arm with long strokes. “Why don’t you take a chance and do the travel pictures full time? You’ve always wanted to do landscapes for a living.”
“Someday, but I have bills to pay now. We’ve been over this.” The boyfriend sighed and lowered his camera. “I can do more of what I want after my portfolio is bigger. It’s part of the process.”
“You shouldn’t have to wait on a dream, though,” the girlfriend crooned, the quality of her encouragement having something thicker to it than excitement. “You should go for it now, while you’re young and your inspiration is fresh.”
“How are we going to support ourselves if we just take off now?” The boyfriend let his camera hang off his neck as he turned away from the last sliver of sunset. “I haven’t had any luck finding a day job. We need to save for this to do it right.”
“What about those videos you always watch about getting credit cards and living off the good of other people?” The fae took both the photographer’s hands in hers. “If they can do it, why can’t we?”
“They have a plan, a platform. I already spent my summer job money on this, and we’ve almost run out of my tuition savings.” The boyfriend patted the top of his camera. “I want a career, not a fun couple years, then I’m broke and have to be a slave to some company for the rest of my life.”
Yoel pulled out a small spiral journal from a pocket inside his jacket with a pen tucked in its front cover. He opened it and scribbled a word in slanted cursive. It took Helen a second to read when he held it at her.
Lennan Sìth.
It was a hint, right? It had to be a kind of Seelie fae. There were the super powerful ones who were just called Sìth—said like Shee. Was she one of those? Yoel wouldn’t have added the extra word if that was true. There were lower caste ones, weaker than the high and mighty nobles, who had different specialties. Wait, one Yoel’d been over liked preying on artists by inspiring them.
Helen yanked the paper and pen away from Yoel and wrote her best guess in her sloppy print. Muse?
Yoel jabbed his finger at the word with an emphatic nod.
The muse fae, a Lennan Sìth, would get with a talented artist who showed a lot of potential, and encourage the creative to do nothing but create and create. It didn’t matter how much money, time, and effort it took. Most cases died young, either from self neglect because they were too busy making their masterpieces, or unnatural depression once the Lennan Sìth left them.
Would the photographer kid die if Helen got rid of the fae? She bit the inside of her cheek and snapped herself out of it. She couldn’t worry about what happened later. She had to be decisive and seperate the happy couple so the human boyfriend wouldn’t get in her way. But how?
Helen searched the ground as she considered her options. Yoel hung back behind a shrub and watched. The couple were at the edge of a cliff. If Helen charged in, all three of them would tumble off. She had to lure the couple away from the edge, or separate the fae from her victim. A decent sized rock lay at her feet, and there was a thick patch of bushes in the
distance that could make racket. She picked up the rock and chucked it as hard as her arm could manage. The rock rustled the foliage loud enough to make night creatures scurry through the surrounding trees and underbrush.
Both the fae and her boyfriend jumped as they looked toward the noise.
“The rangers are probably checking the place for hikers,” the boyfriend said. “Or there’s some animal waking up.”
The fae’s sparkly expression turned serious as she scanned the woods behind her.
Helen and Yoel ducked against the rock face and hunkered out of sight.
“You stay here, I’ll check it out.” The boyfriend passed Helen and Yoel as he wandered into the forest at large.
“Hurry back!” The fae called after him. She stayed out of sight, still on the ledge.
Helen braced herself and coiled her thighs to pounce. All the fae had to do was step into view.
“No need to stay in hiding. I can sense you nearby.” The fae emerged from the alcove.
Helen’s heart picked up, and she gulped down bile as the Seelie came closer. The Lennan Sìth turned her head away from them. Helen charged her flank and brought her switchblade up in an underhand strike.
The Lennan Sìth evaporated into a puff of mist. Helen stumbled through it.
The thick, concentrated fog flowed away and materialized back into the young woman. “That bordered on clumsy, and was definitely rude.”
Helen caught herself before her momentum threw her over the steep drop. She swiveled and gritted her teeth. If the fae could become a cloud on command, how could she get a solid attack in?
“Well? Have you no tongue?” The Lennan Sìth crossed her arms as she looked up at Helen with a Shirley Temple pout. “Answer for yourself, or else your queen shall know of this!”
“I…” Think. The Lennan Sìth talked to her like another fae. Her threat made it seem like Helen didn’t answer to the same authority. Yoel had mentioned Helen might be mistaken for an Unseelie. Seelie and Unseelie worked like rival gangs or mafia families, right? She could use that. “This is my turf. You shouldn’t be doin’ your business here.”
