by Sarah Tobias
“Oh, honey, no,” he said and patted my shoulder. “Those are your human’s memories. We all have those. How would you expect us to navigate this world otherwise?”
I ground my molars together. “But I am human.”
Derek angled his head. “Goodness. I’m regretting dismissing you so outright before. You’ll be an excellent study.”
“Derek, for the millionth time, explain yourself with better words.”
Derek placed his hand on my shoulder, rubbing it back and forth.
“Darling, babycakes, you’re not human,” he said as if he were reasoning with a toddler. “You’re a fae.”
Chapter 13
Hahahaha. Aaaaaaahahahahaha.
Please meet my new roommate. Derek and I would be sharing the plushiest, cushiest cell New York had to offer for the criminally insane.
“That is a bunch of baloney,” I said.
“Why must you insist on the mechanical combination of edible animal parts?” Derek regarded me like one would study a petri dish in a science lab. “Are you curious about how it’s made? Or if we enjoy eating it? We don’t, by the way.”
“You’re nuts,” I said. I refused to believe his words. But the flame stirred, fireflies swirling up into my chest. “I can’t be a…a fairy. This is imaginary. Maybe I am sick—I do belong in a bed beside my mother. I’m going insane.”
I thought of the girl. Rob. The blood. The voice inside me laughed, soft and deep. I added in a small voice, “Multiple personalities, maybe…”
Derek laughed. “That’s usually what humans call most fae who can’t properly control their shells. Or in some cases, it actually is the human. But you, my dear, are neither.” His brows lower. “And don’t call us fairies. We are not the kind to have wings on our backs and glitter in our palms, my dear. We are very, very different.”
“Then it has to be some other sort of mental disorder. My mother—”
“If that’s the case, how would you explain your powers of persuasion? Your physical changes? I’ve never seen the physical manifestations that you’re displaying. And I’ve been around for a very long time.” Derek’s eyes brightened for a moment, eager as he stared at me. “You must tell me what else you can do. It irritates me that I’m so stumped by you.”
“Oh, I also eat bricks. Have X-ray vision. Spawn demon babies.”
“How fantastic.” Derek clapped. “Really?”
“No, Derek,” I deadpanned. “I don’t even know what I’m doing.”
He pouted. “You shouldn't tease another fae so. We like to retaliate against tricksters by removing heads. But since you clearly have no memory of what you are, allow me to inform you of our ways, to become your Mentor. In return, you’ll allow me to study you.”
“I’m not some experiment,” I said. “I’m a human being.”
“No you’re not.”
“I am. Possibly I’m a human with superpowers.”
He laughed, and I had to admit that he had a nice, rumbling tenor. “No. You’re not. But I suppose you can call them superpowers. So, do we have a deal?”
So far, Derek was the only person who could offer me any explanation to my recent events. I could see a psychiatrist, but I’d probably end up locked up in a mental institution in a hot minute once I told him or her about my perceived “superpowers.” Oh, and killing people in a bloody mess before evaporating them and leaving no evidence.
“Okay, let’s say I entertain you temporarily,” I said, “and allow you to regale me with all your fae tales.”
I didn’t want to tell him that I had no other option, that I felt adrift and alone. “But only temporarily. If this becomes too tiring, or too insane, I’m out, okay?”
Derek nodded. “Fine.”
I slapped the palms of my hands on my knees to punctuate the deal.
“So, what’s your first question?” he asked.
I startled. “Now?”
Derek’s expression was determined. He didn't want to let me go yet. Not until he knew more.
To be honest, I felt the same way.
I stood up, my energy firing in all directions. “Can we sit at a table for the rest of this?”
Derek shrugged, standing up noiselessly. I was in awe of his quiet, lithe movements. Humans had no choice but to make cracking or popping sounds, legs and arms dangling for balance as one stood up. But Derek was unnervingly inhuman. No wonder he was so fast that day in the park, smacking me in the face with his book before I could blink.
“The … girl,” I said as I strode over to a table, lightly stepping over the broken chair. “The monster that attacked me. Why did she do it?”
“Describe her in more detail,” Derek said, taking a seat across me.
I did, right down to the empty, black eyes, the large, fanged mouth, her emaciated state, and of course, her lack of a tongue.
“Well,” he said, taking time to think. “What you’re describing, she’s certainly very low in our ranks. She’s a Scraw. No physical or mental powers—they’re what humans call ‘bottom-feeders.’ They come to this world, and they eat. They isolate themselves. Rarely do they make contact with other fae. And even more rarely do they ever fight another fae.” His mouth formed into a tight line. “Are you sure this is what you saw?”
I nodded. “Yes. Absolutely. She’s hard to erase from my memory.”
“Yes, well, your memory isn’t exactly up to par now is it, babycakes?”
I frowned. “No, that’s what she looked like. I’m sure. And I’m not your babycakes.”
“I can’t help but say it.” Derek shrugged. “I love the word. All this human had were piles of videotapes, and to acclimate, I watched them. These very pale, colorless men kept saying, ‘Give it here, sweetheart,’ ‘Pegs’—that means nice legs—‘I could use a quencher,’ and ‘Show me that sweet derrière one more time, Babycakes.” Derek cast his gaze to the ceiling, losing his old-timey accent. “I think this shell was a film student.”
“Derek, I can assure you, things have changed since nineteen-forties black and white detective films. You may want to update your research.”
Derek ignored me, deep in thought as he absently traced circles on the mahogany table. “It’s just so unlike a Scraw.”
“Well, there actually was one other time, with another creature…”
His jerked to attention. “Another fae attacked you?”
“Last Friday at a party. But, here’s the thing. He’s my friend—was my friend. Rob Morrow. One minute he was himself, and the next … he slammed me against a wall and tried to bite my head off. Literally.”
“No, no that’s just not possible.” Derek stood up from the table and began to pace. “We don’t attack each other like this. We all know. The Trine is here. We can’t wrestle around with each other when there is a much greater danger to our kind in our midst. Damos’s orders.”
“Well, it is possible because it did happen.” I tilted my head as I watched him walk back and forth. “Who’s Damos? Is he a super-fae?”
“Don’t be so glib. When you speak of the most powerful fae of our kind, you address him accordingly.” Derek paused for as long as it took to glare at me. “Tell me about this other fae that attacked you.”
I described Rob for him. This time, I explained the long yellow teeth, a gaping maw, and definitely a large black tongue. Derek seemed mostly interested in his eyes, how they were bright yellow, almost glowing, with a black slit in the center.
“That’s another low-sect fae. A Melix. Pretty much acts like a snake, makes a nest somewhere in the woods, swallows its prey whole, that sort of thing.” Derek spoke as if he were talking about a nature show and not a supernatural monster that decapitates people.
I ventured to ask, “And its prey is—”
“Humans, of course,” Derek answered. “All of our prey is human. Even yours. How else have you survived this long if you haven’t been feasting on humans?”
I recoiled. “I have never, ever ‘feasted’ o
n another human. Ever.”
“I’m just going to have to blame that on your faulty memory. Of course you have. You can’t survive without one.”
I pictured a long dining table filled with grotesque fae, each sitting primly on their chair as they eyed the rows of humans in front of them, apples stuffed in mouths and empty stares gazing skyward. No, I insist, you take the heart. I had it last time.
“We only take a little,” Derek said, breaking into my morbid fantasy. “Usually, we don’t kill them. We just take enough to sustain ourselves. It’s rather easy to compel humans to forget.” Derek waved his hand regally. “If you’re a high-sect fae.”
“You mean, like a vampire or something? Fae just suck on human blood, then dilate their pupils all scary-like and compel the person to forget?”
Derek laughed. “With one differences. We don’t drink blood. Gross.” He makes a face before continuing on. “We take pieces of their life-force. Or the whole thing, if one is feeling greedy.”
I tried not to dwell on the fact that Derek wasn’t denying the existence of vampires. “Life-force?”
“I believe humans term it as the ‘soul.’ We survive by eating human souls. Sucking the life-force out of them, if you want to get all vampirical about it.”
Souls were such an intangible thing, barely thought of as we lived our lives, smiling with our hearts, thinking with our brains … but we were driven by our spirit, our soul. And Derek, this person, this creature, was telling me that he stole souls. Not only took them, but ate them.
You remember the taste…
I did remember. Those spiraling tendrils of blue smoke, delectable as it drifted into my mouth and coated my throat like melted chocolate. The remembrance was divine, but the thought was sickening.
I had to take a loud swallow of saliva before I asked, “What about my friend, Rob? What happened him? No one seems to remember who he is. It’s as if he stopped existing.”
Derek went very still, and if I thought he regarded me carefully before, he was even more watchful when he stated, “That can only mean one thing. You are very, very high in the ranks if you can do something like that.”
“Something like what?”
“Alter reality.”
I stiffened. “I did what now?”
“When you fought this fae and destroyed its human shell, this ‘Rob’—which I really don’t recommend, by the way, it only draws unwanted attention—you were able to alter this world so he no longer existed.”
At my blank look, he continued, slower, “When you attack a fae without first expelling that fae out of the human’s body, you kill the human, but not the fae.”
It still wasn’t clicking. This time, Derek crossed his arms, his face perfectly mirroring a sarcastic “Really?” before he tried again. “The fae can easily sift out of its dying shell and move onto another. Our essence inhabits humans, not our form.” He leaned in so our noses were almost touching, enunciating so his next words could sink in. “We can’t be destroyed when we’re inhabiting a human.”
“Right. So a fae inhabited Rob. Another one inhabited the girl.” I nodded as if he were explaining what ingredients to put in chocolate cake. I think my mind had gone numb, an after-shock of sorts. Was I really accepting this?
Memories of the girl’s unearthly screams ricocheted in my head. Then Rob’s dripping fangs. Okay yes, I was accepting it.
Derek plowed on. “Usually, fae must deal with the effects of the human life they destroy. I can’t think of any fae in a long time that was able to zap that human life out of existence.”
Derek lost me again. Or maybe it was denial that bubbled up in my throat like bile as the truth sunk in. “What do you mean zapping a life out of existence? I couldn’t have done that.”
“Most of us have to deal with the human body after we feast on them. You know, attempt to make the human body look like another human murdered it, the usual tactics. Which is why we usually don’t kill and just take little bits of life-force every now and again.” He gave me a sideways glance. “Too much effort to clean up otherwise. But you.” Derek’s voice lowered to a whisper. “You made it so the human you killed never walked this Earth in the first place.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “I didn’t do that. I didn’t do that to Rob.”
Derek placed his hands on the table as he bent down, “Yes, you did. You ate your friend’s soul, then deleted him.”
It took a full minute for Derek’s words to sink in. Foul smelling fae, completely unlike the fairytales in books, intangible life-forces—I could deal with all that. It was separate enough, crazy enough, that my mind could absorb it, much like I would absorb a bedtime story. But this … this. Telling me someone was dead—that he was dead because of me … I had no words, only horror.
Derek's voice was eager when he continued, “What you did—it’s incredible. I haven’t seen anything like this in—in a century. You took control of reality, rippled it so that you only affected one human life and left everything else the same as it was. No butterfly effect. No mistakes. Do you know how much control that takes? How much talent?”
“No. No,” I said, my voice tight and strained. “I didn’t kill him.”
Derek finally stopped pacing, swinging to face me and taking in my shaking, trembling form. His eyes softened. “Oh, babycakes, I think you did. Just like you did with that girl over there. You must come to terms with it.”
“It’s not—it wasn’t him, though Derek! It was the fairy. Rob was gone. It wasn’t Rob anymore…”
It had gotten too quiet. I looked up, searching, and jolted in my seat when I saw Derek had taken up residence across from me again. Silently. He rested his chin in his hand.
“The Melix, who possessed this Rob of yours, didn’t empty its shell’s life-force entirely before inhabiting it,” Derek finally said.
“What? You’re saying Rob’s soul was in there … with the fae—Melix? Trapped by it? But you just said faes take souls!”
Was I becoming hysterical? Maybe. I was confused, hurt, panicked. Yes, I was definitely bordering on bonkers.
“You need to listen to my meaning,” Derek said, dropping his hand from his chin. “I said we only take a little life-force at a time. We can easily take over a human body with pieces of the soul still in place. Humans are so, so weak…” he trailed off, then caught himself. “We can eat away at it, savoring each bite as we continue on in this world, using their bodies.” He lifted his arms. “Because they fit us so well.”
I kept silent through his explanation, my eyes boring into the table, my jaw clenched. I didn’t kill Rob.
“Besides,” Derek said. “How do you explain that delightful taste of the misty smoke? Don’t deny it. I know you nibbled.”
I raised my eyes, meeting his.
“That’s how I know the Melix didn’t inhabit an empty shell,” Derek said. “Because that, my dear, sweet babycakes, was a soul. Rob’s soul.”
At last, I said, with broken syllables, “I fought for my life, preventing Rob’s long, sharp snake-fangs from piercing through my eyes and into my brain, because I had to. The fairy—fae—was going to kill me, so I had to kill it. But, I didn’t. I just killed its shell. I killed my friend.”
Derek nodded. “You set the fae free.”
“No.” I moaned, covering my face with my hands, but there was no comforting darkness when I closed them. The walls of the restaurant were caving in. Blood cascaded out from the cracks in the ceiling and ran like a river toward us. Rob’s blood.
“No, no, no…”
Derek sighed, the sound bursting through my thoughts enough to open my eyes. The golden candlelight of the restaurant washed over our forms, the mahogany wood cool on my fingertips. Dry wood. Empty walls. No blood.
“I believe that’s enough for today, you fragile little thing. We’ll meet tomorrow. I want to test you out a little, anyway. Then we can get back to lectures.” Derek dragged the last word out like the very effort of uttering th
e syllables bored him senseless.
I shook my head. I didn’t hurt Rob. I couldn’t have killed him. I didn’t mean to murder him…
Derek studied me a while longer, offering no words of comfort. To him, my reaction was probably akin to crying over a chicken breast once I realized it came from a living thing. His face seemed to say, Chicken is just chicken, souls are just souls. It’s all just food in the end.
Derek blew out the candle in front of us with a quick puff, patted my shoulder awkwardly and left the restaurant. I glared at his back as he exited with no cares in the world.
I didn’t give a crap where Derek was going or how I’d find him again. I didn’t want to ever see him again. This couldn’t be the truth. Even if I believed Derek’s fae-tale stories, I refused to admit I killed a person. A friend. True, Rob was in the midst of trying to kill me, but that wasn’t Rob—Derek even said so. It was the fae possession. Rob was suffering inside his own body, and I didn’t know. He was trapped, and I couldn’t even tell. And because I didn’t know how to deal with these creatures or even how to manage myself, I didn’t lure the fae out first in order to save my friend.
Derek’s explanation came back to me. When you attack a fae without first expelling that fae out of the human’s body, you kill the human, but not the fae…
Problem was, I had no idea how to remove a fae from a human body.
My head shot up. “Derek! What do I do if this happens again? How do I save the person?”
My cries hit emptiness. Derek was long gone.
Chapter 14
Once home after closing down Butterfield, I surveyed my studio apartment as I would a person visiting it for the first time.
The old me was everywhere. In picture frames on my little corner desk, an arm slung over Macy and my Aunt Sandy; in perfume bottles cluttered on top of my dresser, scents I’d used since high school. I even saw Old Me in the dirty coffee mug I’d tossed into the sink this morning, tipped on its side with dried coffee stains rimming the edges.
