people they took the body and soul together.
—The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Y. Evans-Wentz (1911)
Aislinn closed her eyes as she finished describing the faeries who’d been stalking her. “They’re court fey; I know that much. They move in the circle of a king or queen, have enough influence to act without consequences. They’re too strong, too arrogant to be anything else.” She thought about their disdain, their disregard for the fey watching them. These were the most dangerous sort of faeries: ones with power.
She shivered and added, “I just don’t know what they want. There’s this whole other world no one else sees. But I do…. I watch them, but they’ve never noticed me—not any more than they do anyone else.”
“So you see others that aren’t following you?”
It was such a simple question, such an obvious one. She looked at him and laughed, not because it was funny, but because it was so awful. Tears ran down her face.
He just waited, calm, unflappable, until she stopped laughing. “I guess that was a yes?”
“Yes.” She wiped her cheeks. “They’re real, Seth. It’s not that I see things. There are faeries, creatures, almost everywhere. Awful things. Beautiful ones. Some that are both at once. Sometimes they’re horrible to each other, doing really”—she shuddered at the images she didn’t want to share with him—“bad things, sick things.”
He waited.
“This one, this Keenan, he approached me, made himself look like a human and tried to get me to go with him.” She looked away, trying to summon the calm she relied on when the things she saw got too weird. It wasn’t working.
“So what about this court thing? Could you talk to their king or whatever?” Seth turned the page.
Aislinn listened to the soft whisper of paper falling, loud in the room despite the music, despite the impossibility of hearing such a soft sound. Since when can I hear a sheet of paper falling?
She thought about Keenan, thought about how to explain that sense of strength he exuded. He’d seemed immune to the iron downtown—a terrifying possibility; at the very least, he’d been strong enough to hold a glamour around it. Deadgirl had seemed weakened by it, but it hadn’t repelled her either. “No. Grams says court fey are the cruelest ones. I don’t think I could face anything stronger even if I could reveal myself, and I can’t. They can’t find out that I can see them. Grams says they’ll kill or blind us if they find out we see them.”
“Suppose they’re something else, Ash?” Seth was moving now, standing in front of her. “What if there’s another explanation for what you saw?”
She folded her hand into a loose fist as she stared at him, feeling her fingernails dig ever so slightly into the palm of her hand. “I’d love to believe there’s another answer. I’ve seen them since I was born. Grams sees them. It’s real. They’re real.”
She couldn’t look at him; instead she stared down at Boomer, who had twisted his entire length into a tight coil in her lap. She trailed her finger down the side of his head gently.
Seth cupped her chin and tilted her head back so she was looking at him. “There’s got to be something we can do.”
“Can we talk about it tomorrow? I need…” She shook her head. “I just can’t deal with any more tonight.”
Seth reached down and lifted Boomer. The boa didn’t uncoil as Seth carried him to his terrarium and gently lowered him to the heat rock.
She didn’t say anything else as Seth latched the lid to keep Boomer from wandering off. Given half a chance, Boomer found a way to slither outside if he was left home alone, and in most months the temperature out there could be fatal for him.
“Come on, I’ll walk you home,” Seth said.
“You don’t need to.”
He crooked his eyebrow and held out his hand.
“But you can.” She took his hand.
Seth led her through the streets, as unaware of the fey as everyone else they passed, but just having his arm around her made it seem less awful.
They walked silently for almost a block. Then he asked, “You want to stop at Rianne’s?”
“Why?” Aislinn walked a little faster as the wolf-girl who’d given chase earlier started circling predatorily.
“Her party? The one you told me about?” Seth grinned, acting like they were okay, like the whole faery conversation hadn’t happened.
“God, no. That’s the last thing I need.” She shivered at the thought. She’d taken Seth to a couple parties with the Bishop O.C. crowd; by the second one it was pretty clear that the mixing of the two worlds was typically a bad plan.
“You need my jacket?” Seth pulled her closer, attentive as always to the slightest detail.
She shook her head no, but leaned closer to him, enjoying the excuse to be held by him.
He didn’t object, but he didn’t let his hands brush anywhere they shouldn’t, either. He might flirt, but he never made a move that was anything other than just-friends.
“Stop at Pins and Needles with me?” he asked.
The tat shop wasn’t out of the way, and she wasn’t in any hurry to be away from Seth. She nodded, and then asked, “Did you finally pick something to get?”
“Not yet, but Glenn said the new guy started this week. I thought I’d see what his work looks like, what styles, you know.”
She laughed. “Right, wouldn’t want to get the wrong style.”
Mock scowling, he tweaked a strand of her hair. “We could find one we both like. Get a matched pair.”
“Sure, I’ll do that—right after you meet Grams and convince her to sign a consent form.”
“So, no ink for you then. Ever.”
“She’s nice.” The argument was an old one, but she hadn’t given up yet—or made any progress.
“Nope. Not going to risk it.” He kissed her forehead. “As long as she doesn’t meet me she can’t look at me, and say, ‘Stay away from my girl.’”
“Nothing wrong with how you look.”
“Yeah?” He smiled gently. “Would she think that?”
Aislinn thought so, but she hadn’t been able to convince Seth of it.
They continued in silence until they reached the shop. The front of the tat shop was almost all windows, making it seem less intimidating to any curious ink seekers, but unlike the tattoo parlors she’d seen when they went up to Pittsburgh, this was not a glossy shop. Pins and Needles retained some of the grit of the art, not catering to the trendy crowd—not that Huntsdale had much of a trendy crowd.
The cowbell on the door clanged
