Page 19

So, this was it.

Shayne braced for it. He almost closed his eyes, but…

A new silhouette appeared with a flash of ruby-red, eclipsing the light beside Kahn-Der. It was followed by a confusing, bone-snapping shuffle that ended with Kahn-Derflyingoff the pillar. Shayne blinked as Kahn-Der’s limbs flailed, as he didn’t catch himself, as he disappeared over the edge.

Shayne tilted his ear to listen, sure he heard the echo of Kahn-Der’s wail like the fool was falling… still falling… and…

“Oh dear. I hope you weren’t planning to keep him alive? I think he’s very much splattered.”

Shayne’s blurred gaze drifted back to the new silhouette. Was this fairy speaking tohim?

A sweet, furry smell wafted through the air as Shayne lifted a hand to block the sun, to see who this glowing savior was. But the sun slipped behind the clouds again, everything turning back to shadows, and Shayne found himself staring into the face of an enemy fox he was sure was a hallucination.

Luc Zelsor stared back at Shayne. “North Fairies,” he muttered in a bored tone.

Through the teetering in his mind, Shayne recalled a dagger hidden in his boot. Boots weren’t good for anything really, except hiding daggers. He dropped his arm; it slapped against the stone beneath him and stayed there for a moment until he could muster the energy to move it again. Then he inched his hand toward his boot. Bit by bit.

Luc Zelsor blinked. Watching it all.

Shayne tugged the dagger free anyway. He tried to throw it quickly, but the toss ended up being so weak that the fox simply swatted it from its slow, pathetic float through the air. The blade bounced off the pillar and fell, down, down—just like Kahn-Der had.

Suddenly Shayne laughed. Was Kahn-Der really the one who’d met that fate? Agony ripped through his body with the chuckles, and he winced, deciding laughing was off limits.

The fox still stood there. Arms folded. Watching. After a moment, he scowled and said, “You really are mad, North Fairy. I thought Lily Baker was fibbing about you being crazy, but I can see now that you’re a pure-bred lunatic.”

Shayne’s smile fell. He felt less dizzy as he lifted his gaze to the fox. Something predatory came over him, and he gritted his teeth, pulling himself up to a sitting position as his swollen flesh and aching muscles screamed in protest.

“Whose name did you just utter from that vile mouth of yours?” Shayne asked from a dry throat. “When did you speak tomyLily? I swear, if you so much astouchedher—”

Luc kicked him back down. Shayne’s spine smacked the stone, and he choked to catch his breath.

“There’s only room on this pillar for one fairy who talks a lot, I’m afraid. And I call dibs on being that fairy.” Luc tilted his head. “Honestly, I’m not convinced you were worth saving. There’s a perfectly good dog back in my apartment that possesses everything necessary to replace you.” At that, Luc sighed, dropped to a knee, and grabbed Shayne by the arms.

Shayne gasped as he was sucked from the pillar. The realm turned to wind around him and he was overcome with the sensation of floating, speeding, slipping through spaces. After a second of it, he realized he was being cutelyheldby Luc-the-enemy-fox-Zelsor. Shayne tried to push the fox off him, tried to peel himself out of the fox’s grip, but the attempt brought a fresh dizzy spell over him, and he slumped—accidentally letting his head fall onto Luc’s shoulder. A grunt of revulsion filled his ear.

It may have gone on for seconds, or minutes, or longer; the fox’s kidnapping attempt. Time patterns were confusing as Shayne fell in and out of consciousness. As he became aware of his surroundings slowing down.

The next thing Shayne knew, he was dropped onto a cold, hard floor. He rolled onto his side and curled into a ball to sleep there, caring nothing of the place, the time, the circumstance. But then he heard a voice that made him feel all warm and good inside. A grumpy fae voice. It said, “I thought you were going to meet us there later?”

A treacherous fox voice returned, “The thing I had to deal with first ended sooner than I anticipated.” And then, “You’re lucky I made it to that tacky red House early, North Fairy. Your lunatic barefoot friend owes me his life, you know.”

When Shayne managed to open his eyes, everything was blurry again. But as his vision sharpened, he thought he could see Dranian standing there, the fool’s scowl as perfect as ever, his eyes filled with worry. Shayne released a dry chuckle as he wondered if he really had died in that moment on the pillar. If Kahn-Der had ended him, and the rest had been an afterlife illusion. Because he was sure this was fairy heaven—or even better, human heaven. Luc Zelsor must have been a grim reaper sent to try and steal him from his true destiny among the clouds.

Shayne’s theory was confirmed when a pretty, blonde-haired human came racing into the room. She dropped down beside him and shouted, “Are you crazy, Shayne?!”

“Only crazy for you,”he tried to say back to human-heaven’s-Lily as he reached a weak arm toward her to see what she might feel like in heaven. If her body was solid or made of light where his hand would move through. But Shayne found his mouth didn’t work anymore to say his brilliant comment, and his arm was too heavy. His hand dropped back down, his eyes rolled closed, and his head fell to the side as the visions of human heaven drifted away.

7

Lily Baker and the Switcheroo

The early morning hours in the Ever Corners had a different feel than the ones in Toronto. On her bed, Lily hugged her knees to herself as she stared out the window of the worn-down cottage and watched silvery ‘fluffs’ lift from the woods. They did a shiny dance of nature, dusting against a backdrop of the richest green leaves she’d ever seen. The scene was accented by gold sunlight spearing through the branches overhead.

When she was young, mornings had been something like this. She’d often woken up in a room alone and hugged her knees as she stared out the window at the long laneway of the children’s ‘in-between’ safehouse building, wondering if a family might come driving down that lane and decide to take her home. Before she’d died, Tanya Baker had been so certain one of her friends would take Lily in once she was gone. She’d assured Lily it would all be okay as she’d laid on a crisp white hospital bed. But when the day came, the friends she’d mentioned never reached out—in fact, it was the opposite. Lily overheard the repeated disappointment in the child service worker’s voice after several phone calls were made, and the people who’d made Lily’s mother a promise suddenly didn’t want to be contacted.

In the summers growing up, Lily would spot milkweed fluff in the air and think of her mom. Her mom had once told her that milkweed fluffs were really fairies in disguise, and if you could catch one, you could make a wish. She’d said the same thing about snowflakes in the winter.

But Lily had caught dozens of milkweed fluffs. She’d captured hundreds of snowflakes from the air with her mittens. They never granted her wishes. They never brought her mother back or brought her a family who wanted to keep her past a couple of months.