Page 23 of Faerie Fate (Fae Academy for Halflings #7)

Chapter Fifteen

I stared at Poppy, still numb from the truth serum. “What do you mean, that’s you?”

She worked her jaw and struggled to answer as something scratched at the door. A plaintive growl followed the scratch. My direwolf. Checking to see that everything was on the up and up. Or did he feel the sickening kaleidoscope of emotions wreaking havoc with me?

“We—we should join the others.”

Poppy— Barbara —sounded shaky. The hand she drew through her braid trembled and her face had gone paler than moonlight. In my head, the two images superimposed over each other. They were the same height, Barbara and Poppy. They had the same nose.

Their thin frames were similar but Poppy was much more muscled.

The leather armor she wore moved with her body, conforming to her strength, whereas Barbara had looked like a doomsday prepper at the end of her tolerance for society.

She’d been happy with flannel and as many packs of cheap cigarettes as possible.

Even the Augundae Imperium hadn’t been enough to save her in the end.

Poppy practically rushed to the door, drawing in great gulps of air.

But by the time I joined her, by the time she’d finished calling the others into the kitchen, she’d gotten herself under control.

Her face showed only a few spots of color and her eyes were wild, but otherwise it might simply have been exertion from whatever spell she’d worked on me.

Mike glanced my way, his gaze scouring me from head to toe, his shoulders tight. “How do you feel?”

The effects of the truth potion were slowly wearing off.

In place of the blessed numbness in my head, a few pinpricks of worry and anxiety began to grow.

I opened my mouth to answer and Noren interrupted me with a nudge of his giant head against my back.

Pushing me toward the table Poppy conjured for us to sit around.

“I’m better,” I admitted. “It’s stopped bleeding.”

Sometime during her scouring of my head, the salve had cracked and flaked off of me, leaving behind nothing of the slit on my wrist but a thin raised line.

“Of course it’s stopped bleeding,” Poppy replied. “My salves are unparalleled. So is my sight.”

Noren sniffed at the salve, his tongue darting out to lick some of the hardened pieces that hadn’t sloughed off, and I pried my arm up from where he’d pinned it to my side.

“It’s all right,” I told him with a laugh. “But not sure you should be eating it.”

Bronwen hurtled around the corner with a bowl of fresh strawberries in her hands. “You were in there for a long time.”

I pulled out a chair and settled at the table with plenty of room for Noren to crowd closer, in full protective mode.

“I have a lot of broken parts,” I said.

Poppy dragged out a chair with a screech of the legs against the floor and threw herself down in it violently. Almost as though she wanted to punish the furniture. “We need to talk.” She snapped her fingers at the other two, leaving them no room but to do her bidding. “Sit. Now.”

Mike went on immediate alert. “What’s the matter? Did something happen?”

Bronwen took another bite of her strawberry, her mouth colored with juice, before she settled on my opposite side.

The four of us gathered in the kitchen this way might have been comfortable under different circumstances. Poppy had a cozy setup, and with the fire in the stove, the dried herb bundles above the windows, and the shelves laden with pottery, the witch’s kitchen was homey. Quaint.

“ Yes , something happened,” she griped.

She saw Mike through a different lens now that she knew he was her grandson. Her nostrils flared.

Well . So much for the flirtation bubbling between them at the tavern. I couldn’t completely wipe away my pleased grin at this new change.

“Lay everything out on the table, starting from the beginning,” Poppy demanded. “And once you’re done, I’ll do the same. Information for information.”

Bronwen glanced at me, waiting for the go-ahead, and I nodded. “It’s fine,” I added.

More than fine. I owed it to Barbara to have this conversation with her younger self.

Between the three of us, we managed to tell Poppy everything, from start to finish.

Once Mike finished the tale of us showing up at Grove, Poppy took up the baton of conversation.

Although she kept her explanation tight and mincing, she told them who she was.

What she saw. And what she knew from my memories.

“So that’s it. You’re my grandson.”” She crossed her arms over her chest and tipped her chair backward. Daring him to say anything against her.

She looked less than thrilled and as young as him.

Mike’s features twisted in bafflement. “You’re my mom’s mother?”

Poppy blinked and effectively ended their staring contest—it seemed there were still a few things that could surprise her after everything we’d discussed. “I’m going to have a daughter?”

“Apparently you are,” I said dryly. “And Laina is…she’s great. She’s a really good person.”

Mike shot me an appreciative sideways glance at the compliment. “If what you’re saying is true, then yeah, you’re going to have a daughter. My mom is a fantastic woman, a powerful witch, and a good ruler. She’ll do you proud.”

Poppy shook her head and lifted her arms to her sides. “I mean, anything I pop out is bound to be powerful. That’s a given. But I have no intention of marrying. I’ve never wanted to be a mother.” Her smile was feral. “It’s not in my plan. A baby certainly wouldn’t fit into my life.”

She shouldn’t trust the man she would marry, either, from what Barbara had told me. From the shitty things Barbara said about the dude, he was nothing but a worthless sack of shit who would inevitably break her heart and tear their family apart.

But…if I told Poppy that, Laina would never be born. And then Mike would never be born. So I had to keep my mouth shut.

I certainly didn’t need Mike’s silencing glances to tell me not to speak up.

My head spun for a completely different reason this time.

I’d never been good at figuring out the time travel stuff.

The repercussions, the consequences—those were always beyond me and one of the reasons why I never liked watching those kinds of movies.

Now I was trapped in the middle of one and the stakes were life and death.

For a long moment, the four of us sat in silence, glancing at one another, everyone at a loss. What did we do now? Where did we go from here?

I picked at the pieces of dried salve around my neck until the rest of the pieces began to flake off, the color of honeycomb.

“Look,” Poppy finally said, “I’m a busy woman. I can’t stick around for long.”

And she certainly wouldn’t want to slum around with her grandson and his friends from the future. Not when too much time spent together might have devastating effects.

I reached across the table and grabbed one of the last strawberries from Bronwen’s bowl.

She’d eaten almost all the fruit as she listened, her attention bouncing back and forth faster than a streak at Wimbledon.

She’d taken all of this in stride, having been on the outskirts of too many different conversations to count.

In fact, this was one of the most complete recaps we’d had so far.

Noren curled at my feet, his head on my lap and no doubt keeping tabs on Poppy through our conversation.

“So.” I broke through the tense silence, “will you help me unlock my powers? Then we’ll be out of your hair.”

I’d told her everything about Livvy and the journal, the spell my mother got from the goddess Faerie herself, and what it was supposed to do for me. How the spell had failed.

Poppy drummed her fingers against the table and stared over my head. Whatever she saw in the distance, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“I’ll have to commune with the energies around us to figure out if this is what I’m meant to do,” she said at last. “The gods have plans and we mortals must listen.”

“The gods?” Bronwen asked as she sat up straighter. “More than one?”

I nibbled at a strawberry. “I thought Faerie was the only goddess in the game.”

Was Poppy seriously saying that there were more gods and goddesses out there? Real ones? I pressed a hand to my stomach when it began to catch. Too much. It was all too much for me.

Rather than answer, Poppy abruptly pushed up from her chair and sent it careening against the cabinets at her back. “Make yourselves at home.” It was a non-answer to our question. “Get some rest.”

Before any of us had a chance to ask her anything , she disappeared into her spell room and closed the door, snapping the lock. Cutting us off and sequestering herself.

Bronwen waited about ten seconds before she erupted, her hair bristling around her round face.

Her freckles stood out to attention as she chewed on her lower lip.

“Am I the only one who thinks this whole communing with the gods thing is complete crap? I mean, come on! Poppy has all the info she needs to make a decision and this is just a delay we don’t need. ”

Bronwen widened her eyes at Mike, head slightly tilted, waiting for him to agree with her. Since he was the one in charge of the time manipulation.

Honestly, I felt the same. Poppy’s “communing” felt like a tactic to get us off her back.

The longer we spent in the past, the harder it would be to not change things. And having gotten an up close and personal look at Poppy’s magic stock, I was inclined to agree with Bronwen.

What was the witch waiting for?

Why wouldn’t she help?

Especially if we were going to leave and head back to the future? It wasn’t like we’d be underfoot any longer than necessary.

“We’re not actually losing time while we’re here,” Mike reminded Bronwen gently. “We’ll return to the exact moment when we left.”

Bronwen huffed and rose as well, walking over to the nearest cabinet and pulling open the doors. Looked at the bottles and bowls inside. “That’s not the point.”

“Then what is the point?” Mike pinched his nose. “Because right now, we need Poppy to trust us. And we need to trust her.”

“Don’t you mean Grammie ?” Bronwen tossed over her shoulder.

Mike rolled his eyes, and as much as he might hate the idea of their family relation, the gesture was pure Barbara.

“She rooted around in my head,” I reminded him. “If that isn’t the ultimate expression of trust, then I don’t know what is. What else could she need from us? She’s already seen me.”

The real me, the me I can’t hide.

Mike turned, exasperation in the lines of his tight lips. “I’m not sure, Tavi.”

A clear indication to drop it .

“It doesn’t seem like we’re going anywhere right now. Unless we want to start all over and that’s not a good idea.” Mike shook his head, staring at the empty strawberry bowl. Had he eaten? “I say we take her advice and get cozy. We might as well sleep.”

He needed rest.

But I’d slept enough when I was sick, and during all my stints of unconsciousness when I’d had no choice.

Unfortunately, on closer inspection of the cabin, Poppy only had a small twin bed and a couch.

She clearly didn’t spend time in this place, and never with company, which made sense if she was the great and powerful bounty hunter she claimed to be.

She probably only came back occasionally when she was between jobs.

Bronwen raised her hand. “I’ll take the couch.”

Mike glared at her for a moment before he caught me looking at him and swiftly wiped the expression from his face. A second too late. I saw it, memorized it, and understood.

“Wow. I didn’t realize the thought of sharing a bed with me was so repulsive,” I couldn't help saying.

He jerked back as though the words were bullets. “Tavi…” He blew out a breath. “Just…come on.”

Whatever he wanted to say, he kept to himself. Good. I was too much of a coward to want to hear the words out loud.