Page 69 of Hunted By Fae

Tess isn’t untrustworthy because she’s suicidal. She’s just volatile, unpredictable.

I need her focused and present.

Otherwise we can both kiss our lives goodbye.

My work on Tess isn’t yet done.

But before I go find her, I take a moment to wash my face in the sink, then brush out my ponytail. It’s all kinked, but the ache at my scalp begs for loose hair. I dampen it, just like Tesni did her own, one section at a time in the basin, then I clip a small towel around my head.

I slip out of the bathroom, feeling a touch fresher, but it would be better if we were at our original safehouse, the one we were meant to head back to after the raid at Costco, because that place is remote, near the highway and the woods, but with a bathtub and running water from the tanks outside, so actually having a bath isn’t a noise problem there like it is here.

But the return to that safehouse was made impossible by the never-ending parade of dark fae blocking our path.

This place, we stumbled into at random.

In all truth, in all shame, we were in such a state of panic when we fled—we just ran.

Ran and ran and ran.

Left our bikes behind, unspooled a rope between us, so we didn’t lose each other in the dark, and we bolted—until we couldn’t run anymore.

The door we took led to a stairwell, and up there, on the first floor, another door opened to a small apartment.

This one.

The problem with apartments is there’s never a fireplace.

So the sight of Emily—huddled up on the couch, eyes reddened and raw, aimed at the sheen of the dead TV, with a dozen blankets wrapped around her—is not surprising.

It’s a cold night.

The days and nights are both dark now, but I canfeelthe difference in them.

I leave Emily on the couch and make for the kitchen—and I find Tesni.

Hair still turbaned, she is perched on the counter, tucked between the wall and the sink. Beside her, the window is cracked open, and through the gap, she exhales a ribbon of cigarette smoke.

I shut the door quietly behind me. “Should you be doing that?”

With the state of her lungs post-plague, it’s not the brightest idea she’s had. But Tesni is nothing if not utterly self-destructive.

She just stares at the grey wisps dancing in her face. “If you’re fae, why don’t you look like them?”

The bluntness of the question strikes me still for a heartbeat. Honestly, I expected her to ignore the whole thing entirely until she can process it.

My answer comes as soft as my steps, “I don’t look like those dark ones because I’m of light—and I’m half.”

I pause my approach at the toppled dining chair.

“Half,” she echoes, then brings the cigarette to her mouth. Still, she doesn’t look at me. Not a glance aimed my way. She watches the smoke dance in her face. “What does that mean? How can you be half of another species?”

“The same way some humans have neanderthal DNA.” I tuck the chair back into place under the table. “That’s a different species.” I move for the counter. “Like mules and donkeys can breed, like coyotes and wolves, or lions and tigers.”

She says nothing.

“My mother is fae,” I go on. “My father is human. They met when my dad fell through a bridge into the woods near her village.”

I jump up to sit on the counter.