Deep within Midre Forest, the ghosts waited. Renard clutched a box of croissants to his chest. “Food is the way to the heart,” he muttered. Hopefully the saying applied to vengeful ghosts.
Because bringing food into the Flickers’ domain, especially after how they’d died… He shuddered. If the Flickers caught him before daylight, he’d be dead.
“Seriously? That’s what you’re gifting me?” I rolled my eyes at Amelia.
“What do you mean? It’s a good gift. It’ll keep you alive, right? So we can stay friends. I was worried being a fairy would change things, but if I’m your fairy…”
“Yeah, yeah. I get it. It’s just not what I was expecting.”
Jack tore into the roasted chicken thigh, the heat of his anger suffusing with the warm tingling of his mother’s herb blend. The flavors of rosemary and thyme soothed him, their homey familiarity pushing against the sting of resentment.
He crunched down on a bone and spat it onto the ground.
Jane’s stomach tightened as she neared the door. She paused to adjust her glasses. “Sal, are you sure a human is okay at a xaether’s party? I don’t want to mess anything up.”
Sal pulled her through the entryway. “Don’t worry. You’re hardly one to cause a stir. Plus, xaethers are a couple millennia old.
“Is that a taikina?” Seana faces me, shoulders squared.
I drop the pastry, sending sliced nuts and golden berries across the silver tablecloth. “Um.”
Behind my sister, faeries and pixies continue dancing. Dust scatters off the pixies’ wings. Not fair. The pixie dust in their dishes makes faerie food taste like dirt.
“Thief!”
Esme stormed across the weathered floorboards of her seaside shop. Displays of enchanted sea-glass and metal pendants swung in the wake of her temper, clinking like warning chimes.
Jack froze, his hand half-in, half-out of the small wooden chest that usually stayed beneath the counter, away from customers’ curious gazes.
Mind, there’s nothing inherently surprising about finding a drunken old man in the royal garden. I just never expected to see one eating Grandpa’s roses. Horribly undignified behavior for the most respectable house in Phrygia. I leaned over my balcony rail, fumbling through my mental lexicon for the appropriate words to address this situation.
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Harthan thumbed through the herbal encyclopedia and rubbed his fingers together. A familiar soft tingle crawled up his arm. It reminded him of his sister, Lyse, who had taught him to use his abilities, at least until their parents sold her—
“We’ve a job,” Braean said. “Let’s go.”
Harthan snarled at the old alchemist’s back
“You’re hurting me, Wynn.”
Wynnstan let go of Gemma’s hand. “Sorry.” He glared at his stone fingers, wishing for the hundredth––perhaps thousandth––time that his hands could be soft and delicate, able to hold Gemma like she deserved to be held.
She rubbed her hands together. The creek’s low rumble filled the silence
“You said to come in if there was any more trouble. And we are way past that!”
Paula tapped her pen against her pad, adjusted her glasses, and looked at the man and woman sitting opposite her. She had dealt with many parents in her long career and was accustomed to encountering families in the strangest crises.
I never wanted to leave the luxurious south for the frigid north, but my parents’ decision was firm. I still despised the cold and the frozen landscape. I huddled on my window seat, watching the lone star that illuminated the snow.
“If,” I whispered, “the first star truly grants a wish…”
But I couldn’t voice it.
The figure didn’t show its face. Just stared at me from the void-like eye cavities of a ghoulish white mask. “Don’t be afraid.” The mask distorted its voice, and I trembled. It stepped toward me then crouched to my level. “You’ve lost much, lad.”
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