Sara’s eyes opened wide. “That’s why you didn’t date? I totally thought it was because you were some kind of freak.”
On a scale of one to ten, Sara definitely scored an eleven on the Tact-O-Meter. I don’t know how I could have been intimidated by her before. I shrugged. “That’s what a lot of people say who don’t know me. Their loss.”
The awed look on Sara’s face was worth a million bucks. The feeling I had pulsing through my veins was worth a million more.
And then Freckle Freak came into the shop, and my two million bucks went down the toilet. Again, he was perfect and preppy, the collar turned up on his layered polo shirt and fingers linked in the pockets of his perfectly tailored khaki shorts, revealing half a dozen leather bands knotted around his wrist.
There was one big difference from when I’d seen him before, though—this time, I could tell he was a faerie. It wasn’t the sharp herbal scent that accompanied him into the store. Rather, he had the same kind of mind-bending perfection as Eleanor, which I was beginning to think was the mark of a faerie. It wasn’t that he was beautiful, though he was—it was the way the beauty hurt to look at. Also, he glowed from within, healthy and warm, though the fluorescent lights of the shop and the storm-light outside washed all the color out of my face and Sara’s. How could I have ever mistaken him for human?
When he put his hands up on the counter and smiled at us, I saw the dull glint of a torc under his left sleeve. Sara discreetly tugged up her apron and slid down the counter toward him. “What can I get for you?”
Freckle Freak looked from Sara to me and back again. “I don’t know. Everything looks so delicious.” Sara’s mouth quirked; I stayed where I was, my skin crawling. Just beneath the surface of my own perceptions, I could sense Luke’s memories of Freckle Freak churning, threatening to break through.
“Well, you can take a minute to decide,” Sara said, gesturing to the empty store. “No hurry.”
He pushed off the counter, running his fingers on the edge of the display glass, ceaselessly moving as he had the last time I encountered him. I watched his fingers jerk back from a metal strip on the display, and then return to their lazy path along the glass as if nothing had happened. In my head, Luke’s memories flickered dimly: Freak driving a herd of yearling cattle into a river, laughing as their wide eyes disappeared into the unexpectedly deep water. Freak circling Luke as Luke held three iron nails in a white, knuckled hand. Freak running his hand over the bloody skin of a terrified looking girl, the knots of the leather bands on his wrist dragging tracks across her. I gritted my teeth, wanting to forget what I’d seen.
“So hard to choose,” he said softly, smiling slowly at Sara. “Can I get more than one if I can’t decide?”
Sara glanced at me and laughed. “Are we still talking about ice cream here?”
“Were we ever?” Freckle Freak leaned toward Sara, his tongue flicking on the edge of perfect lips. I had my necklace, but there was nothing to keep him from Sara.
I couldn’t believe I was going to have to protect the skank from him. I joined her, my arm pressed against hers, and said firmly, “I think you ought to pick a flavor—of ice cream—or get lost.”
To my surprise, Sara didn’t protest, but moved subtly backward, away from him. Maybe even she had her limits. Maybe even the most innocent of sheep could smell a wolf if it stank enough.
Freckle Freak made a startlingly high leap onto the counter with surprising grace, and behind me, Sara made a soft noise. He swung his legs over and dangled them on our side of the counter. I stepped out of reach of his legs, and he clucked. “Oh, don’t be like that. I just thought Luke might share his playthings.” He grinned at me, hungrily, and pointed to the key around my neck. “Maybe I can help you out of that later.” He looked over his shoulder, at the sun blazing in the sky. “Very soon, I think.”
“Creep,” muttered Sara. “Get out or I’ll call the cops on your ass.”
He seemed unfazed by the threat. From an empty palm, he dropped a line of clover onto the counter. They flapped their butterfly wings, taking flight as beautiful swallowtails before crumbling to the floor—wilted clovers after all. His smile rose goose bumps on my skin. “I can show you some things Luke can’t, lovely,” he murmured.
“I can show you some things he can’t, as well.” James let the shop door close behind him. “Lovely.” James’ attire was a bit strange—he had accessorized a T-shirt that read You: Off My Planet with an iron fireplace ash scoop, which he held over his shoulder like a rifle. The combination was oddly appropriate.
Freckle Freak smiled, all teeth, and slid off the counter, flicking his tongue at James. “Maybe you’ll play as well?” He leaned back toward me and sniffed. “Although she smells better. Good enough to swallow whole.”
James lowered the shovel and matter-of-factly approached Freak. “Get. Out.”
Freckle Freak let himself be guided by the iron until he was by the door, then looked back at me and made a rude gesture.
James growled and swung the shovel at Freak’s head. The shovel never made contact with his scalp—Freak jerked violently away from the iron, slamming his skull into the door with enough force to rattle the glass. Then he smacked down onto the floor, hard.
James spit on him. The faerie opened his eyes when the saliva landed on his cheek, and smiled. “So this is how we’re playing the game.”
I had a sudden, vivid image of Luke, holding the Freak against a wall, his dagger nearly touching his neck, and Freak grinning and saying, “So, it will be a good game.”
Then I looked back to the door, where James stood over empty floor. Outside the door, a white rabbit hopped across the pavement.
James and I watched the rabbit until it disappeared in the scrubby brush beyond the parking lot, and then exchanged a glance. “Rodent problem?” he asked.
“Weasel, I think.” I let out a deep breath I’d been holding without realizing it. “Why are you here?”
James shouldered the shovel, glancing out the window as thunder boomed, but Sara interrupted from her spot beside the milkshake machine. “What the hell just happened?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer. James shrugged. “Homicidal faeries.”
Sara stared out the window into the parking lot where the rabbit had been. The girl who could never shut up when there was nothing to talk about had nothing to say when there was.
I looked at the clock. “I’m going to lock the back door. I think it’s time to get out of here.” Sara still hadn’t moved. She was chewing her lip, lost in thought, her face transformed by the introspection.
“Good idea,” James said. “I’ll take you to see Granna after you’re done. And I’ll walk Sara to her car.”
I went through my closing routine, locking the back door and closing up containers of sprinkles and cookie crumbs. Sara went through hers, mechanically wiping down the milkshake machine and the counter. Her silence made me uncomfortable, like I ought to say something just to make her speak. I suddenly wondered if that was why she normally babbled all the time—maybe she’d been trying to get me to break my pensive quiet.
We emerged from our uncomfortable female bonding session to find James stacking the last of the chairs on the tables. He retrieved his shovel from beside the door. “We should go before it rains.”
My phone rang in my pocket, and I pulled it out. This time I knew who the number belonged to, and I opened it halfway through the ring. “Luke?”
I could barely hear him say, “I saw Granna. It was Them.”
fourteen
Lightning glowed inside the towering thunderheads as they crowded out the last of the blue sky. A second later, the boom of thunder was loud enough to shake the windows on James’ old Pontiac. I slouched down inside the car, turning my head into the familiar camel-colored leather of the seat. The smell of this car, old leather and carpet, would forever be associated in my head with James. In a way, this car was James. He’d spent so many hours rebuilding it from the chassis up, it might as well have been a part of him.
He turned down the Audioslave album we’d been listening to and seemed about to say something before thinking better of it. The quiet built between us, strange only in contrast to our usual banter, and for a moment I couldn’t think of anything to say. Then: “How did you know Granna was in trouble? What was it like?”
James drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, making himself busy staring at the road. “She told me. Your grandmother. I started to feel sick, and for some reason I thought about her in her workshop. So I called you, and somewhere in between all those calls I was making to you, she told me.” He let out a noisy breath. “Man, Dee. I’m almost as big of a freak as you. Soon you’ll see me on TV with my crystal ball and my 900 number.”
I frowned at him as lightning flashed one side of his face pale and featureless. “You’d have to change your name to something more foreign sounding, I think. No one would believe a domestic psychic.”
“Esmeralda is pretty,” James mused.
Thunder cracked, so loudly that my ears hummed afterward, and shifted my mind to another, more immediate subject. “I just can’t believe They did something to her. That’s what Luke told me.”
“I know.” James’s eyes flitted over to me. “She told me that, too. She called it ‘elf shot.’”
It sounded so innocent, like “love sick.” Elf shot. I wondered what I was going to find when I got to the hospital; the thought made me shift anxiously in my seat. “It’s just so hard to believe. Error. Resubmit. Cannot compute.”
“Oh, there’s more,” James assured me. “I’ve been doing some research on Thornking-Ash—do you remember them?”
“Duh. They keep calling, trying to get me to send in an application.”
“I got a letter from them, too.” James slowed at a sign advertising the hospital and turned down a tree-lined road. Even through the lush green canopy overhead, purple-black clouds were still visible. Cars in the hospital parking lots glinted on the other side of the trees; my stomach squeezed, thinking about Granna inside. “Apparently, they’re a freak school.”
“I thought they were a conservatory. A what-do-you-call-it? Charter school?”
“Yeah, I did too. But I started looking up some grads and they all seemed sort of peculiar. Then I started calling the grads, and they were sort of peculiar. Apparently, musical genius, such as we possess, is strongly associated with being freaks, such as we are.”
“Do huh?”
James found a parking spot among a sea of cars; they all seemed to be silver, reflecting dull purple back at the sky. He turned the car off and swivelled in his seat to face me. “I finally got ahold of the recruiter you talked to, Gregory Normandy—he’s the head honcho, did you know? Anyway. I pinned him down. He told me psychic ability was linked to musical ability, and that good musicians frequently had what he called ‘gifts.’ What you and I call ‘freakdom.’ He claimed to be able to tell whether or not a musician had freakdom just by listening to them.”
