As she pulled out of the lot, I glanced discreetly in the rearview mirror, hoping for a glimpse of Luke, but there was only an audience of birches visible. I wondered what would happen to the giant cat’s body.
“Alcohol wipes in the glove box,” Granna said. “We’ll clean it up better at my house.”
“Your house?” I paused, hand in glove box.
Granna really looked at me for the first time, and I blinked, seeing so much of Mom’s eyes in hers, hidden with crow’s feet. “Do you really want to explain that dress to your mother? I have some of your clothes at my house still.”
So maybe Luke was right. She would believe the truth.
“What was it?” Her voice was calm and even; she might as well have been asking, “How did it go?” or “Did you have a nice day today?”
I sighed, a little amazed that I was just going to tell the truth, and then I described the entire attack—from the loss of the ring to Luke’s rescue. I took great pleasure in telling that last bit, actually, after the way she’d treated him in the driveway. I waited for her to distill it into some tidy tale devoid of passion and danger, but she said nothing for a moment. The car was silent, except for its tires whirring on a road dappled with the shapes of summer leaves.
Finally her mouth quirked, and she said, “We should talk about this once you’ve gotten cleaned up.”
I wasn’t sure why the discussion would be any different once I was wearing different clothing, but Granna was as dangerous to poke as Mom. We didn’t speak again until we’d gotten to her old, L-shaped farmhouse in the middle of a cornfield.
“The clothes are upstairs in the guest room. In the closet on the shelf. I’ll get you some tea.” She headed for the kitchen and I headed up the stairs.
The farmhouse was always drafty, no matter how hot it was outside, and the guest room was the worst. Granna had covered the creaking, splintery wood floor with a colorful woven rag rug and hung bright abstract paintings on the pale-as-ice walls, but it always felt cold to me. Cold like nasty chill-in-your-head cold, not grab-me-a-sweater cold. Dad had told me that this had been Delia’s old room, and that as a child she’d nearly died here. Even without the dying part, just knowing that this room had helped form Delia’s charming personality made me hate it.
I grabbed my clothing from the closet—so that’s where my favorite baggy cords had gone—and changed in the bathroom. As I rinsed the dried blood from my skin, I remembered the feeling of Luke crushing me to him and the smell of him pressed against my nostrils. A fist squeezed my stomach at the memory … like nerves, but better.
Where is he now?
I joined Granna down in the kitchen, blinking in the bright sunshine pouring through the windows. She put a glass of iced tea in my hand and gestured for me to sit at the round table.
She studied my arm to see if I’d gotten it clean. “You know what’s happening here, don’t you?”
I felt a little stupid. “Faeries?”
She looked up at me abruptly. “Don’t say it. Say the word, and They’ll listen. There’s a reason why They’re called ‘The Good Neighbors’ and ‘The Fair Folk.’ The other word, it’s like an insult. It’s coarse.”
I drank some tea. Granna never made it sweet enough —something about refined sugars being bad for you, blah blah blah. “So, if you knew about Them all along, why didn’t you say anything? Just ‘oh here, wear this ugly ring,’ with no explanation?”
Granna pursed her lips, but I could tell she was trying not to smile. “So that’s why you washed it down the drain?”
“That really was an accident.”
“Mmm. They’ve always been a bit of bother to the female side of the family.”
Bit of bother. I’d just been chewed on by a cat that made Jaws look like an irritable guppy. If that was only a bit of bother, I’d hate to see the whole thing.
Granna drummed her fingers on the table. “You’re about the right age for Them to start making trouble. Shallow things. I don’t think They have much use for anything old or not beautiful. They’re only interested in brand new toys.” She shrugged, as if she were talking about an ant problem or something equally mundane. “So I gave you the ring.”
“You act like They’re nothing to be afraid of.”
She shrugged again. “If you’re wearing iron, They really can’t do anything. Why do you think there aren’t stories on the news about changelings and stolen children all the time? We have iron everywhere now. They bothered Delia and your mother when they were younger, and then They gave up.”
That was a weird thought. My straight-up mother being bothered by faeries? Delia was even weirder. I could picture the scene. Faerie: Come away, human. Delia: Why? Faerie: Untold delights and youth forever. Delia: I’m holding out for a better offer. Ta.
“Why didn’t you give me the ring sooner? You know, at birth or something.”
“I really thought that They had given up on us. But then I saw him, and I knew They were back.”
I didn’t have to ask who “him” was. My stomach lurched again, only this time it was nerves, and not the good kind. I didn’t know what to say. Anything I said would betray my increasing infatuation with him, and I didn’t think Granna would respond well to that. And even if I could get a question out with an innocent voice, I didn’t want to hear the answer.
I held on fast to the image of him saving me, and clinging to me after the cat was dead; I tied myself to it like a sailor to a mast, with a storm on the horizon.
And the storm came. “He’s one of Them, Deirdre.”
I shook my head.
“I know he is. I saw him twenty years ago, and he looked just the same as he did the other day.”
She had mistaken him for someone else.
“Right before the rest of Them show up, he does. He was there for Delia.”
I managed to get a few words out. “He saved me, Granna. Did you forget that part?”
She shrugged, irritatingly nonchalant. I wanted to smack her for casually trampling over my heart. “It’s all games, Deirdre. They love games. Cruel sports. Don’t you remember the old bedtime stories? Riddles and names and trickery. And why would They want you dead, anyway? They want to steal you away.” She mistook the look on my face, and unusual sympathy crept into her voice. “Oh, don’t worry! I’ll find you another piece of iron jewelry.”
I grasped the key at my neck and thrust it toward her. “He can touch iron, Granna. You said They couldn’t touch it. Well, he can. He could touch the ring, and he gave me this. He warned me about Them.” I pushed my chair back angrily. “I don’t think he’s one of Them.”
Granna pulled the lid off her box of emotions just long enough to let a frown escape. “Are you sure he can touch iron?”
In my head, his fingers touched the skin next to the key, held my fingers, glanced against the ring.
“I’m sure.”
She actually let another frown, a deeper one, out of the box. “He must—he must be some sort of half-breed. Something—did he have eyedrops?”
My heart, which had begun to beat faster at the word ‘half-breed,’ stopped when she mentioned the drops. I didn’t have to answer; my face told her everything she wanted to know.
“He has to use the drops to see Them.” She stood up and pushed her chair in. “I’m going to have to see if I can make something that will work on him.”
I couldn’t help myself. “Do you have to?”
She looked at me again, hard. “Deirdre, everything he’s told you is a lie. They don’t have souls. They don’t have friends. They don’t love. They play. They’re big, cruel children and They want shiny new toys. You’re shiny and new. He’s playing you.”
I thought I ought to feel like crying, then, but my eyes weren’t even a little wet. Or I should be angry, or something, but I was just nothing. I was so full of nothing that it was something.
“Go and relax on the sofa. I’ll be in the workshop, and I’ll take you home when I’m done.”
I didn’t answer, because nothing had no voice. I just did what she said and retreated to the living room, reaching for the image of Luke holding me, and finding nothing.
I watched Cops reruns until the shadows shifted and lengthened over the edge of the white wicker couch. The eight-hundredth cop was slamming the eight-hundredth criminal over the back of their car when my phone rang. I looked at the number and picked it up. “Hi.”
“Capital D!” James’ voice exclaimed, distantly.
I couldn’t work up the same enthusiasm. “Sorry I didn’t call you today. I’m at—”
“Granna’s. Your mom told me. She sounds pissier than an incontinent water buffalo. Can I come over and hang out?”
I considered. I didn’t know what I wanted, but being alone wasn’t it. “That would be great.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” James said, and I heard a car door shut outside the window. “Because I’m already here and it would suck to drive back home now.”
The phone went dead in my hand, and then I heard the screen door slam. James found me in the living room, and I stood up to move a stack of holistic healing books from the other end of the sofa.
He set a large, fast-food cup on the end table. “I know Granna doesn’t make it sweet enough, so I brought you some of the real stuff from Sticky Pig.” He eyed my arm, which was clean but obviously chewed on. “Are you okay?”
He looked so normal and safe, standing there with his summer-brown arms and his Sarcasm: Just Another Service I Offer T-shirt. He looked like every summer I’d ever known and reminded me of everything I couldn’t seem to have right now. I fought valiantly with a strange rush of emotions for about one-third of a second, and then I burst into tears.
“Hey, hey!” James sat down with me on the couch and let me cry onto his sarcasm T-shirt. He didn’t ask any questions or try to get me to talk, because that’s how awesome a friend he is. Realizing that just made me cry more. And then I thought of how pathetic this whole crying jag was, which made me cry even more.
James bundled me closer as I started to shiver, his arms wrapped tightly around me like a living sweater. My teeth chattered. I finally stuttered, “I think I’m in shock.”
He reached up and wiped tears from my cheeks with the side of his writing-scrawled hand. “Does this have anything to do with the chomp marks on your arm? If you had them before, I don’t remember them. And I’ve got, like, a crazy eye for detail.”
I laughed pitifully. “If I’d had a video camera when I got them, I’d be rich. It was this giant cat-thing.” I swallowed a new batch of stupid tears and shuddered again, involuntarily. “When will the shivering stop?”
“When you calm your ass down.” He stood up and tugged on my good arm. “C’mon. You need fries, obviously.”