Yes. But what if?
Chapter 5: Rayne
When I got home later that afternoon, I was surprised to find a VW van in my driveway, the owner sitting on my front porch.
I parked my truck, grabbing the empty wooden crates from the back, then climbed the steps of the porch to my old farm house.
“Hi, Cassidy,” I said apprehensively. Cassidy, the other faerie who lived in Chancellor, had stripped off her sneakers and was rocking back and forth on the porch swing while blowing an enormous bubble. She’d pulled her long red hair into a pony tail.
“Great view. How’d you get these digs?”
I shrugged. “Luck.”
“Leprechaun help you?”
I shook my head. “I don’t deal with them. Sneaky buggers.”
“Yeah. There’s that. So, we’re invited for dinner.”
Uh-oh. “Really?” I asked, trying to shake off my obvious apprehension.
“Yep,” she said, slipping her shoes back on.
“Do I need to change?”
She shook her head. “No, just the usual fare. Nothing fancy.”
“Then I guess we’d better go?”
Cassidy shrugged. “Want me to drive?”
Hardly. Last time she drove, we almost died five or six times, but I wasn’t about to remind her. “That’s okay. I’ve got a full tank.”
I set the wooden crates down by the front door then headed back down the stairs.
“Someone call you?” I asked Cassidy.
“Text.”
I pulled out my phone. Nothing. Sometimes faerie etiquette puzzled me. After all this time with humans, couldn’t we adopt a few of their better traits? I slid back into the truck and started the engine, Cassidy popping into the seat beside me.
“What’s all this?” she asked then, picking through the box I’d picked up at the antique shop.
“Mostly knickknacks. I spotted some tools I wanted at an auction, but I had to buy the box to get them.”
“Cute,” she said, lifting some sort of figurine that looked like a cross between a troll and Santa.
“It’s all yours.”
She laughed. “Thanks,” she said as she continued digging.
“I didn’t even look. Anything useful in there?”
“Hum. Let’s see. An old pot, some painted Easter eggs, chopsticks, some weird kind of vase, and this,” she said, lifting a metal contraption. “What the hell is this?”
“An apple peeler, I think.”
“Shoe box,” she said, opening the lid to look. “Too small for me. Pretty though. Oh, here we go,” she said, pulling out a little Hawaiian hula girl which she suction-cupped to my dashboard. “Perfect.”
I laughed. Guiding the truck down the back roads, the hula girl dancing in tune with the potholes, I finally reached Route 5 which trailed alongside Lake Erie.
“So which one of us is in trouble?” Cassidy asked.
“Not sure. The bees say I’m getting close, but I’m still not there yet. How about you?”
“Um, yeah, she got into college but still no prom date.”
“So…both of us?” I asked with a laugh, which Cassidy joined.
“Yeah, probably. I’m just going to focus on the onion rings. The diner has great onion rings.”
I grinned. She was right. At least there was that.
We pulled into Fairway Diner about half an hour later. The little restaurant, which sat along the lakeshore, was a landmark go-to place for college students to study…and sober up. The neon sign above the teal and chrome building buzzed as Cassidy and I passed underneath.
“Two?” the hostess asked. “We got a booth in the back.”
Cassidy shook her head and glanced around. “No. We’re with some people.”
The hostess sized us up. “There?” she asked, pointing to the couple sitting near the back of the diner.
Great. Not only were they faerie elders, but it was Ziggy and Skyla, the elders who kept watch over the entire faerie community in the northeast. Cleary, one of us was in for a scolding.
“Crap,” Cassidy whispered under her breath.
“Yep,” I agreed. “That’s them,” I told the hostess who was smiling at me.
“Thought so. So, are you from around here or just passing through?” she asked me as she led us back to the table.
Distracted, I hadn’t been paying attention to the glamour I was casting. In the presence of other faeries, my twinkly glow was buzzing so loudly that a few other women in the room looked up as I passed.
“Oh, no. My girlfriend and I are just here on vacation,” I replied.
The hostess frowned.
Cassidy laughed.
“That’s too bad,” the woman said, clearly dejected, as she set our menus at the edge of the table. “Here you go. Waitress will be over in a minute.” As the hostess walked away, I saw her frown sharply and shake her head, clearly chiding herself for the sudden flirtatious behavior that had swept over her.
Ziggy smiled at us as we slid into across the teal-colored vinyl seat, the upholstery groaning and crackling. The gold and silver flecked Formica table must have been freshly wiped down; it held the scent of bleach and dirty dish water.
“Rayne and Cassidy,” Ziggy exclaimed happily. “We haven’t ordered yet. Pick something. Dinner is on us.”
I eyed the faerie elder. He looked, as always, like he’d just stepped out of the sixties. His long silver hair fell in loose locks all around his shoulders. The swirling designs of his multi-colored tie-dyed shirt accented the silver of his hair. He wore rings on every finger and strings of beads around his neck.
“Starving,” Cassidy said. “They still have those onion rings?”
“I was going to get those too,” Ziggy said then turned to Skyla. “What about you, Peaseblossom?”
“Salad,” she said flatly then set down her menu.
Ziggy frowned. “Just salad? Who knows when we’ll be back this way again? It’s not like we get many problems from Chancellor.”
“Okay, okay, salad and poutine.”
“What’s poutine?” Cassidy asked.
“Fries topped with gravy and cheese. It’s a Canadian thing.”
“Oh! I want that. I still need to get over to the falls. You two get over there much?” Cassidy replied. She was making small talk, but I noticed the tremor of worry under her nonchalant tone. Why, exactly, were we here again?
“From time to time. Rayne, you’re quiet. Hungry, my boy?” Ziggy asked.
“I can eat. Alice filled me up at lunch, but I always have room for diner food.”
“I took Twyla and her friends down to the bagel shop last week. They complained that I took them for carbs, but they ate all the same and have been raving about it since,” Cassidy said, referring to her assignment, a teenaged girl name Twyla.
I smiled weakly then glanced at Skyla who was looking closely at me. Though she appeared to be around sixty in human years, her hair was a youthful sunflower yellow color. Her yellow curls tumbled over her shoulders. She was wearing a sundress with a sweater over it. Like Ziggy, she wore lots of jewelry. All faeries seemed to love shiny baubles. I couldn’t help but notice, however, that she was wearing her infamous mirror amulet. While it looked like a simple piece of adornment, it was anything but. All faeries had their ways of keeping up with their work. The bees and I had our own routine, but everyone knew that Skyla could see quite a lot in that little mirror. I suddenly felt nervous. What had she seen?