Troll Or Derby, A Fairy Wicked Tale (7 page)

My point is, Coach might have seemed laid-back and unconcerned about what was happening to Deb, but in troll standards he was practically shooing me out the door.

I didn’t have time to ask who she was, how she fit into my destiny, how he even knew. I could feel deep down inside of me, past layers of cloudy memory, that she needed help and the only thing I could do to save myself from whatever was going down was to help her.

Who would know more about what was going on? Who could clue me in?

Zelda. Coach told me to see her, didn’t he?

She was sort of my aunt, and the ex-wife of the Coach, but we’d kept in touch despite the family difficulties. I’d always been good at reading her face. “Not everyone can see through Zelda’s mask, little Harlow,” she’d once told me. She wasn’t happy when she’d said it, but she also didn’t seem to hold it against me. I couldn’t blame her. In a world where secrets are guarded and everyone’s working an angle, you’ve got to be able to keep your cards close to your chest, especially if they’re tarot, you know?

She might not tell me everything I needed to know about what was going down, but I could at least read her facial reactions and attempt to piece together whatever truth was in her words.

It wasn’t that Zelda lied. She saw so many truths flash in front of her eyes that she sometimes forgot what she had told to whom, and free will had a way of canceling them out. I don’t know if she actually kept it all straight. How could she?

I would find this girl—Roller Deb—and take her with me to see Zelda. I took a deep, quenching breath and caught her scent, this time mixed with fear and muscle car. Not
her fear—someone else’s. A human who smelled strongly of Dave. A teenager. Great
.

If Dave wanted her, this could not be good. My mouth watered at the thought of combat with my cousin, and as far as this girl was concerned—well, all of a sudden I cared for her more than I thought possible.

Chapter Seven

Old Man Graber Had a Farm

Deb

The sun set quickly, and cool air filled the Mustang as Yoder broke speed limits all through town. In a few minutes, we were past the city limits sign, and deep in the heart of Country. The smell of cowshit and broken dreams filled the air. Aw, yeah. Or should I say “yee haw”?

“Who sent you?” I asked.

Yoder didn’t answer.

From Easter through Halloween, Graber’s was a busy tourist destination with a massive U-Pick operation and apple cider distillery. Graber’s Farm Market & Cidery occupied quite a few heavily-trafficked acres, but past the homemade caramels and the wine tasting booths, the original farm sprawled across a significant chunk of Laurents County.

It was said that the Graber family had once owned three counties in Indiana, before they started selling off land to other settlers. The Graber family was huge, and factioned. There were Amish Grabers, Mennonite Grabers, and those who’d cashed in on the agritourist biz, who were only costume Amish on the high-tourist weekends. Those were the Town Grabers.

The old-school Grabers were sort of a mystery, except for when Rumspringa was going on. They lived in a compound deep within Graber’s Farm. I’d never been there, but it always sounded like the movie
The Village
, to me.

Yoder turned the car down a gravel road about a mile from the Graber Family Eats and Bait Shack. The road was bumpy, and he drove the Mustang slowly through the dark woods with only the parking lamps on.

“Where’s your girlfriend?” I asked.

Silence.

I had no idea how deeply into the woods we had gone before we came to a clearing. Yoder parked next to a line of cars that I recognized from the school parking lot—though I hadn’t the foggiest idea who drove them.

I slipped my tennis shoes out of my backpack and traded them for my skates. We got out of the car, and by the light of the moon I could see a huge line of Amish buggies on the other side of the clearing. An old weathered barn hulked in the shadows beyond an enormous bonfire. Bales of straw ringed the fire and kids or adults (I couldn’t honestly tell) in street clothes and Amish dress were drinking cans of beer and laughing. A boombox up against the old barn blasted classic Metallica tunes.

“Now what?” I asked Yoder.

“Have a beer, I guess,” he said. “I done my job—I’m gonna make sure they know it, then I’m going to get my drink on and forget all about it, girl.”

The grass was high and wet, sticking to my jeans and seeping through my shoes. I couldn’t say I really wanted a beer—I hate them, actually—but once I sat down around the bonfire to warm up, I needed something to do besides wait in dread.

Despite his promise to leave me alone, Yoder and his girlfriend sat down next to me on the bale. Drunk and giggly, she sat on his lap, falling off every few seconds. Yoder handed me a beer.

“Word is, Dave is coming here to talk to you about your sister,” he said in a low voice.

“Is Gennifer coming to the party, that slut?” asked his charming girlfriend, before she fell on her rear again, her stringy blonde hair spread across the mud and muck.

Yoder ignored her.

“When’s he getting here?” I asked.

“Nobody ever knows,” Yoder said. He took a swig of beer and gulped it down hard, as if it hurt. For a moment he hesitated, and looked like he wanted to say more, but he tipped the beer fully upside down and finished it off, crushing the can and belching loudly before throwing it into the fire.

He didn’t look laid-back or cool or any of the other tags I was suddenly sure he was going for. Big Man on Campus, Redneck Edition? No way. This guy just looked sad and tired—and way older than seventeen.

I was tired, and moved down to sit on the ground where I could lean up against the straw bale. The fire danced before me, and little sprites of flame emerged, seeming to hold hands and skip. They were orange and gold, tinged with red. For some reason, they reminded me of the blue flames of the meth lab on fire, ten feet tall. I remembered the smoke bellowing up from Coach’s van earlier that day. Everywhere I looked, fire. The little fire sprites danced faster and faster, and I was just thinking to myself that they probably weren’t figments of my imagination at all, when I fell into a trance.

The forest was dark around me, and I was running—or skating—as fast as I could. A crowd rumbled behind me on the path. I could smell the pitch from the flames of their torches. Though I couldn’t see them in the dark, I knew they had pitchforks and they wanted to stick their tines into me, to hold my face to their torches and set me alight.

They were getting closer, closer—a hand reached out to grab me from behind. A hand in the darkness, without a face. I slipped and fell backward, my skates making it worse. Suddenly I was falling from a cliff in the dark of night, deeper and deeper into oblivion as terror enveloped me.

I awoke with a jerk, the word “No!” still stapled to my lips, the image of terrible dark wings in my mind.

“No, what?” a deep voice said, laughing.

I looked up, and across from me on the other side of the bonfire, stood Dave.

Chapter 7.5

Call Me

Harlow

I was waiting for her to say my name. It would cut through the fog, cut through the darkness and release me. Release me from what? Who did I need to find?

I knew the legends of the memory charms, but as soon as I began to recall them, I began to forget
her
. Roller Deb.

I could have lost my cool, could have lost my head, but that wasn’t my thing. Hadn’t been my dad’s thing, either. Wasn’t a Saarkenner trait—at least, not our branch of the family. My uncle Jag was kind of a wild card at times, but even he was a deep, slow burn. The coolest head wins, right? That’s what all the gunfighters said, in the paperback Westerns I’d read at the dump.

But all this thinking was pushing her out of my head. I had to remember her. She was the key. Emotions were unlocking inside me, memories leaving me.
Find her. Roller Deb. Take her to Zelda
.

I remembered the Wheelers—I didn’t know why. Marnie, so graceful on a pair of roller skates, at the Coach’s rink, in the early ‘80s. Pristine white skates with a big pink pom-pom on each toe. Skin-tight jeans and tight white tee shirt glamoured over her luxurious black fairy wings. Feathered Farrah Fawcett hair over a thin, boyish body, hips rocking as she boogie-skated. Rolling, bouncing. I must have been a very small child.

Roller Deb, Roller Deb, Roller Deb. The words repeated in my mind as each foot struck the pavement, the grass, sunk into the mud. No time for Marnie memories.

I hurried. I was sloppy. There were Bigfoot sightings in the news the following day, and one of my muddy footprints was the lead photo.

Then I was in the woods, the nocturnal animals frozen in fear or fleeing before me. The heavy scent of Dave’s lazy evil pervaded everything. Deb was here.

I would gain the tactical advantage by hiding, observing first, before I rushed in to rescue anyone. Just like those cowboys in the books. A cool head.

A fire blazed ahead of me in a clearing—Dave was throwing one of his famous teenager parties. I wondered who would die at this one.

Definitely not Deb. Definitely not me. Hopefully Dave. I’d see what I could do to make that happen.

Chapter Eight

Don’t You Want Me, Baby?

Deb

Dave has no redeeming qualities. He’s ugly, he smells horrible, he’s got a sick sense of humor, and he sells drugs to high school girls. So why did I suddenly have the urge to throw myself at him, kiss him hard on the lips, and be his baby mama?

He leered at me and beckoned with one hairy, warty finger. His fists were the size of small hams. Probably smelled like them, too.

The tiny figures I’d imagined dancing in the bonfire now leapt to his shoulders, one taking on a white glow and an angelic expression—the other burning deep red and stabbing him in the shoulder with a burning pitchfork.

“Should I, or shouldn’t I?” he whispered—but his voice was clear and carried across the meadow.

The party-goers paired up and drew away from the fire. Yoder carried his girlfriend away in his arms and threw her down in the tall weeds where she shrieked with joy. I heard a girl cackling out of control, and turned to see an Amish chick rubbing her body against an English kid in a way I’d only ever seen in music videos. (Hey, you probably already know this, but the Amish refer to all non-Amish as English. You got it?)

“What the hell is going on?” I asked. I didn’t like the way my voice sounded. Groggy. Slow.

Dave shook his head, laughing. “Thought I’d give you a taste of what you’ve been missing. Wanna little more?” He held out a can of beer to me.

“You drugged me!” I stumbled to my feet. “What was in this beer?”

“Little girl like you has no business drinking, anyway,” he said. “Didn’t your mama ever warn you about guys like me?”

“No one had to warn me about you, Dave. I saw what you did to Gennifer—where are you keeping my sister? I demand you give her back.”