With a Kiss (Twisted Tales) (9 page)

My dad looked at my mother. They let me get away with murder—that’s what I was banking on. They wouldn’t with Daphne, but then again she was normal, and they wanted so badly for me to be normal. I waited breathlessly for the verdict and tried to look motherly. Having a baby under my wing would only make me more human.

Just as I thought, my parents broke into a smile and nodded. Psychologists. They left, murmuring something about finding blankets for my new charge. I slammed the door shut again.

“Halley?” Daphne called through the door. Oops. She was still out there
and
the most dogged of the bunch. “I just want to talk to you. It’s been so long since we’ve done anything together.”

Daphne just wanted an excuse to spend time with me. I shoved the baby at Hobs and slid down the flimsy door onto a pile of clothes. I put my hands over my ears the more she talked. I couldn’t understand why this was affecting me so much. For some reason, I really wanted to have some girl time with her too. I heard loneliness in her voice that I never understood before, and now? It hurt really bad not to go to her. “Not right now,” I said, “okay?”

I heard her shuffle away and felt a sense of loss, but I wasn’t sure why. She had something she wanted to tell me, something important to her . . . and I actually cared. My hand went over my heart where the faery queen had touched me. I had to fix this. I got up and swiped all the junk off my chair, so I could sit down at the computer. I needed to figure out where the faeries were and how to get the baby there . . . and hopefully break this curse they had over me. I couldn’t take being normal anymore. It hurt too much. Pulling the year-old Post-it Notes from my screen, I brought up the Internet and typed in fairies with an
i
. I got more than a million links.

Hobs dragged a chair one-handed from my vanity to sit down next to my computer. He stared at me. Babs did too and I had a hard time concentrating on the information on the computer screen. “Do you have a shard of ice in your heart? Is that what happened to you when you got sick?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Can you feel?”

I snorted.
More than ever.
I didn’t want to admit that my heart had been virtually dead before this. Just who were these faeries anyway? And why did they have so much control over me? “The queen sent you to help me,” I said, “so help me already. Why don’t you tell me how to get this baby back home?”

“Wait three days. You heard the queen.”

“I can’t wait three days!” I skimmed through the sites like my life depended on it, which it did. Even now I could feel my eyes water over with exhaustion. Besides the threat of drowning with these new emotions that washed over me, I felt like I was swimming through heavy water . . . slower than a zombie. Or maybe more like a Banshee? A drowning mermaid?

Forget it.

“And you think an Internet search will tell you what you need to know? Such faith.”

“Well, you won’t tell me!” I clicked on the first site and then to the next and the next. “I need to figure out how to get to the Otherworld—the sooner, the better. If you won’t help me, then quit bugging me.”

Hobs leaned his chin against Babs’ bobble head. She shook her swirly toy at me. “Baby, this
is
the Otherworld.”

I refused to believe it and skimmed through the pages, site after site: faeries were a race of the gods. I glanced over at Hobs.
Doubtful.
Babs dropped her swirly toy and tugged a stuffed yellow chick from a shelf, trying to gnaw on it. She must be teething. Hobs tugged it teasingly from her and played keep-away with it. She didn’t participate, just watched. He threw the stuffed animal then rolled it down his arm and bounced it off the faint stripes of his jeans like it was a Hacky Sack.
Yeah.
I checked the deity theory right off the list and read through some others.

After the defeat of the sons of Mil, the faeries escaped underground
or
to a different dimension
or
across the ocean to the west.
America?
Well, I sure hoped so. That would make things a lot more convenient since I wouldn’t have to travel across the ocean to get these two back home. I only had three days to do it—talk about incentive. My gaze darted across the screen. The faeries called their land the Sidhe, pronounced
she
.
Or
it was called Tuatha
or
land of the young
or
. . . I leaned my head back. “I’ll never figure this out!”

Hobs grinned and I uneasily ignored it. The more I learned, the more I realized how impossible it was to pinpoint where to find the faeries’ domain. Everyone had a theory. Scandinavians, Celts, Germans. I had no doubt my newfound friends caused a ruckus everywhere they went. But I had nothing to go on, except rumors passed down from the ancients. It seemed the Celts had a pretty good superstitious handle on these things, which meant they probably had direct contact with faeries, but where were all their records? The stuffed chick hit me square in the face and I swiveled on Hobs. “So what about you? Did someone curse you to be annoying?”

He shrugged. “Sorry. I’m not used to sitting and doing nothing.”

Yeah? I stole the stuffed animal
from him. The guy couldn’t keep still. He was more a baby than Babs was. I turned back to the screen. What was the connection? Faeries seemed to have a need for babies
and
women
and
young lovers
and
midwives . . .
and
why? What was the appeal of humans? Namely happy ones? Did faeries suck blood or something? Or people’s happy juice? Were they envious of our souls? I didn’t buy any of it. They took humans as slaves?
Maybe.

I glanced back at Hobs and with a start, caught him reading the site over my shoulder. His chin grazed against mine. “They got it wrong,” he murmured at length. “Faeries could care less about humans.” He turned a devilish look on me. “Unless they get in the way, of course.”

“Then what am I doing here?”

He laughed. “Good question.” He wasn’t about to answer it either. I went back to the computer for a clue. Faeries needed nature and music and dancing and moonlight. How dumb. They needed to be appeased with offerings. Hobs snorted at that and I pushed his face away from my shoulder, trying to concentrate. “They make us look really stupid, don’t they?” he said. “Maybe it stops mortals from being afraid.”

If that was the plan, it wasn’t working. I was very afraid, especially when I read about the dangers of a faery touch. It disfigured. It maimed. My heart lurched at the gory Celtic paintings on my screen.
A faery hand over a human head caused madness, the hand over the heart caused sickness . . . and a kiss? Death.
The faery queen had really done a number on me. I rubbed at my eyes, resolved to never touch Hobs again. “The queen did everything to me that she shouldn’t have done,” I said.

Hobs didn’t look concerned. “How else could she give you faery vision?”

“Well, for starters, she didn’t have to kill me!”
Your days are numbered here.
The queen had even given me a time limit and then I was dead.
One, two, three the sun circles. Another world you’ll see.
Three days and I was out of this world. My first day was almost gone. I had to figure this out before my time was up. “I have to break the curse,” I whispered.

Hobs scooted even closer to me, warmth emanating from him. I tried to pull away and knocked my elbow against the wall behind me. The baby tugged the stuffed Peep off the desk and started to gum it to death. “You want to try?” Hobs asked.

“Try what?”

“To break the curse. It only takes a kiss.” He looked at me like he wanted to go for it and I scowled at him. His lips turned up and his eyes probed mine as if he were trying to figure me out.

I refused to move, knowing exactly what would happen if he tried to kiss me. I’d smack him a good one. I had enough of faery kisses. “Oh, no you don’t. Kisses are deadly.”

“Not all the time. I’d say the kiss of the faery queen brought you back to life.”

“I
wasn’t
dead.” My voice cracked when he gave me that smile of his and I groaned. Of all the people to tug at my heart strings, he shouldn’t be the one.

“You
were
dead,” he said, “in a matter of speaking.”

The baby lost interest in the stuffed animal and grabbed at the chain around Hobs’ neck. Maybe it would choke him, but of course, it didn’t. He stuffed the toy back into Babs’ hands to keep her busy, but it was too late. My attention had been drawn to the medallion. It looked like a charm or a talisman. Is that where he held his power? I was close enough to find out, and without asking, I tugged it my way so I could inspect it. He got into my personal space, I’d get into his. Only he didn’t resist. I turned the medallion over in my hand. It was round and silver and still warm from his skin. There was writing engraved on it. It wasn’t just warm—it was hot. I yelped and dropped it. “That burned me!”

He smirked wryly. “Try wearing it.”

I swiveled back to my computer, typing
Hobs
in the search engine and got
kitchen hobs
. My nose wrinkled. C’mon, who was he? After a moment of hesitation, I put in
Puck
. A huge number of complaints popped up.
Devil, Pan, imp, pagan trickster.
Hmmm, apparently Shakespeare wasn’t the only who had trouble with him—the Germans and the Swedish couldn’t stand him. I raised an eyebrow at him. “You get around,” I turned back to read his online record, “. . . in more ways than one. You blow out candles and kiss girls in the darkness?” After reading that, I snickered, “Who would think it of you?” He didn’t have the grace to flush and I smiled, feeling tired. He was crazy like me. Was that why I liked him? Maybe there was something to say for the bad boys—as long as they weren’t real.

“Yeah, but look what a good protector I am.” He lifted his chin, indicating the screen. It was clear by his calm look that he didn’t agree with anything that was written about him, though according to the latest site, he was a good faery to have around . . . when it suited him.

I didn’t know what to believe anymore. I just wished I could find something more reliable than these foggy rumors lost in biased history. “If I could get hold of some old Irish manuscripts,” I said. Of course, no matter how speedy the delivery, I’d be dead by the time it got here. Three days’ time was nothing.

“What do the Irish have to do with this?” Hobs asked.

I felt like stomping my foot. “How else are we going to travel to . . . uh,”
for lack of a better word,
“. . . to faeryland?”

“Faeryland?” Just as I expected, he laughed. “That sounds as dumb as people-land. It’s the Sidhe. Get it right. You’re going to be spending a lot of time there.” He plopped Babs on the floor with a blanket, and after reading the tabloid headlines about the suspected Skinwalker peeling off his face at a golf course, he chucked that aside. “Useless, but this . . .” He pulled out the faerytales he made me buy. “This is all about the
Cloan ny Moyrn
.” His eyes sought mine. “Children of Pride,” he explained. “Don’t worry. It’s just a
euphemism. If I used the name of our real race, you’d invoke all the faeries down here at once. Then you’d see a real battle.”

I sucked in my breath at the thought. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

“Ah, so you
do
have a heart. Here ya go,
person
.” He handed the book of faerytales to me and I flipped through it, listening to him narrate. “These are the faery prophecies. The book of the ancients.”

It was just a regular children’s book:
Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rumpelstiltskin
. I gave him a look of disbelief. He just shrugged. “A lot of these records get lost in translation, of course. The pagans liked to put their spin on everything: Easter Bunny, Christmas trees, Valentine’s Day. Wow. Now
that
used to be a day.”

I had a hard time ignoring that. “So, this is essentially your people’s history?”

“Not really. These are prophecies. Big bad wolves? Girls getting stuck in towers. Gold spinning faeries stealing firstborns? What if I told you that faerytales were real, they just haven’t happened yet? And the happy endings? I’m sorry to tell you, but that’s just wishful thinking.”

It figured.

Chapter Eight

The bridal-songs and cradle-songs have cadences
of sorrow,
The laughter of the sun to-day, the wind of
death to-morrow.
Far sweeter sound the forest-notes where forest-
streams are falling;
O mother mine, I cannot stay, the fairy-folk
are calling.