Mysteria Nights

rarely smiled, and both her sisters took it as a gift, and not without astonishment.

“Teach him to call our mother names,” Derisive added, and spat again for good measure.

“Girls!”

“Uh-oh.”

Derisive craned to look. “Must have run out of leprechauns to look at.”

“You girls!” Their mother was running toward them at full speed, black curly hair bobbing all over the place. The triplets knew they took after their late father; their mother was petite, while they already had two inches on her; she was dark-eyed, while their eyes were sky-colored; and they had straight blond hair that hardly moved in gale-force winds. “Girls! I swear, I can’t turn my back on you for five seconds!”

“That’s true,” Withering said. “You can’t.”

“Get him down! Right . . . now!”

The triplets studied their mother, whom they loved but did not like, and tried to gauge the seriousness of her mood. A grounding, they did not need. Not with Halloween only three months away.

“Girls!” Panting, shoving her hair out of her eyes, even wheezing a little, Giselle Desdaine staggered up to her girls and glared at them so hard her eyeballs actually bulged. That was enough for the triplets, who, as one, made the V with their fingers, said, “Extant,” in unison, and spat.

Mr. Raggle shot out of the tree just as their mother said, “Why don’t you just grow up?!?” He plowed into Withering, knocking them both back into the wishing well.

Two

Thad Wilson was back in Mysteria, and not at all happy about it. Unfortunately, he had been born here, lived the first twelve years of his life here, and had taken fifteen years to realize that Mysteria got into your blood like a poison. The kind that wouldn’t kill you but just kept you generally miserable.

An air force brat, his father had re-upped the spring he was in seventh grade (Thad, not his father), and around and around the country they went: Boston, Minot, Ellsworth, San Antonio, Vance, Nellis, Cannon. No wishing wells that really worked, no werewolves who disappeared during the full moon. No witches, no horses that brought nightmares. No wish-granting knickknacks. Just missile silos and PXs.

He’d been so bored he thought he’d puke. And as if bouncing around with his folks hadn’t been enough, once he was of legal age, he’d moved to six cities in five years. Finally, he’d given up and come back to Mysteria. He’d had no doubts about finding it. Once you lived there, you could always get back.

As it happened, the local river nymph (what had her name been? Pat? Pit?) had sold the building, and he’d bought it, turning it into a pizza place. Living in Chicago and Boston had taught him what real pizza was supposed to taste like, and by God, he’d show the other Mysteria residents just what—

He heard shrieking, dropped the dough, and bolted out the door. Lettering in track in both high school and college stood him in good stead now; his long legs took him to the scene of the crime (because, since the Desdaine triplets were involved, what else could it be?) in no time.

“You girls!” Mrs. Desdaine was yelling. The girls—whom Thad had very studiously avoided since getting back to town, they just reeked of trouble and were way too cute for jailbait—looked uncomfortable and unrepentant. “Get him down right now! Girls!”

That’s when he noticed the mailman, an unpleasant drunk named—what? Ragman? Raggle?—come sailing out of the tree and slam one of the triplets into the wishing well.

“Oh, shit,” he said, screeching to a halt before he could topple into the well himself.

Three

Mrs. Desdaine had helped the wet and enraged postal employee out of the fountain, and the man had run off without so much as a thank-you, which surprised Thad not at all.

Almost immediately after that, a creature shockingly ugly popped up out of the fountain. It smelled, if possible, worse than it looked: like rotten eggs marinating in vomit. It was about five feet tall, squat, with four arms and a long, balancing tail. It was poison green and had what appeared to be a thousand teeth.

Then Thad noticed that the creature turned the exact same shade of gray as the blocks making up the well. Ugly as hell, and a chameleon, too. Terrific.

Mrs. Desdaine was screaming. The two (dry) triplets were screaming. People were starting to come out of their stores, much too slowly, and he put on speed.

He was, in the language of the fey, naragai, which literally translated to “no will.”

What it actually meant was that he had inherited nothing from his fairy mother: not the immortality, not the strength, not the wings, not even the height (at six feet four inches, his mother was five inches taller than he was). Human genes, he had decided long ago, must be super dominant, because he took after his father in every way.

But he could run like a bastard, which he did now.

“Watch out, watch out!” he yelled, nearly toppling into the fountain himself as he tried to put on the brakes.

“That thing ate Withering!” one of the triplets wailed.

“My baby!” Mrs. Desdaine yowled.

The thing—it looked like a cross between a man and a velociraptor—climbed out of the fountain and stood on the brick walk, dripping and growling and slashing its tail back and forth like a whip.

Thad had no idea what he was going to do to it. Kick it? Breathe on it? Try to drown it without getting his face bitten off?

Then another figure rose from the water, this one a tall, luscious blonde dressed in tattered leathers and armed to the teeth; he counted two daggers and one sword, and those were just the ones he could immediately see.

“Wha?” was all he could manage.

She looked like she was in her early twenties, and he was amazed she’d come out of the fountain, which was only eighteen inches deep. Of course, the lizard man had come out of the fountain, too.

She smiled at Lizard Guy. “This will not end well for you.”

Lizard Guy snapped and snarled and wiggled all four arms at her. Its thighs were as big as tree trunks.

The gorgeous blonde did something with her sword; she was so quick he didn’t quite catch it. It was almost like she’d flipped it out of her back sheath and was now holding it easily in her left hand. She saluted the monster with it, smiling a little. Great smile.

“Dakan eei verdant,” she said, trilling her r. “Compara denara.”

Lizard Guy lunged at her. She ducked easily under the swing and parried with one of her own. “I’ve chased you across three worlds and ten years,” she said, almost conversationally. “Did you think I would let you get away now?”

Thad wasn’t sure if this was in addition to what she had said, or if she was translating what she had said. What was interesting was that she wasn’t out of breath, didn’t look excited or flushed . . . just businesslike.

Her backswing lopped off Lizard Guy’s head.

“Cantaka et nu,” she said, saluting the headless (gushing . . . purple blood, ech!) body. “Deren va.”

The other two girls had stopped screaming, and Scornful (or was it Derisive?) kicked Lizard Guy’s head out of the way. Thad had to give her props for her rapid recovery. He was still having trouble following the events of the last forty seconds.