“Says him, if you bothered to ask.”
He had tried, in a roundabout kind of way. He’d invited his brother out for a beer, said they should catch up. He’d extended an olive branch, and it might have worked if that asshole of a handler hadn’t whisked him away.
“Stop being jealous of him. Eat that and find what he has.”
“I’m not jealous of my dweeb of a little brother!” he snapped, though even he heard the childishness in the statement. Because he did envy his brother. Josh was smart, as in PhD in chemistry smart. He had true friends like Savannah, who was worth a dozen of the dumbass jerks Bruce had surrounded himself with in high school. And yes, Bruce had found a team in his fellow firefighters, but they all had their own lives. Sure, they had his back in a fire, but at the end of the day, they went home to their families, whereas Bruce just went home.
“Why are you doing this?” Bruce asked.
“Why do fairies do anything? Because we’re bored. And in this case, I’m waiting for dawn over White River State Park, when your brother and his lover fix my problem and become my slaves forever.” He grinned in a truly malevolent way. “Why are you doing this?”
Bruce dropped his voice as dread slid through his body. “What do you mean ‘slaves forever’?”
The fairy waved a single carrot-stick finger at him. “That’s need-to-know only, brother. And you don’t need to know.” He waggled the sliced onion that served as his eyebrows. “Unless, of course, you want to be what he is. Then all you have to do is pop the cherry into your mouth.”
“And become your slave forever?”
“Nope. That there”—he pointed to the cherry—“that’s a freebie. Eat it and you’ll get exactly what your brother has—no more, no less. You’ll be stronger than you ever have been before. Faster too. Think what a difference that would make at work.”
Bruce did think about it. He thought about all the times he’d been too slow or too weak to save people in trouble. A boy had died because Bruce hadn’t been able to carry both him and his sister at the same time. A floor had collapsed, breaking his best friend’s back, because Bruce hadn’t been fast enough with the axe to get them both free. What would it mean to be better at work than he’d ever been before? Who could he save if he ate that beautiful little cherry?
But the fairy prince wasn’t done. While Bruce was still feeling the desperate pull of temptation, the creature waved his hand over the dash. Suddenly next to the cherry there was an apple, as big and beautiful as the one that had tempted Snow White. The color showed like a dark ruby, and its scent filled the interior of the car with the smell of warm apple pie. It filtered into his thoughts and his darkest desires. Bruce was already reaching for it when he stopped short.
“What is that?” he demanded as he forced his hand down.
“That, my friend, is going to cost you. Eat the little fruit, and you get the same thing as your brother. Same wolf nature, same wolf power, same wolf needs.” He hesitated for a moment on that last word, and Bruce was smart enough to note that it was significant. But he didn’t have time to ask, because the fairy kept talking. “But eat the other one and you get more. More power. More strength.”
“More needs?”
“Hell yes,” the guy said with a grin. Then he shrugged. “Look, if you don’t want it, don’t take it. I’m not forcing anything on you.”
“Just offering me a gift horse, and I’m not supposed to look into its mouth.”
“It’s shaped like an apple, so it doesn’t have a mouth.”
He was trading witty words with a salad elf. And he wasn’t even drunk. Best to focus on what he cared about. “How—exactly—is my brother enslaved to you?”
The elf shrugged. “He’s not yet, but I’ll get him. He’s one little fairy promise away from taking orders from me.”
The elf’s confidence was annoying, but it didn’t seem misplaced. Josh couldn’t resist diving into weird shit. He was a nerd, a geek, and a freak, all rolled into one gullible package. If anyone would take what this fairy offered—hook, line, and sinker—it was Josh. Which meant that if Bruce wanted to be a good big brother and not an asshole, he had to do whatever it took to save Josh from himself.
But he wasn’t going to do it by eating fairy fruit.
He was going to talk to his brother, even if it meant facing off with Nero. So without another word—and only a single last glance at the cherry—Bruce opened his car door. Or he tried. There wasn’t a door latch. He fumbled around trying to feel for where it should be, but all he got was smooth paneling.
“I can’t let you interrupt him right now,” the fairy said cheerfully. “First off, what they’re doing now—nobody wants you to see that. Second, there are rules to a fairy offer. You don’t go getting cherries without popping somebody’s cork somehow.”
“What?”
“Mixed metaphor?” the fairy asked. “Human language is so hard to understand sometimes.”
Bruce shook his head. He’d started this day after a long night shift, and now it was well past one. That was probably the real reason he was talking to a salad fairy. He’d fallen asleep in his car and was dreaming. “Let me out of my car.”
“I can’t let you interfere with tomorrow’s events. There’s too much at stake for both our worlds. It’s too dangerous.”
“But you will if I eat the cherry.”
“Pop the cherry! Isn’t that the expression? Don’t you want to pop it?”
“Answer the fucking question. If I eat the cherry, do I become immortal?”
“Hell no. You become a werewolf, just like your brother. He’s not immortal. He’s optionally hairy and somewhat immortal under the right conditions.” He grinned. “Like when he starts working for me.”
An
