The sisters looked at each other. The second one answered, “We speak your language. There are two hidden folk here, trapped as we were. Please free them and help us get back to our…” They turned pleading eyes to me. “Our boyfriends were caught too.”
“Are your boyfriends named Peasgood and Hyslop?” I asked, grabbing my light bulb moment.
They nodded in unison. They did a lot in unison.
“How did you guess?” asked fairy number one.
“Long story,” I said. “They’re free and safe and with our friends. Let’s get you reunited.” I reached for Bas’s shoulder and squeezed. “Can we go now?”
He unfolded his long legs and stood. “The sooner the better. Grab the cat. I’ll take the sisters,” he said and looked from one to the other, “if they’ll allow?”
They nodded, leapt into his arms, and drew the sides of his cape around their shoulders. Alabastair took off toward the cluster of weeping cherry trees and our portal, and I bent to pick up Jasper. The cat resisted then gave in. I ventured a guess all that spitting was exhausting.
Bas waved at me. “Would you please hurry?” he hissed. “Someone’s coming, and this is going to take two trips.”
“What?” Oh, hell no. No.
He put his forefinger to his lips. “Be right back.”
I stuffed Jasper into the canvas bag and dug my toes into the trimmed and prickly over-watered grass. A heavy body was running toward me—two heavy bodies—and I knew exactly who they were by the amount of stomach acid charging up my throat. I stepped away from Jasper, whipped my wand out of my pants, and pointed in the direction of Doug and his brother.
The men’s faces, silvered by the light reflecting off their outstretched and fully armored fingers, were bloodthirsty. The Doug and Roger I had known in my early twenties were abandoned to memory, their true faces now revealed more sharply than the night they’d crashed my party.
I gripped my little wand hard. I’d never felt this vulnerable and ill-equipped to handle a dangerous situation in my life. No Tanner, no Christoph, no mother.
Until Bear rose up on its legs behind me, surrounding my shoulders with fur.
A loud and steady heart reverberated against my back. Bear roared its displeasure.
Doug skidded to a stop, arms out to the side in what I was fast learning was a favored prestrike stance of the Fae, and laughed. “Are you growling at me?”
I shook off his sarcasm. Bear growled again, the sound moving through its chest, into mine, and out of my throat.
My throat. I was the one growling. And holding up a stubby crabapple stick against magic-infused metal and an overflow of rage. My dirtied toes tried desperately to hold ground with what strength the little digits had left.
Shit.
Roger tapped his brother’s extended, weaponized fingernails with his own. “If she gets away, it’s your ass on the line.”
I pointed the tip of my wand at Roger, ready to buy myself a few extra seconds with my full-name spell, when my waist was circled by a steady arm corded with muscles of steel.
“Got you,” Bas said, squeezing me hard. The air punched out of my chest. “Close your eyes. This is going to be a bumpy ride.”
Doug’s roar, heard way too often this summer, echoed in my ears.
Bas held me, and I held the bagged cat—that much I was aware of—and the suction I’d felt on my first portal ride returned. This time we landed at the ocean’s edge, scrambled across barnacled rocks and up an embankment to an arbutus tree, and were pulled into the suction again.
I opened my eyes when we stopped. My feet slipped on Astroturf in a lit-up sculpture park in what looked like Seattle. I dry-heaved, closed my eyes for another leg of Portalmania, and finally caught my breath under the familiar arms of my crabapple tree.
Bas let me go. I rolled to my side and lost my cookies in the grass. Throwing up was becoming a thing, and I was tiring of it, fast. Belle must have an herbal remedy. Or maybe the combination of both real and existential nausea were part and parcel of awakening one’s magic.
While I philosophized in my head and waited for another wave of queasiness to pass, Alabastair called to me. “Calliope Jones, you are magnificent. Let’s get you washed up.”
“Where’s Jasper?”
Bas held up the bag, still zippered shut. “In here. You might want to wait to let him out. I think he’s a bit peeved.”
“Where are the fairy sisters?”
Before Bas could answer, headlights swept the driveway. A car engine cut out. More lights, higher up, signaled the arrival of another vehicle. A truck engine choked, four doors slammed one after the other, and familiar voices called out across the front of the house.
“They’re back,” I said.
“Are they good guys or bad guys?” asked Alabastair.
“Really good guys.” I wiped my mouth with the bottom edge of my long-sleeved T-shirt. “Come and meet some of my family.”
Bas passed me the handles of the canvas bag. “Another time,” he whispered. “I took the fairies to their boyfriends, and I must to go back. Maritza will expect me to ask all the questions, and I want to have all the answers. She’s that thorough, and I’m that eager to please.”
He probably couldn’t see my weak smile, but I was pretty sure my new friend had a crush on his teacher.
“Will I see you again?” I asked.
“Yes, my dear Calliope, you will see a lot of me in the coming months.” Bas gave another dramatic flourish of his cape, touched the crabapple tree, and winked away.
“C’mon, Jasper.” I hauled the bag across the grass to the accompaniment of growls. “The kids are home.”
Rounding the side of the house, I waved at Wes and winced. Barnacles had cut up my feet. Christoph gave me a hug and a worried glance. “Did you just throw up?”
“Puked right over there in the
