Sparrow sat in the far back corner of the Central Library, a stack of books at her elbow. The librarian thought she was doing research on fairy tales for a paper and had helped Sparrow use the library’s database to search articles and books on fairy lore, tales of fairy possession, and protection from fairies. She had a small spiral notebook and wrote down anything that might be useful to her now. She knew the usual things of course, a cross and holy water, though she shied away from them. She didn’t think it right or effective to use the sacred symbols of a religion one didn’t know anything about much less believed in.
No, she had been rescued all those years ago in the woods. She was pretty sure it was in nature that she would find her protection, even if she did live in the city.
The last two nights had been difficult, but she’d learned something since Hawk had marked her for a second time: the tattoos had the power to harm her only when she slept at night. With enough coffee, she could stay awake till morning. Then she could sleep, but only restless catnaps to avoid the dreams that still hovered even during waking hours.
In that time, Marti and Mitch had cleaned the downstairs apartment and quietly moved in. Sparrow told them the new lease was coming soon. That gave her a chance to pick up a boilerplate lease at a stationery store and write in the house name and Marti and Mitch’s name as well. She decided against a new roommate. Instead, she planned to get a second job like waitressing or something to help pay Marti’s share of the rent. She didn’t want anyone else in her home while dealing with Hawk.
Leaning back in her chair, she yawned, stretching her arms overhead. The long sleeve of her turtleneck pulled back and revealed the snake’s head, its fangs still clamped around her wrist. Sparrow yanked down the sleeve to hide it and returned to the book in front of her. It was a textbook on psychological disorders and Sparrow had thought it an odd choice until the librarian pointed out a section of the book that dealt with patients whose psychoses were clustered around various claims of fairy possession.
“Maybe this could help you find what you need,” she’d said, sympathetically.
Their stories unnerved Sparrow, made her wonder and second-guess her own life, for these patients had also grown up in small communities, with histories of child abuse, domestic violence, and tragedy. She tapped her right forefinger against a passage about a girl whose history was a bit too much like hers.
But not one of the patients—not even the girl on the page under Sparrow’s finger—had lived what she had lived through, Sparrow reminded herself. Not one had been claimed by the woods, staying two years among the wild, sheltered at night by deer. In those days, when she needed it, she’d found clothing waiting for her beneath a bush or tree; not just stolen jeans and T-shirts, but also woven cloaks of rough wool, felted mittens lined with down feathers, and hats of rabbit skin. For most of the year there was always food growing wild: onions, sorrel, fairy spuds, berries, mushrooms, and nuts. And when there wasn’t enough to scrounge in the dead of winter, she would wake to find a small cake in her hand made of seed, dried berries, and coarse-ground flour.
“Match that!” she whispered to the people in the book.
She might never have been found had she not wandered too close to a campground one spring night, attracted by the sounds of human laughter. She’d been spotted by a young couple, who coaxed her closer to their fire. Though she’d tried to resist, it was no use. She’d missed the sound of human voices. They’d fed her cookies, and as she savored the sweet exotic taste, they had asked her a few questions. She tried to remember how to lie, or better, tell the truth without saying too much. But it hadn’t worked. While Sparrow waited for the woman to heat up some dried stew from a small clear pouch plunged into boiling water, the man had disappeared. Sparrow thought he had gone to relieve himself, but he returned shortly with a park ranger, who clapped his hand on her shoulder and asked her far more penetrating questions while she shoveled the food into her mouth. Three hours later, she was in custody, the forest far behind her.
Bending over the book again, Sparrow read the case study of a woman who was convinced she’d lived in the fairy world as a child. She described the splendor, the music, and the unbearable longing that filled her heart when she was unable to find the door into Faerie again. Sparrow knew how the woman felt. Twice she’d run away from foster families. Good people but at a loss how to cope with her. Her nightmares unsettled the other children, her shy silence taken for sullenness. But when she’d run back to the woods, something had changed. The animals fled from her, the nights were cold, and no food or clothing appeared in the morning. The door to Faerie was truly shut. She was suddenly more alone than she’d ever been in her life.
I stink of the city, she’d thought then. But soon after, she discovered that while the door was closed to her, it was not closed to them. She saw and heard what other humans did not: the hooves beneath the long hem of a pretty girl’s skirt; a cocky young man’s gleaming yellow eyes as he strolled under streetlights whistling; the small voices that chattered in the rosebushes, in the branches overhead. She had followed a man and a woman one winter day because the man’s face wavered as he looked at the woman. The woman saw only the handsome face, blond curls over a broad forehead and a white-toothed smile. But when he tilted his head to the side, Sparrow saw the coal-black eyes, hollowed cheeks and fangs. She wanted to warn the woman, but didn’t know how without calling attention to herself. So she followed them, but only a little way for the man raised his head and looked behind him. Sparrow ducked into a shop, terrified, for she had seen the horns curled around his temples, and the red snake of his tongue as it tasted the air. That was when she realized they hunted here, just as humans hunted in the woods.
As Sparrow scanned the pages of the case studies, she realized the one thing she’d learned on her return to the human world, and that was how to lie. It had saved her from the well-meaning but clueless therapists and the patronizing foster parents, but not from the hunters and creatures who prowled around her in the bars, on the streets, or anywhere she stayed too long. They knew she was not difficult but different. And they resented it. She was like the midwife in the story called to assist at a fairy birth who was given the ability to see into the fairy world only to have her eyes gouged out later by a malicious fey.
“Screw that,” Sparrow murmured. It was time to even the score somehow. Not just for me but for all those hunted women. She would arm herself with whatever was necessary and go after bastards like Hawk. It wasn’t actually murder, was it? After all, he wasn’t human, of that she was certain. And if others followed . . . ? Sparrow shrugged. She’d worry about that when the time came.
Checking her list of items, she realized that most of the things on it were easy enough to find: Saint-John’s-wort, thyme, and comfrey for one’s pockets; red verbena, white daisies, primroses, and peonies to shield one from fairy mischief; stakes made from elderberry, ash, and juniper for protection. Iron she could find down by the train tracks, or at any construction site.
And the last thing she needed was silver. A bit of pure silver. The only charm capable of severing the life from that murderous son of a bitch.