Lu took the frisky pixies back to Keir’s property on the mountain, Zev disposed of the satyr’s body, Linda agreed to not leave forever until after my wind problem was resolved, and Marigold went to the family meeting. Without me. I really was the worst ever. Once again, Marigold was going to lie and make excuses for me. I had no idea how I would make it up to her, my siblings, and my dad. I’m not sure I ever could.
The stepladder in my closet wobbled. Keir was on the top of the steps, half-in and half-out of the attic trap door in my closet. After I’d bound my grimoire, I tossed it in the attic, hoping to never have to deal with it again. Total pipe dream. Now, since I only had one good hand and no abdomen, Keir was digging it back out for me.
“Careful,” I warned him. “I can’t catch you if you fall.”
My face and body that were still visible hurt from the beating. My left eye was almost swollen shut, and I worried that I had an orbital fracture. Linda had gathered some healing herbs then made me eat them. They’d helped somewhat, but not enough. I’d tried a couple times to return the portions of my body the air had replaced, but my efforts had caused more of my body to disappear, so I quit messing around. I definitely needed more information before trying again. Otherwise, I was going to turn into a morning breeze and blow away.
Keir coughed, then followed it up with a sneeze. “I think you have asbestos.”
“Just don’t inhale too deeply,” I said.
I heard Keir’s head smack a roof beam. “Ow. Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Is the big bad pooka afraid of a little asbestos?” When he didn’t answer, I said, “No asbestos. I had the house checked years ago when Michael developed a cough.” During his first few years, I worried all the time about every cough, sneeze, and hangnail when it came to my son. Honestly, I still worried, but thankfully for my kid, I was a lot less obsessive.
“Did you have to throw it so far back?”
“Yes,” I told him. “I never planned to open it ever again. I thought I’d made that clear.”
“Yeah, but did you really think it was going to be that easy?”
“A woman can dream.” Bob hopped onto the bed, and before I could stop him, the adorable floof was curled up in my empty space. I didn’t make him move. I mean, if two pixies could fornicate in the space, then Bob could hang out there.
Linda wobbled through the bedroom door, took one look at me petting Bob and shook her head. “Zis is disturbing. You are a mess, Kleinkind. I don’t know how you’ll survive without me.”
“I don’t have to find out if you stay.”
She gave an angry wave with her arm. “You’ve given me no choice.”
“I didn’t do anything,” I protested. “I mean, I didn’t do anything to you. I can’t help it if I’m not as homicidal as you are.”
“Those pixies bring nothing but death with them.” She pointed at me and then drew a bullseye in the air. “You’ll see. This disappearing act you are doing is likely their fault.”
“You can’t really believe that,” I told her.
“Silence!” She clapped her hands. When she got like this, she reminded me of Frau Blucher from the movie Young Frankenstein. Even so, Linda had become very important to me in a short amount of time. Granted, I’d had the gnome in my garden for years before I sparked to magic, so I hadn’t known she was a real person until then.
I wished I understood why she was set on leaving the garden, so I could talk her out of it.
“All the pixies are up the mountain at Keir’s place,” I told her, hoping that would help. “They won’t bother you anymore.”
“Their existence bothers me,” she replied.
Stubborn gnome. “What did Fair Konig and his people do to you?”
“I’m touching it,” Keir said from the closet. “It’s at my fingertips.”
“Watch the stitching. The metal thread will cut you.” That’s how the book had sparked my terra-craft.
Linda shook her head. “It doesn’t matter what his people did to mine,” she said. “You won’t break your bargain with him no matter what I say.”
“I might,” I said. “For you.” I wasn’t sure I could leave his group to fend for themselves against the likes of Sylva the Satyr and whoever came next for them. But I could figure out a way to get someone else to protect them. Maybe Zev. Hah. He would as soon as light them on fire, I’m sure. “If they did something terrible to you, and I have to choose between you and my word to the pixies. I choose you.”
“But you didn’t, did you?”
Painfully accurate. I almost wished she’d thrown something at me instead of hearing the hurt I heard in her voice. “I’m sorry, Linda.” I’d known she’d be mad when I agreed to protect the troupe until their week of mating and gestating came to its natural conclusion. But…. “I didn’t think you’d leave.”
“You don’t think,” she said. She pointed at my missing arm and stomach. “That’s how you get in these predicaments.”
“Got it!” Keir said excitedly. There was another wobble of the stepladder, then a “Whooa!” and my usually graceful guy came tumbling out of the closet and onto my hardwood floor. He was clutching the bound grimoire against his chest. He glanced over at me. “I found your book.”
I raised my brows. “I see that.”
He plopped it on the bed next to me. “Undo it.”
I had changed twine to metal with an off-the-cuff spell. I wasn’t sure I could remember it exactly enough to reverse the spell. “That might be a problem.” With my corporeal hand, I traced the bindings. They turned back to twine and then charred to ash before they fell away without me casting any spell. “I take that back.”
“Your grimoire is eager to help you, Kleinkind. That’s what it lives for.”
Well, poop. I’d forgotten the leather-bound tome was alive when I bound it and chucked it in the attic. I’d trapped a living creature because of fear, and I kept it locked away so I wouldn’t have to deal with more new magic.
“I forgot,” I told it. “I’m sorry.” The elemental symbols for Earth, Fire, and Air began to glow yellow, red, and light blue. It was keen for me to open it, but I couldn’t shake my reluctance.
“Do you want to stay half-woman half-air for as long as you can live before you starve because you have no digestive tract right now?” Linda asked. Talk about getting down to the heart of it.
“Fine.” I frowned. “No funny business,” I told the grimoire. “Or next time, I’ll throw you in the lake.”
The symbols began to flicker in a pattern like disco lights.
“I think you’re making it nervous,” Keir said.
“Me?” The book had been nothing but a pain in the ass since I’d bought it at the auction. Or rather, it had manipulated me into bidding on it. “This thing has had an agenda since before we met. I’m the one who should be nervous.” I sighed. “Will you open it for me?” I asked Keir. It was hard to brace yourself up and turn pages. The grimoire flopped open, and the pages fluttered for a second, then stopped. “Okay. This is new.”
“I guess it didn’t like being cooped up in a tiny attic crawl space,” the gnome said.
“Zip it, Linda,” I said automatically, then wished I could take it back. Being contrary wasn’t going to get her to change her mind about going. “I mean, I totally get it.” I ogled the book. “My bad, Grim. Won’t happen again.”
Keir chuckled, but the levity didn’t erase the worry creasing his forehead. “What’s it showing you?”
Blood of my blood, daughter of fade and bright.
Tears of my tears, prepare for a harrowing fight.
To fight what is not there, first, you must harness the air.
Ignorance is the greatest sin. Learn what you must or be dust in the wind.
Goddess, help you.
I sighed. “Once again, Ol’ Grimmy has a lot to say about nothing. When have any of these fights not been harrowing? And if one more person or thing calls me stupid, I’m going to explode.”
A chunk of dirt hit me between the eyes.
“Linda!” I locked gazes with the gnome.
“Intention,” she reminded me. “Your magic is fueled by intention. Unless you really want to explode the next time someone calls you stu—”
I held up my hand as bile burned my throat. “I take it back. I will NOT explode if someone calls me stupid because that’s exactly what I am. Sheesh.”
“See, you’re not so ignorant you can’t learn.” Her rosy gnomy face was a little too smug for my taste. “What’s that line about dust?”
It dawned on me that Keir hadn’t said anything about the cryptic grimoire poem. “Maybe the grimoire is a Kansas fan,” I said, referencing the song Dust in the Wind. “I mean, it’s possible.”
Linda tsked. “I take back my previous observation.”
“Oh!” I snapped my fingers and almost fell over before I slapped my palm back down on the bed. “What about pixie dust? Right. Fair Konig’s dust is highly sought after, so maybe that’s what it means. Maybe I’ll turn to….” I paused and looked at Keir. “Dust. Shit. My magic is killing me again, isn’t it?”
“We don’t know that for certain, Iris.” But I could see by his expression that he was really worried it meant just that. My terra-craft, before I got ahold of it, nearly turned me into magical dust that a dozen rogue druids had wanted to snort up to become sorcerers.
If I’d had guts, I’d have hurled. “It’s happening again, isn’t it?” I tilted my head back. “So much bullshit!” I let out a cry of frustration. Not even Bob’s oxytocin-producing juju could ease my worry and frustration. Keir put his arm around me, and his hand slid into the empty space. I shook my head and leaned away from him, flopping sideways on the bed. “Don’t touch me. It’s too weird.” A sob choked from me. “Let me blow away in peace.” Or in pieces.
“Get up, Liebling. There is no giving up,” Linda commanded in her brook-no-bullshit tone.
“Why do you care, Linda? You’re leaving me anyway.” Damn, like the force in Star Wars, the pity party was strong in me. “Just go. Both of you. If I don’t make it, I leave all my aether dust to the two of you to use or dispose of as you so choose.”
“Don’t start writing your will and testament just yet, love,” Keir said. He crawled on the bed behind me and rested his hand on my hip. Bob began to purr louder as he rubbed his ears over Keir’s fingers. My poor chonky-chonky was trying his best, but not even his feel-good vibes could lighten my mood. “I’m sorry, Bob. You’ve been a good familiar. I know you’ll find a good home when I’m gone.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Linda said with an eye roll. “Get back into zee grimoire and, as your sister Marigold is so fond of saying, figure die Scheisse out.”
I sniffled. I felt empty and defeated.
“You’re not a quitter, Iris,” Keir said. “Don’t quit on me now.”
He was right. I wasn’t a quitter. So, why did I feel like giving up was the only option? “I think someone or something is making me feel this way? Maybe the magic. I don’t know. I feel…despair. Like the bottomless pit kind.” To some degree, I’d been feeling it since the pixies’ arrival. Was it Fair Konig making me feel this way? “Do you think the pixies have done something to me? To my magic? Could it be affecting my mood?”
Linda could’ve used the opportunity to bash the winged creatures she hated so, but she didn’t. “It’s not the pixies,” she said. “That is not the way of their magic. They make you want to protect them at all costs. Even if the price is your own family.” She bowed her head. “I watched my mother and my papa die on this mountain two hundred years ago to protect Fair Konig and his troupe. I was barely ten years of age. My husband’s parents took me in, and the elders left in our donsy cared for me.” She shook her head. “Pixies don’t fill anyone with despair. Their magic is hope. My parents were pixeled, as they call it. That’s not what’s happening to you.”
“Oh, Linda.” I started crying again. I lost my mom as an adult, and it was the hardest thing I’d ever experienced. I’d rather my husband had left me a dozen times for someone else than to go through that again. And Linda had lost both her parents at the same time. She’d been so young. Too young. Though, was there ever a time when any age was old enough to bear the loss. “I’m so sorry for you.”
“It was a long time ago, Liebling.”
“It’s still awful,” I said. Too awful. I wept even harder. Why couldn’t I stop?
“Mom?” The sound of Michael’s voice, quiet and scared, shook me out of my reverie.
“Don’t come in here,” I told him. “I’m okay.”
“You’re not okay,” he said, entering the room. “What happened to you?”
He had honed in on my bruises and missing parts. “A little magic gone awry is all.” Having him in the room made me feel stronger, less despondent. My son’s presence was breaking whatever ill spell had a hold of me.
Keir must’ve felt it too because he said, “Michael, come sit next to your mom. Hold her hand.”
My scared, brave teenager didn’t hesitate. He sat down on the bed, his eyes as big as saucers, and took my hand. The melancholy retreated. Bob began to purr even louder. With Keir holding me, Bob curled up against my legs, and Michael holding my hand, I felt strong. It was the first time since the fight with the satyr that I felt my strength return.
My gaze flickered to the ceiling, where I saw a shadow resting in the corner of the room above my bedside table. It moved.
“Oh, shit.” I tried to sit up, but I was on my empty side, and I couldn’t use my non-existent abs. “There’s something in the room with us.”
Keir hauled me up, and Michael stood, looking around the room. “Where?”
I noticed then that Linda was an inanimate lawn ornament again because Michael was still non-magical. I pointed to the corner of the ceiling. “There,” I said.
“I don’t see anything,” Michael said.
But Keir cocked his head sideways before reaching over to my tableside lamp and flicking it on. The scream that emanated from the shadow, filled me with fear, rage, despair, self-loathing, and hate. I screamed back.
It fled across the ceiling and out of the room. Keir chased after it.
“What in the hell was that?” Michael was clutching his chest.
“Are you all right?” I asked with frantic worry.
“Nope,” he said frankly. “I am not all right. Not at all.”
Keir hurried back into the bedroom. “It’s gone,” he said, his voice not quite human. “For now.”
I looked at him. “What was that thing?”
His expression was stark. “A wraith.”
“Oh, shit,” Michael said.
My sentiments, exactly.