Fairyville (4 page)

"Oscar!" his mother said, her voice gone sharp. "Stop that this instant!"

"Why don't we leave Oscar to entertain himself?" Bryan suggested. "Since he seems to be good at it. And then you can tell us what this is about."

Mrs. Pruitt turned back reluctantly, clearly torn between controlling her son's high spirits and her own concerns. After a moment, her own concerns won out. "Raymond Lederer said your firm was the best in Phoenix."

Raymond Lederer was a defense lawyer for whom they did skip-trace work, tracking down potential witnesses and the like. "Raymond didn't lie," Bryan assured her. "You can count on our competence. And our discretion."

Discretion didn't seem to be the issue. Mrs. Pruitt had a death grip on the handles of her designer purse. "He said you could find anyone anywhere."

Bryan began to revise his assumption that she was worried about her husband's extracurricular activities. He resisted exchanging a glance with Alex, though he knew his partner was probably jumping to the same conclusion. "Finding people is one of our specialties. Who is it you're trying to track?"

"My son," said Mrs. Pruitt. She leaned forward over her purse and dropped her voice. "My
real
son."

The hair on the back of Bryan's neck stood up as his crazy meter started going off. This was so not what he'd expected. He looked at little Oscar, right-side up now and, except for his pleasant smile, the spitting image of the woman who seemed to be denying he belonged to her.

"You mean you gave up a son for adoption?" Alex tried hopefully.

Mrs. Pruitt shot him a glare Bryan doubted Alex had seen the likes of very many times, at least not from female eyes.

"No," she said crisply. "Oh, I know this one looks like me, but he's not mine. Oscar." She snapped her fingers at the little boy. "Do one of your tricks for these men."

For the first time Oscar looked less than content with his circumstances. He slid out of his chair and onto his feet with a .thump. "You told me I'm not supposed to, Mommy."

"Well, this time I'm telling you you should."

Still unsure, the boy stuck his index finger in his mouth.

"Come on," his mother said.

Oscar gave Alex and then Bryan a worried look. Bryan responded with a smile, trying to reassure him they knew his mother was a few cards short of a deck. The message failed to communicate. Oscar didn't stop looking scared.

"A little trick or a big one?" the boy whispered.

"Just do it," his mother snapped.

The boy closed his eyes, and all at once the air in the office changed. It was cooler and thicker, and now it wasn't just the hair at the back of Bryan's neck that stood up. His whole body prickled as a rustling noise met his ears, like a dozen heavy books having their pages flipped. Movement caught the corner of his eye, and then—with a jolt like a mule lacking adrenaline into his chest—Bryan noticed that the contents of their inbox had begun to levitate. He stared in amazement as, one by one, invoices and memos slid off the stack and flowed around their office in a conga line. It would have been funny, if it hadn't been impossible.

Caught off balance, Bryan gasped for air as his heart pounded with something deeper than shock. He couldn't believe what he was seeing, but he couldn't disbelieve it, either.

This little kid was making paper fly.

"That's enough," said his mother, and every sheet dropped to the floor.

In the silence that followed, Bryan's breath sounded in his ears like a thunderstorm.

"I can put them back," Oscar offered in a small, guilt-stricken tone.

"That's okay," said Alex, then cleared his throat, his voice having come out raspier than usual. Bryan's partner was stroking his tasteful silver tie like a worry stone, up and down, up and down, as if stopping might pose a threat to his sanity. "That was… quite a trick."

Alex was by no means a kid person, but he put his hand on Oscar's wheat-colored head. "That was fine. You did good."

"You see what I mean," said Oscar's mother as Oscar fled back to his chair and curled up. "He isn't normal. People like him don't get born to people like me. My family is normal. My husband's family is normal. For heaven's sake, we go to church!"

Alex looked at Bryan, an obvious and unprecedented plea for help.

"Um," said Bryan, not about to let him down. "I know your son's gift is a little odd, but surely these things can pop up in any family."

"The hospital switched them," Mrs. Pruitt said, the insistence in her words hard to listen to without wincing. "One of those weird Fairyville families has my son."

This time Bryan couldn't resist his urge to glance at Alex. Having given up on fondling his tie, he was now gripping the edge of the desk so hard you'd have thought he was bracing for an earthquake. It was a challenge for a lifelong Arizonan to look pale, but Alex was giving it a shot.

"You're from Fairyville?" he asked carefully.

"Of course I'm not!" Mrs. Pruitt huffed. "I was passing through on my way from Santa Fe to Phoenix when I went into early labor in that freak show they call a town. I
hud
to go to their hospital, and that's where they stole my boy!"

Bryan was fighting a serious compulsion to apologize to Oscar on his mother's behalf, or at least remove him from the room. "I assume you've had genetic testing done. To confirm whether or not Oscar is your son."

Mrs. Pruitt twisted her mouth in scorn—as if genetic testing were on a par with casting horoscopes. "Those doctors stick together. They're not going to admit one of their own snatched my boy. Please." She choked the handles of her purse again. "You have to find out what happened to my child. My husband and I hardly sleep for worrying what this one's going to do next. I don't dare send him to school anymore, and I'm too embarrassed to bring him to family parties. We used to be so close to my relatives, and now he's ruining our lives!"

Mrs. Pruitt dissolved into quiet tears, no doubt grieving over missed barbecues. Oscar regarded her solemnly. He didn't look half as upset as his mother, but Bryan still strode across the room and lifted him onto his hip.

The boy stared up at him, trusting but surprised. Bryan could see he wasn't used to the idea of being protected.

"Let's go out and meet our secretary," Bryan said. "Charlene has a boy about your age, and I'm pretty sure there's a fire truck in her bottom drawer."

Bryan stayed in the reception area long enough to ensure that Oscar was comfortable with Charlene. Bryan's expression must have been strange, because two of their interns did a double take as he passed their desks. Bryan ignored them. This particular interview wasn't going to be discussed with them.

When he returned to the office he and Alex shared, Mrs. Pruitt wasn't just recovered, she was radiant. Bryan walked in as she was clasping Alex's right hand in both of hers.

"Thank you," she said, her entire body vibrating with gratitude. "I can't tell you how this sets my mind at ease."

Bryan's mouth fell open, but the event that couldn't be happening apparently was.

"We'll do our best to find the truth," Alex said. "That much I promise you."

He escorted Mrs. Pruitt out, pointedly avoiding his partner's incredulous stare. The second he returned, Bryan's protests burst out.

"You can't have taken this case! It's totally without merit!"

Alex
shrugged out of his suit jacket, draped it over a chair, then bent to pick up the trail of fallen paper Oscar's trick had left. To Bryan's surprise, his crisp striped shirt was damp under the arms. "She wrote a check for our retainer. If it clears the bank, the case is ours."

"Oh, well, as long as her money's good, who cares if she's nuts!"

His hands full of memos, Alex straightened and gave Bryan a level look.

"She's crazy," Bryan insisted. "She's got a perfectly nice little boy. Okay, that floating paper thing is strange, but she's treating him like he's defective. She needs counseling. She needs to count her goddamn blessings. She doesn't need a private detective!"

"I was born in Fairyville."

Alex's voice was matter of fact, but Bryan noticed his eyes were showing too much white.

"You what?" Bryan said, completely flummoxed now.

"I was born in Fairyville. Grew up there. Left when I was seventeen."

"I thought you were born in Tucson."

"I know. I didn't want to talk about my background."

Bryan knew Alex liked his privacy. All those weekends they'd spent drinking in college, it was always Bryan spilling his life stories. Still, this was taking reserve to new levels. Who the hell cared if Alex grew up in some town with a funny name?

Bryan rubbed the throbbing center of his forehead. "What does you being born in Fairyville have to do with us taking this case?"

Alex stared at the wall that held their licenses, his preternaturally chiseled profile stirring things inside Bryan he'd learned not to pay attention to. "Fairyville is… different." He shook himself and met Bryan's eyes, the directness of his sea-blue gaze a small but palpable shock. "Fairyville is like Sedona. Vortexes and spirits and all that mystical crap."

"Which presumably you don't believe in."

Alex shrugged—not the confirmation Bryan was expecting. "I know no one's taken Mrs. Pruitt's theories seriously, not even her husband. If we check them out—talk to the hospital, see what's what—maybe we'll find something to reassure her, something to help her accept the son she has."

Alex referring to Oscar as
the son she has
wasn't striking the right note for Bryan.

"You can't believe what she says is true. That boy is her spitting image. Do you honestly think some family in Fairyville stole her son? And why? So they could raise a son who's normal? If Fairyvillians are so freaky, that's the last thing they'd want."

"Fairyvillers."

"Huh?" said Bryan, convinced his head was going to explode.

"They call themselves Fairyvillers, not Fairyvillians. Look, I'm not saying I believe her. I'm saying maybe something out of the ordinary happened. Don't you like to know the why of things? Doesn't it calm you even if it can't change what is? I can go alone, if this makes you uncomfortable."

Normally, Alex wouldn't have thought twice about handling a job this size solo. The fact that he'd been assuming Bryan would come made Bryan think he really was shaken.

"I can go," he said after a pause to hide his own thoughts, most of which involved sharing hotel rooms. "We've got nothing on deck right now except that mountain of background checks for Burrough's new hires. The other staff can handle that."

Alex blew out his breath and set his stack of collected papers into their inbox. "Good," he said. Not
thanks, not glad to have you
, just
good
.

Bryan mentally rolled his eyes. Polished manners or not, Alex could, on occasion, be an abrupt son of a bitch.

"Crap," Alex said now, tugging impatiently at his tie. When he yanked it off, the sight of his strong, tanned neck was enough to make Bryan swallow. "I'm sweating like a pig. Have Charlene make reservations while I grab a shower."

Bryan and Alex had a private bath attached to their office, a luxury neither of them apologized to the staff for, because they liked to run on their lunch hours. Actually, Alex ran on his lunch hour—as if his long, gold legs were made of Olympic springs. Bryan jogged and huffed. It was a pain, but it was worth it. Bryan liked his pizza, not his pizza gut.

"Reservations for tonight?" he asked, his trousers tightening at the thought of water streaming down Alex's hard body. The erection was so sudden he had no chance to head it off.

Luckily, Alex didn't turn as he stopped at the bathroom door. "Tonight," he agreed, sounding as grim as Bryan had ever heard him. "We'll take my car."

"Works for me," Bryan said as lightly as he could.

He realized he was excited for more reasons than Alex being naked one room away. Bryan's friend had always been something of a mystery, but maybe if he tagged along to his old hometown, Bryan would figure out the why of him.

Alex shut the door behind him with shaking hands. Too rattled to undress, he leaned over the sink and let his head hang like a dog's. He didn't want to go back there. Didn't want to see those people and dig up his sins. Most of all, he didn't want to see Zoe.

Christ, he still got hard just to think her name. Sweet, black-haired Zoe with her apple breasts and her soft gray eyes that no one could read but him. He'd wanted her to near insanity when he was younger. Even now, he didn't know how he'd kept it zipped. Yeah, she'd only been fifteen—and a fragile fifteen, at that—but she'd adored him with all her heart. She'd been his fruit to pluck, and he'd burned so hot for her he should have set his pants on fire a dozen times a day.

"Crap," he said, the ache in his chest as bad as the one in his slacks.

He didn't mean to put his fist through the wall. His field of vision simply went red, and his arm cut loose. The next thing he knew he was shaking plaster off his scraped knuckles. The reaction shook him, the loss of control. He couldn't even pull himself together when Bryan opened the door in concern.

"Jeez," he said, looking from the wall to Alex's hand. "You all right?"

"I can't go back there."

The confession was completely raw. Bryan furrowed his brow. "Well," he said, pretty calmly, considering Alex had never done anything like this in front of him before. "I'm not the one who's making you."

Alex cursed and sat on the closed toilet. "I have to go. No one else is going to take this case seriously."

He propped his head in his hands, as Bryan hunkered down beside him. The other man's nearness—simple, patient, affectionate—was more comforting than he'd ever guess. Bryan had no idea how deeply Alex valued his friendship—which was, in a way, part of the problem with going back to Fairyville.

"You're going to hear things about me," Alex warned. "Things that might make you feel differently about the man you've been friends with these last ten years."

Bryan's hand gripped Alex's knee. It was a gesture the most committed hetero couldn't have taken offense at, and Bryan was pretty much a master of those things. "Everybody has a past."