Odd Melody (Odd Series Book 2) (15 page)

Glancing up from the laptop in my lap, my eyes strayed to the fairy still on his knees leaking tears. We should probably try to move him somehow, try to make him comfortable somewhere. “Quiet.” It was an honest answer.

My mother was silent for a moment. “Quiet?”

“Yup.” Monosyllables were my friend.

“I want the two of you to come to tea.” She apparently decided to let his uncharacteristic behavior go.

My eyes wandered across the room to stop at Vickie. We had not opened the store today. We figured the mortal customers probably couldn’t handle a little girl with a tail, a witch sneezing spells, and a fairy crying tears of eternal sorrow. I rubbed a hand across my face and came away with a bit of dried, flaky oatmeal.

“It really isn’t a good time, Mom. Vickie stayed home from school today and—”

“Victoria! Wonderful, bring her, too.” Mom’s tone reflected her enthusiasm. My mother might have a lot of flaws, but I gave her this. She loved Vickie. I never got that one. She and I might not see eye to eye. She and I might fight like cats and dogs. But a strange bond had immediately formed between grandmother and granddaughter. They understood one another. Maybe it was a generation gap thing.

I rubbed my face harder and encountered more grey goo. On the upside, oatmeal was supposedly great for the skin. Not that I knew if it worked for siren skin, but I read once combination skin reacted perfectly to it and really, that described mine exactly, right? A combination of species, but still… “Mom, she isn’t feeling herself today which is why I called her off school and—”

Vickie, who as usual eavesdropped, interrupted. “Mom, is that Grandma?” She had, also as usual, forgotten that she should not butt in on adult conversations.

I rubbed at my face harder and convinced myself it was the oatmeal that irritated me. “Uh-huh.”

“I thought you said she was in Florida?” She came to stand in front of me, abandoning the book she had been reading.

My mother apparently heard her. “You told her I was in Florida?”

This was why I rarely bother to lie. I generally got caught in it. “Uh-huh.”

“Janie, really.” My mother had that tone she reserved for when she knew that I knew better, so why bother giving me the lecture.

I hated that tone. Also, I could not go into the longer explanation as to why I had lied to my daughter regarding my mother’s whereabouts.
Your grandmother would have sent evil minions after me because I had come to power, honey, so Mommy tried to avoid her, but Grandma caught me anyway. Now she has foisted a fairy fiancé on me. Oh, came to power? Well, you see…
Instead, I simply sighed. It seemed easier all around. With family, I rarely win. I sigh a lot. Instead, I pasted on my best mommy-would-never-lie-to-you-smile. “Your grandmother came back early, Vickie.”

“Janie.” My mother sounded horrified. “You should not lie to her.”

“Yeah, and you’re one to talk.”

“I do not lie to you.” Her voice, even over the line, carried a dignified huff. I could almost hear a silent,
I would never
. “You disregard your responsibilities, and I try to remind you. It is an entirely different situation.”

Again, with family, sometimes you have to call it a loss and give up. My daughter danced with impatience in front of me, and my mother would not concede the point to me.

“Today really is not good.” I hoped perhaps reiteration would make my point as I again remembered the fairy on the floor. I wondered exactly how I would even get him to my mother’s if I wanted to.

“Don’t be silly. Tea, today and bring your fiancé and my granddaughter. We will be civil, and I will not give you a hard time. I miss you, Janie. How about noon, so Vickie will bring her appetite?”

“Can we go see her, please?” Vickie looked at me with pleading seeping from every pore.

I glanced at my watch. If we left soon, we could go see her at noon as requested. I glanced at Avery. Perhaps the truth would work. “Mom, Mia’s sick and sort of sneezing spells so both Avery and Vickie kind of got hit by them. Until her muse gets here neither of them really should go out in public.”

“I am Goblin Queen. I am queen of all that is magical. Do you really think that a sick witch could have done anything that will shock me? Noon, Janie. And that is an order.”

With that, my mother hung up on me.

I sighed again and stuffed my phone in my back pocket. I walked to Avery.

Vickie followed me. “Are we taking him?”

“Yup.” I tugged on his arm and he stood, unresisting. He was a fairy doll. He went where I led, blind and marionette-like. I had to say, I liked the personality improvement. Now if we could get rid of the eyes bled to black and the streaking black tears like mascara gone awry, we would be good to go.

“Who is he, again?” Vickie peered at him curiously.

“A cousin?” I really had not meant it to come out a question, but as usual, she let it pass.

“You are going to your mother’s?” Mia tried not to snort in laughter.

“Yup.”

I snagged my coat and purse and off we went to New Lyme. To the house above the Fairie Courts, here we go. I grimaced to myself. My life oozed chock full of fun these days.

I buckled Avery into the front seat of the car as if he were a child and tried to ignore his scent. Even unconscious, he gave off fairy musk and up close it caught my attention. The fairy part of me, to give my mother some credit, wished I could fit in her world. Sadly, though, to me it would always be her world, not mine.

He smelled like wild magic and reminded me of home. Unlike my mother’s scent, his male essence called to a part of me that I usually ignored. For a moment, as I snapped him in, since he had been unresponsive up to that point, I breathed deeply of his aroma.

I stood quickly and moved to my side of the car. I cracked my window to keep his scent from permeating the car and drove as fast as the road conditions would allow to the house on the far side of Jefferson. Pulling into the long drive and through the gates, a feeling of nostalgia hit me that I hadn’t gotten when I came to the courts at night. Maybe because I hadn’t been kidnapped this time and had come on my own steam. Maybe it was the snow glistening off those big iron gates that triggered years of tightly repressed childhood memories.

I had grown up there. Most of my formative years had been spent running wild in the halls and on the land. It still felt like coming home, even if it would never be my home again. I wondered if that explained my mother’s reason for bringing me there, and then remembered she did not think like a person and discarded the notion.

I parked the car and we all hustled through the cold. Well, Vickie and I hustled. Avery simply went where I led him.

A man, shorter than I was, opened the front door. I was always curious when we visited my mother if Vickie wondered why everyone her grandmother hung out with stood shorter than average. As she had never asked, I hadn’t had to come up with any clever answers yet.

We gave up our coats to the doorman, and he did not ask about Avery. Although, he glanced from my fiancé to me, one apparently did not ask the prodigal princess how she had broken the chosen prince.

We followed the butler fairy down two stairs into the large living room with a cathedral ceiling and bay windows all around. Vance would fry in this room. On the far wall loomed a huge, stone fireplace big enough to barbeque a pig in—I only say that because I had seen it done once. Granite fieldstone, sparkling glass, and rich cherry wood materials gave a magical, yet earthy spirit to the room. My mother preferred to use natural materials in her decorating, and the glass allowed the outside to flow inside, which let her revel in her nature as a fairy. She perched on a leather sofa and looked up as we entered.

Her smile withered around the edges as she saw Avery. “That is a bit more than not himself, wouldn’t you say, Janie?”

I shrugged and flopped on a couch across from her. When I tugged, Avery dropped like a bag of rocks and continued his silent weeping next to me.

Excited and eager, Vickie rushed to hug her grandmother, but I sat back and prepared myself for hell rather than high tea. Spending quality time with my mother while my daughter sported a tail and one of Mom’s favorite minions leaked black muck made hell a rather apt descriptor. The entire situation did not really create a recipe for a good time.

My mother examined Vickie’s hair, tail, and the tattoos but did not comment. She did glare at me, but I had expected worse so I let it pass.

Silent comments echoed in my head, though.
Fairies do not befriend witches. Witches and fairies do not mix well. When they try, things like little girls with purple streaked hair, tattoos, and purple tails happen.
 

As if weird crap occurred all the time around Mia. Okay, odd stuff did happen all the time, but most of it could not be blamed on Mia.

Mother did not have to say any of it. Her disapproval and my putting my daughter in harm’s way shifted my guilty maternal conscience into overdrive. Not that my happy Vickie seemed terribly harmed just then, but still…

A small wave of dizziness came over me.
Shit
. I had not fed the stupid starving siren abilities. I hadn’t figured I would need energy again this soon. I bit my lip.

I could stall, but I would suffer if I waited too long. If I ignored it, the dizzy feeling got worse. I could not risk being weak so close to the fairie mounds. I needed Chance. I just had to figure out how to call him to me.

I considered my mother. Would she catch on if I left?

“Hey, I have something I need to take care of. Do you want to visit while I go off the property to make a call or two? Cells never work well this far from town.” The fairie mound messed with cell signals, making them sketchy at best, but I hesitated to remind Mom of that in front of Vickie.

“Sure.” She smiled agreeably and waved me away. “Don’t forget your coat.”

I grabbed my coat and dashed out the door. I probably seemed like an addict off to get my fix, but I burrowed in my coat and shuffled down the driveway. I unlocked my cell phone at the end of the drive.

As I did, the air swished around me, and I heard an almost inaudible pop. The cold parted and became slightly warmer as Chance appeared. I stuffed the phone back in my pocket, and he followed me silently down the road.

“How did you know I was going to call you?” I couldn’t resist asking even though I didn’t expect his response to really answer anything.

“We are two halves of a whole.” His cheerful mask settled in place and I went on alert. Cheery Chance came out when he wanted to distract me. “We’re connected now. More than we were. You called. I came. I’m better than a phone.”

“Do you have to come whenever I call?” I peered out of the corners of my eyes at him.

With a flash of gold in his eyes, he changed from cheerful to cold. “No. I do not
have
to but as it suits neither my, nor your, needs for you to be weak and starving. It seemed logical for me to come when I sensed your need for me.”

“How did you know I’d look for you?” My eyes had to have flashed in irritation. I was lightheaded and moody.

“Aside from the fact that you have not been brave enough to feed off anyone else because you’re afraid to kill someone, but you aren’t afraid of hurting me because you think I’m some endless source of brain energy?” He gave me innocent, owlish eyes.

I stared back and stopped walking down the snow packed road for a moment. I had not rationalized it, but he was right. “Can I hurt you?” Part of me worried about that, however, another part did not. My feelings for Chance were nothing if not conflicted.

“Probably, but you haven’t yet. I’m not positive I can sustain you single handedly forever, but more than likely I can do it for a long time, years even, barring major injury. Our power seems to balance us evenly…further proof you belong to me.”

I kept walking and he kept pace easily. “I hadn’t realized I was too chicken to try feeding off anyone else, but now that you mention it, I think I am leaning on you. It’s probably a terrible idea. It probably won’t help the other situation at all.” I probably should not have said all that out loud. However, Chance had a way about him that made my tongue and other things looser than normal.

He smirked at me, “The other situation is not going to get better either way. Accepting that would
probably
help more than anything else but that is neither here nor there.”

I gave him my best glare and opened the door to a small guesthouse. Although off fairie land technically, it still sat on the property my mother owned. It would provide a bright, safe place out of the weather, yet free of fairy magic. I walked in, shrugged out of my coat, and dropped it on the table, still there after years of disuse.

The house had been my refuge when I was a kid. When my mother bought the property, she had used it for visitors. I had used it to hide. It created my safe place when I wanted to read, to escape, or to play somewhere that wasn’t drenched in magic. It became, in my head, my place. When I had gotten older, I had practically lived there. In Ohio, well, you can’t hide outside all the time. You need someplace warm to go.

Chance spun once, took it all in, and smiled a small smile. “This place smells of you.”

“Yeah.” I shrugged and frowned at the sudden intimacy of sharing my private space with him of all people. “I spent a lot of time here.”

He shrugged out of his coat. It was a long tan duster and again I noticed how ordinary he dressed. For a creature of such power, of such mystery, he did try to fly under the radar. He dropped his coat on mine and sprawled on the couch as if he were at home.

I moved to stand in front of him. “Well?”

“I am here.” His smile was slow and his eyes glittered up at me. “Do your thing.”

I made a noise of frustration. “Will you quit doing that? Why can’t you ever make this easy? You have the power to feed the darn thing and get it over with, and yet you make me work for it. I have a kid with a tail, a crying fairy issue, and a mother in there expecting me to join her for tea. Can we do this simply for once?”