The Modern Fae's Guide to Surviving Humanity (12 page)

It used to disturb her, that last bit, but that was before she'd asked her teacher and Ms. Banks had explained that to put someone to shame meant that you surpassed them in skill. Autumn didn't think it could ever really happen (her daddy was the best daddy ever and good at positively everything) but it made her proud to think that he thought she was going to be even close to as wonderful as he was someday.

“Daddy, do you want to come up and see my garden?
At least half is blooming now and I switched some things around so that—”

“Autumn,” her mother interrupted. Autumn twisted to look at her mother who was still hovering nearby. “Your father is tired. Let him rest.”

Autumn looked back at her father, for the first time noticing that his beautiful golden skin looked sallow, his handsome face looked drawn. Worry warred with disappointment. She didn't like that her daddy was so tired looking, but she still wanted to show him her garden.

“Maybe after your father has a nap he can come up.”

Autumn chewed on her lip. What had her daddy been doing that he was so tired? Was the storm that bad?

Her mother cleared her throat. “It is a hot, dry day. Do you need to water your plants?”

That had Autumn springing up. It had been hot. Nearly a hundred degrees at noon, which was totally unheard of in early May. Most of her plants were hardy enough to make it until tomorrow but there were a few … she looked back at her dad. For some reason she didn't want to leave his side. It was silly, but she couldn't help but fear that he might disappear on her again.

“Ah, pumpkin, ease that worry from your brow. You are my sunshine. And like one of your precious flowers, I promise I'll be here awaiting your return.”

Her daddy was so smart to understand her so well. She bent down, smacking a sloppy kiss on his lips and then spun and raced for the roof stairs.

Autumn tiptoed down the stairs leading from the roof to her apartment, her precious cargo clenched tightly in her hands. The afternoon had passed, as had a quiet dinner with her mother, and still her daddy had slept on the
couch. He did manage to rouse himself to tuck her in, but there had been no story, and as soon as he was done he'd stumbled off down the hall to his bedroom. This morning, her mother had said he was “run down” and “sleeping in” and that Autumn “shouldn't disturb him.”

Autumn didn't like it but she understood. It was like that time she'd gotten that awful tummy bug and afterward she'd slept for almost two days straight before she felt better again. Her daddy hadn't been sick, but it was obvious that whatever he'd been doing for his job had tired him terribly. She'd decided that “run down” was a kind of sickness and was determined to help him get better as fast as possible.

Which was why she was bringing him her gerbera daisy. She just knew having it beside his bed to look at would cheer him up. And her daddy said that a smile was one of the best cures in the world.

Autumn reached their front door, slipping inside. Her backpack weighed down her shoulders like a guilty reminder of what she should be doing. Heading to the bus stop. It would be okay though. She'd just leave the gerbera daisy on his dresser, slip back out, scoot down to the back entrance of her building, and cut through the side street to catch the bus at its next stop. And because of her efforts, by the end of the day her daddy would be up and about and ready to go to the roof to look at the rest of her garden.

She hadn't made it past the tiled foyer when her parents' voices drifted down the hall to her, her mother's voice pitched with worry and her daddy's … well she'd never heard her daddy sound like that. All hard and angry and … scary.

“Whoever he or she is, they're an idiot. The council is
not going to tolerate this sort of blatant display of power. The moment the
bean-sídhe
tracks them down it will be the end of their fool life.”

There was a stretch of silence then the sound of something smacking into something else. Like a fist into wood.

“This is exactly the kind of thing that we can't have! With how efficient technology is today, with no plausible explanation for such an extreme shift, incidents like this could expose our entire race. Do you have any idea what could happen then? The kind of mad panic that could ensue?”

Autumn held her breath. She didn't know exactly what her daddy was talking about, only that he'd taken on the same kind of urgent tone he used when he spoke to her about the “big three rules.” But how those rules could have anything to do with other races and councils and power …

Daddy is talking like the people in his stories are real.
Autumn inched another step closer.

“Do you suppose it was a mistake?” her mother asked. “Perhaps someone newly come into their power and unused to handling such a large storm?”

“By Danu, I wish that it were, but no. A newly fledged youngling would not be able to divert such a widespread weather pattern. The power needed to shift the jet stream and then create a pressure bubble to keep it there? We still haven't been able to re-establish the natural patterns and that's with both me and Avril working on it.”

“Is that why it's been so hot the last few days?”

“It's all we can do to keep the temperatures down to livable levels.” There was a pause. “If this doesn't break, we're looking at one of the worst heat waves ever.”

“And then what?” Her mother's voice trembled with worry. Autumn felt a corresponding sink in her tummy. She waited for her father's answer breathlessly, her lip clamped tight between her teeth.

“People could die. No. People
will
die if we don't… .”

Her father kept talking but Autumn didn't hear. She gasped, the pot slipping through her numb fingers. She watched, time seeming to slow, as her prize gerbera daisy plummeted to the floor, the pot smashing on the unforgiving tile. Dirt heaved up and spread in a ring. The daisy bounced, petals shaking violently in the explosion, the blossoms splitting and slumping down on the mound of dirt and terracotta shards.

Not me. Not me.
It was chance the storm went away when she told it to, she assured herself.

“Who's there?” A door banged open. Hurried footsteps.

But what about the headache? Was that a coincidence too?

“Autumn?”

She lifted her head from the destruction at her feet, eyes wide as she gazed at her father. His edges were blurry, like looking through the funky old glass at her Aunt Elana's Victorian house.

She looked back down at the flower at her feet. It laid limply, one blossom bent awkwardly on its stem. The others crushed under the settling dirt.

She'd killed it. She'd told the storm to go away. She'd … she'd… .

“Pumpkin. Honey… .”

She jerked her gaze back up again. Saw her daddy easing down the hall, his hand outstretched like she was a cornered dog that he was trying to soothe. Her mother
was less than a step behind, her hand clenched around daddy's other arm.

Daddy. Her daddy could fix anything.

But not this. Her daddy couldn't fix this.

With a cry of dismay she spun around, pushing through the apartment door. She ran. Faster than she'd ever run, her feet hardly touching the treads as she disregarded the slow elevator and bolted down the stairs instead. She heard her mother calling her. The heavy footfalls that told her daddy was chasing her. Whimpering, she shrugged the heavy backpack from her shoulders and ran harder, taking chances, leaping down half-flights of stairs.

She thought it was hopeless, that her daddy would catch her and then he'd find out that she … that she'd… .

No, no, no. Not me!
Coincidence. Just a coincidence.

Behind her, her daddy shouted in surprise. There was a loud thud, then a long exclamation of words strung together that she'd never heard her daddy utter before.

Her backpack, he must have tripped. And now he would be really, really angry with her.

Choking back a sob, she ran down the last flight of stairs and burst through the back door onto the street beyond.

“Autumn? What are you doing here?”

Autumn choked back a sob, just one in a long string of them, and raised her swollen face from her knees. A trail of snot dripped from her nose to the soaked edge of her skirt. Embarrassed, she swiped it away, hoping that James hadn't noticed. Bad enough James had caught her crying. She bet James never cried. James was too much of a
boy
to cry.

She looked up at him, saw the horrified look of disgust on his face, and had to fight the urge to stuff her head back in the crook of her bent knees.

“Aw, man. Have you been crying?”

Well, duh, she thought, jutting her chin out defensively. Though defensive or not, it never hurt to be polite. “Hello, James.”

“Yeah, hey.” He scratched the back of his head, his mouth twisting up funny as his gaze drifted away from her, scanning the empty park they were in.

Autumn looked around, too. It wasn't the best place in the neighborhood. The playground equipment was old, the grounds overgrown with weeds and shrubbery that had a tendency to both catch and provide shelter to an assortment of trash. The majority of the mothers and children in the neighborhood utilized the new park three blocks over near the Baptist church. But this had been the only place she could think to go. The other park and her school were completely out of the question if she didn't want to be found.

“Aren't you going to tell me what
you're
doing here?” James asked again, his attention settling on her once more.

“Maybe.” She straightened her legs, brushing out her rumbled skirt. “You going to tell me what you're doing here?”

“Skipping.”

Her mouth flopped open. She gave a furtive glance around.

“Skipping? As in … hooky?” She whispered the last, as if uttering the evil word would bring the hounds of hell down upon them. She knew James could be a bit of a troublemaker, and he certainly loved to tease her—pulling
her hair, calling her names—but playing hooky from elementary school? Unheard of.

He shrugged, wrapping his arms around his chest. “Yeah, so? You got a problem with that? Miss I'm Not in School Either.”

Autumn hung her head. That's right, she was as bad as James was. No worse. She'd … She'd… .

“I ran away,” she mumbled.

“What's that?”

She lifted her head back up, meeting his gaze. “I said I ran away from home.”

His head jerked back and he rocked onto his heels. “Why would you do a stupid thing like that?”

“I have to.” She stated this bravely, ruined it by sniffling.

“Ah, man. That bites.” He took a step closer, plopped down beside her. They sat together, legs stretched out alongside one another's for a while, when he spoke again. “You don't seem to be running very fast or very far.”

“I don't know where to go,” she admitted.

“Well, if you're going to do it right, then you should find a better hiding place than this. This is one of the first places they'll look.”

“Not the first.”

“Not the last though.”

She had to agree with that, albeit grudgingly. It might not be one of the top three places, but she didn't doubt James was right: this wouldn't be far down on the list.

“Do you want help?”

She blinked, twisting her head to stare at him. How could he be so casual about her running away? How could he be so calm as he offered to aid and abet her?

She nibbled her lip, looking at him. He seemed just
like any other normal boy their age, maybe an inch taller than her, skinny from play and games. She knew that though he liked sports, he had an oftentimes clumsy streak, and frankly, neither his curly mop of brown hair nor the dirt-brown eyes did anything to set him apart from his classmates.

Yet he seemed so brave and grown-up, and he obviously hung out on the streets enough to know more than she. All of a sudden, a completely disobedient and insane thought crossed her mind. She leaned in, her mouth just inches from his ear, and whispered, “My daddy's a weatherman.”

He twisted to look at her, his brow drawn tight together as he eyed her oddly. “And that's why you're running away?”

She shook her head in exasperation. “No, not because of that. I'm running away because I scratched ‘the itch'.”

At least she thought that was what she'd done. It hadn't exactly been an itch, not really, but the more she thought about it and the more she applied it to what she'd overheard, she knew that's what she had done.

“Ah.” He nodded knowingly. “You got in trouble.”

Frowning, she crossed her arms across her chest. She'd just told him two of the top three big secrets her family had and that was the answer she got? “No, not yet. But if they find out what I really did… .”

She trailed off, gulping down the funny lump in her throat. It was jagged and hard and even more bitter than the coffee her mother had let her have a sip of once.

He tipped his head, his brown eyes steady on her. She knew he wanted her to tell him what “scratched the itch” meant, but she couldn't. She practically hyperventilated just thinking about it.

“I killed my gerbera daisy,” she exclaimed in a poof of breath.

His face crunched up.

She looked down at her feet, seeing again the pile of broken pot, dirt, and limp blooms. “My plant. It was just a baby plant.”

He was silent for long time. Autumn pleated her skirt, un-pleated it, ironed it down. He swallowed, and then said, sounding amazingly loud compared to the nearby street noise, “I killed my goldfish last summer. Overfed it. I felt terrible.”

Autumn was careful to keep her gaze down in her lap. She suspected that for James to admit that he'd felt such genuine emotion was akin to her revealing her family secrets. She was sure of it when a few seconds later he snapped out, “So, do you want that help or not?”