When Libby Met the Fairies and her Whole Life Went Fae (16 page)

“Thanks, Maise.” Libby was noticing the little man in her peripheral vision. He was flicking the leaf of a milkweed that she’d spared, per his weeding instructions, the day before. Could Maisey see that the leaf was moving? A slight breeze had picked up in the past hour, maybe she’d attribute it to the breeze.

In any case, she made no sign that she’d noticed anything weird. Yet more proof that he was invisible to others.

Maisey started back down the hill and Libby moved to the end of the bed where the last few feet of carrot seedlings waited to be thinned.

“Anything else?” she asked when Maisey was out of sight.

He didn’t answer and she saw that he was melting away into the dense growth of motherwort and goldenrod that had sprouted up along the western boundary of the field.

Libby straightened up and stretched her back to ease its stiffness a bit. She was facing her house, now, and yeah, it made her feel a bit glum. This was the part of the day that was hardest, when she had to make her way back down the hill, shut herself back indoors, and tackle whatever waited for her there.

And in this case, what waited for her was a two-page computer printout of names. Josh had decided, now, that a revision wasn’t enough. The entire last issue of
Skin Tones
had to be tossed out. So Libby was starting over from scratch. Plus Dormet Vous hadn’t managed to get any of her potential interviewees prescreened. Funny how the importance of requests like that get diluted as they’re passed up the corporate management chain . . . it meant a lot more work for Libby, of course. She would not only have to write the stories, but before she could even begin that she’d have to pore over that printout for three or four women with stories about how their lives had been changed forever, thanks to Dormet Vous Lustre.

She wasn’t looking forward to it.

She picked up her tools. It was too bad Maisey was so upset with her. She was still a kid in a lot of ways . . . Libby had gotten used to her company. It was strange to have her all withdrawn that way.

As Libby started down the hill, it occurred to her that she hadn’t gotten an answer to her other question—the question about whether her horsetail brew was going to pass the lab test.

Figures.

24

Deja vous.

The hippy chick’s car in the driveway, again.

Only this time she wasn’t inside the car waiting for Libby. This time, she was inside the house, sitting on the living room floor, having a lively conversation with Maisey and Tyler.

Well, it was a lively conversation until the door banged shut behind Libby and they looked up and saw her.

They exchanged glances, then Maisey stood up from the couch. “Hey, Aunt Libby, you’ve met Alex.”

Alex stood, too, and slipped her flip flops back onto her feet. She was a fragile looking little thing, high forehead, wispy hair pulled back in a pony tail. “Hi, Aunt Libby,” she said.

“Ty’s been staying with her,” Maisey explained.

Ah. Well, that made sense. Obviously he’d found someplace in town to sleep.

“Nice to meet you,” Libby said in a formal voice. “Please excuse me, I have to get some work done.”

She wasn’t trying to be unfriendly, exactly, but obviously she wasn’t going to sit around and chitchat.

Libby could hear them from her office. Talking again, but in low voices. She told herself it was a generation gap thing and turned her attention to her work.

A few minutes later the pitch and tempo of their voices picked up, and she heard the front door. She listened for a car motor, but didn’t hear one, and then she saw the three of them walking on the road past the front of the house.

Toward Dean’s place?

That was strange.

She wasn’t getting any work done. She stared at the list of Dormet Vous customers, her stomach twinging uneasily, then forced herself to pick up her phone and dial the first number on the list.

♦ ♦ ♦

One good thing. Something shifted that afternoon for the better, between Libby and Maisey. Maybe having Tyler by for a visit had done it. But Maisey didn’t seem angry at Libby, anymore. Things had hit a new set-point or something. A new normalcy, so they could all be comfortable again now.

She’d even suggested they watch a movie together that night.

Libby was grateful for it. Working like she did on her farm, only seeing Paul a few nights a week—she suddenly realized how nice it was, to have someone to hang out with.

And of course, if they were going to hang out together, maybe she could find out what the kids had been up to earlier.

Libby considered how to broach the subject while she warmed some milk on the stove for cocoa.

She may as well be direct.

Maisey was in the living room, getting the DVD ready. Libby raised her voice so Maisey could hear it over the television. “So. You took Alex to meet Dean, then?”

Maisey muted the TV and switched on the DVD player. “Oh. She knows him already. She’s his sister, do you believe it?”

“Ow!”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just spilled the cocoa. It didn’t hurt. I don’t know why I said ow.”

Libby’s face felt hot from being near the stove.

Maisey had come into the kitchen. She handed Libby a dish rag to wipe up the spilled cocoa. “Actually, she’s his half-sister.”

“I see.” Libby’s voice, at least, sounded casual. So that explained why they’d all gone to see him. “That’s a . . . coincidence.”

“Yeah. She’s awfully nice. She told us all about him. You wouldn’t believe. She cuts hair. She’s going to cut mine tomorrow.”

All
about him?

Libby poured the rest of the cocoa. More carefully this time.

“How are you going to have it cut?” They headed into the living room, Libby carrying the two mugs of cocoa, Maisey carrying the popcorn.

“I dunno. Maybe sort of a retro bob. Like Uma in Pulp Fiction.”

She put the popcorn bowl on the couch between them.

“So.” Libby blew on her cocoa to give herself some space to choose her words. But she was having trouble forming her question. “She’s his half-sister . . .” was the best she could manage.

Fortunately, it didn’t take much to get Maisey going.

“Yeah! Their mother is dead. Terrible story. Cancer. And Alex’s father is dead too, isn’t that awful? He came back east because of it—”

“Who came back east? The father?”

“No! No, Alex’s father died when she was a baby. I meant Dean. When their mother got sick, he came back east.”

“Ah.”

“But that isn’t even why he’s so sad! His heart was broken by an Iranian princess. So I was right! He’s been living in the woods ever since, Alex says, only before it was out west. He was a logger, so
that
explains where he got all those muscles.”

The cocoa was a bit too hot and Libby’s eyes watered as it scalded the roof of her mouth. “An Iranian princess.” Alex was prone to exaggeration, apparently. If not outright lying.

“That’s what she said! They met in college and fell madly in love, but her parents had this arranged marriage thing all set, and when they found out about it, they took her away. The princess. Kidnapped her, basically. Took her to, like, Pakistan or someplace. And he never saw her again.”

Libby grimaced. “Maisey, I don’t believe that for a minute. That sort of thing doesn’t happen, not in real life. Alex is . . .” She stopped herself. But she needn’t have worried. Her skepticism didn’t faze Maisey in the slightest.

“Alex says he wouldn’t even talk to anyone for like, 18 months. Then their mother got these headaches, and it turned out to be the brain cancer, and Alex had to go out and find him and tell him, because he didn’t have a phone or anything.”

“You didn’t bring this up to him, I hope.” The adult in Libby took over. Because suppose there was some truth to this tale . . . she felt suddenly protective of Dean. Whatever his reasons for living like he did, he sure didn’t need a bunch of kids pestering him about his private affairs.

“Oh, no. We just, you know, listen to music. And he carves stuff for us. He carved Tyler a talisman thing. It was going to be a key ring but Tyler wanted a talisman.”

“Talisman?”

“It’s a wolf. Kind of.”

Yeah, that explained it. And what young man could manage without a talisman?

“It was fun. You should go with us, sometime.” She plumped a throw pillow and settled back onto the couch.

“Where’s the remote?” No way was Libby going to . . . drop in on Dean. Not that she would mind seeing him. But a social call? Even considering the idea made her feel funny. Awkward.

Maisey pointed the remote at the TV screen and began navigating through the DVD menu. She’d picked the movie—
Two Weeks Notice
, Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock. Then she hit play, which meant their conversation ended. A disappointment, Libby thought. Because yeah, she was curious about her neighbor. That’s natural, right? But she didn’t want it to be too obvious. Which meant that she couldn’t just pull Maisey aside at any time and question her about him.

An Iranian princess?

Libby touched the blister on the roof of her mouth with her tongue. Alex had the story wrong, of course. Although probably there were elements of truth. Maybe even the part about some young woman’s parents intervening in a budding love affair.

“Isn’t Hugh Grant gorgeous?” Maisey interrupted Libby’s thoughts and she slopped her cocoa again. On her shorts, fortunately, instead of the couch.

♦ ♦ ♦

The next morning Libby discovered the first of the emails.

There were four of them.

Two had “fairies” in the subject line.

The third subject line just said “hi.”

The fourth was the most charming. “She-devil bullshit!!!!”

Libby opened the first one.

i just had to email u. you’re story is amzing. i would so luv to meet u sometime. its peeps like u who will save gaia from total destruct. luv, sandy.

Then the next two, groaning aloud as she read. And the last one, no better written, except it was nasty, accusing her of—she wasn’t quite sure. Satanism. Being a charlatan. Both at once, she supposed—might as well cover all your bases when emailing anonymous insults.

She heard Maisey coming up the stairs and called out to her.

“Yeah?” Maisey answered warily. Could probably tell from the tone of Libby’s voice that she was in trouble.

“Look at this.”

Libby opened the first email again.

Maisey read it over her shoulder.

“Maisey. Has Tyler posted about this again?”

“No, no, Aunt Libby!” Libby turned around to look at her niece’s face. She looked sincere. “You don’t understand. He didn’t post about it ever, not really. Not on purpose—it was in the comments.”

She wasn’t a liar. But . . . “Look. There are four of them. Where are they coming from?”

“I have no idea, I swear.”

“How did they get my address?” Libby closed the window with the email message in it and pointed at her inbox queue. “Look. Four of them.”

“I have no idea.”

Libby deleted the emails, and then something occurred to her. Dormet Vous had started putting
Skin Tones
up on their website. And Libby was listed as editorial contact.

Sure enough, when she Googled her name, up popped two issues of
Skin Tones
in html format. And there was her email address.

“So that’s where,” Maisey said. She was watching Libby’s screen still.

“Yeah.”

“Go back to Google.”

Libby was, already. She’d seen it, too—her name had come up on another site as well. She clicked the link and groaned again as she read. “Exciting news, gals and guys, a woman by the name of Libby Samson has made contact with the Little Folk in Upstate New York . . .”

She scrolled down to the bottom of the page. Someone had signed it. The name was “Heavenly Starlight.”

“Aunt Libby, you have to believe me. Tyler didn’t mean to—”

Libby was on the site’s home page, now, looking for a contact. Someone without a fake name, for her lawyer to hunt down. The lawyer she was going to hire, that is.

“He posts a lot about supernatural stuff, you know? So his readers—and all he did was—he wrote about finding this new hotspot, you know, your farm, only he didn’t reveal your name or anything, I swear. But then in the comments these people got going, and you know some of them just can’t let it go—”

“It’s okay.” Libby couldn’t find a webmaster listed on the stupid site. “What’s done, is done.”

She pushed back from the desk and suddenly realized Maisey was crying. Libby stood up. It hadn’t occurred to her that this whole thing had been hard on the girl . . . of course, Maisey had been mad because her aunt had kicked out her boyfriend. But . . . Libby looked at Maisey awkwardly for a minute. Then she reached out and touched her shoulder, and Maisey kind of collapsed toward her, into her arms. “I’m so sorry. We didn’t mean to make you mad,” she snuffled into Libby’s shoulder.