9
Negotiation is a very important process to some supernatural creatures, such as gnomes, trolls, fairies, and brownies. The intricacies of this process are likely beyond the capabilities of the average human and should not be attempted. Yes, this means you.
—From Fangs to Fairy Folk:
Unusual Creatures of Midwestern North America
I woke up with stiff, sticky eyes, which was fairly typical after nights spent thinking of dear old Mum. I walked into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face. I looked like hell, with dark circles under the aforementioned eyes and an unhappy slant to my mouth. It was a disturbingly familiar arrangement of features that I blotted out with some blush and wide “buying these after binge drinking seemed like a good idea” sunglasses.
My magic was bottled up and restless. Considering the timing—so close to a dream of my own blessed mother—I was beginning to suspect that the binding was less a result of Penny’s actions and increasingly because of my own emotional instability. I could feel the magic itching below the surface like a phantom limb. I was completely drained of energy, listless, practically hungover from the lack of magical spark. I couldn’t so much as stir the air at the moment. And I had no idea what sort of situation I was heading into and how long this magical constipation would last.
What a wonderful time for a road trip.
I pulled my dark hair into a sloppy twist. I threw on jeans and a red tank top with some cute sandals. I grabbed my mobile and overnight bag and trudged down the stairs. I had about two hours before I had to leave town, and I was extremely curious to know how Jane and Dick planned to get my depressive arse down to Georgia.
Just as I’d reached the landing, there was a loud pounding on my door. I opened it to find Jed, wearing faded jeans, a short-sleeved button-down plaid shirt, and a contrite expression, while holding out a travel cup of coffee as if it was a shield.
“I was told keeping you caffeinated would be an important part of my survival,” he said, pressing the cup into my hand and stepping away quickly. I knew I shouldn’t have told Jane that story about punching Uncle Seamus in the throat when he tried to wake me during a fire drill at the clinic.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, sipping the coffee and willing the caffeine to flood my brain with sense and energy.
“Andrea Cheney called me late last night and said you needed someone to drive to Georgia with you. And unlike your car, my truck has a good chance of makin’ it past the town limits without the engine fallin’ out.”
“Why would you agree to this?” I asked. “Don’t you have better things to do with your Saturday?
Jed shrugged. “Why not? I like to drive. I think Andrea liked the idea of you having someone around to keep Zeb’s family in line if things got rough. And when my landlord asks a favor of me, I hop to.”
“How rough could his family be?” I scoffed.
“I saw the video from the Lavelle twins’ christening. Don’t even joke about it.”
* * *
I was fairly average in height, and it still took a boost from Jed to crawl into the cab of his truck. There were moving vans in Ireland that weren’t this large. When had American vehicles become such an . . . overcompensation? Still, the interior smelled pleasantly of pine air freshener and the woodsy aftershave Jed used. The seats had been recently vacuumed, and the dashboard shone. Had he gone out and cleaned the truck because he knew I would be riding in it all day . . . or because Dick had threatened him when he made his “request” and told him to treat me with kid gloves? I wasn’t sure which was the preferable, less invasive alternative.
I slid my sunglasses up on my nose, sipped my coffee, and rested my head against the seat, willing the vague headache located just above my eyebrows to go away. Jed seemed to sense that I needed quiet, so he remained silent as we coasted smoothly out of town, over the Tennessee River, and into central Kentucky. He eventually switched on a country-western station playing old Loretta Lynn songs. He asked about working in Boston, and I had to scramble for an answer. From what I remembered, my dad worked a lot of night shifts, and the morning commutes were a bear.
I repeated stories Dad had told me about working in the hospital where he practiced emergency medicine. Unfortunately, most of these stories had been edited for younger audiences, so they weren’t terribly interesting. But the more I talked, the more I was able to focus on the world rolling past the truck windows. We rolled through towns that were barely towns at all, just a few buildings cobbled together on a street, usually situated around railroad tracks. And then we drove through Nashville, bustling and alive with traffic and noise. And as soon as you adjusted to the urban landscape, boom, back in farm country.
The landscape was so different from the hills and seascape surrounding Kilcairy. Instead of the relentless emerald I was used to, there were dozens of shades of textured green. Instead of rolling, gentle hills that eventually rose into peaks, mountains seemed to spring up from nowhere. There were sections of road that took my breath away, random patches of bright-red poppies growing between the lanes, rushing creeks, and the occasional random monument in the middle of a cow pasture. Throughout this landscape were little neighborhoods of house trailers, long metal boxes with windows.
“Haven’t you ever seen them before?” Jed asked as I stared at another configuration of trailers on a hill.
“On television, maybe, but never up close. They look so small from here.”
“It’s not so bad. I grew up in one.”
“What was that like?”
“Crowded,” he admitted. “I have this huge family: three brothers, a sister, and myself. We played outside just so we could breathe our own air.”
“Did you all get along?”
“For the most part. I’m closest with my oldest brother, Jim. Sometimes the extended family was a different story. We argue over the usual stuff, you know, who borrowed whose lawnmower, who pinched whose wife’s ass at Christmas.”
“Actually, I don’t believe ass pinching comes up in normal family discourse.”
“Well, you’re a Yankee. Who knows what y’all talk about,” he said. “We moved from Louisiana to Tennessee about three generations ago, and my grandpa never quite got over it. He’s still pissed about it, to be honest with you, says he misses the bayou. It’s funny, ’cause he was a baby when the family moved away. He never really lived on the bayou. We’re the only family in Hazeltine with semi-Cajun accents. Anyway, we all settled on this farm in the 1920s. There was a main house, where my great-grandparents lived, and then we built a sort of complex of trailers around it.”
“I can sympathize,” I told him. “My family lives close together, too. Do you miss them?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted. “But there are other times when I appreciate having all those rooms to myself in the Hollow. Not being able to see the inside of my house from one end to the other is a good thing.”
“Gets a little lonely, though,” I mused. “Do you have a young possum enthusiast waiting for you back home? I have noticed the distinct lack of Hollow girls doing the walk of shame from your front door.”
“Why don’t you just ask if I’m seeing someone?”
“Get better answers this way,” I said, smirking at him.
“No, I haven’t dated anyone seriously in years. I haven’t had a real girlfriend since high school.”
“Why not?”
“No reason,” he said, his lips pressed together in a frown. “Why are you asking me all of these questions?”
“Since I’ve arrived, I’ve been subjected to nothing but questions. Now it’s your turn. So why no girlfriend?”
“Just never found someone I thought could handle all of this,” he said, making a broad gesture down to his toes.
“Defensive and secretive, the Southern male deflects the personal question with posturing and a sexual reference intending to make the inquisitor uncomfortable,” I said in my best nature documentary narrator’s voice.
“OK, fine. My family is sort of nuts, right? There are a lot of traits I don’t want to pass along to kids. And most women, if they’re the nice, marrying sort of girl you want to date seriously, are going to want kids. I have learned from experience that if you leave that little detail out in the first couple of dates, it only ends in tears and thrown drinks.”
“That is a refreshingly honest answer,” I told him. “See what happens when you’re forced to keep your shirt on?”
“Smart-ass.”
* * *
We stopped somewhere in northern Georgia so we could eat a late lunch of fried bologna sandwiches at a Huck’s convenience store. I had never before experienced the delicacy of fried bologna, but I can’t say it was anything worse than what Penny came up with for some holiday meals.
After answering several questions about defensive driving and basic auto maintenance, I was “allowed” to take over driving to give Jed a chance to rest. I filled the gas tank, since it was my errand we were running. While I was pumping the gas, he emerged from the convenience store with a bag filled with beef jerky, Corn Nuts, Twizzlers, and other culinary delights.
“We just ate,” I reminded him, although I hated to do anything to jeopardize the broad white grin on his face.
“If you’re going to have an American road-trip experience, you should have all the trimmin’s.”
“So you promised Andrea I would receive the full-service package?” I asked, climbing into the driver’s seat.
He buckled his seatbelt, clearly less comfortable sitting in the passenger seat. “How can you say things like that and not expect me to turn them into a filthy joke?”
“I fully expect you to turn them into a filthy joke. Sno-Balls!” I cried, snatching the pink package from the bag and diving into coconut-covered goodness. “I haven’t had these since I was a kid!”
“Can’t have a road trip without them,” he said solemnly as I pulled the truck into traffic. He winced as I carefully changed lanes and pulled to a stop at a yellow light. Men were such babies when it came to their vehicles.
But it wasn’t a baseless concern, as it turned out. The farther south we drove, the heavier traffic got. I noticed there seemed to be more lanes, transitioning from two to three to six. The road department seemed to be doing random experiments in how to frustrate drivers, because I could see no rhyme or reason in the way they chose to repair the roads. My fellow drivers and I would move at a reasonable rate until I came screeching up to a car parked in the middle of the bloody lane. I would switch lanes, sometimes looking over my shoulder beforehand. And on occasion, Jed’s head would end up smacking against the window.
“You know, you can pull over anytime,” he said. “I’m good to drive again.”
“We’re in Atlanta city limits. Every exit I’ve seen is either closed for construction or blocked by idiots.”
A semi-truck swept past us, changing lanes and nearly clipping us. I was so worried about that I barely noticed that the car right in front of us had slowed to a near stop. I yelped, whipping the wheel to the left and pulling past, only to have another car slide into the lane ahead of us, honking like mad and zipping around a bus full of schoolchildren.
“I am not prepared for all this traffic!”
“It’s fine,” he promised. “It’s always like this.”
“It’s not fine. I am on the verge of a nervous breakdown! Which is a problem, because we are moving at eighty bloody miles an hour!”
“Just breathe, baby. Just breathe, and try to focus on one thing at a time, make one decision at a time.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a mentally challenged toddler. And this is not because I’m a woman driver. This is because I am used to living in a place where traffic jams are caused by truant sheep!”
He frowned. “Are there a lot of sheep in Boston?”
Just then, the rather large tanker truck marked “explosive” stopped to avoid stalled traffic ahead of us. I saw an opening between two cars and switched lanes, then switched again and made a sudden turn into the last before screeching to a halt on the shoulder of the road. I was shaking so badly it felt like shivering. Jed had to put the car in park, because my fingers were clamped around the steering wheel in a death grip. His fingers gently pried mine from the wheel, and my hands wound their way around his neck. Once again, I was clinging to him like a frantic primate.
“It’s OK.” He chuckled, rubbing my back.
“No, these people are crazy, and they are trying to kill us,” I said, sniffing. He laughed, threading his fingers through my hair and pressing my face against his neck. How could someone who spent so much time sweating in the sun smell so good and clean? He was a one-man fabric-softener commercial.
Jed kissed my temple, my cheekbone, an innocent gesture. I tilted my face toward his and let his breath wash over my skin. A strange, giddy excitement fluttered through my chest, making me grip his shirt even tighter. My nose nudged against his, and I could feel the tips of his eyelashes against my brows.
I surged forward, pressing my lips against his. He made a shocked murmuring sound before sliding his hands against my back and pressing me closer. He pulled my bottom lip into his mouth and nibbled at it. I tried to move closer, but my seatbelt yanked me back against the seat. Grunting, he fumbled for the belt release, cupped my face between his hands, and hauled me to him. I was this close to crawling into his lap when a truck passed by and blared its horn.
I jumped, backing away and leaning against the window. My lips were tingling. Why were my lips tingling? I’d never had tingly lips before. I touched my fingertips to them, tasting the salt of Jed’s skin and my own peach-flavored lip gloss. Jed relaxed back into his seat.
“What just happened?” he asked, looking straight ahead at the lanes of traffic whipping by us.
“I don’t know. I got all confused by the multiple lanes. I still haven’t figured out the whole driving-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-road thing.”
“No, I mean the kissin’. What happened to ‘I’m seeing someone, I’m not available’? Not that I’m complainin’.”
My hand whipped up to smack the side of his head.
“Ow! Hey, you kissed me. Why am I gettin’ hit?”
“Sorry, sorry. Instinct. I will keep my lips and my hands to myself.”
“Well, let’s not go crazy. Anytime you want to make out with me in a panic, feel fr—Ow! Stop hittin’ me!”
* * *
I did not make out with him again that afternoon. We made it to our destination a few hours later, and I was still sorting out whether I’d officially broken things off with Stephen the night before, or if I had been at all ambiguous. But it was very difficult to concentrate on driving and relationship status when my lips were still tingling with the memory of Jed’s.
I simply did not do things like kiss men in a panic on the side of a crowded roadway. Well, there was that one time with Neal Dunnigan after our graduation dance, but that was an aberration. A delicious aberration. What the hell was Jed doing to me? I was a mature, educated woman with the livelihoods and health of a whole village on my shoulders. And yet every time he got near me, I behaved like an addled, horny teenager. I had to nip this in the bud. I had to gain control of the situation.
I just didn’t think this was the place to do it.
Helton, Georgia, turned out to be a tiny village. There were no major retailers or restaurants. All of the homes and businesses were on one long stretch of street intersecting with a railway, with a box-shaped white church nearby. The houses ran the gamut from sturdy brick bungalows to dilapidated shacks.
Of course, we were heading for one of the shacks.
Jed had been told that I was reclaiming a valuable piece of merchandise that had been “misdirected” from Jane’s shop, but I hadn’t given him specifics. As we got closer to the address, I could feel the waves of concern rolling off of him, as if we were walking into a bad situation. Frankly, given the number of NRA bumper stickers on the early-model truck parked in the driveway, I was getting a little nervous myself.
“I think you should stay in the car,” he said, looking the house over.
I scoffed. “What?”
He gave me a look I can only describe as “focused” and said, “Do as you’re told.”
My jaw dropped. No one had ever talked to me like that before and walked away without a limp. Jed had never shown signs of this sort of command. He’d always struck me as the funny, goofy sort. But here he was giving me orders, and I wanted to do exactly what he told me to do. The tone of his voice and the smoldering expression on his face made me want to give him whatever he wanted.
Of course, I couldn’t tell him that. Instead, I exclaimed, “I beg your pardon! Like I’m supposed to fall to my knees at the sight of your freakishly large muscles? Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”
Jed seemed to snap out of whatever bizarre alpha-male haze had prompted such a speech. “Right, sorry.”
I shoved the truck door open and slammed it in his face, or at least near his face.
“OK, so that was the wrong way to go about it,” Jed admitted. “I’m just—I don’t like the look of this.”
“Get over it,” I told him.
“Fine,” he huffed. “But at least let me do this.” Jed hooked an arm through my elbow and led me forward. “I’m about to devolve into some pretty serious Bubbaness. Don’t judge me based on what I am about to say or do. And no offense meant, but it would be best if you didn’t say anythin’ over the next few minutes. And try not to make those faces, OK?”
“Faces?” I asked.
“The ‘I am an alien explorer in a strange world, and I don’t like what I see’ faces.”
“I don’t—” I protested, but cut myself off when he gave me that grave, serious look. I grumbled, “I don’t see how that’s not supposed to offend me,” just as the door opened.
Hubert Lavelle towered over even Jed’s tall frame. He had some sort of handlebar mustache and was dressed in camouflage from head to toe. He was the most terrifying person I’d ever met. And I had several cousins who would head-butt complete strangers over a soccer match.
“Hi there! We’re lookin’ for a Mr. Lavelle,” Jed said, his accent far more pronounced than I’d ever heard it. “My girl here talked to your wife on the phone last night.”
“Who sentcha?” Hubert asked.
“Your aunt Ginger,” Jed said.
Hubert’s eyes narrowed. “She say anything about the credit cards? ’Cause it’s not our fault she left that application on the counter. Anybody could have picked it up.”
“No, just the wedding present,” Jed assured him.
After establishing that we were not door-to-door evangelists or salesmen, Hubert ushered us through the front door and pushed us onto the green velour couch. The key design element of the living room seemed to be the deer’s head mounted on the wall, with some sort of cheap garter around its nose. The garter had a little tag that read, “Helton High School Prom, 1992.” This seemed disrespectful both to deer and to cheaply made underwear.
Hubert’s wife, Mindy, was a tiny powerhouse of a woman with a halo of wild blond hair and eye makeup so complex it took me a while to locate her pupils. She was clearly the brains of the operation, such as it was. And I was distinctly uncomfortable with the way she was eyeing Jed. But I was starting to think her threats to sell the plaque on eBay were a bluff, because they didn’t appear to have a computer. And given the length of Mindy’s nails, I doubted she spent much time typing sales information.
“Can I get y’all anything?” she drawled, her voice smooth and silky as custard.
“I’d appreciate a sweet tea, ma’am,” Jed said, plucking at the hat in his hands. Mindy turned to me, expectant.
“Oh, please don’t go to any trouble,” I said, trying like mad to keep the grimace from crinkling my face at the thought of liquid diabetes.
“No trouble at all, shug,” she said, teetering toward the kitchen on see-through plastic wedge heels. Hubert gave us an awkward smile, settling back into his Barcalounger.
“What did she call me?” I muttered out of the side of my mouth.
“Shug,” he said. “It’s short for ‘sugar’; it means she likes you. Or, at least, she likes the money you’re about to pay her. If she called you by your first name, she’d be indifferent. If she called you Miss Leary, she’d have already written you off.”
“Good to know.”
Mindy came toddling back into the living room with two hot-pink plastic tumblers of iced tea. She put a little extra wiggle in her step when she served Jed’s. He offered her a bland smile and took a long drag from his glass. How was he able to do that without gagging? But I was ever so grateful that her attention was directed otherwise, because it meant no one noticed when I poured my tea into her potted plant. Which turned out to be plastic.
Mindy shot a sultry look over her shoulder as she disappeared into the back of the house.
“Well, we’re real grateful to you for being so understanding about Mama Ginger’s wedding gift,” Jed said carefully as Mindy carried a gift bag with a cabbage rose pattern into the living room.
“You’re lucky you called when you did, ’cause we were going to use this as a backup ashtray when Mindy’s mama comes to visit,” Hubert said, his tone magnanimous.
I nodded. “I appreciate your restraint.”
“Course, I couldn’t just hand it over,” Mindy said pointedly. “Not without some sort of fair trade. After all, it was a wedding present. There’s sentimental value.”
“Right, sorry,” I said, digging into my purse. I handed her the envelope of cash I’d prepared to save myself the awkwardness of counting it out. I pressed the envelope into her hand. Meanwhile, Jed started a conversation with Hubert about “the Dawgs” and their chances in the playoffs. I didn’t know what sport they were referring to, but Hubert lit up at the chance to discuss his beloved Dawgs and engaged in a spirited debate. Mindy’s attention could not be swayed.
“Of course, with you payin’ us, that would only mean we broke even. Still leaves us without a wedding gift.”
“You want me to buy you a blender?” I asked. I was grateful to get the plaque back, but these people were getting on my last nerve.
“No, at this point, we’ve got the whole house set up,” Mindy said. “It would be nice to have a little extra cash, in case we wanted to splurge a little.”
“Would a hundred be enough?” I asked flatly as I plucked a bill from my wallet.
“Well, we are pretty close to Aunt Ginger,” Hubert hedged. “She’d probably want to give us at least two hundred.”
I slapped the two extra bills into Mindy’s hand with a humorless smile and took the bag from her hand. The plaque tumbled into my hands, wrapped in a wad of pink tissue paper. I had a hard time containing my giggle. I didn’t want Mindy to decide I was too happy with my purchase and owed her another hundred.
The cool weight of the plaque was wondrously solid against my palm. Jane was right; it was rather blobby. The acorn-cap pattern barely stood out under the patina of aged clay. But even if it smelled of old pennies, it was unchipped and intact. That was all I cared about. I whispered, “Thank you.”
“Happy to help.” Mindy smiled, tucking the cash into her bra. “Y’all are welcome to stay for supper, if you’d like.”
I frowned at the display of cleavage and the implications of staying for “supper.” Oh, I could only imagine the extravaganza of hospitality that would await us, right down to Mindy changing into something “more comfortable.”
“That’s mighty kind of you, ma’am. But we have to drive home yet tonight,” Jed said. “Work, you know?”
“Maybe the next time you’re in the neighborhood, then.” She simpered, batting her eyelashes for all they were worth.
Having wrapped up the “happy to meet yous,” Jed and I booked it out to the truck before Mindy decided she wanted a matching dinette set, too. My blood thrilled in my veins as we climbed into our seats.
“I can’t believe I have it.” I sighed, pressing the tissue-covered bundle to my chest. “Two down, two to go.”
“What do you mean by that?” he asked, starting the engine.
“Oh, it’s just a project I’m working on with Jane. Personal interest.”
He gave me a long speculative look. “Well, I am too tired to drive any farther,” he said. “There was a motel just outside of town. Does that work for you?”
“I have proven myself to be untrustworthy driving on the right side of the road, so yes,” I said, clicking my belt into place as we roared onto the main street. “You really went full-on Bubba, didn’t you?”
“I warned you.”
“Nothing could have prepared me.” I chuckled, shaking my head. “That poor deer.”
* * *
I was not familiar with motel tourism. When I’d lived with my dad, we were strictly Holiday Inn or Ramada travelers. The few times I’d traveled overseas, I’d stayed in smallish historic hotels with “character.” (Read: water damage and manky carpet.) And still, the damp-flooring issues were preferable to the comforts of the Sleep-Tight Inn. This was beyond the Bates Motel. It was a brick block building with rusty stains dripping down under the window air-conditioning units. There was a pool . . . and it was full of sludgy green water and leaves.
But the Sleep-Tight was the only motel for the next fifty miles, neither of us had another hour of driving in us, and after paying Mindy off, it fit my cash-on-hand budget. That was the only positive thing I could say about the Sleep-Tight. Jed insisted on being the one to go into the office to rent the rooms. I was concerned that he might have ulterior motives and would come back claiming that there was only one single-bed room available for the night. But it turned out he was concerned that the motel clerk might see a woman alone and “get the wrong ideas.”
It was a manly, almost cavemanly, gesture, but I could see the value in it. Nana Fee would have told me to stand up straight, make direct eye contact, and demand respect. And as healthy as that was, in this environment, demanding respect would have probably resulted in the clerk slapping the “bitch” label on me and doing something weird to the truck. I appreciated the direct caveman approach if it meant circumventing all that.
I dragged our overnight bags out of the back of the truck as he returned with the room keys. “If I am stabbed to death in the shower, I will come back and haunt you,” I told him.
“Fine.” He sighed. “I will come and watch over you while you are in the shower.”
“You completely misinterpreted that.”
My room was connected to Jed’s through an adjoining door. It was spare and outdated, but at least I didn’t see anything crawling across the threadbare orange carpet. Of course, the first thing I did was pull the comforter off of the bed, because there was no way I was going to sleep under that. I pulled out my travel sleeping bag and spread it over the sheets, with a prick of regret for Stephen and his practical gift-giving habits.
I’d showered (without being stabbed) and was seriously considering just going to bed, when Jed knocked on the adjoining door. He yelled through the door, “How do you feel about barbecue?”
“You mean hamburgers?” I yelled back. “I have no particular philosophy about hamburgers.”
There was a long pause. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that.”