The Urban Fantasy Anthology (24 page)

I have a moment of disassociation when I step through the front door of the bar and see him on stage. Because I can’t tell it’s not him—Edric, I mean. He looks exactly the same. He plays exactly the same. It’s not until the end of the set when I go up to the side of the stage as he’s retuning his guitar that I see the difference.

Actually, there is no difference—at least nothing you can measure. It’s in the way he looks at me. In the tone of his voice.

“You,” he says.

I have to clear my throat, but when I do manage to speak, my voice is steady.

“Yeah, me,” I say.

“What are you doing here?”

“I just had to see for myself.”

He scowls at me.

“I’m the one who’s real now,” he says. “This is my life now.”

I shrug.

“I’m grateful for the part you played in my getting it, but—” “I’m not here for your thanks.”

“—this ends here. We’re not taking up together or anything.”

I pull a face. “Like I’d want to.”

“I’ll just come get my stuff tomorrow, and that’ll be it.”

“You don’t have any stuff,” I tell him, “so don’t bother.”

His eyes narrow. “Well, then you don’t have a car anymore.”

“Fine. If you want the cops to pull you in for car theft, don’t bring it back.”

“Then I’ll get a warrant to get my stuff back.”

“I told you. You don’t have any stuff. But Edric’s crap is going to be sitting on the curb just as soon as I get home from here.”

“
I’m
Edric now.”

I shake my head. “No, you’re not. You’re just some pathetic little changeling that he grew out of a tree.”

He takes an angry step towards me.

“Temper temper,” I say. “You don’t want the good people who came here buying into your peaceful guitar groove to find out you’re really just a nasty little creep, do you?”

He glares, but he stays where he was and I leave the bar.

Well, that went well, I think as I get into the car. Venting like that was just so mature, wasn’t it?

But it felt good.

I have another long cry before I start up the car and head home to put Edric’s belongings on the curb.

“You know,” Gwen says when we’re sitting in the Half Kaffe Café the next day, “I didn’t really mean that I was happy you were having problems.”

“Yeah, I know.”

I had Karen commiserating with me when I brought her car back earlier this morning. Mine was parked where it was supposed to be, on the street, with my resident’s parking pass displayed on the dashboard. Edric’s stuff was all gone—but whether the changeling got it, or street people, I don’t know. Or care.

Now I’ve got Gwen figuratively holding my hand.

“So he really was having an affair,” she says.

I didn’t say anything to either her or Karen about changelings and fairy courts and the fairy tale geas that pushed Edric and I apart. I simply told them there’d been another woman—which wasn’t entirely a lie. He just wasn’t sleeping with her.

“He has this whole other life,” I tell her. “It’s been going on from before we even met and he won’t—he says can’t—give it up. So what am I supposed to do?”

“That sucks,” she says, then she cocks her head. “And there you were, wanting me to ask Bill about his fixation with the SuicideGirls.”

“I wouldn’t bother,” I say. “Not unless he starts listening to Goth music and starts talking about getting a tattoo or a piercing.”

“As if.” Then Gwen sighed and added, “You really just put all Edric’s stuff out on the curb?”

“I wasn’t going to keep it—and I didn’t want to see him again.”

Only it would be the changeling coming by, not Edric, and there’s no way I can explain that without sounding completely mental.

“I’m still surprised you didn’t want to try to work things out,” Gwen says. “I mean, you of all people…”

“I agree there are relationships you can work on, but for ours to stay good, either he or I would have had to have a complete makeover—and you know how I feel about that kind of thing.”

Gwen shakes her head. “I still don’t get it. When we started going our separate ways back in high school, you didn’t give up on us.”

“That’s because, for all our differences, we were actually willing to work on our friendship. You
and
me. It takes two.”

“I guess. But you and Edric were together for
seven
years.”

“During which time, he had a secret life that he kept hidden from me. And he won’t give it up, so what can I do?”

“I hate this,” Gwen says.

She reaches across the table and gives my hand a squeeze. The rest of our conversation goes on much the way the one with Karen did, me saying I was okay, really, her being supportive and telling me if there was anything I needed, all I had to do was ask.

There’s something I need, but she can’t give it to me.

I need to turn back the clock, maybe.

Or I need to be a fairy girl myself—or at least someone who trusts her partner, without questions.

But I’m just not built that way.

I realize just how true that is when Gwen asks me, “If you could take it all back, would you?”

“Before or after the suspicions?”

“After, I guess. Before you had them, there wasn’t a decision to be made, was there?”

“I guess not.”

The problem is, she doesn’t know the whole truth, the fairy tale puzzle lying underneath the mess that has become my life. I can’t tell her or anybody without someone suggesting that I should check myself into the Zeb for a psychological evaluation. Maybe I should anyway, but I’m not going to.

“So would you?” she asks.

I shake my head. “You know me. I can never let something just lie. I have to worry at it until I understand.”

The look in her eyes tells me she gets it.

“But that doesn’t mean it hurts any less now,” she says.

I think of the big ache that fills my whole chest and give her a slow nod.

“No,” I agree. “It doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

A Haunted House of Her Own

Kelley Armstrong

Tanya couldn’t understand why realtors failed to recognize the commercial potential of haunted houses. This one, it seemed, was no different.

“Now, these railings need work,” the woman said as she led Tanya and Nathan out onto one of the balconies. “But the floor is structurally sound, and that’s the main thing. I’m sure these would be an attractive selling point to your bed-and-breakfast guests.”

Not as attractive as ghosts.

“You’re sure the house doesn’t have a history?” Tanya prodded again. “I thought I heard something in town….”

She hadn’t, but the way the realtor stiffened told Tanya that she was onto something. After pointed reminders about disclosing the house’s full history, the woman admitted there was, indeed, something. Apparently a kid had murdered his family here, back in the seventies.

“A tragedy, but it’s long past,” the realtor assured her. “Never a spot of trouble since.”

“Damn,” Tanya murmured under her breath, and followed the realtor back inside.

Nathan wanted to check out the coach house, to see if there was any chance of converting it into a separate “honeymoon hideaway.”

Tanya was thrilled to see him taking an interest. Opening the inn had been her idea. An unexpected windfall from a great-aunt had come right after she’d lost her teaching job and Nathan’s office-manager position teetered under end-of-year budget cuts. It seemed like the perfect time to try something new.

“You two go on ahead,” she said. “I’ll poke around in here, maybe check out the gardens.”

“Did I see a greenhouse out back?” Nathan asked the realtor.

She beamed. “You most certainly did.”

“Why don’t you go take a look, hon? You were talking about growing organic vegetables.”

“Oh, what a wonderful idea,” the realtor said. “That is so popular right now. Organic local produce is all the rage. There’s a shop in town that supplies all the…”

As the woman gushed, Tanya backed away slowly, then escaped.

The house was perfect—a six-bedroom, rambling Victorian perched on a hill three miles from a suitably quaint village. What more could she want in a bedand-breakfast? Well, ghosts. Not that Tanya believed in such things, but haunted inns in Vermont were all the rage, and she was determined to own one.

When she saw the octagonal Victorian greenhouse, though, she decided that if it turned out there’d never been so much as a ghostly candle spotted on the property, she’d light one herself. She had to have this place.

She stepped inside and pictured it with lounge chairs, a bookshelf, maybe a little woodstove for winter. Not a greenhouse, but a sunroom. First, though, they’d need to do some serious weeding. The greenhouse
conservatory,
she amended—sat in a nest of thorny vines dotted with red. Raspberries? She cleaned a peephole in the grime and peered out.

A head popped up from the thicket. Tanya fell back with a yelp. Sunken brown eyes widened, and wizened lips parted in a matching shriek of surprise.

Tanya hurried out as the old woman made her way from the thicket, a basket of red berries in one hand.

“I’m sorry, dear,” she said. “We gave each other quite a fright.”

Tanya motioned at the basket. “Late for raspberries, isn’t it?”

The old woman smiled. “They’re double-blooming. At least there’s one good thing to come out of this place.” She looked over at the house. “You aren’t… looking to buy, are you?”

“I might be.”

The woman’s free hand gripped Tanya’s arm. “No, dear. You don’t want to do that.”

“I hear there’s some history.”

“History?” The old woman shivered. “Horrors. Blasphemies. Murders. Foul murders. No, dear, you don’t want this house, not at all.”

Foul murders?
Tanya tried not to laugh. If they ever did a promotional video, she was hiring this woman.

“Whatever happened was a tragedy,” Tanya said. “But it’s long past, and it’s time—”

“Long past? Never. At night, I still hear the moans. The screams. The chanting. The chanting is the worst, as if they’re trying to call up the devil himself.”

“I see.” Tanya squinted out at the late-day sun, dropping beneath the horizon. “Do you live around here, then?”

“Just over there.”

The woman pointed, then shuffled around the conservatory; still pointing. When she didn’t come back, Tanya followed, wanting to make note of her name. But the yard was empty.

Tanya poked around a bit after that, but the sun dropped fast over the mountain ridge. As she picked her way through the brambles, she looked up at the house looming in the twilight—a hulking shadow against the night, the lights inside seeming to flicker like candles behind the old glass.

The wind sighed past and she swore she heard voices in it, sibilant whispers snaking around her. A shadow moved across an upper window. She’d blame a drape caught in a draft…only she couldn’t see any window coverings.

She smiled as she shivered. For someone who didn’t believe in ghosts, she was quite caught up in the fantasy. Imagine how guests who did believe would react.

She found Nathan still in the coach house, measuring tape extended. When she walked up, he grinned, his boyish face lighting up.

“It’s perfect,” he said. “Ten grand and we’d have ourselves a honeymoon suite.”

Tanya turned to the realtor. “How soon can we close?”

The owners were as anxious to sell as Tanya was to buy, and three weeks later, they were in the house, with the hired contractors hard at work. Tanya and Nathan were working, too, researching the house’s background, both history and legend.

The first part was giving them trouble. The only online mention Nathan found was a secondary reference. But it proved that a family had died in their house, so that morning he’d gone to the library in nearby Beamsville, hoping a search there would produce details.

Meanwhile, Tanya would try to dig up the less-tangible ghosts of the past.

She started in the gardening shop, and made the mistake of mentioning the house’s history. The girl at the counter shut right down, murmuring, “We don’t talk about that,” then bustled off to help the next customer. That was fine. If the town didn’t like to talk about the tragedy, she was free to tweak the facts and her guests would never hear anything different.

Next, she headed for the general store, complete with rocking chairs on the front porch and a tub of salty pickles beside the counter. She bought supplies, then struck up a conversation with the owner. She mentioned that she’d bought the Sullivan place, and worked the conversation around to, “Someone over in Beamsville told me the house is supposed to be haunted.”

“Can’t say I ever heard that,” he said, filling her bag. “This is a nice, quiet town.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.” She laughed. “Not the quiet part but…” She lowered her voice. “You wouldn’t believe the advertising value of ghosts.”

His wife poked her head in from the back room. “She’s right, Tom. Folks pay extra to stay in those places. I saw it on TV.”

“A full house for me means more customers for you,” Tanya said.

“Well, now that you mention it, when my boys were young, they said they saw lights…”

And so it went. People might not want to talk about the true horrors of what had happened at the Sullivan place, but with a little prodding they spun tales of imagined ones. Most were secondhand accounts, but Tanya didn’t even care if they were true. Someone in town said it, and that was all that mattered. By the time she headed home, her notebook was filled with stories.

She was at the bottom of the road when she saw the postwoman putting along in her little car, driving from the passenger seat so she could stuff the mailboxes. Tanya got out to introduce herself. As they chatted, Tanya mentioned the raspberry-picking neighbor, hoping to get a name.

“No old ladies around here,” the postwoman said. “You’ve got Mr. McNally to the north. The Lee gang to the south. And to the back, it’s a couple of new women. Don’t recall the names—it isn’t my route—but they’re young.”

“Maybe a little farther? She didn’t exactly say she was a neighbor. Just pointed over there.”