Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
Six weeks to the day of Mom’s death, I dig her diploma from the locked drawer of her bedside table. Beside me are the busted remains of a lock, a crowbar, splintered pieces of wood.
I’m not exactly sure what I expect to find here. Solutions, maybe, to all the secrets she kept. Money. Diaries. Her entire life story, if I’m lucky, signed and dated.
But it’s nothing like that. Just a diploma in a scarred leather cover: Nancy May Morgenstern, 2003. Magical Studies. Halea University.
I spend a long time staring at the curling script. Mom had a degree in Magical Studies. It feels almost impossible. She’d never, ever acted anything other than human.
The fae, like the shifters, have never been anything other than elusive.
I know they exist around me, in theory, but I’ve had few interactions with them over the course of my life.
They don’t attend human schools. Don’t shop in human grocery stores.
If any live within our town, they rarely step outside.
Mostly, they dwell deep in the wilderness, or nestled within cities.
Communities are tight-knit, but there’s integration in urban areas.
Downtown, I’ve watched fae businessmen waiting for the bus, walking down the street, chatting on cell phones.
I try not to stare, but they’re ethereal in their beauty, all long limbs and perfect faces, with flowing hair and stern expressions.
I never know what to make of them. Some are friendly, like Avariel, who frequents one of my favorite bars and will talk my ear off about anything from sports to stocks, but others are standoffish, disinterested in my meager human existence, and I try to respect that.
To my eternal disappointment, the fae rarely perform magic in public. Many won’t lift a finger to save themselves from an oncoming runaway train, let alone a complete stranger, which has led to public resentment. What’s the point of having magic if you won’t use it for the greater good?
The argument, of course, is that magic is not to be used lightly.
Seems a bit pointless to even bother learning magic if you won’t use it, I always think.
But Mom had magic. Mom used magic, presumably, at some point. Maybe not in front of me, maybe not even in the house, but probably at some point while I was alive.
Scanning the diploma again, I come to a realization: Mom was pregnant with me when she graduated.
I put the diploma back in the drawer and lay on the floor among the wreckage.
Is it possible that my dad graduated with her? That he also attended Halea?
Fuck. Am I more than one-quarter fae? And if that’s the case, how the fuck did I not know?
In the end, I look up Halea University online, scouring the webpage until I find a single link for inquiries, then I fire off an email asking for any information they can give me about my mom.
Then I pass out for the night.
When I wake, the sun is streaming through the windows, so bright as to be nearly blinding, and there’s a dark silhouette on the edge of the bed. I blink, and it’s gone.
I sit up, trying to slow my rapidly beating heart. It’s just Jolene, I tell myself, then startle out of my skin as the doorbell rings. Bruce immediately starts barking.
I stumble downstairs and open the door to a fae woman taller than I am, dressed in a black suit. She wears her chestnut hair in a single braid.
I gawk at her, clueless.
She thrusts her hand at me in greeting, her grip firm enough to hurt. “Dominic Morgenstern, I presume.” Her voice makes my name sound melodic instead of like something from one of Mom’s old, dog-eared paranormal romance novels. “How lovely to meet you.”
“Um, hi,” I manage. My voice is still rough with sleep.
What time is it? Birds are chirping, the sun is high in the sky, and I’m standing at the door barefoot, wearing a pair of torn basketball shorts and a formerly white undershirt with a spaghetti stain on the chest. Behind me, Bruce is going ballistic, yapping his little brains out, his few remaining teeth bared.
“My name is Orea,” she says. Her grin reveals pointed teeth. “I’m here from Halea University. You made an inquiry last night?”
“That was fast.” This feels like a trap. Still, I step out onto the porch, closing the front door behind me so that Bruce can’t finally earn that bite record he’s been threatening for the last fifteen years.
And, if I’m being honest Mom’s house is way too messy for guests. Especially guests as well-dressed as Orea, who would surely be horrified by the chaos hidden behind the screen door.
But she’s disappointed at this, her uncannily beautiful lips turning downward. “Oh, can’t I come in?”
I haven’t had coffee yet. The cogs in my brain squeal as they turn, but fail to produce any useful thoughts. “Um, OK.” If she’s here to talk about Mom, I should let her in.
I can’t help but think that I must look like a cave troll, leading her into a den of bones and decay when she belongs somewhere just as beautiful and ethereal as she is.
“So is this your home, or your mother’s?” Orea asks, looking all around, feigning interest in the defunct cuckoo clock and Mom’s numerous shoe racks. Bruce yells at her ankles, expertly dodging her every step between snarls.
I bend to pick him up and he screeches in my face.
“It was my mom’s,” I answer, scratching at the back of my head, self-conscious, trying to pretend like I’m not holding a chihuahua who may or may not rip my face off. “I’m trying to get it cleaned up, but it’s… not easy.”
“Oh, no,” says Orea, and her face falls, like she’s actually sad. “I’m so sorry to hear about your mom.”
I can barely remember what I wrote in that email, if I’d merely mentioned her death or fully detailed her diagnosis. “She’s better off now,” I say, and mean it. “She was really, really sick.”
Orea nods with big, sympathetic eyes. “Well, I’m here with some documents for you, and a few other things as well.”
“Do you guys always make house calls?” I lead her into the kitchen and put Bruce outside, where he starts snarling at the neighbor’s dog on the other side of the fence. Then I set about making coffee.
Orea has already seated herself at the kitchen table. “Only on special occasions,” she says brightly. She ignores the dirty plate and empty cereal box beside her with an aura of practiced grace. I’m quick to stuff them into an overflowing trashcan.
This is worse than opening the door for a cop. Somehow, I can’t stand knowing that this fae woman thinks I’m a slob.
But I am. Mom’s house was my disastrous inheritance.
Now that I’ve quit my old office job and started picking up shifts at a local restaurant, it’s a lived-in disaster.
Even Gretchen’s occasional visits haven’t made a dent in all the clutter and paperwork.
For fuck’s sake, it’s like Mom saved every piece of paper she could possibly find. Like she wanted to live in a tinderbox.
Maybe she wanted the house to go up flames. Maybe, like the little voice in the back of my mind insists, she was hiding something so sinister that she’d rather lose the house than risk being discovered.
But there are better ways to hide things. If Mom lived inside the world’s most disorganized filing cabinet, it was the result of a mental disorder, not whatever deceit I’ve attributed to her.
I sit down across from Orea and conceal a yawn with my hand. “What’s the occasion?”
“Well…” She bends to rummage in her bag. It’s made of leather, so sleek and smooth that I suspect it cost more than my entire couch. I’m immediately, irrationally jealous.
As a rule, I don’t date rich guys. One, because they’re rude and entitled, and two, because I’m jealous and insecure.
I grew up poor. I want money. I love feeling financially taken care of, even spoiled, but I’m too proud to accept it.
Toys can be taken away at a moment’s notice, and I hate that kind of manipulation.
Every rich asshole I’ve ever dated has tried that move.
I never stick around long enough for them to try it again.
Maybe there’s some fae in me after all, because I’ve never had a hard time landing a date.
People tell me I’m magnetic. Apparently, it doesn’t matter if you’re awkward and broke if you’re also hot.
I’ve been seduced into the backseats of expensive cars, rooftop patio parties, and glamorous hotel rooms, caught up in a whirlwind of money and affection and manipulation.
It got so bad that one of my college roommates asked if I was planning on dropping out, at which point I stopped dating for a little while, because he was right about one thing: I went on a lot of dates with a lot of shitty men.
I wasn’t focused on anything else. At some point, I was going to end up in trouble.
More trouble that I’d already gotten into, that is.
Looking at Orea’s bag, I’m transported back to that world, instantly uncomfortable.
Back at Mom’s, I’ve been shielded from the reality of my old life.
The suburbs are slow and predictable. Bruce and Jolene keep me on a somewhat regular schedule.
I drink more than I probably should, but I’m not going out all the time, either.
At work last week, a guest wearing a Rolex hit on me.
I politely told him I wasn’t interested and threw the receipt where he’d scrawled his phone number into the trash on my way to the parking lot.
I was so fucking proud of myself.
Orea reveals a cream-colored folder. Embossed in gold are the words Halea University. Beneath, there’s the gilded emblem of a tree, twisted and gnarled. She slides the folder across the table; I open it with shaking fingers.