28. Peter
28
Peter
I had a job .
An actual, bona fide, whole adult job.
Sure, it wasn’t like Everett’s, with his computer and stuff, but that was fine. I didn’t mind using his laptop, but it felt weird to me, constrained in a way that I didn’t fully understand.
But working with my hands? That was fucking great.
Okay, my hands and magic.
We’d gone down to the store and took a look at the bulletin board, where people were asking for help with everything that’d broken in their homes, and Everett had looked at me sidelong.
“Are you sure you’re up for this? Maybe we start with something small.”
But looking over the board, there was nothing that I thought was impossible. I didn’t flatter myself to think I was good at everything, only that things knew the shape they wanted to be and I could give them a push.
It was the same kind of magic that’d kept me young for almost two centuries, and the same kind that’d let me grow beside Everett. It’d been simple, and while one day I might get bogged down in the complexities of why things were the way they were, in that moment, it felt right.
“We can, but it’s going to be fine,” I promised, slipping my hand into Everett’s.
He took pictures of the board with his phone so we could call everyone, and I was letting him handle that part.
By the next morning, he was using his laptop not to check his emails or hunt for other freelance jobs, but to arrange my schedule, which seemed, honestly, horrible. I didn’t want to keep track of times and dates and phone numbers. But the magic? I freaking loved the magic.
More than that, I loved watching the relief wash over people’s faces when something they’d been tolerating for ages was fixed . Then, they’d smile.
I let Everett handle the money stuff too. I had no idea what was reasonable for people to pay for handiwork, and though some larger magic stripped my energy, it felt wrong charging people at all.
Everett assured me that was the way of things—a capitalist hellscape, he called it. I was very happy not to learn too much about it, though Dr. Hawking seemed to think I’d be better served looking after my own schedule.
Truth was, half the reason I didn’t want to do it was that Everett came with me to every appointment he arranged. I liked having him there.
It was like the magic came a little easier when I could look up into his eyes, sure that everything, finally, was how it should be.
Right then, he was standing at the front of the supermarket talking to Marsha about—well, I didn’t know, exactly. I was crouching in front of a refrigerator along the back wall, the front all glass, rattling furiously.
When I took off the metal grate on the lower part of the front, Ezra narrowed his eyes and leaned in too. “I don’t know how you make any sense of this,” he grumbled, looking at wires and fans.
I shrugged, reaching my hand in, palm up, fingers lightly curled as I collected the magic in my hand. I didn’t let everyone watch this part, but Ezra? He knew about the kids. I’d seen him fly, and his fresh produce was definitely some kind of magic, whether or not he recognized how strange it was to have everything in the store stay fresh and crisp and plump.
Still, when he watched the gold fly out, glistening and beautiful, curling through the components of the fridge, he swore.
“How the hell—” He sat back, his hands clapped down on top of his thighs.
I sat up too, head cocked, watching him. “You really can’t do this?”
Ezra shook his head.
“Can you still fly?”
Ezra’s eyes narrowed into a scowl, his lips pinched, like he was struggling to remember something.
“We did do that, didn’t we? Zipped around everywhere. Slept in trees like little Tarzans.”
I snorted. “Yeah. But you can’t anymore?”
Ezra shook his head. “Don’t think so. At least, I haven’t tried, but it...You just knew you could do all this?”
With a rough swallow, I nodded. “It feels natural. I just?—”
I didn’t know what to say. Knowing I still had magic and he didn’t have easy access to it made me feel like a freak, but Ezra just laughed, grabbing his earlobes and stretching them out, wiggling his ears all around.
“Look at yourself,” he said.
I turned to the glass surface of the fridge, frowning. But there I was, same face I’d gotten used to, pointed ears sticking out beneath a tumble of goldish-brown waves.
Ezra bumped against my arm. He looked...old. Not in a bad way or anything. In fact, I rather liked his sparkly eyes and the lines around his mouth that said he’d lived a life full of smiles.
“You were there the longest,” he said softly, staring at us both in the reflection. “Some part of you still belongs to the fae, I think, and you took something from them. But it’s okay to be different, Peter.” He gripped my hand, my fingers still tingling with the warm flicker of magic. “We like you as you are now, as you were yesterday, and as you’ll be tomorrow.”
Somehow, each of those ideas of me felt different, but that—that wasn’t terrifying like it had been. Dazed, I put the metal grate back in place and rose to my feet, drifting to Everett’s side.
I slipped my arm around his and leaned my cheek against his shoulder.
“All done?” he asked, his free hand settling on top of mine.
“Yup.”
“Don’t think the old thing’s ever been quieter. Thanks, Peter,” Ezra said, nodding at each of us. “Everett.”
Marsha paid us with a checkbook she kept under the tray in the cash register, and we made our way home, walking along the same sidewalks I’d trudged when I missed Everett too much to stay away from Cider Landing.
“Everything okay?” Everett asked. My arm was still looped through his, his crooked with a bag of groceries in his other hand. “You seem kind of...contemplative?”
I started, blinking up at him. “Ezra said something that got me thinking.”
“Thinking about what?”
“He said the fae still have part of me. Do you think that’s true?”
Everett tipped his head one way than the other. “Well, that life was all you ever knew. I don’t really have my parents anymore, but they still helped make me. Some of the other kids had lives outside the forest, right? Like Jessie?”
I nodded. But that wasn’t really what bothered me. I didn’t want to go back and change what’d happened, just?—
“Do you think the magic’s going to go away?”
Everett sucked his cheeks in, watching me, giving the question due consideration. “Not that I’m an expert or anything, but...no. It’s hard to imagine you changing that much. You helped me fly.”
“What if it does?” I knew that magic wasn’t what made Everett like me, but would I change again? Would I get worse? I’d just found a thing I could do.
Everett laughed, letting my arm go to put his around me instead. “Then you’d still be wonderful, and we’ll figure it out, okay? Together.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
I felt a little better going home. He was right. I was Peter, damn it, and whatever magic I had was mine . I’d earned it.
I was holding my chin a little higher when we turned back onto our street, and there, on our porch, stood two men, their arms crossed, their expressions displeased.
And beside me, Everett groaned.