16. Carter
16
Carter
M y version of heaven would be eerily similar to that week we spent in Lex and Ivy’s townhouse after the lust finished with us. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to be. Ivy and Lex took time off school, Miri had convinced her grandmother to give her some space, and I’d already planned this vacation.
I spent my mornings fucking my husband and making breakfast for my wives. After that, we talked and researched fairy history, speculating about what could be wrong with us. In the time since Ireland, all of us had seen doctors and had bloodwork done. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary with us physically or mentally, which meant this was some other kind of problem.
Dare I say magical?
I wasn’t ready to admit that out loud yet, even if it made the most sense. Siobhan hadn’t come to Ivy since we’d been together, so short of her brief encounter two years ago, we didn’t have much to go on.
“We have to assume all the lore is true,” Ivy said, rubbing her forehead.
“If we do that, then there are things that contradict each other.” Lex lit a cigarette and leaned back on the couch. We’d been in their study for hours, going through Ivy’s massive book collection. She’d accumulated enough for a doctorate. “For example, H. R. Murphy says there’s a portal in the woods. O’Kelley says the fairies abduct you from your bed. There are mentions of sacrifices?—”
“Sacrifices?” Miri asked with wide panicked eyes.
“Only life can pay for life,” Ivy explained. “In some cases, one person agrees to stay with the fairies in exchange for another person to be set free.”
“That’s cruel.” Miri furrowed her eyebrows and scowled.
“Siobhan led us out into the woods,” I said. “Does anyone remember crossing through a portal into a different world?”
“That Midsummer festival was off from the beginning.” Miri flipped another page in her book. “But the wine was what did me in.”
“All the lore says to stay away from the food of the fae,” Ivy added.
“Noted.” Three pairs of eyes shot to me. “For next time.”
“Next time?” Lex narrowed his gaze and furrowed his brows, letting out an exhale of smoke.
No one said anything, and I shrugged. “They always go back.”
“What do you mean?” Miri cut in.
Ivy cleared her throat and touched her neck, hiding the X that currently snaked up her windpipe.
“In the lore,” I explained, pointing down to the book in front of me, “any human that escapes Faerie usually goes back.”
“Why the fuck would they do that?” Lex inhaled his cigarette before stabbing it out in the ashtray on the coffee table.
I shrugged. “The realm has a hold on them forever.”
Lex looked from me to Miri and eventually up to Ivy. “You think that’s what’s happening here?”
Ivy pursed her lips. “I don’t know, but it makes sense.”
“In the end, you have to go back to the beginning,” Miri said, pulling one side of her mouth into a grimace. “I really don’t want to see those woods again.”
“I don’t know if we’ll have another choice.” Ivy sat back in her seat, her features softening as the weight of the situation landed on all of us.
“I hope we do,” Miri added.
Yeah, me too.
Nothing in me wanted to return to Killwater, especially now that we suspected the fairies had done something terrible to us. What if they made this worse? What if we went back and we could never leave again? There were stories about that shit, too. I’d just read one about some entitled fairy falling in love with a human, only to keep them as a consort until everyone that human knew had died. I didn’t want to end up like that poor dude.
When our brains turned to mush, we moved to the kitchen where we made dinner together like a family. Lex and Ivy debated politics while Miri antagonized both of them and I tried to play peacemaker. We cuddled on their oversized couch and watched movies until we couldn’t keep our eyes open. Then we dragged ourselves back to Ivy’s massive bed where we’d take our fill of each other. We’d pass out in a heap of hormones only to wake up and do it all over again the next day.
It was perfect. But like all perfect things, it couldn’t last. About a week and a half into our staycation, Ivy came home with news.
“Kit found Siobhan,” she said.
Miri and I sat on the couch, watching a popular show about meth dealers in Albuquerque, when Ivy and Lex came through the front door following brunch with their parents.
“Where is she?” Miri said, pushing to her feet.
“She’s back in Ireland,” Lex said.
“She showed up three days after the lust took us.” Ivy looked between us. “She bounced around Dublin until yesterday, when she stopped two kilometers outside Killwater.” She showed us a grainy black-and-white photo of someone I sort of recognized at a cash register.
“Are you sure it’s her?” Miri asked.
“Kit is,” Ivy said. “Her computers are smarter than everyone in this room.”
“Computers are still programmed by humans,” Lex said.
Fair point.
“It’s obvious she’s heading to Killwater,” Ivy said. “Back to the woods.”
We fell into a brief silence where the suggestion hung between us, unsaid but undeniable. We all knew it.
“No,” Lex said. “Absolutely not. We talked about this.”
“Why not?” Ivy said.
“The last time we went into those woods, we lost a whole day of our lives,” Lex said. “Who’s to say it’s not a month or a year this time?”
“This is the only way we’ll know for sure,” Ivy said. “We have to get answers from her. We have to demand she tell us the truth.”
“Ivy,” Lex said. “Think about this for a second. You can’t drop everything to fly to Ireland on a whim.”
“This isn’t a whim. This is proof that Siobhan is there.”
“This is a grainy image of a brunette at a gas station.” Lex furrowed his brows, looking at her like she’d said the sky was falling.
“Kit says it’s her.” Ivy put her hands on her hips, a clear sign of a challenge.
“Kit has never met her,” Lex argued. “Kit is still in college.”
Ivy clenched her hands into fists and Lex bit into a cigarette to hold it so he could light it, competition flaming in his gaze. They lived for the thrill of the fight, especially against each other. I glanced at Miri, who pursed her lips and returned my look of reticence.
“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t know what she’s doing,” Ivy argued.
“No, it means we can’t take her word for it,” Lex said. “Midterm break is almost over. We have to go back to school in five days. We can’t afford to get caught up in this fairy tale bullshit again.”
“We’re already caught up in it,” she said. “This is the only way to break this curse. Don’t you want to be normal again? To have ordinary relationships?”
I might have argued that none of us had ever been normal, and our relationship had certainly never been ordinary.
“I can’t be on set constantly worried about whether the lust is going to hit me again.” I rubbed a hand over my mouth. Fuck me, but I agreed with Ivy. It scared the shit out of me, but we needed to hunt Siobhan down and make her explain herself.
“That means we have to stay together,” Lex said. “Which you already agreed to.”
“What if it gets worse?” Miri argued.
“What if these powers come with a cost?” I remembered what Ashley told us at the orientation. “A fairy gift is never just a gift. There’s always a cost.”
Lex ran his free hand over his face and through his hair. “Fuck.”
“I think we should go, darling,” Miri said, grabbing his hand. “Siobhan owes us an explanation.”
“Even if we can’t find her, we know that’s the source,” I said. “It started there.”
Lex took a deep breath and stared at us. “It’s Samhain. You realize that, right?”
“Shit.” I rubbed my hands over my face.
“This sabbat marks the time when the veil between the realms is the thinnest,” Lex continued. “If Midsummer brought us this bullshit, what do you think will happen now?”
“It’s a different holiday,” Ivy countered, raising an eyebrow in consideration. “It’s a different time of year.”
He gave her a look that said he doubted that mattered. “We go into those woods”—Lex shook his head—“we don’t know what’s going to happen. Fairy king? Fairy queen? A whole fairy army?”
“We made it out last time,” Ivy argued. “We know the risks.”
“Do we?” Lex raised his eyebrows. “This is?—”
“We have to try,” Ivy cut in. “That’s all I’m asking for. Your best effort.”
He pursed his lips and raised an eyebrow. Obviously, that meant something between them.
“Please, Lex,” she said. “Please do this for me.”
The Lex I met in college would have scoffed and put up a front, perhaps demanding she explain what was in it for him. But this Lex softened at her plea and took a deep breath in concession. “You can never leave well enough alone, can you?”
“I wouldn’t be me if I did.”
“Fine.” He stabbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another one. “But you’re paying for first class, and I’m not staying in some violently sweltering broom closet, okay? I’m talking the best bed-and-breakfast you can find.”
Ivy clapped and wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him into a big hug.
“And,” he said, “you owe me. Like, blowjob on the top of the Washington Monument owe me.”
She scrunched her nose and laughed. “We’ll talk about that one.”
“You get us to the top of the Washington Monument,” I said, “and I’ll handle that one for you.”
“Don’t tease me with a good time, Chicago,” Lex said, winking.
A few hours later, we were on a plane in first class, headed for Dublin.