Chapter One
ABBY
MY BACK HURTS, and I pause to stretch it out before pushing open my apartment door. It squeaks, the hinges in desperate need of grease, and I make a mental note to call the maintenance man tomorrow.
Quiet classical music is playing throughout the apartment, and the lights are dimmed. I already know what that means, and I frown as I shut the door and kick off my shoes. Lill loves sunlight, especially the afternoon light that streams through our front windows.
She must not be feeling well.
The messy entryway proves it. Lill’s sensitive about her inability to work, and she’s made it her life’s mission to scrub our apartment floor to ceiling during the weekdays. I come home to the smell of lemon cleaner and dinner practically every day.
I smell neither today.
I reorganize the shoes on our rack, stalling, before heading down the narrow hallway leading to the kitchen and living area. Our apartment is small, and I force a smile onto my lips as I walk the seven steps into the kitchen.
The curtains in the living room and kitchen have been drawn, which explains the dim lighting. It must’ve been hurting Lill’s eyes.
She’s leaning against the kitchen counter, letting it support her weight as she mixes herself a drink of delysum tea. A black migraine mask is wrapped securely around her head, the gel-filled fabric lifted just enough for her to see her hands.
She hasn’t noticed me, and I’m careful to keep quiet as I inch forward and peer into the open canister on the counter. She keeps her special tea hidden in her room, but I want to know how much she has left.
This is her last canister.
I take another step, my heart lurching when I see how little remains. Almost three-quarters of the canister is empty.
She only needs to ingest a small amount of delysum to sustain her magic and survive in the human realm, but she’s quickly running out. Her mother never intended for them to remain here this long, and she didn’t grab enough during their escape from the faerie realm.
Callie may be long dead, but I’ll never forgive her for her short-sightedness.
I clear my throat, alerting Lill of my presence.
She jolts, spinning around with wide, panicked eyes. The fear vanishes when she realizes it’s just me behind her, but not before I see it.
I used to joke that she could hear a mouse scurrying up a wall from three rooms over, but her senses are dulled now that she’s cutting back on her already-too-small dosage of delysum. I try to keep my worry out of my expression, but I can tell Lill recognizes it.
She carries the weight of her guilt and shame in her shoulders.
“How are you feeling?” I ask before she can yell at me for startling her.
Lill straightens her spine and stands tall, but I see through it. She’s extraordinarily beautiful, but it’s obvious that she’s unhealthy. She’s always been thin, but she’s lost so much weight this past year that she’s nothing more than skin and bones. It’s jarring, and even her once-bright white hair and violet eyes are dull.
My family thinks she has an eating disorder. They whisper about it whenever I come home to visit, and they bug me with questions I can’t answer. They’re worried about her, but there’s no way to explain that she’s a faerie who is dying because she’s living in a realm without the magic her body needs to survive.
That would raise a lot of questions, and my parents would probably try to have me admitted to a hospital.
I wish Lill’s sickness were an eating disorder. It would be a serious issue, but at least one with the hope of a cure. Her body needs the magic that runs thick in the air of the faerie realm, and the human one has none. Not a drop. Lill’s going to die, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
It’s what killed her mother, and it’s only a matter of time before it does the same to her.
Lill’s mom refused to drink the delysum tea after realizing there wouldn’t be enough for her and her daughter. Or, at least, she refused to drink enough to sustain her. She wanted to save what was left for her daughter, and she withered away and died within ten years of coming to the human realm.
Lill told everybody it was cancer, which I suppose isn’t too far from the truth.
She looks just like her mother did in the months before she died, and I wonder what lie I’ll end up telling when the time comes. It terrifies me.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Lill snaps. She hurries to put the lid on her canister, but there’s no point. I already saw how little is left. “I’m just about to start dinner.”
I shake my head, grabbing her teacup. Her hands are trembling, and I don’t want her to spill. The delysum tea is too precious to spill.
“Abby…” Lill starts.
I shake my head, silently dismissing her impending argument. I know she’s embarrassed, but that’s what family is for. I’m here for her. I’ll always be here for her.
I hold the teacup to her lips, letting her take a few sips before pulling away.
“No need to cook dinner,” I say. “I’ll order pizza.”
She nods, and I carry the cup into the living room so she can sit and rest. She needs to preserve what little energy she has left; otherwise, her symptoms will worsen. Her tea is too diluted to restore any of the magic she has lost, but it will alleviate the worst of her pain.
At this point, that’s all we can hope for.
Lill looks around the living room, her gaze lingering on the book I was reading last night and the few bits of yarn cuttings from the crochet project she’s been working on this past week. I know what she’s thinking before she even opens her mouth to speak.
“I’ll clean up tomorrow morning,” she says. “I promise.”
I press my lips together, not bothering to argue. I’ve told her a million times that she doesn’t need to clean the apartment and I’ll do it this weekend, but she refuses to listen. It makes her feel useful, and it probably helps alleviate some of her guilt over our financial arrangement.
Lill finally sits down, and I wait until she’s fully settled before handing her the teacup. The few sips helped her tremor, so I trust she won’t spill any.
“I’ll be right back,” I say, disappearing down the hallway that leads to our bedrooms.
Mine is the first on the right, and I dip into my room with a quiet sigh. The room is a mess, but it’s my mess. I rip off my work clothing, fussing with my pant buttons before yanking my shirt over my head and tossing it into my overflowing laundry basket in the corner. It rolls onto the ground.
I’ve needed to do laundry for days now, and there’s no more putting it off.
I had to wear my uncomfortable and unflattering gray slacks today, and while I tried salvaging the outfit with a tight, black T-shirt, I spent all day feeling self-conscious.
The small marketing firm I work for is full of bright, energetic twenty-year-olds, and they have me feeling old at twenty-six. I know I’m still objectively young, but when I show up in my boring, gray outfits and they’re in bright-green patterned tops, I feel like a fucking crypt keeper.
I throw on an old college sweatshirt and pull on a pair of Lill’s leggings before carrying my laundry basket into the hallway. Lill is puttering around the living room, probably tidying up, as I place my dirty clothes in the washing machine.
I hate her near-constant need to clean, but I know better than to voice my feelings. Lill may be physically weak, but her tongue is as sharp as ever.
She collapses onto the couch when I finally emerge from the hallway, and I resist the urge to groan as I look around the newly cleaned room. Lill tries to pretend she’s been on the couch the entire time, refusing to meet my gaze as she sips her tea, but her hands are shaking again.
The five minutes of cleaning took it out of her.
She needs to return to the faerie realm. She refuses, for reasons still unknown to me, but I know that just breathing the magic in the air would be good for her. I’ve gathered through odd remarks and sly comments that Lill and her mom are running away from something or someone, but Lill was a child when she came here. If she did return, I doubt anybody would recognize her.
She’s told me most faeries have white hair and violet eyes, so it’s not like she would stand out. She could settle in a small village or something.
I’d miss her terribly, but at least she’d be alive. Maybe I could even go with her. Lill’s told me that while it’s rare for humans to be in the faerie realm, it’s not unheard of. There are a few, most brought over by a romantic partner. I’d be delighted to marry a sexy, magical faerie man. My parents would love him, and we could come back and visit during the major holidays.
“Did you order the pizza?” Lill asks.
I shake my head and pull out my phone, debating whether I should bring up my idea of traveling to the faerie realm and getting her more tea myself. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve offered, but Lill gets angry when I try to discuss it.
She seems to think her world is too dangerous for me, but I doubt it. I’m not naive enough to go waltzing into a city full of the trolls she’s whispered about who treat human meat as a delicacy—a fact I still think she’s joking about. I’ll stick to the faerie lands, which she has said herself are relatively safe.
She said faeries think humans are cute—like magicless, small pets. I’ll be very fucking cute, and I’ll bring her back a hundred canisters of delysum tea. I doubt faeries accept human money, but I’ll sell myself if it comes to it. I’ll do anything to keep Lill alive.
It’s a good idea, but Lill’s already having a bad day. I’ll postpone this argument until she has enough energy to engage.
“What toppings do you want?” I ask.
Lill shrugs and takes another sip of tea. I can’t help but stare. The drinks she used to make were so dark, you couldn’t see the bottom of the cup. What she’s drinking now looks like tinted water.
“I’ll get their veggie,” I say, wincing as my voice cracks.
The sound gives away the emotions swirling through me, and I turn away from Lill before she says anything about it. She gets annoyed when she sees what she perceives to be pity in my eyes. It’s never pity, though. It’s fear. Raw, unadulterated fear that often has me jolting awake at night in a cold sweat.
I’m terrified of what will happen when she runs out of delysum tea. Of how I’m supposed to enjoy life without my best friend in it.
My bottom lip wobbles, and I bite the inside of my cheek until the physical pain overshadows the mental. It never takes me long to compose myself, and I subtly clear my throat before calling the local pizza shop and placing our order.
It’s a good distraction, and I tidy up the kitchen while waiting for the delivery to arrive. Lill cleans so often that there isn’t much for me to do, but I wash the few dishes in the sink before putting away the heavy pots and pans she struggles to lift.
“How was your day?” Lill asks, stepping into the room. “Mark still giving you trouble?”
Her cup is empty, and she glares around the kitchen before setting the dirty dish beside the sink. I snort, already knowing what she’s thinking. She’s probably mad at me for cleaning, and I shoot her a broad smile as I grab her cup.
“Leave it,” she orders. “I’ll wash it tomorrow.”
I ignore her, washing the cup.
“My day was fine,” I say instead, answering her earlier question. “I spent most of it trying to convince Mark to update our bookkeeping software.”
He and I have been arguing about it for weeks. Mark hates spending money, but our current software was built in the Middle Ages and is impossible to use. I almost missed payroll last week due to some random error that has literally never occurred before, and it’s not the first time something like this has happened.
Mark seems to think it’s fine since I was able to find and fix the issue in time, but he fails to understand that I’m an accountant, not an IT wizard. He can’t rely on me to resolve every technological issue the company comes across, and I hate how I’m always blamed for the few that slip through the cracks.
I sometimes wonder how he ever managed to start a company.
“You should find a new job and quit,” Lill says. “That place sucks.”
I shrug. We both know I can’t do that. Our town is small, and unless I want an extremely long commute or to move to a busier area and pay twice as much in rent, there’s no leaving.
Besides, even though my manager sucks, the pay is good. It’s enough to comfortably afford our small, two-bedroom apartment, and I usually have a little left over for pizza and overpriced coffee.
The real reason, though, the one I can’t admit to Lill, is because I’m saving up for home care aides. Lill’s managing well enough for now, but I predict it’s only a matter of time before she needs more help than I can realistically provide.
That care will be expensive, and I need to save all I can.
Our doorbell rings, and Lill grabs plates while I get our pizza. We usually eat at our small, chipped wooden dining table—a tradition Lill insists on—but pizza deserves to be eaten in the living room with the TV on. It’s a hill I’m willing to die on, and after countless arguments and even the occasional bout of tears, Lill’s accepted defeat.
Well, mostly. She still sets up TV trays and makes me lay a napkin across my lap, but I’ll take what I can get.
I try my best not to look at Lill’s shaking hands as we eat, and when my eyes eventually grow wet with tears, I force myself to stare at the far wall until they dry. She’s going to die, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.