Chapter 34
PANDORA’S DIARY
Elders: Ha ha ha ha!
I sat on the love seat in the Carters’ living room, leaving plenty of space for Leo beside me, but he chose the uncomfortable post-modern chair in the corner.
“Where’s Leora?” I asked.
“She’s in Portland,” Leo told me. “I pushed her to write about that new sushi restaurant to get her off the island until things were calmer. I didn’t want the creatures to upset her.”
I frowned. “Why would she be upset? She can’t even see them.”
“Because, Pan, that’s what faerie-kin magic does to her.”
Huh. That was news to me. I thought she only felt bad when she saw the rest of us responding to things she didn’t understand. I was about to ask more when Mom clapped her hands loudly.
“All right!” she said. “Let’s make this snappy. I need to figure out where the brownies left the clean towels last night.”
“They’re in the golf cart,” Dad told her, as he and Leonard settled onto the couch with late-afternoon beers. “I saw them this morning.”
“Folded?” Mom asked.
“And sorted by size.”
“Perfect! They’re such good little helpers.”
“Can you hear the words coming out of your mouth?” Leo demanded, leaning forward on the angular chair. “The creat—the folk hatched from an ancient manuscript, and you’re using them as unpaid housekeepers.”
“I’m paying them in pastrami!” Mom hated being accused of unfairness, especially if it was true. “And a crapload of croissants. Do you know how much butter costs?”
“Brownies love keeping busy,” Leonard told Leo, then glanced at Bob, who was napping in his hair. “Unlike pixies.”
“Though Grace is right about how much they eat,” Dad added.
“Worth it,” Mom told him. “Did you see how the floors gleamed this morning?”
“In any case!” Leonard said, setting his beer bottle down hard. “We’ve been discussing things with the other elders and—”
“You’re still just olds,” Leo muttered.
“—we agree that the folk are a tremendous boon to Beane Isle.”
“It’s like the ancient days of fae,” Mom said.
“Still,” Leonard added, “we need to keep the normals from discovering that these mythical folk are no longer mythical. We’re concerned the consequences of such a major paradigm shift might, uh, destabilize the—”
“It’d blow their minds,” Mom interrupted. “Twenty-first-century normals can’t deal with the reality of pixies and brownies and gnomes.”
“Yeah, that would hurt a lot of people. Unless…” Dad scratched his beard. “We cut through the fog and prove that mythical creatures exist. Maybe then they’d start to see the folk?”
“And completely panic over magic they couldn’t understand,” Mom said.
“Panic is the only thing that does make sense,” Leo said. “Am I the only one on this island who thinks this is trouble?”
Bob woke up from his nap and shook his head in agreement.
“I did have a worrying casting of runes this morning,” Dad said.
Leo gestured to him dramatically, and so did Bob. “See!”
“Dad throws worrisome runes every morning,” I told him. “Yet nothing ever happens.”
“What do you mean, nothing happens?” Leo asked. “Everything is happening!”
“Oh, calm down,” Leonard told him. “That’s why we’re meeting with the two faerie-kin who released the folk. Or, well, the one and her bookish assistant.”
“I’ve explained to the folk that they can’t interact with normals,” I told them.
“And started a social media campaign about unexplained happenings on the island being nothing more than teen pranks. That should hold us until we’re a little more adjusted to living with the folk.
But we probably need to make a solid plan for the future with every faerie-kin on the island. ”
“Maybe we should focus on what’s currently happening,” Leo said, clearly struggling to stay calm. “Like what caused all the damage to the village.”
“We’re not sure about that.” Leonard set his beer aside. “Perhaps an aftershock that happened before you opened the manuscript. A beforeshock.”
“Oh, well if the elders pulled that out their asses,” Leo said. “I’m sure it’s true.”
“What do you think, Pandora?” Mom asked.
Whoa. My mother was asking my opinion? She usually simply told me what I thought. But she’d been treating me differently since I’d gotten my gift and summoned the folk. As though she finally saw me as an adult.
So what did I think?
First, I thought that I didn’t want to be distracted by Leo’s catastrophizing.
I wanted us to go back to laughing together and playing faerie-kin detectives and making love.
Yet as I cradled the pixies in my hands, I realized I couldn’t let my feelings about Leo influence my thoughts about the folk.
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” I said, after a moment. “This is our new reality. Magic is back in the world. There’s nothing we can do but make the transition as easy and safe as possible.”
“You don’t know there’s nothing we can do.” Leo looked at me. “We haven’t tried. Dames, we can scan that manuscript with an electron microscope if we need to, we can—”
“You can’t,” Mom barked at him. “You can’t even get near it without Pandora.”
“Exactly.” He gestured from me to the door. “So let’s go.”
I took a breath so I didn’t snap at him. “Leo, there’s no reason to rush into things.”
“You don’t want to rush?” he sputtered.
“No, Leo. I want to take things slow.”
“The island is crawling with gnomes and now you want to take things slow!”
Leo grabbed Bob—who was headfirst in Leonard’s beer bottle—then strode from the room and slammed the door behind him.
“What brownie crawled up his ass?” Mom asked.