Chapter 1
We’ve got to do what?” Jarvis asked, a curtain of sobriety falling over his face.
“We’ve got to go to Fairyland to get everybody back,” I repeated.
“What do you mean, Fairyland?” Jarvis asked.
“Dude, did you not hear the stripper last night call Bubba a Prince of Faerie?” Skeeter asked.
Jarvis looked baffled, which was only slightly different from him looking still a little drunk, which is how he’d looked until ten seconds ago. “Yeah, I heard that, but I thought she was talking about him having a gay dude for a best friend. Like an ally, or something.”
I snorted, and Ash, the nonbinary stagehand for the wedding venue, laughed out loud. “No, Jarvis, my grandmother is Mab, Queen of the Winter Court of Faerie. My grandfather is Oberon, the Summer King. I’m only part fairy, but I am technically a descendant of royalty.”
Jarvis’s eyes got really wide, and he looked at Skeeter. “Are you a fairy, too?”
“Not in the magical sense,” he replied. “Just in the light in my loafers and sleeps with dudes sense.”
“What about you?” he asked Geri, who snorted in reply.
“Totally human, bro,” she said.
He turned to Barry. And looked up. A lot. “And…what are you?” Jarvis asked.
“I am a Sasquatch,” Barry said. “I believe your people also refer to us as Bigfoot.”
“Holy shit,” Jarvis said, staggering a little. I grabbed him under his arms and laid him down on the grass, making sure he didn’t hit his head on anything.
“Imagine what he’d say if we told him about me,” Harker said.
I turned to the demon-hunting wizard. “I thought you were bringing a bunch of people?” He’d gotten out of his Suburban alone, and now that I knew my faerie grandparents were involved, I wanted as much magical firepower as I could muster.
“They got called away on a case,” he said. “I was the only one who could come.”
“The cat got called in on the case, too?” I asked.
“Nah, Luke’s looking after Nameless. They’ve…bonded.”
“So why didn’t you go?” Geri asked.
“I dunno,” Harker replied. “Becks said something about wanting a more subtle approach. I guess I’m a little too much of ‘I didn’t ask how big the room was, I said I cast fireball’ type.”
I could see that. I’m not known for having a delicate touch, but Harker was the kind of guy who finds a locked door and blows up the entire building just to find out what’s on the other side. I kept staring at the mushrooms, and the anger inside just kept growing.
Mab. My psychotic grandmother, who hadn’t even known I was alive for the first three decades and change of my life, had the audacity to screw up the most important day of my life.
This was the kind of thing that made people grow up and slaughter their families.
Okay, that thought hit a little close to home for the guy who offed both his kid brother and his dad, but they were both psychos, so I think I get a pass.
“Harker, I need you to open a portal for us,” I said. “Soon as we arm up, we’re going after them.”
He looked up at me, a little chagrined. “Umm…no can do, big guy,” he said.
“What do you mean, no can do?” I asked.
“Yeah, aren’t you some kind of big deal wizard, Harker?” Geri asked.
“Wizard?” Jarvis asked from the grass. I looked over and he was still lying flat, but he lifted his head up to speak. When he saw no one was joking, he just dropped his noggin’ back to the turf.
“I can’t open a Gate to Faerie,” he said.
“I don’t know how. I’ve opened dimensional Gates to Hell before, and I could probably figure out how to tweak one of those to get to Heaven, or at least to the Pearly Gates.
Not sure I could open a Gate that actually got inside Heaven.
But I’ve never been to Faerie, and I haven’t read any rituals to open a portal there.
Anything I tried would be a total shot in the dark, and that’s a good way to end up somewhere you really don’t want to be. ”
“Like where?” I asked.
“Like nowhere,” he said simply. “Stuck between dimensions, with no anchor to get you home. I’m sorry, Bubba, I don’t know how to get to Faerie, and even if I did, I couldn’t open a passage there. I wouldn’t.”
“And why exactly would you not?” I asked, my voice low and slow.
He held up both hands, palms out. “Because Oberon wants to kill me, and if I opened a portal into his realm, even into Winter, he’d sense it, and come rip me limb from limb, along with anyone stupid enough to travel with me.”
“What did you do to Oberon?” I asked.
“Long story. I kinda shit on a plan he had last year to destroy all humanity, and he’s kinda pissed about it.
I also got him in hot water with Titania about banging some of her handmaidens, which was like the worst-kept secret in Faerie, but I made a whole thing of it in front of a bunch of people and she got pissed.
So basically, I embarrassed him on this plane and got him banished to a no-nookie zone with his wife, so he really doesn’t like me.
” He paused for a second, cocking his head to the side.
“Okay, maybe it wasn’t that long a story after all. ”
There’s a pattern there. Harker has pissed off more powerful extra-dimensional beings than anyone I’ve ever met, and I’ve met some wild individuals. “So how do we go after them?” I asked.
“Um, maybe we use that thing?” Ash said, pointing into the circle. They walked over and knelt by a mushroom at the top of the M’s center point. I got closer and could see that it wasn’t actually a mushroom, but an iridescent stone shaped like a toadstool. I knelt beside it and reached out a hand.
“Stop!” Harker shouted.
I froze and turned to look at him. “I can’t open a portal, but I can at least examine the magical stone and see if it’s a Gate or if it’s going to turn you into a toad.”
Okay, fair enough. I stood and backed away, careful not to stomp any of the mushrooms. I didn’t know what kind of crazy spores they’d let loose.
Harker walked up, knelt by the magic mushrooms (not that kind, dammit), and muttered something under his breath.
After a few seconds, he stood up and shook his head.
“It’s magic, alright, but it doesn’t seem tied to a portal.
As far as I can tell, it’s just a trap. It seems like if you don’t have the right magical signature, it’ll blow you up if you touch it.
And no, I can’t tell what the right magical signature is.
It might be keyed to kill Bubba, or it might be keyed to kill anybody but Bubba.
Either way, better not to screw with it,” he said.
“So let’s all back away from the exploding mushroom,” Skeeter said, mirroring his actions to his words.
All of us knew Harker well enough to understand that if he was calling for caution, we needed to be careful.
“Harker, do you know of any other portals to Faerie in the area? The last one we used was in Ruby Falls.”
“Um, can we hold on just a second?” Jarvis asked, raising his hand. Everyone turned to look at him, and he slowly put his hand down.
“What is it, Jarvis?” I asked.
He…exploded, for lack of a better word. Not in the spraying guts all over the grass kinda way that apparently the shiny mushroom would do, but verbally.
“What the fuck are you all talking about? You’re just standing here staring at a bunch of mushrooms where a building used to be, and you’re acting like this is all normal!
Are you people insane?!? Do you even hear yourselves?
What is all this bullshit about fairies and exploding mushrooms and magic portals and gates to Hell?
If this is some kind of joke, and you drove me around to some kind of weird prank site to make me think that I got drunker than I thought I did last night, then ha ha, the joke’s on Jarvis, I get it.
Now can we just go to the damned wedding so I can hit up the bar, get a little hair of the dog in me, and maybe knock this hangover down to reasonable proportions?
Because whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying. Joke’s over, let’s move on.”
I looked at Skeeter, who looked at me. Then I looked at Barry, who just shrugged.
Father Matthew opened his mouth a couple times like he was going to say something, but then just closed it again, kinda like a trout.
We all stood around trying to figure out how to address the magic elephant in the room until Harker solved the problem in a very Quincy Harker kinda way.
He threw a fireball at Jarvis’s feet. “Dance, shithead,” he said, and flicked a sphere of glowing purple magic at his toes.
Jarvis jumped back, and Harker chucked another magic ball at him, green this time.
They repeated this a few times until Harker walked over to my future brother-in-law, held up both hands wreathed in a crimson glow, and said, “You’re right, kid.
Joke’s over. Now do you believe in magic? ”
Jarvis opened his mouth, a belligerent expression on his face, and I stepped up to put a hand on Harker’s shoulder. “How about I handle this one?” I asked.
I turned Jarvis toward the woods and put my arm across his shoulders. I started walking, and he didn’t have much choice but to go with me, given how much I outweighed him. We walked a little bit away from the group, and I started talking.
“Jarvis, I know this is a lot to take in. I know most of this crap is so far outside your frame of reference as to feel like we’re pranking you, but I promise we ain’t.
Magic is real, I’m part faerie, Barry is a Sasquatch, and my psychotic granny kidnapped your sister, your parents, and pretty much everybody I like in the world who isn’t standing around staring at a bunch of shrooms right now. ”
Jarvis threw off my arm and glared up at me. “Stop. Lying. This bullshit stops right now, or I’ll—”
“You’ll what, boy?” I asked, staring him down.
“I’ve already lost one fiancée, a brother, and a father to this life, not to mention one of the best friends I’ve ever known.
Now Amy’s in trouble, and you think you’ve got something to threaten me with?
The person I care most about in the goddamned world is missing, and the only thing I can do to find her is go after her, and if that means I have to go to another dimension, then I’m going to another dimension.
If you don’t want to believe any of this is real, I honestly don’t give a shit.
What you believe does not matter one little bit to me.
Because you don’t matter one little bit to me right now.
All that matters is that somebody took the woman I love, and I’m going to go get her back.
Now that woman happens to be your sister, so if you want to go with me, you’re welcome to ride along.
But if you get in the way, or cause me the least little bit of trouble, I will ditch you faster than I dropped LOST after the damn polar bear showed up. You got that?”
He just stared for a long moment, then when he finally spoke again, his voice shook a little. “You’re serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
“This isn’t a prank?”
“If it is, I’m going to beat the hell out of whoever thought this was funny.”
“Magic’s real?”
“One hundred percent.”
“You’re part fairy?”
“About half, yeah.
“Fuck me.”
“Your sister’s way prettier, so I’ll pass.”
Jarvis stood there staring at me for another long moment, his entire worldview shifting under my gaze, then he finally nodded and said, “What’s next?”
And that was a damned fine question.