The Accidental Fairy, page 6
“Okay. I’ll tell you. Buckle up, Buttercup. Its story time.” Prim cracked her knuckles and blew out a breath. “Friday night, I came home. I heated up a shitty TV dinner because it was defrosting all over my shitty toxic dump of a fridge and my new one’s not here yet. I fed Freddy and Katy. I fucked around online, looking for people to hire to fix up this shithole. Then I took a lukewarm trickle of a shower and got into bed. When I woke up, I was in a dungeon—”
“Like a BDSM dungeon?” Rafferty asked, his brow furrowing as he tossed his hat from hand to hand.
What was it with everyone equating a dungeon to sex? “No, Rafferty. A dungeon, dungeon. Like medieval. Candles on the walls, handcuffs, chains, the whole Renaissance Fair experience.”
“Sorry, he offered sheepishly. “I was just asking…”
Prim dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “Know where I was in that dungeon, Raff? In a fucking jar. Like the kind of jar my mom used to use when she pickled cucumbers or made jam. That means, I was the size of a damn gnat. I also had on a leotard and a fluffy tutu. But that’s for another day. Anyway, plum bananas, right? Know what else I had? Wings! Motherfucking—”
“Cut it out, Prim—”
She jammed a finger into Raff’s shoulder to stop him. “I’m not done yet.”
Whipping around, she lifted her sweatshirt so he could see her shoulder blade before she yanked it back down after hearing the appropriate gasp.
“Like I was saying, I had wings. But I managed to escape and fly the fuck out of the jar when some weird-looking hobbit guy dressed in a brown robe opened it to take me out. I flew as fast as I could, considering I don’t know shit-all about having wings or how the fuck to use them.”
“Wings,” Rafferty mumbled, his face a mask of confusion…
“Wings,” Prim reiterated. “Anyway, I flapped those bastards like my life depended on it. Past toadstools the size of houses, past trees with pink and purple leaves, past little woodland creatures, and somehow, I ended up at one of these ladies’ houses—”
“That was me,” Marty said sheepishly as she raised her hand and looked at Rafferty, who’s eyes had gone wide. “I mean, it was my house she ended up at.”
Prim jabbed a finger in the air. “Right. It was Marty’s house. The wolf lady’s house. Where was I?” she asked as she began to pace. “Oh! Right. I ended up outside the wolf lady’s house, where I ran into this monster right here,” she said, pointing to Nina, who growled at her in return. “This is Nina. She’s a vampire. That’s why she’s so pale. But I digress.”
“Prim, why are you doing this?” Rafferty asked, beginning to rise in protest.
But she pushed him back on the couch with a flat palm to his shoulder. “Still not finished. Anyway, I flew right into Nina’s perfect face. She snatched me up in her hand. She’s crazy-fast. Like, magician fast. She brought me inside and, long story short, there was a fight about what to do with tiny me. Nina the vampire wanted to throw me back out into the cold, but Marty the werewolf said, ‘No! You can’t just throw her out into the cold, Mistress of the Dark!’” she mocked, mimicking Marty and pressing her fists to her chest like a damsel in distress.
“Oh, I did not,” Marty vehemently denied, making a face.
“Well, maybe not quite like that, but you did stop Nina from hurling her out the door,” Wanda agreed, smoothing her skirt over her thighs.
“She sure did,” Prim said on a nod. “Then Marty the wolf lady turned into a big, hairy, snarling thing like in the movies because she was mad at Nina the vampire. They got into a fight and while they were fighting, I, being the size of a damn mosquito, was launched like a grenade into a cupboard.” Prim paused to be sure she was relaying this fucknuttery in the proper order.
“Get to the fucking point, would you?” Nina complained.
“Shhh.” She pressed a finger to Nina’s mouth, a finger Nina snapped at. “Just wait,” she mumbled, trying to concentrate on the order of things. “Lemme backtrack. I lost my place. It was jar. Escape. Wings. Holy Tinkerbell. Fly. Then Monster with ninja speed. Yelling. A fight. Hair. Teeth. Drool. Ugh. So much damn drool. Thrown into a wall at warp speed. Then… Oh, yes! I remember. Then I was big again, and naked in Marty the wolf lady’s kitchen. Then there was more yelling and telling me I was in danger—”
“You are in danger, young lady,” Wanda muttered in disgust.
Prim nodded and winked. “What she said. Anyway, I told them all to fuck right off, which I’m sure comes as no great surprise to you because I’m an angry potty mouth. Then I left as fast as my bare feet and half-naked ass could move in the snow. But Nina the vampire and Darnell the…” She looked to him in question. What was Darnell again?
She was sure someone had mentioned it in one of their outlandish retellings of how they came to be, but she couldn’t remember. “What are you again?”
“Demon. I’m a demon.” Then he grinned and tipped his imaginary hat at Rafferty, who blanched as he continued to twist his hat between his fingers—a gesture only she knew meant he was freaked out.
“That’s it! A demon. Darnell the demon stopped me and made me let them give me a ride home. Well, stopped is a kind word. Nina grabbed me, threw me under her arm like luggage and shoved me into a big, fancy SUV with lights like the cockpit of a plane. They dropped me here and I thought I’d gotten rid of them, but no such fucking luck—”
“Prim, maybe you should slow down a bit?” Wanda suggested. “Your friend looks positively peaked.”
But she shook her head, aghast at the idea. “Why stop now when I’m just getting to the point?” She turned back to Rafferty. “Anyway, then we came here and I couldn’t get inside because of course, after being snatched from my bed and locked up in a jar, I didn’t have my keys on me. I tried to get in the fucking front door, that damn thing always sticks, but again, no such luck. So then I tried the window and still couldn’t get in, but Nina the vampire could because she’s freakishly strong—”
Nina boinked her in the arm, her expression annoyed. “Don’t call me a freak or I’ll eat your face off.”
Prim tilted her head and gave Nina a questioning look. “I thought Wanda was in charge of eating faces?”
Nina fisted her fingers with a growl and went for Prim’s throat, but Marty stopped her. “Knock it off, Nina! And, Prim? Get to the damn point!”
Prim stuck her tongue out at Nina before returning to her story. “So like I said, Nina pried open the window, which was glued shut by a zillion years of paint and whatever else that scumbag Smitty used to keep the cops out of this dump after I jumped ship. So we got inside, and Freddy and Katy had a little insta-love with Nina the vampire, while Darnell the demon started a fire. I tried to get them to go away, but they just wouldn’t split—”
“We’re not doing this to inconvenience you, Primrose. We’re doing this to—”
“Help me.” Prim cut off Wanda with a sarcastic tone and air quotes. “Right. They’re helping me. So then these other two cuckoo birds showed up, luggage in hand like this is some Airbnb because they claim they have new and exciting news about what happened to me. Get this, Rafferty. Apparently, Marty’s cousin’s brother’s sister’s BFF who was at a ceramics class—”
“Pottery!” Marty shouted petulantly. “It’s pottery, and it was my husband’s cousin’s BFF, for crap’s sake!”
“Details-schmetails,” Prim retorted. “Anyway, this BFF said that someone stole me from my bed and turned me into a fairy. That would be the good fairies called see-somethings, as a point of reference. The good fairies gave me powers that some bad fairies, the un-see-somethings, want and they’re gonna try to kill me to get them. You good so far, Raff?”
“Seelie and Unseelie. That’s what they’re called,” Darnell pleasantly reminded.
“Yeah, them,” Prim drawled sarcastically. “Still with me, Raff?”
He looked up at her, his eyes clouded with a million different emotions she, at one time, would have been able to decipher but now couldn’t parse due to the distance between them. “I…”
Prim stabbed her finger in the air. “Exactly! That’s what I said. Or didn’t say. It left me speechless just like you are right now. Either way, I get your confusion. So then I told them to take their crackerpants asses on out of here again, because I think this is some kind of prank orchestrated by Darleen—”
“Who’s Darleen?” Raff interrupted.
“She’s the bitch in HR at my place of employment who hates my guts. But she’s neither here nor there becaaaaause, guess what?” When he didn’t answer, Prim pressed him. “Go ahead. Ask me what.”
With wide blue eyes, he mumbled, “Uh, what?”
“Just before you stuck your nose where it didn’t belong to check on me after I’ve told you to go away a billion times, I found out I can make myself invisible. I don’t know how I did it. I don’t know why it happened, but while you were out there playing Mr. Nice Guy with Nina the vampire and trying to use your honey/vinegar motto to get past her, I was in here losing my shit because I couldn’t see my reflection in the goddamn mirror.”
When she didn’t say anything else and the room grew deafeningly silent, Prim plopped down on the hearth of the fireplace and waited for Rafferty to process.
He always needed time to make sense of things, which is what made him the far more rational of the pair. Raff always looked at both sides of the story before making a judgement call. He put time and effort into making a logical, fair choice.
She, on the other hand, shot her mouth off and hoped for the best.
Scooping up Katy, who’d abandoned Rafferty, she looked at him with a “Don’t you wish you’d gone home now?” gaze.
He ran a hand over his hair, smoothing the chin-length locks away from his face, his mouth open. “I…”
Prim captured his gaze with hers in a challenge. “You what, Raff?”
He moved his mouth again, but very little sound came out and still only one fully formed word. “I…”
Prim set Katy back on the floor and slapped her thighs in satisfaction before rising. “Do you see why I told you to go home? Are you happy you stuck your nose into my business now, Raff?”
“Jesus. Why are you such an asshole?” Nina barked out of the blue. “It’s obvious he fucking gives a shit about you. And from the looks of it, you don’t have too many people who give a shit—”
“Nina!” Marty hollered with a shake of her finger, her bangle bracelets clanking together. “You stop right there, Miss Ma’am. I find it uncanny that you’re calling someone who could be your twin an asshole. Or are you forgetting how many people cared about you before we came along?”
“Marty, stop. Stop this instant,” Wanda demanded, stomping her foot, making Freddy shiver. “I absolutely won’t have the two of you fighting about a client. We’re a team. We’re always going to be a team. While the similarities between their personalities are striking—a lack of filter comes to mind—Nina has us and everyone we’ve helped, forever. I’m sure Prim has plenty of people who care about her and—”
“No,” Prim said quietly, holding up a hand to keep Wanda from pitying her. “No. Nina the vampire’s right.”
She could admit the truth. She knew it was just her and her dog and cat. She’d come to terms with it. There was no reason to lie. It didn’t hurt as much as it used to—or, she refused to let it hurt like it once had, if you listened to her therapist.
“She really is right. It’s just me and Freddy and Katy, and it probably always will be. I’m fine with that. Now, take your tea and sympathy and your rainbow-colored friends and your need to help me and get the fuck out,” she said tiredly, even though as she spoke the words, they left her with a strange sadness she couldn’t deny.
As she turned to leave the room, Raff did what he always did. He latched onto her arm and pleaded with her. “Prim, don’t go. Please. Let’s talk about this—”
He stopped short when everyone gasped—just like they’d gasped earlier.
When she turned back around, Raff wasn’t there.
Or at least, his body wasn’t there.
His clothes stood there, just like someone had plucked his person from them.
But the rest of him?
Invisible.
Chapter
Seven
“What the hell is going on, Prim?” Rafferty fought not to howl the question. “Who are these people and why am I fading in and out like a TV station that needs tuning? Are we on drugs? Did they drug us? Did they drug you? Jesus Christ, what’s happening?”
Prim squinted her eyes at him. “You know, I thought drugs, too. Maybe hallucinogens, an acid trip. I don’t know. I’ve never done drugs, but I’ve seen some shit these last coupla days, Raff. Shit I can’t explain.”
“We’ve been trying to explain it to you, Prim. You simply refuse to listen,” Wanda—at least, he thought that was her name—pointed out as she came to stand in the doorway of Prim’s bedroom.
She leaned against it, stylish and stately, her eyes warm and friendly as she looked at him, or pieces of him, in the mirror.
Try as he might, he couldn’t summon his reflection in the mirror. Almost nothing but his clothes were fully visible while the rest of him crackled and faded in and out.
“How about you explain it to me then. Is this some sort of mass hallucination? Hypnotic state? What the hell is happening?”
The elegant female dressed like Princess Grace shook her head. “No. As you can see over Prim’s shoulder, where part of her wing is poking out, I doubt that’s something even an expert hypnotist could manage.”
Her wing. A shimmery, gossamer, multicolored wing. Jesus, Joseph and a camel.
“Then what?” Rafferty murmured as he sat on the edge of Prim’s bed, flabbergasted.
She plunked down next to him and clapped him on the shoulder, her eyes full of sympathy—which meant this was serious. Prim rarely allowed herself even an ounce of vulnerability.
“I told you. I’m a fairy with fairy powers. Didn’t you listen to what I said out there?”
Raff blew out the breath he’d been holding. “I heard wolf lady and vampire and mosquito and jar and dungeon. I heard a bunch of shit, Prim, and none of it made sense. Zero sense.”
She nodded her head and looked down at her sneakers, the scent of her perfume, familiar and soft, wafting to his nose. “Tell me something I don’t fucking know, Raff. I don’t know what the hell is happening. I keep hoping I’ll wake up and I can go back to life as I knew it. But so far, the nightmare continues.”
Wanda stepped into the room, folding her hands in a basket in front of her. “Listen, you two, here’s what we think. We think when you passed out and fell on Prim, she somehow rubbed off on you, a transfer of power, if you will.”
“So does that mean every time I bump into someone, I’m gonna turn them into a damn fairy?” Prim asked. “Because we’re gonna have a shit-ton of fairies if that’s the case. Or did I give all my so-called power to him and I’m cleared for takeoff?”
Wanda smiled in sympathy, grabbing Prim’s hand and squeezing. “No. I don’t think that, Prim, and I don’t think you’re cleared for takeoff either. What I do think? I think there’s a connection between you two we don’t understand, and you have to at least grant us the time to figure it out. We can figure it out, if you’ll just let us contact the people we know in our world.”
Their world? Raff shook his head. What did that mean? What a curious thing to say.
Curiouser still? Prim didn’t pull away from Wanda’s touch. Further proof she didn’t hate all physical contact. Maybe it was just his physical contact.
But right now, that was the least of his concerns. He wanted to know what was going on and how he could help Prim, and himself, get through this. “So are you telling me, I’m a fairy, too?”
Wanda nodded with a forlorn sigh. “I think so, Rafferty.”
“Am I collecting teeth or granting wishes? You know, bibbidi-bobbidi-boo?” he asked, because those were the only fairies he knew aside from Tinker Bell.
“That’s what I fucking asked, too!” Nina barked from the other room. “But sourpuss in there gave me the eyeball of death for asking. See, Wanda? I wasn’t being fucking unreasonable. I was being logical, not getting all in my stupid chick feelings.”
Wanda rolled her eyes before she went all business. “I don’t think you’re the tooth fairy, but after what I’ve experienced, I can’t say for sure. If Darnell’s nose is right, both you and Prim are Seelie.”
Darnell’s nose? His nose told him they were fairies? He’d ask about that later. But the Seelie bit? It meant nothing. “I don’t know what that means.”
Wanda sighed. “Listen, why don’t you come out into the kitchen where Arch is making some late-night grilled cheese and we can talk. Everything’s better on a warm, full tummy. Especially when it’s Arch’s grilled cheese.” She blew a chef’s kiss for emphasis. “Then we’ll tell you all about what happened to us, how we got where we are, what we think is happening to you, and how we’ll try and help you both get through this. Okay?”
He hesitated as his hand began to make an appearance. “Is Arch the blue man?”
She tinkled a laugh lighter than air and winked. “A troll. Arch is a troll. Also something we’ll thoroughly explain.”
Rafferty was almost convinced to follow her, but then he stopped. “Wait. The green boy…his hand…”
She smiled reassuringly again. “That’s Carl. I can explain him, too. You’ll love him. He’s the sweetest zombie on the face of the planet.”
“Zombie?” both he and Prim shouted.
That was when Carl appeared behind Wanda, putting his reattached, duct-taped hand on her shoulder. “Hi…” he said shyly. “I’m…I’m Carl.”
“The zombie,” Rafferty repeated woodenly.
Wanda reached up and gripped Carl’s hand. “The zombie,” she reiterated.
He nodded his dark head, his sweet face wreathed in a smile. “Yeesss. Zooom…bie.”
