Page 171 of Sigils & Spells

I straightened. “Hey, Ruby. Looking good.”

She smiled, but the smile faded as she looked at me. I wondered briefly what the state of my hair could possibly be, before she looked at Minho with a stony expression.

“Minho what happened?” Stony didn’t fit her face well. Her face was made for soft expressions, but somehow I knew that if she looked at me like that I’d have to answer her.

Minho grimaced and fished in his pocket for the envelope from Sterling. “That’s the problem. We’re not sure.”

Ruby looked at me again, accepting the envelope, and set down the chicken, who walked away clucking grumpily. “Come with me, and tell me everything.”

* * *

Ruby readwhatever was on the paper while we walked and I talked. She led us around the back of the farm house, to what looked like a vamped up shed and ushered us inside while I still talked. I still didn’t know why Ruby would know anything about the situation, but I understood as soon as I stepped inside. The inside of the shed for a moment confused the hell out of my brain.

For one, the shed, from the outside, couldn’t have been more than ten by ten feet, but inside…it had to have been as big as our apartment. There were bookshelves and desks, a cauldron, bundles of scented herbs hung from one wall, and jars of who knows what.

Ruby was a witch.

I must have been slack jawed, because Ruby had to shoo me further into the room. She scanned the note again and again, though it really didn’t look like there was that much on it.

“Ok.” She furrowed her eyebrows, and pointed to a purple arm chair that sat in the middle of a detailed chalk circle. “You. Sit.”

I resisted the urge to say ‘yes ma’am’ and sat, “-and then Sterling told us to come to you.”

“Well, you’re not a werewolf.”

Minho collapsed onto a couch that matched the chair. “That’s the problem. But no, that’s too easy.”

Ruby hushed him, and walked over to a chalkboard, and reached into her rainboot, pulling out a stick about as long as her forearm with twisting designs I couldn’t make out from here, and a honking huge red gemstone—most likely a Ruby. A wand. She waved the wand at the board muttering to herself and a piece of chalk floated up and started writing in a legible cursive.

It wrote: Flour, Apples, Titania, Maeve, Toad Stools, Horse, Strawberries, and Elfhame. Then under the list, it wrote fairy dust put in his drink.

“What does that mean?”

Ruby put the note in her overall pocket and put her hands on her hips, “This is what Sterling smelled on you that he thought might give me some idea about what’s going on.”

“Does it?”

Ruby turned back to me, and I couldn’t read the expression in her face. “I don’t know. Maybe a bit.”

“Exactly what happened between you leaving the bar and you going home? Tell me literally every detail.”

So much had happened since then that I’d forgotten about the dream entirely, but it all came rushing back to me suddenly. I told Ruby about jumping out of the car, and falling asleep in a ring of mushrooms and the dream I’d had after I passed out. The ethereal party. The apple I’d taken a single bite of, and the woman made of a tree who seemed like she wanted to kill me before I woke up.

Ruby’s face morphed from ambiguous to absolute horror as I talked, and I found my own chest clenching as I described the dream. It hadn’t felt relevant until this moment, but now… it was probably important.

Ruby closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. She took a long breath. “Julian Sanchez. Have you read any book ever?”

“Well, yeah, butThe Martiandoesn’t really give any helpful pointers on the situation.”

Ruby made a sound of exasperation, and pointed at the board, yelling, “You dumbass! That wasn’t a dream! You went to Elfhame!”

“Where?”

“Elfhame!” Ruby waved her wand again and the chalk circled the world in the list. “Fairyland! You can’t go in a fairy circle after midnight! You especially can’t fall asleep in one!”

I blinked at her. “Fairies?” I looked at Minho who was watching the conversation with a stunned exhaustion. “Fairies?”

Minho rubbed his eyes again. “Fairies, man.”

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