Page 25 of Welcome to Fae Cafe

She waved Kate forward. “You can call me Freida. That’s my unhidden name.”

Kate spotted the curly-haired girl among them who’d found her in the street. A half-scribbled name tag was on her sweater now that said: HAZEL. The girl was focussed on knitting a scarf and paid Kate no more attention.

“Um… I don’t know how to knit,” Kate said, wondering why in the world she bothered to tell them that. A few chuckles rose from the older ladies.

“You’re not here to knit.” Freida rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Just pretend for a while.”

Kate hesitated.

“My assassins will find you soon enough.”

She slid her book bag off her shoulder and wandered in with slow steps. When she sank into the last seat on the edge of a couch, Freida grabbed a ball of mint yarn and stuffed it into her hands with two long gray needles. A woman across the couches slid a small dish with a light blue macaroon toward Kate.

“I’m supposed to pretend to do this?” Kate made a face, and a woman with a large red braid pointed with her needle toward a video camera in the shop’s corner.

“They can see us, but they can’t hear us in here,” Freida said as she sat back down and picked up her yarn. “You’ve been black marked, Kate Kole,” she added. “The fae Prince has come to kill you. And he’ll succeed.”

The yarn tumbled from Kate’s fingers, but she caught it before it hit the floor. “What did you just say?” She gripped the ball.

“We don’t allow humans into our knitting club. But we took a vote, and I suppose we want to ask you a few questions before you’re dead. Most of all, we wish to know why you killed that fae the other morning? Did someone pay you in gold to do it? You can’t trust the gold, you know. It’s rarely real.”

Kate stammered, “Did you say…fae?”

“No one kills a fairy and lives.”

Freida sighed. “Is she deaf, Gretchen? I did say fae, right?” she asked the woman with the red braid beside her.

The woman—Gretchen—nodded but didn’t look up from her knitting.

“Fae,” Freida said it loudly and articulate this time, like Kate was stupid. “Otherwise known as fair folk, elves, pixies, dokkaebi, yojeong, or any number of other names depending on which culture in this world your folklore derives from, but most commonly,fairies. Haven’t you seen the fae Prince, yet? Haven’t you noticed his ears?” Freida shoved her hair aside to reveal a pointed ear with a heavy, opal clip-on earring hanging from the lobe.

“I met him,” Kate said, trying not to react to Freida’s pointed ear. She couldn’t look away from it. It was like Freida was a character from every children’s fairy tale she’d ever read. “He’s pretending to be a police officer and he totally kissed me out of the blue,” she said, and her cheeks warmed.

A few moans lifted from the group, and Freida grimaced. “Well, that’s unfortunate.” But she paused. “Wait, he kissed you and you’re not longing to race to him, or having dreams of him, or wanting to move heaven and earth to see him?” she asked, and Kate made a repulsed face.

“No way!”

A few shrill giggles lifted from the group.

“It must have reversed,” Hazel muttered from her seat. “Joke’s on him,” she then said with a grin that showed a row of wide, twisted teeth.

Kate set her yarn and needles down on the table in the middle. “Is this a joke?” she asked. “Or are you really talking about afae, like something from a fantasy book?”

“Ah. I see you’re well read.” Freida smiled.

“Yeah, well… I read a lot when I was younger.”

A few needles slowed their knitting. One of the women grew teary-eyed and took in a shaky inhale, and the atmosphere in the room became glum in a heartbeat. A girl sucked in a nose-full of snot, wiped her sleeve over her face, then tossed down her knitting on the table with a clatter and stomped off to a room in the back where Kate couldn’t see.

“What did I say?” Kate asked, and Freida set down her knitting with a sigh.

“It’s your tone, Kate Kole. We all know that tone. We’ve all suffered and lost ones we love. Like you have.”

“How do you know… I mean…” Kate dropped her gaze to the carpet as the air in the room turned heavy. “I never said I lost someone.”

“You can learn a person’s whole life story from a tone,” the teary-eyed old woman across from her said.

Freida pursed her lips. She snatched her knitting back up and began working twice as fast. “I suppose Palmer was right, though I haven’t been a fairy godmother in nearly ten faeborn years,” she mumbled. “But first, I think you could use a good sweater.”

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