Page 16 of The Courting of Bristol Keats
“Fae?”
“Another name for fairies. Do you think—”
Bristol shook her head. “No, Harper. What I saw were strange beings. Grotesque monsters. Not cute little things with wings—”
“But there’s all kinds of fae, Bri. Some are good, some are bad. Trows are wicked.”
“Fairies aren’t real, Harper. They’re imaginary.”
“Then what you saw wasn’t real?”
Bristol touched her throbbing lip. Real. The creatures she saw, real. Willow, vanishing before her eyes, real. Butfairies?
She crossed the room and sat on the couch, wedging her hands between her thighs to keep them from shaking. Harper plopped down beside her. “Tell me exactly what you saw.”
Bristol hesitated, but it was too late to dismiss it now. She described the creatures in detail, from their claws to their horns and wings, as well as she could remember. It all happened so fast. And then how they insisted she take art from the table, but they wanted something in return.
Harper’s eyes went wide. “You didn’t take the gift, did you?”
“The art they promised was valuable—”
“No!No, no, no!” Harper jumped up and ran from the room. In seconds she returned with an old worn book, a crossed-out library label on the spine. Bristol recognized it as one of the many books Harper brought home from the twenty-five-cent bin at the library. She called them the weeded books, and she had a whole shelf full of them because Harper couldn’t resist any book, especially one that was a bargain. The title of this one wasAnastasia Wiggins’s Encyclopedia of Faerieland.She sat at the kitchen counter and splayed it wide, its pages mottled and musty.
“How old is that thing?”
“First edition, 1940,” she replied. “Fae have rules, Bri. Lots of them. Strange secret codes they live by.”
Bristol’s brows rose. Strange secret codes? That was something she understood. They had always been a family of nods, short smiles, plain clothes, blending in with crowds, a family passing through, unconnected, meant to go unnoticed. Even at swap meets, there was a certain invisibility about them, no phone number, no address, no website. Her parents took a perceived weakness and made it work for them. Buy now because there was no later.
Harper ran her fingers down the pages of the book, expertly flipping them, searching for information. “Here’s her top twelvedon’ts in Faerie,” she said, pointing to a passage. “Anastasia says accepting a gift from anyone in Faerie puts you in their debt. You can’t get out of that debt.”
Bristol stared at the words on the yellowed page.
8.Never accept a gift from fae because then you owe one in return—and faeries never forget debts.
It was only a myth from an old book with torn pages that even the library had tossed out.
Impossible. This couldn’t be happening.
Was that why they wanted her to take the art so badly?In my world, a gift is an obligation.He said that like it was written in blood. The room floated around her like she wasn’t fully anchored to the kitchen floor. Were they really discussing fairies? A dangerous hidden world?
Harper’s gaze met Bristol’s. A grim knowing settled over them both. The insanity of fairies suddenly made the madness of their lives make sense—all the years of running and secrets.Faeries never forget debts.Had her parents accepted a gift from a trow and then run from their debt? Was that who had been stalking them all these years? Not organized crime, but creatures called trows? Would the fae at the inn know these trows?
She fingered the sketch in her interior pocket. A debt. “Just because a book says—”
“Anastasia Wiggins was the foremost authority on Faerieland,” Harper said.
Bristol went to the kitchen sink and splashed her face with water, hoping it would wake her from this enormously bad dream.
Instead, the dots kept connecting.
Trows got him.And Willow wanted her to know. It didn’t mean he was alive, but why would she tell her that if he was dead? There was a chance that her father was alive.
Her mind raced. She touched the art in her pocket again.An obligation.
“You didn’t answer me. Did you take the gift?”
Bristol nodded and pulled the art from her pocket.
