Page 17 of The Wolfing Hour
“Not fairy with an ‘i.’ Faery with an ‘e.’ They’re nothing like the fairy cakes you people are accustomed to. The side effects for non-Faery folk include hallucinations, delusions, paranoia,anxiety, panic, bizarre behavior, and violent seizures.” Her voice brightened. “Oh, but they’re a delicacy in our world.”
“Glad I asked. Please don’t let him bring any of that home. All I need is for him to feed one to Señora Cervantes.”
“Aw, Cecil’s a good guy. He’d never do that.”
“Are we talking about the same ornery little dude?” I lifted the rose petal to my nose and sniffed. The scent reminded me of Abuela Lulu, and I smiled. “I mean it, Gela. Check his pockets.”
“Don’t worry. Kiv will do it. They’re a lot more cynical than I am.”
“Good. Can you also please tell him to hang out until I get there, please? I need his assistance with something.”
“Will do.” The faery lowered her voice. “Thanks for encouraging him to visit us. Kiv gets homesick for the old country sometimes. Cecil’s presence calms them.”
“Cecil’s presence calms them,” I repeated. “Gela, that’s a sentence no one has ever uttered before. I should write it on the calendar. Light a candle. Commemorate the date somehow.”
Gela laughed and ended the call.
Now that I knew Cecil was safe with the Melliza cousins, I could focus on tracking down Fennel.
My partners were free to come and go as they pleased, but it was unusual for them to be gone this long and not give me a head’s up where they were going. We were running a business, after all.
I stared down at the empty cat bed I’d bought for him after he decided to stay with me. Originally, I’d placed it further back in the garden room where it was quieter. He’d dragged it to where it was now. Near the door, beneath the planter where I grew his namesake.
“Where are you, gato?”
I’d talked to most of the residents, and no one had seen him, so I decided to walk the perimeter of the Siete Saguaros. Fennelhad taken to napping by the new saguaro sprouts, going as far as to curl his body around the smaller ones. He was as invested in their wellbeing as I was, and I appreciated it.
The largest of the saguaro sprouts, Red, was alone.
I’d visited him on my way to Ida’s this morning, so I didn’t stick around long after ascertaining that Fennel wasn’t there. I did, however, take a quick second to send some magic into his roots. It was habit now, something I’d started doing the day I saw the first signs of life from the once-dead plants.
Every saguaro in the park had died the day my mom had, as if she’d been their sole reason for existing. Red’s death, especially, had cut me to the core, and I’d nearly killed myself trying to save him. Had it not been for Ida—and later Fennel—I don’t believe I’d have made it.
Now that they were back, things felt more settled in the park. It meant I’d connected with the soil here, that it had accepted me, and that it trusted me with its most precious of gifts—the elder saguaros who protected the park.
I jogged past Red and headed to the saguaro sprout outside Señora Cervantes’s trailer—Orange. Mom had loved rainbows, and had named the giant cactuses using the Roy G. Biv mnemonic device.
Fennel wasn’t with Orange, Yellow, or Blue, but when I passed Indigo, I spotted him lying on his back in a ray of sunshine beside Violet. At only a few inches tall, she was the tiniest sprout, and we were all protective of her.
“Hey, I need to run a couple of errands. I could use your help,” I said.
He rolled onto his side and blinked up at me. “Meow.”
“Cool. Thanks. I’m going to need a few things from the garden room, then we’ll pick up Cecil at the café, and head out to the cemetery.”
“Meow?” Fennel rolled to his feet, tail up, ears alert.
“Yeah, the cemetery. It’s time to let my long-lost grandfather tell me about my even longer-lost birth father.”
Fennel head-butted my leg. He saw through my sarcasm and understood what this was going to cost me.
Goddess, I wasn’t looking forward to this.
Before today, I’d fought my grandfather whenever he tried to tell me about his son—or grandson, or great-grandson, for all I knew. Time was a stretchy thing in the otherworlds. As a result of that elasticity, relationships on Sexton’s side of reality were often hard to define on this one. He called me granddaughter, but I could just as easily have been his hundred-times-great-granddaughter.
Trying to parse it all out threatened to break my brain, so I mostly accepted the situation on faith. I was Bertrand Sexton’s granddaughter, and his son was my father, and that was that.
Sheez. That almost made our relationship soundnormal.
