Fair Folk Foul Read online

  “Do I look like a commercial airline to you?” He lifted that damn eyebrow again.

  Before I could answer, “yes” he turned his back to me. I thought he was going to walk away but instead he crouched down and sighed, as if I had twisted his arm. “Get on.”

  Shut. The. Front. Door.

  I barely hesitated half a second before I jumped on him and wrapped my hands over his shoulders. Really, the only good thing about Meg’s magenta dress was that the wide slit up the side of the skirt gave me enough freedom to tuck my legs on either side of his hips. “Can you fly like this?” I asked as he pulled his arms under my knees and straightened up, apparently not disturbed by my weight. “Are we going to fly?! Is your tail going to come out?”

  He turned his head and gave me an irritated glare. “What is your obsession with my tail?”

  “I’ve just never met anyone with a tail before,” I said, perfectly honestly. I tapped my fingers over the curve of his shoulders. I resisted the urge to slide my hands along his chest or up into his hair. It took all of my willpower not to pick off his blob of glamor.

  Like the mode-of-transportation I’d always suspected him of being, he carried me the two blocks home. As we turned onto my street I asked, “What sort of horrible things are you going to do to me for breaking my promise?”

  He huffed out a quiet laugh. “Unspeakably terrible things.”

  I eyed his head.

  “Like what? Make me follow your orders? Make me shave my hair? Force me to watch The Bee Movie on repeat for 48 hours?” I lowered my face towards his ear and asked, “take me out on a real date?”

  I don’t know what had come over me. No doubt it was the same brain-scrambling disease that’d affected me last night when I’d thought it’d be a good idea to ask him to Homecoming. I should probs ask Mom to make a doctor’s appointment for me.

  Tobias, in response, walked up to my front porch and dropped me inelegantly in front of the door. He turned around to face me. “Much worse,” he assured me. He reached out and his hand ghosted across my neck, tucking a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “You’ll be left speechless and disturbed for days.”

  His hand hadn’t moved from my hair. I realized my hand was on his sleeve. When had that gotten there?! Our eyes met, and neither of us looked away.

  Crap crap crap crap.

  Tobias leaned forward until we were too close, and he smirked. “Are you ready?”

  I inhaled, certain I was anything BUT ready, and found myself nodding.

  Above us, the porch lights snapped on.

  I shot away from Tobias and just in time, because the front door flew open to reveal my mother, narrow eyed and suspicious.

  “Goodnight, Mr. Monday,” she said, pulling me out of Tobias’ grasp and tugging my hand off him. “Catherine, say goodnight.”

  She dragged me inside as I was midway through stammering a goodbye, and the door slammed behind me.

  I didn’t listen as Mom nagged about my inappropriate behavior with strange young men or my lack of personal responsibility when it came to running across town barefoot.

  He’d almost kissed me; I was certain of it.

  I covered my face with both hands and squealed exactly like one of those 1960s girls at a sleepover.

  It was official. Nothing could ever go wrong again.

  But like,

  …I should’ve known better.

  Dawn of the Sheep

  I rolled out of bed Monday morning at 7:44, threw on the first shirt I could find, the cleanest pair of jeans nearby, and French-braided my hair as I jogged to school.

  My stomach grumbled in pitiful sadness throughout French, and Kacey Alvaro made a rude comment about the noise halfway through class.

  In solidarity, Becca passed me a bag of celery and peanut butter from her lunch bag before Euro Lit and I tried stuffing as much into my mouth as possible before the bell rang.

  Jake Wildern, to my everlasting dismay, had greeted me cheerfully upon entering the classroom, and when all of his friends demanded to know why he would do such an abhorrent thing, he brightly explained that I’d done him a solid favor over the weekend.

  Yeah, like saved his life.

  “Solid favor my butt,” I grumbled between chewing. I waved a celery stick at Becca. “These crunchy greens are disgusting by the way. But thank you for nourishing me.”

  Ms. Clemmings was in a MOOD. She never liked seeing me on Mondays (or really any day of the week) and she knew, by some instinctive force, that I was behind on my reading.

  “Catherine,” she said, striding back and forth across the length of the whiteboard. “Please summarize Gérard de Villefort’s role in this weekend’s reading.”

  Assigning reading over Homecoming Weekend is the act of an amoral villain.

  Especially since my lovely dreams about kissing Tobias had been interrupted by a distinctly unlovely nightmare of the ceremony the night before. In the nightmare, instead of falling into the river, the queen had made us stay on the deck, and Jake had just kept on transforming and transforming and he turned into a fat baby with tentacle arms and I got scared and let go, but when I tried to grab him again, he’d disappeared, and the queen and all her fairy court had just laughed and laughed.

  I hadn’t been able to fall asleep and I eventually woke up at eleven and in no mood to do any of my assigned reading.

  Clemmings could smell it on me, I knew it.

  “Well,” I began. I definitely knew who this de Villefort guy was. I had definitely read more than the first chapter. Absolutely. “It was quite shocking, really. Or at least, I was shocked.”

  “Were you indeed?” Ms. Clemmings leaned forward, like a fox sticking its head into the coop of sleeping chickens. This was all a trap, and it was one I couldn’t seem to avoid.

  In front of me, Becca shook her head, trying to get me to stop, but this train was going, without or without rails.

  “I was,” I agreed, nodding sagely. “Really surprised. I had not expected him at all, really.”

  “Please,” the devil cajoled, “elaborate for the class.”

  I couldn’t stop, but I could use my age-old skill. Distraction.

  I leaned forward in my desk and picked up a peanut-buttered celery stick for emphasis. “In the movie version,” I said, prodding the celery into the air, “he’s reduced to the wicked villain, worse than Ferdinand, but in the book—” at this point, shocking me into silence, my celery stick, smeared with peanut butter, flew from my hands and hit Oliver Davids in the side of the head.

  I could see the fire and brimstone in Clemmings’ eyes, and when she opened her mouth hellfire nearly spilled out, but in a truly fortuitous turn of events, Oliver picked the celery stick off his desk and took a noisy chomp out of it.

  The class burst into laughter and Becca, who is probably actually a superhero from an alien planet sent to earth to help mankind, graciously picked up where I’d stumblingly left off, offering her own analysis of the character, which then prompted Kelsey Jones to disagree, and a lively discussion carried away all reminders of my own disgrace.

  I knew Clemmings’ general operating policy regarding me was: NEVER FORGET NEVER FORGIVE, so I spent most of Choir hiding in the back, trying to catch up on my reading.

  LUNCH FINALLY.

  I sprinted to our sunny spot along the windows and dumped my backpack before running to the cafeteria to stand in line and receive a questionable looking chicken bacon ranch wrap. I met Finn at the register and grabbed his arm in my free one, steering us back up to the windows.

  “I’m not sure this is actually chicken,” I said once seated. I pulled out the offender. “Looks like plastic??”

  “Why would they feed you plastic?” Finn’s hair had been combed this morning, and he wore a sweater cardigan over his usual band t-shirt.

  “Part of the conspiracy to turn us into mindless drones, no doubt.” I nibbled at the chicken. It tasted spongy. I took another bite.

  “Is it tofu maybe?”
Becca wondered.

  “Why would they feed you tofu instead of chicken?”

  “The conspiracy runs deep,” I decided. I ate the wrap anyway. “Yo, Finneph, where’d you go during the dance? Totally disappeared and abandoned me with that annoying dude Tobias.” I sent a silent apology to Tobias.

  “Tobias Monday?” Finn glanced up at me in surprise. “He goes to Silveridge, what was he doing at the dance?”

  Becca and I exchanged a look. “Are you on drugs?” I flicked a piece of popcorn at his face. “You literally walked into the dance with me and him.”

  Finn shrugged and brushed off the piece of popcorn. “I guess I forgot,” he said in a disinterested tone that wasn’t normal AT ALL.

  Becca and I looked at each other again.

  “Are you feeling alright?” Becca placed her hand on Finn’s knee. “Did something bad happen over the weekend?” She bit her lip. “Is this because of Jake and Anna?”

  I, with less inhibition, slapped my hand over Finn’s forehead. He felt as warm as he normally did, but nothing weird. “Did you hit your head?” I wondered helpfully. “Were you involved in a fairy gang fight over the weekend and they knocked you ‘round one too many times?”

  Finn pulled away from my hand and gave me a wary look. “Nothing like that. Something came up with my family.”

  “If you’re sick of your parents, you’re welcome to switch families with me,” I reminded him. “Your mom loves me.”

  Finn glanced at me, momentarily surprised.

  Very weird.

  I texted Becca about it on my way to Calculus.

  In Calculus, Jake smiled at me which I didn’t appreciate, but Auggie and Penny got to me before he could gushingly thank me for saving his life (hey a girl could dream) and I could request he now try to save mine.

  “CAT OMMMGGGG,” Auggie nearly threw herself over her desk to get to me. “WHO was that BOY you spent THE WHOLE DANCE with?!?!?!?!?!?!”

  Auggie’s really into boys. It’s real dedication, and something everyone should try to aspire to when following their own passions, really.

  “He goes to Silveridge, right?” Penny asked.

  I nodded.

  “CAT!” Auggie grabbed my hands and bounced in her seat. “OH MY GOSH is he the guy you met at the bonfire party?!?!?!”

  I nodded again.

  Auggie shrieked like Godzilla bursting out of the sea. “He is SO CUTE, Cat. Like, seriously, SO HOT. OMGGG are you guys dating now?!?!” Her expression begged me to affirm.

  “Wait,” Jake interrupted. “What guy?”

  “Your buddy Tobias,” I reminded him. “You know, big bat wings, evil claws, scary tail? He probably has horns too.” I mimicked horns poking out of my forehead.

  Auggie and Penny giggled, but Jake scowled at me.

  “You shouldn’t hang around with him,” he muttered. “He’s not hanging with you because he likes you.”

  After Saturday night, I was only 45% convinced that was true.

  “He let me ride on his back,” I whispered back. “Even if his motivation isn’t pure, at least he’s putting in some effort to protect me.” I eyed him. “Unlike you, who got me into this mess.”

  Jake scoffed. “What, you think they’re going to be mad at you for the next fourteen years?”

  Apparently kissing Anna Flores had scrambled his brain.

  “That is exactly what I think,” I retorted. In a louder voice I added, “TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR ME!”

  This, of course, was met by a silent classroom. Neither Jake nor I had noticed the teacher up at the front of the room. I waved casually, and Jake kept frowning at me throughout class.

  Two hours later, I plopped next to Anna in Chemistry. I hadn’t thought that saving her boyfriend from being sacrificed would change our lab-partner hate-hate relationship, and I had been correct.

  She still didn’t let me touch any of our experiments and muttered furiously under her breath about my incompetence as we filled out the worksheet together.

  At the end of class though, she did give me a scowl that was slightly less pissed than all her previous scowls. “Everyone in the Court of the Winter Falls is mad Jake.”

  “Yup, I got that,” I confirmed.

  “I’ll watch out for you in Chemistry,” she offered, as if granting me all of China in reward for defeating the Huns.

  “Are there other fairies in our class?”

  Anna sniffed. “No, but that doesn’t mean you’re safe.”

  “Will you walk me home from school?” I clasped my hands and held them under my chin, blinking hopefully.

  She shuddered and shouldered past me.

  I took that as a strong “no.”

  I met Becca down near the parking lot and we proceeded arm in arm to my house. We played Dragon Crusaders for two hours until we decided Finn HAD to be at work by now. I leant her my amazing periwinkle kitten sweatshirt and pulled on my hideous “THEY LIVE AMONG US” one because I knew Finn would get a laugh out of it, and we piled precariously onto my bike, pedaling towards the cutesy downtown center.

  This was our undoing.

  Not the double bike riding, which is probably technically illegal, but the sweatshirts.

  I was wobbling the bike in the general direction of Main St when Becca said, “Don’t freak out, but I think that car’s following us.”

  This is 100% the thing to say to 100% guarantee I will freak out.

  “What?!” I demanded, swiveling my head around. Unfortunately, this meant I also swiveled the bike, and we tottered and swerved into the grass, and no amount of backpedaling or screaming stopped us from colliding with the nearest mailbox.

  I extracted myself from under the bike. “Am I dead?” I wondered, but no, alas, still alive.

  A shiny yellow car (presumably the one that had been following us) pulled up alongside the curb, and the doors sprung opened.

  I hastily grabbed my bike and tried to make a break for it, but a crowd of yahoo fairies jumped out of the car and surrounded Becca. Well, I assumed they were fairies, since they were all wearing Silveridge uniforms and I didn’t know any other group of youths who’d be interested in following two derps like Bec and I around.

  There had to be at least seven of them (how had they all fit in that sedan???) and two of them grabbed me before I could charge the group surrounding Becca and unleash the FURY OF MY BIKE on them.

  “Which one is it?” a female fairy asked, frowning first at me and then at Becca. She reminded me of Kacey Alvaro—perfectly applied makeup and perfectly coiffed hair, looking like she was ready to be caught on camera at any given second. I was mildly impressed.

  “Toby mentioned that awful sweatshirt,” a guy who looked familiar said, pointing at Becca. I squinted at him. Yes, right, I remembered him now. When I’d been caught in the rain in Lorraine Park, he’d been the one with the creepy mask-like face. He’d tried super hard to get me to join them in the pavilion, and I think it’d been a trick to eat my soul or whatever it is fairies do to unsuspecting humans. “It’s gotta be her.”