I was afraid for you, my darling.
Just one sentence, nothing further—as if that was all she could manage from whatever place lay beyond—but it was enough. It was everything. It was more than Cassie could have ever dreamed. The people you loved didn’t simplyend.
There was something more.
There wasloadsmore. And all real in ways she could never in a million years have imagined. It seemed too fantastical to believe it. But even if she could have doubted, Seth was there to reinforce it all. She came out onto the front porch, the next morning, to find the paper, and found him already parking his butt in the lawn chair. And once she had settled onto the step, notebook in hand, he just launched right in.
“Okay, so the first thing you need to know about fairies is that they are super gross,” he said, and she just couldn’t help it. She snorted with incredulous laughter.
“No fucking way,” she said. “Fairies are fancy.”
But knew from his raised eyebrow that she was wrong.
“So you now believe there is a god of some kind, and that thereare apartment-living vampires, and trolls under bridges who make you answer their riddles three, but fairies who fart on each other are where you draw the line,” he said.
And yeah, there was no way around that.
“I didn’t say I drew the line. I just—”
“You just what? Need proof? Okay. Get your jacket.”
“No, honestly I don’t need to see anything. You don’t have to show me.”
“But I want to show you. I think Ishouldshow you. I think being shown all this stuff is what you need right now,” he said, and as he did he stood, as if to show how firmly he was resolved. Which probably would have worked better if the lawn chair hadn’t gone with him.
He had to spend the next few seconds wrestling his wedged butt out of it.
While she made absolutely zero effort not to laugh.
“You know, you can hardly blame me for being slightly incredulous about any of this when I am currently watching a supposed werewolf being felled by garden furniture,” she said—much to his obvious irritation. He tossed the chair aside and gave her a fuming sort of look, hands on his hips.
“Don’t say ‘supposed.’ You’veseenme.”
“Yeah, but what I’ve seen is somewhat overridden by… this.”
She waved her hand at everything. Much to his disgruntlement.
“You’re such a liar,” he said. “I know for a stone-cold fact thatthisonly makes it more believable to you. That it only makes it feel more like reality. Because it’s like you always said: in the movies everything is always cool. But real life? Real life is amess.”
So now of course she was trailing in his wake again. Stunned that he’d remembered, trapped by his logic. And unable to argue when he added, “Now are we going? I have more messy stuff to blow your mind with.”
She simply grabbed her denim jacket, like he’d suggested, and found some fucking walking boots, because apparently he thought she needed them, and then followed him across her garden, in the direction of the woods.
Even though the woods now seemed a lot scarier than they had once seemed.
No no no, I’m not quite ready for whatever is in there,she thought.
But by that point it was too late. She couldn’t back out now. She’d acted like she was barely rattled by any of it, instead of wildly vacillating between fear and awe. In fact, by the time they made it to the tree line, her heart was practically beating in her face. When he disappeared between two old oaks, she came incredibly close to telling him to stop.I changed my mind. I don’t need to see any fur ther evidence that the world has cracked right open and spilled its sloppy supernatural guts, she imagined herself saying. Yet somehow, instead, her feet kept walking one in front of the other. She followed him, right into it all.
And was immediately assailed by how mundane it had seemed, before.
And what it was like now.
Every tree looked about fifty feet taller and wider and more ancient than she remembered; the snap and crackle of the undergrowth beneath her feet felt much louder than it once had. And the shadows were definitely darker. Darker, and deeper, and hungrier. They seemed to seethe around her, in a way that almost looked normal when she stared at them directly.
But the second she turned away, she could sense them reaching out. She could feel them watching her, in this strangely familiar manner. Like they were just waiting for her to drop her guard, somehow, so they could get her.
And the worst part was, she couldn’t even say for sure that her impression wasn’t real.
