The Changelings by Elle Casey

  "I'm cool with moving in next door," Sam said. "If that'll make you feel better."

  I nodded, relief flooding through me. "It would. Unless it's going to be a major pain in the ass for you."

  She shrugged. "Not at all. I don't have anything but my clothes, so it's easy for me to move."

  "We can too," Becky said. She looked at Finn. "Right? Can you move our bed?"

  "Sure, no problem. I'll just get some of my buddies to help."

  "I can help," said Mike's rumbling voice from behind me.

  "Why don't we all just shack up together?" Long suggested. "Like a big slumber party. You have a large room, right? We had to do that once at the hospital when a hurricane came through. That was interesting.”

  I held up my hand. "I don't want to hear about what interesting means in a mental ward. But yes. Let's do it. I would feel so much better if you guys were closer." I looked at Spike. "If it's okay with you."

  "Of course." He laced his fingers with mine from his position on the floor. "I'd put the entire fae community right outside our door if I could."

  "But we'll be inside your door," Scrum said. "Like inside it. Right in your living room and stuff." He looked uncomfortable on our behalf.

  "That's fine," I said, reaching over and patting Scrum's hand. "I want you all there."

  Becky clapped her hands together. "This is going to be fun!" She jumped up from her seat and pulled on Finn's shirt. "Come on, let's go get our stuff."

  As they were leaving, Finn stopped to put his hand on my shoulder. "We've got your back, Mother. Don't you worry about them dang crows anymore. Nothin's gonna get to you, cuz they'll have to go through us, and we ain't goin' nowhere."

  I patted his hand. "Thanks, dude. You rock."

  He bowed with his fist on his chest before leaving.

  I shook my head at his formality. The guy was going to be sleeping in my room, so he was going to have to quit that bowing bullshit real soon.

  "You want us there too?" Long asked.

  I stood, forcing her to move back. I walked up to her and put my hand on her shoulder. Staring her in the eyes, I tried like heck to tap into that part of me that could sense when someone wasn't being truthful. "I need to ask you one question first."

  She nodded. "Okay. Shoot."

  "When we were in the hospital together, did you know there were demons there? And did you help them get to me?"

  She was staring me down like she was about to shoot lasers out of her eyeballs. "That's two questions. You said you only had one."

  I squeezed her shoulder. "Answer me. And tell the truth, or I'll know you're lying."

  I felt her body changing, but I hung on. She went from being a small Asian girl to being a moderately tall wyvern, her blue black scales glinting in the lights of the dining hall. Her skin felt like it was made of lightweight metal. All the fae in the room who didn't know her jumped to their feet and ran to the doors. They didn't leave, but they prepared themselves for a quick exit. Fae were never ones to run from a good drama.

  She spoke to me in her mind. You awakened me from the shadows. You started The Becoming of The Others.

  "Yes, I did," I said, staring into her lizardy eyes. "Now answer my question."

  I do not understand. I have answered your question.

  "No, you haven't." I gritted my teeth to keep from shouting at her. I couldn't tell if she was being evasive or just being a wyvern. "Now go back to being a fae girl and answer my questions, plural, or you will not be welcome in my room or in my presence." I was being harsh, but I had to be sure. I couldn't take the chance that my friends and I would be sleeping with the enemy. I looked up at Mike to see how he was taking all of this, but he was just standing there like a statue, waiting for Long to do whatever she was going to do.

  Her body began to shrink, and soon my hand was resting on her normal, non-scaley shoulder again. Her pupils changed from vertical slits to circular again. A tear formed in the corner of her left eye and traced slowly down her cheek.

  "Well?" I asked, trying not to feel like a total b-word over that tear.

  "I have never, nor will I ever, double cross you, trap you, hurt you, or otherwise interfere in your ability to live your life on your terms." Her voice was completely devoid of any emotion.

  Truth.

  I let her go, my hand dropping to my side. My entire body filled with relief. I really, really didn't want to have to put her on my bad fae list. "Then you are welcome in my room, and I would really appreciate it if you and Mike would come and be a part of the group that keeps me safe."

  I wasn't going to say this to any of them—I probably wouldn't even say it to Spike—but I wasn't really asking my friends to stay in my room because I was scared for myself. I'd already lost too many people who I loved and held dear; I couldn't bear to lose another family member. I wanted them close so I could take care of them and make sure that no one ever got the chance to hurt them.

  I never said any of this out loud, but just after the thought floated through my mind, Long's eyes changed from fae girl eyes to dragon eyes and then back again. And she nodded ever so slightly at me, before looking up at Mike and speaking. "Let's get our stuff," she said.

  "Okay." He shuffled off behind her, his arms hanging at his sides, making him look like a giant gorilla.

  That look she gave me made me think that the little wyvern knew exactly what I was up to by asking everyone to join me, but I also felt pretty confident that she'd keep that information to herself. It was becoming really difficult to stay mad at the forces that had time-slipped me back into my alternate past, because without them having done that, I never would have met her, and she would have stayed in that hospital forever. I think. This was assuming that the hospital even existed before I got time-slipped back to it. That time-slipping, alternate universe shit was seriously confusing.

  I put my hand on Valentine's arm as he was turning to go. He stopped to look at me. "Thanks, Valentine. I know you didn't want to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm glad you told me."

  He leaned down and kissed my cheek, inhaling deeply and giving me goosebumps in the process. "You are our Mother. I could do no less." He placed his hand on my cheek and looked deeply into my eyes. Colors were swirling slowly in his irises. They were mesmerizing. "We must keep you safe, no matter the cost."

  I put my hand on his. "We will. Everything's going to be okay. You'll see." And I meant it. I wasn't going to let the Forsaken or anyone or anything else hurt my family. I was going to do everything in my power to keep us all safe.

  "Are you ready to go back?" Scrum asked, breaking Valentine’s incubus hold on me with his steady, nearby presence.

  I put my arm around my daemon's back, and Spike trailed behind us as we walked out of the dining hall. "Yep. Sure am. And on our way back to the room, we can talk about the wyvern."

  "What about her?" Scrum asked, sounding worried.

  "About how you have a crush on her and what we're going to do about it."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  "YOU JUST NEED to let her know how you feel somehow," I said to Scrum as we stood outside my door.

  "But I don't even know how I feel, so how can I tell her anything that will make sense?" he asked. He glanced worriedly at my room.

  "She's not in there yet. They just left the dining hall ahead of us."

  "Who's not in there yet?" Long asked, approaching from the other direction.

  I looked up at Scrum and whispered. "Ask her if she needs any help moving her bed over here." I patted him on the chest and winked. "Good luck."

  I left him standing outside in the hallway, ushering Spike in ahead of me.

  "Playing matchmaker, huh?" he said after I closed the door.

  "Maybe."

  "You sure that's a good idea?" He looked doubtful.

  "I just want Scrum to be happy. Is that such a bad thing?"

  Spike pulled me gently into his arms. "Not at all. I think it's cute."

  I smiled up at him.
"You think I'm cute?"

  "Oh, hell yeah," he said, dipping his head for a kiss.

  "Lellemental and incubus, sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G! First comes love! Then comes marriage! Then comes boobies and a baby parrot!" yelled a tiny voice from the garden area behind our living room.

  I pulled away from Spike and sighed, closing my eyes.

  "What? Does my breath stink?" He blew into the palm of his hand and sniffed.

  "No. It's a baby pixie who's up way past his bedtime."

  "Are you talking about me?" Willy asked. I could tell from the sound of his voice that he was way too close.

  I opened one eye and found him hovering an inch away. "What are you doing awake and out of bed?"

  "My mommy and daddy are having a talk."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means I haffa leave them alone cuz Daddy is cranky."

  "Oh." I felt bad that I'd contributed to unrest in the pixie household. "Want me to go talk to them?"

  "You better not," Willy said, becoming very serious. "They don't like to be inner-rupted. I got spanked once when I inner-rupted and it hurt."

  I held out my hand, and he landed on it. He looked up at Spike. "Hi, incubus!"

  "He says hi," I explained.

  Spike held up a finger at Willy for a high-one. "Hey, little dude. How's it hangin'?"

  "How's what's hanging?" He looked all around himself. Then he looked at his crotch. He narrowed his eyes at Spike and frowned. "Are you talkin' about my dingaling?" He put his hands on his tiny hips. "You're not sa-possa talk about my dingaling. That's my private stuff, incubus."

  "What's he saying?" Spike said, totally mystified at the pixie's angry expression.

  "Well, he's accusing you of talking about his dingaling and being offended that you'd be so forward with him."

  "Oh. Dude. No. That is not what I meant." Spike backed up, his hands held out in front of him.

  "Ready to go home to the garden?" I asked Willy, drawing my hand back for a serious pixie launching.

  "Ready? Okay. I don't want to talk about my privates anymore. I just wanted to say to you that you're mean, but we can be friends if you say sorry again."

  I held him up in my fist close to my face and tried not to sigh too loudly at him. "Okay, little dude. This is the last time I'm going to apologize to you this week. I'm sorry for being mean." I couldn't even remember what I'd said or done, but if it would make him happy to hear me say those words, I didn't care what I was admitting to.

  "Okay. Now, throw me, and do it good." He got his flying face on and readied himself for a launch across the room.

  I made a big deal out of my windup, swinging my arm around and around. "Aaaaaand a-one…aaaand a-two…aaaaand a-three!" I yelled, whipping my arm out and opening my hand at the last second.

  He went flying across the room, screaming the entire way. He bumbled and spun through the air right through the opening to the garden area and past his family's compound on the table, zipping by at a pretty good clip. I heard some yelling, some crashing, and some plants being shredded before silence reigned once again.

  "Damn. That was a pretty big throw," Spike said, kind of laughing, kind of sounding worried.

  "Oh, shit." I ran into the garden, praying he wasn't hurt and that his parents hadn't heard him. I paused on my way past their room and looked down, nearly barfing at the vision that greeted my eyes. "Oh, damn. I am so sorry…"

  "Get out!" a naked Tim yelled at me. He'd been halfway through some sort of weird dance that he was putting on for his wife, who was reclined on their bed in a suggestive pose.

  "Ahhhh!!" I ran, panicked, screaming into the garden, desperately looking for the baby pixie so I wouldn't accidentally step on him, as I tried to scrub the vision of Tim's pixie parts from my brain.

  "What's going on?!!" yelled Spike, running in behind me. He glanced down at the table and yelled again. "Oh, Jesus, God, what the hell…!"

  I was laughing and crying at the same time. And I couldn't find Willy anywhere.

  Tim flew up from the table with a tiny pair of blue nylon running shorts on and nothing else. "What in the hell is going on out here?"

  The door to our living room opened and fae started pouring in. Finn and two other green elves were pushing a mattress through the opening and Becky was giving them directions. "A little to the right. Now left! Good. We're almost there. Jayne? Where do you want us? In the living room or in your bedroom with you?"

  Tim's face was getting redder by the second. "You had better start explaining yourself, young lady."

  I just couldn't… I could not keep it together when he was yelling at me with those bright blue short-shorts on. I started laughing so hard, I collapsed to the ground. I found Willy there, climbing around in the grass below a big rose bush.

  "Dat was way too fast, Lellemental," he said, covered from head to toe in leaf and rose petal shrapnel, stumbling out of the grass toward me. "My daddy says you gotta check yourself before you wreck yourself, but I wrecked myself and I didn't check myself. He's gonna spank me now. My pants are ripped in the back, and my hiney is cold. I wanna go home."

  I literally peed my pants when I heard those choice words come out of his tiny mouth. And he noticed it too, the little shit; he started laughing and pointing at me. "The Lellemental peed her pants again! Ha, ha, ha! Hey, everybody! She peed her paaaants! She peed her paaaants!"

  Spike looked down at me, he glanced over at the pixies, he watched our friends moving in for a few seconds, and then he smiled at me. "Never a dull moment with you, is there?"

  I lay back in the grass and smiled up at the stars while Willy tromped all over my chest, jumping from one boob to the other and back again like they were his own personal trampolines. "Nope. And I never want that to change, either."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  TIM AND SCRUM accompanied me to Maggie's house. Neither of them were happy about it, but I'd insisted. I didn't want to bring everyone because they had training to attend, but I definitely didn't want to go alone either.

  "I still don't understand why this is necessary," Tim said. He'd already worded this complaint about three different ways, but apparently my answers hadn't been good enough. "Are you making me do this because you're mad that Abby yelled at everyone to be quiet last night? I'm sorry she's such a party pooper, but it was two in the morning."

  "No, I'm fine with Abby setting the rules for our new sleeping arrangements. And please tell her again that it's only temporary. I just want everyone to be close for now, until this is all over."

  "Hey, I get it. Safety in numbers and all that stuff. But do we really need to do the crow thing again? Didn't Valentine explain this to you already?"

  "Yes, he explained a lot. But maybe Maggie knows more. Maybe she can find a way to actually talk to them and find out what they know." Three more crows had met me outside the compound this morning, and even Scrum was starting to notice.

  "It is kind of creepy how they're always there looking at us," Scrum said. "I never noticed them before."

  "Because they weren't there before," I said. "Or I would have seen them."

  "Oh, no, they're always there," Tim said, sounding like the voice of authority. "Those of us lucky enough to be born with wings are always aware of others like us nearby. But I will admit that the crows have made themselves more visible to the general public recently. They want you to see them, when normally they do not."

  "See?" I bugged my eyes out at Scrum.

  "What? I didn't say they weren't there."

  "Yeah, but you're acting like I should just accept it and move on."

  He sighed, picking his way over a big log that had fallen into the path that led to Maggie's house. "I know better than to think you're just going to accept something without thoroughly analyzing it."

  "Good." I patted his arm. "I like that you've figured me out and you're not fighting me on it anymore." I made my way around a small but deep hole in the ground before continuing. "What happened wi
th Long last night?"

  "I don't know," Scrum said, sounding very demoralized. "She's very confusing."

  I snorted. "Tell me about it. What happened?"

  "Well…I asked her if she wanted my help with her bed, and she said she didn't have a bed. But she said I could help her with other things, so I went to her room and she had just a bed roll…like a sleeping bag. Her bed looked like Mike had been sleeping in it while she slept on the floor."

  "That's weird."

  "What? That he was sleeping in her bed?"

  "No, that they're sharing a room." I felt bad that I'd encouraged Scrum to make his move when she apparently had a live-in arrangement going on.

  "Oh, they're not a couple," he said confidently.

  "How do you know that?" I asked, worried he was being naïve about the whole thing.

  "Because she kissed me right in front of him and he didn't say anything about it."

  I immediately stopped. "Whaaaat? She kissed you?" I grabbed his arm to keep him from going past me.

  He wouldn't meet my eyes. "Yeah."

  "Oh my god, that's great!"

  He shrugged. He didn't look very happy about it. "Yeah, I guess."

  I shook his arm. "Scrum, what's going on? Talk to me."

  He looked up, his face a mask of confusion. "I think she might like me, but sometimes she gets this look on her face like she's seeing into my soul, and I'm not sure she likes what she sees in there."

  I pulled him into a hug and squeezed him super hard. "She will see what I see, which is pure goodness and awesomeness too. I understand what you mean about that patented wyvern stare; it can be a little intense sometimes. But she's a good fae. She's different. She's not going to be like all those other girls who didn't notice you." I pulled back so I could see his face. "You deserve someone special like her."

  "She is special. I knew that from the first time I saw her." He got the goofiest look on his face. I was pretty sure it was love making that happen.

  "It probably didn't hurt that she turned into a gorgeous dragon right in front of you."

  He shrugged. "I don't care about that. I like both versions of her."