The Last Adventure of Constance Verity (9 page)

Tia had been with Connie through many a narrow escape, but it was as if everyone and everything in the Fae Realms was
after them. A gargoyle ripped itself off a building and dive-bombed, a near miss. A lamppost tried to knock Connie off the hound. The street itself started tearing away under their feet.

Their flight stopped at the warehouse they'd entered through. Giants, dragons, ogres, hundreds of pixies, and one very stern gnome barricaded the building. Connie and Tia jumped off the hound, encircled by an army.

The many-headed dragon rose up behind Connie and howled. It snapped and snarled but didn't attack.

The gnome stepped forward and unfurled a scroll. “Constance Verity, you are charged with that most heinous of crimes, the embarrassment and diminishment of the great King Oberon. Surrender yourself to immediate pitting, and your companion shall be mercifully executed.”

“You have a plan,” said Tia. “Tell me you have a plan.”

Connie held her knuckledusters for everyone to see. They crackled with raw power. The fae security forces gasped collectively. A dragon inhaled some of its own fire and started coughing clouds of smoke.

“Here's the situation,” said Connie. “You can either let us leave, or we can watch this city explode together.”

T
he gnome escorted Connie into the warehouse. They passed the dragon guardian, who grumbled at them.

The wardrobe was opened for them.

“Are you going to tell me not to come back?” asked Connie.

“Would you listen?” asked the gnome. “All of us in the realms know we owe you a lot. King Oberon might be the life and breath of this land, but he's a stuffy old bastard. Still, if we catch you without those iron scraps, we'll have to take you in. You understand.”

“I do.”

“As it is, I'm going to get chewed out for this one. I like you, and I like this city. And Oberon wouldn't mind watching this city being obliterated if you were vaporized along with it. The only reason I'll get away with it is because he'd rather see you pitted than destroyed. Now get out of here.” He smiled. “And don't come back.”

“You got it.”

Connie and Tia stepped through the wardrobe and back into the mortal world. The wardrobe doors slammed shut. Connie wrapped the chains around it, just in case the fae changed their mind.

Tia picked up the knuckledusters. They'd stopped glowing but remained warm to the touch.

“I can't believe we made it out of there alive,” said Tia. “We've been in some tight spots before, but that was almost as bad as the time I was kidnapped by that swamp creature. I thought we'd had it for sure then.”

“Oh, yeah.” Connie smiled. “I'd forgotten about that.”

“I wish I could.” The creature had courted her with piles of dead fish and possums and a screechy, warbling love song. The creature might have been a perfect gentleman, aside from the abduction, but she still shuddered, recollecting the stink of his lair.

Connie said, “What's funny is all the adventures start to blend together after a while. I remember the quiet times far more. Remember that time we went to that Italian restaurant and had that awesome cheesecake? That was amazing, and I don't even like cheesecake.”

Everyone measured their life by the memorable bits, and those bits weren't the things they did every day. Connie's fondest memories weren't of last-minute escapes from crumbling temples or sword fights with cross-time pirates. Those were unremarkable events. But a quiet moment with her best friend, talking about nothing important over dessert, was a rarity to be treasured.

Honestly, the cheesecake hadn't been that good.

It didn't matter. It was the experience that counted.

“Where are we going now?” asked Tia.

Connie removed the glass marble from her pocket and held it up to the light. “Looks like Florida.”

She tossed the marble to Tia, who glanced through it. It was a miniature globe, but when turned, it focused on a close up of North America, then Florida, then a small house in a small neighborhood.

“Why would a fairy godmother be in Florida?”

Connie took the marble back and dropped it in her pocket. “Guess we'll find out when we ask her.”

T
he broken-down house might have aspired to be a charming cottage in its heyday, but it'd long before abandoned such ambitions and was little more than a decaying ramshackle home in desperate need of repair. A window was boarded up. The lawn was nothing but dirt and yellowed grass.

“This can't be it,” said Tia.

Connie checked the marble, which was flashing with a soft light, humming in her hands. It'd been doing so since they'd landed in Florida.

The front gate was rusted shut, but they walked around through the gap in the fallen picket fence beside it. Connie tried the broken doorbell. She knocked. Nobody answered.

“Maybe she's not home,” said Tia.

Connie knocked again. Harder, this time.

“Go away!” shouted someone from inside the house. “No solicitors!”

The door wasn't locked. Connie pushed it open. Before
she could take a step inside, a lightning bolt blasted a hole in the door. Connie and Tia jumped back.

“I said, ‘No solicitors!' ” yelled Grandmother Willow. “Get the fuck out of here, or I'll shove this wand so far up your ass, you'll swear I enchanted your colon.”

To illustrate the point, a few flashes and thunderclaps echoed from inside.

“This is the place,” said Connie.

She slipped on her iron knuckledusters.

Tia said, “You aren't going to just kill her, are you?”

Connie shrugged. “That was kind of the plan from the start.”

“You can't seriously be planning on beating a fairy godmother to death with your bare hands? That's pretty brutal.”

Connie tightened her grip on her knuckledusters. “Why did I bring you along, again?”

“So you'd have someone to talk you out of doing something you'd regret.”

“I can hear you out there!” shouted Grandmother Willow. “Get off my property!”

“You don't know if killing her will even solve your problem yet,” whispered Tia. “What if it only makes it worse? Or maybe you need her alive to reverse the spell. Did you think of that?”

Connie mumbled, “No, I guess I didn't.”

“Hey, I'm your friend. If I thought it would help you, I'd hold this old lady down while you bashed her skull in.”

“No, you wouldn't.”

“No, I wouldn't. But I wouldn't blame you for wanting to
do it. We have to be smart about this. You should talk to her before you kill her. If you decide you still want to kill her.”

Connie grumbled. “I guess you're right.”

“You know I'm right.”

Grandmother Willow, in a dirty pink bathrobe, flung open the front door and stepped onto her porch. Her hair was a mess. A cigarette hung from her lips, and her eyes were bloodshot and sunken.

“Don't say I didn't warn you!”

She pulled a gray mouse from her robe pocket and dropped it at her feet. She waved her wand, which sparked and sputtered as it sprinkled glittering dust onto the rodent. The mouse grew into a hulking brutish humanoid covered in fur with an adorable face and twitching ears.

“Show them the way out, my dear.”

The mouse monster scampered away, seeking shelter under an old, rotted tree in the yard. The uprooted tree fell over and smashed a hole in the house's roof. The monster cowered under a few roots.

“Damn it.” Grandmother Willow shook her wand. “This fucking thing isn't worth a damn anymore.” She pointed the wand at Connie and Tia, but before Grandmother Willow could launch a lightning bolt, the wand exploded in her face. Swearing, she beat the sparks out of her hair.

“Should we do something?” asked Tia.

“She's fine,” said Connie.

After smothering the flames, Grandmother Willow grumbled.
“Whatever you're selling, I'm not buying. I don't want to hear about whatever gods you're fortunate or foolish enough to believe in. And I don't grant wishes, if that's what you're here for. That is a genie. I'm a whole different thing. Or I was.” Grandmother Willow wiped her watering eyes and took her first real look at Connie.

“Oh, shit. It's you.” Grandmother Willow sneered. Her left eye twitched. She blew out her smoking wand.

“You remember me?” asked Connie.

“You're Constance Verity, child. How could I not remember you? I was wondering if you'd ever try to find me.”

She stumbled back inside.

“Well, are you coming in, or did you come all this way just to watch an ex-godmother make a fool of herself?”

Connie and Tia followed Grandmother Willow into her home. The place was a mess of old newspapers, dusty furniture, and mice. So many mice scampering about underfoot, in the open, across the coffee table. The only sources of light were an old TV bathing everything in a pale blue and what sunlight managed to filter through the tree branches over the fresh hole in the ceiling.

Grandmother Willow flopped onto a floral-print couch covered in plastic. Staring at the TV, she asked, “You two want a wine cooler or something? I think I have some gingerbread in the oven. It's a week old but probably still good.”

“No. Thank you,” said Connie.

“Suit yourself.” Grandmother Willow snapped her fingers.
Several mice, carrying a bottle, scurried out of the kitchen and handed it to her. “Thanks, fellas.” She twisted the cap off and chugged the cooler.

“Are you going to stand there like a couple of idiots? Take a seat.”

A rolling office chair and a recliner ambled over to Connie and Tia. The recliner waddled slowly on its stubby legs, and the office chair knocked over a pile of newspapers.

“Ah, hell, I just got those organized.”

Connie and Tia took mercy on the walking furniture and navigated the mess to sit down.

“You must have a lot of questions,” said Grandmother Willow.

“What the hell happened to you, Grandmother Willow?” asked Connie.

Grandmother Willow snorted. “It's Thelma. Grandmother Willow was my godmother name. I lost that when I lost my license.”

Thelma snorted.

“You happened to me, child. Someone like you. Except not you. You're the lucky one. You turned out all right. Took to my blessing rather well, but I suppose someone was bound to eventually. I must say I'm surprised it was you. You didn't leave much of an impression on me. There was a girl in Munich who I thought had such potential. But these things are unpredictable.”

“There are others?” asked Tia. “Like Connie?”

“Like Constance? No, there aren't any others like her. She survived her blessing. Many others didn't. A life of adventure
isn't for the weak. There were many candidates, but only one could fill the role.”

“You twisted old bitch,” said Connie. “How long have you been doing this?”

“Me? I'm just a glorified delivery faerie. I go where I'm told, bestowing enchantments as directed. Just a drudge in the Godmother Corps. Or I was, until I lost my license. And it's all because of you. Or someone like you but not so fortunate.”

“Hang on,” said Connie. “My parents told me you said I chose my blessing.”

Thelma chuckled. “That was a bit of showmanship. I am—I was a professional. I could've darted in while you were asleep, sprinkled some faerie dust on your head when no one was looking, with none the wiser. Classic tooth fairy stealth method. The results would've been the same. But I took pride in making my blessings memorable. Funny. Now it's come to bite me on the ass, because if I hadn't, you would've probably never found me. Although what difference does that make now?”

She sat up and half-smiled. “I'm actually glad you're here. The problem with being ageless is that I can only die if I choose to, and I haven't the gumption for that.”

“You know she came here to kill you?” asked Tia.

Thelma sat up. “What? Connie, is this true?”

Connie removed her knuckledusters from her pocket and set them on her lap. “Yes, that's why I'm here.”

Thelma frowned. “Oh, child, what has this life done to you? This isn't you.”

“That's what I keep saying,” said Tia.

“Damn it, I've killed before.”

Thelma said, “Go ahead, then. Do it, if you must. There's a certain poetic justice to it. The one who survived taking revenge for all the ones that didn't.”

Connie clinked her iron knuckledusters together on her lap while she sized up the pathetic old faerie. Thelma was no monster, no space Nazi, no malevolent sorcerer. She wasn't even as threatening as the evil genius hamster that Connie had once stomped to save Australia.

“Damn it.”

Thelma grunted. “I knew you couldn't do it.”

“Can we get back to the others?” said Tia. “What did you mean by that?”

“You didn't think you were the only one? There were others. A little over a hundred. For many, it didn't take. A few years of adventure before falling into an ordinary life. For others, they eventually ran across an adventure they couldn't triumph over. Those are the ones that bother me.

“I didn't think much of them at the time. Mortal lives are so short, I thought it wasn't important. Then I realized that just made it worse. We fae live for thousands of years, and with so many centuries before us, time becomes a meaningless commodity. But for mortals, every day is a gift, gone and never to return. Once I understood this, I saw myself for the monster I was.

“When I started questioning orders, it was inevitable that
there would be consequences. I never thought the corps would take away my license and banish me to this wretched world. If I had, I probably would've kept my big mouth shut.”

A team of mice pulled off her slippers and gave her a foot massage.