Americana Fairy Tale (6 page)

Taylor backed up a step as the redneck came closer. “How in the hell am I not in danger? Clearly your dang-a-meter is on the fritz.”

“Who the hell are you talkin’ to?” the man bellowed. “You fuckin’ crazyassed fairy. Either you get out of here, or I’m taking you out.”

Taylor took another slow step back, but his foot caught on his robe. “Dammit,” he hissed under his breath as he tried to kick it off. “I’d really love to leave your wonderful one-traffic-light Podunk town, but I’m out of gas. Spot me some cash?” he asked and flashed his brightest smile.

Just when things couldn’t get any worse, Taylor’s butt crashed onto the pavement when he tripped on a curb. And if it couldn’t get any more terrifying, Taylor caught a flash of silver from the guy’s switchblade as he drew closer. Taylor’s bravery evaporated. He threw his arms over his head, preparing for his demise, which Ringo didn’t seem too keen on saving him from, and really wishing he had his mommy.

The blade dropped at his feet, and a dusty black Red Wing boot kicked it away. Some kind of choking sound followed, then a thump of body to body.

Ringo had hidden behind Taylor’s head but pulled on his hair. “Look, look!” he urged Taylor.

Every one of Taylor’s muscles contracted in unbridled terror. His brilliant plan played through his head like the unrelenting barrage of firecrackers. He had bolted straight from the altar, driven five hours straight with no ID, no money, and no phone. He hadn’t thought of what to do next. He actually hadn’t thought he’d get that far. Taylor realized his brilliant plan was an incredibly stupid idea, and now he was going to die out in the middle of nowhere. He bit down on his lip and prayed to someone, anyone, that it wouldn’t hurt as much as he was sure it would.

“Taylor, look, look. I told you it was okay!” Ringo said again and tugged on his hair.

Taylor slowly came back to the present. He shivered from the bite of fear and lowered his trembling hands. He squinted against the setting sun, and there his savior stood with his arm casually hooked around his attacker’s neck in a sleeper hold.

Taylor furrowed his brow, trying to make him out against the harsh shadows and light. When his gallant white knight came into focus, Taylor’s stomach plummeted with shallow disappointment.

Since Taylor was three, he’d had his prince pictured completely different. A beautiful, beach-bodied Adonis with blond surfer hair, dazzling blue eyes, and perfect white teeth. Taylor knew very well he was in love with a Ken doll, but he would find his real-life Ken someday.

This guy?

Not Ken.

Olive-toned skin, unkempt shag of sandy brown hair, coal black eyes, and it just got worse from there. Tattered leather jacket with an equally threadbare flannel shirt, ratty, stained Levi’s, and Taylor kept his revulsion to himself at the man’s dirty fingernails and oil-stained hands. His college crush, Billy Bunyan, found construction workers, firemen, and all the blue-collar types hot. They made Taylor feel self-conscious, in Billy’s opinion, because Taylor was none of those things.

And in this very moment, Taylor had been saved by Billy Bunyan’s perfect man. Either the Storyteller That Be was teaching him a lesson or laughing her ass off. Taylor figured it was the latter.

“See,” Ringo said, fluttering toward the man. “I told you you weren’t in danger.” He held out his tiny hand to him. “Ringo, fairy godfather, how’d’ya do?”

Taylor’s hero let the unconscious body of his attacker fall between them. “Fay Opa?” Taylor’s savior asked in a distinct Creole drawl.

Ringo’s wings drooped. “Um,” he muttered with a glance to Taylor. “Help me out here.”

Taylor slowly stood, and the man slipped back a hesitant step. Taylor pointed at him and then pointed to himself. “My. Name. Is. Taylor,” he said slowly and then pointed to Ringo. “He. Is. Ringo.” Taylor hooked his hands together in the universal bird gesture. “He. Is. A. Pixie.”

The man narrowed his eyes. “Y’eh suh’s?” he said with a deep frown. He mimicked Taylor’s gesture of pointing to him and then himself. “A’it,” he said, and Taylor gave Ringo a fretful look. “
A’it
,” he said again and then held up a hand at Taylor. He rummaged through his jacket pockets and pulled out an onyx arrowhead dipped in silver.

Taylor and Ringo exchanged nervous glances. Taylor sucked in a sharp gasp as the man captured his chin between his fingertips.

His hero tapped the tip of the arrowhead to Taylor’s forehead and smiled. “
Ka eh
—can you understand me now?”

Taylor blinked and jerked away at the peculiar soothing quality of his voice. “Whoa. Seriously? How did you do that?”

“What? What?” Ringo asked as he looked between the two of them.

Taylor nodded to his hero and then pointed to Ringo. “Hold still,” he told Ringo.

The man poked Ringo’s forehead with the arrowhead. “Better?”

“Whooooaaaaa,” Ringo said. “So… it’s like… Enchanted translator microbes or something?”

The man shook his head slightly, looking lost.

Taylor waved a hand. “Never mind him. Soooo.” Taylor searched for a reason to make the situation less awkward. “You’re an Enchant?”

“I came to your rescue, didn’t I?” the guy asked. Taylor still had to listen carefully through the dropped consonants in his speech.

Feeling more confident, Taylor swept a bow. He would sooner kiss a toad than curtsey like all princesses were expected to do. “I guess this is the part where I repay your kindness or something,” he said and smiled.

“No need,” his rescuer said.

“I’m…,” Taylor began, uncertain. He made vague gestures as he tried to explain. “I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to repay you. Like that’s how that works. Right?” He glanced at Ringo and nodded to him. “You’re the repository of Enchant legalities. I’m supposed to repay him, right?”

Taylor’s rescuer frowned, which didn’t make Taylor feel as confident anymore. “
Princesses
repay,” he said, a little too firmly for Taylor’s liking.

“Well, you’re right,” Taylor said and cringed the second it left his mouth.

“And where is she?” he asked and crossed his arms. “I need to be getting on to the next county, and I could use her token.”

Taylor frowned. He took a breath and let it out. “Ringo’s
my
fairy godfather,” he said and expected it to explain everything.

“Impossible.” He tossed his head with a snort. “Fairy guardians don’t bond to princes.”

Taylor had had enough of the guy’s attitude. “Do you honestly think I am wearing
this
much pink for kicks? I just ran out on my wedding!”

That seemed to be the thing to chip through his rescuer’s armor. He blinked, then grinned. “You’re telling me you’re a princess?”

“Unfortunately,” Taylor said and sighed.

The guy’s attitude completely turned around in three seconds. And Taylor slipped back a step. Something about his change of demeanor and how his eyes glittered with merriment seemed disturbing. He smiled broadly and extended an oil-stained, dirty hand that Taylor was hesitant to accept. “We’ll work out the repaying specifics later,” the man said. “What I owe you right now is a proper rescue. Corentin Devereaux, at your service.”

Taylor talked himself into accepting the hand and gave a firm shake. “Taylor Hatfield. Princess Taylor Hatfield… I guess.”

“Hungry?” Corentin asked, and Taylor was taken by surprise at his sudden overfriendliness. “How about a change of clothes?” He gestured to the diner. “It doesn’t have much selection, but I’m sure you’ll find something… less hideous.”

“
Read my freaking mind
,” Taylor said, spitting giggles.

W
HAT
D
O
Y
OU
D
O

WITH
A
P
ROBLEM
L
IKE
T
AYLOR
?

The Oasis Travel Center and Derailed Diner, Robertsdale, Alabama

June 6

A
S
T
AYLOR
sat at the counter sipping a Dr. Pepper inside the Derailed Diner, Corentin sat on the stool next to him. Corentin thumbed through his wallet. Taylor smiled, and Corentin caught the expression out of the corner of his eye. He was a cute kid, but if he ran off from his wedding, he wasn’t entirely a kid. Corentin knew the facts and figures that all Enchants married at twenty-five and not a day later. Maybe it was the wretched pink outfit. He was a scrawny thing. Did they not feed princesses? That was a weird enough concept already. Corentin had heard of the male princesses and female princes, but he had never run across any. Not that he remembered, anyway.

Corentin considered his credit cards, trying to remember which one still worked and which one didn’t. His finger settled on the edge of the gold one, and he tried to jog his memory of when he’d last used it. Nothing came to mind, one way or another, so he settled on the platinum one. All of his cards had his name on them, so he was sure they were his, even if the driver’s license photo looked nothing like him. He’d never had a Mohawk, nor was he of Arabic descent.

“Hey? Did I say something wrong?” Taylor asked and apparently never looked away with his big peach-pink eyes. That was a little weird too. Must be a princess thing.

“Um, sorry,” he said, then flashed a smile. “Was just daydreaming. What is it?”

“I asked where you’re from.” Taylor tilted his head in the way an eager puppy would. “I mean, your accent is insane.”

Corentin arched a brow. “What acc—”

Taylor burst into laughter and Corentin narrowed his eyes. “Don’t give me the ‘I don’t have an accent’ thing.”

Corentin clued in quickly that it was the inherent trait in every Enchant to blindly trust. This would make things easier. He tried a smile, and Taylor seemed to go along with it. Corentin turned away and faked a cough, trying to find a way to change the subject. He turned back to Taylor again with a smile, and Taylor nodded obliviously. Corentin flexed his fingers and cracked his knuckles on both hands. He couldn’t get over the pink-eyes thing. It was just far too bizarre. “My plates say Louisiana,” Corentin said and hooked a thumb at his Ford F-150 in the parking lot. “The one next to the Metro.” Taylor followed the gesture, and Corentin noticed the concern on his face. “It doesn’t look like much. But it gets me where I need to go.”

Frustration always made Corentin’s temples throb. He reached into his canvas messenger bag and pulled out his lifeline. A stack of composition notebooks that had been duct-taped together to form one large compendium and was stuffed to the gills with papers, pictures, receipts, Post-Its, and every possible colored tab he could collect. He unhooked the bungee cord that held the monstrous notebook together and flipped to a page in the green-tabbed section. He scanned the pages, then flipped to another green tab that was six tabs later and continued scanning. He frowned and flipped to another green tab somewhere in the middle. He smiled.

“Excellent,” Corentin said to himself and ran his finger over the list of credit cards to find which one was maxed and which one wasn’t. He closed the notebook, which still remained open by ten inches, fished out his gold card, and slid it toward Taylor. “Use this one.”

Meanwhile, Taylor sat still and silent. He stared at Corentin like he had just sprouted three heads.

On Taylor’s shoulder, his fairy godfather was the first to say something. “You know, if you’re a hoarder… it’s cool,” Ringo said cautiously.

“
Ringo
,” Taylor hissed.

Corentin’s attention darted to his tome and back to the princess and fairy. He glanced at his mishmash of notebooks again. “Oh, yeah. That….” He tried to sound as casual as possible.

“Not to sound rude,” Taylor said and pointed. “But
that
is a little weird.”

“It’s my curse, you know. Every Enchant has one.” He placed his hand on the steep slope of the cover. “Have to write everything down.”

“Like a Storyteller?” Taylor asked, and Corentin recognized in Taylor’s smile that his trust had returned.

He looked past Taylor to the yellow school bus mounted on the wall behind the counter. The lights still blinked like it was preparing to stop. “Kind of like that,” he lied, then changed the subject. “What’s yours?”

Taylor wilted under the question. “I don’t wanna talk about it,” he said quietly.

Corentin grinned. “Let me guess. When the sun sets, you turn into a mermaid?”

“I don’t really have one.”

Corentin thought he heard Taylor mumble. He leaned closer to hear better. “Don’t have what? A tail?” he asked.

Taylor looked down at his lap, and his fists tightened. “A curse. I don’t have a curse.”

Corentin blinked and recoiled out of Taylor’s space. “You don’t? You’re
Curseless
?”

Taylor frowned darkly. “Why don’t you announce it to everyone, asshole?”

“Wow,” Corentin said, then turned back to his messenger bag. “Yow.”

Taylor fidgeted with his fork, running his thumb over the tines. Corentin noticed he had only eaten half of his burger. The Derailed Diner wasn’t particularly known for anything not swimming in grease. Patrons talked around them in a low, undulating wave of chatter. Taylor wouldn’t look at Corentin.

Ringo, on the other hand, glared venom upon him. “I think you need to occupy yourself for minute,” Ringo stated with terrible calmness.

Corentin puffed a sigh and pushed away from the counter. “Yeah, got it,” he said and slid the credit card closer to Taylor’s elbow. “Here. Take it and get yourself something to change into. There’s showers in the back. Might make you feel better.”

Taylor muttered something that sounded like a thank you, and Corentin took that as his cue to shuffle off to the restrooms. He glanced over his shoulder and watched Taylor lift the card off the counter and flip it through his fingers.

Corentin shoved his hand into the pocket of his leather jacket, and his fingers fluttered over the contours of his phone and pocketknife. He pivoted and bumped his way into the men’s room by pushing the door with his shoulder. After stepping carefully over the floor tiles, he stooped and checked under the stall doors for occupants. He then peeked around the dividing wall toward the urinals. One guy was finishing up, and Corentin twisted away quickly toward a sink and picked at his hair in the mirror.