Authors: Jenna Grey
Superglue.
The bitches had put superglue on her plait right at the top, close to her hairline. She’d have to cut the entire thing off before she went to bed tonight – but at least it would grow again by morning. Her hands were covered in glue, but she managed to get most of it off before her fingers stuck together.
She closed her eyes and drew the magic to her, reaching into that dark place where she only ventured when she was at her most vindictive. Using this kind of magic was always dangerous, because she was reaching into the darkness, calling on powers that could never be classed as benevolent. She’d only used it twice before – once to curse a paedophile who had been plaguing children in the neighbourhood and another time to curse a bag snatcher that had attacked an old lady in the street, leaving her battered and bruised. The former she’d made impotent, and she’d curse the mugger with crippling arthritis in his knees; she’d like to see how fast he could run now. The beings whose power she called on now were the fallen angels, Belphegor, Samadriel, Belial and Lilith. They would aid her, for a price – a portion of her life force, her power. They would drawer energy from her in return for their favour. The greater her request the more power they would syphon from her. The small favours she was begging now would hardly cause a ripple and worth every scrap of power they demanded from her. Those bitches had gone too far this time, and she had been saving this up for years. She counted to ten, and when she opened her eyes, she felt better.
Come tomorrow the three Bs wouldn’t have anything to giggle about.
By the time Lily reached her destination she was fractious and in a terrible mood. She pitied anyone that got on her wrong side today. ‘The Wrong Side’ of the fey was a very wrong side indeed.
Her college – which was really just a glorified addition to the village school, and called a ‘Community College’ to give it delusions of grandeur wasn’t quite in the centre of the village, but off to the other side of it, up by the small rarely used railway station. Children came from the villages around to it, which justified its existence, just about, but it was still small by anybody’s standards. Lily enjoyed the schooling part of school a lot – she found taking in knowledge easy, it just seemed to pour into her like water pouring into a bowl and she could usually retain information just by hearing it once. But only if she enjoyed the subject. When it came to things like maths and science she was a lost cause – put two numbers in front of her and she would become hysterical; add a few more digits and she would go into a state of catatonia. Fey and numbers just didn’t seem to go together. The real problem with school had always been that she could never really hide that she was different – disguise or not, other people could sense her oddness, and her life had been an eternal misery because of it.
Lily spent most of the day in troubled thought, only half present in any of the classes; her body there, but not her mind or soul. The events of the previous night hung heavy over her, a darkness that seemed to have settled around her shoulders like a kind of malignant cloak. The memory of that dark form pinning her down, that terrible face – and worse, the knowledge that it would be coming back. Her only small comfort was that piece of rusty metal that might well be her only chance of protection against them. She wondered why she hadn’t thought of something so obvious before – except perhaps that most chains these days seemed to be made of alloy and not iron. She might not have even noticed it if her enemy hadn’t tried so hard to protect it. The image of that poor animal, literally ripped apart, brought sharp bursts of bile to her throat every so often. That memory was going to haunt her for many months to come. There was one little niggling doubt, though, at the back of her mind – why would they draw her attention to it? She might never have noticed it, never had done before, if they hadn’t drawn her attention to it in such an outrageous way? She forced the conundrum from her mind and turned her thoughts to other things. The small satisfaction she’d got from laying the various curses on the three Bs, still wasn’t enough to fully drive away her fury and her hurt. She’d given Bryony elf tangles, knotting her hair so badly that she would have no choice but to cut it off close to the roots – come tomorrow she’d have a GI crop if she didn’t want to come into school looking as if she’d spent the night in a thorn bush – poetic justice at its best. Brook she’d given a serious case of the trots – well, it might help her lose a bit of weight if she had to spend a few days on the loo – Lily didn’t make it too serious, just a nice unhealthy dose of the squits. Brittany, who spent more time looking in the mirror than eating or sleeping, now had a face full of zits – her punishment for making fun of Gary. They would clear up in a week or so; Lily wasn’t vindictive enough to make it so bad that it would leave scars. No permanent damage to any of them, and it probably wouldn’t teach them a lesson, but it certainly made Lily feel better – it would also keep them away from her for the last few days of term. With any luck she would never have to see them again.
Their taunts did hurt, of course they did; she had never been prideful, but she did have some pride. Being forced to wear her primitive equivalent of glamour had never really bothered her before, but for the last little while she had found herself wishing that she didn’t have to hide like this; she was so tired of the scorn and ridicule – or worse, pity.
A great swell of righteous indignation suddenly welled up inside her and she wanted nothing more than to go to the bathroom, wipe off all of the gunk from her hair and face and come out to show them her true self, just to see the looks on their faces. Would it really be so bad to come out of hiding, to strip off the secret and let the world see her as she really was? Of course it would; it would be the worst idea ever. ‘Hi, I’m a fairy – want to lock me away in a psychiatric hospital, or put me in a lab and experiment on me? Sure, help yourself.’
So she bit back her misery, remembering that tomorrow morning all three of them would look a hell of a lot worse than she did. She picked up her bag, hoisted it over her shoulder and turned...
...to see Gary Wilcox standing just behind her, all three hundred pounds of him, blushing furiously and looking as if he hoped someone would shoot him in the head. He was sweating copiously, his face covered in glistening droplets, and he was panting as if he’d been running hard, blowing out his breath in little gushes.
“Br... Br...Bryony said that you wanted me t-t-to go with you to the end of year dance on Friday.” He was hardly able to get the words out he was stammering and wheezing so badly. Lily felt desperately sorry for him. His glasses had steamed up and his face was so red, Lily was certain that his galaxy of spots were going to explode like supernovas – worse, that he was going to have a coronary.
She put on her best smile and said:
“Oh, I did, I was going to ask you, but then I realised that’s the day I’ve got to move into my new flat...” She saw the look of dreadful disappointment on his face and quickly added, “Did you really want to go to the dance, though? I mean, if you didn’t, it would be great if you could help me move my stuff. We could go and grab a coffee after at the teashop in the village. I think the dance is going to be rubbish anyway – I’d much rather go and have a nice quiet cup of coffee with you.”
He looked so pleased Lily thought he was going to burst into tears. It brought her a bright buzz of pleasure to see his reaction. He really was very sweet.
“No, I never really wanted to go. I’d love to help you. That would be great.”
The stammer had miraculously gone and a look of something close to joy had replaced the dreadful look of consternation. Lily grinned back at him.
“Cool. You know where I live, don’t you? If you could get there by about six, that would be terrific. There’s not much to move anyway, we could do it all in a couple of trips, and I’ll treat you to the coffee.”
Gary wandered off, looking as if he’d just got a date with Miley Cyrus, dazed but sublimely happy, and Lily added just a little bit more malice to the curses she’d put on her three nemeses.
Once out of purgatory, Lily headed straight for the tiny village library, her second favourite place in the world, and settled down to work on the very last piece of her GCSE coursework – British Folklore, a subject created by the gods, just for her; she knew practically everything there was to know about the myths and legends of the British Isles – although of course most of them weren’t actually myths and legends at all and she had a subheading all of her own. She didn’t really need to do this extra bit of work, because she’d already submitted the project and knew that she’d got really good marks for it, but she just wanted to add a little more to round it off to her own satisfaction. She’d taken three A levels, art, music and English literature, and another four GCSEs just for the sake of keeping her ever-active mind occupied. All of her teachers had implored her to think about going to university – she had more than enough qualifications, but they just didn’t understand – how could they? The thought of going to university left her cold – school had been a nightmare, why add to her misery by re-enrolling for another few years of psychological torture?
The moment she walked into the library she felt a wonderful calm settle over her. She loved the peace and quiet here, the tranquillity and comfort of the place. She knew both of the librarians well, Judith and Kit, and liked them both, and they would often do her little favours; she gladly did them back. Last year, Judith’s dog had developed a tumour on its leg, and Lily had taken it away – all she had to do was hug the dog and wish it better and the tumour had disappeared in a matter of days. Kit’s sister had been told she could never have children, but she came into the library for tea one day and Lily only had to touch her arm to make her fertile. She had a beautiful little girl now; Kit had brought photos in of her, and Lily had been so happy for her.
Lily settled herself at one of the computers and caught a glimpse of the headlines on Yahoo:
Cattle blight strikes South of England.
That was the third outbreak in the last couple of weeks; Scotland and the Midlands had already been hit, and scientists were desperately trying to find out what was causing it. The word was that it was a new strain of anthrax, and the government were panicking, desperately trying to control it. She could only feel sorry for the poor farmers and the animals that were being put down and burnt by their thousands. It wasn’t only Great Britain that was suffering, to all accounts there had been escalating plagues and blights all over the world in the last few months, ranging from a new strain of virus that was killing sheep out in New Zealand, to a crop blight that was wiping out wheat crops in Kansas. World health organisations were going ballistic trying to find out what was going on, and placard waving ‘The End is Nigh’, devotees were proselytising on every street corner.
Lily did suspect that there was something unnatural about this avalanche of curses, but hadn’t really felt any arcane involvement in them – at least not yet.
She put her memory stick into the slot, pulling up her project, idly sorting out files, but found it hard to concentrate. She suddenly realised why: someone was reading out loud – a very simplified version of the
Wind in the Willows
by the sound of it. She glanced across to the rather bony woman perched on the too-small children’s chair, reading to the cross-legged group in front of her. So much for getting some work done.
It was only after a few moments that she realised that the group being read to were from the local residential home for people with learning difficulties and behavioural problems, mostly Down’s Syndrome or autism. It had only been open for a couple of weeks. These all seemed to be quite young, boys and girls in their late teens. She supposed that was just coincidence, unless they had deliberately filled the new home with people of the same age, so that they would feel more at home. She’d seen them around the village, just about a dozen of them; it was a very small home, but she been impressed by the way the carers treated them, with kindness and respect, and she’d often wave to them and send them her best goodwill magic. That kind of magic was just a general good luck charm, to make their day a little brighter, hopefully bring something good to them, a little gift or blessing – the equivalent of the American ‘Have a nice day’, but with magic to back it up.
In some ways she could relate to these youngsters far better than she could to the rest of humanity – she could certainly relate to them a hell of a lot more than she could the three Bs: being something out of the norm was never going to be easy.
Lily found her mind wandering and suddenly realised that she was picking up impressions from the young people across the room, not thoughts exactly, but images and feelings, just random patterns emanating from each of them. She tried to focus on what they were thinking. With most people all she could pick up was a chaos of jumbled miscellany, shopping, kids, petrol, dinner – a detritus of thoughts that meant nothing – the useless mundanities of everyday life, but she was getting very clear impressions from these young people. What she was picking up was definitely not thoughts as such, but certainly feelings. They were enjoying the story. In many cultures those who had learning difficulties were called blessed, and perhaps she could see why now; their innocence and way of seeing reality was so much better than the cynical and jaundiced view the rest of humanity had.
And then she realised that one of them was staring hard at her.
It was one of the young men, perhaps in his late teens.
The Wind in the Willows
suddenly seemed to have lost its charm and Lily was getting his full attention. He kept turning to stare at her, then looking away again, as if he were not quite certain of where he wanted his attention to be focused. She watched him cautiously, and as she looked more closely she felt a tremble run through her, not fear exactly, but a shiver of something; it tingled through her, making her shudder.
He was fey.
It wasn’t possible, of course – it had to be her imagination, but he turned towards her again, a slow deliberate motion and then stood, just staring at her, statue still, as if he was hoping that if he stood still enough no-one would notice him. The young woman who had been reading, stopped and told him to sit down, a polite request, which he totally ignored. He began to move forwards, ignoring the protest of the two carers, urging him to come back, and moved towards Lily, still staring hard at her. He seemed nervous, not to say terrified, edging towards her as if she were some kind of alien creature that he wanted to investigate, without getting too close. One of the carers, a slight woman, with a pinched, but pleasant face, came and tried to drag him back, but he shrugged her off easily, making incoherent noises and protests of ‘No’ and kept moving inexorably towards Lily.
“Connor, love, you need to come back with the others,” the slip of a woman said, dragging on his arm. She was half his size and had no chance of restraining him.