Hatter's Heart - Erin Bedford

Chapter 1

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My mother would have adored Mrs. Tara McAllister. She was everything she expected a woman to be in the nineteenth century. Besides the fact that the human sitting across from my desk wore a pantsuit instead of a gown. Pantsuits were the equivalent to dresses for well-to-do women in the twenty-first century. She was articulated, gossipy, but in a hushed way, and overly concerned by anyone not abiding by the rules.

As my friend Kat would say, "Fuck the rules."

I hated to think I would have been an exact replica of Mrs. McAllister had I stayed in the nineteenth century. God forbid, if I had actually married Lewis.

Suppressing a shudder, I shifted in my chair, hoping she hadn't noticed my drifting attention.

"And while I have nothing against you fairy folk," Mrs. McAllister shifted in her seat and fluffed her dyed blonde hair, "but I don’t understand how the president even allows those creatures to integrate with polite society."

I adjusted the collar of my own blush colored suit jacket and tried not to sigh.

Mrs. McAllister quickly added, "Not you, Alice, dear. I mean those..." her nose scrunched up with obvious disgust, "...trolls, those ugly little faeries, and while I do appreciate the cleanliness of the brownies, they leave a lot to be desired in the looks department, don't you agree?"

I nodded politely but didn't comment.

"They're not like you and the other representatives." She smiled softly, her eyes getting that far off look most got when talking about the higher fae. "While I do not care for that Katherine young lady, her mother and I were in the same social groups for a while, before she became so pro-faerie. Now that Erydesa, she's a wonderful woman. The way she handled Congress-"

"Mrs. McAllister," I interrupted her, ready to be done with this. "I will bring your complaint up with the Moderator. I'm sure we can find a reasonable solution to your faerie problem." I pushed back from the table and stood, not giving her the chance to argue with me as I held my hand out. "Thank you for bringing this to our attention and please feel free to bring any other concerns in the future."

The woman scrambled to her feet and shook my hand, her hands cold and clammy. "Oh, yes. Of course. Thank you for seeing me. Like I said, I have nothing against your kind, I just like my garden a specific way and those faeries -"

"Of course," I forced an agreeable smile to my lips and nodded, leading her to the door of my office. "We all do. Have a great day, Mrs. McAllister."

I ushered her out of my office and shut the door behind her. I waited a moment before sagging against the wood and sighed.

When I took the job as representative between the Fae and humans, I hadn't expected there to be so many complaints about little things. The trolls were falling asleep in the streets. The brownies kept sneaking into houses and cleaning them. The fucking faeries kept getting into every person in a hundred-mile radius's gardens and rearranging the flowers.

Now the majority of the population didn't seem to be bothered by the Fae at all. Of course, half of them were in awe of us still and the other half were scared. We had made leaps and bounds in the last year since the fae had come out of the portal and into the human world. There were bound to be some people who weren't happy with our existence let alone us infiltrating their world.

Then there were the Mrs. McAllisters. For every human who liked or hated us, there was one in the middle who pretended to be okay with us but then would find everything they could to complain about. This was just one of the many Mrs. McAllisters I'd had to deal with today. Thankfully, she was the last.

Rubbing my temples, I slogged over to my desk and finished up the paperwork to log Mrs. McAllister's complaint. A half an hour later, I had my purse and was locking up the office.

When I had first accepted the job, I had been working out of Kat's kitchen. With myself as the go between of the two species, I brought all the complaints that I couldn't handle myself to Kat, who was acting Moderator on