Cynthia, who had just stepped inside with a platter of barbequed chicken in her hands, blinked at us like we were doing something truly ridiculous. “Food’s ready,” she said, hoisting the platter to show us all before she walked over and dropped it onto the table, adding a handful of plastic forks. “Let me know when you’re done, and I’ll come pick up the leftovers. If there are any.”
The chicken smelled delicious, like sweet hickory sauce and charred meat, and I grabbed a fork and speared a thigh before I could think better of it. “Thank you, Cynthia,” I said.
“You kids all right back here?” Something about the way she asked the question made it clear that her question encompassed my grandmother, who was still staring at me, looking like I’d offered her everything she’d ever wanted, but put it on the other side of an impassable lake of molten lava.
“We’re great, ma’am,” said Sam, his tail tightening around my ankle. “Thank you.”
“You’re a fūri, right?” she asked, eyes on Sam.
He nodded reluctantly.
“We used to have a fūri living local, back in the early ’70s,” said Cynthia, either unaware of the tension in the room or ignoring it. “She was a nice lady. Kept getting in trouble with some of the folk from town, since no one who grows up in Buckley is completely at ease with big, unidentified animals in the trees. You know your troop?”
“Troop?” asked Sam, blankly. “I was raised by my grandmother, ma’am. She’s human. So’s my mother. I never met my father.”
“This modern world.” Cynthia shook her head. “My mother was huldrafolk, like I am. My father was a grove of white birch, as is only right and fitting.”
“Your dad was a tree?” asked Cylia.
“No,” said Cynthia. “My father was about three dozen trees. They each contributed pollen to the making of me, and had any of them been absent, I would have been someone altogether different. My mother was their wife, until they were cut to the ground by humans who wanted the land where they grew. She moved to America with a baby in her arms and a coat on her shoulders to hide the bowing in her back. It was easier in those days to cross international borders without being unmasked as something other than human. No one ever asked her to disrobe, or to unswaddle me. We settled in Michigan, and she built the Red Angel with her own two hands before passing it on to me. She grows behind the building, on a stretch of land the state allows me to pretend I own. As if anyone could own land, apart from the trees, and I still have a century or more before I decide to put down roots.”
“You were part of what gave me the idea to keep snatching back my youth until I was done with it,” said Grandma, warmly. “I grew up and started growing old, and you never did.”
“Yes, well, we huldra are made of sterner stuff than you humans—or most of the people who can pass for human. It’s like having a fast breeding and birthing cycle made you careless with the way you live your lives.” Cynthia made a small scoffing noise. “I love you anyway. Alice, are you and the kids staying in town tonight?”
“We are,” I said. “Our vehicle won’t be ready until tomorrow at the very earliest. I figured I’d show the gang the old Parrish place, since we don’t have any tenants living there.” We never did. Renting out the old Parrish place would have upset my grandmother, the family of tailypo living on the property, and inevitably, anyone who thought it was a good idea to live there.
The house had been originally chosen by the Covenant as a way to punish my grandfather for the sin of disagreeing with them. It wasn’t haunted; sort of the opposite, as I’d told Sam. No ghost with any common sense was willing to pass its threshold, and no people with any common sense had any business going there either.
“I always stay at home when I’m in town,” said Grandma. “It’s why the power is still turned on.”
Cynthia nodded slowly. “You know I have a room for you if you ever want it,” she said. “It’d be healthier than staying there all by yourself.”
“I won’t be by myself tonight,” said Grandma cheerfully. “I’m going to have Annie and her friends with me.”
Cynthia sighed, looking briefly disappointed. Then she nodded. “I suppose you