Tithe A Modern Faerie Tale Page 0,42

spent the night.

Just touching them filled him with a longing so intense it made him sick.

Kaye stumbled in the backdoor. A quick look at the red digital numbers on the microwave told her that it was late morning.

Exhaustion settled over her as she strained to sense the wend and weft of magic in her fingers. She felt like a too-taut piece of string, fraying as it was pulled. She'd looked and looked, but there was no way back into the hill. Perhaps it opened only at dusk. She'd have to go back tonight, retrace the same path, and wait.

Her senses were overacute; the flimsy glamour she was wearing now was nothing like the one she had before. She could still feel the slight rustle of wings against her back, still smell the trash under the sink, even separate out smells—coffee grounds, eggshells, a bit of moldy cheese, detergents, some thick syrupy poison used to bait roach traps. The air thrummed with energy she had previously ignored. If she opened up to it, she might be able to leave her fatigue behind.

But she didn't want to—she wanted to cling to the facade of humanity with both fists.

"Kaye? Is that you?" Kaye's grandmother came in from the other room. She was wearing a robe and slippers, her thin gray hair pinned up in curlers. "Did you just get in?"

"Hi, Gram," Kaye said, yawning. She went over to the kitchen table, shifted a pile of newspapers and circulars out of her way, and put her head down in her hands. It was almost a relief to just let her grandmother yell at her, as if everything could be normal again.

"I called the school this morning."

Kaye forced herself not to groan.

"Did you know that you are not allowed to drop out of school without a parent's written permission? According to your transcripts you haven't been in school since you were fourteen!"

Kaye shook her head.

"What does that mean? Was that a no?"

"I know I haven't been in school," Kaye said, disgusted at how childish her own voice sounded.

"Well, it's a good thing that you know, missy, but I want to know what it is you have been doing. Where are you sneaking off to?"

"Nowhere," Kaye said in a small voice. "I just didn't want you to know. I knew you'd be mad."

"Well, why didn't you hightail it back to school then? Do you want to be nothing your whole life?"

"I'll get my GED," Kaye said.

"Your GED? Like a drug dealer? Like a pregnant teenager? Do you want to wind up trailer trash like your little friend?"

"Shut up!" Kaye yelled, holding her head. "You think you know everything about everything, don't you? You think that the world is so easy to understand. You don't know me at all—you don't know one single thing about me! How can you possibly know anything about Janet when you don't know anything about me?"

"I will not have you shouting at me in my own house. You and your mother are just the same. You think that it's enough to want things. You think that if you just want and want then you're just going to magically get them."

Magically. Kaye felt her face twist with an expression somewhere between a wince and a smirk.

"Nothing but hard work gets anyone anywhere. Even then, people don't get what they want. People just suffer, and no one knows why they suffer. Talented people—like your mother—they don't make it, despite the talent, and what are you going to do then? You can't rely on luck. How do you know you're lucky?"

Kaye was surprised to hear that her grandmother thought that her mother had talent. "I'm not relying on luck," Kaye said numbly.

"Oh really? What are you doing then?"

"I don't know," Kaye said. She was tired, and she could feel a whine creep into her voice. She was afraid that she was going to cry, and if she started crying right now, she wasn't sure she could stop. Worse, she knew she sounded petulant, upset only that she was caught. It wasn't far from the truth. "We needed the money."

Her grandmother looked at her in horror. "What money?"

"Is that what you think? Don't even talk to me," Kaye said, burrowing her face in her folded arms. She mumbled into her own skin, "I was working at a fucking Chinese restaurant, okay? In the city. Full-time. We needed the money."

Her grandmother looked at her in confusion.

"I don't have a job yet here," she confessed,

"but I thought I