Crown of Shadows (Court of Midnight and Deception #1) - K. M. Shea Page 0,6

him, but he didn’t pick up.”

“Yeah, I think he’s in his workshop. I’ll let him know.”

“Thanks. How has your day been?”

I grimaced. “I heard back from the marketing firm. They went with a different applicant.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I know you said you really liked them when you interviewed with them.”

“Yeah, but it’s okay. There are a few online positions I can apply for. Otherwise I saw there was one at the Curia Cloisters.”

I’d normally avoid the Curia Cloisters—it was basically the town hall for the supernatural community here in Magiford, which was pretty big since Magiford was considered the supernatural capital of the Midwest region.

It’s not that I was against working for supernaturals, it just didn’t mesh well with my goal of living like a human and remaining out-of-sight/out-of-mind to the fae community. They didn’t usually let anyone with fae blood waltz around free, so I had to be pretty purposeful about where I lived and worked.

But I started looking for a full-time job in February when I was still in college. Now it was May, I’d finished my classes, and I still hadn’t gotten a job. I was getting a lot less picky these days.

“That’s a nice idea.” She sounded kind of flat—which was pretty unusual for her.

“What, you’re not going to tell me ‘I told you so’?” I joked, trying to break the moment. “You told me last winter I should apply for something at the Curia Cloisters—in between times when you were showing me pictures of your friends’ sons and trying to set me up on dates.”

That got a weak chuckle out of her. “Wherever you end up, I know you’ll be fine. I will always believe in you, Leila.”

I briefly pulled the phone away from my ear so I could frown at it.

Mom was normally pretty sentimental, but not usually on the phone when she was driving home from the grocery store.

“Oops,” Mom said. “I should go—I see Mrs. Brown out at her farm stand—I want to ask when the strawberry season will start.”

“Okay—see you soon!” I ended the call and stared at my phone for an extra moment or two.

Mom has been acting off for the past few days.

My mom was always a super warm and sweet parent. But recently she’d been hugging me a lot more, and watching me with sad eyes whenever she thought I didn’t notice.

It was probably because since I had graduated college I was all “grown up” or something. She’d been harping on me about dating until about two weeks ago—which was a total waste of her time since I was way more consumed with finding a job and launching my Responsible Adult plan. But she’d stopped telling me to get out there and date the day the first fae horse showed up. Maybe she realized I aspired to become one of those old cat ladies, and figured I’d just do it with horses instead?

I finished cleaning out the horse stall I’d been working on and dumped out the dirty shavings, waving to all the equines as I mulled over Mom’s sentimental actions. I went back into the barn just long enough to dump fresh sawdust in the stall, creating a mushroom cloud of dust that got me sneezing.

Dad hadn’t noticed anything odd about Mom when I asked him about it yesterday, so maybe it was just the “grown up” thing.

Dad was just as warm and kind a parent as Mom—especially because I wasn’t really his kid.

He was my step-dad, but he married my mom when I was about ten, and he taught me how to drive, helped me with my homework, and had been the best dad I could ask for—way better than my bio father, the fae degenerate that had gifted me with my fae blood. So, he was Dad to me.

Finished with the stalls, I stepped out of the shade of the barn and into the hot afternoon sunlight.

I rounded the corner of the barn and slipped through the wooden fence, stopping just by the water troughs.

Dad’s horses were all clustered at the far side of the pasture, stamping their hooves and swishing their tails as they waited to be let inside again.

Bagel, however, was a spot of velveteen brown surrounded by six fae horses.

Wait…six?

“Oh, you dirty weasel.” I sprinted down the length of the pasture, upsetting horses and ignoring Bagel when he hee-hawed to me.

I made it to the far side of the pasture where the tree line that the fae spider had tried to