Since I've become more intimately acquainted with them, they scare me even more than they used to.
I know that they can kill me.
But I've killed one and helped to kill two others.
The fae .
.
.
In the most terrifying horror films, you never see what is killing people.
I know that's because the unknown is far scarier than anything some makeup or special-effects person can come up with.
The fae are like that, their true faces concealed behind other forms--and designed to blend in with the human race and hide what they truly are.
This sweet-faced person who looked like someone's grandmother might be one of those who ate children who were lost in the woods, or drowned young men who trespassed in her forest.
Of course, it was possible that she might be one of the lesser or gentler fae--just as she looked.
But I didn't think so.
I'm smarter than Snow White: I wouldn't be eating any apples she gave me.
She ignored my questions--fae don't give out their true names--and said, "Are you a friend of his? You're shivering.
I don't suppose it would hurt anything if you came in and sat down a bit to warm up.
I'm just helping straighten out the books while Phin is gone." "Gone?" I wasn't going into that shop alone with her.
Instead, I pounded her with the kind of questions any customer .
.
.
okay, any obsessive customer would ask.
"Where is he? Do you know how I can get in touch with him? Why isn't the store open?" She smiled.
"I don't know where he is at the moment." Another evasion.
She might know that he was in the basement, for instance, but not exactly where he was standing.
"He'll probably let me know when he gets a chance to call me.
Who should I tell him came asking after him?" I looked into her guileless eyes and knew that Tad had been right to be worried.
All I had was Phin's unresponsive phone, a nasty neighbor, and the store closed--but my instincts were clamoring.
Something had happened to Phin, something bad.
I didn't know him well, but I liked him.
And, going by the phone call Tad had received, whatever had happened to him was tied to the book he'd loaned to me.
Which made it my fault.