Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Bad Fairies
    Bad Fairies
    Bad Fairies
    Ebook113 pages1 hour

    Bad Fairies

    By Alice M. Cole

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Someone is killing Boston's flower fairies, and Cassie is afraid she knows who: her father, the Rose King, disappeared years ago, intending to kill himself. But the spells he cast to entangle and control his court keep him tied to the living. He can't die until they do. Cassie would like to turn to Bran O'Meara, formerly a priest and still a bard. In the old days, he was promised to his God and she was promised to another man. Now they have a second chance. But Bran is tied to the Rose King by spells so strong they have kept him from death for many hundreds of years. Will breaking the spell free Bran—or will it mean death for Bran, Cassie, and everyone in their court?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTorrid Books
    Release dateJul 1, 2013
    ISBN9781611607017
    Bad Fairies

    Related to Bad Fairies

    Related ebooks

    Romance For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Mar 1, 2024

      I was trying to look a little less like myselfand more like other humans, humans who belonged, so I put on a skort.Purchased in another life, when I had a husband and wrote thank-you notes and held dinner parties,the skort even had its own little poc

      6 min read

    • Article

      Six Sonnets

      Jan 1, 2021

      Goldenrod, I could say, you know, everybody wants somethingfrom me, but, well, everybody wants something and nobody wantsnothing from me, goldenrod, towhead, beast. Goldenrod, you packthe meadows like gold-plated sardines. I have heart palpitationsbu

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Postmenopausal Fairy Tale

      Feb 4, 2019

      The Postmenopausal Fairy Tale
      9 min read

    • Article

      Foxes

      Jun 15, 2019

      What’s worth happening happens in deep woods. Or so my daughter tells me. Her plotlines: In the deep woods someone is chasing, someone else is getting hacked. Hatchets are lifted, brought downdowndown. Men stutter blood onto snow. A cast of animals—s

      17 min read

    • Article

      The Silence of Witches

      Dec 10, 2019

      The Silence of Witches
      6 min read

    • Article

      ‘Cygnet’: Featured Fiction from Season Butler

      Jun 25, 2019

      A excerpt from Butler's debut coming-of-age novel, set in an appealingly rich world with quirky, flawed characters and a dramatic oceanfront landscape. The post ‘Cygnet’: Featured Fiction from Season Butler appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Duplex

      Jun 9, 2020

      I moved to Los Angeles to sing. When was this? August? June? I was twenty-nine, and those were shapeless months, when the days blended together and I refused to pull them apart. My landlord was unusually close to her adult son. His name was Jeffrey,

      21 min read

    • Article

      The Invitation

      Aug 21, 2023

      York, October 1644 Before I’ve even mustered the courage to knock, the door to the townhouse flings open. I drop my hand. “It is me, John Falmouth,” I say and wince at how loud my voice carries into the night. My greeting falters when I look up and n

      6 min read

    • Article

      Seedlings

      May 6, 2021

      Seedlings
      9 min read

    • Article

      Life In The past Lane

      Aug 27, 2021

      Life In The past Lane
      5 min read

    • Article

      Penny

      Jul 2, 2020

      Penny
      6 min read

    • Article

      Second Chances

      Jun 3, 2022

      Second Chances
      3 min read

    • Article

      Cricket Ceague

      Apr 1, 2019

      Penelope Berkeley, age 9 Mars Hill, NC Night had fallen, and Luna awoke from where she had been sleeping in a cornfield. She moved steadily through the stalks with barely a sound, keeping her eyes on the glittering glass rooftop of the greenhouse in

      7 min read

    • Article

      Cooking with Bruno Schulz

      Jul 19, 2019

      Cooking with Bruno Schulz
      8 min read

    • Article

      Shards

      Jun 1, 2018

      Shards
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Periodic Stranger: When exile becomes home.

      Dec 12, 2013

      My roots are in a hilltop village west of Matera, where rabbit and boar run riot in the fields. Figs, apricots, and pears hang in heavy clusters, at eye-level and within easy reach. There, the local girls are famous for their calves, made firm and st

      21 min read

    • Article

      The Periodic Stranger

      Mar 2, 2017

      My roots are in a hilltop village west of Matera, where rabbit and boar run riot in the fields. Figs, apricots, and pears hang in heavy clusters, at eye-level and within easy reach. There, the local girls are famous for their calves, made firm and st

      21 min read

    • Article

      Nick Laird

      Dec 15, 2017

      I was trying to write like an adult.I had children.I was at the end of something. As I waited at my table by the window for the coffee,I saw that the sirocco had depositeda scrim of dust on the sill overnight,and it was the dark red of powdered blood

      3 min read

    • Article

      Ann Beattie

      Sep 15, 2017

      I’d started to visit Olivia more often because it was obvious she was lonely. The ALS lady who’d been moved to Hopkins had been Aunt Olivia’s closest friend, leaving aside Merton Hillstead, who actually went home. Even the friendly paperboy who somet

      23 min read

    • Article

      The Plague Legends

      Dec 1, 2021

      The Plague Legends
      12 min read

    • Article

      Our Lady Of The Rockies

      Aug 7, 2023

      Our Lady Of The Rockies
      13 min read

    • Article

      Summer Beach Reads

      Jan 10, 2021

      Summer Beach Reads
      7 min read

    • Article

      Come Stay

      Jan 16, 2024

      Come Stay
      23 min read

    • Article

      The Man I Should Have Married

      Dec 29, 2019

      The Man I Should Have Married
      11 min read

    • Article

      Peyton Burgess

      Mar 9, 2021

      Sometimes PB to my students, Sack to my friends, and always Pete to my family, my name is Peter Burgundy and I worry that death has been my only inspiration to be a better person—that death has had a way of making life understandable. And oh whoa, ho

      30 min read

    • Article

      I, Von Economo

      Oct 10, 2022

      I’d never seen a Bentley Mulsanne in the flesh, not even in the chop shops where I sold the luxury cars I boosted. Yet there it was, parked behind an inner-city soup kitchen with its signature hood ornament of silver wings stretched wide to the heave

      12 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Bad Fairies

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Bad Fairies - Alice M. Cole

      BAD FAIRIES

      by

      Alice M. Cole

      TORRID BOOKS

      www.torridbooks.com

      Published by

      TORRID BOOKS

      www.torridbooks.com

      An Imprint of Whiskey Creek Press LLC

      Whiskey Creek Press

      PO Box 51052

      Casper, WY 82605-1052

      Copyright Ó 2013 by Alice M. Cole

      Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 (five) years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

      Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

      No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

      ISBN 978-1-61160-701-7

      Credits

      Cover Artist: Gemini Judson

      Editor: Fran Mathieson

      Printed in the United States of America

      Dedication

      To my mom, who always believed in me and my writing—even though she’s going to be horribly embarrassed by the story.

      Can I live the dear life of delusion again,

      That flow’d when these echoes first mix’d with my strain?

      It was then that around me, though poor and unknown

      High spells of mysterious enchantment were thrown,

      The streams were of silver, of diamonds the dew,

      The land was an Eden, for fancy was new.

      I had heard of our bards, and my soul was on fire

      At the rush of their verse, and the sweep of their lyre:

      To me ‘twas not legend, nor tale to the ear,

      But a vision of noontide, distinguish’d and clear.

      From The Return to Ulster, Sir Walter Scott

      Chapter 1

      The trouble with cops these days, they don’t recognize the old power. The dead woman’s aura quivers so strongly I want to go to my knees on the dirty concrete outside the T stop, ripping the bosom of my shirt in the old ritual of mourning. Even the shoppers, students, budding artists, and young financiers who haunt this quarter of Boston seem aware of it, stepping past with lowered heads.

      But not the Boston cops. All they see is a homeless derelict lying on the sidewalk under the retaining wall beside a colonial cemetery. They see her plastic bag of old clothes, her worn-out sneakers, and think it’s just another homeless old bitch dead.

      All they see of me is what I let them see. A tired college professor hot and frustrated at the end of a long day of classes. A tired woman closer to middle age than she would like to be. Just another gawker.

      The big bald cop waves his sandwich at me. Just move on, lady. Let us do our job. We’ll get this straightened out in no time.

      Yeah, right, same way they’ve straightened out the last four murders.

      And all of them fairies, not that the public knows that. I whisper their names. Isobel. Ydris. Galatae. Achleen.

      All flower fairies. Flower fairies like my adoptive mother the Rose Queen, like my father, like Ash and Mirelle.

      No garden fairies like my mother and me. No backyard fairies, house fairies, brownies, or kelpies. Just flower fairies found dead around Back Bay, like this woman lying beneath a small bedraggled rambling rose whose pale pink blossoms are fading to white and brown as the petals drip to the sidewalk. They veil the woman’s face as if the vine had cast them there in mourning.

      Damn, is that the Rose Queen? I haven’t seen her for months, but she had her own court over on Commonwealth Avenue then. Even if she was foreclosed on, she wouldn’t be living on the street. There’s always a home for the Queen, no matter how much you hate her. Even Mom and I would have taken her in.

      Though she might have preferred to live on the street rather than with lowly garden fairies. And she and Ciabella always come this way when they walk their dog—

      Damn you, lady, I said move! bellows the cop.

      The woman cop behind him says, Do you know her, Miss? She steps aside slightly, allowing me a clearer view.

      I’m not used to looking at dead faces and I can’t picture how the woman would have looked when she was alive. She’s too discolored and distorted. Her skin is covered by a network of fine lines, like scratches. Her face is bloated and blue, even the nose.

      Even bloated and beaten, would the Rose Queen’s delicate pointed nose look this bulbous? I don’t think so. I thought I might, but no. No, it’s not her.

      The first cop gestures with his sandwich again. Thank you for your assistance. Now get the fuck out of here, before I arrest you for failing to obey an officer!

      Nothing I can do will help the dead woman now, so I move on. I do not succumb to the temptation to turn his cap into ass ears for him.

      Or maybe he’d look better with a pig’s snout? He’s snorting like a pig as he crunches into his sandwich.

      Don’t do it, lady, says a man’s voice, from the church steps.

      The voice sounds like Puck, but the owner doesn’t look like Puck. Puck is one of those wiry wizened creatures who’s always trying to sneak a peek up your skirt. This man was once—still is—handsome, with deep blue eyes, fair skin, and a black beard that curls slightly, like his hair. He’s sitting on an upturned plastic bucket holding a paper-bagged bottle by the neck. He’s been busking rather than begging; his guitar is propped behind an upturned Detroit Tigers cap. Not a smart choice in Boston, but nobody seems to be heckling him about it. He would smell even if he had showered in living memory, which he hasn’t. But he has all his teeth, and he brushes regularly. Flosses, too.

      Fairies know things like that about people, even if we’re not tooth fairies. And only a fairy, or a changeling, or someone we’ve ensorcelled, would care for his teeth like that while neglecting the rest of his body.

      Don’t do it, he says again. He’s just doing his job.

      He’s not doing his job, is the problem.

      The vagrant shrugs and drinks deeply from his bottle. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. How would you feel if somebody put ass ears on you?

      I twitch ears into place on my own head, kick my heels a couple of times, and la-la-la a few lines of Mendelssohn. A mother pushing a stroller turns to look. I twitch a curtain into place between her and me. All she’s going to see is a rather bedraggled college literature teacher wishing she was home in her own shady back yard with a large cold and very alcoholic drink in her hand. Damn, this must be the hottest summer in decades.

      Mr. Puck-ish offers me the bottle as I finish the jig. For your thirst.

      I sniff cautiously.

      It’s Four Roses. Jesus. You think I put a spell on it?

      I flip him the bird. His head grows wings, which flap and try to lift him off the ground.

      He snaps his fingers. The wings disappear, dropping him with a thump onto his plastic bucket. I’m not much good with a spell, but it’s still a good trick getting rid of them that easily.

      I take the bottle. Thank you.

      The bottle starts to wriggle as it nears my mouth. I drink anyway. A good swig. After a glimpse of that body, I’m tempted to chug the whole thing, no matter what kind of spell it’s got on it or what kind of strange creature manufactured it, or what kind of shape-form bottle it’s coming out of.

      The snake hisses.

      Sorry, says the vagrant. Guess I’m starting to get a bit of the heebie-jeebies. He sounds pleased.

      I was handing the bottle to him. I pull back. Then it’s time to stop, isn’t it?

      I can’t die except by my own hand. I can’t die by iron or rope. Certainly not by drowning. I’ll do it the best way I can manage.

      I blink. If he’s a creature of water, then he’s certainly not Puck out slumming as a human.

      He grins. That’s right, I’m not Puck. And you’re Castella of the Roses.

      Hedges, I correct him. But I’m just plain Cassie Higgins, at the moment. I teach Old Irish poetry at the university.

      This amuses him, for some reason unknown to me. It’s not

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1