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This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.

In the ashes of her past, she will rise up, and her death will save us all.

Lizzie ran from her past for ten years, zigzagging across the United States every few months, trying to outlast the prophesy that an oracle gave to her when she was just sixteen years old.

But nobody can run from their destiny forever.

After watching her friend brutally gunned down by a group of ruthless demons, she had no choice but to protect the woman’s child, and there was only one place where Lizzie knew the girl would be safe.

Bronard, Missouri.

Home.

She stayed away to protect her parents, but the girl needed mystical protection.

Her parents had taken in magical strays their whole lives, including Lizzie. If anyone could save the poor child’s life, it would be her mother and father.

But will returning to her home doom Lizzie even as she works to save the child she has vowed to defend?

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It was exactly the same as when I left it, down to the coats on the hooks to the left of the door. I used to rush through the door after a day at school and throw my backpack—the same one I would abandon in Edgemont when I left with Veronica—on the ground next to my muddy shoes and flop on the couch to watch television before chores.

The same laughing sounds that Veronica was making from the kitchen were the ones I once made, too, as Dad made hot chocolate, or soup, or any number of snacks for me. And if Mom was home, she would pull one of her famous eclairs or donuts out of the oven and stuff them in my belly. God, what it was like to have a fast metabolism in my younger years.

The television was blaring classic TCM when I passed by on my way to the stairs. The television had been replaced since my youth, but the rest of the room was glaringly the same, though the thick coating of fuzz made it seem grayer than I remembered. A floorboard under me moaned, exactly five steps into the house, just like always. I hopped over it the night I left to avoid being caught.

As I placed my hand on the banister, Veronica rushed out from the kitchen door and into the dining room, where she sat on the same chair that I had once claimed. Children were incredibly resilient, and it was amazing to see her smiling at Carl as he hobbled back into the room.

“Do you want marshmallows, too?” Dad asked.

She nodded. “Course I do. I’m not a savage.”

“A girl after my own heart,” he said with a chuckle, disappearing back behind the door.

I took the stairs one at a time, in no rush to see my mother’s failing condition. The stairs squeaked and cracked in chorus as if the house was greeting me. The banister, like the rest of the house, was coated in a thin layer of dust. It hung in the air above where I’d placed my fingers for a moment before floating down to the floor.

There was a heaviness in my feet as I stepped onto the second floor of my childhood home. The door to my room sat on the far end of the hall, and on the near end was the one they gave to guests that had been occupied for a short time by my estranged, world-hopping sister. On the other side was my parent’s office and on the far end, across from the door to my room, was my parent’s bedroom. That’s where Mom was.

I needed another moment to gather my courage. Instead of opening Mom’s door, I pushed open the door to my childhood bedroom. I wasn’t surprised to see that it hadn’t been touched since I left, except that the bed had been made and the schoolbooks I’d left spread across my desk were nowhere to be found.

I thought I was edgy, putting up pictures of the Cure and the Smyths and painting my walls black “to match the color of my soul.” I cringed a little. If only I knew what real pain was, perhaps I would have been able to see the joy in this home, in my innocent childhood.

That was the problem with youth. It was impossible to understand just how long life would be or how dark things could get when you hadn’t lived much of your life. A year seemed to last a century when I was younger. Imagining that there would be four to five times as many days to live—well, that was an impossible task.

I knew I shouldn’t blame myself for believing that I had reached the zenith of my misery back then. If, when I was a child, I had been given even a fraction of the weight that my life now carried, I would have buckled under the pressure. I had to grow and mature into the idea that living with the misery was possible, that every single person in the whole of the world deals with so much misery that it’s hard to believe the world keeps turning. And yet, not only does it keep turning, some people even find joy in it.

Dust plumed into the air when I sat down on the bed, causing me to hack a few times. I stood immediately and made my way out of the room to grab some air, closing the door behind me to lock in the dust particles. When I stopped coughing, I was in front of Mom’s door, my hand resting on the doorknob.

“Carl?” a weak voice said. “Is that you? It doesn’t sound like your clodhopper footsteps.”

I entered the room where Mom lay in bed, shriveled and weak. Her skin was gray, and her eyes sunken. A heart monitor beeped next to her, and even the stress of moving her head to look at me was too much for her to manage. She fell back with a painful moan. I wanted to wail at the sight of my strong mother degraded like this, but I choked back my emotions, hid them like I had so often in my past.

“No, Mom. It’s me. It’s your Lizzie. Do you remember me?” I took a few steps through the musk that permeated the room.

Her voice shook when she talked. “Lizzie?” This time she fought through the exhaustion and turned to see me. “My gods, is it really you?”

I grabbed her hand. “Yes, Mom. It’s really me.”

She gave a wobbly smile and squeezed my hand tightly. “I never thought I would see you again.”

I nodded. “It’s so good to see you, Mom.”

“It’s good to see you too, baby. Now, come and give your mom a hug.”

She opened up her arms, and I collapsed into them like I had when I was a child. Listening to her heart beating in her chest made me feel safe in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time. I let my eyes fall closed.

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This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.

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Read more

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This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.

In the ashes of her past, she will rise up, and her death will save us all.

Lizzie ran from her past for ten years, zigzagging across the United States every few months, trying to outlast the prophesy that an oracle gave to her when she was just sixteen years old.

But nobody can run from their destiny forever.

After watching her friend brutally gunned down by a group of ruthless demons, she had no choice but to protect the woman’s child, and there was only one place where Lizzie knew the girl would be safe.

Bronard, Missouri.

Home.

She stayed away to protect her parents, but the girl needed mystical protection.

Her parents had taken in magical strays their whole lives, including Lizzie. If anyone could save the poor child’s life, it would be her mother and father.

But will returning to her home doom Lizzie even as she works to save the child she has vowed to defend?

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I turned down the streets of Bronard using muscle memory, surprised that so little had changed in the decade I’d been away. The Johnsons were still selling corn on the side of the road, and a few farms down, you could get berries from the Clacksons. The road down the middle of town toward my parent’s farm was filled with food stands with all manner of fruit and veggies in them. As we passed the homemade signs, I took note of the children I’d grown up with, now adults with their own children in tow as they worked their family farms.

That was supposed to be my lot in life, to help Dad and Mom till the fields, to care for them in their old age, to carry on their legacy. There was no doubt I would come back to the farm after college and work it until I died. Some people might not have thought that appealing, but it was my dream—a dream shattered by the prophecy that loomed over my head.

“It smells funny,” Veronica said as we drove through.

“That’s good, good country air, Veronica,” I said.

“Smells like poop,” she observed.

“It sure does. I’ve missed it.”

“Weirdo.”

Papa’s truck was still in front of the white farmhouse. His tools, now rusted and in disrepair, hung on the shed on the right of the driveway. It was like stepping back in time to a past I never thought I’d return to.

“We’re here,” I said.

“Thank god,” Veronica said. “That was a long ride.”

I had tried to get her some coloring books and games to play, but Veronica wasn’t interested in any of that. She just wanted to get where we were going and focused on the road. When I unbuckled her seat belt, she hopped out of the car and latched onto my hand on our way to the door.

We hadn’t even reached the steps before the creaky screen swung open, and my father, Carl, shuffled out, hunched over a cane. His dark skin was cut with deep grooves. He wasn’t a young man when I was a child, but now he looked like the world had sucked the last of his life out of him. When he saw me, his face lit up, and the old Dad came through the thick wrinkles for a moment.

“L-Lizzie? My gods, is that you?”

I grinned. “Hi, Dad!”

He stood straight up then and scooted toward me as I made my way to him. We embraced in a long hug filled with tears and laughter.

“I never thought I would see you again, kiddo.”

“I never thought I’d see you again either, Dad.” I thought it would be awkward, after all this time, to see my father, but it felt like old times, like we hadn’t been estranged for a decade. I smelled his scent as I hugged him tightly and knew I was home. It was the thing I’d spent a decade running from, and it was the only thing I never knew I always wanted—to see my parents again. I lied to myself into believing I didn’t crave this moment, but there was no more lying now. The truth rushed at me in a torrent.

After a long while, Carl’s eyes moved from me to Veronica. “And who is your friend?”

I unlatched from his embrace and turned to her. “This is Veronica. She’s—I think—one of us, and she’s in a bad way. That’s why I came back.”

He nodded. “I thought maybe you just wanted to see your old man and your mother before she…I’m just glad to see you.” He hobbled over to Veronica and held out his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, little one.”

She shook his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, too, sir.”

“Carl,” he said. “You can call me Carl.”

“Nice to meet you, Carl.”

He smiled a weak smile. “How would you like some cocoa?”

“I’d like that very much, Carl.”

He placed his hand on her back. “Then how about we have some hot chocolate while Lizzie here goes to say hello to her mother.”

“Who’s Lizzie?”

“I am, Veronica,” I replied.

“Oh.” She looked at me, confused. “I thought your name was Jude.”

“I’ve had a lot of names, but my real name is Elizabeth—Lizzie.”

“I like Jude better.”

“Noted.” I touched Dad’s shoulder as they passed. “Where is she?”

“Our room. Upstairs.” He helped Veronica into the house. “I think you know the way.”

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This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.

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This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.

In the ashes of her past, she will rise up, and her death will save us all.

Lizzie ran from her past for ten years, zigzagging across the United States every few months, trying to outlast the prophesy that an oracle gave to her when she was just sixteen years old.

But nobody can run from their destiny forever.

After watching her friend brutally gunned down by a group of ruthless demons, she had no choice but to protect the woman’s child, and there was only one place where Lizzie knew the girl would be safe.

Bronard, Missouri.

Home.

She stayed away to protect her parents, but the girl needed mystical protection.

Her parents had taken in magical strays their whole lives, including Lizzie. If anyone could save the poor child’s life, it would be her mother and father.

But will returning to her home doom Lizzie even as she works to save the child she has vowed to defend?

Subscribe now

We drove through the night. Veronica repeatedly asked me where her mother was, but I just couldn’t—every time I tried to tell her the truth, a lump lodged in my throat and forced me mute. Eventually, Veronica must have realized that her mother wasn’t coming with us. Perhaps she recognized the blood on my pants, or the fear in my eyes, or the pain on my face at the mention of Becky. Whatever the reason, she settled down once we reached Utah and let the car lull her into a fitful sleep.

What the hell was I doing? By any metric, I was kidnapping Veronica, and now I had taken her across state lines, making myself a felon. If a police officer pulled me over, they would see a girl that wasn’t related to me and the residuals of her mother’s blood on my hands. They would arrest me, and Veronica would tell them where she lived. The murder would be all over the news by now.

This was why you’re not supposed to make connections, Lizzie. I was supposed to keep my head low and leave a place before I caught feelings. That had been my motto and kept me safe for the past decade, and now, in one day, I’d abandoned everything I believed, all for a little girl and her fae mother.

I didn’t know for sure Veronica was fae. Rick was fae, and all three of them had the necklace, but there’s all manner of reasons why somebody would want a little girl like that—a prophecy girl who was supposed to save the world.

It wasn’t lost on me that our fates were similar, and I didn’t believe in coincidence. Maybe Veronica’s destiny was intrinsically linked to mine, and every mile I drove toward Bronard was one step closer to a rendezvous with the inevitable conclusion of my story and hers.

You should just leave her on the side of the road or drop her at a fire station. They would find a home for her. She’s adorable, after all. Who wouldn’t love her?

I shook off the thought. No, she would tell them where she’s from, and then they would bring her back and—there was only one person who could keep her safe, and it sure as shit wasn’t me. And I didn’t know how to contact Kimberly except through my mother.

Kimberly had saved hundreds of fae over the years. She would know what to do. Junebug would know what to do. Papa Carl would know what to do. I bit my lip to avoid crying, but deep tremors fiercely shook through my body and tugged on the steering wheel until I had no choice except to turn off the road into a rest area. It wasn’t much more than a bathroom with a couple of vending machines.

I wiped the last of my tears from my face, then shook Veronica awake. “Hey,” I said in a whisper. “Do you have to pee?”

“Mommy?” she replied, bleary-eyed. When her eyes focused on me, her face dropped into a scowl. “You’re not Mommy.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m not. Do you need to use the bathroom?”

She yawned. “Yes.”

I unbuckled her and pulled her out of the car. She didn’t try to tug away from me.

“I’m not kidnapping you,” I said as we washed our hands in the bathroom sink. “I want you to know that.”

“That sounds like the kind of thing a kidnapper would say,” she replied, looking up at me as I handed her a brown paper towel.

“You’re not wrong,” I said. “Your mother—she taught you well, but I’m not kidnapping you. I’m trying to protect you.”

“Protect me from what?”

“From bad people.”

“Do the bad people have Mommy?”

I sighed. It was time to tell her the truth. It wouldn’t be any better hiding it from her only to hear it from somebody else. I needed to stop being a chicken and bite the bullet, whatever the cliché was.

I sat her on a bench outside after buying her a bunch of sugary candy to help ease the pain. I turned on the lights to the car, so we could have some illumination. The night was bitterly cold. I hated deserts. They didn’t retain heat during the night, and yet they sweltered in the day.

After Veronica had eaten half a bag of Skittles, I spoke. “Your mother loves you very much. Did you know that?”

She nodded. “I know. She tells me all the time.”

She would never tell her again.

“The bad men. The ones chasing you. They…they hurt your mommy, Veronica. I tried to help her—to save her—but—but—your mother died.”

It started slow. She cocked her head to the left, then to the right, before blinking several times, trying to process what she just heard. The realization of my words seemed to hit her in waves, lightly at first and then crashing upon her with greater and greater force until the flood of tears was so great that I thought she might drown under them. I was ill-equipped to deal with children, let alone grieving children. I had survived by bottling up my emotions about everything and everyone I met. In the face of strong feelings, I turned the other way.

There was no turning away from this—Veronica’s poor life had been changed forever. The two people who had protected her were dead, and all she had left was me.

When she stopped heaving tears, she slid her arms around me, hugging my stomach. She didn’t speak for a long while, and neither did I. She simply cried into my shirt, and I rubbed her back, trying to comfort her.

“I’m going to take you somewhere you can be safe,” I said, finally.

“I want my mommy.”

“I know, sweetheart. I know, but—well—you know you can’t see her again, right?”

She sniffled. “I’ll see her in Heaven.”

Maybe. “Not for a very long time, sweetheart, but I’m sure she’ll be waiting to welcome you when you die—which won’t be for a very, very long time.”

She squeezed me tighter. “Because you’ll protect me.”

“I’ll take you somewhere where you’ll be safe,” I replied, correcting her. “My friend will know what to do to protect you. She’s a real badass.”

“A…badass?”

“That’s right,” I said with a smile. “She’ll know exactly what to do because she’s done it so many times before with so many other kids just like you.”

“How do you know?”

I pulled the black opal necklace that I kept around my neck. It was the only thing I’d kept from the past I worked so hard to distance myself from because I was a hypocrite. “Because she helped me.”

Veronica pulled her necklace out from beneath her shirt. “Just like mine!”

“That’s right, and my friend is going to help you, just like she helped me.”

“She sounds nice.” She nodded with determination. “Not mommy nice, but nice.”

“She’s something, all right.” I chuckled. “And you know what else? I’m going to introduce you to a woman who’s gonna love you so much.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because you are totally loveable.” I gave her a little squeeze. “And for another thing, she’s my mom, so I have some experience with her.”

“That sounds nice, I guess.”

“I know it’s not perfect, kiddo, and it’s not your mom, but it’s still gonna be great, I promise.”

“Pinky promise?” She held out her left pinky.

I hooked it into my finger and closed it tight. “Pinky promise.”

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This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.

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Read more

Read more

This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.

In the ashes of her past, she will rise up, and her death will save us all.

Lizzie ran from her past for ten years, zigzagging across the United States every few months, trying to outlast the prophesy that an oracle gave to her when she was just sixteen years old.

But nobody can run from their destiny forever.

After watching her friend brutally gunned down by a group of ruthless demons, she had no choice but to protect the woman’s child, and there was only one place where Lizzie knew the girl would be safe.

Bronard, Missouri.

Home.

She stayed away to protect her parents, but the girl needed mystical protection.

Her parents had taken in magical strays their whole lives, including Lizzie. If anyone could save the poor child’s life, it would be her mother and father.

But will returning to her home doom Lizzie even as she works to save the child she has vowed to defend?

Subscribe now

I racked my brain to try to remember where Becky lived. We chatted so much that she must have told me before, but I couldn’t think—in a flood of adrenaline, I passed an intersection where the street sign triggered a memory. I’d driven her home once after Rick stood her up.

Though, she wasn’t a human at all, was she? She was probably fae, like Rick, and they were on the run, just like all those poor little fairies that came into our house when I was a kid. They were scared—petrified, really—and alone. The world was tough enough for humans, but fairy folk had been hunted down for centuries.

We could blend in with humans, sure, but our magic left a mark. Anybody that knew what to look for could find us. That was why Rick’s necklace was so important. The black opal had special properties allowing magic to bind to it, specifically a very powerful protection spell that kept fae hidden from all but the most powerful magical forces. However, you needed runes to keep it charged, or else it was useless.

I parked on the street across from Becky’s house. She drove a rusty Dodge Charger that barely turned over most days, which I didn’t see in the driveway. If I had a heart, I would have offered her my car, or at least to give her a ride, but I was protective of my wheels in case I needed to leave town at a moment’s notice.

That made me wonder why I was still there. I’d run away from so much less. Normally I would already be on the road, halfway across the state by now. And yet, I couldn’t will myself to leave Becky. How had she made such an impression in such a short time? Why were some people so good at burrowing themselves into your heart?

It was probably the magic. Of course. Becky might not even be aware of her power, but it was the only explanation. I was far too rational to let her win me over any other way. Even with the possibility that she might have cast a spell on me, I couldn’t put the car back into drive and speed off into the horizon.

I was sitting there wrestling with my desire to leave when the beat-up Dodge Charger pulled around the corner and into the driveway. Becky removed two brown bags from the backseat and walked toward the house.

I stepped out of the car and walked toward her. “Becky!”

She turned to me. “Jesus, Jude. You almost gave me a heart attack.”

“We have to go. Come on.”

“What are you ta—” She looked past me toward the car behind her and instantly made the connection. “Where’s Rick?”

I dropped my eyes. “He’s dead. Four men came looking for you. We tried to escape. I made it. He didn’t. Where’s Veronica?”

She started trembling. She tried to control her crying, stay in control, but the emotions were winning. “She—how—Are you one of them?”

“Who are them?”

“They’re—they’re after Veronica,” she said. “Because of what she is. Because of what we all are.”

“No, I’m not one of them.” I looked back to the street. They would be coming any minute. “Let’s go inside. Do you have a go-bag?”

She opened the front door. “We’ve had one since we moved in, just in case.” She set the food down on the counter. “Guess I don’t need these. I was gonna make lasagna.” She walked toward the stairs. “Wait here for me.”

“Where’s Veronica?” I yelled down the hall.

“Still at school. I was just about to pick her up.”

I peered out of the window. A long black car slid to a stop in front of the house. “We have to go, now!”

When I turned back, Becky had a duffel strapped to her side and was holding a tiny backpack just the right size for a little girl. “I’m ready.”

“Who are these guys?” I asked, watching them walk out of the car.

“Demons,” she replied.

“Why are they after Veronica?”

“We didn’t know for a long time. They have been after us since she was born. Finally, we went to an Oracle.”

“Let me guess,” I said, pushing a chair to the lock as they stormed up the stairs. “She’s a prophecy girl?”

“Well, she is a girl, and she has a prophecy, so yeah, I guess so. The Oracle said she would save the world. Then, she told us to get some black opal and lay low, and we’ve been doing that ever since.” She pulled the necklace from her blouse. “See?”

“Did you charge it?”

“Nobody said anything about charging it.”

Someone pounded loudly against the door. “Of course they didn’t. Is there a back door to this place?”

“Yes,” Becky replied, turning around. We heard glass smashing, and two demons rushed inside, guns drawn.

They began to fire their weapons. Bullets tore through the front of the house as I rushed up the stairs, pulling Becky along behind me. She cried out and fell to her knees, a thick red streak on the wall behind her. She looked up at me with glassy eyes, pressing her fingers against her stomach.

“I’m fine. Keep going.”

I dragged her along with me to the master bedroom at the end of the hallway and pushed a heavy dresser in front of the door. Becky stumbled to the edge of the bed. Her breathing was labored and wet.

“Let me see.” I ripped open her shirt to find the bullet hole that had punctured her stomach. It spurted blood with every heave of her chest.

“Listen to me,” Becky whispered as the door slammed. “Protect my daughter, please.”

I shook my head. “You’re going to protect her just fine. Don’t worry.”

She squeezed my hand. “Don’t lie to me. Promise me you’ll protect her.”

My eyes filled with tears as I nodded. “I promise. I promise, but you’re going to—”

“Millard Fillmore. Mister Matt’s class. She’s a panda…” She slumped over, white as a sheet.

There wasn’t any more time to say my goodbyes. Heavy footsteps thundered down the hall. I ripped the necklace off Becky’s neck, grabbed the bags, and smashed through the window out onto the roof. The moment the demons banged open the door, I slid down the roof and landed in some bushes.

By the time they fired at me, I was already halfway down the block in Rick’s Buick. Just leave, Lizzie. Just leave. You don’t owe her anything. You’ve only known her a month. Just a single stupid month. You don’t owe her your life.

Even as I said the words to myself, my hands turned the wheel away from the main road as if I was being guided by an invisible force. At the end of the block, I took a right, and in four blocks, I ended up in front of Millard Fillmore elementary school.

I ducked inside and headed to the bathroom to wash the blood from my hands in the tiny sinks much too small for my body. I did my best to scrub at my pants, but I didn’t have much time. I had to hope people would assume it was paint. It wouldn’t take long for the demons to realize Veronica wasn’t at the house and come to the school looking for her.

The building wasn’t very big, and I followed the pandas down the colorfully decorated hallways. There was a jolly one painted on Mister Matt’s door.

“Excuse me?” I said, knocking on the crepe paper taped to the door.

Mister Matt was in the center of the room reading a book to the kids, and he turned to me with kind eyes before his smile dropped from the sight of me. “Can I…help you?”

I nodded. “I’m sorry to be a bother, but I need to see Veronica.”

“Are you a parent, or—”

“Her mother is very sick, and her father rushed her to the hospital. They sent me here. All I have is this?” I pulled the black opal necklace out of my pocket. “Do you recognize this, Veronica?”

She looked at it for a moment and then pulled an identical one out of her shirt. “That’s Mommy’s. I have one just like it!”

“I know this is irregular,” I said.

He shook his head. “I simply can’t—”

“There’s no time for this!” I didn’t blame him, but right now, he was an obstacle to Veronica’s safety, and he had to get out of my way or suffer the consequences.

I stormed into the room and picked Veronica up. By the time I turned around, Mister Matt was on top of me, lumbering over me with his lanky frame.

“Let her go!” he screamed.

I pushed him hard as he rushed toward me. He stumbled backward and fell into the tiny tables the children used. The children screamed bloody murder and rushed to him.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” I called out to the class, then turned to Veronica. “Are you ready to go?”

“Are we really going to see Mommy?” She was strangely calm, given the situation.

I nodded. “Of course. She’s very excited to see you.” The lie sent pangs through my body. There was only one place safe enough for an orphaned fairy kid. Looks like I would be headed back to Bronard after all. Mom will be so excited.

Read the next chapter

This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.

Subscribe now

Read more

Read more

This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.

In the ashes of her past, she will rise up, and her death will save us all.

Lizzie ran from her past for ten years, zigzagging across the United States every few months, trying to outlast the prophesy that an oracle gave to her when she was just sixteen years old.

But nobody can run from their destiny forever.

After watching her friend brutally gunned down by a group of ruthless demons, she had no choice but to protect the woman’s child, and there was only one place where Lizzie knew the girl would be safe.

Bronard, Missouri.

Home.

She stayed away to protect her parents, but the girl needed mystical protection.

Her parents had taken in magical strays their whole lives, including Lizzie. If anyone could save the poor child’s life, it would be her mother and father.

But will returning to her home doom Lizzie even as she works to save the child she has vowed to defend?

Subscribe now

Turned out that Becky didn’t have the power to hire any new waitresses, though she did put in a good word to Celeste, the owner of the restaurant, who ran me through my paces before agreeing to hire me.

“Lots of people just want a job here cuz they think it’ll be easy,” Celeste said during my interview. “When they realize it’s hard, harder than hell, they decide it’s not for them. That sound like you, Jude M—”

“Absolutely not,” I cut in before she could finish saying my new assumed identity. “I’ve worked waitressing jobs before, and I know just how hard they are. If people got paid based on how hard a job was, we’d all be making Bill Gate’s salary, is what I say.”

“Amen, sister.” I didn’t actually ever say that, but it seemed to appease Celeste. She looked me up and down for a long time, furrowing her brow. “Are you a size six?”

“Depends on the cut.”

“Bryan!” Celeste hollered. “Bring me a six.”

A tall man with a mustache came into the office carrying the same pink apron I’d seen Becky wear the previous night. I didn’t realize that the apron was sewn into the dress itself, making it all the more hideous.

“Here you go, my little waterfall,” he said, twitching his mustache as he gingerly handed it to Celeste. “Anything else?”

“Not right now, sweet thing.” Bryan left, and Celeste handed the dress-apron combo to me. “The customers like it. It cinches in all the right places.”

“You don’t have to convince me to wear a demeaning dress, ma’am. I have been in this game for a long time. Whatever brings in tips, right?”

“And keeps people coming back. The more you flirt, well…you know.”

Nobody wanted to say that the job was as much pretending to flirt with the customers as anything else. I didn’t have any reservations about that part of it. I’m sure there were some waitressing jobs where that wasn’t true, but truckers had simple pleasures. After being stuck in a truck for a dozen hours, having a lady be nice for a couple of minutes as they ate their food made them feel good, and that went a long way to getting a nice tip. We were all whores in some way. Maybe we didn’t have sex for money, but we sold our souls for it. The way I figured it, if you were going to prostitute yourself, it helped to understand the rules of the game and how to exploit them to your advantage. I didn’t have many things going for me, but I was always charming.

I was supposed to be on probation for the first couple of weeks, learning the ropes from Becky’s expert guidance, but I already knew the lingo and had excellent customer service skills. After three days, they took off the training wheels and let me work on my own. I found a motel up the road, close enough that I could walk, and worked as many hours as they would give me.

It always surprised me how quickly I acclimated to a new place. Within a week, my new life felt like normal. The town of Edgewater, Nevada, became my new home, and the customers soon became regulars. Becky and I became friends, or as close to it as I would let myself get to the idea.

I never let our friendship leave the diner. Once I stepped out into the parking lot, she didn’t exist, as far as I was concerned. On the clock, we were inseparable. It was amazing how you could work a hundred jobs not connecting to a single person, and then step into a place where you feel an instant bond like you were sisters, separated at birth. She told me about her life, her ex-husband, and her little girl, Veronica, a precocious six-year-old too smart for her own good.

Sometimes, Veronica would come into the diner after school and do her homework. She was dark-skinned with a puffy afro that her mother kept meticulously quaffed. She didn’t talk much, but one day I showed her how delicious dipping fries into milkshakes could be, and she fell in love with me. Every time she came into the diner, she begged her mother for fries and a shake, and Becky always relented. That girl had her mother wrapped around her finger.

I actually legitimately liked both of them, which was vexing for me, but it kept the guilt of my mother at bay. I decided to use Becky and Veronica’s happiness like a drug to anesthetize me to my failed relationship with my parents. I should have left, but I just…couldn’t get the courage to do so…not yet. Turned out I was just as big a hypocrite as anyone else.

I grew very protective over them in short order, partially because the kid was nearly impossible not to love, but also because Becky had terrible taste in men—or specifically, one man—Rick.

“You seen Becky?” He came in the restaurant at all hours, asking the same question, bothering her at work, and, more than once, nearly getting her fired. This particular day he looked worse than usual. His pale skin was moist with sweat, and the bags under his eyes were more pronounced.

“She hasn’t come in yet, today, Rick,” I replied as I slid behind the counter to place an order. “Stack of Vermont, frog sticks, fry two, let the sun shine, and a 50/50.” When I turned back around, Rick was still there. Usually, he rushed out as quickly as he came in, but today, he wasn’t leaving. “Why are you still here?”

“I have to find her, Jude.” It had been almost a month, and the new name still didn’t sit right with me. “Now.”

“Maybe she left you.” I pressed my hands into the counter. “I’ve been pushing her pretty hard to dump your ass.”

“She would never do that.” He shook his head fervently. “I protect her.”

My eyes narrowed. “That’s what all abusers say.”

“I’m NOT—!” He cleared his throat as all eyes in the diner turned to him. “I’m not abusing her.” He reached into his shirt and squeezed a necklace under it. “I protect her. We protect each other.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“Listen to me!” He screamed, slapping the counter loudly. The movement jostled his clothing and set the necklace free. My eyes went wide. It was a black opal, just like the type my mother gave fairies to protect them from something terrible coming to find them. “We have to stay together.”

“Where did you get that?” I asked, pointing to the necklace.

He suddenly realized the necklace was out and stuffed it back into his shirt. “Nothing. Nowhere. Don’t—please. She talks to you. Have you—”

Behind him, the glass door swung open, and four men, bulky, tall, hulking even, entered, each uglier and meaner than the last.

“It’s over,” the man in front said, the folds of his neck creasing his bald head. “Give us the girl.”

Rick knocked his hands together and shot fire from the tips of his fingers toward the men, who walked forward as if the fire was a harmless breeze. The other people in the diner weren’t so calm and began to rush from their booths toward the other door.

“You’re a fae,” I said.

“Don’t be crazy,” Rick replied. “You’re talking foolish.”

One of the men, this one with a demon tattooed on his cheek, swung at Rick. He ducked it and knocked the tattooed man in the face before kicking him backward, crashing through the glass door. The other three advanced, and I did something stupid. Something I hadn’t done since I was a child.

“Frigus tempestas!” I shouted, and ice shot from the tips of my fingernails, coating the men in a thick layer of ice. I slid over the counter and grabbed Rick by the hand. “Come on!”

“You’re a fae, too?”

“DUH!” I screamed. “I try not to use my powers in public, though, and now I gotta leave another town because I did. Thanks a lot, Rick!”

We slammed through the front door. “This isn’t my fault!”

“Well, it’s definitely not mine! So, if not mine and not yours, whose fault is it? And don’t you dare say Becky or Veronica.” I looked around the parking lot. “Where’s your car?”

He pointed to a piece of crap brown Buick Century from the 80s, big as a boat and twice as slow. We rushed toward it and got in. Rick peeled away just as the men smashed through their ice prisons and ran outside.

They fired at us on our way onto the street. I ducked the bullets, but then the horn blared as the car began to turn toward the sidewalk. I spun around to see Rick lying on the steering wheel, his head bleeding from a bullet wound.

“Shit.” I reached over and pulled the driver’s seat door open before kicking Rick out onto the road. It was an inauspicious end for a man I had completely misjudged, but the shooters were rushing forward, and I didn’t have time to be delicate.

I slid over into the driver’s seat and kicked my foot onto the gas, the door flapping open as I gunned it. I yanked it shut as the bullets fired into the car, barely missing me. I tore off down the street and couldn’t help but laugh through my fear. The fickle finger of fate was a fucker.

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This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.

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This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.

In the ashes of her past, she will rise up, and her death will save us all.

Lizzie ran from her past for ten years, zigzagging across the United States every few months, trying to outlast the prophesy that an oracle gave to her when she was just sixteen years old.

But nobody can run from their destiny forever.

After watching her friend brutally gunned down by a group of ruthless demons, she had no choice but to protect the woman’s child, and there was only one place where Lizzie knew the girl would be safe.

Bronard, Missouri.

Home.

She stayed away to protect her parents, but the girl needed mystical protection.

Her parents had taken in magical strays their whole lives, including Lizzie. If anyone could save the poor child’s life, it would be her mother and father.

But will returning to her home doom Lizzie even as she works to save the child she has vowed to defend?

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Every turn of the tires crashed like a wave of guilt on my heart, but I knew I was making the right decision…didn’t I? If I went to see my mother, I would be putting her in danger, both from the prophecy and from her own will to live. If I wanted her to live, I had to stay away and live with the guilt.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t come to terms with guilt. Hell, I’d worn it like an old shawl since I ran away. That first night I left home, I could barely close the door on Dad’s pickup truck, and I had to fight against my own body to put the key to the ignition. It was like I got punched in the gut when the engine turned over, but I was determined to leave, to protect those that I loved, and never to love anything or anyone ever again. Once I found a new car, I called and told Carl where to find the truck. I couldn’t have that on my conscience, too.

It was a lonely, solitary life, and through the last decade, the one thing I could count on was the guilt. It sat with me every day. Sometimes, it squeezed my stomach so tight I could barely move, but usually, it was a light din, like something ringing in my ear. It just needed somebody like Kimberly to turn the volume up.

She wasn’t wrong, either. She was just a dick about it. She saw things from her side and from Mom and Dad’s side, but she never tried to see things my way. Imagine being sixteen years old and told that you must die to save the world, and that your past must burn along with you. Yes, Kimberly had had a tough row, too. As a baby, she’d been kidnapped and brought to Hell as a sacrifice to the Devil. Later, she had to watch as the mentor who saved her from that terrible fate was slaughtered in front of her eyes. But Kimberly had agency to fight against that fate. She became a monster hunter, a savior of fairy folk. She didn’t have to die to fulfill her destiny. She didn’t have to burn her past to live her life.

I did.

I wished I’d never known my fate. I could have gone on in ignorant bliss. But now, a nagging thought pushed its way to the surface—could anyone really outrun their fate? I had built my life on the idea that you could. Deep in the back of my brain, the part of my brain that only spoke in the deepest silence, I knew I was on a fool’s errand; if the fickle finger of fate wanted me to die, it would find a way to make it so.

Hell, it was nudging me right now, pushing me back to my past, the past that I’d done everything in my power to avoid. If my past died before I showed up, then it couldn’t burn, could it?

Ah, there you have it, Lizzie, the crux of the matter. You can’t kill the past if it dies without you, and if you can fight against that part of the prophecy, then perhaps you didn’t have to die at all, at least not for a very long time—as an old woman, maybe. Peacefully, in your sleep. That’s what you want, after all, in the end, right? You don’t care that your mother will die without seeing you for a decade—that your father will die alone, without his wife to help him pass into the darkness. What matters is that you’ll be alive.

I clutched the steering wheel and turned off the road at the next town I saw. Any town would do. I wasn’t picky. I often fought against my guilt by swerving into whatever truck stop town came up on the map. I couldn’t take the voices pounding in the back of my head. One of the best tactics against guilt was to fill it with work, and lots of it.

I had no idea how long I had been driving or where I was exactly, just that the name on the exit said Edgemont Rd, and it was somewhere along the 80 past Reno. Everywhere in Nevada looked kinda the same: Large swaths of desert speckled with lush forests and small towns nestled by the bits of water that popped up along the way.

It was the middle of the night, but I passed a couple of motels with vacancy signs. There was no point in going to bed. My brain wouldn’t shut up until morning. Better to find an open diner, get some food, and check out the classifieds for a job. I had acquired enough skills over the last decade that I could do most entry-level jobs well enough. I had experience working at call centers, logging companies, answering phones, telemarketing for vitamin companies, selling cars, and, of course, waitressing. That was the one I kept coming back to, even though it was the one I liked least—except for telemarketing. There was nothing worse than calling people, interrupting their dinner, and getting them to scream at you for five minutes, or hanging up on you in the middle of a sentence.

It didn’t take me long to find the little diner with the lights on. Several semis were parked outside, which was how I judged a good diner. Truckers talked, and you could always rely on them for recommendations on good, fast, cheap eats along the interstates. I often peppered them with questions about their favorite towns along their routes, and more than once used their recommendations when I moved further down the line.

Sometimes, I would get a trucker who became a regular at more than one place I had worked, even if they were hundreds of miles apart. Maybe that should have been a cue to move on, but there was never any fear of developing more than a passing connection with them. They never stayed around one place for more than a meal, anyway. However, now that I thought about it, maybe that’s how Kimberly tracked me across the country, by using the same truckers I did to rebuild my path.

Very sneaky. I would be sure to take side streets and country roads next time. Although if Junebug died, I doubt she’d be looking for me anymore. Kimberly liked my father enough, but she would kill for my mother. Watching Junebug suffer couldn’t have been easy, and it likely drove the pixie to check up on me more often than she otherwise would have—to beg me to come home. Once Junebug was gone and the constant pain was off her heart, Kimberly would forget about me, and that would be for the best.

The bell over the glass door dinged when I opened it, and a smiling waitress, way too perky for the middle of the night, walked over to me wearing a pink apron and red shoes, accented with a red headband to pull back her brown hair. Her nametag read Becky in glittering letters.

“What can I do ya for, hon?” she said.

“Table for one, please.”

“Follow me,” she replied, snaking through the empty tables to a red vinyl booth by a window looking out at the main road. “Here you go.”

She handed me the menu, and I smiled at her. “You don’t have to do that, Becky.”

She cocked her head. “Do what?”

“I’m a waitress, too,” I said. “I know that customer voice anywhere, and it’s exhausting, so you don’t have to, but if you want to drop the act around me, it’s okay.”

Becky took a deep breath, and the smile dropped from her face. When she spoke again, her voice had dropped half an octave. “Thank Christ. I’m at the second half of a double, and I don’t think I could pretend to give a care about one more person. No offense.”

“Girl, I have been there.” I looked at the menu. “What’s good here?”

“People like the burger, but what greasy spoon doesn’t have a good burger, right?”

“What kind of fries?”

“Real crispy ones,” she said.

I pointed at her. “That’s what I want. And do you have a vanilla milkshake?”

“We do, but the strawberry is better, in my opinion.”

“I’ll have that, then. I know better than to go against a waitress’s recommendation.”

The thing I liked most about greasy spoons was that they didn’t care about presentation. They were much more worried about taste, the good ones at least, which was where I tried to end up. Becky wasn’t wrong; the burger was dynamite. Though, if you couldn’t get a burger right, you had no business being in the diner business.

As I savored my meal, the few truckers in the diner funneled out until it was just Becky and me. She smiled at me as she cleaned the tables around me, and when that was done, hopped from one foot to another, trying to maintain the energy to stand on her aching feet.

“How much time do you have left on the clock?” I asked her.

She looked up to the glittering wall clock above the counter. “Two hours.”

“Busy this time of night?”

She shook her head. “Not too bad. Could be a couple more people or a couple dozen before I get to go home. All of ‘em will be crap tippers, though. That’s for sure.”

I swirled a fry into my milkshake and popped it into my mouth. “Want some help? I’m a pretty good waitress if I do say so.”

“Uhm…I don’t know how to answer that.”

I pushed the basket of fries over to her. “If you’re anything like me, you haven’t eaten since you started shift. So, how about you eat some fries, take a load off, and I’ll handle the next customer.” She looked at me funny, trying to size me up. “You keep the tips, too.”

“What’s in it for you?”

I popped another fry. “I’m new in town, and I need a job, so you might consider it a tryout, and well…I really don’t want to be alone right now. Doing work will stop the voices in my head from driving me crazy.”

She stepped over to my table, and I handed her a fry. “I am real hungry.”

I slipped out of the chair. “What can I get you? My treat.”

She lost the last of her resolve and slid into the booth across from where I had just been sitting. “You wouldn’t believe it, but Bryan back there makes a real mean Cajun chicken pasta.”

“Weird, but I like it.”

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This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.

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