Virgin Dreams
I shook my head in disbelief at the creature standing in the middle of a dappled, sunlit meadow, gazing at me with its doleful brown eyes. My most cherished childhood possession (growing up in foster care, I didn't have many) had been one of those felt-and-marker posters I colored in myself: a unicorn rearing in front of a rainbow and waterfall. I'd given it a multicolored mane but kept the coat pristine white, as all unicorns ought to be. I daydreamed more often than was healthy that I'd somehow been transported into that velvet-lined fantasy, the unicornmine, and together we'd ride off to a home behind the rainbow, happy and strong, and we'd never be alone again. That unicorn was power, and magic, and beauty incarnate.
Apparently this unicorn hadn't gotten the memo. It was ugly. Like, seriously ugly. Coat a mottled brown and gray; horn a dingy, stubby thing; hair a matted mess. It looked more like a goat than anything else, with a small, filthy beard and square pupils.
Oh, and the stench? Skunks have nothing on unicorns.
The dang thing kept trying to nuzzle me while I did my best to dodge it. So much for dramatic images of knights on unicorn stallions, too. This creature couldn't carry a child, much less a man in armor. Its head barely came up to my chest, which added a whole new level of discomfort to its continued nuzzling attempts.
Jack hung upside down from a limb of one of the surrounding trees. I couldn't place where we were, but it was warm enough that my coat was uncomfortable, and the sun filtered through the leaves in a green and gold haze. Really, the meadow itself was almost magical, if the bleeping unicorn weren't screwing up the idyllic setting.
Jack laughed at my attempts to avoid being felt up by a mythical beast. "Apparently you're a virgin."
"Shut up! Like that's any of your business!"
He shrugged, the motion less effective upside down. "Unicorns love maidens. Haven't you done any research at all?"
"What, you have?"
He flipped off the branch, startling the unicorn so badly it bolted from the meadow. Thank heavens. "The Center's iron filing cabinets? Not really an issue if you can open a door through any wall and aren't a faerie."
"So what, you read secret files?"
"Among other things. Someone really ought to tell Raquel to modernize. Paper is so medieval. Now." He held out his elbow in a disingenuously gentlemanly gesture. "How about we go and have some real fun?"
"What, shattering my one remaining fantasy wasn't enough?" Faeries didn't have wings and bordered on evil; pixies were dirty, feral, and tended to bite; and mermaids had neither glorious hair nor seashell bras. Now this about unicorns. Sometimes reality sucked.
"You can always chase the unicorn, if you want. Take it for a ride."
I shuddered at the thought and sat down, leaning my back against the tree and unzipping my coat. "No, thanks. But let's stay here for a while. It's warm."
Jack flopped down next to me, lying flat with his hands behind his head. "I can always find warm."
"That must be nice."
He laughed. "It comes in handy."
"Where are we, exactly?"
"A sort of supernatural preserve for wild paranormal animals that were threatened with extinction. The unicorns are the most common. Stinkiest, too."
"No kidding. So, what other secrets do you know?"
"If I told you, it'd ruin all the fun. I like surprising people." Despite his innocent face, something in his expression made me nervous. I was full to bursting with secrets, and recognized the same thing in Jack.
"Please don't tell me our next trip will take us to bigfoot."
"Nah, according to Raquel's stuff, they went extinct around the turn of the century."
"Which century?"
He frowned. "Good question. Too bad I can't ask her for clarification, considering I'm not supposed to know."
I shifted my back to get comfortable and closed my eyes, trying to soak in the sun. "Do you come here a lot?"
"Sometimes."
"Where do you go when you aren't at the Center?"
"Home."
"Where's that?"
He sighed. "Isn't that the question? Where's your home?"
"Umm, the room you seem to make a habit of violating?"
"No, think about it. When I say 'home,' what's the first thing that pops into your head?"
I frowned, images flitting before my eyelids. It used to be the Center, but my recent visit had erased any lingering sense of home I might have felt there. My pink closet bedroom felt more like a placeholder-somewhere I was staying before I left for somewhere else. Lend's house felt like a home. But not mine. "I honestly don't know. Nowhere, really."
"Something we have in common, then, besides the world's most perfect hair color. We were both raised by no one and live nowhere."
I squirmed, opening my eyes. He had a point, but not one I especially liked. I was connected to people, to places. Wasn't I? There was something in Jack that I related to, though, on a level I didn't quite understand. Here and there, when he wasn't being an idiot, there was this sort of . . . desperation. Like he was trying to find something, but he didn't know what it was yet. It was a feeling I knew all too well. Vivian understood it, too. Lend never could. But being with Lend made that feeling fade, like the unknown question wasn't as important as it used to be, and maybe someday it wouldn't be a question at all.
Jack still hadn't answered any of myactual questions, though. "But what did you do before you started working for IPCA?"
"Survived."
I grabbed a fistful of grass and tossed it at him. "How about a real answer?"
He smiled. "I'm from Oregon, or at least that's what I think I remember. But, alas, it doesn't pay to be a beautiful toddler when stray faeries wander through town. Now I'm from that dark dreamscape, beauty and terror eternally intermingled, blah, blah, blah."
I frowned at him, puzzled.
"Hey, they need entertainment and slaves even in the Faerie Realms."
"Wait-you-you live in the Faerie Realms?"
"For now."
That wasn't possible. Faeries had a nasty habit of kidnapping mortals and taking them to their Realms. It was a one-way trip. Once you were taken there and tasted faerie food, you could never come back. Even if you somehow found a faerie willing to bring you back to Earth, human food would never satisfy you, and you'd waste away to nothing. Ah-thus Jack's apple-spitting at Lend's house.
"So the faeries raised you?"
He barked out a laugh. "I wouldn't call it that, no."
Vivian had been raised by faeries, but as far as I knew they never took her to the Realms. She talked about it sometimes, how the faeries took her wherever they wanted to go without any care for how she felt. Once she almost froze to death because they decided to have a ball on a glacier. Excellent caregivers, the fey.
I'd only been to the Realms a couple of times, both when Reth forced me, and it was so strange and alien, I couldn't imagine growing up there. How Jack could navigate both worlds, even survive in the Faerie Realms, was beyond me. Was he a specific faerie's servant? Maybe he was a sort of contract faerie employee, like I was for IPCA, and they taught him how to use the Paths.
Finding out more about Jack only made him a bigger enigma. "How, though? I mean, I'm sorry, but plenty of people are kidnapped and taken to the Realms, and I've never heard of them coming back. How do you do it? Did they teach you?"
"Living there, well, it changes you. And, besides, if you were constantly being left places by yourself with no way to get out of them unless a faerie happens to come along and find you-which sometimes takes a very long while indeed-you'd get a little innovative, too, wouldn't you? It's amazing what one can learn if it means not starving to death. Faeries aren't as mystical as they want you to think. I'll teach you some tricks one of these days."
I set my head back against the trunk. "I'll pass, thanks. I've had enough faerie for a lifetime. Several, actually."
Jack's stomach growled loudly. "I need food."
"I have a shift at the diner tonight. I could probably hook you up with a free dinner." The words were out of my mouth before I realized that would mean bringing Jack-from my secret job-to my real job. Not a good idea. Besides which, I wasn't sure how much I wanted him in my life, anyway. There was that connection we had, yeah, but it made me more uncomfortable than anything else. I felt in Jack so many of the things I didn't like about myself-the lying, the evasiveness, the selfishness. He seemed completely at ease with those traits, though.
"Yes," he said, "and I could probably vomit the putrid food back up all over you. I live in Faerie, remember?"
I grimaced. "Oh, duh. Sorry."
"I'll go grab something quick. You wanna come with me?"
"There is not an ounce of me that has any desire whatsoever to set foot in the Faerie Realms ever again."
"Boring. I'll be right back then." He jumped up and was gone before I had a chance to tell him he could drop me off at the diner first. I looked warily around the meadow, hoping that the unicorn would keep his personal space issues far, far away from me. Relatively certain that my maiden self was safe, I closed my eyes. Maybe Jack wasn't so bad, after all. Weird feelings aside, this afternoon had been pretty fun. He seemed to be good at fun. I liked that.
I got in a decent nap before Jack came back. "So, what should we do now?" he asked, positively buzzing with energy on a full stomach.
"Now," I said, rubbing my neck where it had stiffened up because of my position, "we should take me back so I can work my shift at the diner."
"Who cares about the diner. Anyone can move dishes around and be grouchy at customers. How about we find some dragons? Or spit off the top of the Empire State Building? Ooh, or there has to be a movie premiere somewhere we can crash."
"Oh, shut up. I have to work."
"Why?"
I shrugged, holding out my hand. "It's part of my life."
"Yet again I ask, why?"
Because I couldn't admit that I had another source of income and no longer needed that job. Because I had to keep up appearances that IPCA wasn't part of my life again. Because I felt like I owed it to David for taking me in. "Because it is. Let's go."
"Admit it. You like wearing those stylish little uniforms."
I laughed, smacking his shoulder. "Nothing's hotter than cows. But, wait, when have you seen me in uniform?"
He held up his free hand as he concentrated on opening a door in a wide tree. He had a knack for not answering questions. A door appeared and we squeezed through. Jack always needed a surface to open doors, but I had seen Reth open doors in the middle of the air before. I wondered if that was harder.
"Pick up the pace, Evie. If we want to get you to work on time we've got to mooooove faster."
I groaned, laughing. "That has got to be the worst pun I've ever heard in my life." I was still laughing when Jack opened a door and we walked out into my room-nearly bumping into Lend, whose eyes took in the faerie door, Jack, and our clasped hands in a single sweep.
Bleep.