Faerie Blood by Angela Korra'ti Read Free Book Online Page A

just woke up a little more. No dice.
    Idiot
, I chastised myself.
If they didn’t change overnight, they’re not changing now
!
    Of course, they shouldn’t have changed color in the first place, but my battered prudence sternly recommended I not go there.
    Instead, I retrieved my blood-marked biking top from the bathtub. It bore one small stain, high on the shoulder where Christopher’s head had rested. The sight of it reminded me of the shape of his body in my grasp and his agitated eyes, and I swallowed a little while I mechanically scrubbed Woolite into the garment and left it to soak in the sink. I dressed without noticing what I was wearing, confined my unruly hair with a scrunchy and my favorite patchwork-hued cap, and grabbed my backpack and keys.
    En route through the kitchen to get Fort a few of his favorite kitty treats, I found a note from Jake on the table. In his clean, spare handwriting it read:
Kendis
,
    We got your bike last night and put it on the porch. Your phone was trashed, but we found the SIM card, so you should at least be able to recover your data. We’re setting off for the weekend, but I really do want to talk to you when we get back. It’s important. Please call if you need us for anything
.
    Jake, 6:40am
    I didn’t recognize the number Jake had written down; it wasn’t Carson’s cell. Fort, however, gave me no time to mull it. He pawed my shoes and yowled until I forked over the treats, and only then was I free to flee to work. I fled gratefully. If anything could banish last night’s weirdness from my brain, it was the prosaic clamor of a software department about to ship their latest product.
    The sight of my bike stopped me in my tracks. I’d forgotten my worry about some passerby finding the troll’s remains; the memory brought new panic with it now as it came flooding back. I slumped against my front door, wondering wildly if the boys had seen what was left of the monster, and terrified that it might have come back to life.
    Then clearer thoughts prevailed. The bike was here. Damaged, its mangled frame and sliced tires mute testimony to the reality of the ambush on the trail, but here. Chances were slim that the troll, even if it had reanimated, had politely returned the bike it had almost bent in half. No one but my housemates knew I’d abandoned the bicycle. Therefore, they must have reached Burke-Gilman, found the bike, and brought it home without mishap.
    But as I stumbled off to the nearest bus stop, I still felt like a heel for endangering them, and sick with nervousness besides. When they got back, what would I say? ‘Did you guys happen to see a petrified troll with my Swiss Army knife sticking out of it when you got my bike?’
    Yeah. Right. That’d sound nonchalant.
    As I walked I fought to keep from jumping at random sounds or flinching every time I hastened by a bush or a hedge. At first all I saw within the neighborhood greenery were sparrows and finches and a few foraging squirrels, but the sparkling, translucent-winged shape flittering in the curlicue limbs of a monkey-puzzle tree was no bird. Not when it peeked down at me with doll-like but unmistakably humanoid eyes as it vanished into the shelter of the higher branches.
    Nor was the thing scampering across someone’s lawn a squirrel, though it was squirrel-sized. Clutching a discarded fragment of uneaten pizza, it ran upright on two feet and cackled to itself in triumph. It hissed at me in passing. Squirrels don’t do that, and they don’t have wicked little goblin faces and shaggy lime-green hair either.
    Okay, midget, pizza-filching goblins? Not as scary as trolls. But I bolted across the street anyway, choking back a scream as I went. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of looking where I’d been rather than where I was going, and tripped headlong over the curb. I staggered, went sprawling, and crashed through the thick green laurel hedge that blocked off the sidewalk from the yard behind it.
    Twigs