Storykiller (19 page)

“What?!” he cut her off, and stood up.

“Yeah,
” Tessa said, scratching the sore spot where the crow had snatched her hair from her head. Robin moved closer to her and touched her forearm, looking all around them, clearly spooked. Tessa tried to ignore the shudder of electricity that ran through her at his touch.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded, his face full of concern but his voice severe.

“I didn’t think it was important,
is
it important?” By way of answering,
Robin took her by the elbow and led her toward the park exit, toward home.

“We have to get you home.”

“Why?”

“That’s black magic. Tessa, someone’s trying to curse you.” Robin said, looking around them, scouring the tree line.

“What about the fire?” Tessa asked, gesturing back to the blaze, still going strong.

“Let it burn.”

When Robin and Tessa burst through the front door, Snow seemed to be arguing with Brand and Micah about the very same black magic.

“Unbelievable! Here you are doing dishes and watching foreign soap operas when someone is working to level a curse on you! No wonder you’re minions! You’re IDIOTS!” Snow said, her voice nearly at glass-shattering level. Micah and Brand sat on the couch transfixed, having clearly moved past annoyance with Snow to sheer horror, their eyes like teacups in their faces. When Tessa and Robin arrived they turned to Tessa in unison, their faces white as sheets. Snow turned and gestured toward the door theatrically, “It’s about damn time, Scion! Tova! Why didn’t you tell me about the hair!” Tessa looked at her blankly.

“I…” she raised her hands and then dropped them. “There’s been a lot going on?” she offered weakly. Snow threw up her arms in frustration.

“Neyersichita!” she yelled at the ceiling.

Tessa looked from Snow to Robin. “So, what do we do?” At that, the room went deadly silent. “Well?” Tessa urged.

“I don’t know,” Snow said, pacing and seeming legitimately worried. She turned to Tessa. “Yours was a Tiger that shifted into a crow and then disappeared?” she said, more than asked.
Tessa nodded. Snow tapped her bottom lip with a slender finger.

“I take it the tiger was
not
Shere Kahn,” Tessa said. Snow gave her a pathetic look that had ‘
you’re a moron’
written all over it and returned to pacing. “So? How many Fictional witches can there even be? W
e’ll just narrow it down.”

At this, both Snow and Brand looked at her like she was a moron. Snow began ticking Story witches off on her fingers.

“Well, let’s see, Scion, there’s Le Fay, Baba Yaga, Nimue, Harkness, Karaba, Nessarose, Bavmorda, Enchantress, Galadriel, Black Forest, Maximoff, Kiki, The Mayfairs, Lin, Maleficent, Mombi, Ozma, Willow, Amy, Yubaba, Repulsa, Blackwood, The Three Sisters, Cassandra, Endor, Sendo, Dalma, Taranee, Zatara, Traci Thirteen, Nico, Circe, Medea, The White Witch, Nutter, Pekkala, The Queen, Sycorax, all the damn Potters—”

“Ohmigodharrypotter,” Micah breathed.

“Okay, okay, I get it. Lotta witches,” Tessa said, defeated.

“I should go,” Robin said, and Tessa’s head snapped toward him.

“What?! Why?”

“I want to make sure the bodies are destroyed, and then I should put the word out to a few Stories I know that might be motivated to help us, see if anyone knows anything,” Robin sheathed his sword, pulled his hood up, and looked at Tessa for just a moment before leaving.

“Okay,” she said, watching him head down the front walk. Things already felt lonely and less safe and warm (and sexy) without him. She turned toward her friends and Snow.

“Bodies?”
They all asked at once. Tessa shrugged.

“Zombies.”

The three furrowed their brows and said, “Ohhhhhhh.”

Tessa nodded. Brand looked at his feet, his head in his hands.

“Man, zombies are real. I can’t decide whether to be horrified or giddy,” he said, as if in real conflict on the issue.

Tessa picked up the massive duffel bag of books Snow had brought over and took it into the dining room. Brand, Micah, and Snow followed her and, without a word, the four of them each pulled a book from the bag and sat down in a chair to begin reading.

An hour and many volumes later, the quartet, grouchy and bickering, the pile of discarded books massive between them, collectively jumped as the doorbell rang again. Tessa raced for it, hoping to find Robin. Answers or no, she already felt better when he was around. Brand and Micah gathered a bit behind her in the living room. Tessa threw open the door, her face alight with anticipation, only to find the three a.m. stranger standing on her porch, even though it was only ten p.m.

“Oh,” Tessa said, her face falling.

“Well, that’s not ‘happy to see me’,” he intoned. “I thought a non-three a.m. visit was the current request by—” he stopped mid-sentence and leaned to the side to take in the view of Brand and Micah in the living room. Tessa followed his gaze. “Annnnd this is why I prefer three a.m.,” he said under his breath.

Tessa turned back to him. “I suppose you want to come in?”

The stranger seemed to consider it, weighing some options Tessa wasn’t privy to, and
then stepped inside.

“Jesus H.,” Brand mumbled. “Is this place a parade of damn supermodels or what?” Micah stifled a laugh and tried not to stare. Taller and broader than Robin, he was attractive in an entirely different way. Snow had said ‘tall, dark, and handsome’ described many of the men in Fiction, and Tessa was struck by how that was technically true both of the stranger and Robin,
and yet they could not have appeared more different, could not have stirred different emotions in her.

Just as Tessa was about to finally ask the stranger’s name so that she could introduce him to her friends, Snow stepped into the room and drew back with a cartoonish villainous hiss. “Anivaine Fucol,” she said, and the words sounded like some kind of ancient evil far worse than Snow herself. The temperature in the room fell rapidly.

The stranger’s face registered nothing, his voice was that same sound like water breaking over stones, smooth and magical, “Snow. It’s been an age.”

“Not enough of one,” she said, her voice more like icebergs breaking apart.

“I thought I smelled you before,” he mused. “All icicles and bitchiness. You haven’t changed a bit.”

“Nor you,” she said, and everyone shivered as the temperature continued to drop, now perhaps twenty degrees below where it belonged.

“Snow,” Tessa cautioned. Snow looked at Tessa, her eyes like steel balls in her hardened face. “The temperature?” Tessa asked, a gentle reminder that the rest of them were going to freeze to death. Snow seemed to unclench and the room softened, everything softened, including her features.

“Yes, of course,” she said, a thin,
forced smile spreading across her face.

“So, who are you?” Tessa finally asked the stranger, folding her arms across her chest.

“Don’t you know, Scion?” Snow snarled. “This is Fenris, but you’d know him best as The Big Bad Wolf.”

“What the hell?” Tessa said, backing up from the stranger (now, officially, The Big Bad Wolf) a few feet and putting herself between him
and her friends.

“Mmmmm,” Fenris mused. “Yes, I am what Snow says, though I prefer to be called Fenris. The Big Bad Wolf is so…” he trailed off.

“Accurate?” Snow supplied, almost chipper.

“Cumbersome,” he finished, smiling at her with a look that Tessa now felt was less ‘sexy’ and more ‘devour-y,’ although perhaps, given who he was, they were a bit the same. Tessa was about to launch into an accusatory, judgmental tirade when she remembered the giant wolf that had saved her from Bluebeard.

“Wait,” she said, one finger raised, her eyes thoughtful, curious. Fenris looked at her, his interest piqued, and now that she knew who he was, Tessa could not help but think ‘hungry’. “It was you,” she said. He smiled at her. Something about it made her shiver, and she looked away.

“What was you?” Micah asked,
and Brand raised his hand and shook his head as if to signal that he too was lost.

“At Bluebeard’s, the wolf that saved me,” she paused again, now sure of herself. “It was you.”

“Guilty, Red,” he said, and it sounded like he was used to saying the word, both words actually.

“Why?” Tessa asked, her face a storm of conflicting emotions. But before he could answer, Snow broke in.

“Why indeed, Scion. If he did it, you can guess that it’s for his own selfish reasons,” Snow snarled. Tessa didn’t really want to be best pals with The Big Bad Wolf, but she had to admit that the effect he was having on Snow was almost worth it.

Brand cast his eyes at Snow. “And your motives are pure as the driven snow,
Snow
?”

Snow turned on him. “What do you people want?!” she rather screeched. “I’m here trying to help you for just
days
now,” she complained, emphasizing ‘days’ as if it meant ‘eternity.’

Tessa crossed her arms again and rolled her eyes. “Oh yes, DAYS, such a test of loyalty, whole
days
devoted to us.” Snow stalked out of the room. Tessa sighed, knowing she may have to apologize which was an abhorrent idea. But it would come later. For now, there was The Big Bad Wolf in her living room,
again
. “But she’s not wrong. Your reputation has obviously preceded you here. What’s the game?”

“No game, Scion. I come to help. I offered you help in finding your new Advocate. I offer it again, at a more reasonable hour, per your rather grouchy,” he paused and looked her up and down as if she was on a very specific menu, “but rather adorable, baby-chickie pajama-bottomed request several nights ago.” A pinch of pain flashed in Tessa as she thought of Bishop.

“I told you, I don’t need—” her voice caught on the word Advocate and she substituted instead, “One.”

Fenris walked further into the room and returned to the photos on the mantle he had examined last time. He picked up the same one from before, of Tessa at eight.

“I thought things might have changed, considering the curse,” he said casually. Tessa, Brand, and Micah looked at him, wide-eyed.

“How did you know about that?” Micah asked.

“What big ears you have,” Brand whispered to her.

“Indeed I do, kid, indeed I do,” he said, putting down the picture frame and turning to face them. Tessa thought she could hear Brand gulp and Micah’s heart begin to pound harder as if they were cartoon characters.

“You think The Advocate can help us if we’ve been cursed?”

“No better person around for such a thing,” Fenris said, and as he did, the door swung open and Robin came in.

“I can think of one better person,” Robin said, pushing back his hood. Fenris narrowed his eyes at Robin but Tessa couldn’t quite read his expression. Truth be told, she hadn’t been able to read any of his expressions. They were such a strange mix of things that felt foreign to Tessa. Tessa looked between them, and though both Robin and Fenris standing there in the same room shamed the words handsome, sexy, hott (double t) and a slew of others besides, they could not be more different. Where Fenris was broad and muscled, tall and imposing, full of practiced calm, Robin was more slight, lean but strong, agile, and full of barely contained energy. Robin made her feel safe and protected, but also excited, glowing and almost
embarrassingly
warm all over. By contrast, Fenris, no matter how attractive, rankled something deep and sour within her, causing the hair on the back of her neck to stand up and
goose bumps to break out across her skin. “Didn’t expect to find me here, did you, Wolf?” Robin said, shutting the door.

“Quite the contrary,” Fenris purred. “I’m the one that sent you here.” The admission stunned everyone in the room, but Robin most of all.

“I don’t believe you,” Robin said, low and quiet and with barely concealed rage.

“What a surprise, anarchist,” Fenris said, his eyes strangely playful. Robin made a move for his sword, and Tessa reached out to stop him.

“Whoa! None of that,” Tessa tried to catch Robin’s eye, and after a moment, she did. He seemed breathless and almost out of control but became steadier when they locked eyes. “That’s not helping me,” she said, and he nodded and let go of the sword. Tessa turned back to the rest of the room. Fenris and Robin were in some kind of bizarre Mexican standoff, Robin in the foyer, Fenris in the living room, leaning against a door-jamb. Brand and Micah stood close together in the living room between the two, confused as all get out, scared, and more than a little curious. Snow had rejoined the group, begrudgingly, and stood in the doorway between the living room and the kitchen, her eyes trained on Fenris. Tessa raised her hands in an ‘everybody calm the hell down’ gesture.

“Robin. What did you find?”

“The Troll,” he said. Tessa snapped around, and Fenris raised an eyebrow, intrigued.

“Troll? The Troll was in my house five days ago! Did you know?” Tessa trailed off.