“I am indeed,” he said, looking very serious. “And you are my granddaughter. I’m glad you found me. I wasn’t sure you ever would. Your mother was so vehement I stay away that I didn’t dare come see you. What made her change her mind?”
“She hasn’t,” said Cory. “Uncle Micah gave me a card you’d sent. Your address is on the back.”
“So your mother doesn’t know that you’re here?”
Cory shook her head. “I left the Tooth Fairy Guild and Mother didn’t approve. We had a big fight, so I couldn’t stay there any longer. Uncle Micah has let me live with him.”
“I’d heard your mother made you join her guild,” said Lionel. “I wondered how long it would last. You have to have a certain temperament to be a tooth fairy and I never saw that in you when you were a little girl. You were too independent and stubborn, just like me.”
Cory smiled. “That’s what Mother always said—that I was as stubborn as you are. She didn’t talk about you much, but what she did say wasn’t very nice. From the way she talked about you, I thought you were dead.”
When her grandfather laughed, he tilted his head back and opened his mouth wide. It was an infectious laugh and Cory’s grin grew broader. “Not dead,” said her grandfather, “semiretired. I’d hoped to have a successor by now, but it didn’t work that way.”
A door opened as Orville and Margory came out bringing two large trays. Cory and her grandfather sat back while Orville unloaded his tray of plates and cutlery, pastries, a mug for Cory, and a pitcher full of mulled cider. When he stepped aside, Margory set down platters of eggs coddled in milk, stacks of hot nut bread, a small plate holding butter shaped like a rose in full bloom, and a large green bowl of fresh sliced fruit.
“Thank you,” Cory said. The two putti grinned at her before going back inside.
Cory had eaten a slice of toast for breakfast and normally that was enough, but now her mouth watered and she gazed at the food longingly.
“Please help yourself,” her grandfather said, his eyes twinkling.
Not wanting to look greedy, Cory helped herself to a pastry. She took a bite and savored the taste of cinnamon and butter before turning to her grandfather and saying, “If you’re semiretired, what did you do exactly?”
“Your mother didn’t tell you anything about me, did she?” her grandfather asked as he helped himself to fruit.
“She wouldn’t even tell me your name.”
“Most people don’t know me by my name. It’s my title that interests them. For eight hundred and fifty-three years I was Cupid, just as my father was before me. I had hoped my son would follow in my footsteps, but he shunned the job and joined the military instead. Then he married your mother and our relationship was a bit strained. His platoon was sent to fight in the Fairy War and I never heard from him again. Your mother hadn’t liked me from the beginning, so I wasn’t surprised when she told me that she wanted nothing more to do with me. Losing my son and then my only grandchild nearly broke my heart. You were the only family I had.”
“I’m sorry,” Cory said, not sure what to say.
“Don’t be. It wasn’t your fault,” her grandfather said, patting her hand.
Looking at her grandfather, a man she was coming to like, Cory grew even angrier at her mother than she had been before. Her mother had kept her from her grandfather for a reason Cory still didn’t really understand. He seemed like a very good person, yet she had grown up thinking that something had to be wrong with him for her mother to hate him so much. And then she remembered something her grandfather had said. “Did you say that you’re Cupid? I thought that was a little guy who shot arrows at people to make them fall in love.”
Her grandfather smiled, which made him seem much younger. “I’m not so little, as you can see. I just liked to work behind the scenes. It would have made my job harder if people recognized me before I shot them with my arrows, and yes, I did use a bow and arrow. My putti represented me when I needed to make public appearances, which is why so many people think that Cupid is a small, mostly naked babylike being. Enough about me. Tell me, if you quit the Tooth Fairy Guild, what are you doing now?”
“I’m in a band,” said Cory, “but I’m also taking on odd jobs. I didn’t like the guild because I wanted to help people and didn’t feel as if I was really helping anyone. I’ve been trying to find a way to help people, but I haven’t been doing very well so far.”
“What kind of odd jobs?” her grandfather asked.
Cory shrugged. She was embarrassed that she hadn’t found anything substantial that she could claim as her future career. “Nothing big or important,” she said, running her finger around the top of her mug while avoiding her grandfather’s eyes. “I’ve babysat for a few people, helped can beans, mowed lawns; whatever someone says they need help doing. Oh, and you might find this interesting: some people have asked me to help them find their love match, although I haven’t had much success.”
When Cory raised her eyes, her grandfather was looking at her more intently. “That is interesting! They must sense that you have the ability somewhere inside you. I suggest that you keep on trying. You might surprise yourself someday.”
Cory ate two more pastries and let her grandfather talk her into eating eggs and fruit as well. When she said good-bye, it was with the promise that she would keep in touch. Orville reappeared to lead her out. He seemed friendlier now. More putti came to peek at her on her way to the door, and every one of them smiled at her.
Cory was excited when she returned home and was glad that her uncle was there. The pipe in the school hadn’t been fixed yet, so the school was still closed. Her uncle was seated on the porch drinking lemonade while Noodles gnawed on a toy at his feet. The squirrel was perched on the railing, and he chattered at Cory as she climbed the steps and sat down on the chair that Micah had already fixed. She had so much to tell her uncle! He listened to her, nodding and smiling as she told him about her morning.
“You knew that he was Cupid, didn’t you?” she said when her uncle didn’t ask any questions.
“I did,” he replied, “but it was up to him to tell you.”
“I really liked my grandfather and we had a very nice visit. Mother should never have kept him away! Oh, and he said one thing that I bet you don’t know. He said that I might have the ability to help people find their matches. He told me not to give up and …”
Cory noticed that her uncle was no longer looking at her, but instead was staring at the street. Micah got to his feet even as she turned her head. A magic carpet had landed on the lawn, and three men wearing black masks and hoods had jumped off and were running up the walk. Cory stood as the men bounded onto the porch. One tackled her uncle and held him down, although he fought to resist. Another grabbed hold of Cory, holding her still while the third tied her hands behind her and fastened something cold around her wrist. Suddenly her arm ached, and she felt heavy all over.
“I know you’re from the Tooth Fairy Guild!” Micah cried. “You can’t get away with this!”
“And who’s going to stop us?” said one of the masked men. “Nobody can go against the guilds!”
The air around her uncle shimmered as he became small and flitted out of the men’s reach. Cory tried to change, too, but nothing happened. “Let me go!” she cried, struggling as the two men carried her down from the porch and plunked her onto the magic carpet. When she started to scream, the third man stuffed a handkerchief in her mouth and pulled a pillowcase over her head before sitting down beside her.
Cory swayed as the carpet rose into the air. She tried to steady herself with her hands, but with them tied behind her, she could only just touch the knotted fiber with her fingertips. Rough hands shoved her up when she nearly fell over. A moment later, they were racing through the air, the wind pushing against her so that she had to lean forward to stay upright.
They were in the air only a few minutes before Cory felt the carpet begin to descend. Sounds changed around her, becoming c
loser and more intimate, and she knew that they had entered a building. The instant the carpet settled onto the floor, the two men hustled her off, shoving her down a smooth-floored hallway and turning her to stumble through a doorway. She took a few steps before they made her stop. When they ripped the pillowcase off her head, she stood, blinking at the light streaming through the window behind a silhouetted figure. She blinked again and the figure came into focus. It was Mary Mary.
“And so it’s come to this,” Mary Mary said, shaking her head. “We gave you every opportunity to return to us, but you refused again and again. Even after we tried to direct you back on the right path, it was to no avail. Do you know how much time and energy we spent on you, young lady? It’s your own fault that we’re going to have to take such extreme measures, so you don’t have anyone else to blame.”
“What are you going to do?” Cory asked.
Something moved behind Mary Mary. It was Micah, still tiny, fluttering outside the window as he waved his arms to get Cory’s attention. When she looked his way, he waved once more and took off. Cory was relieved to know that her uncle had followed to see where the men had taken her, but she didn’t know what he could do about it. If they were in the Tooth Fairy Guild headquarters, as Cory suspected, she doubted he’d even be able to get into the building.
“What we should have done before this if only your mother hadn’t been such a thorn in my side,” Mary Mary was saying when Cory started listening to her again. “You have spurned the guild and now the guild is going to repudiate you. Oh, and don’t think you can get out of this. That bracelet on your wrist is a thin band of iron encased in porcelain so the metal doesn’t burn you. We’re not heartless, despite what you might think.”
Cory shivered. Iron was known to negate fairy magic and burn fairy skin. Fortunately, there was little iron in the fairy world, although humans sometimes brought it with them. Fairies did their best to keep their distance from it, and one of the hardest parts about visiting the human world was the presence of so much iron. It had taken her weeks of near misses to learn what she could and couldn’t approach when she performed her tooth fairy rounds. If the bracelet on her arm had iron in it, it was no wonder her arm felt heavy and her whole body felt awful!
“You wanted a life outside the guild, and that’s exactly what you’re going to get,” Mary Mary told her. She glanced at the two men and pointed at Cory. “Gentlemen, take her away!”
Turning toward the men, Cory saw them without their masks for the first time. One was a thin fairy with red hair and a scraggly mustache. The other was Tom Tom, who sneered and started toward her. Cory wanted to fend off the men, but the longer she wore the iron-filled bracelet, the heavier and more drained she felt. Tom Tom and the fairy practically had to carry her out of the office and down the corridor to a door at the end of the hall.
“So you do work for the Tooth Fairy Guild,” Cory said to Tom Tom.
He sneered and dragged her along, his grip so tight it was painful. “I have been for a while,” he told her. “I saw that you cleaned up the broken glass and the mud. I liked what you did with the plants. Too bad so many were destroyed when the wolf tried to blow down your house.”
“You were the one who threw the tooth and the mud?” Cory said, horrified. “Those were awful things to do! You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Tom Tom laughed. “Are you joking? That was the most fun I’d had in ages. Here we are. Hold still while we open the door.”
Cory tried to stand her ground, but they shoved her into a windowless room with a clear cylinder in the center. Cory let herself go limp when they tried to make her walk into the cylinder, so they picked her up and set her in it. The redheaded fairy removed the bracelet and untied her wrists before closing the door. Tom Tom hurried out of the room without looking back, but his companion paused and gave Cory a look filled with pity before he left, closing the outer door behind him.
Once the iron-filled bracelet was gone, Cory thought she would feel better, but she still felt heavy and drained of energy. If she could become small, she could whisper the secret fairy words and pass through the wall itself, but when she tried to shrink, nothing happened. When she examined the column, she couldn’t find any way out except the door, and that opened only from the outside. The column was narrow, perhaps twice the width of her shoulders, and the transparent walls were tinged with green and as smooth as glass. Examining the wall more closely, she found thin lines of gray running through it from floor to ceiling. She set her hand on the surface and immediately jerked it away as pain flared in her palm. The gray lines were iron, making the walls as effective as the bracelet. Cory was trapped with no way out.
She was still studying the walls, hoping she had missed something, when a soft hum filled the column. The sound grew progressively louder until her whole body seemed to vibrate with it. Suddenly, the lights flickered and went out. Cory’s skin prickled; she felt as if ants were crawling all over her. When the hum continued to grow louder, she stuck her fingers in her ears, although it didn’t seem to do much good. The light flickered on again, but it was blue now, and went off and on repeatedly until Cory’s head hurt and she felt sick to her stomach. She squeezed her eyes shut, blocking out some of the light. By the time the light became painfully bright, then dimmed to normal, Cory felt terrible. Opening her eyes, she saw the light turn white even as the hum faded away.
There was a soft click and the column door opened. Cory felt weak, but she no longer felt heavy. When she stumbled and caught herself by placing her hand against the wall, the metal in the column didn’t hurt her like it had when she’d touched it before.
The door into the hallway was unlocked when she tried it. Tom Tom and the redhead were waiting outside and they gestured for her to precede them down the hall toward Mary Mary’s office. A group of people were gathered outside the room, some with their ears pressed to the door. They hurried away when they saw Cory and the men approaching. By then Cory could hear raised voices coming from inside the office. As she drew closer she recognized both speakers. One was Mary Mary, the other was Lionel Feathering, her grandfather.
When they reached the door, the men glanced at each other as if they weren’t sure what to do. Cory didn’t wait, but stepped forward and opened the door herself. Micah was there, standing with her grandfather across the desk from Mary Mary. He glanced at Cory when she entered the room and motioned for her to join them.
“You foolish woman,” her grandfather was saying to Mary Mary. “That girl is my granddaughter. If you have hurt one hair on her head, you will rue the day you ever heard of the Tooth Fairy Guild.”
Mary Mary’s face was turning red when she said, “Who are you, old man? What right do you have to come in here and talk to me like that? I’m the head of the Tooth Fairy Guild and there is no fairy with standing high enough to speak to me this way!”
“You’re right, of course,” said Lionel Feathering. “But then, I’m not a fairy.” The air shimmered around him and he stood there draped in a white robe with one shoulder bare and beautiful feathered wings sprouting from his back.
Mary Mary gasped. “You’re a demigod! I didn’t know. No one ever told me. Delphinium should have …”
“A good leader does not try to pass the blame to others. Cory is my granddaughter and should never have been treated in such a high-handed manner, nor should anyone. I understand that your organization has been harassing her. I’ll be launching an investigation into your actions today.”
Lionel turned to Cory and held out his hand. “Cory! Are you all right, my dear?” he asked as she slipped her hand into his. “What did they do to you?”
“I don’t know,” Cory replied. “They put me in a cylinder with iron in its walls. There were lights and a loud sound. I feel very odd.”
Cupid turned to stare at Mary Mary. The woman spluttered, her hands fluttering as she said, “We didn’t hurt her! We just took her fairy powers away.”
“What do you mean?” Cor
y asked. She had tried to turn small while in the cylinder, but the walls had kept her from changing. Letting go of her grandfather’s hand, she tried again now. Nothing happened. Cory glanced from her grandfather to her uncle, horrified. “If I can’t become small, I won’t have wings. I’ll never be able to fly again!”
“What gives you the right to do this?” Micah demanded of Mary Mary. “She was born able to change her size and fly. The Tooth Fairy Guild didn’t give her those abilities! I can understand if you want to take back what you’ve given her, but you’ve gone too far!”
Mary Mary shrugged. “We couldn’t take part of her fairy talents without taking them all.”
“You’ve made me no better than a human!” Cory cried as despair filled her heart.
Chapter 21
Cory didn’t stir until Noodles nipped her toe. She was still half asleep when she pulled her feet away, wondering why he was on her bed. As the woodchuck tugged the blanket, she woke enough to remember what had happened the night before—the kidnapping, losing her fairy abilities, the look on Mary Mary’s face when Cory’s grandfather scooped her up and made the glass in the window disappear with a glance. He’d flown her back to Micah’s house then, tucking her into bed and kissing her cheek. The last thing she remembered was Noodles whimpering when he couldn’t get close to her, and her grandfather placing him on the bed.
A sharp pain in her foot made Cory sit up and frown at the woodchuck who had nipped her again while gnawing on her blanket. “Cut that out! This is exactly why you shouldn’t be up here! You smell, too. I have to give you another bath.”
Picking up the woodchuck, she climbed out of bed and set him on the floor. When she straightened, she caught a glimpse of herself in her mirror. Although the night before she’d felt like she’d been chewed up, spit out, and stomped on, she felt wonderful now. She looked wonderful, too. The dark shadows she’d had under her eyes from lack of sleep were gone. Her skin was flawless and had a glow that she’d never noticed before. Even her hair looked thicker and shinier. Cory touched it, wondering how she could look and feel so good after everything that had happened. Her abilities had been wrenched from her, she couldn’t get smaller when she tried, and her wings … Cory gasped when she remembered that her wings were gone. She would never fly again, or do any of the fairy things she’d always taken for granted.