Page 54 of Faerie Fate
“We—we should join the others.”
Poppy—Barbara—sounded shaky. The hand she drew through her braid trembled and her face had gone paler than moonlight. In my head, the two images superimposed over each other. They were the same height, Barbara and Poppy. They had the same nose.
Their thin frames were similar but Poppy was much more muscled. The leather armor she wore moved with her body, conforming to her strength, whereas Barbara had looked like a doomsday prepper at the end of her tolerance for society. She’d been happy with flannel and as many packs of cheap cigarettes as possible.
Even theAugundae Imperiumhadn’t been enough to save her in the end.
Poppy practically rushed to the door, drawing in great gulps of air. But by the time I joined her, by the time she’d finished calling the others into the kitchen, she’d gotten herself under control. Her face showed only a few spots of color and her eyes were wild, but otherwise it might simply have been exertion from whatever spell she’d worked on me.
Mike glanced my way, his gaze scouring me from head to toe, his shoulders tight. “How do you feel?”
The effects of the truth potion were slowly wearing off. In place of the blessed numbness in my head, a few pinpricks of worry and anxiety began to grow. I opened my mouth to answer and Noren interrupted me with a nudge of his giant head against my back. Pushing me toward the table Poppy conjured for us to sit around.
“I’m better,” I admitted. “It’s stopped bleeding.”
Sometime during her scouring of my head, the salve had cracked and flaked off of me, leaving behind nothing of the slit on my wrist but a thin raised line.
“Of course it’s stopped bleeding,” Poppy replied. “My salves are unparalleled. So is my sight.”
Noren sniffed at the salve, his tongue darting out to lick some of the hardened pieces that hadn’t sloughed off, and I pried my arm up from where he’d pinned it to my side.
“It’s all right,” I told him with a laugh. “But not sure you should be eating it.”
Bronwen hurtled around the corner with a bowl of fresh strawberries in her hands. “You were in there for a long time.”
I pulled out a chair and settled at the table with plenty of room for Noren to crowd closer, in full protective mode.
“I have a lot of broken parts,” I said.
Poppy dragged out a chair with a screech of the legs against the floor and threw herself down in it violently. Almost as though she wanted to punish the furniture. “We need to talk.” She snapped her fingers at the other two, leaving them no room but to do her bidding. “Sit. Now.”
Mike went on immediate alert. “What’s the matter? Did something happen?”
Bronwen took another bite of her strawberry, her mouth colored with juice, before she settled on my opposite side.
The four of us gathered in the kitchen this way might have been comfortable under different circumstances. Poppy had a cozy setup, and with the fire in the stove, the dried herb bundles above the windows, and the shelves laden with pottery, the witch’s kitchen was homey. Quaint.
“Yes, something happened,” she griped.
She saw Mike through a different lens now that she knew he was her grandson. Her nostrils flared.
Well. So much for the flirtation bubbling between them at the tavern. I couldn’t completely wipe away my pleased grin at this new change.
“Lay everything out on the table, starting from the beginning,” Poppy demanded. “And once you’re done, I’ll do the same. Information for information.”
Bronwen glanced at me, waiting for the go-ahead, and I nodded. “It’s fine,” I added.
More than fine. I owed it to Barbara to have this conversation with her younger self.
Between the three of us, we managed to tell Poppy everything, from start to finish. Once Mike finished the tale of us showing up at Grove, Poppy took up the baton of conversation. Although she kept her explanation tight and mincing, she told them who she was. What she saw. And what she knew from my memories.
“So that’s it. You’re my grandson.”” She crossed her arms over her chest and tipped her chair backward. Daring him to say anything against her.
She looked less than thrilled and as young as him.
Mike’s features twisted in bafflement. “You’re my mom’s mother?”
Poppy blinked and effectively ended their staring contest—it seemed there were still a few things that could surprise her after everything we’d discussed. “I’m going to have a daughter?”
