"Ukuleles?" Austin asked.
I sighed. "Austin, meet Leigh-Ann. She's a clown."
Turned out that Mickey had met Leigh-Ann beneath the willow tree after the benefit performance her clown troupe had put on in Dead End.
I growled at Mickey to answer his phone in the future, congratulated them on their elopement, and then Austin and I returned to Dead End.
Back to square one.
Clowns: One.
Me: Zero.
The good guys were taking a beating this week.
32
Tess
Iwoke up to a desperate scratching sound and stumbled out of my room to find that it was my cat. She was trying to tunnel through the front door, if her frenzied clawing was any sign.
"Okay, okay," I mumbled, wondering why people and cats kept waking me up at six in the dang morning. Also wondering what it was going to cost me to repair the paint from her claw marks.
Or if I'd even have to worry about it after Friday.
I opened the door, and Lou shot out of it like hellhounds (which I hadn't seen in Dead End yet, thankfully) were chasing her. I turned around to go make coffee—or fall back into bed—but a horrific screeching sound made me jump a foot in the air.
"Lou?" I raced outside in my sleeping shirt and bare feet, only to find my cat hunched into a crouch and staring fixedly at one of my flowerpots.
Maybe an injured bird had fallen into it?
I gently nudged Lou aside, or at least I tried to. She wasn't having it, and I bent to look at the Coreopsis. They were lovely daisy-shaped golden-yellow flowers, and a water nymph had planted them and given them to me. But one flower was shaking like a strong breeze was blowing only on that one bloom.
A bird was looking more and more likely.
Lou meowed plaintively, and I eased the flower aside to look. Maybe the new vet in town could help …
Oh.
Okay.
Definitely not the vet, then.
My knees went wobbly, and I ungracefully folded up and plopped down on my butt on the cold, damp wood of the porch.
"Um, hello?"
The tiny face peering back at me brightened with a smile, and a voice like tiny bells trilled a sound. Not quite a word, but almost.
It was a faery.
One of the Fae.
She was tiny, maybe six inches tall, and she looked like a child's idea of a storybook faery princess. Her heart-shaped face was lovely beyond description, and she had long, wispy, lavender-colored hair. Her gauzy dress, all in shades of pink and yellow, looked like it was made of silk threads or cotton candy.
Or maybe it was made of dreams spun by moonlight.
You never knew with the Fae.
