#small favours

If I don’t like a book, no I won’t finish it. I’ll probs get a refund. If I don’t like a game, no I won’t finish the game.

It does not deserve the limited time I have on this earth.

And I’ll call it how I think it is. If it’s good? I’ll praise it. If it’s shit, I’ll call it that. I just don’t care.

Speaking of which, here’s some amazing books:

The Scarlet Veil

Belladonna

Small Favours

House of Salt and Sorrow

(the challenge)

His heart is still beating when you decide you’ve spent enough time with his blood on your hands. Some things even time cannot wash away, some crimes even magic cannot wish away. There are costs to everything, but sometimes it feels as though that’s a lie we tell ourselves to make every day seem better. We paid the cost, we move on.

He stares at me without an expression I’m familiar with, the page in his hand. “This is the start of a story?” he asks, unable to see himself on a page. I don’t leave the start of stories out anymore, not after he made the crack about Twilight fanfic. But this one left itself, almost.

The sneer in his voice at ‘story’ says everything, and too much of that. You can’t be with people who don’t support your dreams, not really. He never did anything except insist that I supported mine.

We met in a too-expensive coffee shop, both on trips with other people – he with his girlfriend of the time, I with my little brother. Taking pictures of famous landmarks, and then of each other. We had a caffeine challenge, matching each other with shots of espresso. We hit it off, but perhaps only after the coffee was replaced by wine at a wine bar. It should have been a warning, but it wasn’t. He left his girlfriend for me. Gabriel sneered at that as only a younger brother can, said he’d leave me to. That false once could only be false again.

He hasn’t left me though. I’m the one who has my bags packed and ready to go in the bedroom. I wish I’d caught him with another woman. I have a gun locked away for a kiss and bang. But it’s nothing that simple.

“It was therapy.”

“Therapy.” He snorts. “You’ve wasted enough of our money on that. Those quacks get paid by the hour: their job wasn’t to save you. It was to string you along and get as much money from you as they could.”

“You cancelled it without telling me.”

“Pretty therapeutic, I say.” He laughs at his jokes. No one else does.

Magic runs in my family. I could do it. Remove his heart, hold it out, talk to him. But we only have so much magic in us for our entire lives. He’s not worth it. He was never worth my magic. Gabriel said that to me, and I never disagreed. But if he wasn’t worth my magic, how was he ever worth me? Sometimes things get so simple it’s a wonder they were ever complicated at all.

I take the paper, rip it apart, walk to the bedroom and come out with my bags.

“Hey,” he says, confused. “What is this?”

There is menace in his tone; I hope I am just imagining it. “I’m leaving. I can’t do this anymore.”

“You can’t just –.” He stands, confusion giving way to anger.

“I am.”

“Is this about that joke at the party about you being fat? I never met to hurt nobody!”

“It’s not that. It’s everything. Please move.”

He stares at me. Takes a step forward.

“Don’t.” I’ve never used magic on him. Never wasted, never spent, but I let a hint of other creep into my tone. I have Gabriel on speed dial in my pocket; if I don’t want to waste any of my magic on him, Gabriel will happily do so.

He steps aside. Slowly, not understanding. I left no note for him. I walk outside, call a call, start down the street toward the intersection.

He doesn’t follow.

Small Favours - Erin A. Craig

I finished ‘Small Favours’ last night and wow….

What a trip.

The story follows Ellerie Downing, an 18 year old that lives in a quiet little town called Amity Falls. It's a rather peaceful place, everyone helping out. But bitterness and darkness lurks around the corners, completely hidden from sight. Whether that be a deep generational hatred for another family in town, the farm animals that birth with grotesque deformities, or the unknown beings in the woods with silver eyes.

As usual with Erin A. Craig books, little hints are given and hidden through out the story, with the true danger brewing in the background until its ready to burst forth. And this book doesn't fail to go positively wild when shit does indeed hit the fan. And like usual, Erin's story endings always take me by surprise. Sometimes I have an inkling, but other times I am completely blindsided by the extent of the horror of the situation. Leaving me completely bewildered throwing my hands in the air in shock and disbelief. (I mean this sentence literally just so you know.)

I am desperately trying to remain patient for Erin's next few books. But I will be completely honest, I'll probably drive myself crazy waiting. The next book that will be arriving sometime in October (Big thanks to @pikaychuwu for helping me get the book much sooner then Australia would allow.), I am so excited for 'The Thirteenth Child', I desperately need more of Erin's works.

So if this review has convinced you to try out Erin A. Craig books, please let me know what you feel. Would love to hear more thoughts!

The shop is nothing special. A small sign outside, a couple in the windows telling people what they might find within. The interior is neat and tidy, with curious and general used items for sale. It feels nice, and the person behind the counter smiles, offers a greeting and barely pauses when I ask to speak with Minou.

“I am afraid I have no idea who you’re talking about; my name is Cam, and I run this shop.” “My name is Kris. He knows me. Please?”

Cam lets out a breath. “Go outside, around back. The door to the back room is open.” Nothing else. Not how I know the fae, not who I am, not asking why I am here.

I head out and around the building, finding the open door easily. The back room is clean as well. Tables for testing items, tables of priced items, garbage and recyclable. Minou is putting a toaster together, gloves on his hands, and blinks once when I enter.

“Kris.” His voice is even. His shadow is not, writhing behind him like a living thing.

“Minou. I won’t tell you who Gabe and I found for allies, or where we are in the fight against our family. You did more than we could have asked. You did – far more than I thought of asking.” The fae nods, his expression unreadable.

“I’ve seen a little of what you really look like. You showed more to my family. The Underwoods are –.” I shake my head. “Even with a few who were not there and can heal minds, the terror you invoked. You broke over two hundred magicians. Even the other fae never really saw you, did they?”

“No. Athel knows me of old. Almost no one else knows – what else I can look like.”

I move closer. The fae doesn’t move. “You do that, and then you just... return to working in a shop? Let yourself loose and then rein it in?”

“I have been.”

“And that’s why you’re back here and not dealing with customers?” Minou doesn’t move. He sets a screwdriver down slowly, looking almost surprised he’s bent it in half. “You are not helping.”  I take a deep breath, hold out my right hand. “This is for you.”

Minou walks over, picks up the small piece of red rock, fingers it slowly. “A piece of rock.” “A piece of the hate the Qis had for you, and for what your kind did. It isn’t much, in terms of healing. But we’re trying.”

Minou doesn’t drop it. He’s too old to lose control of himself. He pockets the piece of stone slowly, his dark eyes bright with stars behind them. “Thank you.”

“It is – not much, but all Gabe and I have managed so far. I doubt we’ll manage more, not in a lifetime. Gabe will live longer than I will, tied to the Qis, but none of us know how long. And you never need to thank me. Not after everything we’ve been through.”

“Does your brother need you?” Minou asks quietly as I reach the door.

I turn. “Pardon?”

“The family you are aiding to damage your own, your brother: do they need your power?”  “Why do you ask?”

“Because there is a new Court in the twilight lands that could, perhaps, be an ally for your new family as well. And you a bridge between them.”

“I –.”

“I can open up a door there when you need it. You wouldn’t be able to come back to earth, and move beyond the pale to survive there. I can give yo glamour enough for that, but your life would still be a human life, measured in human years.”

“The other Courts would hate that.”

Minou smiles. “I know.”

I thank him, get back into the waiting car outside and return home.

*

Fighting a magical war takes magic. Weeks. A month, two and I’ve used up every bit of magic within me. Everything I’d never used, a lifetime of energy spent trying to destroy the Underwoods. We’ll win, the family Gabe and I have joined, but it’s going to take time to break an empire. Time and alliances. I am dropped off two blocks away from the shop, and walk. It is almost not a surprise to find Minou walk up beside me and hand me a coffee.

“You have two people who were following you. The shop has been staked out since your last visit,” the fae says softly. “Cam doesn’t know. I’ve been dealing with them, and waiting.”

“Thank you.” He smiles. His shadow looks like just a shadow again, the smile slow and sad. “You won’t be able to return to earth, with this glamour on you.”  “I figured as much. This isn’t a talent you have.”

“Not at all. But I’ve had over a month to make sure it will work. What do you wish to look like, as a fae?”  “Me.” And I show him how I see myself inside my head, with the last of the magic I can call forth.

There is no judgement. Not from Minou. Just a nod. He finishes his coffee as we walk, waits until I finish mine, and holds out a hand. “Unless you wish to wait, Kris?”

“No.” I’m scared to wait. So much of me wants to stay, but I can do more, from the twilight lands. I can help the fae, I can help humanity.

“You can be yourself,” Minou whispers, as gently as his nature allows.

“Thank you,” I get out again, and I hug him. The fae actually stops dead at that, and waits until I am done, and pushes me lightly.

One step. A second. There is a flash of pale light, and then the sky is nothing but twilight. I can hear the river they made the far Court at, and look down at my body. The same colouring as the last glamour Minou made for me. No eyes that see for miles, no, but I have four arms because who wouldn’t want those, and I walk easily toward the Court. I’m just outside it, feel the energy of it as I enter.

I walk for almost a minute before wind blows about me that wasn’t there a moment ago.

“Bus?”

The wind ruffles my hair, and then the rest of my body in a moment. “Kris? You sound like Kris?”

“It’s – me. A better me. I try and explain, but Bus is gone between moments, the fae off to tell the others. They haven’t changed, of course. Fae don’t change, not as humans change. Trul pokes my tail lightly, asking why I wanted it.

I shrug, “I didn’t see many fae with tails. I wanted to stand out a little still.” That wins a soft laugh in reply.  

The others say hello, slightly wary. I explain why I am here, and to what end. Druul winces at what the other Courts will think, but Fury is definitely amused and Bus giggles softly about us.

“You’ve lost your family,” Fury says later, after food hasd been had and a place found for me to sleep.

“I’ve gained friends. I consider it a good trade.”  

The fae studies me, fire dancing lightly in his eyes. “Even losing your brother?” “He’s – something other than human now, and can embrace that. We talked. We don’t like it, but – we have to atone for what our family did, to fight them any way we can. This is the best move I can make now, and when they learn about it, it’s going terrify them.”

And Fury asks nothing else, and pushes nothing else. Fae live a long time, and questions can wait for a longer time to them.

Minou returns, sometimes. He passes information from the the other Courts, and from earth to us and back. Time does not pass in the twilight kingdoms as it does in the human world. There are no seasons as such. Just twilight sky, sometimes rain. Snow so rarely it is celebration.

It is only when Minou makes a comment about Starbucks on one visit that I begin to understand.

“When did Starbucks go out of business?” I ask before he returns back to earth.

The fae turns and looks back at me. “Some years ago,” he says warily.

“How long will this glamour – you said I would only have a human lifespan.”

“I know. It seemed a lie you needed to hear.”

“How long will I live?”

“As long as your friends, I think,” he says. “I can promise that much.”

“Minou.” I wonder what it is costing him to do this. But I know he’ll never tell me.

“Some costs are always worth it, Kris. You left Gabe to help human relations with the fae, and have done so. And terrified the Underwood’s so much they are in hiding, and your name is a tale they tell to frighten children, even more than mine.”

The earth moves. Never slow, never quiet. There are oceans under the land as there are stars that fall from the sky. There are humans far above, but it is easy to go deep. Easy to find places where even the darkness does not go. There are secrets buried so deep that they are not secrets, simply because no one knows them. I am part of the deep places of the earth now. A river drawn to the ocean. Sometimes I forget, this deep, this far from surface things.

But one cannot drift into nothing. There are currents, dangers, shifts in space. The movement of a century can take place in a moment. One must be aware. And awareness means thinking. I was a mountain once, and a forest. Never long enough for peace. Everything I knew is gone but so much remains. This I know, that it is terrible to be the last of your kind.

I move deeper. Earth turns to other things, this deep. I am liquid and fire and dreams. I have no voice, this deep into the core. A part of me wonders what I scream in this silence. I know it as one word:

Revenge.

I will learn. I will change. I will find what I need, and nothing will be hidden from me. The silence presses down, but the scream only grows. Soon. Soon will be a hundred years, a thousand, a million. I can wait. Revenge can wait for a perfect moment.

If I could smile, I think I would. There is pain, holding myself together so far from anything I know. But the pain is nothing compared to the joy that will come.

“I was -.”

“I do not want to hear it. A protest. Our family does not indulge in such behaviours. You gain good will through rash actions, son. You lose it through the same.”

Everything is about balance, in our family. Sometimes I wonder if we are more like the fae than the fae themselves. My father thinks me unwise, but I am wise enough to have never voiced that thought aloud. “I would not call working magic on a false lover rash,” I say softy.

My father says nothing. There are rules that govern our family, rules that only love can truly suspend. But even so.

“You indulge,” he says finally, halfway  back to my condo.

“I do not always mean to.”

Mother would smile at the honesty. Father just looks at me coldly for a moment. Every prepared got it, the feel of his magic is like a furnace of cold fire against my skin. Power presses against flesh and spirit responds. My own magic flares up. I hold his at bay, but nothing more.

“Reckless,” he whispers. “Vain, foolish child!”

“Uncle Owen.”  I say nothing else. Father lets go of his magic, snarls a request to his driver. I am dropped off a block from home. It is the kind of condo that would show up in fashion magazines, if my family allowed such publicity into our lives. A block away the street is littered with graffiti and predators study me from behind calm eyes.

I walk down the street, Smile. They look away. I doubt I come off as a predator, but desperation can be more dangerous by far. Not that I am that, I think. It is hard to be sure anymore. My father’s magic a bulwark of power. But Uncle Owen was the same, and he died in an accident.

A hit and run. The driver suffered in ways I try not to think about. My father almost never uses his magic; he did then, and the screams might end in a year. Two. Perhaps even ten.

There are many families with magic. Some never know of it, some can only work certain kinds. But each of us are born with only so much magic within us for our lifetime. A sliver of the impossible, to bend chance and probability to our wills. And once gone, there is nothing left. I have used more of my magic since coming into my power than my father has in six decades. I don’t want to hoard my power for a future that may never come.

I don’t even consider it power, most of the time. Anyone can learn to work small magics, to bend the world in little ways. Step on a crack, break your mother’s back. Not any crack, not at any time, but done, just so, and one can harm an enemy. There are little things like that, and I have made it a point to learn most of them.

The rest of the family think me foolish. Even those I have aided who would not aid themselves. But I think their magic gets weaker in some ways. Starves through lack of use. Power that is not in the world is not power. A fae told me that once, when I asked why they ever came back to this world.

I sketch symbols in the ground as I walk. Protection, confusion. Some work; others never will. I am never certain if the fault is in me or they symbols. My key fob opens the private elevator, manufactured silence taking me to the top floor. Some days I am so tired of being part of my family, but there is no other place where I belong.

“You’re a blacksmith?” the police officer repeats again. Speaking to fill the silence, fumbling to displace truth.

“Yes. It is a skill and a calling.”

She stares at me. “Your hands don’t look that calloused.” Because a police is police, no matter anything else.

“I wear gloves.” I find a non-smile. “I make small things. For fairs. Children. It is not full time.”

“I’m sorry. I’m not meaning to pry. This is –.” She rubs her face. Old, but not old in this. “We’ll need you to come to the station. To identify the bodies.”

“Yes.” I walk back into the small living room of the house, turn the TV off, follow the police officer to her car. She makes small talk. Asks when I was adopted, if I know my birth parents. I keep my answers short, distant. She tells me there aren’t as many gangs as the TV would have people believe. That the police are looking for suspects. I do not disagree.

It has been a long time since I have been in a morgue. This one is modern, like the TV ones. There is steel. Enough that I feel uncomfortable, but that is easy to ignore. There is a quiet growing inside me.

Mary. Susan. Thomas. Adoptive sister, parents. I identify them calmly, without tears. The police officer hurries me out, takes me to a side door. Two reporters are waiting even then, with cameras and smiles and hunger. I smile back, and the reporter and the camerawoman fall away. The police officer thinks it is her cursing them out without curse words. I thank her, say I have a friends near here. I will spend the night with them, and the police officer does not press me.

I walk down the alley, another alley, a third. I have been Malcolm Smith for almost twenty years. He does not deserve to be besmirched. Those who adopted me do not. It takes time, to change my face. Not long, but it is slower than it should be. The danger of putting on a mask for so long is that it almost feels as if removing it is the mask. It is almost funny, that part of me desires to be Malcolm. It was difficult, to work with so much metal each day. A challenge that became something more than that.

I make a body slightly smaller than my own. Mousy. Quiet. The kind designed to not be noticed. And then I walk. Two people try and mug me in under half an hour, proof this mask works quite well. I leave their bodies in dumpsters, a small part of me enjoying the exercise. The first one almost hurt me. I have got slow in the mask that was Malcolm. Slow, moving at the pace of a human world.

I am not quite ready to return to the Court, not like this. But I am ready for other things. I find people who bring death, seeing in them what others do not. Listen, follow. In under two hours, I find those who killed the Smiths. A house, run-down in a street the police never enter after dark. I move through shadows, find the back entrance. It is locked, but the blade in my hand is warm under my fingers.

A slice, and I am through and inside. One is in the kitchen, getting a beer. I throw the blade through his throat, call it back to my hand.  There are four in the living room. Drunk but dangerous. Two manage to reach for guns. I kill them both, the blade a blur through the air. One body, my hand, one body, back to my hand.

The other two back up. One has wet himself, the other has a knife.

“What the hell?” the braver one manages, and swings.

I break fingers, watch him drop. The other find the place behind fear and swings. I cut only to wound. I am not good at that, but I am not myself yet. It helps. I smile at the one with broken hands.

“What – what – what –.” he whimpers in broken spasms.

“You killed three humans today that I was fond of.” I hold up my knife. The glass is very old, a gleam of orange and black in my grasp. My smile matches it. “That is not a thing you should have done.”

The wet one, hamstrung, fumbles out a phone.

I turn my head. He lets out a sound, and then a rattling breath.

I turn back, and the one with broken hands is against the wall, shaking. “You – you looked at him. You looked at him and he died,” he gets out.

“My name is Arvid. It has not been that for some time, but that is my name. I was old before humans walked this continent and have been part of the Court of Life for many years now, as you humans count time. It has been a long time since I have bothered or needed to kill a human.” And then even this, this mousy thing, I let it go. Drop all glamours in the human world for the first time in centuries. I smile, barring all my teeth. Let my eyes burn with what lies inside.

The human does not die, because I do not permit it. I am a very good smith, and I begin to shape him. One bone here. One organ there. Flesh is not glass, bone is not steel. But it suffices. He dies in the end, for all my skills lie only in death. I pour my anger into the knife, into the blade, letting fire consume the building. There are sirens. Distant, useless. So much is useless in the human world. So much is too slow.

I make a door back into the twilight kingdoms, begin the slow walk back to the Court. I do not trust myself to stay in the human one. I take part of a bone and the building with me, find an empty forge. The Court of Life has almost more forges than fae in it; I have not been home to work in some time. I find one, and begin forging a weapon.