6. The Folk

"Well, that was awkward for you," sang Chamomile.

Micah and Chamomile wound their way up into a cluster of silver birch trees where the humans wouldn't be able to see them. They were in sight of the brick fence marking the faerie compound, and Micah's skin prickled under the watchful gaze of Folk from within. He slumped down at the foot of a tree and cradled his head, eyes closed.

Chamomile touched his arm, making him jump with her silent advance. She crouched beside him, her braid slung over her shoulder and draping down between her knees. Her soft blushing lips were pursed. "I wasn't going to harm them," she said after a moment.

Micah nodded, his forehead on his wrist. "That's good."

"What does he use that little iron seax for?"

"Iron what?"

"The sword. Does he want to kill us?"

Micah shrugged one shoulder, raking his fingers through his tangled and sweaty hair. "I don't know, honestly. Maybe."

"Be careful with him," warned Chamomile. "You have notoriously dangerous taste in partners." She jabbed herself with her thumb. She hadn't dated Micah for very long. She got bored rather quickly. She was fascinated with human life in the same way that humans watched animals at a zoo. She liked the spectacle and the novelty. She liked to be entertained by humanity. She was affectionate, and kind, but Micah knew it was never meant to last.

Evidently a goblin—given her insubstantial height, and pointed ears that stuck out horizontally from her head—Chamomile was small, fast, and arguably unhinged. Even under bright summer sunshine, her skin had a sage-green tone beneath the creamy white, and under the moonlight, she was the color of moss.

When Micah was a boy in Washington, he learned of the Folk by observing—and by figuring out what he needed to know to keep himself alive—but also largely by lessons from his sister. Among faeries, there were all sorts of different breeds. The highest-class, such as his sister and mother, looked like elves from Tolkien. But the other classes were all colors, shapes, sizes, and temperaments. Lilydale's residents consisted of winged pixies, waist-tall sprites with too many bony joints, gnomes like Syabira, his gardening mentor, some fish-scaled nixies, mild-tempered but mute brownies, and several more goblins like Chamomile.

In true goblin fashion, Chamomile was also a hoarder. Micah had been in her hut in Lilydale once, and the sheer amount of clutter was enough to make his throat close up and his head swim. She insisted there was order to everything. He insisted he never needed to stay at her place again.

On the hill, listening to Andrew and Sam tramp away through the trees and leave the bluffs, they sat quietly together for some time. Micah stared down into the valley below. Creamy morning sunlight glinted on the surface of Pickerel Lake. Peals of laughter and a jaunty fiddle drifted through the air from the commune; the notes were hypnotic, unreal, nothing you could hear streaming music on your phone.

Chamomile bent a spurt of tiger lilies toward her and collected the dusty pollen on the pads of her finger. She painted streaks down Micah's arm while he stared out over the river valley.

"He'll probably want nothing to do with me anymore," Micah said bleakly.

"If he still spoke to you after you charmed him into kissing you, clearly he had already figured out a few things," Chamomile said. "Maybe you should be more like me and not lie. He didn't look happy when you lied about my apple."

"What do you think you're doing, offering Fae-spelled foods to humans, anyway?"

Chamomile shrugged. "I knew he would know better."

"How?"

She remained silent, as if he hadn't spoken.

"Chami. What do you mean? How did you know he would avoid foods from Lilydale?"

Chamomile cast her unnervingly bright gaze in his direction. She had a smear of orange pollen on her small nose. "I can't lie, but I can decide when to keep my mouth shut."

He scowled. "Fine. What can I do? To keep him safe from me. His géas doesn't stop me."

"Don't exert Fae influence over him, obviously."

Micah growled in frustration. "I don't know how. You've got to have other ideas."

Chamomile sighed heavily and fell back into the grass. "You're so much work, Micah."

"Does that mean you'll help me?" Micah asked brightly.

"Only if you agree to see your sister."

Micah yelled, "What? You—that isn't fair!"

"Alas, the asset makes the rules, doesn't she? Come on then. Come and visit Lilydale." Chamomile started to rise.

"No!" Micah yanked on her shoulder. "Tomorrow. I'll meet her at Amore. At noon."

"Micah," groaned Chamomile. "Don't be a coward."

"I haven't been in Lilydale in five years, and I don't miss it. Come back with me and hang out with my dad. He misses you."

She shook her head. "I have supplies to gather if I'm going to help you. Just know, she won't be happy she has to go meet you somewhere."

Micah climbed to his feet and brushed dirt off his pants. "She'll live," he said.

Arms draped across her knees, Chamomile glared up at him and said after a moment, "It isn't right that you shun her."

He shrugged. "I would do anything for my father."

"She has done everything for you."

Micah hesitated. He wetted his lips. "I have to stay away right now, Chami." Shielding his eyes, he scoped out the easiest route back to Cherokee Park. "You can come for dinner. Anything you want Dad to make?"

"Something cheap that comes out of a box," she replied immediately, licking her lips. "Oh, that yellow macaroni and cheese."

"Ew. Gross. What's wrong with you?"

Chamomile showed him her serrated teeth. Then she lay back in the grass; a breeze rose, smelling of honeysuckle, and then she vanished.

"What the fuck?" said Sam in the car on the Smith Avenue bridge.

"What the fuck?" said Sam when he got upstairs to Andrew's apartment.

"What the fuck?" said Sam as Andrew sat him on his leather couch and put tea in his hands.

"I can answer questions," said Andrew, "but I don't know how to answer that one."

"You have a sword!" Sam exclaimed.

Arwen Und?meow jumped onto the couch and sniffed Andrew's fingers. Her eyes turned into black discs, her tail puffing into a fluffy pipe cleaner that lashed against Sam's arm. Sam stroked her spine until she relaxed and sat on the throw pillow.

"Yes, I have a sword," said Andrew.

"Are you any good with it?"

"Um." Andrew thought. "I mean…I've taken some fencing, and some classes—because you can find a class for anything—and watched a lot of video tutorials. So, no, probably not."

"And faeries are real!" Sam said. His complexion paled as he sagged against the cushions. "I need food."

Andrew nodded, moving to the other side of the island and turning on the oven. He pulled a pizza out of the freezer and unwrapped it from the clingy plastic wrap. "I believe that the proper noun for a group of faeries is the Folk, and the general noun for someone who is a faerie is Fae. So when we talk about food bespelled with magical properties, it is Fae-spelled." It helped to say it aloud, since using the words correctly sometimes gave him a headache.

"How in the hell does serious, tech-savvy, introverted Andrew know about fae—the Folk?" said Sam. "It's all so…whimsical."

"An accident. Remember I've mentioned my mum was an addict?"

Sam cringed. "Yeah."

"She got food from Lilydale. Foods that the Folk make—like the apple that faerie offered you—are highly addictive and dangerous."

"Oh, shit. She was trying to drug me? I thought Micah said it was from the supermarket."

"Micah lied," Andrew said, frowning. "Which is another conundrum. He charmed you, but he can also lie." Andrew's voice dropped; he was talking more to himself than to Sam. "He can't be purely Fae, and he can't be purely human. I wonder if he's even as young as he looks."

"Why would he lie?"

"Good question." Andrew filled the bottom of a whiskey glass with amber Jameson and then leaned over it, releasing a long sigh. Finally, he swigged the liquid from his cup, shuddered, and then said to Sam, "And I don't want to assume that someone was trying to drug you. Fae-spelled foods only affect humans like that, as far as I understand. To her, it was just a pretty green apple."

"From a pretty green girl," sighed Sam.

"Oh, god." Andrew pinched the bridge of his nose.

Sam's phone chimed urgently. He frowned, tapping the screen as he said, "Cirrus? Where are you?"

Andrew rushed around the counter to see Sam's screen, which showed a video call with the blonde girl from the bar, her makeup pristine, a milk steamer hissing in the background beneath clinking ceramic cups and the chatter of café patrons. Andrew had found Sam dirty and sweaty and distressed—it just wasn't fair that Cirrus looked so…clean and tidy and unbothered.

"Oh, I'm just at Amore," said Cirrus, flipping her shiny, straightened hair over her shoulder. "You just kept texting me, so I figured I'd call."

Sam hummed with displeasure and opened his mouth to reply.

Andrew snapped, "He kept texting you because you ditched him in the bluffs." He leaned over the back of the couch to be in the frame of the video. He needed to be sure this girl could see the savage gleam in his eye and his hatefully bared teeth. "What the hell is wrong with you? Don't—"

"Andrew, I got this." Sam reached back and patted his arm. "Where'd you go?" he said to Cirrus. "You just hiked out of there and left me? Kinda lame."

"I mean…" Cirrus glared off to the side. "I stopped by Lilydale, but I just picked up some drugs. The Goth Queen wasn't letting anyone in anyway, and my plug barely gave me my usual stuff 'cause they're apparently so scared of her."

Andrew's eyes went round and the color drained from his face in the video as he reached to snatch Sam's phone out of his hand. "Are you an idiot?" he demanded. "Stuff from Lilydale can kill you! What are you thinking?"

"I cannot tell you how much I do not need a crotchety man like you worrying about me," said Cirrus with a sniff. "And what do you know, anyway?" She blinked at the camera and said, "Oh, wait. I don't care."

As Andrew growled and dredged up another poisonous insult, Sam pried his phone back and said calmly, "Hey, Cirrus, that was really lame and it was not fun getting stuck out there alone after you dragged me along with you. You do you, girlypop, but don't talk to me again." Then he ended the call.

Andrew slumped over the back of the couch with a groan. He took down his hair and fought with the snarls as Sam sighed heavily next to him, tossing his phone onto the cushion.

Sam muttered, "She's a psychopath, isn't she?"

"Sam," said Andrew, pushing onto his elbows so he could see his assistant, "if she's eating the foods she gets from Lilydale herself, I can promise you that her life is not headed down a good path. If she's giving them to other people, that's not better, because it's going to be horrible for someone else."

Sam nodded, hugging his knees. "I'm getting that." He sighed again. "Sorry I was so stupid."

"You're not stupid," said Andrew softly. "You shouldn't have gotten dragged up there by her."

"Sure," said Sam, "but you got dragged into all this magic stuff a long time ago, didn't you?"

He nodded. "My mum gave me no other choice. I was already involved ages ago. Cirrus didn't give you a choice, either." Andrew straightened and massaged his neck. "Right, then. I need a shower."

With a grimace, Sam shifted on the couch and said after a moment, "I can go and open the shop for a few hours if you want."

"I don't want you leaving my apartment by yourself now that the Folk have seen you," said Andrew. "For me, at least, that put a target on my back."

Sam swallowed. "Oh. Am—am I in danger?"

"Not in here."

Eyes round, Sam silently pushed his glasses up his nose.

Andrew sighed. He came around the couch and sat beside Sam. "Look, plenty of people live near the bluffs and are none the wiser. Everything I've learned is that people only really find trouble when they go looking for it in Lilydale…like I did. And I've done a lot of research to make sure I'm protected from them." He unclasped his géas and put it around Sam's neck. "This is a good start. This should negate the effects of Fae charm so they can't trick you or force you to do things." Again to himself, he muttered, "At least it should. But it didn't seem to stop Micah. That must be what happened at The Squire, too. It was trying to ward off Micah's charm, but it was like trying to use insect repellent on a snake."

Sam peered at the sachet of berries, eyebrows going up and lips turning down with barely veiled disgust.

"It isn't for fashion," said Andrew with a beleaguered laugh.

He glared at Andrew from under his bangs. "My look was for your weird analogy."

Andrew picked up the television remote and handed it to Sam. "Perhaps if Micah is involved with Lilydale, I can…maybe he can ensure nobody bothers you. Anyway, why don't you crash here tonight? You can sleep on the couch or on the double in the second bedroom."

Sam nodded slightly. "I don't know if you'll ever convince me to leave here, honestly."

"That's fine."

He blinked his big hazel eyes. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. This is too much space for me, and now that you got sucked into this magic bullshit, I'd be happier having you where I could keep an eye on you. We can go get whatever stuff you need from your place tomorrow. I know I'm probably not the same kind of entertainment as a houseful of queer twentysomethings, but humor me for now at least."

"Aw." Sam's chin quivered. "You're the best chosen brother a guy could ask for."

Andrew paused. "You are, too." He blinked, sniffed, and looked away. "Uh. Anyway. Gonna shower. Throw the pizza in when the oven goes off, will you?"

Micah used his two-mile walk home to try to unspool some of the tension that had coiled between his shoulder blades. He popped in his earbuds and blasted All Time Low, keeping his hands in his pockets and his eyes on his sneakers. He wished desperately to have something else to distract him from thinking about how angry Andrew had looked. Sword drawn, staring at that apple, realizing Micah had lied straight to his face.

All because Micah couldn't avoid this damn Fae nonsense.

Past the long Smith Avenue bridge where the city hung to his right and the lake and the bluffs to his left, Micah took a sharp left to follow the curve of the street through a quieter neighborhood. All human, nothing overgrown or wild to be seen, except for that chihuahua that lived in the corner house. The transition was almost dizzying. All the more reason to stay the fuck out of Lilydale, he thought bitterly.

He sighed as he approached the tall, pale brownstones and went up the outside stairs into his own. He let himself in and followed the mutter of the television up the stairs from the front vestibule. Micah dropped his keys in a decorative floral dish and slid out of his shoes and socks, grimacing, stretching the stiff exhaustion out of his limbs. He hadn't even been out in the bluffs for that long, but it had been a while since he'd scaled that cliff, and it strained unusual muscles.

Julian warily watched him approach as if he could sense the magic of the bluffs still clinging to Micah. Feigning nonchalance, Micah flopped onto the suede couch next to his father and leaned back his head.

"Smells like you cooked," said Micah.

Julian had gym shorts and a plain tee on since the brownstone was muggy with heat. He never let Micah run the air conditioner in the summer, which saved on electricity anyway. Their fluffy orange tom cat, Cinnamon, draped across Julian's knees and peered at Micah through one slitted eye. Micah scratched the cat's forehead and he began to purr.

Julian held out a samosa. "They were fresh for you a few hours ago." When Micah reached for it, Julian caught him by the wrist and inspected the line of pollen on his arm. He brushed it off with a frown. "I thought you weren't going to Lilydale anymore."

Micah popped the spicy samosa in his mouth and licked his fingers clean, stalling. When he swallowed, he said carefully, "I'm afraid I'm going to have a bit more to do with Lilydale than we'd like."

"I don't understand why," said Julian, voice brittle.

Micah hesitated. "It's just gotta happen."

Amber eyes going unfocused, Julian scratched his nails down his neck several times, a little harder each time. Micah grasped his hand, pulling it away from his neck and laying it on his lap. Cinderblocks of dread crushed the air out of the room.

Micah said softly, "You're safe, Dad. I'm not leaving tonight." They sat in silence while Julian's chest rose and fell rapidly. "Let me get you a pill."

"I'm fine," snapped Julian. He leaned his head back on the couch and shut his eyes. "I'm fine," he said more gently. "Sorry, kiddo. I've just been, um…dreaming about her again. Your mother."

Fear reared inside Micah's stomach. "Shit. What? That's not good."

"Be careful with them, okay? They're all the same. They're all like her."

Micah remained silent, studying Julian's creased face. He didn't think most men in their sixties looked as old and weary as Julian. The stress showed on his skin. This didn't seem like the kind of day for Julian to know Chamomile would be over. She and Julian typically got along, since she had the tendency to call him "sir" and ask him about his favorite television. But when Julian was jumpy like this, it was best not to aggravate things. Besides, Micah could probably handle a box of mac and cheese himself.

Swallowing, Micah said, "Why don't you take a nap?"

Julian nodded, and Micah helped him scoot the tray back. They both stood, moving behind the couch and up the stairs. Each flight was steep and narrow and doubled back on itself from a short landing where they'd put tall metal bookshelves. He let Julian off on the second story, lingering in the hall where he could see Julian move around his bedroom. Though he'd refused when Micah offered, he picked up the amber bottle of pills on his nightstand and swallowed a pill with a splash of water.

"Love you, Dad."

The black cat Fadil jumped from a shadow on the steps and twined around Micah's ankles as he circled up the last flight and onto the top floor. He followed the striped runner into his bathroom where he flipped on the lights. Fadil jumped on the sink and chirped at Micah.

"Chami is coming over," he told the cat as he turned on the shower, letting it get very hot as he undressed and took off his mulberry leaf necklace. The cat tilted his sleek head and blinked slowly, his cheeks fluffing with pleasure. The only person Fadil liked more than Micah was Chamomile.

Looking up at the vanity mirror over the sink, he glared at his reflection. Why couldn't he have gotten a naturally occurring eye color like Chamomile? Sure, hers were a bit too bright, and a bit uncanny, but still blue. Micah's purple eyes could never constitute as naturally occurring. Before he'd known any better, they presented a problem and attracted quite a bit of attention from his classmates in business school. Parties were an integral part of that culture, and having a classmate with eyes the girls swooned over was an excellent party trick. Granted, he usually got along with the girls better than anyone anticipated, and he enjoyed making their spectacle backfire. Before long, he stopped getting invitations to happy hours and house parties, but he never really missed them.

Micah took out the large emerald earrings from his stretched lobes. One of the black rubber rings that held them in place slipped from his fingers and bounced onto the counter. Fadil pounced on it immediately, flipping onto his back and chewing noisily on it so that his fishy breath wafted up to Micah. Sucking his teeth, Micah snatched the ring off Fadil's canine and got several claws through the pad of his fingertip as a result before, fearing inevitable consequence, Fadil jumped off the counter and bounded out of sight. Micah shook out his stinging finger, sending a silent threat after the cat.

After folding more comfortable silicon loops through his ears, Micah stepped into the spray of the shower and let the scalding water burn off the dirt and sweat, and the sickly sweetness from being in close proximity to Chamomile. The tea tree wash he used smelled antiseptic by comparison. He took much longer than necessary, letting the heat clarify him, his thoughts running down the drain and fading into the floorboards, into the soil and the roots and the darkness in the earth.

While he was staring at his feet, rivulets of water streaming off his hair and slipping past his parted lips, Andrew's face appeared in his mind. Micah curled his fingers into his palms, embarrassed. As if Andrew would want anything more to do with him after the spectacle with Chamomile. Spinning the squeaky shower knob off, he shook out his hair and fixed a towel around his waist before he left the bathroom. Fadil immediately stretched out at the sight of Micah, pawing at the corner of a fleece blanket on the bed.

The afternoon let only grayish, weak light into his room, so he lit a candle with a cheap lighter. Potted plants of all sizes lined the windowsills and hung from macrame baskets strung on hooks in the plaster ceiling. He'd made some of the pots himself, but you could tell by how crude they looked. His sister was an excellent artist and teacher, but he was fairly hopeless at the arts. His mulberry leaf necklace had been electroformed around a real leaf. He certainly never could have made anything like that.

On top of an antique cedar bookshelf was an altar circling around a juniper bonsai tree that was almost a foot tall now. He also had several pieces of art from his sister, including a small elk antler wrapped in glittering black thread with rough red garnets erupting out of the blunt end. The thread she'd woven herself on a spinning wheel. She'd made him a nightshade blossom out of dyed sticks, silk petals, and gemstone beads. And she'd even made him a circlet of copper vines that nobody else had ever allowed him to wear. That was the worst part of all of this: she was everywhere in his mind, and yet it hurt him to think about her. The last five years had been the longest he'd gone without seeing her in his whole life.

Micah lay across his bed in his towel and thumbed at his phone. Fadil slunk closer and set his butt on Micah's shoulder. Micah grunted in protest, but Fadil closed his eyes and ignored him. The scent of pine was strong now as the wax in the candle melted. He breathed deep and slow, in through his nose, out through his mouth.

Not long past sunset, Andrew switched off the television to the sound of Sam snoring softly on the couch. He unfolded a tartan blanket and draped it over Sam. Then he switched on his bedroom light so he could move in the kitchen without the lights shining in Sam's face.

He poured the boiling water from his electric kettle over a tea ball, which wafted sharp lemon toward him as it bounced in the teacup. Arwen jumped onto the counter to see what he was doing. He started to shoo her, but sighed instead and scratched her between the ears until she purred.

The toneless chime of his landline phone erupted into the silence. Andrew and Arwen jumped, and Sam snorted and stirred on the couch.

Andrew snatched up the phone and tapped the green ANSWER button before the phone could cause any further disruption. He paused before he lifted it to his ear; Sam settled back on the couch, rolling over to bury his face in the corner of the cushions.

"Magic's Computer Repair," said Andrew softly, picking up his tea and padding into his room in his house moccasins. He waited until Arwen followed him inside and then clicked his door shut with his heel.

"Uh, hi, ah…Andrew?"

Andrew's tea sloshed in his cup and onto his wrist. Hissing, he hurriedly set the cup on his dresser and shook out his hand. "Micah?"

"Yeah. Sorry if this is creepy. I got this number off your business page when I looked it up."

Andrew trapped the phone between his shoulder and his ear so he could wipe his hand dry on his sweatpants. "I mean, it's a bit creepy, but all quite above-board, ultimately. You've already been over here."

"We never exchanged numbers, but I wanted to talk about what happened in Lilydale."

Andrew almost missed his bed, freezing, shifting slightly, then perching on the corner of the mattress with a creak of springs. "That would probably be good."

Micah let out a long breath. "You were right. I lied a lot today, and I'm not proud of that. I wasn't prepared to deal with any of it, so I took the easy way out and tried to pretend I didn't need to."

"Huh." Andrew combed his fingers through his hair with a waft of his citrus-scented shampoo. He carefully climbed to the head of his bed and leaned back. "Awfully mature of you."

"This is forward," said Micah, "but can I buy you breakfast? I'd like to give you some space if you have more questions. I'm busy at noon, but—"

"I wake up early." Andrew flinched when Arwen stretched out and pawed Andrew's chin with her claws extended. He covered her small face with his palm, and she chirped in protest. "It's what you get," he whispered.

"What?"

"Sorry. I was talking to my cat."

Micah's musical laugh made the hairs on Andrew's forearms stand on end. "Honestly, same."