Tithe (Modern Faerie Tales 1)

"Why?" Corny didn't laugh at all. He was totally serious.

"Because the Thistlewitch told me that that was one of the ways I could see myself the way I really am. See—I told you that it gets ridiculous."

"This is the way you really are, then?"

Kaye nodded carefully. "I guess so."

"And this thimble witch? Who is she?"

"Thistlewitch," Kaye corrected. And she told him. Told him how she'd known faeries for as long as she could remember, how Spike would perch on the footboard of her bed when she was small and tell her stories about goblins and giants while Lutie darted around the room like a manic nightlight. She told him how Gristle taught her how to make a piercing whistle with a blade of grass and described the Thistlewitch divining with eggshells.

All the while, Corny stared with greedy eyes.

"Who knew about these friends?"

Kaye shrugged. "My mom, my grandmother—I guess I'm not really related to them at all…" She stopped suddenly. Her voice sounded unsteady, even to herself, and she took a deep breath. "Everyone in my first-grade class. You. Janet."

"Did any of these people see the faeries? Ever?"

Kaye shook her head.

Corny turned his gaze toward the wall, frowning in concentration. "And you can't call them?"

Kaye shook her head again. "They find me when they want to—that's the way it always was. Right now, that's the problem. I can't stay like this, and I don't know how to get reglamoured."

"There isn't anywhere you can look?"

"No," Kaye said vehemently. "I already told you no. The swamp was the only place, and I was there all night."

"But you're a faerie too. Don't you have any abilities?"

"I don't know," Kaye said, thinking of Kenny. That was definitely not something she really wanted to discuss right now. Her head hurt enough already.

"Can you cast any spells?"

"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know! Can't you understand that I don't know anything at all?"

"Come on in the back. Let's go online."

They went into Corny's room, and he flicked on his computer. The screen went blue, and then his background picture loaded. It was a wizard hunched over a chess table while the two queen pieces battled, one all black and the other all white.

Kaye flopped onto the tangled sheets of his bed, stomach down, wings up.

Corny tapped a few keys, and his modem groaned.

"Okay. F-a-e-r-i-e. Let's see. Hmmm. Gay stuff—don't go there."

She snickered anyway.

"Here we go. German changelings. Pictures. Yeats poetry."

"Apparently, I'm a pixie," Kaye supplied. "Click on the changeling thing, though."

"Interesting."

He scrolled through it, and she tried to read it from her slightly-too-distant vantage point. "What?"

"Says you throw 'em in the fire to get your own kid back… that or stick a hot poker down their throats."