Free Unshapely Things by Mark Del Franco

at the floor, idly swinging his feet. If there's one thing flits like less than being around people larger than they are, it's talking about dead fey. As near immortals, it's not a subject they find captivating. "There is no honor in such a thing, Connor. No fey would do it, not even the sad brothers of Unseelie would break such a rule. Destroying someone in the nobility of battle is just. Enslaving their spirit is outside the turning of the Wheel. It would destroy everything."
    A light shiver ran across my skin. Joe was rarely so serious. "Are you saying it can be done?" I asked quietly.
    He hovered up from the counter. "No. The world is still here, isn't it? I have to go." He vanished. A moment later, he popped back in again. "By the way, you need more cookies." And then he was gone.
    I cleaned up the white flaky residue from the fire and wandered back into the study, perusing the bookshelves. Most of the titles on essence were philosophical discussions or medical theories. The books on rituals were on process. I could not recall a single book on using someone else's essence. Employing the essence of animals, stones, or plants abounded in rituals, were even the point of rituals in general. In all my years of training, I had never come across any discussion of using fey in rituals. Even the old druid sacrifice stories always talked about human children, usually males, as the sacrifice. But the essences of children were weak, and in humans almost negligible.
    I felt a thrill of excitement. Druidic lore had always been an oral tradition dependent on teaching and self-discovery. You moved up in rank only when you were judged ready or had enough intuitive knowledge to discover the next level of mystery on your own. It was a way of managing powerful knowledge so that it could only be used with the wisdom of experience. If everything were simply written down, the temptation to run before you could walk would be enormous. The silence over fey sacrifices had to be secret knowledge, never to be spoken to the unready or written down for the unwary.
    Which meant I had no easy way to learn the reasons for the silence. Such knowledge was passed on in a chain of trust, from teacher to student. It wasn't likely that I could walk up to someone and ask. My old mentors were gone, journeying in their own paths. I could track them down, but that would take time I didn't have. I had to see if I could convince Briallen to tell me.
    I turned toward the living room a moment before I heard the knock on my door. Anxiety clenched my chest, like it did whenever something unexpected happened. I had made a lot of enemies when I worked for the Guild, people who would have been only too happy to find me in my current more vulnerable condition. The Guild had given me some wards to guard the house, mostly warning beacons. The ones around the windows made them less susceptible to breakage or long-range casting. I had felt none of them go off. And nobody had rung the building buzzer downstairs.
    I moved quietly into the living room, listening. The only sound was the distant drone of a plane taking off from the airport. The knock came again, no different than the first time, no more urgent. Maybe it was a neighbor. "Who is it?" I finally said.
    "Keeva," came the muffled reply.
    Chagrined, I shook my head and opened the door. Keeva macNeve lounged against the opposite wall, the barest hint of a smile on her face. The wards hadn't gone off because she had set them up for me before I moved in. The lock on the building front door certainly wouldn't have deterred her.
    Keeva was tall for a fairy woman, almost my height, with lush red hair that cascaded over her shoulders. A touch of haughtiness kept her finely drawn features from being truly beautiful; her green eyes were a bit too cool, her dark lips a bit too thin. We had had a modest flirtation when we first met, nothing serious. But then we got to know each other better, or that is to say, I got to know her