Free Dust Girl: The American Fairy Trilogy Book 1 by Sarah Zettel Page A

we were both in the kitchen. “You gotta be starved.”
    “We’re always starved.” Her voice sounded different when she said that, light and thin but more … 
real
. “There’s never enough for all of us.”
    “Then what could you want out this way? There’s not much left to eat since the dusters started.” I took up a side towel and pulled the bread pudding from the oven. It had come out perfect, all golden brown and shimmery with the milk custard. The rich, sweet smell mixed with the scents of the ham, beans, and gravy still bubbling away on the stove top. It set my mouth watering, but Letitia … she looked at that bread pudding like it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
    “Now that we’ve found you, we’ll be fed.” She took two steps toward the pudding. “The Seelie King will reward us all.”
    I couldn’t have heard that right. “King? Who the heck is Seelie King?”
    “
The
Seelie King.” Letitia snickered and took a step closer to the pudding, like it pulled her on a string. “And he’s offered a reward to the first of us to bring you to him. You’re famous, Miss Callie. There’s a whole prophecy about you.”
    The words dropped like stones into the middle of my confusion, but I just adjusted the pudding on the counter a little. “Prophecy?”
    Letitia’s bug eyes misted over. I could see my pudding’s reflection in her spectacles.
“See her now, daughter of three worlds. See her now, three roads to choose. Where she goes, where she stays, where she stands, there shall the gates be closed.”
    Those words went straight down into my blood and bones. They twisted around in there, looking for the way tomy heart. She was telling me the truth, and I knew it. The problem was, I had no idea what the heck that truth
meant
.
    It didn’t matter. I could work it out later. Right now, I had to take care of Miss Letitia and the rest of the proud Hopper clan.
    “You know,” I said slowly. “It’s not fair that they’re all out there stuffing their faces and you’re in here doing the work. Why don’t you have this?” I slid the pan toward her.
    Letitia opened her mouth wide, but she didn’t move right away. She shifted her bug eyes sideways to me, and back to the pudding.
    I made myself smile. “It’d serve ’em right.”
    “Serve ’em right.” Letitia dug in with both hooks and stuffed a big, boiling-hot heap of pudding into her mouth. She bent down over the pan, chewing and buzzing, and not looking at me at all.
    So I whacked her a good one with Mama’s best silver tray.
    Letitia fell
splat
into the pudding, and I hit her again, hard enough to dent the tray. She slid to the floor, but she didn’t stay down.
    “You little brat!” Letitia bounced to her feet. Her spectacles hung crooked and custard-spattered from one ear, and her faceted bug eyes glittered hard and dry. I had one short second to get good and scared before Letitia leapt into the air. Her green sash unwound from her waist, turning into a pair of iridescent green-veined wings.
    Half-bug, half-human Letitia swooped down. I doveacross the tiles like I was sliding into second base, and banged hard against the stove. Letitia laughed and circled tight, lining up for another run. I scrambled to my feet and—still thinking baseball—grabbed the cast-iron frying pan off the stove with both hands. Letitia dove, and I swung. Momentum carried me in a full circle. I felt the thud and heard the scream before I could see straight.
    “What
is
all this commotion?”
    Mrs. Hopper came through the door in time to get hit by a gob of flying ham and to see her girl knocked smack against the wall.
    “Oh,
dear
.” Mrs. Hopper’s antennae waved toward her daughter, who was sprawled on the tiles and did not get up, but her eyes stayed fixed on me. “Callie, I am very much afraid we’re going to have to dock your pay for this.”
    “Come on, you big bug!” I hefted the frying pan, dripping sticky Coca-Cola glaze. “You