Free Return of the Fae by Lynn Cahoon Page A

meet with him. Use your language correctly girl, I’m not a this.” Robert Nelson stretched. “Let’s get going.”
    “Where?” The word slipped out before Parris could stop it.
    “To St. Louis of course. I can’t very well train you here on the street, now, can I?”
    Parris glanced at Ty, not able to keep fear out of her voice. “He’s going to train me?”
    “I’d hoped he’d say yes. You need an expert who knows your power.” Ty looked at his mentor. “You need any of this stuff?”
    “No, leave it here. There’s a young man who’s been sleeping on the next stoop who doesn’t have anything. His folks kicked him out of the house for being gay. I wonder what they’d think if he told them he was also a witch?” Robert started down the stone steps toward the street. “Can we stop at Skyline Chili first? I’m a tad bit hungry.”
    “Sure. We have to go by to see Prudence before we leave anyway.” Ty caught up with the man. Parris watched the two walk in front as she followed along. So this was the great wizard who’d trained Ty? He looked like some of the men who hung around the bar looking for odd jobs she paid for with a bottle or two of liquor and a bag of sandwiches.
    “Looks are deceiving sometimes.” Ty called back.
    “Stop reading my mind,” Parris answered. She thought about the vision she’d seen in the church. A group crowded around her, led by a tall, older man with eyes that reminded her of her father’s. Unlike her father’s smiling eyes she remembered from the pictures she’d hung in her living room, this man’s eyes shined with a dead cold. Hate seethed from him like blood pouring out of an open wound. The hate focused on at her.
    When they’d gotten to the small restaurant, somehow, Robert looked cleaner, more like an eccentric professor. Parris knew she stared when he turned appraising her.
    “You’ve done well my boy, getting her this far. I think she’s the key.” Robert stared at the menu board. “I want one with everything. Get her the chili on spaghetti. It has some cinnamon in the mix, she’ll like it.”
    “I can order for myself,” Parris groused.
    “I keep forgetting women aren’t docile as they were in my day.” Robert smiled, watching her. “I didn’t mean to offend.”
    “And pigs fly,” Parris mumbled.
    Ty gently pushed her toward the dining room. “Why don’t you grab us a booth and we’ll be right over. Tea?”
    “That would be nice.” Parris slid into a booth closest to the window, watching the people walk past. Docile my ass. He can shove training if he thinks he’s going to talk to me like I’m some fainting flower.
    She saw the man again in her mind. She needed all the help she could get. “The devil you know,” she whispered against the glass. “The devil you know.”
    Soon Ty and Robert returned with trays of food. The smell of tomato, meat, cinnamon and onions overwhelmed her. Her stomach growled in pleasure. The guy might be a chauvinist pig, but he knew food.
    Robert shoveled food, head down like he hadn’t eaten in days. “Thanks, I think the place is great too.”
    “How can you still read my mind? This block keeps Ty and Derek out.” Parris twirled spaghetti on her fork.
    The old man raised his head, grinning at her, eyes sparkling like a teenage boy given his first muscle car. “I’m better than the boys.”
    Parris laughed, in spite of herself. “Okay, then, stop it. It’s creepy.”
    Robert patted her hand that rested on the table. “Dear, there are far more disturbing things in this world than you even know. I can’t believe the minds of some of those poor souls I shared food lines with down at the mission. What ever happened to the mental health system in this country? We should be ashamed of ourselves.”
    “Preaching to the choir here. April, my bar manager, is training to work with kids on the streets. She’s an angel for wanting to help those kids.” Parris reached down, patting her shirt pocket for her