Free Chicory Up: The Pixie Chronicles by Irene Radford Page A

me, then paused in front of the window to make sure I saw him. I had to swerve to avoid hitting him!” They all dictated variations of that statement. One woman said that when the flying man paused, he flickered in and out of view, “Kind of like a computer monitor saving and resetting. Blink and you miss it.”
    All of them had passed the sobriety and Breathalyzer tests. Chase hadn’t dared admit to anyone but himself that a Pixie had been at work. But which one? He had a few ideas about that even before he got the call that Haywood Wheatland had escaped county jail. He’d been spotted in Phelma Jo’s office.
    Chase shivered, suddenly chilled to the bone.
    Then he opened the door of his tiny apartment. The heavenly aroma of garlic and tomatoes with herbs and stuff he never bothered to use when he cooked for himself greeted him. The chill faded, his stomach woke up, and his mind began to work again. Sort of.
    “Dusty, is that you?” It had to be. No one else had a key to his apartment.
    “Supper’s ready. Get washed up while I put everything on the table,” she called back from the galley kitchen that flowed into his dining/living room space.
    “What kind of organic concoction that tastes like cardboard has she thrown together?” he asked himself as he splashed cool water on his face. Then he stumbled to the small round table that separated the kitchen from the living room. He only had two chairs. She occupied one. He took the other, eyeing the pile of whole wheat pasta and tomato sauce with some kind of ground meat—organic turkey he’d bet—on his garage sale china plates. He’d bet the parmesan was a variation of soy cheese, too. More cardboard.
    “Eat this,” Dusty said gently, shoving the plate closer to him. “You’ll feel better.”
    “I’m too tired to eat,” he mumbled. Dusty’s healthy, organic diet—ingrained while she endured chemo as a child—had looked and smelled better than he thought it would. As tired as he was, he just couldn’t summon a bit of appetite for the food he suspected would be tasteless.
    “Why don’t we run down to the café. My sister will fix us dinner. She’s changed the menu. There’s Desdemona’s Delight, a veggie sandwich on whole wheat bread with soy cream cheese. And she added some gluten-free stuff. She wants to broaden the customer base to include people who think they can’t eat out.”
    “No. You need to eat now, not an hour from now when we get served at Norton’s.”
    Dusty had come to take care of him. He couldn’t ever remember her doing that. The Universe needed to take care of Dusty.
    “You’ll sleep better if you eat something and take a shower,” she coaxed.
    “One bite,” he agreed, too tired to fight her. When had the shy little girl he’d teased unmercifully become so strong?
    Last summer when Thistle had begun working her magic on the town
. What would happen to them all if malevolent magic and mayhem from the yellow Pixie with gold-and-redwings replaced the gentle, good-humored nurturing from Thistle Down?
    A second bite followed the first, then a third, and pretty soon he was soaking up the last of the sauce with a piece of garlic toast—whole grain bread with soy parmesan and, he was sure, organic butter.
    “This is really good. I never thought your natural diet would have any taste at all.”
    Dusty still picked at her meal. She’d never been a big eater.
    “What’s the matter? Don’t like your own cooking?” he asked, stealing her extra piece of bread.
    “No, I like my cooking. And I like to cook, when Mom will let me. I’m looking forward to having my own kitchen and someone to cook for.”
    “Then what’s bothering you?” Chase looked around for something to drink, something with more substance than the herbal tea she had prepared for herself. He pushed back his chair, intent on making coffee. The chair legs scraped loudly on the vinyl.
    Dusty looked up startled, almost like a deer caught in a car’s