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Spike shook his head. "We don't know the answer to that any more than we know why we were told to watch you."
It was staggering to Kaye to realize that there might be another Kaye Fierch, the real Kaye Fierch, off somewhere in Faerie. "You said… glamoured. Does that mean I don't look like this?"
"It's a very powerful glamour. Someone put it on to stay." Spike nodded sagely.
"What do I really look like?"
"Well, you're a pixie, if that helps." Spike scratched his head. "It usually means green."
Kaye closed her eyes tightly, shaking her head. "How can I see me?"
"I don't advise it," Spike said. "Once you pull that thing off, no one we know can put it back on that good. Just let it be until Samhain—that's when the Tithe is. Someone might figure out what you are if you go messing with your face."
"Soon it'll be off for good and you won't have to pretend to be mortal anymore if you don't want," Lutie chirped.
"If the glamour on me is so good, how did you know what I was?"
The Thistlewitch smiled. "Glamour is the stuff of illusion, but sometimes, if deftly woven, it can be more than a mere disguise. Fantastical pockets can actually hold baubles, an illusionary umbrella can protect one from the rain, and magical gold can remain gold, at least until the warmth of the magician's hand fades from the coins. The magic on you is the strongest I have seen, Kaye. It protects you even from the touch of iron, which burns faerie flesh. I know you to be a pixie because I saw you when you were very small and we lived in Seelie lands. The Queen herself asked us to look after you."
"But why?"
"Who can tell the whims of Queens?"
"What if I did want to remove the glamour?" Kaye insisted.
The Thistlewitch took a step toward her. "The ways of removing faerie magic are many. A four-leaf clover, rowan berries, looking at yourself through a rock with a natural hole. It is your decision to make."
Kaye took a deep breath. She needed to think. "I'm going to go back to bed."
"One more thing," the Thistlewitch said as Kaye rose from the bank and dusted off the backs of her thighs. "Heed the warning of your shattered eggshell. Where you go, chaos and discord will follow."
"What does that mean?"
The Thistlewitch smiled. "Time will tell. It always does."
* * *
Kaye stood on the lawn of her grandmother's house. It was dark except for the silvery moon, the moon that didn't seem anthropomorphic tonight, just a cold rock glowing with reflected light. It was the bare trees that looked alive, their twisted branches sharp arrows that might pierce her heart.
Still, she could not go inside the house. She sat in the dew-damp grass and ripped up clumps of it, tossing them in the air and feeling vaguely guilty about it. Some gnome ought to pop out of the tree and scold her for torturing the lawn.
A pixie. The word sounded so… so frolicky. It made her smile, though, to think of being magical, of having wings like Lutie, of having quick fingers like poor Gristle.
Her stomach clenched when she thought about her mother, though. Her mother, whose head she'd fished out of toilets, who dragged them from apartment to apartment and from bar to bar following some distant dream. Her mother, who once broke one of Kaye's favorite LPs because she was "sick of listening to that talentless whore." Her mother, who had never told her she was weird, had always encouraged her to think for herself, stood up for her, and never, ever told her that she was a liar.
What would her mother think if she realized that her daughter wasn't the girl she'd lived with for sixteen years? No, Ellen's baby had been boosted by quick-fingered elves.
It was just too fucked-up to dwell on.
And if she wasn't Kaye Fierch, freaky human girl, then what was she? She knew that they didn't want her to mess up the plan for Halloween, but right now, she just wanted to see what she looked like.
There were patches of clover on the lawn.
Leaning into the patch of brown, half-dead clover, she spread her fingers out and searched. There were so many, even in autumn, there had to be one with four leaves.
It was slow going in the dark, and yet none of the clover she dug through had more or less than three leaves. She was getting desperate enough to tear one of the heart-shaped leaves down the middle and find out whether this magic stuff was more symbolic or literal. Still, it wasn't like she had to find it, she only had to touch it…
Oh, that was too stupid. That could never work. Even if it did work it was still stupid.
