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"I—," Kaye started, but Ellen cut her off.
"No," she said. "I'm glad. I guess I always figured that so long as you were happy, then I was an okay mother no matter how strange our lives got. But you weren't happy, were you? So, okay, Jersey didn't work out, but things will be different in New York. This place is mine, not some boyfriend's. And I'm bartending, not just doing gigs. I'm turning things around. I want another chance.”
"Mom." Kaye half turned. "I think you should hear what I have to say before you go on.”
"About tonight?" Ellen asked. "I knew there was more to the story. You two would never attack some guy because he—”
Kaye cut her off. "About a long time ago.”
Ellen took out a cigarette from a pack on the table. She lit it off of the stove. Turning, she squinted, like she'd just noticed Kaye's skin. "Well? Shoot.”
Kaye took a deep breath. She could feel her heartbeat like it was pounding in her brain instead of her chest. "I'm not human.”
"What is that supposed to mean?" Ellen frowned.
"Your real daughter has been gone a long time. Since she was really little. Since we were both really little. They switched us.”
"What switched you?”
"There are things—supernatural things out in the world. Some people call them faeries, some people call them monsters or demons or whatever, but they exist. When the . . . the faeries took your real daughter, they left me behind.”
Ellen stared at her, the ash on her cigarette growing long enough to rain on the back of her hand. "That is complete bullshit. Look at me, Kaye.”
"I didn't know until October. Maybe I should have guessed—there were clues." Kaye felt as though her eyes were raw, as though her throat were raw as she spoke. "But I didn't know.”
"Stop. This isn't funny and it isn't nice." Ellen's voice sounded torn between being annoyed and being truly frightened.
"I can prove it." Kaye walked toward the kitchen. "Lutie-loo! Come out. Show yourself to her.”
The little faery flew down from the refrigerator to alight on Kaye's shoulder, tiny hands catching hold of a steadying lock of hair.
"I'm bored and everything stinks," Lutie pouted. "You should have taken me with you to the party. What if you had gotten drunk and fallen down again?”
"Kaye," Ellen said, her voice shaking. "What is that thing?”
Lutie snarled. "Rude! I will tangle your hair and sour all your milk.”
"She's my evidence. So that you'll listen to me. Really listen.”
"Whatever it is," Ellen said, "you're nothing like it.”
Kaye took a deep breath and dropped what glamour was left. She couldn't see her own face, but she knew how she looked to Ellen now. Eyes black and glossy as oil, skin green as a grass stain. She could see her hands, folded in front of her, her long fingers, with an extra joint that made them seem curled even when they were at rest.
The cigarette dropped from her mother's fingers. It burned the linoleum floor where it fell, the edges of the melting plastic crater glowing, the center black as ash. Black as Kaye's eyes.
"No," Ellen said, shaking her head and backing away from Kaye.
"It's me," Kaye said. Her limbs felt cold, as though all the blood in her body rushed to her face. "This is what I really look like.”
"I don't understand. I don't understand what you are. Where is my daughter?”
Kaye had read about changelings, about how mothers got their own babies back. They heated up iron pokers, threw the faerie infants on the fire.
"She's in Faerieland," Kaye said. "I've seen her. But you know me. I'm still me. I don't want to scare you. I can explain everything now that you'll listen. We can get her back.”
"You stole my child and now you want to help me?" Ellen demanded.
In pictures Kaye'd been a skinny black-eyed little thing. She thought of that now. Of her bony fingers. Eating. Always eating. Had Ellen ever suspected? Known in that kind of gut-motherly way that no one would have believed?
