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The brief call left her a little conflicted but just for a moment.
We are all in this together. The council just wants things to run smoothly. And so do I. So does Dax for that matter.
But what was that business about Dax’s father?
She made a mental note to ask Mack about him. But not today. She had enough on her plate aside from that unsettling comment.
“Mack, I am heading out for a bit,” she said as she headed for the door.
* * *
Sometimes Bloom wonderedwhy she even had a car, her town was so small, but she jumped into her orange Mini and headed over toward the Meadow. Her mind was racing, trying to guess what on earth Dewey could have gotten up to. And at a fancy gourmet market of all places? And why had Finch felt the need to ask her to go over there and watch out for ‘fae interests’?
The Meadow was a relatively short drive, just over the river and down in the southwest of town. The moment she crossed the Bibury River it was evident things were different. It had always been that way. As soon as Crabtree Lane crossed the bridge in fact, it changed from being a simple 2 way road into a much more scenic divided thoroughfare. The space between was filled with lush flowerbeds, and even the occasional marble statuary. The part she was actually most jealous of were the roundabouts. There wasn’t a stoplight to be found in the Meadow.
After navigating a few turns, she pulled up at McKenzie’s. She instantly clocked Dax’s Range Rover as well as a few of the other pack members’ vehicles. But the cars weren’t what held her attention. Despite it being the early bloom of spring, she was more shocked by what she didn’t see. There was not a single leaf on the trees. And where there should have been rows of the market’s famous flower beds, there were only matted brown withered husks. Every plant was dead.
Ugh and it stinks!
Rotting vegetables it turns out are just as bad as rotten meat.
Gross.
She pulled her shirt collar over her nose as she walked in, passing a few other pack members who were milling about, taking statements from stunned witnesses.
She saw Clint talking to a young boy.
“And then the pasta sauce exploded!” the kid was saying excitedly. You would have thought the kid had seen the coolest thing ever from the way he was talking. “And then the broccoli started dancing!” he continued. “That was before all the vegetables turned black.”
“Right,” Clint was saying, apparently coaxing the kid to tell him what he saw. “And then that’s when the man passed out?”
“Yeah, before that, he was going crazy, like he was singing to the vegetables or something. But then they died.” He looked at Clint somewhat conspiratorially. “I don’t think that was his plan. But yeah. Then he just fell over,” the boy finished up as he shrugged his shoulders.
“Dax is inside,” Clint said. Then, as he saw her continue to search for him as she walked in, he shouted, “Produce aisle.”
She gave him a thumbs up as she dared to sniff the air inside, and headed in that direction.
What a mess.
It was more than a mess, really. But thankfully the smell was mercifully less potent inside somehow.
It felt like a tornado had swept through the store, except the shelves seemed more or less intact. But it seemed every bottle or container had burst, and the contents were festooned about the store like there had been some unbelievable party. Or food fight.
Picking her way across the front, she came to the produce section.
Carnage. Utter Carnage.Those were the only words for it.
Ugg, that smell again.
Here it was even worse than outside. It stank of death. Vegetable death. There were blackened peppers and rotting cucumbers. Some had looked like they were arranged in lines across the floor before they turned black.
“What the hell happened here?” she said under her breath.
“That’s what we are trying to figure out,” Dax said as he walked up to her. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, um, a fae friend called me. They said something had happened and that Dewey was involved?” The words were out of her mouth before she knew it.
Why not just tell him it was Finch?
