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Prologue
~~~~~~~~~~~~
The nightmare begins.
Pollux Strakh. Father of Andromeda Strakh. A seven-year-old child who has been attending my small private school since the fall semester started in August of this year.
Taking a deep breath, I smooth the skirt of my honeybee dress, keep my plastic smile in place, and stare at the man seated in front of my desk.
He. Is. Massive.
Probably veering near seven feet tall, which makes my decidedly average height appear somewhat below average.
Pollux’s ginormous frame swallows one of the two cheap leather chairs before me. Dark shirt. Dark jeans. Dark expression. His eyes—nearly black and piercing—haven’t lifted off me for even a second since I invited him into my office.
Those dire eyes only stared at my offered handshake when I greeted him at the front of the Noble Faith School building minutes ago.
Which is fine, of course.
I’m not exactly fond of him, after all.
“Mint?” I say in a chipper little tone that I hope masks the distaste I feel raging inside my chest. In my head, I have poisoned every mint. He will take one. And then I’ll smile wider as he slowly comes under the effects, foams at the mouth, and—
His gaze falls heavy on the candy dish I’m pushing forward, and then…then he says an actual word. “No.”
Right.
Well.
So much for my pretend poisoning plans.
At least now I know he can do more than grunt.
Given his positively cheery disposition thus far, I can tell I need to approach this situation more tactfully than I have ever tacted before in my life.
As that is the case, I allow our momentary standoff to give me time to organize my thoughts. I am notorious when it comes to getting distracted or daydreaming. (See: five seconds ago, when my brain pictured this man sliding to the floor clutching his throat, while I cackled deviously above him and began filling out adoption papers for Andromeda.)
I can’t afford to get lost in a ramble with him.
Therefore, let’s review:
Pollux Strakh is here because his daughter started going to my school two months ago. Within these past two months, I’ve not once seen her with a guardian. Willow Harding—who enrolled her—fell off the face of the planet after our brief tour prior to when the school year began. Despite not even being eight yet, Andromeda walks to school, by herself, every morning, and walks off, by herself, every afternoon. She’s worn the same clothes—a pink polo and a pair of khakis—every single day, even on the crisp autumn days that suggest winter is coming. She’s skirted all real discussion of her home life…apart from mentioning every so often how both she and her father work late.
She has been getting better lately, but for a while she behaved as though she’d never been around another child before.
She speaks entirely in fanciful stories about magical places and magical things—faeries to be exact. She frames her entire existence within the bounds of a realm known as Faerie. She swears she is a faerie.
She swears. Period. She seemed baffled when I explained to her that certain language wasn’t entirely appropriate at her age, and we had a long discussion while she sincerely and politely attempted to understand why some words belonged to grown ups.
If bad words are bad, why would anyone be allowed to use them? was the foundation of her reasoning, and she only seemed to “get it” when I told her it was a social rule.
Plainly, she then said, Ohhh, one of those human things. Gotcha.
She’s been perfectly compliant. Open to all instruction. Entirely disinterested in squabbles. Bright. Intelligent. Happy.
She has not acted like a normal child.
It took me a week to notice the patterns were a touch beyond spectrum behavior and call CPS. It took two days for them to contact me and make sure they had the correct address. It took three days for them to stop by and chat with Andromeda in private at school—which ended with them leaving pale and somewhat disoriented. Then it took two weeks with no change for me to begin calling daily.
