Page 5 of Crashing Tides

I read it over and over again. This is Mom’s handwriting, but it doesn’t make sense. I’m not supposed to have anything to do with the ocean. I was the baby in question, right? As far as I know, I don’t have any siblings. If I do, Mom has done an excellent job hiding them from me.

Not that I would put it past her. It took her two years to admit she was going through chemo. Maybe I should’ve noticed, but it wouldn’t have mattered if I did; she would’ve swept my concerns under the rug, maybe even lied. She never admits there’s a problem until it’s way too late.

I find something else among the wreckage: a gray stone about the size of a quarter, just as round but far thicker. A symbol is carved into its surface. I squint, but don’t recognize it. A rune, maybe?

I go hunting for more information about runes in Mom’s notebook, but I don’t find anything useful. This isn’t a rune as she describes in her notes. Maybe a sigil, then.

But I’m too tired to make sense of this. Already, I’m slumped against her unmade bed, my head pressed to the edge of the mattress. I should strip the sheets. I should do more laundry.

Exhaustion drags me down.

The stone grows heavy in my hand.

Chapter

Three

Six weeks to the day of Mom’s death, I dig her diploma from the locked drawer of her bedside table. Beside me are the busted remains of a lock, a crowbar, splintered pieces of wood.

I’m not exactly sure what I expect to find here. Solutions, maybe, to all the secrets she kept. Money. Diaries. Her entire life story, if I’m lucky, signed and dated.

But it’s nothing like that. Just a diploma in a scarred leather cover: Nancy May Morgenstern, 2003. Magical Studies. Halea University.

I spend a long time staring at the curling script. Mom had a degree in Magical Studies. It feels almost impossible. She’d never, ever acted anything other than human.

The fae, like the shifters, have never been anything other than elusive. I know they exist around me, in theory, but I’ve had few interactions with them over the course of my life. They don’t attend human schools. Don’t shop in human grocery stores. If any live within our town, they rarely step outside.

Mostly, they dwell deep in the wilderness, or nestled within cities. Communities are tight-knit, but there’s integration in urban areas. Downtown, I’ve watched fae businessmen waiting for the bus, walking down the street, chatting on cell phones. I try not to stare, but they’re ethereal in their beauty, all long limbs and perfect faces, with flowing hair and stern expressions.

I never know what to make of them. Some are friendly, like Avariel, who frequents one of my favorite bars and will talk my ear off about anything from sports to stocks, but others are standoffish, disinterested in my meager human existence, and I try to respect that.

To my eternal disappointment, the fae rarely perform magic in public. Many won’t lift a finger to save themselves from an oncoming runaway train, let alone a complete stranger, which has led to public resentment. What’s the point of having magic if you won’t use it for the greater good?

The argument, of course, is that magic is not to be used lightly.

Seems a bit pointless to even bother learning magic if you won’t use it, I always think.

But Mom had magic. Mom used magic, presumably, at some point. Maybe not in front of me, maybe not even in the house, but probably at some point while I was alive.

Scanning the diploma again, I come to a realization: Mom was pregnant with me when she graduated.

I put the diploma back in the drawer and lay on the floor among the wreckage.

Is it possible that my dad graduated with her? That he also attended Halea?

Fuck. Am I more than one-quarter fae? And if that’s the case, how the fuck did I not know?

In the end, I look up Halea University online, scouring the webpage until I find a single link for inquiries, then I fire off an email asking for any information they can give me about my mom.

Then I pass out for the night.

When I wake, the sun is streaming through the windows, so bright as to be nearly blinding, and there’s a dark silhouette on the edge of the bed. I blink, and it’s gone.

I sit up, trying to slow my rapidly beating heart. It’s just Jolene, I tell myself, then startle out of my skin as the doorbell rings. Bruce immediately starts barking.

I stumble downstairs and open the door to a fae woman taller than I am, dressed in a black suit. She wears her chestnut hair in a single braid.

I gawk at her, clueless.