Tall, Dark and Troll MB#2 PAPERBACK

I tapped my wand against the newspaper by my espresso machine. The headline on today’s Mystic Mystery caught my eye.

“So who is Thaddeus Trevor Thurburg?”

“Only the most eligible of bachelors in the fae community,” Nia grinned, then dumped a fresh bag of espresso beans into the grinder. “These smell yummy. Is this your own roast?”

I shook my head. “Nope. Even though I can get the espresso roast dialled in with the new roaster, I can’t roast enough to keep up with all the pixies and their caramel macchiatos. The medium roasts are coming out good. I could be a lot better at roasting them, though. Dark roast, however, is still driving me batty. That’s why I keep ordering roasted coffee in bulk.”

“You’ll get it figured out,” Nia smiled. I wished I had her confidence in me. Pixies seemed almost innocent with trust and confidence in others. “We always get tourists who want dark roast.”

“I like a good medium-dark roast myself,” I said. 

“What’s the difference?” Nia only drank caramel macchiatos. As did most of the pixies. They were more keen on sugary drinks than on coffee tastes and brews.

“The longer we roast the beans, the darker they get. That changes their taste. Light to medium roasts have a distinctly different taste than dark roasts.” I pointed toward where our three carafes of coffee sat under the filter brewers. “Too many of the older generations grew up on very dark French roasts. The younger crowd are mostly the ones that favour the fruity, floral notes of medium and light roasts.”

Aunt Rose bustled in with a fresh tray of pastries. “Village folks have been asking when you’re going to do your first tasting, Cariad.” 

“When I get my roaster dialled in well enough to be proud of the brews.”

“You’ll get there in no time,” she smiled and whisked back into the kitchen.

“Not until she learns to smell the fire,” Punkin, my brownish tabby cat, called from under a table. “I keep telling her she’s going to burn them, and she does.”

“I’ll let you do the next batch, then, smarty-nose. Just what I needed, a furry familiar who tells me how to roast coffee.”

“You won’t let me touch your roaster or beans,” he grumped. “And when you don’t listen to the pwca, the pwca doesn’t do what you want.” Pwca was a Welsh word for a house-elf type of fae, which he was. An annoying pwca turned into an even more annoying cat by my other great aunty, the queen of the fae, whom I had never met.

I peered under the table. “Funny, you look like a cat. A very bossy cat. Your coat is getting more coffee coloured, too. Have you been sneaking beans again?”

“Thbpbpbpbpbtt!” sounded from under the table.

“How do you make that sound with a cat face?” I glanced under the table again. Punkin licked one of his paws, then winked at me.

“Never mind… The better question is: how did I get stuck with a snarky cat for a familiar?”

“Ask your aunt. The grumpy one with a crown. Rose had nothing to do with it.” He was right. My aunt the fae queen had turned him into a cat, and made him my familiar.

Nia bent to check the coolers under the espresso station.

“Cream and milk are stocked; grinder bins are full. Anything else, Ebrel?”

“We’ll have the pixies in here shortly,” I reminded her. “Don’t forget to prep some caramel tornados.”

“You said tornado!” That was her word for a macchiato. I had stopped correcting her.

“It is inevitable when dealing with pixies.” I pointed at the magical newspaper. “What’s so special about this Thad or whoever he is?”

“T3, for all of his initials,” Mia called from where she slid scones and pastries into the display case by the order station. She and Nia were sisters. “His mother is a gwraig annwn.”

“A what?” Must be another Welsh term I hadn’t learned yet.

“A water sprite,” Aunt Rose explained on yet another trip from the kitchen. She looked every bit like the British grandmum one would expect on the telly. Glasses on a neck chain, perched and forgotten atop her head. A teal apron around her waist. She wore a long-sleeved floral-print dress and sensible thick-soled shoes.

“A water spout? Or sprite?”

“A sprite, Cariad. We’ve got a few varieties in this part of the world. Some say his mum is a siren. If she were, his father would have drowned. Thaddeus Thurburg, the second is still very much alive. Though T3’s mother has disappeared.”

“How so? Foul play?”

“No, Cariad.” Aunt Rose set another tray of pastries next to Mia. “There be a rule of three attached to each water fae marriage. When a sprite consents to marry a land dweller, it will always be conditional. Usually it be the husband striking or saying a cross word three times to his new wife. Upon the third, she is free to return to her pond or lake and resume life as a sprite.”

“Sad to see the children abandoned. With my mom being a hippy in the California deserts, I can sympathise.”

“Your mum needs to be away from the ghosts,” Rose added.

“I understand. Still, it wasn’t easy watching her leave when I was little.”

“T3 is not married,” Mia had a dreaming tone to her voice. A girl with a celebrity crush. “He’s gone missing. Went out for a week of solo hiking and climbing in the mountains of Bavaria and disappeared. Every fae girl who isn’t married is hoping he will show up on her doorstep with flowers in hand.”

“With a name like Thaddeus Trevor Thurburg the Third, I assume he’s got wealth and good looks?”

“Of course,” Nia said. She had six paper cups set out and was spooning caramel sauce into each.

“Who’s talking about T3?” another high-pitched voice called from the kitchen. Rachel the pixie led the flight of our tourist delegation this morning. Five pixies fluttered about the cafe, their bodies only three or four inches in height, with silky gossamer wings beating like hummingbirds. They would fly out into the surrounding countryside, change into human form, and wait at areas, like petrol stations, where tourists on holiday often became confused. In human form, the pixies were always charming, and their directions to the lost travellers involved a “shortcut” through our village. That helped our local economy.

“Is T3 coming through Misty Valley?” Rachel had that same dreamy tone to her voice.

“If only,” Mia sighed. “We girls can dream, can’t we?”

“Would you leave Yerdleh for him?” one of the other pixies in the group piped up. All the fliers landed and morphed into their human sizes. Rachel shot her a look of daggers over her shoulders. The coloured streaks in her hair sizzled red for a second. Red was the pixie colour of anger. Her hair settled back into her normal colouring, but her cheeks were red with embarrassment now.

“Who said anything about the mayor?”

“If you were my sister,” Nia twisted the porta-filter into the espresso machine’s left side and hit the brew button, “Mum would pluck your wings for going after either of them. Mayor or T3. She says a fae with money is just a man to avoid. Get a hardworking one that uses his magic for craft and value.”

Rachel reached back and rubbed her left shoulder. I had no idea where a pixie’s wings went when they took on human form. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“Your mum is mean.” Rachel kept rubbing. “If she plucked your wings as often as she threatened, they’d stop growing back in.” She turned away from the pixie who’d called her out for her not-so-secret relationship with Yerdleh Yardley, Misty Valley’s mayor.

“Does she really pluck your wings? That sounds painful.” Even I rubbed my shoulder when I asked.

“It is very painful.” Mia’s words set the other pixies nodding. “But the week where new ones grow back in is worse. We can’t fly and have to walk everywhere. One of the few times we stay big all day. Tiring but necessary. Rachel’s right, though. Damage your wings too often and they don’t grow back fast. Mum knows that, and it makes her threats even more serious.”

“Owww!” I rubbed harder on my own shoulders. I wasn’t even a pixie. Just a normal girl. Well, a run-of-the-mill fae. A human who could do magic.

“The only pixie mum hasn’t threatened was cousin Twizzie from Los Angeles,” Mia said. “She’s got a gimpy wing, and can’t fly straight. But, she’s a better witch than any of our family.”

Nia nodded. “Poor Twizzie. Not even a moult corrects her wings.”

“Your wings fall off?”

“About once a year. Normal moults are bad enough,” she pushed her pitcher of cream under the wand, letting the steam work its mundane magic on the milk. “We sell them to the apothecary and make a little money that way. But no one wants to be seen walking into the chemist. We all know that means you won’t be flying for a week.”

“Why would a pharmacist want pixie wings?”

“Lots of spells and potions use them,” Aunt Rose said as she brought out her tub of clotted cream. It went into the cooler next to the pastry case. “Pixies have youth, and energy. Many elixirs can use those qualities.”

“Usually for energy or potions for flight,” Rachel explained. “You tall fae always want to do more, or soar with the birds. We keep telling you that birds are nice but flighty. All they care about is food and laying eggs.”

“Watch out for hawks,” Mia added.

“Oh, don’t get me started on hawks,” one pixie said. She took the first caramel macchiato Nia set out. She sipped it, despite the steam. “Ooooo! So good. Diolch, Nia!”

“I hadn’t thought of predator birds and pixies. Makes sense that the large birds would mistake you for easy prey.”

“The owls have a collective long-term memory. They’ve learned to help us, not to harm us,” Rachel said, taking the next macchiato. “Diolch, Nia. But the hawks don’t want to remember.”

“Like Bent Beak,” another pixie added. “My dad popped him a good one when he tried to snatch me sis. Half the pixies in the forest chased old Bent Beak away. Feathers everywhere. Took him a month before he could fly again.”

Rachel nodded. Bent Beak must be a notorious predator of pixies in the valley. “And he tried to grab another youngling a week after he got his feathers back. Hawks never learn. Only near the village where we have magical wards, are we safe. That’s why we try to fly in pairs with our wands in hand if we venture far. Getting grabbed by a hawk will break your wings off, at best.”

“At least the owls help,” Nia set the last two macchiatos on the counter. “I had one follow me home when I had to run an errand to the other end of the valley. Bent Beak didn’t come down at all. No one wants to tangle with an owl.”

“You paid the owl back, didn’t you, Cariad?” Aunt Rose asked.

“Yes, ma’am. I stopped by her tree each week all last winter and put a warm spell on a rock she had in her nest. She watches for me now, and we fly together when we can.”

“Hey,” Nia glanced across the room, counting the pixies. “Where’s Fizzy?”

“She didn’t get home last night,” Rachel shrugged. “I stopped by her mum’s tree this morning. Mum called the constable to file a missing pixie report.”

“Oh, I hope Bent Beak didn’t get her.” I shuddered at the thought of what a hawk would do to one of our pixies.

Rachel must have seen my shudder. “If he tried, Fizzy knows to go big. Gravity sucks eggs when we go big while flying, but the birds can’t hold us.”

“How do you stop the plummet back to earth?” The entire experience sounded painful.

“If she had her wand out,” Nia said, “she could cast a slow fall spell on herself. Fizzy doesn’t always think about flying with her wand out, though. She’s usually too busy dreaming of tall guys like T3 coming to whisk her away to their private islands.”

“A girl can dream, I guess,” I smiled at the girls. If that was what the pixies wanted. I preferred running the coffee bar.

“Door is about to open,” Punkin called. “Everyone act human.”

“Not you, Fuzzbutt. You act like a cat,” I glanced at the door. Beyond Punkin, I could see two silhouettes waiting to enter. “And no cats in the cafe. You know how Americans get about cat fur in their food.”

“Not all of them,” Punkin grumped, but he retreated towards the kitchen at the rear of the building. From there he would head up the stairs to my former bedroom. He’d probably take the teleport disc back to my room at Castle Raven and sleep the morning away. “I love the nice aunties who give a squeal and share their scones and cream with me.”

“Stop eating their scones,” I pointed a finger at him. “They paid for their pastries.”

“Most of them purchase a second. I’m helping with base sales.” He twitched his tail and rubbed the wall on his way around the corner right as the magic on the door lock clicked open.

A youngish couple, late twenties or early thirties, charged through the door. They were bundled up against the chill of the Welsh morning.

“Please tell us you have internet here,” the man called in a British accent. “Can’t get a bloody signal anywhere on this side of the island. Need to get this video uploaded.” He slid a backpack off and pulled out a laptop computer. “And call the local constable. We got vid of a dead body under a rockfall out in the valley.”

“Female?” I asked, my thoughts going to the reports of Fizzy gone missing.

“Male, we think,” the girl next to him said. “We were on the cliff above and didn’t get that good of a look, though.”