When Libby Met the Fairies and her Whole Life Went Fae Read Online Free PDF

slowed a bit by then and she knew, now, what she needed to do. Take herself firmly in hand. And walk away. “I need a glass of water. You aren’t there. I’m going.”
    He laughed.
    She paused, but not because he’d laughed. She was wondering if she should walk around him, or through him.
    She picked around.
    Just because she knew he wasn’t real didn’t mean she had the nerve to walk right through him.
    She didn’t look back.
    She concentrated on walking at a natural pace. But she heard him.
    “Watch where you’re walking, Libby.”
    A threat?
    Her palms were sweating inside her gloves.
    It wasn’t real. Certainly not.
    What was real, unmistakably self-evident, was that she, Libby Samson, wasn’t as together as she’d thought.
    On the contrary. She was finally cracking up.

6
     
    Reached her house. Finally. The air inside felt warm, the light was yellow after the grays of the outdoors’ dusk. She’d warmed up some chicken soup for dinner and could still smell it faintly when she stepped inside.
    “Hey, Aunt Libby, c’mere, look who’s showed up!”
    Maisey.
    Her voice was coming from the living room.
    And that’s how discombobulated Libby was: her first thought was, He’s here. The little man is here, with Maisey in my living room .
    Get a grip, Libby. There is no little man.
    And it wasn’t. It was a skinny teenage boy. That would have been a goatee on his chin, Libby supposed, if he were capable of growing a real beard.
    Maisey was grinning ear-to-ear. “It’s Tyler, Aunt Libby! My boyfriend I was telling you about. He just got here!”
    “Thanks for giving us a place to stay,” Tyler said, ducking his head and shrugging in the nouveau-hippy equivalent of a handshake.
    Libby sucked in her breath. “Oh! Oh, no! No, Maisey, I never—”
    “He hitchhiked all the way from Seattle to be with me. Do you believe it?”
    “Hold it right there, you two. There is no way. No way.”
    Tyler’s shoulders drooped.
    Maisey glanced at him, then back at her aunt. Libby could almost hear the whir of the gears in Maisey’s head as she considered her options.
    She settled on appealing to pity. She’s no dummy, Maisey. “He doesn’t know anyone, Aunt Libby. He doesn’t have anywhere to go—he doesn’t even have a car.”
    Tyler, picking up on the strategy, gave Libby a lost puppy look. Perhaps they’d been rehearsing this.
    “You, however, do have a car,” Libby said to Maisey.
    Maisey nodded. “Yeah. But where would I take him?”
    “A hotel?”
    “He doesn’t have any money. Do you, Tyler?”
    He shook his head and Libby sighed heavily. “You hitchhiked from Seattle with no money?”
    “I had some when I started.” He had shoved his hands into his jeans pockets and pulled them back out again. In his left hand, a jackknife, a strip of rawhide with some glass beads strung on it, and a compass. In the other hand a few bills. “I got some left. Let’s see. Seven dollars. And some change.”
    “Where’s he going to sleep?” Libby directed this one at Maisey, whose eyes darted quickly toward the boy.
    Tyler, on the other hand, read the situation perfectly and piped up with the right answer. “On the couch, ma’am. If that’s okay with you.”
    “He knows computers!” Maisey chirped at me. “If you ever have any problems, you know, with your computer, he can—”
    “Please stay away from my computer! Both of you.” Libby pulled off her gloves angrily. “Please? It’s a work computer. It would really mess things up for me if . . . if you accidentally closed a file that I hadn’t saved or something.”
    The last thing she needed was for her computer to be turned into a gaming system. Or being permanently crippled with spyware downloaded from questionable web sites.
    “Yeah, sure, sure, ma’am.”
    Libby could feel them exchanging glances behind her back as she went to hang up her coat.
     
    ♦ ♦ ♦
     
    “Hey, babe. It’s me. Call me when you get in, okay?”
    Paul’s land line.