We didn’t have a bucket or pot for the tree, so Falin turned another clump of Spanish moss into a burlap sack.
“Why not just glamour it into a pot?” I asked, as I helped him wrap the tree’s root ball.
He shrugged. “Masters of glamour can create objects from nothing and reality will accept the object, at least until the magic thins at dawn or sunset. But most of us need a base object to change. The fewer changes we make, the stronger the glamoured object’s place in reality.”
So the fiberlike moss changed into a fiber-based textile was easier for reality to accept. It made sense. And it was something I’d never been told before. Of course, I was still at the stage of trying to learn to use glamour to cover my telltale fae glow, so creating objects was rather out of my ability range. The knowledge did give me an even scarier appreciation for Glitter though. No wonder it burned the user out if the hallucination didn’t kill them. The hallucinations-given-life weren’t transformations of a base material, but pure glamour fueled by the victims own life energy.
We carried the tree between us, back to where the path and the pond met. I had no doubt Falin could have carried it himself, even with the weight of the soil packed around the roots, but I think having me help was his way of ensuring I was close. It also allowed him to keep his dagger out and bared in his free hand, just in case Jenny made another appearance.
As we walked, I spotted a bit of purple near the edge of the pond. My phone.
Falin wouldn’t let me approach the water—not that I really wanted to—so I stayed with the tree while he went and scooped the phone out of the muck. It was a little muddy, but it had been spared a trip into the water, so functioning. Of course, it still didn’t have signal.
As we waited for the FIB agents, I did the best I could to clean up the phone with the edge of the blanket. While we’d been digging, I’d worked up a sweat, but now that we were standing still in the shadow of the trees, the chill was creeping in again. Thankfully, it didn’t take much longer for the agents to arrive. Falin described Jenny to them, and two went into the woods to search for the bogeyman, the third staying to watch for any sign of her at the pond.
After that we were free to leave. Falin wanted to take the amaranthine sapling straight to Faerie, but what I really wanted was a hot shower and a change of clothes.
“You don’t need me there to give the tree to the queen,” I said as we trudged up the path. The sapling may not be very big, but the longer we carried it, the heavier it got. I was breathing heavy before we made it around the first curve in the path. “Drop me off at home first.”
He frowned at me. “The trip to Faerie would be good for you. Nearly drowning took a lot out of you. You’d waste less energy by recovering in Faerie.”
And he’d been ordered to drag me back by force if necessary if I seemed to be fading too much. The queen didn’t want to risk losing even theoretical access to a planeweaver. I wanted to disagree, but I was both shivering and sweating with the effort of carrying half the tree, and I had no extra breath to argue. Falin sheathed his dagger and took the strap I’d been hauling, lifting the entire weight of the tree alone. He’d been heavily wounded yesterday, but he wasn’t even breathing hard.
I didn’t fight to help carry the tree. I was too busy keeping my feet from dragging.
We’d reached the parking lot when a shrill beeping issued from my phone.
I had signal.
I dug the phone out of my pocket. The smeared mud residue made it hard to read the screen, but I had a voice mail I’d missed by fewer than five minutes. It was probably a potential client who I wouldn’t be able to schedule an appointment for, at least not until this case was solved and I had my independent status secured. Falin was loading the sapling into the car, and I considered listening to the message later, maybe after I felt a little less shaky and had caught my breath, but I didn’t have anything else to do.
The signal kept dropping, so it took me two tries to get the message to play.
“Lady Craft,” a vaguely familiar voice said in the recording, “you told me to call if the hobgoblin returned to the bar. He’s here now,” he said. Then the message ended.
I glanced at the time stamp. It had now been ten minutes since the message was left. Oh please let Tommy Rawhead still be there. I hit redial on the number.
“Eternal Bloom, come in and let us enchant you,” the voice that answered said.
Cute. But hopefully not accurate.
The person who’d answered was male, but I wasn’t sure if it was the bartender who’d called me.
“Yes, hi. May I speak to . . .” I trailed off. The fae had never given me his name. Would it be rude to ask for the satyr who tended bar? “Uh, well, that is, this is Alex Craft. I’m returning a call from this number.”