I could hear voices. Not a choir of angels or anything, don’t count me out of the game so soon. No, Jessica and Chief Little were talking with someone but at first whatever they were saying seemed fuzzy to me like my brain was playing all of it in super slow motion. The other voice belonged to a woman and it took me a moment to recognize it. She was the one who attacked me. “...should be coming out of it soon, don’t worry. It looked worse than it was and I didn’t hit him anywhere vital. We had to make it look convincing, so I can collect my pay and you don’t have to worry about someone else coming after him.”

I heard Jessica ask, “Are you sure? There was a lot of blood.”

I let my eyes flutter open and saw that I seemed to be in an ambulance with that strange woman smiling down at me. “There we go, see I told you so. Sorry about the drugging and the pain, Kid, but we needed to make your death convincing to anyone who might be watching. For that, we needed you to leave a good amount of blood behind and I had to coat my claws in a drug cocktail that slowed your pulse and breathing enough to make you appear dead.”

“I would have warned you, Seth, but we needed your reaction to appear genuine,” Chief Little apologized. “Seth, allow me to introduce Surie Rourke. She’s a bounty hunter and…”

“A Demon,” I finished as my eyes went wide and I lurched to sit up in the stretcher I was on, causing pain to shoot through my midsection. Between the pain and being still mostly encased in a body bag, getting up wasn’t easy either.

“Half Demon,” Surie clarified before placing a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Easy, Kid, we just got you patched up, don’t go bleeding on us again. You’re already going to have to take it easy from the blood you did lose and until the drugs are completely out of your system.”

“But Demons want me dead,” I said uncertainly, trying very hard not to shrink back in fear.

The half-Demon shook her head. “One group of Demons wants you dead, Kid. Demons don’t usually agree on anything unilaterally, there’s too much infighting and power games. I don’t usually associate with full-blooded Demons unless there’s a paycheck in it and the target has done something to deserve being dead. Sometimes I help the PDA with cases like yours where an innocent Paranormal needs their death faked so they can be quietly relocated. I get the bounty and you get them off your back, it's win-win.”

Chief Little nodded in agreement. “We allowed some people to witness your death and now we’re making like we’re trying to cover it up like we normally would. We’ll feed the news some bullshit story about gang violence and since you’re technically a Paranormal there’s nothing unusual about us coming to claim your body after such an incident, especially since we already had people on the scene.”

“So, what now?” Jessica asked, her ears twitching in worry.

“Now you both go to a safe house for a few days while we let this play through the news and make sure that the Demons have Seth crossed off their list. We’ll need to work out a new identity for Seth so he can travel too,” Chief Little replied.

After Surie had made sure we weren’t being followed she left us to contact someone about collecting my bounty and I was able to change clothes at Werehouse Imports and Exports, the business that served as a cover for various PDA installations across the country. While I was doing that Chief Little arranged for a safe house and an escort so that Jessica and I could lay low for a few days before going to our final destination, wherever that was. Then once those arrangements were made they had gotten Jessica and me to put on what clothes we had for cold weather, drove us to the airport, and put us on a helicopter with a woman who I assumed was the agent who would act as our escort.

Jessica was a nervous wreck and I wasn’t doing much better as we rode in the helicopter on the way to the safe house. I was trying to hide my grief and fear for her sake, but I knew that I probably wasn’t doing a very good job. I was clutching Jessica’s hand so tightly that both of us were white-knuckled. I still couldn’t believe that Dad was dead and I was on a hit list. A Demon hit list. And now we had faked my death and there had just been too much going on for me to process.

“Do you think that your Mom will take in both of us?” Jessica’s whispered question made me jump a bit. Yeah, I was a little on edge, but you probably would be too in my place. She had been crying again, her eyes were all puffy and she was sniffling. I couldn’t blame her. Dad was dead and because we had to leave home for my safety we couldn’t even go to the funeral. Add to that that we might be able to move in with some woman we’d never met before and I felt like crying too. If I didn’t have to be strong for Jess I probably would have.

I sighed and shrugged, wincing at the pain it caused underneath my bandages. “I don’t know,” I told her honestly, whispering back. “I’ve never met the woman. I didn’t even know her name or that she’s apparently a Paranormal, much less that she’s alive and Dad knew how to contact her.” I was kinda pissed at my father for keeping that from me all these years, but I would have gladly forgiven him if he could just come back to us. He wasn’t going to though and until I was sure that my mother was going to take Jessica in as well, all we had was one another.

Dammit, this was getting me thinking about my Dad again, when I was trying really hard not to. I wanted to know more about this safe house that we were going to, and about my mysterious mother that Chief Little was trying to contact too. I used to think that she was human and that I just wasn’t Fey enough to develop Fey abilities during puberty and since I didn’t Manifest like a lot of other Paranormals do in adolescence.

I never knew my mother, and Dad didn’t like to talk about her, so I never really knew for sure if she was human or some kind of Paranormal like my dad and Jessica. Now I knew, and I was going to live with her. She was a Paranormal, but what kind, and what did that make me?

Unfortunately, the pilot and the woman sent to guard us weren’t much help in the answer department. The former was concentrating on flying, which I was extremely grateful for. As for the latter, she just quietly and morosely watched us for the most part and kept looking around for danger as if something could actually attack us thousands of feet in the air.

At least our escort, whose name was Merriwynd, was a Fey so that made Jessica and me fairly comfortable around her. She had long pointed ears, crystal blue eyes with slit pupils, and long strawberry blonde hair. She could have been full-blooded if not for the eyes, and they had caught my attention since it was an unusual eye color for a Fey. Usually, full-bloods had eyes in various shades of green, brown, or amber.

The reason most people refer to ‘elves’ like Merriwynd as Fey and the cousin varieties by their own various species names is because the traditional hardline Fey don’t want to accept being called a lesser term while ‘Fey’ gets used as an umbrella term, they have too much pride. Hell, they could barely stand being lumped in under the ‘Paranormal’ classification. Don’t get me wrong, they don’t hate their ‘lesser Fey’ cousins. In fact, the opposite is true. They see them as something special because they are even more connected with nature than the Fey themselves are, that’s why Dad took in Jessica.

Our Fey escort didn’t look much older than us but as I’ve said before, with Fey appearances can be deceiving. We were actually pretty sure that Jessica was older than me but she looked like she was maybe sixteen or seventeen. Merriwynd on the other hand looked to be in her early twenties but the way that she spoke and how she carried herself made me think that she was far older.

Not that she had said much. Merriwynd either wasn’t much of a talker or didn’t like having to protect two kids. The only things that she had really told us since we took off were her name and that the safe house was somewhere near Whistler, which was why we needed to dress warmly. There was something familiar about her, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on whether it was her name or something else.

A short time later the pilot called over his shoulder that we were lowering our altitude and would be landing in a few minutes. I looked out the window and saw that we were descending toward a cabin set in a carpet of thick white powder. Living in Vancouver you don’t really see snow often unless you head to Whistler or some of the other ski resorts in the mountains to the north. I couldn’t remember seeing any up close since before we found Jessica.

Once we had landed Merriwynd had us grab our suitcases, while she grabbed her own, and we slogged through the snow to the cabin, dragging our luggage. Jessica had enough bags that we needed to make two trips, but it didn’t take too long. By the time we were back from the second trip, Merriwynd had entered a security code in a keypad beside the door and quickly ushered us inside the cabin. Inside it was small, cozy, and rustic with little more than a fireplace, a wood stove, a couch, a fridge and freezer, and two bedrooms.

It seemed like the moment we closed the cabin door the helicopter took off and Merriwynd started talking. “I’m here as your escort and my job is to keep us all alive and safe. If I give you an order follow it because it’s probably for your own good. I am not however your nanny or maid, nor is this a prison. While we’re here I figure that we’ll all contribute with cooking and cleaning, and if you want to go out and enjoy the snow feel free, but don’t stray far from the cabin. I will be watching you every minute that you’re not safe inside this cabin.”

We took a look around the cabin, Merriwynd because she wanted to make sure everything was secure and Jessica and me to get the lay of the land. There were only two bedrooms, but Merriwynd settled that situation by claiming the couch so she could react faster if somebody tried to get inside who shouldn’t be.

I didn’t bother unpacking my suitcases, I just opened them and kept them near the bed in case I needed anything. Jessica though was hanging all of her clothes or putting them in drawers. She usually wasn’t a neat freak so I figured that she was trying to keep herself busy and distracted. Yup, her ears were twitching again. “I… Jess… it’ll be okay,” I said to her, but I wasn’t really sure if I was trying to convince her or myself.

“Yeah, sorry Seth, I just…. y’know, figured I should put everything away properly so it doesn’t all wrinkle. A lot of my stuff is silk or satin so I should take proper care of it like Dad keeps telling…” She stopped herself from finishing that sentence. Like most Fey and their various cousins, Jessica and Dad had both shared an acute allergy to most synthetic cloth materials so most of the clothes that they bought had to be silk, hemp, wool, or at least 95% pure cotton and with only natural dyes used. That could be both tricky and expensive so it had been a good thing that Dad had a decent job to buy clothes for them both at shops that catered to Paranormals with special needs.

Apparently, Jessica’s aborted comment had gotten her thinking about Dad again as well. She turned away and tried to make it look like she was focused on unpacking and putting her clothes away but I could hear her sniffling and see her ears twitching atop her head. I quickly crossed the room and wrapped her up in a hug. “It’ll be oka…”

“You keep saying that! Dad is gone and we’re on the run! How is it going to be okay?!” she shouted as she turned toward me with her anger, grief, and pain contorting her face in a way that broke my heart as much as losing Dad did.

I could see in her eyes that she immediately regretted her outburst so I just wrapped my arms around her again and held her tighter. “Because you still have me, silly rabbit. That won’t ever change and nobody is going to break us apart. No matter what I’ll always be your brother,” I promised. I held her tightly and protectively in my arms until she stopped crying and then I left her to her distraction. It’s almost funny how that one little promise would become impossible for me to keep, at least the last part.

When I returned to the living room I saw that Merriwynd had opened her pair of suitcases on the coffee table. I was surprised to see that less than half of the space had been occupied by clothes. She had already removed a pair of long curved swords, a collapsible bow, a quiver of arrows, a gun, and a pair of knives. Now she was in the process of placing each and every one of those weapons somewhere upon her body, where they would be accessible if she needed them.

One thing that we discovered quickly about Merriwynd was that she might be all business, but she was not cold-hearted. Like most Fey, she had a soft spot for her distant cousins in the Fey family and that included Jessica and even me since I might look human but I did have some Fey blood. She took the first turn for cooking and made us all a vegetarian stir-fry and I think she had figured out that Jess needed a distraction to keep from thinking about Dad.

After we had finished washing the dishes from our lunch she gave Jess a long look and said, “You need to learn to defend yourselves. You’re a Púca so you should be able to keep up with me. Let’s start with some basic hand-to-hand.” Then she had us help her move some of the furniture to make room to do just that.

An hour later I was getting bored from watching them. I’d have joined in but I never would have been able to keep up with either of them, they were just too fast and agile. Jessica was getting just what she needed though, distraction and a chance to burn off some of her frustration and anger over the loss of Dad and our current situation.

When they finally decided to call it quits for the afternoon I was ready to do just about anything else. I could sympathize with Jess more too. I had had far too much time to think, about Dad and about everything that had happened since we had gotten the call from the hospital the day before. It felt like my heart was being shattered into a million pieces and I knew that I couldn’t afford to fall apart right then.

I was curious about Merriwynd as well though. For some reason, she was very familiar to me and I couldn’t place why or from where. And whenever we mentioned Dad or tried to avoid mentioning him she looked as hurt as we were. So as we all sat down so that she and Jess could take a post-workout rest I had to ask, “Did you know our Dad? I mean you probably saw each other in passing since he worked with the PDA too, but was there more than that? I mean, I keep thinking that I’ve met you before.”

“I don’t work for the PDA but you have met me before,” the Fey said with a sad shake of her head. “You were very young then, so I wasn’t sure if you’d remember your Aunt Merry. Your father and I were close growing up. We weren’t related but we grew up as siblings, much like you and Jessica. We grew up among the Fey, but we were both different and that brought us even closer together.”

What do you mean? You look like a Fey to me,” Jessica asked in confusion.

“Blue isn’t a normal eye color for Fey, Jess,” I told her.

Merriwynd shrugged and nodded. “Your father and I were both only half-Fey. His mother was human and he ended looking mostly human as well and had barely any Fey abilities. My mother was a Sylph, one of the Air elementals, and I ended up with all of the Fey looks and most of the abilities but my eyes are blue and I ended up aligned to the Air element rather than Wood like other Fey. We were both accepted but at the same time we were outcasts too and we really relied on one another.”

“Is that why you both came to the Material Plane?” Jess asked.

“Yes, your father could fit in here and I could too as long as I used a glamour. We met Seth’s mother not long after arriving in Toronto and we all became very close.” Merriwynd explained before turning her azure gaze toward me once again and letting out a long sigh. “When you were born your mother sent you off with your father to keep you safe and she went elsewhere to start over while I stayed with her to provide protection. I visited a few times when you were little to see you and Dairen and so your mother would know that you were doing okay, but I haven’t had much time since she and her partner started up the new business ten years ago. As soon as we heard about Dairen’s death and the hit list I came to protect you until we could get you home.”

“Why didn’t she come to visit herself? Why didn’t I even know she existed until now?!” I snapped angrily.

“Because you would have been in danger,” she replied calmly. “People would have used you as a hostage against your mother if they knew you existed. You’re old enough to realize that danger now and we will take precautions to keep you and Jessica safe. At least you never Manifested, and it seems unlikely now, but I’ll have to warn you that your mother’s lifestyle may be unsettling to you at first.”

“Me and Jess? So you think that she’ll take both of us in?” I asked hopefully, my anger momentarily forgotten. Though I had to wonder just who and what my mother was and why people would try to use me against her. Was I just making my way out of the frying pan to land in the fire?

“Yes, she’s known about Jessica since Dairen took her in and she’s been receiving updates from him about both of you. Report cards, photos, and even Jessica’s acting endeavors, your dad sent everything he could whenever he could through a mutual friend. Jessica is a sister to you and your mother will gladly take her in. She may not have been able to be there for you in person until now, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want to. She’s watched you both grow up from afar and she’s eager to meet you both in person,” Merriwynd assured us.

It sounded good, but the fact that she seemed reluctant to say my mother’s name had me on edge. She also didn’t say where exactly my mother was so I still had no clue where we were going to be going and didn’t know much about my absentee mother other than that she existed. It was getting a little infuriating. “Who and what is my mother? Why all of this secrecy, and why would people try to use me against her?” I pressed insistently.

She shook her head. “It’s better that you don’t know until we get there. I haven’t found any listening devices in this “safe” house, but I would rather not risk it until I am certain that we are safe to freely discuss it. Dairen trusted Edward Little so I am sure that he has earned that trust, but I do not know him and I cannot completely entrust your safety, or your mother’s, to someone who I don’t know and trust completely. This is why I asked to escort you rather than one of his agents and I will not feel that the two of you or your mother’s identity will be safe until we are at home.”

“And you won’t tell us where that is either?” I asked, already suspecting what her answer would be.

“Not until we are safely there,” Merriwynd replied carefully. She wasn’t going to budge on the topic and I couldn’t really blame her since it seemed that she was worried about our safety.

I needed to get out and clear my head, all this brooding and asking questions that I wasn’t going to get answers to wasn’t helping my mood and if I started to look depressed or unsure then Jessica would be sure to pick up on it and start feeling depressed too. Maybe Jess was right about a distraction keeping our mind off things and as it happened we had a big white field full of distractions just outside the door. “Do you mind if I get some fresh air?” I asked.

“Sure, but we all stick together, no getting out of my sight, even for a second,” the Fey woman responded after a moment.

We got our jackets, boots, and gloves on and stepped back out into the cold crisp mountain air. It was snowing heavily so the view wasn’t great but for some reason, I felt so much better as we just stood outside with the snow falling around us. It was strange, but I felt like this was where I belonged for some reason. I gleefully tossed a snowball at Jessica and she squealed as it thwacked her in the back of the head and split apart, some partially melting as it made its way down the back of her neck. She tossed one back and hit me in the shoulder and then it was on.

Sometime later we were laughing and breathing heavily from our snowball fight, all of our problems momentarily forgotten, and I fell onto my back into the snow and sighed as I looked up at the snow falling down on me from above. My dad used to tell me that as Fey we were deeply connected to nature, that we were part of it, but I had never felt that connection before. I tried, but I sometimes worried that I just wasn’t Fey enough for it. Now I had that connection. It was this perfect moment where I felt like I was at one with the snow and ice around me.

It was the most intensely serene that I had ever felt… until the screaming began. At first, I didn’t even realize that it was me. My body felt like it was being ripped apart from the inside out. Hot flashes and cold shivers took turns pulsing through my entire being and every muscle in my body locked up as my bones and joints were popped, pulled, and twisted and agony became my new best friend.

“Seth! Omigod what’s wrong with him?!” I heard Jessica’s voice scream from the very edge of my senses.

It seems that sometimes one language just doesn’t have enough swear words. Merriwynd seemed to agree as she let out an impressive litany of Fey swear words and then went on in English. “Fuck! Shit! She’s Manifesting! Why now of all times?! Her element just had to be Ice, didn’t it?! Quickly, Jessica! We need to get those clothes off of her!”

“She?! Her?! Wait, Seth is Manifesting?!” Jess’s voice squealed uncertainly.

If Merriwynd answered her I didn’t hear what she said, I was too busy fainting from the pain of my entire skeleton being rearranged. It was the burning feeling that awoke me. I probably hadn’t been out long since I could feel Jess and Merriwynd pulling at my jacket sleeves. It wasn’t near fast enough.

I knocked Merriwynd and Jessica over in my haste as I jumped up to start tearing off my clothes screaming, “Owowow!! Get’em off!!!” Everywhere that my clothes touched me it felt like my skin was on fire and I instinctively knew that they were the cause. I pulled off my gloves and that seemed to ease the burning of my hands so I stripped off my jacket next and then the boots, socks, pants, and even my underwear. The only thing that hadn’t felt like it was burning me alive had been my cotton t-shirt.

I just knelt there like that in the snow for a moment. It seemed to help ease the burning in my lower legs so I dropped and rolled through the snow, feeling sweet relief wherever it touched. “Are you crazy, it’s like minus twenty out here!” Jess was shouting, but I didn’t care, it didn’t feel cold to me and it was helping to ease my burning skin.

I raised my hands to the sky to look at my arms, afraid that I had been set on fire and horribly burned or something. There was a blotchy redness, like the rashes that Jessica or Dad got when they wore something not made from natural fibers. It seemed to be fading though and I thought that the snow might have something to do with that as red blotchiness faded to alabaster-white skin on slender feminine hands and arms.

Now, in my head, I knew that this should be raising alarms, but I felt so nice now that the pain and irritation of the rash were fading. I felt so right, like before that moment I had spent every minute of my life slowly becoming something that I shouldn’t be. Now I wasn’t becoming, I was, and what I was felt so good. I was comfortable, content, and truly myself for the first time ever.

Wait, there was one thing wrong. It was my shirt. I was still wearing it because it had been the only piece of clothing that hadn’t been burning me but it felt wrong and uncomfortable like it was unnecessary and annoying, enough so that I could feel a surge of anxiety about it welling up inside my chest. I really needed to take it off. I started pulling it off and it got caught on my breasts.

Wait, breasts? Those were new. They felt really nice though, especially when I touched them and for a moment I got lost in caressing them and playing with my nipples. Curious, I finished removing my shirt and began to run my hands over the rest of my body, it was so nice and smooth and that place between my legs was kind of warm and wet and it gave me more of those wonderful feelings until I shivered in pleasure.

Oh wait, I wasn’t alone. I could sense two other women and they smelled so nice. I turned to smile at them, biting my lip in need, and I twirled a strand of my long white hair around my finger as I looked up at them. “They’re so pretty, I wonder if they would be interested in…”

“What’s wrong with him… her?” Jessica’s voice inquired, interrupting that train of thought.

“Apparently she’s a Snow Nymph, and since she just Manifested and isn’t sleeping it off she’s probably going to be running on instinct for a little bit while her mind adjusts to her new body and nature,” the pretty Fey told Jessica. “Don’t worry about the cold it won’t bother her, and the snow seems to be helping her rash, but try not to touch her. She could get overwhelmed and do something she might regret later when she’s thinking more clearly. At least she seems to have some restraint.”

“You call that restraint?!” The Púca’s finger pointed to where I was using my fingers to try to generate those nice feelings between my legs again.

“Well, we’re warm bodies and she hasn’t jumped on either of us yet, so yeah I’m going to call that restraint. Especially since for Nymphs the general rule of thumb for having sex is ‘Anyone, anywhere, anytime.’ Nymph is the root word for Nymphomaniac for a reason. She should be resting though, Manifesting can be exhausting and she went through a pretty major change,” the Fey woman explained.

Jessica’s ears twitched and her nose wrinkled in agitation. It was so cute and as nice as the feelings that I was sparking between my legs with my fingers were, I felt like I needed more as she asked, “So what do we do then?”

“She’d probably be sleeping if she hadn’t had that allergic reaction to her clothes causing her so much pain. She’s too excited right now though and if we leave her doing that she could be at it a while or lose some of that restraint. If we can get her to relax somehow though she’ll probably pass right out. Then she should feel more her normal self when she wakes,” Merriwynd suggested.

“Somehow, I doubt that Seth is going to feel anything like his normal self when he… she wakes up,” Jessica muttered before letting forth an exasperated sigh. “Okay, it’s time to pull out the big guns. This usually puts us both to sleep when one of us is feeling anxious.” She shrank out of her clothes and then her rabbit-self extracted herself from the pile to hop toward me.

Oooh, she was such a pretty little white bunny and she looked so soft. She wrinkled her nose adorably as she bounced into my lap and I just couldn’t resist stroking that soft fur. She was so soft and warm and cuddly. I picked her up and held her against my chest as I petted her. It was so relaxing and soon I fell asleep with her held lovingly in my arms.