“No worries.” Her hands lifted in a placating gesture, the kind you’d use to soothe a skittish horse. “Personal space. Boundaries. Stranger danger. All cool, girl.”
I chewed my bottom lip, feeling like a total heel. My reluctance to be touched had nothing to do withstranger danger,but it was better for all parties involved if she believed it was.
“You know, my cousin owns a mechanic shop across town,” the elf said eventually. As she spoke, she swayed ever-so-slightly in place, shifting her weight from foot to foot like a river reed caught in the current. “Witch City Collision. They’re probably already closed for the night, but if you stop in tomorrow, tell them Moonbeam sent you. They’ll take care of you and I promise they won’t rip you off.”
“Moonbeam?”
“That’d be me.” She smiled at me. “I’m Moonbeam.”
“Your given name isMoonbeam?”
She giggled, a frothy sound that bubbled up from somewhere deep in her throat. “No, my given name is Karen. But I go by my Seelie name — Gracious Moonbeam Stardust, Maiden of the Light Court.”
I could feel my eyes widening with each word that left her mouth. I racked my brain for an appropriate response. All I could manage was a bewildered, “What’s a Seelie name?”
“You know… the Seelie and Unseelie?”
I shook my head.
“Surely you’ve head of the Faery Courts?”
“Uh…” I eyed her pointed ears a bit more closely. They didn’t look like the cheap plastic ones you’d find at a costume shop. They appeared to be genuine prosthetics, blending seamlessly into her skin. I’d never seen anything like them. “No, I can’t say that I have.”
“The Elden?” the girl prompted, growing impatient with my ignorance. She crossed two willowy arms over her chest. “The Old Ones?”
“I, uh…” I squirmed beneath her disapproving stare. “I’m not sure…”
“What about the Fair Folk?”
“No, I…”
“The Wee People Under the Hill?”
“Weepeople?”
“It means little,” she said rather tersely.
It also meant urine, but I wasn’t going to remind her of that. “Right. Of course. Got it.”
“You really know nothing of the Tuatha Dé Danann?”
I shrugged helplessly. “Nope.”
She stared at me like I was the lowest form of life, a brainless amoeba who’d just crawled from the primordial ooze. “Some people really are completely disconnected from the spiritual world.”
I bit my lip to keep from laughing.
Yep, that was me. The celebrity clairvoyant, totally disconnected from the spiritual world.
Inside my gloves, my hands tingled. It had been a few days since I’d had a vision and I was due. Overdue, in fact. I could feel the energy gathering at the tips of my fingers like an electrical charge in the air before a lightning strike, just waiting for an opportunity to release.
“I suppose I shouldn’t hold it against you.” The elf’s eyes scanned me up and down, then flickered over to my out-of-state license plate. “Clearly, you’re not from around here. But don’t worry — a bit of time in Salem will open your eyes to the possibilities. Did you know it’s a mystical epicenter?”
“Like the Hellmouth under Sunnydale?”
MyBuffy the Vampire Slayerreference sailed right over her head. She narrowed her eyes at me. “The convergence of magic is no joking matter.”
“Right. Of course not.” I tried to smooth things over, not entirely certain where our conversation had gone astray or why she was looking at me like I’d just admitted I liked to drown kittens for fun. “In any case, I appreciate the mechanic recommendation, Moonbeam. And I really do like your name. Your costume, too… Wow! It’s beautiful. Did you make those ears yourself?”