Sure, most people didn’t go deep into the forest during a new moon with a bowl of cream and a baby blanket, ready to make a deal with the higher-ups of the local covey. Adoption was a thing. So was a fertility specialist. And surrogacy, for that matter.
But most people didn’t have the history her mother’s family did, one rife with old magic and fey deals, so perhaps Charlotte could cut them some slack. It wasn’t like she was the first Changeling in the family, after all. She was just the only one dumb enough to get caught.
* * *
Charlotte, her short black hair mussed from her fitful nap and her nose pressed against the glass of her cage, blinked hard several times to focus the image through the warped glass. It was a small mercy that Millie put her up on a high shelf. If she weren’t able to watch the old cow every day, Charlotte was sure she would have gone insane already.
Or maybe she already had, and that was why she could very clearly see a demon standing there amidst the curling incense smoke and buffoonery. He towered over Millie. Even through the glass, Charlotte could see the grand sweep of his antlers, the shock of deep black sclera around irises of shining bronze, and the way the air fizzled slightly around him, as if his humanoid shape was ever-so-slight… off.
Dressed in a simple white long-sleeve with his chestnut hair swept back neatly between his antlers, the demon looked exactly like the kind of person who shouldn’t wander into Millie’s misbegotten trash heap.
Which meant bad things for Charlotte.
The last time someone came in who actually looked like they knew what they were doing, the terrarium next to hers ended up going in a suitcase and out the door, off to a fate she couldn’t contemplate without spiraling into a dread so deep, there was no clawing her way out of it.
Charlotte tried to get a good look at Millie, but it was impossible from that angle. Her stomach twisted into knots. There’s no one else left.
Obviously, she didn’t relish the idea of spending eternity trapped in stasis on Millie’s shelf, but Charlotte didn’t exactly look forward to being sold to a stranger, either. Better the enemy she knew, right?
It did occur to her that the demon could be there to buy something, but what a demon could want from a woman with the magical ability of an old shoe was beyond her. Perhaps he was there to kill Millie and drag her corpse into the woods for the mites to eat; an old-timey sacrifice the god Blight would probably appreciate.
That sounded pretty great, if one ignored the fact that Charlotte was still trapped in a jar and would remain that way until someone released the seal on the stasis spell holding her captive.
Charlotte was all for Millie’s untimely demise. Just not when it meant she might be tossed in a dumpster when the cleaners came to clear the shop out.
Pressing herself as close to the glass as possible, she strained to listen as Millie gave the demon her usual spiel. It didn’t last long. One muttered sentence from the demon — who had a voice so deep it reverberated through the glass of her prison with rich bass notes — and the hand-waving ceased.
She watched, beginning to sweat in earnest, as Millie’s demeanor changed. Her usually warm, slightly slouched posture vanished. It was replaced by a stiffness that Charlotte knew well.
They’re negotiating, she realized, stomach knotting up. Please don’t be for me.
But what else could it be? There was, as far as Charlotte knew, nothing else of any real worth in Millie’s shop. Only the m-siphons, cleverly disguised as decorative terrariums, could bring in clientèle like a demon in.
And there were no more m-siphons left except the one holding her captive.
Charlotte lurched up and away from the glass. Her feet sank into the rich soil and springy moss as she paced, raking her fingers through her short hair until it stood on end. All around her, the demon’s baritone rumbled with menace.
What could she do? Nothing.
There was no escaping the terrarium. She tried a hundred different ways, but whoever laid the sigilwork on the damn thing was no slouch and she lacked any sort of real magical skill that might have helped her. Charlotte rarely got over a C in magical extracurriculars. Her sigilwork was basically chicken scratch. She couldn’t even properly fly.
I went to college and got a degree in communications! I am not cut out for any of this!
But she couldn’t just sit there, doing nothing, as her fate was decided behind the dusty counter of Millie’s tourist trap front for hawking illegal goods. Charlotte was a woman of action if not any recognizable ability.
Scrambling into the heart of the fern, Charlotte only half-listened to the sound of Millie’s voice raising as she climbed the sturdiest of the stems. The view was a little bit better the higher she went, but she couldn’t go terribly far without the fern flopping over. Gripping the stem with white-knuckled fingers and toes, Charlotte craned her neck just in time to see Millie hit the floor, a strange, dark mass rippling around her slumped form.
Charlotte’s stomach seized as panic overtook her. Yes, she wanted to see Millie get her just desserts, but not when the person dishing it out might have even worse plans for her.
The demon wasted no time stepping over Millie’s prone form sprawled on the grimy mat behind the counter to approach the nearly empty shelf Charlotte’s prison called home.
No, no, no! She threw herself down from the fern and into her nest to land with a wheeze in the moss below. Frantically covering herself with hunks of greenery and silky flower petals in the vain hope that he wouldn’t see her and know just how valuable she was, Charlotte hunkered down into the shadows and squeezed her eyes shut.
The light filtering through her eyelids changed — he must have blocked out the light from the windows — and that voice filtered through the glass again, so deep she could feel it humming in her molars. Tucking herself into a tight ball, she covered her ears and refused to look. It didn’t matter that she was curious about seeing a demon up close for the first time.
He was stealing her, just like the feyrunner did, just like Millie did.
The best case scenario was that he hooked her up to a low-level generator for the rest of eternity. The worst involved being sucked dry of all energy until even the stasis spell couldn’t keep up, leaving her mummified corpse to molder in the lush soil of her green prison.