Tooth and Nail by Jennifer Safrey

them, but I still think the beautiful power of the Olde Way can reach you.”
    “That’s olde with an ‘e,’ isn’t it,” I said, and wasn’t surprised at her nod. The rational part of me demanded to leave this café right now, but the curious side of me won this round. Avery was going to love this later.
    “There’s a bond within morning fae,” she said after a pause. “An attraction, if you will, that goes beyond the molecular.”
    “You know I’m straight, right? I mean, you know about my boyfriend.”
    “I’m not talking about sexual attraction,” she said, the corner of her lips quirking up a bit. “It’s an acknowledgment of an invisible link, an instant recognition. But the first time you feel it, it can be laced with sexual confusion. You can catch the eye of the man across the street and you can see it in him, and he sees it in you. He’s merely leaning against a lamppost looking at you, and the mutual gaze can overwhelm your mind with attraction, the need to feel close to one like yourself in this unnatural world that’s sprung up around us.”
    I felt a rush through each ear and it slammed together in the center of my brain. My reason and logic shook and threatened to crumble. I didn’t want this weakness. If I hadn’t been frozen in shock, I would have put up my fists to ward off this... this…
    What was this?
    “Gemma,” Frederica said, “close your eyes.”
    I did. At that moment, I couldn’t disobey.
    She placed something tiny in the center of my palm. It tickled a bit and I instinctively curled my fingers in to probe it with my fingertips, but Frederica caught hold, folding my hand over the object so it was snug in my fist. She reached for my other hand and closed it over my first, then wrapped her own two hands around mine.
    My eyelids tightened as I tried to crack one open to peek. But the sound stopped me. It was indiscernible at first, fading in and out of my auditory consciousness, then the song began to wrap itself like a gossamer shroud around my mind, cradling my thoughts in its softness, relaxing them into inertia.
    Form and substance dissolved, melting into a gentle pool. The hard wooden seat beneath me, the sticky tabletop under my forearms, all fell away, and I felt nothing, nothing, until color and light began to wind around and up my body. Red warmth held me down while white coolness gently tugged at the crown of my head. In between I felt a rainbow of emotion until the white drew down and enveloped me in a radiant glow of peace.
    And the scent—like every flower in the world combined, and like crisp brook water, and like sunlight after a week of rain.
    The voice came from somewhere, and echoed through me. I heard it in my hands, in my stomach, in my legs. I lived here. We all came from here, this place of purity. This is where we exist in each other, and the light moves in and out of us. We create our own surprises. Every moment is free of the one preceding it, or the one following it, and every moment is full of genius and wonder, lasting an eternity. It’s the Olde Way. It’s not gone. It’s not gone…
    It was gone. It was yanked away and I fell back to here, back into seat. I couldn’t open my eyes. I wouldn’t, and perhaps I would return. But the song faded and the warm cushion peeled away from my mind. I heard Frederica, her words coaxing me out of the tunnel. “Come back. Come back.”
    I think I shook my head, but the motion was slow and cottony.
    “That was just a tiny part of it all,” she said. “You can pull away.”
    “I don’t want to,” I mumbled.
    “I know,” she said, her reply sounding like a lullaby. “I know. None of us did. We’re all going back there, but we can’t without your help. Come back, Gemma.”
    “What is it?” I slurred, then licked my lips and tried again. “What’s in my hand?”
    “Just one little piece of our growing collection. The innocence, it’s deep inside there, but it’s not enough to bring the Olde