Alpha Omega 03 - Fair Game

period, a lot of missing pets—mostly kittens and young dogs. Nothing that would have attracted her attention if it weren’t for Mrs. Cullinan. On their daily walks (Mrs. Cullinan called them “busybody strolls,” to see what people in their neighborhood were up to), the old woman began stopping at missing-pet notices taped in store windows and taking out a little notebook and writing all the information in it.
    “Are we looking for lost animals?” Leslie asked finally. She mostly learned from observation rather than by asking questions because, in her experience, people lied better with their lips than they did with their actions. But she hadn’t come up with a good explanation for the missing-pet list and she was forced, at last, to resort to words.
    “It’s always good to keep an eye out.” It was a not-quite answer, but Mrs. Cullinan sounded troubled, so Leslie didn’t ask her again.
    When Leslie’s new birthday puppy—a mutt with brown eyes and big feet—went missing, Mrs. Cullinan had gotten tight-lipped and said, “It is time to put a stop to this.” Leslie was pretty sure her landlady hadn’t known anyone was listening to her.
    Leslie, her father, and Mrs. Cullinan were eating dinner a few days after her puppy’s disappearance when a fancy limousine pulled up in front of Miss Nellie Michaelson’s house. Out of the dark depths of the shiny vehicle emerged two men in suits and a woman in a white flowery dress that looked too summery and airy to be a good match for the men’s attire. They were dressed for a funeral and she for a picnic in the nearby park.
    Unabashedly spying, Leslie’s father and Mrs. Cullinan left the tableto stare out the window as the three people entered Miss Nellie’s house without knocking.
    “What are they…?” The expression on Leslie’s father’s face changed from curious (no one ever visited Miss Nellie) to grim in a heartbeat, and he grabbed his service revolver and his badge. Mrs. Cullinan caught him on the front porch.
    “No, Wes,” she said in a strange, fierce voice. “No. They are fae and it’s a fae mess they’ve come to clean up. You let them do what they need to.”
    Leslie, peering around the adults, finally saw what had gotten everyone in a tizzy. The two men were carrying Nellie out of her house. Nellie was struggling, her mouth wide-open as if she were screaming, but not a sound came out.
    Leslie had always thought that Nellie looked as though she should be a model or a movie star, with her sad blue eyes and downturned soft mouth. But she didn’t appear so pretty right then. She didn’t look frightened—she looked enraged. Her beautiful face was twisted, ugly, and, at the same time, breath-stealingly scary in a way that would haunt Leslie’s dreams even as an adult.
    The woman, the one in the airy-fairy dress who’d come with the men, exited the house about the same time the men finished stuffing Nellie in the backseat of the car. She locked the door of Nellie’s house behind her, and when she was finished she looked up and saw the three of them watching. After a pause, she strolled across the street and down the sidewalk to them. The woman didn’t appear to be walking fast, but she was opening the front gate almost before Leslie realized that she was heading for them.
    “And what do you think you’re looking at?” she said mildly, in a voice that had Leslie’s father thumbing the snap that held his gun in the holster.
    Mrs. Cullinan stepped forward, her jaw set like it had been the day that she’dfaced down a couple of young toughs who’d decided an old woman was fair game. “Justice,” she said with the same soft menace that had sent the boys after easier prey. “And don’t get uppity with me. I know what you are and I’m not afraid of you.”
    The strange woman’s head lowered aggressively and her shoulders got tight. Leslie took a step behind her father. But Mrs. Cullinan’s retort had drawn the attention of the men by the limousine.
    “Eve,” said one of the men mildly, his hand on the open car door. His voice was mellow and rich, as thick with Ireland as Mrs. Cullinan’s own, and it carried across the street and down the block as if there were no city sounds to muffle it. “Come to the car and keep Gordie company, would you?” Even Leslie knew it wasn’t a request.
    The woman stiffened and narrowed her eyes, but she turned and walked away from them. When she had taken his place at the car, the man approached