The Fairy Ring Read online

  The Fairy Ring

  by

  Catherine Paige

  © copyright by Catherine Paige, March 2004

  cover art by Jenny Dixon, © copyright March 2004

  ISBN 1-58608-397-x

  New Concepts Publishing

  www.newconceptspublishing.com

  Chapter One

  "Are we looking for ‘shrooms’ or edible veggies?"

  Chloe Monroe looked at her friend, Terrie, blankly for a moment. "Very funny!" she retorted when she realized her friend’s eyes were dancing with amusement. "I don’t think Professor Wilder would be amused, though."

  Terrie shrugged, concentrating on her footing as they picked their way through the heavy undergrowth. "No sense of humor--and besides that, he’s weird. You aren’t really going to eat them, are you? I mean, I heard about this class that did one time, and they all died, because either nobody could actually identify the edible mushrooms, or somebody failed the class. I don’t know if they ever figured out exactly how they all got poison mushrooms, but if it was me, I’d just be looking for ‘shrooms’--at least you could sell them to somebody on campus and get a little spending money."

  "--and then go to jail, because, with my luck, it’d be a narc," Chloe said tartly.

  Terrie giggled. "You’re not going to protest about it being illegal and immoral?"

  "That too," Chloe said, lifting her gaze from the ground long enough to throw her friend an amused glance. "I don’t know why you’re always trying to make me sound like a tight-ass. I’m not. I just don’t like the idea of going to jail. And I know my limitations. If anything can go wrong, it will. If anybody’s going to get caught, it’ll be me."

  Chloe stopped abruptly, realizing she’d been so busy searching the ground to keep from tripping over vines and roots that she hadn’t done a spot check on their location in a while. Raising her head, she looked around at the tangle of vegetation that surrounded them like a green wall. The pine trees grew so thick here that very little sunlight filtered through. How could so many weeds grow beneath a canopy like this, she wondered a little nervously? Her heart did a little flip flop when she realized she’d lost sight of the narrow road they’d followed back into the woods. She’d meant to keep it in sight, to make sure they didn’t get lost.

  She decided not to mention it to Terrie just yet. Maybe she hadn’t noticed--or maybe Terrie knew where the road was?

  As she looked around, however, she spotted a potential gold mine for the mushrooms she was supposed to be collecting for class. "Hey! There’s a log over there! I’ll bet we find some there."

  "Probably slugs too, yum!--I still don’t know why you decided to take a survival class. This is so not you! Not me, either. The woods give me the creeps."

  "Five quarter hours and something I figured I could ace pretty easily--I thought it was going to be from books, OK?" Chloe said irritably, trying to disentangle the leg of her jeans from a briar bush that had her in its tentacle grasp.

  "Oh look! It wants to play!"

  "Funny!" Chloe said, gritting her teeth as she pulled a briar cane loose. The moment she let go of it, the thing twined around her leg again.

  "Would you quit playing with that thing? Let’s just get the science project and get the hell out of here. The damn mosquitoes are starting to swarm. I’ve already lost a pint of blood."

  Realizing finally that she didn’t have enough hands to hold all the canes, Chloe began tugging at her leg. The jeans were thick, which was why she’d worn them for her little field trip. Despite the optimism, a sting as she finally pulled free told her that at least one of the thorns had pierced all the way through the fabric, ripping skin. "Shit!"

  She let out a long suffering sigh and high-stepped it toward the fallen tree.

  Terrie, following suit, laughed. "If the guys could see us now!"

  "On the trunk, not over it!" Chloe warned, ignoring the remark about her undignified walk. Taking a running jump, she landed on top of the trunk, waved her arms wildly a moment, and, to her surprise and relief, caught her balance. Her heart was thudding uncomfortably. It was just as well she hadn’t thought about it before she tried it. It was nothing short of a miracle that she’d managed it. Grace wasn’t one of her strong points. Ordinarily, she would’ve managed to hang her foot in something and done a belly flop on top, rather than landing on it like an athlete doing a bar mount.

  "Why?"

  "Rattlers."

  "Oh--my--God!" Terrie shrieked, leaping on the log beside her and nearly knocking her off.

  "I didn’t say there was one, but they like to hide under things. You’re not supposed to step over them. You jump on top. If nothing rattles, it’s OK."

  "Damn it, Chloe! You never said anything about snakes! What if it does rattle?"

  Chloe frowned. "I don’t remember that part."

  "Shit! Hell! Fuck! Damn!" Terrie exclaimed, clutching Chloe and looking wildly around at the ground beneath them.

  "Shut up! I’m listening." Chloe instructed, bouncing on the tree trunk experimentally. She was distracted by a spot of color on the other side. "Oh look! It’s a Fairy Ring!"

  "Is there a damn snake under this thing or not?" Terrie snapped, watching Chloe as she leapt from the tree, landing about a yard from it--right in the middle of a patch of briars.

  "I didn’t hear anything. Did you?"

  "No, God damn it! I was too busy trying to keep from peeing my pants." She stopped talking abruptly, looking around at the woods, her eyes wide. "Where’s the car?"

  Chloe frowned, concentrating on extracting herself from the briars. "Over there," she hedged, jerking her head to one side.

  "Over where?" Terrie growled, moving up a little higher on the trunk of the tree. It had broken about three feet up from the ground. The end that was still attached creaked ominously as Terrie moved closer to the break to get a better point of vantage.

  "Not far," Chloe said, refusing to make eye contact with her friend. "On the road. Don’t you see it?"

  "What damn road? Chloe--have you gotten us lost?"

  Chloe looked at her indignantly. "Me?"

  "I was following you."

  Chloe brushed a tendril of dark hair behind her ear. "All we have to do is retrace our steps--once I get the mushrooms."

  "Retrace…?" Terrie gasped, glaring at her in outrage. "We are lost, aren’t we?"

  Chloe released a long suffering sigh. "Terrie--between the two of us, we broke down everything between here and the road. There’s no reason to panic. It won’t be that hard to find the trail we left."

  Terrie stared at her a long moment and finally snickered. "All we have to do is find that patch of wild flowers you flattened when you did the belly flop."

  Chloe reddened. "You said you weren’t going to mention that again."

  "And then there was the baby tree you sat on, the limb you broke that you thought would hold you … God, Chloe! I hadn’t realized you were marking our trail! You are such a clever woods person!"

  "You are such a comedian!" Ignoring her, Chloe stopped trying to disentangle the briars and began wrestling with them. Losing her balance finally, she fell, ripping most of the briar canes loose. She began crawling along the ground then, kicking at the things and finally managed to tear herself loose.

  "You okay?"

  "Except for looking like I tangled with a wildcat--yes!"

  "Shit, Chloe! You’re bleeding!" Terrie exclaimed, looking Chloe over guiltily.

  Chloe studied her hands, arms and ankles. The briars had shredded her unprotected skin. The scratches stung, but she decided she’d live--as long as she didn’t find any ticks on her when she got back to the dorm. "At least Professor Wilder can’t accuse me of collecting my project from the grocery
store."

  Terrie shrugged dismissively. "How was I to know he’d notice the difference?"

  Chloe frowned, carefully picking the tiny thorns from her skin. "Apparently there are certain species that are indigenous--and then there are imports."

  "Really? Who’d have thought?"

  Rising, Chloe brushed as much dirt and debris from her clothing as she could and turned her attention to the mushroom patch she’d seen just before she fell off the log and into the briar patch. A stream of late afternoon sun was shining down right in the middle of the circle they’d formed, like a magical spotlight. "Look how pretty it is!"

  Terrie studied it skeptically. "If you say so."

  "But it is! It almost looks magical. I hate to mess it up by pulling them up. It’s a shame I didn’t think to bring my camera."

  "Why would you want to take a picture of toad stools anyway?"

  Chloe turned to study her friend for a long moment, but she realized it wasn’t something that could be explained. A person either thought something was pretty, or they didn’t. She shrugged. "People used to think these things were magic--a long time ago." She frowned, thinking it over, but she’d never been much good at dates. "Anyway, they believed in fairies. They thought the fairies made them and that if you found one, you could do a little dance in the ring, or chant, or something like that, and then you’d get a wish."

  Terrie gave her a look. "Kind of like plucking the petals off of a daisy, huh? He loves me, he loves me not."

  "Yeah, kind of like that, I guess," Chloe said, her hands on her hips as she studied the ring of mushrooms. "I always wanted to try one of those ancient ritual things--just for kicks, I mean."

  "Sure! You are such a dreamer! Just grab some and let’s go. I’ve got a date tonight."

  Chloe chuckled, feeling a strange little surge of excitement as she moved closer to the ring. "You’ve got a date every night," she said absently.

  "You, of course, are such a dog, you never get dates."

  "Like they look higher than my boobs!" Chloe retorted dryly. "Half the guys I’ve dated wouldn’t recognize my photo ID. I don’t get dates for my looks, or even my personality."

  "You’ve got a personality?"

  "You are such a bitch!" Chloe said, letting out a sound that was half gasp of outrage and half laugh. "I don’t know why I like you."

  "Oh! Sor--ry. I know it’s just awful for you to have guys drooling down your neck."

  "It’d be nice to get a comprehensible sentence out of them once in a while. It’s really hard to try to carry on a conversation with somebody that has their eyes glued to your boobs and responds to everything you say with--uh--what?"

  Terrie was a stunning blond. As far as Chloe could tell, she’d never lacked for male attention, not even when she was a toddler. She, on the other hand, had been largely ignored, until her breasts decided to go freakish on her and grew to the size of cantalopes. There were times when having a ‘rack’ was a definite advantage, and even more times when it wasn’t. Nobody took her seriously--nobody. Girls snickered when she walked by, and wondered loudly if she’d gotten a boob job--apparently completely oblivious to the fact that she had to wear a shoulder harness just to keep the things from beating her to death when she walked. Guys tended to fall down, frequently, or run into things. They were usually too embarrassed afterward to even look at her again. The ones that did look at her always looked blank faced or so openly lascivious it embarrassed her.

  She liked sex okay. She was damned if she could see what all the hoopla was about, though. It wasn’t that great. She’d tried it several times and come away from the experience mildly disappointed, but reasonably satisfied that it could be pleasant if a guy actually knew what he was doing, which most of the ones she’d run into either didn’t, or they just didn’t care if it was good for her as long as they got their cookie.

  She would’ve liked to have an actual relationship, however. She hadn’t had more than three dates with a guy since high school. Some asshole had come up with the third date rule and everybody decided it was the new ‘law’--some male asshole, she was sure. Third date, you screw, or they move on to greener pastures.

  Nobody she’d tried dating seemed to want to do anything but screw her--not even take her out to a movie, for chrissake! Whatever had happened to actual dating?

  She’d be willing to settle for just a little bit of socializing before they tried to get in her pants--dinner and a movie--MacD’s and a rental movie.

  What she really wanted, though, was love—not just sex. Somebody who actually, honest to God, cared something about her. It didn’t seem to her that it was too much to ask. But here she was, twenty three freaking years old--almost a college graduate, and she still hadn’t even come close to finding her significant other!

  Her grandmother had always told her she was just too impatient. She’d find the right guy, sooner or later, but half her friends had found ‘the one’ before they’d graduated from high school. Pretty much everybody else had found a mate in the first two years of college. She’d be graduating next year! She was going to die an old maid!

  Dismissing the disheartening subject, she moved to the ring and stepped inside. The little surge of excitement she’d felt before instantly washed her depression aside and she smiled at Terrie. "I’m going to make a wish anyway. I know it’s silly, but…."

  Terrie shrugged. "Just do it and let’s go."

  Chloe closed her eyes, held her arms out and carefully turned in a circle.

  "You’re going to fall down."

  "Shhh!"

  "I thought you were supposed to dance, or chant, or pray, or something."

  "I don’t know a chant, and there isn’t enough room to dance without stomping all over the mushrooms … and it’s pagan. I don’t think they prayed."

  "So, just make a damned wish."

  Chloe sighed, irritated Terrie wouldn’t even try to get into the spirit of the thing, but she closed her eyes again. "I wish I could meet my soul mate--the one man in all the world that I can love, who’ll love me, passionately, forever!" she exclaimed, laughing, and spinning in a tight little circle again.

  "You’re going to fall down!"

  Terrie’s voice sounded really weird. One moment it was loud, as if she was standing right beside her, and then her voice had petered out to a bare whisper, as if Terrie had shouted the warning back at her as she was racing away. Dizziness washed over Chloe abruptly. She tried to open her eyes to regain her equilibrium, but found that she couldn’t. Her stomach went weightless, as if she was falling. A loud roaring enveloped her. Her last conscious thought was one of absolute amazement. She was fainting! She’d never fainted in her life. She felt so delicate! So fragile! So womanly!

  Chapter Two

  An odd creaking noise was the first thing Chloe noticed.

  Actually, to be perfectly accurate, the very first thing she noticed was that her head felt as if it was going to split wide open. She thought for some moments that the creaking noise might be the plates of her skull shifting. At about the same time she realized that the noise wasn’t coming from inside her skull, she also noticed she could feel something tickling the crack of her ass. She groaned, wiggled her butt to chase the tickle away.

  "Its a luvly sight, Lord, an’ I want ya ta know I appreciate the thought, but I hae ta tell ya I’d have been a might disappointed if the lass’d been dead."

  Chloe opened her eyes. For several moments, she thought she’d gone blind. She couldn’t seem to focus her eyes. Finally, she realized that was because she had her face in the dirt and the object she was trying to focus on was at the end of her nose.

  She’d fallen. She couldn’t figure out why the back of her head would hurt when she’d fallen face down, but she finally decided that Terrie must have rolled her over to check her head before she’d gone for help. She distinctly remembered that she’d heard Terrie calling a warning to her as she’d run back toward the car--at least, she figured that must be what had hap
pened because it had sounded like Terrie was moving away from her. But was that before she’d fallen down? Or after?

  With a great effort, she managed to move one hand up to check the back of her skull. Expecting to find blood, she was surprised--and actually a little disappointed--when all she could discover was a small lump. As badly as it hurt, it seemed to her that it ought to be something really scary. She doubted anyone would even notice the lump.

  Groaning, she rolled over.

  There was a man peering down at her. Chloe was so startled all she could do at first was stare at him.

  He was lying beside her, his head in his hand. His lips, neither full nor thin, but nicely between the two, in fact, really nice period, were pulled up at the corners. His eyes, a deep, emerald green, were crinkled with the smile that seemed to light his entire face and made her belly shimmy in a nervous flutter. Long, shaggy blond hair, that looked as if it had been sawed off with a pocket knife, fell across his brow and throat.

  He had that Don Johnson look going on--no beard or mustache, but a bit more than a five o’clock shadow.

  All in all, it was a very nice face--more than nice, actually. It made her feel breathless just looking at him.

  "Ye’ve luvly … eyes, as well, lass. Damned if I can figure the color, but just the same…."

  She didn’t miss the glance down in the vicinity of her breasts or the hesitation before he said ‘eyes’. "They’re hazel … uh … who are you?"

  "I was about ta ask ya that, lass."

  Chloe frowned, rubbing her head. "Chloe--my head hurts. Did I fall down or did you hit me with something?"

  His blond brows rose. "I’d come a sight closer to kissing ya silly, lass, than clubbing ya on the head. Ye’ve no notion of how ya came to be here? Mayhap the fairy folk brought ya ta me?" he added, grinning now, and waving his free hand over her.

  Following the flight of that dinner plate sized hand, Chloe looked down at herself. Gasping, she sat bolt up right. "Where’re my clothes?"

  "Ya did na leave them here abouts?"