By Erin O’Riordan

I sat perfectly still. Or, as perfectly still as a human being can while sitting cross-legged on a flat wooden bench in Shiojiri Nawa. At that moment, the butterfly landed on me.

The way he flew should have been my first clue. Butterflies flit; they dip and dive, they meander, they stroll. They never travel in straight lines. The unexpected butterfly came at me much too directly, much too purposefully.

If I hadn’t been so utterly lost in meditation at the moment, oblivious to the garden around me, I would have remembered the zigzag bridge. Its crooked lines were meant to throw off evil spirits who, according to Japanese legend, could only move in straight lines. When a mortal wanted to elude them, she could cross the zigzag bridge safely, while the spirit would be diverted into the water.

There was no literal water in Shiojiri Nawa. Ocean waves were represented by carefully raked and shaped white pebbles. The bridge, like the pebbles, was only a metaphor, a symbol. I wish I’d been reading the signs and symbols instead of elevating my consciousness beyond them.

So the butterfly came to me in its linear, non-butterfly-like way, and landed on my wrist. Even in my meditation, I felt its six tiny legs alight. I looked down, snapped back to reality, and noticed my a new, living corsage.

When he folded his wings, I could see the undersides were a rather dull brown, like dead leaves. This was his camouflage. When he opened his wings, he was a dazzling blue color.

“What kind of butterfly are you?” I asked aloud. I was accustomed to monarchs, the usual assortment of yellow and white moths, and the occasional black butterfly. I’d never in my life seen such a vivid blue on a living creature. It was like the sky reflected in the ocean. I made up my mind to ask Janette.

As quickly as he had appeared, the butterfly was gone.

Thus distracted, I left off meditating for the morning and walked through the park, onto the main thoroughfare, and to the public library. I found Janette behind the reference desk, where she worked.

“What do you know about butterflies?” I asked her.

“Nothing,” she said, pushing a bracelet of chunky beads up her wrist. Except for her tortoise-shell reading glasses, Janette didn’t look like a librarian. She looked more like somebody’s sexy grandmother. “I mean, nothing much. I do have a rather nice field guide…they call it a Fandex, because it fans out.”

As quickly as I could follow her, she was out from behind the desk and zipping down the aisle. Swiftly she found the oddly-shaped book, more like a series of butterfly-shaped postcards held together with a single plastic fastener at the bottom.

I took the Fandex and leafed through it until I saw the picture of the butterfly that had landed on my wrist in the park.

Underneath a photo of the insect’s golden body and leaf-colored wings, the text read, “*Morpho Menelaus*: Blue Morpho.”

“Blue Morpho?” I said. “Aren’t those supposed to be kind of rare? And tropical?”

“What does the Fandex say?” Janette replied. I turned the page over and read the butterfly’s vital statistics. Wingspan of five to six inches, first described by Carl Linnaeus, yadda yadda yadda, range including Central and South America.

Huh. Shiojiri Nawa in northern Indiana was a long way from the rain forests of Central and South America.

“You were a long way from home, buddy boy,” I remarked to the long-departed butterfly.

Janette laughed slightly. “Are you saying you saw a Blue Morpho?”

“I did see one, at the Japanese garden,” I said. “It landed on my wrist while I was meditating.”

“That’s impossible,” Janette said. She took the Fandex out of my hands and reshelved it. “Even in this weather, a Blue Morpho couldn’t possibly find the exact species of flowers whose nectar it needs to survive.”

“Maybe it was an escaped science project,” I said. “You know, like a hothouse butterfly.”

She nodded her head. “That’s possible.”

I thanked her for her help and went home to make some plum tea. As I sipped my tea, I nearly forgot about the beautiful butterfly. He came back to me in my dreams.

I thought I heard a slight noise at my window. Slight, yet still enough to wake me from a sound sleep. I got out of bed and went to the window, glad the weather was still warm despite the late hour. Just outside the glass it hovered. The Blue Morpho.

“You followed me home,” I said to the butterfly. I opened the window, expecting it would fly away. Instead, the butterfly waited. As soon as I had the window secured and the curtain pushed firmly to the side, the butterfly flew in through the open window. I watched it flutter over to my bed, then land on top of my thin, pink sheets.

Cautiously, I approached. The moonlight was low, but the butterfly’s golden body was plainly silhouetted against the pastel sheets. I saw its long antennae, its black eyes, and even the long, curling tendril of its nectar-sucking mouth parts.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I told the butterfly. “You’re not from around here, and anyway, the Fandex said you fly during the daytime.”

The butterfly’s body began to shake. The tiny quiver became a tremor, and soon my whole bed was shaking. Before my startled eyes, the butterfly’s body grew, stretching and changing shape. A hand emerged, then an arm. Another arm, then a leg, then another leg. Incredibly, the human figure emerging from what had been the Blue Morpho wore black pants and black boots. The leaf-like wings became a brilliant, bright-blue shirt; it looked as if the figure–clearly a man–were dressed in a piece of the midday sky. He raised his head, and I was staring at the handsome face of a young man whose eyes were so brown they were almost black.

“I knew you weren’t really a butterfly,” I said, mostly thinking out loud.

He laughed. “Sometimes a butterfly, sometimes a bat, sometimes a wolf.” His accent matched his looks: Southeast Asian. When he smiled, I caught a glimpse of very large, very white canine teeth.

“Cute,” I said. “This is a Halloween joke, right? A little sleight of hand with a fake butterfly, some scary dentures, and I’m supposed to think there’s a vampire in my room, right?”

The smile disappeared from his face. “Joke? My name is Tsuyoshi, and I have lived for more than five centuries. I came here from Shiojiri, your sister city, in search of fresh blood.”

I felt a new sensation: fear, a deeper fear than I’d ever known in my life. I tried to flee, but it was impossible. My limbs were paralyzed. There was no escape as Tsuyoshi moved closer, baring his fangs. I felt a chill and assumed it was from the open window, but the night was hot. The cold was coming off Tsuyoshi’s body–the chill of the grave. I couldn’t even scream as his fangs sunk deeply into my neck.

I awoke with my heart racing and my chest heaving. “Nightmare,” I said out loud to myself. I rolled over and tried to get back to sleep, telling myself I wouldn’t have to return to the nightmare. If I had any more dreams that night, I can’t remember them.

I can clearly remember what happened the next weekend, on my next visit to Shiojiri Nawa. I was meditating once again. As much as I tried to calm myself and focus on the peaceful environs of the garden, every time I closed my eyes I was flooded with violent images of cold-blooded beasts with bared fangs dripping blood. I kept remembering the nightmare I’d had, but my memories were more terrifying than the dream had been. Even as I sat in the lightly shaded garden on a hot summer day, chills wracked my body.

My unpleasant meditations were disrupted when something landed on my toes. I looked down at my sandals and saw my toes were covered over with a bright red flying disc. I looked around, but the thrower was nowhere to be seen.

I heard him before I saw him; he came in through the back gate and up behind me. I turned to see his approach. He wore long, red basketball shorts, a white t-shirt soaked in sweat, and a red headband holding back his heavily gelled, spiky black hair. Though he was dressed like a teen, he was at least my age, twenty-four.

“Hey, have you seen my flying disc?” he asked me. I picked it up and held it up for him to see. “Thanks,” he said as I handed it back to him.

“I didn’t think anyone else was in the garden today,” I said. “I wouldn’t want my meditation to get in the way of your game of catch.”

He snorted slightly, catching the note of sarcasm. “Actually, my friends and I are playing in the park across the street. This one was a wild throw.”

“Wow,” I said. The disc must have flown at least sixty yards. “Nice arm.” He did have nice arms, with thick, toned biceps. The sleeves of his shirt showed them off nicely; I couldn’t help but notice.
He shook his head. “Nah, I didn’t throw it. It was my friend Rick. I’m Jake, by the way.” He tucked the disc under his arm before offering me his hand.

“Lacey Burke,” I said as we shook.

“I’ve seen you around here before,” he said. “You like the Japanese garden, don’t you?”

“It’s my favorite place to meditate.”

“I know what you mean. The park’s my favorite place to kick back and catch some fresh air and sunshine, you know?”

“I’ve never noticed you before,” I said honestly.

He chuckled. “Well, since your focus is kinda scattered at the moment, and your meditation’s kinda ruined, want to play with my friends and me? We’re going to go get burgers in a while.”

I cocked my head. “Are you asking me out, Jake?”

He smiled. He had a nice smile. “I guess so, Lacey. Come on, I’ll introduce you to my friends.”

I followed him across the street and into the open field across the parking lot from the city pool. Jake’s two friends arm-wrestled on a park bench while they waited for him to return with the disc. One was another guy, and the other was a woman.

“Who’s your new friend?” the woman asked as she spotted Jake.

“I’m Lacey,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”

She introduced herself as Beth. The guy, I soon learned, was her boyfriend Rick. We stood in a square and threw the flying disc around for a while, until it got away from us and landed in the river, aided by a sudden draft. Despite Jake’s valiant attempts to rescue it at the boat launch, the flying disc was gone. Jake fell, face-first, into the water, but managed to stop himself before his whole body went in. Only his upper half got a soaking. I thought Beth and Rick were going to die laughing.
“I need to go home and change before we go to the restaurant,” Jake told his friends. “You two go ahead; I’ll meet you there. Lacey, do you want to meet us there?”

“Sure,” I said. I was pretty hungry when I thought about it.

Jake told me he and his friends were going to the Starlight Café, two miles north. He gave me his cell phone number, then walked off down the street. I took it he lived nearby.

“We’ll see you at the restaurant,” Beth said to me. I waved goodbye. As I turned to begin my walk home, I heard her say to Rick, “Do you know if Tsuyoshi will be joining us?”

I stopped in my tracks. “Tsuyoshi?” I asked out loud.

“Yeah,” Rick said. “He’s our other best friend; he’s usually here at the park with us. Why, do you know him?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve never met anyone named Tsuyoshi. It’s just that–” What was I going to say next? That I’d had a dream about a butterfly-vampire with the same name? They would have thought I was crazy. “It’s just an unusual name, that’s all.”

“He’s from Japan,” Rick said. “Shiojiri, actually. That was how we met…he loves to hang out at the park named after his hometown, which happens to be where we hang out.”

Even though it was a hot day, I was chilled to the bone. “Are you all right?” Beth asked as she watched me shiver.

“Yeah,” I said, waving off her concern. “I was thinking about having a cold soda, full of ice cubes, and I got a chill.”

“That does sound good,” Beth said. “See you at the Starlight.”

As I walked home, I told myself it was a bad idea to meet Jake and his friends at the restaurant. I picked up my cell to call Jake and tell him I’d had a change of plans, but I couldn’t go through with it. While half of my brain was screaming I was walking into a trap, the other half of my brain told me I was being ridiculous, that I couldn’t live my life according to wacky dreams I had in the middle of the night. Besides, the more logical half of my brain argued, Jake seemed like a nice guy, and I wanted to see where the Jake thing was going.

I changed into something cute, but not too flirty. When I found Jake’s table, he was there sipping a tall glass of lemonade. Beth and Rick drank coffee out of the café’s old-school white ceramic cups. Tsuyoshi, apparently, hadn’t showed up. I sat down next to Beth, across from Jake, at the round table and ordered a diet soda when the server came by.

“You made it,” Jake said to me, leaning on his elbow and smiling. He had a nice smile. I felt flutters in my stomach, but I wasn’t sure whether I was developing a crush on Jake or worrying about Tsuyoshi. I reminded myself nightmares weren’t real.

“I wouldn’t have missed it,” I said. “I’m getting hungry, and a Starlight pizza burger would really hit the spot.”

“That sounds great,” he said, “but I have a special place in my heart for the green olive and bleu cheese burger.”

“Me, too,” Rick said.

“I like the portabella sandwich with hummus and sprouts,” Beth said. When the server re-appeared with my soda, Beth ordered first, getting her vegetarian sandwich with a side salad. Next I ordered the pizza burger.

“What do you want on the side?” the young lady asked me. “You can have your choice of fries, side salad, cole slaw or baked beans.”

“Fries,” I said, because fries logically go with a pizza burger…or so I thought. I was a little floored, I admit, when Jake ordered his olive burger with a salad. Rick, whose imposing build made him look as if he ate Fred Flintstone-style racks of ribs, also ordered the side salad with his burger. I got embarrassed; these guys were making me look like a piglet.

“Oh, and bring us another pizza burger and side salad,” Rick added as the server finished writing down our orders. “For Tsuyoshi.”

I froze in the middle of unwrapping my straw. “I thought Tsuyoshi wasn’t coming,” I said.

Jake shook his head. “He said he’d be late, but he’d be here. So, tell me something about yourself, Lacey. All I know about you is your name, and that you like to meditate in the garden.”

I told him a little about myself as we waited for our food. As our server brought our tray, Jake reached across the table and took my hand. “We always say a blessing before the meal,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” I said, thoroughly enjoying the feel of his hand in mine. With his other hand, I noticed, he took Rick’s hand. Rick held tightly to Beth with his other hand, and Beth reached over to take my hand to form a full circle.

“Goddess our Mother, as we are about to enjoy the fruits of your Earth, we ask your blessing. We praise you and give you our thanks for the sacrifice of your creatures who sustain us. Blessed be,” Jake said.

“Blessed be,” Rick and Beth echoed him.

I think I swooned a little bit. Jake was thoughtful and sensitive, everything I wanted in a man. “That was beautiful,” I said. Jake smiled as my fingers slipped from his.

I resisted the temptation to wolf down my fries while Beth and the two guys were munching on their salads. Maybe they were on a collective diet–not that they needed it; all of them were perfectly well proportioned. Maybe they were just veggie people; they certainly seemed to be enjoying their greens. Rick had ranch dressing, but Jake and Beth didn’t even dress their salads. They did, however, savor them, enjoying each cherry tomato, each slice of cucumber, and each leaf of romaine as if it were a fine wine. I’d never seen people enjoy vegetables more.

We finished our meal slowly; our cups were refilled several times. I drank so much diet soda I had to get up to pee twice. The second time, Beth came to the restroom with me. As we put our respective lip glosses on in adjacent mirrors, she asked me, “So, are you and Jake going to be friends, or is there something more there?”

“I just met him,” I said, leaning against the sink.

“But you like him,” she said. “I can see it in your eyes.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“It’s okay,” Beth responded. “He likes you, too. This isn’t the first time he’s noticed you in the park.”

I wanted to hear more about that last part, but Beth was already heading out of the restroom. On our way back to the table, I noticed it was already starting to get dark outside. I hadn’t realized how long we’d been hanging out in the café; I guess time really does fly when you’re having fun.

The server was at the table when I sat down. “Are you sure you don’t want me to put your friend’s meal in a box and stick it in the fridge?” she asked Jake.

Jake shook his head. “I got a call from him three minutes ago. He’ll be here.”

I saw the blue first: a bit of the sky, the same color as the top of the Blue Morpho butterfly’s wing. It was his shirt. I gasped. Except for the fangs, Tsuyoshi looked exactly as he had in my nightmare.

“What’s wrong?” Jake whispered across the table at me. I didn’t have an answer for him.

Tsuyoshi reached the table and stared down at me with his eyes, brown as mountain granite. “Jake, who’s your friend?” he asked. He definitely had a Japanese accent, though his English was perfectly clear.

“This is Lacey Burke,” Jake said cautiously. He must have noticed the tension on my face. “She and I met at the park today.”

“Rick threw a flying disc at me,” I said nervously. Tsuyoshi held out his hand, and I shook it. He sat down by his plate, positioned between Rick and Jake.

“We got you a burger and a salad,” Beth said. “The burger’s probably cold by now.”

“I could stick it in the microwave for you,” the server said.

“Would you?” Tsuyoshi asked, lifting the plate and holding it out for her. “I’m starving. I‘d like some coffee, too. Make sure it‘s fresh.” She nodded and went to fill his order. Like Beth and Jake, he ate his salad without dressing, though he didn’t seem to enjoy it nearly as much as they did. “I’ve seen you before,” Tsuyoshi said to me.

“Yes,” I said. “In the park.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You like to meditate. In the early morning, while it is still cool, you wear lavender yoga pants.”

Okay, that was creepy. I didn’t know I had a stalker.

Jake laughed. “I guess we hang out at the park more than I realize,” he said.

Rick asked Tsuyoshi about a trip he’d made to the mall the previous evening, and Jake stared across the table at me. “You okay?” he mouthed. I nodded, though something inside me was chilled to the bone.

Tsuyoshi finished his meal, and he and his friends got up from the table. Jake offered to walk me to my car; I accepted.

“You’ve got my phone number,” he said. “You’re welcome to call me, if you’d like to go out some time. Maybe next time it could be just the two of us.”

“Yeah, I’ll call you,” I said.

“Listen, don’t worry about Tsuyoshi,” he added. “I know he’s noticed you before; he’s pointed you out to me a couple times. He appreciates a beautiful woman. He’s not, like, following you or anything.”

“I wasn’t worried. Really,” I said. “I thought he looked familiar, and I was trying to think of where I knew him from. That’s all.”

“Would it be too forward of me to ask for a kiss?” Jake asked.

“Not too forward,” I said. I leaned in and closed my eyes. He gave me a brief, polite peck on the lips. It was over too quickly, but the taste of him on my lips was sublime.

“Call me,” he said, in place of a goodbye.

I told Janette everything when I met her for lunch later in the week: Jake, the weird dream I had about the butterfly, Tsuyoshi.

“You’re sure the man in your dream said his name was Tsuyoshi?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “He even looked the same.”

“Maybe you’re misremembering when you had the dream,” she suggested. “Maybe you didn’t have the nightmare until the night after you met him.”

“I wish you were right,” I said, “but I know you’re wrong.”

She shrugged me off. “Tell me more about this Jake.”

I did. As we were getting ready to leave, she said, “Oh, and I have another theory about the Blue Morpho.”

“You do?”

She nodded. “Maybe it wasn’t a butterfly you saw. Maybe it was a fairy.”

I laughed. “Don’t tell me you believe in fairies now.”

Janette grinned. “It was only a joke. You know me; I have a strange sense of humor.”

After work that night, I called Jake. We made plans to go on a proper date on Saturday night. Before he let me off the phone, he insisted I hear a song he’d written, an instrumental piece he played for me on the guitar. It was slow and soothing, the perfect lullaby. I thanked him for sharing it with me.

“Lacey, I wrote it for you,” he replied. I think I swooned, a little bit, for a second time since I’d met him.

That night, I dreamed of tiny flower fairies with bright blue wings, lighting up like fireflies as they flitted around Shiojiri Nawa.

On Saturday night, Jake showed up at my doorstep with a picnic basket. “I thought we were going to that Italian place,” I said.

“Change of plans. I made us some spaghetti, and I’ve got garlic bread and a bottle of Chianti. Will you let me take you on an adventure?”

I smiled. “Yeah,” I said. “I could do that.”

We got it Jake’s Prius, and he drove to the county park on the outskirts of town. “Are we even supposed to be here at night?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he said. “The park doesn’t close until eleven. It’s perfect; there’s almost no one here.”

It was a beautiful night, with a clear sky and hundreds of stars above us. The crescent moon was high in the sky. Jake brought a flashlight, and we followed a trail into the woods. “Where are we going?” I asked him.

“To my favorite spot,” he said. “There’s a wishing well and a koi pond at the top of the hill where the stream flows.”

“Sounds nice,” I said. It took us several minutes to walk there. Jake asked me about my family, and I asked him about his. Jake was Japanese-American, but unlike Tsuyoshi, his family had been in the U.S. since the nineteenth century. They’d lived in this area for three generations.

We finally saw the tiled roof of the wishing well at the top of the hill. Jake found us a flat spot to lay the blanket we’d brought with us; he kept one in the trunk of his car. From where we sat, I could watch the starlight shining in the pond. The white and red koi were active on this hot night; we saw them eating mosquitoes off the surface of the water. They were beautiful. Jake poured me a glass of wine. I drank it too quickly, because I was already feeling a little buzz as I ate the garlic bread. “This is great,” I told him.

“I hope you don’t mind if the spaghetti isn’t very hot,” he said. “I couldn’t figure out how to keep it hot.” He took a glass baking container, covered in foil, out of the basket, and dished the spaghetti into two plastic bowls. He handed me a fork, and as I twirled the pasta around it, I saw steam rising.

“It seems hot to me,” I said. “It smells delicious, too.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I made the sauce myself.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I even grew the tomatoes and the basil in my back yard garden.”

I tasted what was on my fork. It was heavenly. I was so pleased, I actually laughed out loud.

“Are you glad we didn’t go to that Italian restaurant now?” he asked me.

“Definitely,” I said. “Jake, this is amazing. The food, the wine…”

“You,” he said. “You look amazing tonight.”

“How can you tell?” I asked as I wiped a bit of stray spaghetti sauce off my lips. “It’s dark.”

“But I saw you when you opened your front door,” he said. “You wore green. Green is my favorite color.”

“I’m sensing that,” I said. He reached out and touched my sleeve, where it met the bare skin of my arm.

“Is that silk?” he asked.

I smiled. “No, not really. It only feels like silk.”

He pulled his hand away. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to feel you up or anything.”

“I didn’t mind,” I said. “Maybe we should finish eating first, though.”

He smiled and handed me a cloth napkin from the basket. I finished my spaghetti slowly, savoring it as Jake did his. When we finished, he placed the dirty dishes back in the basket. We laid on the blanket, looking up at the stars. I was still looking at the constellations when Jake leaned over and kissed me.

His kiss was soft, the weight of his body as he leaned into me unbelievably light. I wouldn’t have guessed he had such a soft touch from his tall, lanky, athletic build. He was gentle, though, as I put my arms around him and pulled him nearer. He smelled like earth after a rainfall, spearmint, and hyacinth blossoms.

It was almost closing time when we left the park, but we managed to leave without running into any of the rangers. We went back to my house and had another glass of wine and snuggled on the couch before Jake said goodnight.

We saw a lot of each other over the next few weeks. Jake loved to do things outdoors. We threw the flying disc in park, sometimes just the two of us and sometimes with Beth and Rick. Tsuyoshi, much to my relief, always seemed to have other plans when Jake called him. We had picnics and rented a canoe.

The funny thing was, he never asked me over to his place. One night, as we sat on a park bench, watching the city lights sparkle over the river, I asked him about it.

“Jake, how come we never go to your place?” I asked.

“My bachelor pad?” he answered, laughing. “It’s a mess.”

“I’ve seen a man’s house before. A little mess isn’t going to bother me. I want to get to know you better, Jake. Will you show me where you live?”

He laughed, then looked suddenly serious. “I can’t do that,” he said.

I stood up. “What are you hiding? You’re married, aren’t you?”

“I’m not married!” he said.

“Then, what? You live with your parents, and they’re really embarrassing? I’d be a fool not to believe you’re trying to hide something from me, Jake.”

He stood, laid one hand on each of my arms, and looked me in the eyes. “You’re right,” he said. “I have been hiding something from you.”

“I can’t do this,” I said. I tried to pull away, but he held out my arms with gentle strength. “I can’t be with someone who hides things from me.”

“I didn’t tell you because you wouldn’t believe me,” Jake said. “Hell, I wouldn’t believe me if I were you.”

“Believe you?” I said. “What are you talking about?”

“Maybe I should show you.” He let go of my arms and stepped backwards, standing against the railing separating us from the river. He held out his arms and looked upward at the starry sky. Chills went up my spine; I remembered my dream of Tsuyoshi, the way he turned from a butterfly to a man before my eyes. As I watched, dumbfounded, Jake’s body did the reverse. Suddenly he had wings, four enormous Blue Morpho wings that shimmered and seemed to glow in the moonlight. He flapped them, and his feet lifted off the ground.

“What the hell?” I said out loud. “I’m asleep; I have to be. I must be dreaming again.”

“You’re not dreaming,” Jake said. “I’m a fairy. We’re all fairies: Beth, Rick, Tsuyoshi, and me.”

“Impossible,” I said. My knees felt suddenly weak, and I slumped back down toward the bench. At that moment, Jake’s toes touched the ground.

“Rare, but certainly not impossible. I haven’t invited you to my home because–well, you’ve already been there.”

“You live in the park,” I said.

He nodded. “We rarely leave. When we do, we still have to be near enough to touch plants, animals, or earth. If we spend too long away from any of those things, we start to get sick.”

“What about Tsuyoshi?” I asked. “He hardly ever came out to play with you guys.”

Jake sighed. “Tsuyoshi’s a little…different. He moved out of Shiojiri Nawa and into his own place a couple of months ago.”

“His own place? As in a house?”

“A cave,” Jake said seriously. “Tsuyoshi is getting increasingly intolerant of sunlight. Pretty soon, he’ll only be able to come out at night.“

“Is that something that happens to fairies?“ I asked, though I couldn’t believe the words were coming from my lips.

He shook his head. “Just the opposite; we love the sun. Shortly before he came to America, though, Tsuyoshi had a sort of injury.”

“Injury?” Although I urged him to continue, cold fear was knotting my stomach. I had a feeling I didn’t want to know everything about Tsuyoshi. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like this.

“He was bitten,” Jake explained. “By a bat. Ever since then, he can turn into a bat. That‘s why he had to leave Japan; Old World fairies tend to be less tolerant of differences than those of us in North America.”

I thought of Tsuyoshi’s words in my dream: “Sometimes a butterfly, sometimes a bat, sometimes a wolf.” “Jake,” I continued, “is there anything else you want to tell me about Tsuyoshi? Is he…dangerous?”

Jake considered his answer carefully. “He’s never bitten a human, if that’s what you mean. But you’re right, there is more to the story. Tsuyoshi wasn’t bitten by an ordinary bat. She was a vampire.”
“’My best friend’s a vampire’ is usually something you tell a girl on a first date!” I yelled at Jake. “Right after you tell her you’re a fricking fairy! Damn it, Jake, I was falling in love with you. Now you’re telling me things that, if I tell anyone else, will get me locked up in a mental health facility. Yet they must be true, because I’m looking at your wings!”

“You were falling in love with me?” Jake asked, a huge smile creeping across his glowing face.

My feelings were in such a free-fall, I didn’t know how to respond. My brain was cruising along at a mile a minute, though. “If you know Tsuyoshi’s a vampire, why haven’t you staked him or something?”

“He hasn’t hurt anyone except some rabbits and groundhogs, Lacey.”

“He hasn’t hurt anyone *yet*,” I said. I told Jake about my dream. “Can fairies get into people’s dreams?”

“Some of us can,” Jake admitted. “Our Queen Mab, she was…well, the queen of getting into people’s minds while they slept. I’ve never done it myself, but the elders used to talk of it.”

“If Tsuyoshi was really in my head that night, do you think I’m in danger? Maybe he’s tired of rabbits and groundhogs.”

“I hope for Tsuyoshi’s sake you’re wrong,” Jake said seriously. He took my hand and helped me to my feet. “I need to find out for sure. You should go home, Lacey. I’ll call you as soon as I find out.”

“Where are you going?” I asked him. “To confront Tsuyoshi? Alone?” He nodded. I grabbed his arm. “I can’t let you do that, Jake. What if he gets angry? What if you get hurt?”

“It’ll be far less dangerous for me than it will for you,” he insisted.

“At least take Rick and Beth with you,” I said. It was the last sentiment I had time to utter before an enormous black shape swooped out the sky, knocking Jake and me off our balance. I fell to the concrete; Jake fell the other direction, but flapped his butterfly wings and took to the air before he hit the ground. The black shape swooped low to the ground again, touched down, and became Tsuyoshi. His fangs were bared, and his terrible claws flashed like silver in the moonlight.

“So, you told the human my little secret, hm?” he asked, his eyes boring into Jake’s. “Bad idea, insect.”

Tsuyoshi reached back, ready to slash with his claws. “Look out!” I shouted at Jake, who dodged out of the way. Tsuyoshi missed Jake’s face, but tore the tip of his wing. “Stop it!” I yelled at Tsuyoshi. “He didn’t do anything to you!”

Tsuyoshi turned to me, fangs bared, an evil look in his eyes. “Your kind can’t know what we are!” he thundered. “I can’t let you leave. I’ve been wondering what you taste like since we met.”

“Stay away from her!” Jake shouted. He jumped onto Tsuyoshi’s back, clamping his arm around Tsuyoshi’s throat. “Lacey, run!”

“I’m not leaving you,” I said. He may have been a fairy, a fact he hid from me, but I was still falling in love with Jake.

Tsuyoshi snorted. “Your girlfriend is brave,” he said. “She smells delicious, too.” With great effort, he heaved Jake from his back. Jake went flying, then hit the concrete. He lay there, his wings folded down over his motionless body. Tsuyoshi laughed as he inched closer to me.

“Jake!” I screamed. Every instinct in my body was telling me to run, though I was desperate to know if Jake was still alive. I ran. Tsuyoshi chased me, turning back into a bat as he ran. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him black form looming closer and closer. I ran down the grassy bank, thinking if I could get to the water, he wouldn’t be able to follow. Evil spirits can’t cross running water, I told myself.

I didn’t make it. Tsuyoshi’s arm reaching out and grabbed me seconds before my feet would have hit the water. He pulled me backwards, slamming me against him. His hand brutally shoved my head to the side a split second before I felt the blinding pain of his teeth sinking into my neck. The world went pitch-black.

****

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was green. I blinked, and realized I was looking up at a canopy of leaves.

“She’s awake!” It was Beth. “Lacey, don’t move.”

“Where am I?”

“In a tree,” a familiar male voice said.

“Jake?”

His face loomed over me; his wings were hidden again. “Glad you’re finally moving around. We were worried about you.”

“You’re all right!” I said excitedly. I sat up, so quickly I almost bumped heads with Jake. As soon as I could look around, I saw I was in a tree. Rick was there, too. He and Beth straddled the branch, though it was wide and thick enough for Jake to crouch beside me. If I moved too suddenly, there was a chance I could fall, but if I was careful I was perfectly safe. I let Jake wrap his arms around me, then asked him, “Where’s Tsuyoshi?”

“Gone,” he said.

“Dead?”

“He’s never coming back,” Rick said. “The less you know about it, the better.”

“Technically, he was already dead,” Beth added.

I reached for my neck and felt the scabs of the bite mark. “He bit me,” I said. “Does that mean I’m going to turn…”

“No,” Jake said. “He didn’t turn you. You would only turn if you’d ingested any of Tsuyoshi’s blood.”

“You’ll be sensitive to sunlight,” Beth explained. “You’ll never have to avoid it totally, though.”
“Good,” I said. “It’s hard to see a flying disc in the dark.”

Jake smiled. “Do you still want to hang around with us, after all that’s happened?”

“Yeah,” I said. “When Tsuyoshi tossed you and you hit the ground, I realized I wasn’t just falling in love with you, Jake. I do love you.”

He held my face in his hands and kissed me long and deep. “I love you, too,” he said.

It was hard at first, dating a fairy who lived in the local park. We worked out the kinks, though. Eventually, Jake agreed to move in with me…but only after we built a large flower and vegetable garden in the back yard.