Sorry for the long long wait. I just got internet access last week. So hopefully the next chapter will come a little faster.

Chapter 4

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"Iron?" David looked at him quizzically, then shrugged and glanced around the room. "Well, sure… Is that bad?"

"It can't be helping," Corny said, shrugging. "Let's get everything out into the hallway."

They had to sift through the layers of stuff to find anything iron, because the room was a mess, full of drifts of clothes and papers covering the carpet, creeping toward the bed and out the door. Eventually their collection included an old tire changing kit, full of wrenches and bolts; a pair of huge boots that looked like they might be steel toed; and an amp that neither of them had been sure about.

"Is that it?" Corny asked.

"Yeah, should be," David replied without a lot of confidence. He was surveying the room as though he could see through the first layer right down to the floor. "Oh."

"What?"

"Well, I think… I think that the bed frame is maybe iron."

They both looked at the bed. Sighing, Corny crossed the room to inspect it. "Shit," he swore. "It looks like it is iron. And you said that you can't move him?"

"Not unless you want a black eye and maybe a kick in the stomach."

"You think we could move the mattress? With him on it?"

David looked at it doubtfully. "We could try."

It was harder than it sounded. The mattress was a queen sized, and one of them couldn't comfortably take two corners. Whenever they lifted it, it folded almost in two, folding the faerie boy with it. His head lolled around on his neck grotesquely each time they jarred the mattress. They finally got it set on the floor, on top of a pile of dirty clothes. The boy murmured in his sleep and curled into the fetal position.

They wrestled the bed frame out into the hallway and stood it up lean-to style against the wall. David regarded it from his hands on knees position, trying to catch his breath. "What the fuck am I going to tell my roommate?" he moaned.

Corny snorted. "What, you don't think it'd be believable if you told him you were cleaning for once?"

David shot him a poisonous look before returning his gaze to a spot on the brown carpeting. "So… what now?"

Corny shrugged, leaning so that he could see through the door to where the mattress lay on the floor. "I don't know. We wait? See if this made a difference?" It wasn't a great plan, but he didn't know what else to do.

"Sounds good to me." David straightened up. "You want anything to drink while we wait?"

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They waited. When it got dark, Corny took the blanket that David offered and stretched out on the scratchy couch and slept—the best sleep he'd had in half a week.

It was sometime near morning when he woke suddenly and completely, eyes open and watching the lights of a passing car make moving lines of light across the ceiling. He wondered if it had been the car that had startled him out of sleep, sighing and burrowing down further into his makeshift bed.

Then he saw the girl.

She stood by the door, completely still as he stared at her, silently staring back. After a few seconds she moved into the pool of light the streetlamp outside threw onto the carpeting. She was young—his guess would have been ten or eleven had she been human, but Corny could tell at once that she was not. She had the light hair and delicate features of the boy in the bedroom, and Corny suddenly realized that he doubted very much that the resemblance was coincidence.

He sat up, then, and the sudden movement caused her to flinch, slipping back into the shadow. Wincing, he froze and after a few moments very carefully and slowly sat all the way up.

"My brother…" the child said in a soft voice. "Please… I know that he is not well."

Feeling as though he was still asleep, Corny swung his legs to the floor and got up, starting to walk toward the hallway. When he got to the first door he paused and waited for her, watching as she followed. Her feet made no sound; she seemed to glide above the mess of the room.

When they reached the room she started toward the bed with a cry. "Ryne!"

He was steps behind her, reaching out to stop her before she touched her brother, a warning half formed on his lips when he froze.

The boy was awake. His eyes, light like the rest of him, were focused on Corny's face. Then his sister reached him, a ball of childish energy that threw her arms around his middle. He hissed in pain, the eyes closing again for a few seconds.

Realizing that something was wrong, the child pulled back, eyes wide. Swallowing, the faerie on the bed opened his eyes and took a deep breath in. As he breathed out, Corny could see the pain leaving his eyes until they were clear and calm. He smiled at his sister.

"Greetings, Elysabet. Have you come to take me home?"