When Libby Met the Fairies and her Whole Life Went Fae Read Free

posted signs?” He snapped his fingers, and Bo returned to him. Libby pushed aside a twinge of guilt. She liked dogs, she could have petted the dog. It wasn’t Bo’s fault. It was this rude person, here—this person who was, apparently, also her neighbor.
    “You can’t post signs on someone else’s property.” She gestured at the pine tree in which she’d recently taken refuge. “This tree is on my side of the line. You’ve no business nailing things to it.”
    “You might have said something to me, rather than just yank them all down,” he said. “I’m right next door.”
    Next door. Next door, country style.
    “The place with the long driveway? How was I supposed to know that? I couldn’t even read your signature; your handwriting happens to be appalling. And anyway, I left you a note.”
    “A note?”
    “I left a note on top of the signs. The first time I took them down.”
    “You talking about that piece of cardboard? That sat outside for a week in the rain? If there was a note on that, it was long gone by the time I saw it, lady.”
    Lady. “Bet it was easier to read than your handwriting,” Libby muttered.
    He didn’t answer. An impasse. She shivered. The drizzle had switched to light rain and if she’d missed her gloves and her hat before, she missed them ten times more now. Still. They’d gotten this far, and Libby wasn’t about to let her new life there get off to a wrong start. “Look.” She made firm eye contact again. “You are in the wrong here. You’re posting ‘no trespassing’ signs, but the only one trespassing is you.”
    His face was unreadable. Obviously a man who didn’t like people very much.
    “All you had to do was stop by and ask me to move them. That’s what neighbors do.”
    Libby had no answer to that one. Well. She had an answer. But it would have meant admitting something she wasn’t going to admit. Not out loud. That, being familiar with the fate of Little Red Riding Hood, she wasn’t too keen on venturing into the dark, dark forest on her own. Even if this wolf was, most likely, just a garden variety misanthrope woodchuck. Living in a shack with his collection of torn tee shirts and piles of Genny empties and baby pot plants growing in drywall buckets. Harmless enough if you overlook his vast assortment of firearms. Yeah. Libby knew the type.
    She turned toward her house. “Look. I’m cold. Please just move the signs onto your property. If you really think you need them.”
    Enough of this.
    But then Bo’s muzzle touched her hand again, and suddenly she felt the man’s Carhartt drop over her shoulders.
    “Hey. I didn’t—”
    “Your lips are blue.”
    “I don’t—”
    “I’ll pick it up in fifteen minutes.”
    He snapped his fingers for Bo.
    She decided not to argue. It seemed wisest to just accept the coat. She really wanted this encounter to be over, and besides, the warmth had already gentled her shivering.
    On the other hand, speaking of misanthropes, she didn’t really want to have to talk to the guy again, either. So, on the spot, she decided it would be inconvenient for her to be home in fifteen minutes for coat pick-up time. “Fine. But I have to be somewhere in . . . a little while. I’ll leave the coat on my doorknob.”
    The man nodded, pulled a screwdriver from his pocket, and waved it at her to make sure she saw it. Then he turned to the sign on the pine tree.
    So he’d conceded defeat on the sign argument. He was going to take them down. Or move them anyway.
    When Libby got far enough away that he wouldn’t see, she thrust her arms through the jacket’s sleeves so she could get her stiffened hands into its pockets.
     
    ♦ ♦ ♦
     
    Libby’s side door was locked and she hadn’t brought a key with her, so she circled round to go in the front.
    There was a battered old Ford Escort parked in her driveway.
    Libby didn’t own a battered old Ford Escort. She drove a not-so-battered old Toyota Corolla.
    The front door on the