Chapter 3
Meeting Fiachra Sid
Six Days Later
My legal assistant leaned into the doorway. “I’ve been meaning
to ask, but it’s been a hectic few days — how’d the trip to
Texas go?”
“Kind of a disaster on most fronts, but I had a good meeting
with the clients. We should keep getting plenty of work from
them.”
“Glad to hear it, James Dean. Your ten o’clock is here.”
I finished the paragraph of the brief I was working on and
looked up. “I don’t have anything at ten.”
“Your calendar says you do.”
I definitely hadn’t scheduled anything, but I went to my
email calendar and checked anyway. Sure enough, I had an
appointment on there. “Did you put this on here? Who the heck
is Fiachra Sid?”
Annie said, “No, and he’s the tatted-up guy in the lobby.
When you’re done with him, I may take him home with me for
my lunch break. I think he’s in need of some attention.”
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Casual Business with Fairies
“Nice. Super helpful. Also, no ... uhh ... cavorting with
clients.”
“Is he a client?” she asked.
I raised my arms out to the side. This wasn’t going to be my
best meeting, on account of I didn’t know what I was walking
into.
A minute later, she walked the man who was apparently
Fiachra Sid to my office. As he walked past her, she checked him
out from head to toe, and there was no doubt about her inten-
tions for him. When I really looked at him for the first time, my
jaw fell open. “You.”
“Yes. Me,” he said and stuck out a hand that might as well
have been a bear’s paw. “Fiachra Sid.”
I recovered my decorum. “Hi, Fiachra. I’m—”
“I already know your name,” he said abruptly.
Okay. This was not getting less weird. “I think I owe you an
apology, Mr. Sid. I didn’t have this meeting on my calendar, so
I’m not entirely sure what we’re doing here.”
“No apology is required. I set the meeting.”
His brogue was so thick, and his words tumbled out so fast,
that I could hardly understand what he said. My Southern ears
were accustomed to much slower speech patterns.
“With Annie?”
“No.”
I clenched my jaw. I had a thousand things to do, and none
of them included meeting with someone who was being inten-
tionally vague. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here since
you seem to be the only one who knows what’s going on, and it
seems an awful lot like you might have been following me
around halfway across the country?”
“I can explain.”
“That would be nice.”
“This will take a while.” He reached into the front pocket of
13
J. W. Judge
his pants and retrieved a pipe and pouch of tobacco. “Do you
mind?”
“There’s about a half-dozen laws against smoking indoors.”
“I did not agree to abide by them.”
I cocked my head to the side. “That’s not ... how laws
work.” If he turned out to be one of those sovereign citizen
quacks, there was no way I was taking this case. There’s not an
hourly rate high enough to deal with that bunch of hogwash.
Actually, that’s not true. There’s almost always a big enough
number.
“You will find that I’m not beholden to them,” he said.
I scratched at the crown of my head, not that it itched. I
needed something that I had some semblance of control over,
because this thing was spinning. And we hadn’t even gotten to
the question that should have been the first thing out of my
mouth. “Why have you been following me around?”
“I needed to know that I could trust you.”
“Trust me? I’d have been glad to send you some references.”
He smiled grimly. “I do not think you will have the right
kinds of references.”
“Then I may not be the right person for ... whatever this is.”
“I have considered that possibility.”
I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my palms, then shook my
head. “I’ve got to tell you, man, this has been peculiar. I know
that’s not polite. But it is what it is.”
“My apologies. I am unaccustomed to interactions like this
with huma—with people.”
A tingle hurried down my spine.
When you’re cross-examining witnesses, the key to
extracting more information from them than they want to give
(aside from kindness, which is a hugely underrated asset) is
silence. People are really uncomfortable with silence. I like to
just let it hang in the air after they think they’ve finished
answering my question. That silence will get thick as a castle
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Casual Business with Fairies
wall. And people can’t help but to fill it. Anything to alleviate
the discomfort and awkwardness.
But not this guy. He seemed more at ease when we stopped
talking. I was the one who couldn’t let go of him using human in
that way. The inference was clear. He recognized that. It’s why
he had gone with people instead, but he’d already let the cat out
of the bag. Except him being non-human wasn’t possible. So the
real revelation here was that he’s totally nuts.
“I need to know what that means.”
“I misspoke,” he said.
I cocked my head to the side. “No, you didn’t. Someone who
misspoke would’ve offered an excuse and a clarification. But not
you. You spoke some iteration of the truth, or at least what you
think is true. However, my plate’s pretty full right now, so I’m
going to extricate myself from this situation and call an end to
this meeting. Then I’m gonna have an early lunch and play Call
of Duty for about an hour.” I stepped forward and gestured
toward the door. “Annie will show you out ... happily.”
“I need your help.”
I didn’t want to take the bait, but I could hardly help myself.
“Why me particularly? You haven’t even begun to tell me what
it is you need help with.”
“Words matter. I need someone who chooses their words
with care and says precisely what they mean. That is the first
thing.”
“And the second?”
“You have a child. A daughter.”
The hair on my arms and neck bristled. “Walk carefully.”
“I am not threatening her. She is already in danger, but not
from me.”
I took another step forward so that I was uncomfortably
close. He stood several inches taller than me. His tobacco-laden
breathing remained even and unperturbed. The jets of air from
his nostrils cascaded across me. “You need to leave.”
15
J. W. Judge
He turned and walked out of the office without another
word.
I gave it several minutes before I dashed out of my office and
across the street to where I had parked my car on the third level
of the deck. My degree of breathlessness by the time I sat in the
car and had it cranked reminded me that I hadn’t started
running again like I’d been promising myself. I broke a bunch of
traffic laws on my way through downtown Birmingham and into
Homewood, but at least had the decency to slow down once I
was in the neighborhoods.
My car wasn’t even fully stopped in the driveway when I
threw my door open and popped out. I rushed to the door and
tried the handle. Locked. So I whipped out my key and fumbled
it into the deadbolt.
In the entryway, all was quiet and still. Until a banshee in a
charcoal skin care mask and a bath towel nearly bludgeoned me
with a flashlight. I caught her by the waist and tried to keep her
at arm’s length. “Ashleigh! It’s me!”
She dropped the flashlight onto the rug. The loud clank
suggested the tiles underneath didn’t appreciate it. She’d always
hated the tile entry anyway.
“What the—what are you doing? You can’t just let yourself
in.”
She’d gone from scared to angry. Of course, she was right. I
couldn’t just let myself in. It wasn’t my house anymore. I hadn’t
considered that. Hadn’t considered anything beyond Ella being
threatened. “I just—”
I just ... what? Had a meeting with someone who was
possibly not human and thought our daughter was in danger?
That wouldn’t do.
“Just what?” she insisted.
“Forgot something for work. I came here out of habit, I
guess.”
“Uh-huh.” She wasn’t buying it. “Listen. Whatever you
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Casual Business with Fairies
thought was going to happen here in the middle of the day
while Ella’s off at school is absolutely not happening.”
Oh no. She clearly had the wrong idea about my intentions.
“No, no, no,” waving my hands in protest.
“Hold on. I have to take this mask off.” She squatted down
to get the flashlight, holding onto the top of the towel so it
wouldn’t come untucked. She pointed it at me and, with a tinge
of anger still in her voice, said, “Don’t go anywhere.”
She retreated to our bedroom. Nope. Her bedroom.
After the water cut off, she returned with pinkish cheeks and
still wrapped in her towel. Now she was just messing with me.
She could’ve changed if she’d wanted. But she knew I liked it
when she strode around the house in a towel. It was as much
about what you couldn’t see as what you could.
Sometimes, it was about what you could see. It wasn’t all
that long ago that the best part of my day was when she would
run naked through the house because we’d run out of clean
towels in our bathroom. I would stop what I was doing to make
sure I didn’t miss the second pass, and couldn’t be more disap-
pointed when she returned with a towel wrapped around her.
She would grin at me with a twinkle in her eye, knowing what
she’d deprived me of.
Not anymore. That wasn’t the world we occupied. There
were no twinkles.
“You can’t come over unannounced and let yourself in.”
“I know,” I said with the appropriate tail-tucked tone in my
voice.
“Well, if you know, why did you do it?”
I’ve heard her use that some line on Ella dozens of times,
and I didn’t care for being treated like a child.
“You’re sure Ella’s at school? She’s okay?”
“Yes, she’s at school. Don’t be weird. You know that if she’s
not, we get a text, phone call, and email simultaneously at like
three seconds after ten o’clock.”
17
J. W. Judge
She was right. That didn’t occur to me. I looked at my watch.
It was well after ten now. If something was wrong, we would
have known. If I hadn’t gone off half-cocked, I’d have realized
that.
Besides, Fiachra Sid hadn’t actually threatened her. He said
she was in danger. But how did he know anything about her to
begin with? So many more questions than answers.
Now, I was here in what was becoming an increasingly
uncomfortable situation from which I needed to remove myself.
“Listen,” I said. “Sorry. I just ... you know. Sorry.” Nice. Very
eloquent.
She gave me a patronizing smirk. “You’ll show yourself out?”
I nodded and turned toward the door.
“Scott ...”
I paused, watching her through the reflection in the frosted
glass on the door.
“Call before you come by next time.” Even though she said it
as sweetly as she could, it still stung. But not nearly as much as
when she dropped her towel just as she turned the corner,
knowing that I could still see her. The woman still had my heart,
despite everything. She’d promised nothing like it would ever
happen again. But it shouldn’t have happened in the first place.
That was the whole point. And I was unwilling or unable to
forgive it, as much as I wanted to.
So I made a choice. If I couldn’t forgive her, I better let her
go. I still don’t know if it was the right call, but there was no
going back.
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