Elfish by Julie Steimle (best historical fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

Damn. He had blown it. Some people just rode their egos. This man was one of them. However, he could not leave. Peter did not budge. “No, sir. I have every reason to be here.”

The professor huffed, hardly looking at him. “What? Are you going to demand it is your right? You don’t have a right to be here. You were here on my good graces. You had been recommended, but I see that was a mistake.”

The sound of the clocks in the dusty room ticked. The office would have had the deathly feel of a funeral hall all otherwise—a room with a dead end.

Inwardly groaning, Peter sighed. “Alright old man. I see you are going to be stubborn about this. Let me prove to you that me being here is not a mistake.”

The professor gazed dryly over the top of his computer. His eyes said he was considering calling in Security.

Peter walked over to the side of the desk where he could see the computer screen, nodding to the websites. “I am actually quite familiar with the SRA. I was calling them LARPers because, to be quite frank, they are a joke.”

Prof. Taylor’s mouth dropped open in protest.

“However,” Peter pointed to Anonymous_Wolf’s website, “This site is a good one. I happen to know the guy who makes it. And he tells the truth.”

The professor’s mouth hung open more to protest that he was not buying it.

Yet Peter then said, “I was in Cochem, Germany, the day of the attack—the day after you were there.”

A compete change went over Prof. Taylor. His mouth snapped shut. He went white. His hands shook.

Nodding, Peter said as the room seemed to get uncomfortably colder, “I was in Europe around then, but it was before I knew you. But Rhett Williams mentioned you.”

He watched as the professor went paler. The man leaned back in his chair, staring at him. Prof. Taylor mouthed, “How…?”

Nodding while lowering his voice to a whisper, Peter replied, “I happen to be a very good friend of Howard Richard Deacon the Third. He’s from my hometown.”

Immediately the man’s eyes whipped to the SRA site, which basically declared that Howie Deacon was a savage werewolf, as was his father. Of course they were werewolves, but the way the SRA painted them as blood-thirsty monsters was entirely false. Their prejudice against the Deacons was huge. The SRA regularly tracked both Deacons, always waiting for a time in which they could hunt down and kill them as wolves.

Peter heard the professor breathe out with a tremble in his voice, “What exactly are you looking for in these records, then?”

Shrugging, Peter tried to keep things business-like. “An elf. A particular one.”

“You?” The professor looked him up and down, his eyes tracking the shark’s teeth necklace, red crystal and Peter’s striped shirt, lastly ending on the shrunken head. “You personally know werewolves, and you are searching for an elf?”

It did sound odd. But Peter shrugged, trying to keep it friendly. The man was clearly on his guard.

“We’ve tracked the Elf down to the UK, but we need more detail to actually find him.” Peter shook his head, glancing at the computer again before taking a step away from the professor to give him room to breathe. “Elves don’t like to be seen or found. My good friend here has located Robin Goodfellow, but—”

“You are tracking elves?” The professor stiffened, eyes widening from a memory. “That is dangerous.”

“True,” Peter replied with a shrug. “Yet here you are investigating known werewolves, using the SRA as your source—which is an extremely biased source by the way.”

“You say that because you are friends with—”

“No.” Peter shook his head, watching how almost sick the professor was looking. He was on the verge of hives. Peter also glanced around for something to catch vomit, if he had to. “I say it because I’ve had plenty of encounters with the SRA. They’re unscrupulous monster hunters. I can only count on one hand the good ones.”

Staring, Prof. Taylor pulled back. He looked to the far door, then the windows behind him, possibly in search for an escape, just in case. It was natural response of somebody who had encountered dangerous elves. Peter could not blame him.

“Look,” Peter said, trying to keep it easy by maintaining his distance. “I realize I went into this backward. I had heard things about you, mostly good. But I was not sure how much trouble this might cause you, so I wanted to keep you out of it. But now you have to know because I need your help.”

“Who are you?” Prof. Taylor breathed out, eyes wide on Peter.

Sighing, nodding, almost with a bow, Peter said, “My name is Peter McCabe. And I am here with a friend, representing a group known as the Holy Seven.”

He had expected the man to stare at him, puzzled, like so many before him, but the professor drew in a sharp breath. He stared Peter up and down again.

“You have heard of us.” Peter lifted up, genuinely surprised. “I didn’t expect that. What do you know?”

With a nervous laugh, Prof. Taylor leaned away to make even more space as he inspected Peter once again. “I… I’m not sure. Rumors mostly. Some say you are ghosts. Others… well, I’ve heard people say that there is group of Yankee Magi who call themselves this generation’s Holy Seven.”

“Yankee Magi?” Peter made a face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Prof. Taylor almost replied, yet hesitated, still examining how Peter appeared. Perhaps he just did not have the right mystic aura. He was one of the more ordinary individuals of the Seven. For starters, Peter was his actual age in soul and body. Most of the others were in fact older in soul.

“Well…” the man led in with cautious thought, “I heard this generation of the Holy Seven is in fact contested.”

“Not by the UN.” Peter huffed irritably. He pulled out his wallet and extracted his official ID from the United Nations to show him. Admittedly, Peter was a ‘kid’ in the picture, sweaty, and in pink soccer clothes. Blushing, he muttered, “It was taken a while ago. We haven’t updated them yet.”

But the professor took the card and checked the date as well as the signatures, seals, and the holograph in the plastic layer.

“The SRA contests it because they want to be us,” Peter explained, still fighting a blush. He hated that picture.

Eying Peter, the professor handed the ID card back. “What proof do I have that this isn’t a fake?”

Nodding, Peter sighed, glancing at the card before tucking it back into his wallet. “Well, I happen to know you had met Mr. Brian McDillan… who is a former SRA agent. He can tell you the truth. He knows us. He’s one of the good guys.”

Prof Taylor stared again, recognizing the name. Then he blinked it out, shaking his head as if he had merely been slapped in the face.

“But I also know Tom Brown,” Peter added, letting that name smack the professor in the brain to wake him, “who is now CIA, and Matthew Calamori who is now an NYPD cop.” Peter smiled with a wink at him. “They helped me find you.”

Those two names had the right effect. The professor swayed on his feet. He dropped into his seat and sat there as if he had been tazed. Peter waited for him to react.

And waited.

And waited.  

“Professor?” Peter peered into his face, then waved in front of it. “Are you ok?”

“Just dizzy,” Prof. Taylor murmured, setting a hand to his forehead. He glanced up at Peter again. “Why did you come here again?”

Peter nodded, saying slower, with patience, “We’re looking for a particular elf.”

“Messing with elves is a dangerous deal,” the professor murmured once more. “I was carried away by the Unseelie Court when I—”

“We know all about that.” Peter cut him off. “Tom and Matt filled me in. I understand you had a bad experience. But we’re experts, and we need to find this elf. And you are the expert on elves in this part of the world so… Are you going to help me or not?”

“Experts…” Prof. Taylor nearly laughed. That is, until Peter, sick of this back and forth, opened his right hand and showed the glowing brand mark shaped like the sun in the center of his palm. It was licking up with golden flames into the air.

“We are well aware of the dangers of the supernatural,” Peter said in a calm voice, his eyes on the professor’s face reflected in the firelight. The man stared in horror at the fire in Peter’s palm. Peter closed his hand, quenching the flames. “Now, I’m saying it again, you are our best shot to finding this elf.”

Yet Prof. Taylor shook his head, dazed. “I am not. I stopped tracking elves a long time ago. I had learned my lesson.”

Peter groaned, hanging his shoulders. “Ok. I get that. But I would like access to all your records at least. I know you’ve been holding out on me.”

The professor immediately rose, nodding. “Yes. Of course.” He rushed back to his closed records room, fumbling for his keys.

“Of course you were holding out on me?” Peter followed him, annoyed.

Prof. Taylor shook his head, looking pale. “No. I mean, of course I’ll let you look at all the records. Just don’t burn anything.”

Peter laughed, watching sweat blossom on Prof. Taylor’s forehead and upper lip. “I wasn’t trying to threaten you.”

And yet the professor’s hands shook. Peter knew needed to smooth this over again. Jessica was better at it. He never really was that great with people pandering. He was ‘too weird’. Rather, he was someone people tried to ignore but couldn’t.

“What exactly are you looking for?” the professor asked once he stepped into his open room again, wiping his brow. “You said a particular elf. Give me a description.”

Peter nodded. Now it was going somewhere. “Alright, just promise me you won’t tell anyone else about what I am doing here. The Seven has its enemies, and they are a lot more dangerous than you can imagine.”

“Enemies?” The professor stiffened. He turned, staring at Peter again. “What kind of enemies?”

Peter shrugged as he glanced to the shelves. “Witch covens. Certain demons. The Unseelie Court—” Prof. Taylor shuddered hearing that one. “—and even the SRA themselves. They don’t have ethics when it comes to their hunts.”

“You’re just saying that because you are friends of a werewolf,” Prof. Taylor retorted.

Peter smirked, eying the professor’s face. “If you met him, you would not be so judgmental.”

Prof. Taylor stiffened. His pupils contracted. “His friends died.”

“Jordan died,” Peter corrected palely, remembering it, “because of the German pack. Howie saved the other two, and nearly got killed doing it.”

“Or so he says,” Prof. Taylor retorted, averting his gaze angrily.

“I WAS THERE!” Peter snapped back. There was no reason to pussyfoot around this now. “I helped evacuate them to safety.”

For a second the professor staggered, swaying on his feet. His eyes lifted to Peter’s irate expression. “Oh.”

Shaking his head, feeling the grief of that day all too well, Peter grumbled, “The SRA only see monsters. They put that idea that the Deacons were man-eating monsters into your head. But if they could kill Tom Brown, who had saved your life, they would.”

The professor retreated to one side of the room, making fair distance with glances to Peter’s hand, just in case he was drawing up a fire. But he was not Daniel, who sometimes did, subconsciously. Lifting his gaze to Peter’s face again, Professor Taylor asked, “Did he save my life?” not so sure.

Peter felt like laughing at him. Who was the skeptic now?

“Oh yeah,” Peter nodded. “Matt told me all about it. All of you would have been sucked into a fairy ring had not Tom come followed him out and rescued you all. He even mentioned something about the Boston Butcher.”

The professor gaped. From his expression, Peter could tell