Mystery Noir

Sins and Lies Part 4

I drove out of the city and into the desert, stopping only to fill up the car and grab some fast food.

Penny sat silently beside me, staring out the window and lost in her own thoughts until she murmured. "Do you want to talk about it?"

I didn't.

I was furious at Rashel for bringing up my connection to whatever half-baked plan they were trying to construct for this mysterious shadowy evil thing that was trying to kill us all. I had forgotten I had mentioned it to her until she had looked at me in that meeting. And the realization why it was so important for me to attend had hit me even as Rashel was speaking. It made me want to trust no one with my weird life story ever again.

But, seeing as how Penny had asked little of me and was sitting calmly as I angrily drove us out into the desert, I probably owed her some sort of explanation.

"I'm going to turn back toward town now. After the last job, I don't really want to be out in the desert after dark." I joked, drawing a grin from Penny as she rifled through our food bag and bought me a burger.

For a while, I merely ate as I turned the mustang back toward Las Vegas. But once I was done, I sighed and shrugged. "I don't remember much of my childhood. Glimpses of memories of me and my mother and some other people I don't know in the early years. Then some more clear memories of growing up with my mom. Normal single parent child hood, until one day she just left and never came home. I was eleven, and she told me that she needed to go talk to someone. I called my grandparents after a couple days, right about the time they received a letter from her. It wasn't until I was a little older that I found the letter stashed in their effects, when they died, and her letter was damaged. Like someone had burned it. Probably my grandfather. He was a good man, but whenever I asked about my mother, he would say she was a hair-brained idiot."

Penny frowned over her burger and watched me curiously for a few moments. "That must have been tough."

I shrugged and shook my head. "I don't know if she had talked about this stuff with them before, I would assume that if she had told them that she believed there was an entrance into another realm where she could talk to fairies, they would have taken custody of me earlier. But what was left of the letter just said that I couldn't go with her. But she couldn't stay. Pragmatic me was thankful she didn't take me with her, the likelihood was that she was heading off to kill herself, suffering some sort of psychotic delusions or something. But since I've found out that strange creatures actually do exist, I do wonder if she was sane. And why I was left behind."

"So you don't think Fairies are dangerous?" Penny took a drink from her cup, giving me a curious look. "You think that those two back there..."

"I think wishing and hoping on sprites and magic 'easy buttons' will not get us anywhere. Maybe she had seen fairies before. Maybe exposure to creatures from another realm had made her crazy. Maybe they had lured her off to kill her. I don't know. But either way, I will not chance my life on the hopes that we can summon some magical interdimensional being to come live here and protect us. Seems rather passive to me." I finished, offering a shrug and staring hard at the road for a long while.

"You're not tempted to try to... contact someone from there... and even just ask about your mother?" Penny's question was almost a whisper, as if she feared speaking it too loudly.

I watched the dazzling city lights flash over the horizon as the sun began setting rapidly, shaking my head and smirking. "I mean, it would be nice to know that she was okay. But That sounds a bit selfish, I guess. 'Hey, tinker bell, these guys want you to save the world, but can you see if my mom is anywhere over there first? Thanks.'"