Year One (Chronicles of The One #1)(31)

“It shouldn’t be possible that more than a billion people are dead in a month. But it is possible. And this? Me? Others like me? It’s not only possible, it’s as real as anything else. Maybe it’s some sort of balance. I don’t know. I can’t figure it out, either, so I accept.”

“Others. Like you?”

“Faeries, elves, witches, sirens, sorcerers—and that’s just people I’ve met since.”

As if the idea delighted her, Fred fluttered up another foot in the air.

“We have to be careful. Magickal people have the good and the bad, too. So we’ve got the bad who’d do us harm—and the regular people, who don’t get it, who would, too.”

She lowered again, touched a hand to Arlys’s arm. “I showed you and I’m telling you because something inside me said I should. I’ve always trusted the something inside me, even when I didn’t know it was there.”

“Maybe I fell asleep at my desk, and this is all a dream.”

On a laugh, Fred gave her a light punch on the arm. “You know you didn’t, and it’s not.”

“I … we really need to talk about this.”

“Yeah, sure. We have to get back, get that segment up. Maybe after the evening broadcast, when we shut down for the day. We can have some wine and talk about it. I’ve got some wine squirreled away.”

“I think it’s going to take a lot of wine.”

“Okay, but let’s get that soup. You should punch up your makeup, redo your hair before you go on the air.”

“Right.”

“You freaked?”

“I’m pretty freaked.”

Fred smiled. “But you’ll do what you need to do. You won’t betray me, just like you won’t betray your source, or T.J. and Noah. You’ve got integrity.”

*

Back at the station, Jim called it something else. He called it recklessness and gave Arlys and Fred a heated lecture. A lecture that would have annoyed Arlys down to the core if she hadn’t seen the worry on his face, heard it under the anger.

But he couldn’t fault the interview. He listened to it twice, then sat back. “It’s exceptional. You let him narrate it, let him speak from the heart. A lot of reporters would have inserted a lot of questions, tried to steer him. You didn’t.”

“It was his story, not mine.”

He turned in his chair, stared out the window in the office he rarely used. He’d called them in there—on the carpet—because he’d been pissed and scared.

“It’s never supposed to be about you. Before everything went to hell, a lot of journalists had forgotten that. I got caught up in it myself, might have overlooked that quality in you.”

He swiveled around again. “Let’s get this on the air. You need an intro.”

“Already in my head. I’d like it to run every hour until the evening report.”

“That’s what we’ll do. And don’t do anything like this again without checking with me first. And don’t take this pip-squeak out there. Sorry, Little Fred, but you’re not exactly Wonder Woman.”

“More like Tinker Bell,” Arlys mumbled, making Fred laugh.

“Exactly. Now, let’s go do our jobs.”

Arlys dictated the intro to Fred while punching up her makeup, smoothing her hair. At the anchor station she waited for the green, for the cue.

“This is Arlys Reid, bringing you what I hope will be a recurring segment. Every day, in the midst of tragedy and despair, people go on. Every one of those who go on lives with loss, lives with uncertainty. Every one has a story to tell, of a life that was, a life that is. This is Ben’s story.”

They cut the camera, ran the audio.

She listened to the words again, found they struck her just as deeply. She thought of the big man and the young boy, and hoped they found their way to somewhere clean.

“We’ll replay Ben’s story in one hour,” she concluded, “to remind us all of hope and humanity. This is Arlys Reid, signing off for the hour.”

Fred applauded. With a sigh of satisfaction, Arlys rose, signaled Fred as she headed to the newsroom. “I’m going to talk Jim into letting us go out with a handheld camera tomorrow.”

“Awesome!”

“We won’t put anyone’s face on who doesn’t want it on, but we can get some B roll. If anyone else you know wants to talk to me, let them know I’m going to make it happen. And that wine, Fred? Let’s take it to my place when we sign off for the night. You can stay over. I think we’re going to need to talk, a lot.”

“Like a sleepover! Love it.”

How anybody could be that cheerful considering the state of the human race, Arlys couldn’t understand. Then again, she thought: faerie. Were faeries always cheerful? How could a woman she’d known nearly a year be something that wasn’t supposed to exist?

Thinking about it made her head spin.

She needed to do the job, see what she could dig up for the evening report.

She didn’t find much, but knew when she reported on a sighting of a woman causing flowers to pop up and bloom through the snow in Wisconsin, she wouldn’t do it with a smirk in her voice.

She opted to change her jacket for the evening report, switch out earrings, sweep her hair into an updo. No point boring people with the same visual.