The Fairies of Sadieville

by Alex Bledsoe

Fantasy

Book Description

Charming and lyrical, The Fairies of Sadieville continues Alex Bledsoe’s widely-praised contemporary fantasy series, about the song-wielding fairy descendants living in modern-day Appalachia.

“This is real.” Three small words on a film canister found by graduate students Justin and Veronica, who discover a long-lost silent movie from more than a century ago. The startlingly realistic footage shows a young girl transforming into a winged being. Looking for proof behind this claim, they travel to the rural foothills of Tennessee to find Sadieville, where it had been filmed.

Soon, their journey takes them to Needsville, whose residents are hesitant about their investigation, but Justin and Veronica are helped by Tucker Carding, who seems to have his own ulterior motives. When the two students unearth a secret long hidden, everyone in the Tufa community must answer the most important question of their entire lives — what would they be willing to sacrifice in order to return to their fabled homeland of Tir na nOg?

Justin put his arm around her shoulders. “It must’ve meant a lot to him, to have such a tangible way to remember her.”

Veronica wiped her eyes. “I’m just so glad they won’t be thrown away.”

“Me, too,” he agreed, and kissed her cheek.

“Excuse me,” a new voice said behind them.

The English department chair, Dr. Coffin, stood in the door. He was in his sixties, dressed casually, and looked over the neat stacks Justin and Veronica had already sorted. “You’ve made some headway.”

“A little,” Justin agreed.

“I appreciate you doing this. If we’d had to pay an archivist to start from scratch, all this material might’ve sat uncatalogued for years. Just sorting it into basic piles saves us a great deal of time and money.”

“It’s a pleasure to do it,” Justin said.

“Do you agree?” Coffin wryly asked Veronica.

“I do,” she said. “I loved Doc Adams.”

“We all did,” he said sadly. “He’ll be impossible to replace.”

“Any word from the faculty search committee?” Justin asked.

“No, with the school’s budget like it is, his position may stay empty long enough for you to claim it.”

“Hopefully not. The students deserve better.”

“The students always deserve better,” Coffin said. “But the men who hold the purse strings over in Nashville don’t see the profit in studying things like folklore. And to them, if there’s no profit, there’s no value. And that reminds me, Mr. Johnson: come see me tomorrow, so we can get you set up with another masters committee advisor. Does eight o’clock work for you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then I’ll leave you to your work. Thanks again.”

When he’d gone, Veronica said, “Do you think that’s true? That the only things that matter are ones that turn a profit?”

“I think he’s right that the people who control the money think that way.”

She shook her head. “Then you and I will never make a living.”

“Sure we will,” he said, and pulled her into a kiss. “Me with a degree in folklore, you with one in parapsychology, we’ll be rolling in it.”

“My degree is actually in psychology, you bum,” she said against his lips. “So at least I’ll be able to get a job.”

“Then you can support me until my research makes us rich.”

When they broke the kiss, she said, “I need a break,” and looked for someplace to sit down. The desk chair was filled with a stack of papers, so she chose what looked like a solid pile of magazines. As soon as her weight settled on it, though, the slick covers slid out from under her and she fell to one side with a surprised yelp.

“Graceful,” Justin said as he helped her up. “Been sitting long, or just reading about it?”

She looked down at the magazines, frowned a little, and said, “Hey, look.”

From the very bottom of the pile she lifted a metal lockbox. It was gray and featureless except for touches of rust on the corners. She placed it on the desk and tried to open it.

“Locked,” she said. “Wonder what’s in it?”

“Probably something personal,” Justin said, and turned back to his work.

“Wait, you’re not curious?” Veronica said.

“Of course I’m curious, but I imagine we’ll find a lot of curious things before we’re done. We’ll make that the start of the ‘curious’ pile.”

Veronica looked down at the box. It was big enough to hold a stack of notebooks, and clearly had something inside, but that something was not heavy the way papers or text would be. And it rattled when she shook it.

Copyright © 2018 by Alex Bledsoe

About the Author

ALEX BLEDSOE is the author of the Eddie LaCrosse novels (The Sword-Edged Blonde, Burn Me Deadly, Dark Jenny, and Wake of the Bloody Angel), the novels of the Tufa (The Hum and Shiver, Wisp of a Thing, Long Black Curl, and Chapel of Ease), and the Memphis Vampires (Blood Groove and Girls with Games of Blood). Bledsoe grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. He now lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Enter the captivating world of the fae in Alex Bledsoe’s Tufa novels:

The Hum and the Shiver
Wisp of a Thing
Long Black Curl
Chapel of Ease
Gather Her Round
Sadieville

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