Maybe that they used to be someone else.
Grinning to himself, he pulled up Social Security's Master Death File. What he found there was exciting enough to have him splitting his browser's screen. Muttering to himself, he took a little jaunt through an old DMV database. When the license he wanted finished loading, and he compared the pages side by side, he knew he'd scored a Hail Mary.
"Gotcha!" he crowed. "Take a look at this, guys. The real Magnus Monroe was a skinny carrottop who died in 1992. The one you know is a fake!"
He remembered a little too late that Zoe might not be as happy as he was to hear this news. With an effort, he dialed back the cheer in his voice.
"I need a current picture of him," he said to Zoe, who was gaping at him from the table. "Maybe our contact at the FBI can find a match for his face."
"The FBI?" Bryan put his hand on Alex's shoulder, pulling his gaze back to him. "Alex, I know you don't like this guy, but I can't let you mislead Zoe this way."
"What are you talking about? I've got him. The real Magnus Monroe is dead. Zoe's friend could be anyone."
"Alex, the screen says 'record not found.' "
His tone was so certain and his eyes so sad that Alex had to check the laptop again. The incriminating and slightly pop-eyed picture of the red-haired man remained exactly where he'd left it. Alex's neck prickled for the third time that evening.
"What's wrong with you?" he asked Bryan. "It's right there as plain as day. The Social Security record. The DMV photo."
Zoe came over to see for herself.
"It's right there," Alex assured her, as if she, too, might deny its reality.
Zoe bent close to read the screen, then turned to Bryan. "It is right there. Why would you want to hide this from me?"
Bryan began to look confused. "It's blank. I swear, you two, Magnus Monroe is exactly who he says he is."
Then he backed away from them and sat on the bed.
"I don't think he's joking," Zoe said. "I think he really can't read the screen."
"But why wouldn't…" Alex trailed off, his brain slowing to a crawl, until he almost heard the took, tock, took of its gears turning. He'd been trying to push the incident from his mind, but the voice at the falls came back to him, the one that had mistaken him for Magnus and told him to come home. Fairy Falls had figured heavily in the dotty old lady stories that he'd read at the Courier. If the fairies weren't galloping out of the falls on their white stallions, they'd been haunting the woods nearby. He hated to admit it, but maybe Fairy Falls was more than a name. Maybe real live fairies were traveling back and forth.
And maybe Magnus was one of them.
"Oh, God," he said, his face gone hot with embarrassment, though he hadn't said one crazy thought out loud.
Except… someone had cast some sort of spell on Zoe at the falls, and if not a fairy, then what? Maybe Magnus had found a similar magical means of protecting his bogus records from inquiring eyes, and maybe he and Zoe were immune because they were Fairyville natives.
Alex had seen a little fairy at the falls, complete with wings. Possibly it had been part delusion, but could he truly be certain big fairies weren't real?
"Oh, God," he said, this time just to Zoe. "I so don't want to share my theory about this…"
At some point during Alex's story, Zoe sat beside Bryan on the bed. This tale was too wild to take standing up.
"If Magnus really is a fairy," she said, the words faltering a little on their way out. "Wouldn't someone have noticed? Wouldn't being a magical creature make him stand out?"
"People find ways to account for what they don't understand. If his power is making people not see things… I mean, how can you explain Bryan thinking that screen is blank? And you said yourself his business is successful. Maybe he's working some sort of money mojo, too."
"He's very charming," Zoe justified.
"And what if it's fairy charm? Look, I know this sounds crazy, but you of all people know the value of an open mind."
Zoe did know. She simply wasn't comfortable admitting the world might be even stranger than she'd given it credit for. She smoothed the towel down her thighs, wishing she'd put on something more armorlike. Sighing, she asked what she had to.
"What exactly did the newspaper stories say?"
Alex handed her a sheaf of copies, which he'd probably sweet-talked some intern to make for him. "Here," he said. "These are the original transcripts of the interviews. Basically, these old ladies are repeating stories from when Fairyville was more like a ghost town, about how handsome men used to ride out of Fairy to seduce young girls."
"On the fall moon," Zoe said, skimming down the page. "It says here they had to win a maiden's heart, and if they did, they could remain in the forest, dallying with their new girlfriend for the full month."
Oh, Lord. Her back tightened as if it wanted to shiver but couldn't quite. Was this the reason Magnus slept with a different woman on each full moon? Could it really be as simple and as insane as that?
She had to admit him being a fairy would explain some of his quirks.
Alex reached over to flip through the stack for the page he wanted. "One of the old ladies says that if the parents of the girl came to look for her, the fairies could make themselves invisible. The girls could still see them, but the parents couldn't. It was like they'd been hypnotized."
Zoe's eyes refused to focus on the passage he'd pointed out, though she didn't doubt what he said was there. "Why haven't my fairies mentioned this? Surely they can spot an imposter."
Alex shrugged. "I don't know. Bad blood maybe. Your fairy queen did call Magnus's mother 'The Evil One.' And if his mother isn't a ghost but actually a fairy, that would probably make him one, too."
"Jesus," Zoe said, which showed how flummoxed she was. She'd never liked taking that name in vain.
"Guys," Bryan interrupted in a firm but patient tone. "The. Screen. Is. Blank."
Zoe knew she couldn't leave him in his confusion.
"Come back and look again," she said. "With me this time."
She pulled him gently behind her, coaxing his arms around her waist until his body touched hers above the towel. He and Alex had only pulled on their trousers, and his upper body was bare. It was odd to feel his warm skin and chest hair in this context, but she pushed off the distraction. Closing her eyes, she imagined her aura getting bigger and brighter and blending with Bryan's. It was a trick her old mentor had taught her to goose up another person's psychic sensitivities—assuming they had a few to start with.