Chapter 2 shifts to Chip’s point of view for the perfect comedown after the previous chapter’s action, following him home covered in zombie gore and trying to get cleaned up before the kids wake. His quiet exchange with Warren the werewolf investigator, who’s been watching the children overnight, grounds the found-family texture that makes this series so warm, while nine-year-old Sadie’s matter-of-fact reaction to her uncle’s battle-worn state gets a great laugh.

The chapter’s real charm comes from its quieter domestic details: Bernard the bed troll casually revealing an entire hidden zombie ultimate frisbee league mid-cereal-bowl, Sadie’s growing interest in a book with “kissy stuff” that has Chip quietly panicking, and Addy’s insistence on doing everything his big sister does. It’s exactly the kind of lived-in, funny worldbuilding that makes the series’ hidden supernatural community feel real rather than purely functional.

Underneath the humor, the chapter does real work reinforcing the family’s central tension: Sadie’s growing frustration at having to hide her magic and strength from the ordinary world around her. Chip’s gentle reminder that hiding isn’t just about her safety, but about not hurting the people around her, lands as a genuinely thoughtful parenting moment, and sets up the pressure Sadie will keep feeling as she gets older and her powers keep growing.

📖 Follow the Guardian family’s latest adventure — get Field Trip Fae on Jamie Davis’s site:

jamiedavisbooks.com/books/field-trip-fae/

 

Field Trip Fae — Chapter 2

Rose dropped me off at the house at a little after five in the morning. I took care to be quiet while coming inside. I didn’t want to wake the kids. They didn’t need to see me covered in zombie gore like I was. Despite being quiet, Warren, with his super werewolf hearing, knew I’d come home. He met me in the kitchen.

“Hmph, you look rough, dude. Did you catch the guy?”

“No, but I did manage to get way too close to a bunch of zombies.”

“I know.” Warren waved a hand in front of his nose. “I can smell it all over you. You need to get cleaned up before the kids wake up.”

“My thoughts exactly. Thanks for holding down the fort.”

Warren picked up his jacket and keys from the table in the dining room. “No problem. They never woke up, so I don’t think they even knew I was here.”

“Good, I don’t like them to worry when Rose takes me out late at night on these little training missions.”

“It’s good for you to encounter different things in the Unusual world. I guess she should have warned you about necromancers and the zombies they create.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m a big boy. I knew what we were walking into. Still, until you’ve faced a ravenous zombie trying to eat your brains, it’s hard to understand the specific challenges involved in fighting them.”

Warren chuckled and walked to the front door. I followed him, shaking his hand before he left. I watched him walk across the lawn to his SUV and then closed the door, turning the deadbolt and resetting the chain lock.

“Did you get the bad guy, Uncle Chip?”

I spun around to find Sadie standing on the landing of the stairs up to the bedrooms. I hoped she couldn’t see the gore covering me in the early morning gloom with most of the lights off, but I knew there was little hope of that. Her enhanced Fae vision saw nearly as well in total darkness as in daylight.

“Um, no, but we did stop him from completing his plans.”

Her nine-year-old eyes peered through the darkness at me, and she shook her head. “Aunt Rose says if you get the other guy’s blood on you instead of your own, you’re doing things right. I guess that means you won. Can I have breakfast?”

I fought down my worry of the gore coating me and said, “Sure, get a toaster pastry out of the freezer. You can make it yourself. I’m going to go wash up. As soon as I’m finished, I’ll come back down so we can talk about all this.”

She shrugged and walked down the rest of the steps and turned towards the kitchen. I watched her go and then hurried upstairs before Addy woke up. At five, he might have a much different reaction to all the blood and guts than his older sister did. Then again, he’d started training with Aunt Rose, too, so maybe not.

I stripped and immediately decided to write off the whole outfit. The jeans, T-shirt, jacket, and sneakers all had to go. I didn’t want to run zombie brains and guts through my clothes washer. I was sure I’d never get the stink out if I did, no matter what the detergent brand said about stain mastery and odor control. I pulled a plastic trash bag from beneath the sink and stuffed the entire outfit inside.

The shower’s powerful water jets felt good, though it stung at first as I washed and scrubbed at the caked-on gore on my exposed skin. There were more than a few scrapes and cuts hidden underneath I’d never noticed getting during the fight. Some had cut through my jacket’s sleeves and pants, too. I’d make sure to put antibiotic ointment on them before I got dressed. Rose had assured me my Guardian magic would protect me from most magical effects from Unusual bites and such, but that didn’t help with random germs that had to exist on a dead and decaying body.

After I swabbed and bandaged things as best I could, I got dressed. It was after six and it had taken me longer to get cleaned up than I expected. I snagged the plastic garbage bag with my soiled clothing and headed downstairs.

Sadie sat reading a book at the kitchen counter. She was on one of the barstools at the island. Bernard, the bed troll, sat on the stool next to her eating a bowl of cereal.

She looked up when I walked in and noticed the bag I carried right away. “You’re throwing out the clothes you were wearing? I guess that’s the right thing. They were pretty gross.” She wrinkled up her nose as she said it.

“Yeah, no sense cleaning up that mess. What’s your book about?” I leaned out the doorway into the garage and dropped the bag into the large rolling trash bin there.

“It’s one Astrid gave me. A girl meets a boy at the beach, and they fall in love.”

That caught me by surprise. She usually liked fantasy epics with swords and warrior princesses. I covered my shock by asking, “How is it?”

“It’s okay. It’s pretty unrealistic. I don’t see how any girl would just fall in love with a guy like that in just a few days.”

“Yeah, stuff like that never happens.” I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t ready for the whole dating thing yet. “What are you going to say to Astrid?”

“I don’t know yet. I think I’ll keep reading before I decide. Maybe something later in the book will change my mind about it.”

I loved that she read as much as she did, and I didn’t care much about what genres she read as long as they weren’t too adult in their themes. It was a great habit to have. When she didn’t have homework or soccer practice, she could usually be found sitting somewhere reading.

Bernard looked up with a mouth full of crunchy wheat cereal. “Rose should have warned you about the possibility of zombies. You could have worn a pair of old coveralls or something disposable.”

An image popped into my head of myself in a yellow hazmat suit and hood trying to fight off zombies with my sword. I decided it was a moot point. We weren’t going back to that house and Rose had said the local Unusual community had a crew that would clean up the zombie infestation there.

“It’s a shame the necromancer raised them to be ravenous killers,” Bernard said, continuing his thought. “Most zombies I know are pretty decent folks.”

That surprised me. “Know a lot of zombies, do you?”

“A few over the years. There’s a pretty active ultimate frisbee league for zombies that runs across the state. I’ve been to a few of their matches in between assignments to kids like Sadie here. It’s pretty exciting, especially with all the limbs and other bits falling off the players during the matches.”

“You’re kidding, right?” I’d heard and learned a lot about the Unusuals in the world, but this stretched credibility, even from what I knew.

Bernard held up his right hand. “Swear to the gods. Of course, they only play at night in the dark. Can’t have humans witnessing that kind of carnage at a sporting event. They’d freak out.”

“What happens when someone’s leg falls off?” Sadie asked.

“They usually just reattach it somehow. I saw one guy get his arm reattached with a pneumatic nail gun on the spot. He went back in and started playing again right away.”

“Cool,” Sadie said. “I wish I’d seen that. My soccer games are so ordinary.”

I corrected her, saying, “Ordinary is perfectly fine, Sadie. The extraordinary draws attention to us.”

“Yeah, I know. We need to stay in hiding until I’m older. I remember the rules, Uncle Chip. It’s just so hard to keep my strength and abilities to myself. I wish I were like the girls in one of my fantasy books. Then I could kick butt and take names the way I want to.”

This had been coming up a lot lately. She wasn’t really rebelling. Rose made sure to give her plenty of opportunities to use her burgeoning power during their sparring matches. That seemed to keep her desire to use her abilities in check for the most part.

“Sadie, honey, you have to remember it’s not just about hiding who you are. It’s also about not hurting your teammates or opponents when you’re playing. Your magic is pretty wild right now. Aunt Rose says it’ll settle down eventually, but until then, you have to keep yourself under control.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Her lip pushed out in a little pout.

I smiled when I saw it. I’d heard that worked on softening up other dads with their daughters. I’d found I was mostly impervious to her cute little attempts at manipulation. It was quite the pout, though. It would have had most dads wrapped around their little girls’ fingers. It was probably because I was home with the kids all the time. I’d become immune to these little tricks as I had watched her develop them over time.

“Are you finished eating?” I asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“Come help me make lunch for you and Addy. Go and get the sandwich stuff from the fridge.”

“Okay, Uncle Chip.” She closed her book and hopped down off the stool.

“Hey, Sadie,” I said while she dug in the refrigerator. “Where do zombie generals keep their armies?”

She rolled her eyes right on cue, knowing a dad joke was coming. “Where, Uncle Chip?”

“In their sleevies.” I laughed. “Pretty good, huh?”

She tried not to smile as she brought back the lunch fixings.

We had almost finished making lunch when Addy came downstairs and joined us for his breakfast. I got him a toaster pastry and a banana, then poured him a glass of milk.

Bernard had quietly disappeared upstairs when he was finished eating to get some sleep in whatever dimension he disappeared into during the day. Addy’s bed troll, Brunna, showed up though. She didn’t say anything, as was usual. She just waved, grunted, and grabbed a banana from the bowl before returning up to Addy’s room for her own rest time.

“Hey, buddy. Your sister and I are just about finished up with packing your lunch. Do you want chips or crackers to go with your sandwich?”

“Chips,” he said around a mouthful of banana. Addy swallowed the food in his mouth and asked, “Did you and Aunt Rose go get a bad guy last night?” He pointed at the scratches and cuts on my arm.

I should have worn a long sleeve sweatshirt. The kids were getting too old and too smart to not notice battle damage when they saw it.

“We chased him off, yes. Warren came over to stay here, though, so you weren’t alone at night, okay.”

Addy’s eyes brightened. “Is Uncle Warren still here?” He twisted in his seat to look through the open door into the dining room.

“No, he went home to sleep.”

Warren had a trick he played with Addy where the werewolf would pretend to get angry about something silly and pop out his claws on one hand a finger at a time. Addy had thought that was hilarious since he was a toddler.

Addy deflated a little at the news the werewolf had already left.

“Don’t worry, buddy. We can have him over soon for a cookout around the fire pit in the back yard. Does that sound like fun?”

Sadie perked up at the news we might have company over. “Can I invite Astrid? You could have Miss Patty over, too.”

I hid a wince at the mention of Patty Peyton. She’d reverted to her maiden name since her divorce became final. The two of us had an on again, off again thing that was currently in the off phase. I know Sadie and Astrid were currently scheming to get us back together in true parent trap fashion, but I thought it was over for real this time. Patty had started to ask questions about things regarding Sadie’s growing abilities that could lead to me revealing her destiny as the future Fae Queen. I liked Patty a lot, but not enough to give up that particular secret.

“I’m fine with Astrid coming over. We can do a sleep over if you want, but I’m sure Miss Patty will have something else to do.”

“That means you aren’t going to invite her, Uncle Chip.” Sadie fixed me with a level stare. “I speak grown-up, you know.”

I laughed. “Grown-up speak understand, do you?” I said in my mock Yoda voice.

Both kids smiled. They loved when I did my funny voices. I switched back to my normal voice. “Finish up and get dressed for school. It’ll be time to leave before you know it.”

I watched them while I cleaned up the lunch fixings and put everything away. Addy went back to his cereal and apple slices. Sadie returned to her book while her brother ate. When he finished his breakfast, they both left to go up and get dressed.

The grandfather clock by the front door chimed. We had to leave to walk down to the bus stop soon. The two of them were growing up faster than I realized sometimes. It worried me on some levels because there was so much they had to learn to fulfill their destinies. Sadie would become the first Fae Queen in over five hundred years and Addy must take up his role as her official champion. Their Aunt Rose and I had a lot of work to do before then.

📖 Loved Chapter 2? Keep going — get Field Trip Fae on Jamie Davis’s site:

jamiedavisbooks.com/books/field-trip-fae/