Courting Darkness

Page 13

Aeval frowned, her gossamer dress blowing in the breeze. But the cold didn’t even seem to faze her. She shook her head. “Usually, they lead to a barrow and cross over into the realm of Fae. But you were already there . . . so this is an oddity. You find faerie mushroom rings here, quite often actually, but they are not common once you cross over. I’ll do some research. Meanwhile, I think you are correct. I don’t think the Bog Eater caught hold of your friend. I truthfully believe he still lives. As to how you will retrieve him . . . I’m sorry. I can help you no further.”
She turned. “I am returning to Talamh Lonrach Oll now. I will see you within the week.” And with that, the Queen of the Dark vanished into the swirling snow.
“What now?” Delilah asked, bleakly staring at Chase’s watch. We were sitting in my Lexus.
“I wish I knew. I wish I knew someone who might help us. They have to be associated with the Fae. Let me think.”
Damn it. Now, not only had we not found Chase, but we’d made yet another enemy. I frowned, fiddling with the receiver until I pulled in The End, a radio station that played cutting-edge alternative and grunge. As the music blared through the car, I ran through every idea I could think of.
Finally, I thought of something that might work, but it would mean more danger and more dealings with the Elder Fae. “Maybe Menolly can call on Ivana Krask again. She’s Elder Fae and might be able to help us.”
“Crap—the two words I did not want to hear. Elder Fae. What makes you think that Ivana Krask isn’t playing footsie with Yannie Fin Diver?” Delilah shot me a look like I was halfway on the road to crazy.
“You’re probably right, but that’s the best I can think of for now. Come on, let’s drop down to the Indigo Crescent and see how things are going, then head home. You can check out your new digs upstairs.”
My bookstore—which had started out belonging to the Otherworld Intelligence Agency—had been partially destroyed in an explosion that killed one of my best customers and a dear FBH friend—Henry Jeffries.
I’d dedicated a plaque in the reading alcove to him, but it didn’t feel like enough. He’d left me a surprising sum of money in his will, and with it, I’d expanded to a café next door, hiring others to run it. The Supes now had the Indigo Crescent Coffee Nook to hang out in. I was donating thirty percent of my profits above and beyond costs to the Supe Community Council to help various Supes in need.
We parked in the spot I’d reserved for my car. The Coffee Nook had its own little parking lot in back, which made it much easier for patrons to visit both my store and the restaurant.
We’d had an upswing in business lately, and the bookstore was selling briskly compared to most booksellers in the area. Publishing had taken some hard hits, but we’d invested in setting up audiobook nooks, and Roz had thought of a cool promotion that appeared to be working. We offered a coupon club. When customers came in with proof that they’d bought the book in e-format, we’d sell them a print copy at a discount. In fact, if they bought ten books through the club, they got an eleventh in print for free.
Delilah and I headed inside, she vaulting up the stairs to her new offices, which had been renovated and cleaned up after the explosion, and I into my office. It had been quite a while since I’d spent more than a few minutes here, and even now, my eyes brimmed up. Every time I came to my store, I couldn’t help but remember that Henry had died because he’d been working for me. Collateral damage. Too much, too much...
As I ran my hand over my new desk, still unused to the feel of the maple—my old desk had been oak—it hit me that life would never be the same. Too much had gone down, too much water under the bridge, too much death and carnage and too much uncertainty. But there were compensating factors and life never stood still. It couldn’t, or the stagnation would destroy us, slowly but surely.
“Hey boss!” Giselle peeked through the door, her voice hesitant. “I don’t want to disturb you but . . .”
Giselle had been a gift from Vanzir. She was demon, but she could pass for a rather striking young woman with long wheat-colored hair and muscles to rival even the strongest woman I knew. She was athletic—stocky and tanned. Her eyes were brilliant blue, thanks to the contacts that covered her red irises. FBHs were used to eyes my color now, and topaz eyes, but the red demonic thing still wouldn’t wash right and they’d think she was a vampire and begin questioning too closely.
“Come in.” I motioned for her to take a seat. “How are things going?”
She bit her lip. “Good, as far as the store goes. Deidre says that the restaurant is coming along nicely, too.”
Deidre was a coyote shifter I’d hired to watch over the coffee shop. She was a cousin of Marion Vespa’s—the shifter who ran the Supe-Urban Café—and Marion didn’t have a job for her so I’d taken her on. Deidre and Giselle had become more than friends, and they made a volatile but interesting couple.
The look on Giselle’s face told me something was up. “I know that look. Things may be fine here, but there’s something bothering you. What is it?”
Giselle sucked in a deep breath. “Yeah . . . there is something. Twice now, someone has come in, asking about you. About when you’re going to be here. The guy says he’s Fae and from Otherworld, but boss, I know he’s not. I know he’s something else, but I can’t pin him down.”
A draft swept through and I was suddenly cold. “Who was it? What did he look like?”
“I don’t know who he was. The first time, he tried to charm me, that much I can tell. I think he thought I was human and easily swayed. When that didn’t work, he left. Today he came in, trying to bribe me by offering me a brilliant cut diamond. It was gorgeous, but I don’t need diamonds. He seemed puzzled when I wouldn’t take it.”
I licked my lips. “Describe him?”
“He was around five nine, wiry but muscled. Bald with a single ponytail that was gathered from the center of his head. He looked . . . different, but I don’t know how to describe it. Dressed in leather and fur. But I know this: He knows how to work magic. And he was intent on finding out when you were going to be down here, which is why I’m glad you came in through the back today.”
“Yeah . . .” I hesitated. Coming in the back way was no guarantee to remaining anonymous. “I think I’d better get home. Delilah and I have a problem brewing, and I don’t need another on top of it.”
I called for Delilah and she came dashing down the stairs, carrying a sheaf of papers. “We’ve got to go. I shouldn’t be here right now.”
She gave me a quizzical look, then shrugged. “I’ll meet you at the car. I want to grab a couple cookies from the coffee shop.”
Smiling—Death Maiden or not, Delilah would forever be my younger sister—I nodded. “Just don’t take too long.”
I gathered up the books—it was time to go through them before sending them to the accountant—and then headed out the door, after thanking Giselle for keeping such a good watch on the shop. I climbed in the car and waited, watching the snow lazily fall on the ground. Too much, I whispered to myself. Too much worry, too much to face, too much to lose.
And then Delilah jumped in, warm cookies in her hands, and we took off for home, bathed in the wash of the fresh-fallen snow.
“Who do you think it was?” she asked on the way, handing me a cookie.
I waved away the sweet. For once, I didn’t have much of an appetite. “I think . . . I think it was someone connected with Hyto. Remember, Trytian said he was traveling with a snow monkey.”
“Fuck.” Delilah leaned back in her seat, nibbling on the chocolate chip cookie. “They know where the shop is, then.”
“Can you imagine what a dragon could do to my shop? To the restaurant? To all the people there?” Visions of screaming customers, caught afire from dragon’s breath, raced through my head. Hyto wasn’t just Smoky’s father. He was a terrifying dragon—easily capable of destroying everything I’d worked to build up, along with any number of innocents. And he wouldn’t care—FBHs were dust specks to him. And I was the thorn in his side.
“What are you going to do?” Delilah’s voice dropped, and I realized she’d suddenly grasped the severity of what could happen.
“I don’t know. Should I close the shop for now? Stacia killed Henry because of me. And she was leading a targeted campaign. What a crazed dragon might do . . . I can’t even think about it.”
I carefully navigated around a car stuck on the road. The streets were beginning to ice over with a thick layer of compacted snow beneath the glaze that was forming now that the temperature was dropping again. Though the traffic had melted off a layer of the snow during the day, now that it was afternoon the runoff would begin to freeze into black ice. Seattle drivers had no clue how to drive in the winter—and I was right there along with them. Except my reflexes were better than the average FBH’s.
By the time we neared the house, we were reduced to twenty miles per hour to avoid sliding into a ditch. I finally turned into our drive with a sigh of relief. Home glistened like a welcome scene out of a Thomas Kinkade painting.
As we scurried toward the house, slogging through the snow to the porch—which someone had shoveled clean, though it was starting to pile up again—the chill of the air caught me. The temperature was dropping fast and would likely hit the low twenties tonight. That would make for a lovely commute tomorrow.
“If it’s this cold now, I dread to see what it’s going to be like tonight.”
Delilah nodded. “I wish Menolly would skip driving her Jag and just go for a nice long walk to the Wayfarer—the cold wouldn’t bother her.”
“That might be a good idea. She wouldn’t really hurt herself much in a crash—at least not most crashes—but she could hurt someone else without meaning to.” As I opened the door, the bustle of the day hit us full force.
Trillian was setting the table for a late lunch. Iris and Rozurial were cooking up a huge pot of spaghetti and meatballs. Smoky was stomping in from the back porch, and I caught sight of the snow shovel as he hung it back up on its nail.
Shade was in the living room, coaxing a fire in the new woodstove we’d bought to help keep heating costs down. He blew lightly on the crumpled newspaper beneath the tinder, and it caught from the sparks that flew off his breath.
“Shamas at work?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yeah, he has the day shift this week, though he may sleep there if the roads are too bad.” As he stood, Delilah moved to him and he enfolded her in his arms, kissing her deeply, rubbing his hand up and down her back. They belonged together, as if they’d known each other all their lives. Even from the outside, I could feel the bond that had woven between the two.
The doorbell rang and I went to answer. It was Bruce, Iris’s boyfriend. He motioned for me to come out on the porch. Shivering, I followed him.
“What’s up? Why don’t you come in?”
He smiled, then pulled out something from his pocket. He looked like a young man barely in his thirties—right around Iris’s relative age. I wasn’t sure how the aging process worked among sprites and leprechauns, but I knew both were far, far older than me in chronological years—hundreds of years older. His tousled brunette hair was curly, reaching his shoulders, and his eyes sparkled with the purest blue—matching Iris’s own. He actually looked a lot like Roz, only without the dangerous edge. Bruce and Iris made a striking couple.
“I wanted to ask your opinion about something,” he said, holding out a box. “Do you think she’ll like this?”
I flipped it open. There, against the velvet cushion, rested a platinum band with a sparkling mixed-cut blue sapphire that had to be at least a full carat. On either side nestled half-carat diamond baguettes.
Gasping, I shook my head. “Oh, Bruce. She’ll love this. This is . . . this is beautiful.” I glanced at him. “So are you going to officially ask her today?”
He blushed. “Aye, my sweet. It’s time I did it proper. And she is free now, to accept. She called me last night and we talked long and deep. She told me what happened. I know her dark secrets. She told me if I wanted to walk, she wouldna blame me. She did kill her fiancé, after all. But the gods work as they will, and I would expect my lass to follow the will of her Lady and rid the world of evil. She did the right thing.”
I bit my lip. “Iris will want to stay here. Are you willing to move onto our land? We can help you build a home all your own—we have plenty of room here. Seven acres’ worth.”
“I would move to the moon, should that be where my Iris wanted to live.” And when he smiled at me, I felt like the sun had come out. No wonder Iris was taken with him. Bruce O’Shea was like a welcome ray of sunshine and I could practically feel him tugging a rainbow along with him.
“Then come in. And Bruce, in advance, without jinxing it, welcome to the family.” I leaned down and gave him a solid hug. And for one moment, I was able to block out the fear that had taken over my day.
Chapter 9
Lunch started out with a bang. We were gathered around the table when Bruce stood up and cleared his throat. Iris stared at him, her mouth full of spaghetti. I grabbed Smoky’s hand under the table. He gave me an inscrutable look but smiled at me.
“Iris and I’ve been courting for a while now, and though I’ve been a fool at times, she’s made me a better man.” Bruce shifted from one foot to the other. “I know her secrets, she knows mine. And now, ’tis time to step up and be the man she’s helped me become. I know you all consider Iris part of your family. Therefore it is only fitting that I beg your permission to ask for her hand in marriage. She is—and always will be—the girl of my dreams.”