by Rhys Ford
Hugh wasn’t sure how anyone could abandon their child, discarded in the trash. There were two fire stations and a hospital within walking distance from the Ruby Tuesday where he’d found her. She could have been dropped off somewhere safe easily, but she hadn’t been. She’d been left by the side of the dumpster like trash. Not a day went by that Hugh didn’t thank whatever gods there were that he’d found her.
“I found her,” he repeated firmly. “I went back every day for three weeks, hoping to find who’d left her. But there was never any trace.”
There wouldn’t have been any, not if she’d been left by a fae, he realized. At least none he could detect.
“Where.”
“Cincinnati.”
“And you’ve left her alone in Cincinnati?”
Hugh tensed. “No. She’s at a summer camp with her friends.”
“Camp? In the forest?”
“Yes. She’s gone every summer for years. She loves it.”
Some of the tension bled out of Rykoff’s posture, but he still clutched the sock with a death grip. “Of course she does. It is how we recharge. Being in this realm is difficult. The only good part about it are the forests, where the veil between realms is thin.”
Ruby always came home from camp energized and happy, and he’d assumed that was just normal kid behavior. But maybe it was more. Maybe the way she darted away from him toward her friends when he dropped her off wasn’t about her being an independent spirit. Maybe it was part of her feeling drawn to the forest.
“We may walk among you when it is necessary for us, but the fae do not live in the realm of humans.”
How would a fae baby come to be abandoned in the human realm? He doubted there were Planned Parenthoods in the fae world, but if children were that precious, wouldn’t adoption be a thing? Why leave a child in the human realm to die?
“I’ll answer your questions about my daughter if you answer mine about how to keep her healthy in this realm.”
Rykoff huffed. “It is impossible for a fae youngling to be raised outside the realm.”
“She’s gotten by fine for ten years. But I need to know everything you can tell me about the fae. She’s my daughter, Rykoff. Your speech about kids being precious? She is. She’s my life. I’d die to protect her. Help me do that.”
Hugh held Rykoff’s gaze even though he was uncomfortable being so vulnerable. Rykoff had the advantage here. Hugh didn’t like it, but it underscored how important it was that he find out more about the fae. Did Ruby have powers now? Was she scared or confused? Hurting? Was she hiding them from him, worried she was some sort of freak?
His decision to hide his true nature from her had seemed wise, but now it seemed cruel. His little girl must think there was something wrong with her. She had no idea she wasn’t the only one with a supernatural secret.
Rykoff finally relaxed, and Hugh breathed a sigh of relief and let go of his shirt.
“On one condition,” Rykoff said. “I want to verify she is alive and well.”
Hugh could do that. They could video chat her in the morning. He’d call the camp and make up an excuse—some emergency that would be bad enough he needed to talk to her face-to-face but not so bad he’d have to pick her up. News about her cousin Clementine, maybe. She didn’t have any cousins, of course, but it was their code for the times he couldn’t pick her up from school and she needed to go home with someone else.
“Tomorrow,” Hugh said with a nod. He checked his rearview mirror for traffic and pulled back out onto the interstate.
“This is the direction you were heading,” Rykoff said as Hugh merged. “I asked you to take me to the youngling.”
Hugh shot him a tight grin. “I told you I would do anything to keep her safe. That includes not bringing the strange fae I just met to meet her. We’ll call her.”
“I have a duty to reclaim the youngling and take her to court before harm befalls her in this realm.”
Bullshit. “My daughter’s welfare is no business of yours, but I assure you she’s well cared for and happy.”
Rykoff snorted. “How can she be happy when she is trapped among humans and living with a vampire? This realm is stifling. One can barely draw a breath.”
Hugh silently reminded himself that his daughter was happy and well-adjusted. She’d never seemed the slightest bit distressed by living in the city.
Though she had a certain glow to her when she came home from camp. Fuck. Had he been asphyxiating her for her entire life?
“Is that—is that a thing?”
“It’s a turn of phrase,” Rykoff said. “She is not actually unable to breathe.”
“Is it really that bad here? Is she being harmed by living in the mortal realm?”
Rykoff frowned. “I meant only that this realm dulls my fae senses. I have none of the freedom that the fae realm provides. Think of it as only being able to see half the colors you normally do, or not being able to taste—” He turned in his seat to face Hugh. “Do you eat? I haven’t a clue as to the epicurean habits of the vampire race.”
“We eat,” Hugh said shortly, annoyed. “Our nourishment comes from chi, but we can eat and drink as humans do.”
Rykoff pondered that for a moment and then nodded. “It makes sense, evolutionarily. Your race depends on humans for sustenance, therefore anything that sets you apart from them makes it harder for you to survive.”
“Senses, Rykoff,” Hugh reminded him. “You were talking about Ru—I mean, my daughter’s senses here in the mortal realm.”
“They’re not as vivid as they would be if she were home. And her access to her powers will be dampened.”
Jesus fuck. Powers?
“What powers?”
“She won’t develop them until she’s older, but she is a fae,” he said with a shrug. “We have many latent abilities.”
Hugh could tell Rykoff wasn’t about to share what those abilities were, so he let it drop. For now.
“You said you’re here chasing the rogue. Are you some sort of fae official?”
Rykoff stiffened. “My position at court is none of your business.”
That sounded like a no. Which was probably a good thing. It would be harder to convince Rykoff to keep Ruby a secret if he held an official post in the fae court. Hugh needed to make sure he wasn’t going to step through a portal the moment he got out of the car and spill the beans.
“A bounty hunter, then?”
Rykoff’s already glacial expression cooled even more, so Hugh quit while he was ahead. Whatever Rykoff’s mission, it didn’t involve him.
“What leads do you have? I have friends in a few jurisdictions who can help if you have enough on him to put a BOLO out.”
Just because he couldn’t always give the bad guys over to the cops didn’t mean he never could. Sometimes he got lucky during his hunt and stumbled into a nest of evidence that could put a criminal away, and he always turned that over when it happened. He’d made quite a few friends in law enforcement over the years, and he had access to an even wider network of resources through his supernatural friends.
“What is a bow low?”
“It’s an acronym. It means be on the lookout for. Law enforcement uses it to get a person’s description out to a lot of officers on the street so they can look for them.”
Rykoff shook his head. “Ambrose is dangerous and wouldn’t hesitate to hurt a human if they tried to detain him.”
“We could frame it as a missing-person report. They wouldn’t try to stop him, but they’d send out an alert if they saw someone who fit his description. Do you know where he’s heading?”
He didn’t have connections for a statewide call, but if Rykoff could narrow it down to a few cities, Hugh might be able to pull some strings.
Rykoff pursed his lips. “It’s private fae business.”
Hugh bit back a nasty comment. This wasn’t any of his business. If Rykoff was too stubborn to take help, then so be it. Hugh wasn’t going to spend his summer vacat
ion hunting down a rogue fae anyway.
He had weeks of gluttony and orgies ahead of him. He’d spend some time with Rykoff, get whatever information out of him he could about powers Ruby might develop and anything else he needed to know, and then they’d go their separate ways.
“I don’t suppose you have a fae edition of What to Expect When You’re Expecting,” Hugh muttered.
“I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”
Hugh glanced over at Rykoff, who had settled back into the seat and closed his eyes. He wasn’t exactly sure what normal looked like for the fae, but this probably wasn’t it. Rykoff had bags under his eyes, and his skin still had an unhealthy pallor. It was clear he needed to recharge somehow.
They’d been passing billboards for a campground for miles, and when it showed up again, advertising the exit in a few miles, Hugh made the spontaneous decision that they’d head there. It wasn’t like they had a plan. Even before Rykoff had intercepted him, Hugh hadn’t had an itinerary for the evening. Hell, if things hadn’t gone awry, he’d probably be sleeping off his meal in the car at the truck stop.
Rykoff barely twitched when Hugh took the next exit, which confirmed in his mind that he’d made the right choice. The poor guy was dead to the world, tired enough that he conked out with a virtual stranger at the wheel. Hugh didn’t flatter himself thinking it meant Rykoff trusted him. It simply meant the fae was too depleted to stay awake.
He’d said being in nature helped, and this campground was the best Hugh could do at the moment. He followed the signs, inky darkness settling around the car as he left the headlights of the interstate behind them.
Five minutes later he turned onto a gravel drive marked by an unilluminated wooden sign that had seen better days. It erased any hope that the campground would have modern amenities like Wi-Fi. Hell, it didn’t even have pavement. His car bumped over foliage and pot holes in what had probably once been a maintained gravel road. They’d have their privacy, at least. It didn’t look like Lakeland Hills Campground had hosted visitors for years.
The narrow drive gave way to a clearing, Hugh’s headlights illuminating a dilapidated tollbooth-style building. He’d known cabins were a long shot, but the sparseness of the setup was still a surprise. The gravel continued past the booth, with mini driveways set up about ten feet apart. Apparently this had been a drive-up campground.
He pulled into the first campsite and killed the lights. He’d put good money on Rykoff’s night vision being even better than his, and his was pretty damn good.
The fae stirred when the engine turned off, blinking hard as he roused himself and took in their new surroundings. Hugh was charmed by how cute and rumpled he looked, and he had to remind himself that Rykoff could probably snap his neck like a twig if he wanted to. This wasn’t a guy he’d picked up at a bar. This was a fae, who was a total unknown quantity.
“We needed to stop somewhere for the night, and this seemed as good a place as any,” Hugh said when Rykoff frowned at him.
“What is this place?”
“An abandoned campground,” Hugh said as he climbed out of the car. He had blankets and a pillow in the back, since he’d planned to sleep in his car at least part of the time anyway. “To be fair, I didn’t know it was abandoned when I chose it, but we’ll be fine.”
They were two apex predators. There was nothing in these woods as scary as them. The worst part was having his hopes of indoor plumbing dashed.
Rykoff stretched as he stood, his shirt riding up to expose sharp hip bones. He looked undernourished, and the urge to feed him overwhelmed Hugh. He rifled through the trunk, looking for supplies. Even though he enjoyed it, and it was part of his routine now, Hugh didn’t technically need to eat. And since his vacation budget wouldn’t even extend to a shoestring, he hadn’t brought unnecessary food. He nearly crowed with delight when he found a box of fruit jerky shoved in a corner. Probably forgotten after a shopping trip. He grabbed that and two bottles of water from his stash and wandered along the dirt path, looking for Rykoff.
He found him nestled against the base of a tree like he was sitting in a plush recliner.
“You must be hungry,” he said, shoving the box at him.
Rykoff didn’t take it. “I’ve eaten food in the mortal realm before, and it doesn’t agree with me.”
Hugh didn’t doubt that. Highly processed food made Ruby sick, which was why he spent a considerable amount of his meager salary on organic food from the bougie grocery store in town. The granola bars she’d tried to sneak to camp to sell for quarters cost almost four dollars apiece.
“Try this,” he said, nudging the box at Rykoff until he huffed out an annoyed sigh and took it. “No added sugars or preservatives. It’s basically fruit and water mashed together and baked.”
Rykoff gave it a skeptical look but unwrapped one and took a bite, then another, barely chewing as he finished the first bar. He accepted the bottle of water Hugh held out and took a deep drink from it before wiping his mouth.
“These are acceptable,” he said as he unwrapped a second bar. “Thank you.”
Hugh shrugged. “My kid has a lot of food intolerances and allergies. I figured you might be the same.”
“Our bodies aren’t designed to handle food as the humans have evolved it,” Rykoff said. “We live closer to nature than modern humans do, and we rely on it for our sustenance. Fruits are good. Vegetables. Nuts. Things freely given to us by the forest in exchange for our protection.”
That was a weird way to phrase it. Almost like nature was sentient. Or maybe it was in the fae realm?
“Do the plants really give themselves to you to eat?”
Rykoff snorted. “Like a sacrifice? No. But it is easy to live in tune with nature if you try. Nature is a fickle mistress, but she’s also a nurturing one.”
That put Hugh’s visions of giant man-eating flytraps to bed, then.
“That said, we have many species that no longer exist here. At one time the fae and mortal realms were one, but when mortals began their destructive quest to tame the land, the fae court split us from them.”
God, that would be a botanist’s dream. Stepping into the fae realm must be like traveling back in time. What if there were—
“There are no dinosaurs,” Rykoff said, breaking Hugh out of his reverie. At Hugh’s curious look, Rykoff laughed. “You’re not the first I’ve told about the fae realm. Dinosaurs always come up eventually.”
Hugh watched as Rykoff gathered leaves, molding them into a bed that ended up looking quite comfortable. Well, as comfortable as sleeping outside on the ground could be.
“I need to rest,” Rykoff said, tucking himself into the leaf bed.
“I can stand watch while you sleep.”
“Unnecessary,” Rykoff answered. “You would benefit from some sleep as well. The rogue isn’t anywhere near here, but even if he was, he wouldn’t be able to sneak up on us.”
He laid a hand at the base of the massive tree he’d built his nest under. His eyes glowed amber briefly. Hugh swore the bark shivered at his touch.
“The forest will let us know if anyone with ill will approaches.”
Hugh was too tired to parse that. Apparently Rykoff was forging alliances with trees now, and the forest was sentient enough to stand guard. Maybe he did need to go to bed before he lost the remainder of his sanity.
He’d planned to offer Rykoff his pillow and blanket, but the fae seemed unfairly comfortable in his bed of leaves. He seemed to fall asleep as soon as he closed his eyes, which also annoyed Hugh. He dragged himself back to the car and spent a few minutes adjusting the passenger seat so he could stretch out as much as possible, which unfortunately wasn’t nearly enough.
He couldn’t see Rykoff from the car, which bothered him more than it should. Logically, he knew the fae could protect himself. Even if the trees “standing watch” thing was bullshit—which it had to be—he’d seen Rykoff fight. After recharging in the woods, he should be back to full
strength.
It would be ridiculous to leave the car and sleep on the ground with Rykoff. Hugh had always hated camping, and this barely even qualified as that. No tent, no sleeping bags, no s’mores. Just a nest of leaves that Rykoff seemed to find as comfortable as a feather bed and a tree that had that weird glowy thing going on.
Hugh tossed and turned restlessly for half an hour before a tap on the hood of the car startled him into sitting straight up. Rykoff stood there with an amused smile on his face.
“Your anxiety is keeping me awake,” the fae said. “Come. I’ve made you a bed.”
Hugh hoped that meant what he thought it did. Hugh would much rather be in Rykoff’s bed than one on his own. He climbed out of the car, stretching his sore muscles as he did. He was confident he wasn’t imagining the flash of lust in Rykoff’s eyes, and he definitely wasn’t imagining the curl of heat in his own stomach. If he and Rykoff were stuck together for the foreseeable future, they could at least have a good time.
Hugh leaned into Rykoff’s warmth. His lack of smell was disconcerting, but he was still warm and firm and unmistakably male, even without a scent.
Rykoff’s breath stuttered, and Hugh nuzzled against his cheek. The touch was electric, almost dizzying. When Rykoff didn’t protest, Hugh leaned in and pressed his lips against his in a brief, teasing kiss.
Or what he’d meant to be teasing. The moment their lips met, he felt Rykoff’s aura like a physical touch. It drove his senses wild—like coming out of sensory deprivation. He still couldn’t smell him, but he could feel him, which was even better. Rykoff’s hand on his shoulder was like a brand. The heat of it nearly had Hugh sweating. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have Rykoff wrapped around him. Maybe something like stepping into a fire.
He’d like that very, very much.
“What if I’d rather have your bed?”
Rykoff jolted and stepped back. The intoxicating feel of his aura died as soon as the contact ended. Hugh missed it immediately.
“I could certainly trade beds with you. Though they are of the same caliber.”