He picked up the bucket that Kelsie had left next to the gate. She sat below the window that was open next to Baba’s bed. He hadn’t realized that one was open as well. He couldn’t hear anything beyond hushed voices inside, but that didn’t mean Kelsie wasn’t getting an earful.
Lucifer took a long walk. He cooled off at the stream and splashed water on his face before he collected a bucketful to bring back.
Two muileateach bog maidens waved to him from the other side of the stream. The two women were adorned with swamp weeds and algae. It was difficult to distinguish the serpents and weeds growing from their dark hair.
He was surprised to see them away from the swamp where he sometimes collected herbs. He nodded to them to acknowledge their presence. They beckoned for him to join him.
“Come hither, sweeting, so that we might enjoy your company.” From the mesmerizing quality of her voice, resonating with her particular flavor of enchantments, he recognized the woman as Morag.
“Not today,” he said. Not with Abigail so near, yet so far away. He wouldn’t risk her catching him and alienating her.
A twinge of guilt settled in him that he didn’t want her to know about his affairs, but here he was prying into hers. This was different, he told himself. He needed to know if someone had hurt her.
He sat down at the edge of the water and gazed at the sunlight shimmering on the surface. He sank into the stream of time and focused on the past. Divination wasn’t a natural talent, nor did he usually have much inclination to try to see futures he couldn’t control, but he had practiced when Baba made him.
After a moment, the vision came. Abigail lay curled on the ground in the forest, but not this forest. Three unicorns circled around her, their lips drawn back into sneers. Their large eyes were expressive with derision. A man sat on the ground beside her, stroking her hair as she sobbed. Only when the young man turned his face to yell at the unicorns did Lucifer see it was Godric.
His rival. That bloody bastard.
Godric lay down beside her, stroking her hair in a gesture that was far too intimate for Lucifer’s liking. He couldn’t tell whether Godric had forced himself on her and that was why she was crying, or she had willingly allowed him to lie with her, and it was the unicorns taunting that had made her cry. If only Lucifer could feel pain through scrying in the same way he did when he was next to a person.
Godric curled around Abigail and kissed her temple. Whether Abigail had consented or not, she was far too young to understand he was taking advantage of her. Godric should have restrained himself. He knew better.
He should have known Lucifer would pommel him into the ground the next time he saw him. If Lucifer stopped there.
The waves rippled, and one of the muileateaches swam through the water he was using to scry, interrupting his vision.
“Blast it!” Lucifer said.
The bog maiden screeched to get his attention, the inhuman cry piercing his ears. “How dare you, Witchkin. You will not ignore us.”
“Perhaps I’ll join you another time,” he said.
The muileateach splashed him. Irritated, he dumped his bucket of water on her head. She laughed as though it were a game. Perhaps it was for her.
She hadn’t seen someone she cared about hurt by someone she loathed in a vision. He filled the bucket of water and set out toward the cottage.
Meddling or not, he needed to talk to Abigail and find out if what he’d seen was correct. The carriage was gone when he returned. His heart sank. He hadn’t even said goodbye. He sat down on the stump he used for chopping.
Kelsie pretended not to notice his arrival as she sat weeding in the garden. He knew she’d eavesdropped on him and Clarissa. He wouldn’t put it past her to have eavesdropped on Clarissa or Abigail.
“Do you know what happened?” Lucifer asked.
“Vaguely. I take it that it wasn’t you who . . . deflowered her.” She gave him a hard look, a challenge there.
“No. She’s still a child. I wanted to make sure she was old enough to understand before we ever did anything. Just because she looks like an adult doesn’t mean she is one.” He had known that wouldn’t mean much to less scrupulous men, and he had expected Clarissa to know that as well. He hadn’t known she would be left unchaperoned with Godric of all people. Perhaps Clarissa had mistakenly trusted him because he was the one who had brought news to her about Abigail and Izzy in the first place.
Kelsie stared at him a long moment before nodding. “I believe you.”
“Did she say anything to you before she left?” He rubbed at the tightness in his chest. “Did she tell you anything about what happened?”
“Sort of. I don’t know if I should tell you. It was in confidence.” Kelsie frowned. “A confidence of a confidence. Izzy’s the one who told me. But Abby made her promise not to tell anyone, and she did.”
He arched an eyebrow at her. “Luckily Abigail didn’t use Wiseman’s Oath on Izzy to keep her secrets for her.” He’d read about that spell, though he hadn’t tried it yet. He rose from his makeshift chair and took Kelsie’s hand. Instinct told him he could have pried the truth out of her easily using his incubus magic. But he wouldn’t expose her to it again. “Please. I have to know. It was Godric, wasn’t it?”
“Godric? That son of a duke from the Tinaalto family?” Her blue eyebrows burrowed together.
“I saw him with her when I scried,” Lucifer said.
“Izzy didn’t say anything at all about that.” She kicked a weed over the fence. “Abby was upset because the unicorns said you wouldn’t want her because . . . she didn’t want you to know because . . . don’t tell her I told you, all right? They said you wouldn’t want her because she didn’t have a hymen anymore.” She made a face. “Those unicorns can be such virgin mongers.”
He stared at Kelsie, confused. “What does that matter? Didn’t she say anything to you about Godric forcing himself on her?” He would kill Godric if he had.
“No. Izzy said Abby was more upset about what you would think of her now. She didn’t want you to know.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “You aren’t going to tell her Izzy told me and I told you, right? She was too embarrassed to talk to you about it. She didn’t even want to tell Clarissa, I guess. But Clarissa made her.”
Clarissa was a filthy hypocrite.
He wished he had stayed and consoled Abigail instead of storming off. “I don’t care whether she’s a virgin or not. I wanted her when she was a fifty-year-old woman who had been married and widowed.” He had looked like he was eighteen, and she had feared she was too old for him at that time. “I just want to make sure she doesn’t get hurt again.” Clarissa wasn’t a very attentive guardian. She was too busy ruling a kingdom to care for a juvenile fairy godmother. He didn’t know what was worse, Baba using Abigail for her fingers or Clarissa’s inattention that resulted in her getting hurt.
“Well, maybe you need to tell her how you feel. Honesty is always the best policy.” Kelsie resumed weeding. She threw another weed out of the yard.
“Except when it isn’t,” he said. If Abigail hadn’t told him, it might have been because she had found someone else. She didn’t love him.
The idea of that weighed heavy on his heart.
Kelsie placed a hand on his arm, squeezing his elbow. “I think she’s afraid you won’t want her because she isn’t the old Abby. The one she used to be. She wants to be someone else for you, even if it’s not in her best interest.”
No. He had to fix this.
Lucifer nodded decisively. “Of course it’s in her best interest, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
Kelsie threw up her hands in exasperation. “Whatever.”
Lucifer went inside, finding Baba at her rocking chair. “I would like you to give me leave to go to the Raven Court’s castle.”
Baba sucked on her teeth, thinking it over. “You will not want to return if you go. Think of last time you left to be
with Abby.”
“It’s just for a day, not forever this time. I need to speak with Abby.”
Baba’s lips pressed into a line.
“You can divine the future,” he said. “See if I’ll return.”
“What is so important that you had to run off and could not return before Abby left? You had to take care of affinity?” Baba’s wispy eyebrows shot upward, nearly reaching her kerchief.
“No. I was scrying like I said I would. I saw what happened. Or at least enough of it. I need to talk to her. And I need to warn Clarissa not to allow Godric to be alone with Abby.”
“Godric?” Baba lifted an eyebrow. “How old do you think Abby is? In her mind?”
“I don’t know. Twelve. Perhaps fourteen if I’m being generous with her age.”
Baba squinted at him. “How old were you when you lost your virginity?”
“I don’t know.” He did know. He’d been fourteen. The girl had been older than him by two years. She was part rusalka, and he was lucky she was Witchkin and not Fae, or she might have killed him. Or he might have accidentally killed her. “Why?”
She resumed her knitting. “Have you considered Abby might not want your interfering? She doesn’t want you to avenge her honor or embarrass her any more than you would have at the age of fourteen?”
His face flushed. “This is different.” He’d had a choice about the matter.
“Mayhap. Is it because you are incubus or because you are man?”
“I just want to talk to her. I should have consoled her instead of stalking off.” He could decide on avenging her honor later. First he just needed to hear what happened from her own lips.
“No. You made good choice for once. You did not let temper get better of you as adolescent would. Now, you will make another good choice and give it some time. Da?”
* * *
Lucifer couldn’t see Abigail, so instead he wrote her a letter. He didn’t know if he would have a way of giving it to her. He apologized for embarrassing her and told her he cared about her. He just wanted to make sure she was all right, and if there was anything she wanted to share with him, he would listen. He wouldn’t judge her.
Virginity was highly overrated, and the only people who cared for that sort of thing these days were Fae royalty and unicorns. He told her that.
He also scried again, this time with Baba’s crystal ball to determine if what he’d seen in the water had been a mistake. This time as he divined the past, Godric didn’t just kiss her forehead and curl around her. He laced his fingers through hers and kissed the back of her neck. Through her tears, he read confusion as she twisted to face him and shoved him away.
The leering faces of the unicorns loomed. He knew that disgust in their expressive eyes. It was the kind of loathing they usually reserved for him. He couldn’t understand why those asinine beasts would treat anyone so cruelly. Only unicorns would shame a maiden because she was no longer attractive to them rather than help her.
If one of them had been there at that moment, Lucifer might have hexed them. Or hexed Godric.
“How will I get this letter to Abigail if I can’t deliver it myself?” Lucifer asked.
Baba’s needles continued clicking as she knitted a blanket as indigo as the twilight of the sky. “There are many ways to deliver message. You still have lock of Abby’s hair?”
“Indeed.”
“Use one hair from strand. I teach you new method of transportation. This is for object, not person, mind you. For person, technique is advanced and too difficult just yet.” She waved a hand at his loft. “Fetch book of spells. You will use special spell.”
Lucifer went upstairs to retrieve Baba’s books. He relied more on the spells of forbidden knowledge now that he was advancing and using his affinity to help him use soul magic.
What he hadn’t counted on was the books being gone.
“Did Clarissa go upstairs?” Lucifer asked. “Did she go into my dresser and steal those books?”
Kelsie’s eyes went wide. “No. Izzy was the one who went upstairs. Clarissa sent her up there to rest with the baby while you and Abby were out.”
Clarissa had sent her. Or perhaps Clarissa had sent her up there to steal. Izzy’s words earlier made more sense. She hadn’t known whom she owed greater allegiance to, him or Clarissa.
Apparently she’d chosen Clarissa.
Anger percolated through his veins. “Am I going to be able to work this spell without the books?” Lucifer asked.
“Mayhap. We will try.” Baba rubbed her gnarled fingers over her temples. “My memory isn’t what it used to be. I will take memory draft and see if that helps.”
The brittle thread holding the remnants of hope dissolved as he considered what might happen if he made another mistake restoring her soul.
“Will I be able to return Abby’s soul to her body without the books?” That was his true concern. Clarissa had wanted those books months ago to help restore Abigail, but if what Baba had suggested was true, it was his love that had sparked her soul to grow in the first place. Clarissa hadn’t made a soul weaving to catch the rest of her soul from the underworld. He was the best candidate for this job.
Assuming she even wanted to restore Abigail. He didn’t know what Clarissa’s agenda was. Blast Clarissa stealing those books when he was so close to succeeding.
Baba didn’t meet his eyes. “We can try spells. But maybe you need leshi tears first.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Cat and Mouse
Lucifer finished his heartfelt letter to Abigail. Baba showed him how to open a small, possibly lethal portal he could use to send small objects through.
“You must not send plants, animals, or people. Such a spell will kill essence and remove any soul,” Baba said as she demonstrated the marriage of starlight and Red affinity magic under a gibbous moon. “Your hand must never enter portal. It is best to throw object. Even your letter might not survive intact. Do not expect much.”
“How will I know Abby gets my letter?” he asked.
“She will write you back, nyet?”
Kelsie crossed her arms, doubt painted across her face as she watched. “I bet I could make a better portal.”
“You try and then you teach Lucy in my stead,” Baba said.
Baba’s answer that Abigail would write him didn’t mean much considering Abigail hadn’t been willing to tell him the truth about what had happened before. Lucifer tested the spell with small pebbles, sending them across space and time. The only reason the spell would know to send them into her path was the strand of auburn hair he fed into the magic to find her. Should she happen to notice pebbles tumbling out of nowhere at her feet, she wouldn’t know they were from him. After several hours of practice, he tossed her letter into the portal.
Perhaps on the morrow it would do to write another and send it just in case the first didn’t reach her. In the meantime, he checked the sand in the month glass to make sure it wasn’t slipping by too quickly.
Lucifer’s next task was going to see the leshi again. MacCoinneach hadn’t returned—not that he knew of anyway. That probably meant Kelsie and the ax had scared him off. He did pity the childlike Fae, all alone without a family. Had Kelsie been less fixated on revenge, she might have recognized they had that in common.
Lucifer sought out the leshi, using spells Baba taught him, a combination of advanced divination and tracking magic. Lucifer felt like a cat sniffing out a mouse, only this was more difficult. He had to use his astral self to follow remnants of leshi magic MacCoinneach left in the forest. There were many dead ends, trails leading deep into the earth where the starlight used in the astral magic didn’t want to go.
There were so many remnants of leshi magic, Lucifer thought there was no way all this magic could be MacCoinneach’s. But the Fae wasn’t bound like his kin used to be. The cobwebs of magic clinging to the forest near Vega Bloodmire’s castle made Lucifer the most nervous. It was too
close to Abigail’s home. He didn’t want MacCoinneach—nor any other leshi—finding her there.
Lucifer searched for three days, the white sand in the glass passing too quickly. It had almost reached the halfway point that showed half a month in the outside world. It was then he found MacCoinneach in his astral journeys. He was ready to approach the leshi in person now.
Lucifer brought with him a small flask of vodka laced with honey as a peace offering.
The leshi inhabited the inside of a hollowed oak, magic drifting in the air around the tree. The oak reminded Lucifer of the one Abigail had once occupied with Emmet when they’d been lost in the woods seeking Niall. For all he knew, it might have been the same one.
MacCoinneach crouched in the hole, watching Lucifer approach. His face remained a mask of wood that revealed nothing of what he thought.
Lucifer raised a hand in greeting. “Good tidings, MacCoinneach. How do you fare?”
MacCoinneach responded with polite niceties of his own. His gaze flickered to the flask.
“A gift,” Lucifer said. “One without any spells.” He wanted to demonstrate he trusted MacCoinneach, that he was willing to consider him a friend, even if he was uncertain about doing so.
Lucifer held the flask out.
Tentatively MacCoinneach stepped out of the hole. He snatched the flask and retreated behind the oak. He unscrewed the cap and inhaled. “That is a thoughtful gift, my friend,” MacCoinneach said. “How is Abby? I was afraid I might have hurt her. Or that Kelsie had.”
“She got a few scratches, that’s all. Try not to blame Kelsie. I’m working on her, trying to soften her up to the idea that not all Fae are evil. Not all leshi are murderers.”
“The ones I encountered were.” MacCoinneach toed a clump of dirt with a foot made of twisted bark. “Was my father a murderer?”
Lucifer hesitated. “Well, you remember the story. You were the one who told it.”
“There’s a difference between hunting to eat and hunting for pleasure. He ate people, didn’t he? That meant he had to kill them for food. It doesn’t mean he wanted to.”
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