Portents

by Kelley Armstrong

  I unfolded the paper and read what he’d written.

  “This—” I sputtered. “This isn’t a penalty. It’s a bribe.”

  “That’s open to interpretation.”

  “Interpretation?” I waved the paper. “If I surrender, you’ll—”

  “—have to punish you.”

  “Punish me? I don’t see spanking on this list, Ricky.”

  “Well, that’s not usually your thing, but sure, pass it over, and I’ll add that on.”

  I folded the paper and put it into my pocket. “Oh, no. Two can play this game.”

  I took the notepad and pen from my bag.

  Five minutes later, Ricky said, “Are you writing a novel?”

  “Just one scene. One very detailed scene. Of what you will get when you concede defeat.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Naturally, but that’s at the end. I’m nowhere near the end.”

  I kept writing until I’d finished my drink . . . and filled both sides of the page. Then I handed it to him. He started reading. He kept reading.

  Watching his expression was fun. Possibly even more fun than watching him with the water fae. Finally, he set the paper down and swore under his breath.

  “Do you want to forfeit now?” I asked.

  He took a deep breath and glanced at the page. “Shit.”

  “Admittedly, you are at an academic disadvantage. You’re an MBA student. You drafted a very persuasive offer. However, it lacked the attention to detail that the Victorian Lit grad could bring to the task.”

  He tapped the paper. “Pretty sure the Victorians weren’t doing this.”

  “Oh, they were. They even wrote about it. Those just weren’t the books they gave you in high school.”

  He picked up the page. Skimmed it. Set it down again. Groaned.

  “You can forfeit now,” I said. I checked my watch. “Our room at the inn will be ready shortly. I’ll just need a few minutes to pick up the necessary props.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  Another skim of the pages. He inhaled. Then he squared his shoulders and folded the paper in quarters.

  “Yeah, sorry, but if I say yes to this”—he tapped the note—“the noise alone will get us kicked out, and there isn’t another vacancy in town.”

  “True.”

  I reached to take the page back, but he put it into his pocket. “Keeping it. Possibly laminating it.”

  I chuckled. “Well, the offer stands, whenever you wish to forfeit. And in the meantime, since it is indeed check-in time, might I suggest another game? One that won’t quite achieve the end result we’re both looking for. But it will build up an appetite for the eventual meal.”

  He motioned for me to go on. I leaned over to tell him, but he handed me the pen instead.

  “Write it down,” he said. “I’m starting a scrapbook.”

  Ricky

  “I’m so sorry,” the innkeeper said. “I know check-in is at four, but your room isn’t ready.”

  Ricky’s first thought was to confirm that this was indeed the only local place with a vacancy. Well, no, his first thought was of the second page tucked into his pocket, the one outlining Liv’s proposal for predinner amusement. Then, on thinking of that, he wanted to know if there was another room in town, preferably close by. Very close by.

  Liv beat him to it with, “Is there another room? Any room?”

  “There’s a small one on the first floor, but it doesn’t have the view or a balcony.”

  Ricky was about to say, “We’ll take it.” Then he saw the relief on Liv’s face. She opened her mouth, and he knew “We’ll take it” was coming.

  “Nah,” he said. “We’ll wait.”

  Liv turned on him with a look. “Excuse—”

  “I know you really wanted the view and the balcony. We can wait. Well, I can. If you can’t . . .” He pointed to her bag where she’d stashed her own “penalty.” Her lips tightened. Her eyes narrowed. But those green eyes danced too, granting him a point well earned, even as she mouthed, “Bastard.”

  She turned to the innkeeper. “We’ll wait. How long until our room is ready?”

  “Less than an hour, and I have fresh oatcakes and the kettle on for tea. I am, really, very sorry. I know this looks terrible. One of our girls is unexpectedly off this week. She”—the innkeeper lowered her voice—“lost her baby.”

  “Lost it?” said a voice behind them.

  Ricky turned to see a woman working at a small desk with a calculator and ledger. She had to be in her sixties. Native American—no, Native Canadian, he corrected. She wore jeans and a concert T-shirt, her graying dark hair braided back, and on a closer look, she might have been older than he’d thought, the outfit giving her a youthful air, her strong voice adding to that impression.

  The woman continued, gaze fixed on her accounting work. “Lost implies she misplaced the child, Hildy. Maggie was taken. Stolen.”

  Ricky flashed back to the cry he’d heard in the woods.

  “Kidnapped?” Liv said, turning to the older woman.

  “If that’s what you call it,” the old woman grunted, eyes still on her ledger.

  “Oh, no, Jeanne,” Hildy said. “Don’t even say it.”

  The old woman grunted again.

  “Say what?” Liv asked.

  Jeanne looked up. “She thinks I’m going to blame the little people.” A mock glower at the innkeeper. “Which I was not. Go talking like that and folks figure we’re all a bunch of uneducated hicks. Kind of like saying you saw strange lights in the sky the night the baby disappeared.”

  Hildy flushed. “I said I saw lights. That’s all.”

  “Little people,” Liv said. “Do you mean fae?”

  Jeanne gave her a searching look. “Fae?”

  “Fairies. Sorry. Where I come from, they’re called fae.”

  Which was, technically, true, Ricky thought, if “where she came from” meant Cainsville. The local fae weren’t particularly fond of the more common term, namely because it conjured up images of, well, little people. Tiny and adorable winged creatures. Which they were not. At all.

  “I’ve heard them called that,” Jeanne said. “My granddaughter studies folklore at the university. You just don’t . . .” She shrugged.

  “Don’t seem like the type to talk about fairies?” Liv said with a laugh. “I don’t know if I believe, but I am interested in the folklore. That is what you meant, then? Little people? Fairies?”

  Jeanne’s eyes stayed hooded, as if not yet convinced she wasn’t being mocked. Or, worse, humored. “We call them little people.”

  “By you, you mean . . .”

  Ricky could see Liv struggling to finish that in a way that wouldn’t be offensive or presumptuous.

  “You mean Cape Bretoners?” Ricky said. “Or Native Canadian? Well, no, that’s the same thing, considering the Mi’kmaq were the original Cape Bretoners. Regional versus cultural would be a better way to put it.”

  Her brows lifted, impressed. Which would have been much more satisfying if he hadn’t known people took one look at him and set the bar for intelligence at the bottom rung.

  “The Mi’kmaq refer to them as the little people,” she said. “Which others have picked up.”

  “Does it mean the same thing as fairies? Refer to the same beings?” He gave his head a shake. “Sorry. We don’t mean to pester you. It’s just an area of interest for both of us. The lore. Cool that your granddaughter gets to study it. They didn’t offer anything like that where I went.”

  Jeanne relaxed now. Again, Ricky knew better than to be too pleased by the accomplishment—his Cŵn Annwn blood meant he understood how to put people at ease.

  “Our stories are different from theirs,” Jeanne said. “But the core concept would be similar, as my granddaughter would say. There’s an entire world out there in the forests. Experiences that suggest we aren’t alone. If we’re looking for answers, it makes more sense that they’re in th
e forest rather than up there.”

  She pointed at the sky, and Hildy sighed. “I never said . . .” She trailed off and looked at Ricky and Liv. “Would you like tea? Or would you prefer to listen to my accountant mock me?”

  “I won’t mock you about your little people if you don’t mock me about mine.”

  Liv chuckled. “Tea would be wonderful. And, Mrs. . . .” She looked at the old woman.

  “Jeanne.”

  “We don’t want to be a bother, but is there any way we could convince you to join us for breakfast? I would love to talk about local folklore. We did have something odd happen out there. A couple miles up the highway, off a trail. There was a swimming hole—”

  Liv stopped short as Hildy crossed herself. Jeanne sighed and waved at the innkeeper. “And she calls me superstitious.”

  “So there’s local lore surrounding the swimming hole?” Liv said.

  “It’s cursed,” Hildy said.

  Jeanne sighed again and shook her head. Then she turned to Liv. “Yes, there is plenty of lore about it, but don’t be asking her, or you’ll get a lot of nonsense. Why don’t you two come to dinner? My granddaughter’s home from school. I’m sure she’d love the company.”

  Liv accepted, and Jeanne said they could walk back with her in an hour or so. Then Hildy showed them out onto the back deck.

  “You’re okay with dinner, right?” Liv said as the door closed behind Hildy. “I am curious about the folklore.”

  “And I thought you were just finding an excuse not to go to our room. Worried you might surrender.”

  She smiled. “Oh, I’m not the one who needs to worry about that. As for the interlude I proposed, I’m still planning on that. Just running on a slight delay.” She sobered. “I do want to hear the lore of that swimming hole, see if it helps solve our mystery. Unfortunately, it won’t solve theirs. I almost wish the fae had stolen that baby. At least then we could be of some help. But that’s not how changelings work.”

  “I heard a baby in the forest.”

  “What?”

  “Up at the swimming hole. I thought I heard a baby. I didn’t mention it because I figured it was just a bird or something. But, yeah, that’s not how changelings work. While that’s the folklore—that fairies steal human babies for themselves—it’s not the reality.”

  Hildy brought out tea and oatcakes. When she’d left again, Ricky said, “Maybe, just to be sure, you should see if Patrick or Rose know of any fae that might take babies. You could ask Gabriel to run with it. You know he would.”

  Liv paused, and Ricky’s gut tightened. He should be happy she didn’t want to involve Gabriel. Just like he should have been happy she didn’t want to return Gabriel’s calls. Ricky wasn’t the oblivious idiot who thought it was really nice that his girlfriend had such a close platonic relationship with her boss. It was platonic—in the physical sense. But emotionally platonic? At one time, he’d tried to tell himself it was. When he got the full Matilda/Gwynn/Arawn story, though, it only confirmed what he’d always known. That there was more between Liv and Gabriel, would always be more.

  So if Gabriel had hurt Liv, and she’d backed off, Ricky should be happy. Except he wasn’t because Liv wasn’t happy.

  He looked down at the tattoo on his forearm. A Celtic moon and sun entwined. Matilda’s symbol—night and day, Cŵn Annwn and Tylwyth Teg. On her ankle, she had a moon. For Arawn. For him.

  Every time he saw that tattoo on her, he knew how she felt about him. It was the equivalent of branding Liv Loves Ricky on her skin. It did not, however, mean Liv & Ricky 4ever. Maybe it seemed like it should. Tattoos were permanent, right? But when he decided to get his, it wasn’t about saying he expected them to be together forever. It was like each of the other tattoos on his body, commemorating a thing or a person that was significant in his life. Liv was. Liv always would be.

  That did not mean he had to hold on as tight as he could, spend every day worrying about when or if he’d lose her. He’d learned that lesson at fifteen when he’d gone joyriding on his dad’s motorcycle. He’d had a dirt bike for years. He’d even ridden his dad’s Harley around the property. But until he turned sixteen and got his license, he couldn’t take a motorcycle on the road. So, in a rare burst of rebellion, he’d snuck off one day when his dad had driven the car into Chicago.

  Everything had gone fine until he hit a patch of gravel. Right when a pickup was coming his way. He’d managed to come out of the skid, but in that moment, life flashing before his eyes, he’d realized he was mortal. For the first time in his life, he truly understood that he could—and would—die.

  That had sent him spiraling into weeks of existential panic. He just couldn’t get past it. He’d have full-blown anxiety attacks passing a cemetery.

  He’d finally confessed to his dad. And, yeah, he’d confessed about the bike, too, because while he could have skipped that, it weighed too heavily on him. He told his father what happened and that he’d realized he was going to die one day, and his dad said, “Yes.”

  Yes, Ricky, you will die.

  There was no getting around that one. He did, however, have a choice. He could live in fear, forever looking down the road at that gravestone. Or he could embrace what he had while he had it.

  Ricky chose to embrace what he had. Both in life and with Liv. He knew how she felt about Gabriel. He knew how Gabriel felt about her. And he knew that someday, maybe that would amount to something. But someday wasn’t now. Right now, he had her, and if he had her, he wanted her happy.

  So when she flinched as he suggested she take the fae stuff to Gabriel, he said, “I can ask him if you want, but you guys know this stuff better than I do.”

  “I’ve already talked to him.”

  Now Ricky was the one tensing. Because, yeah, he could say her relationship with Gabriel didn’t bother him at all, but the “at all” part was bullshit.

  “He could tell there was something wrong,” Liv said.

  Of course he could.

  “He kept pushing, so I told him we ran into fae at the swimming hole.”

  “Not the whole story, I hope.”

  That made her laugh and relax, taking a bite of oatcake as she shook her head. “Definitely not that part. He did offer to look into the fae thing. He’s concerned—our run-ins with them haven’t usually been quite so . . . friendly.”

  Ricky chuckled, relaxing a bit himself. “So he’s already on it?”

  “No, because there’s something I didn’t tell you. About my own encounter. I told Gabriel that I needed to speak to you about that part first, and I’ll e-mail him the details later.”

  “What’d he say to that?”

  “He agreed.”

  Ricky exhaled under his breath. “Okay, well, let’s talk then, and you can get that e-mail sent. You said the fae dragged you out of a cavern. Is that not all she did?”

  Catching his look, she laughed and shook her head. “When I said my encounter wasn’t nearly as pleasant as yours, I meant it. I jumped into the water and ended up in an underground cavern. She found me there and dragged me out, and then presumably went to give you a scare, too, got a look at you and changed her mind. Which I can totally understand.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “I have a feeling it was more a case of her thinking that might be another way to get rid of us.”

  “Uh, yeah. She doesn’t know a lot about guys, does she?”

  “I suspect she was thinking more about the girlfriend of the guy. The one who would come over after her traumatic experience and find her boyfriend getting a little fae-action. Whereupon she would freak out and drag him far from the swimming hole, never to return.”

  “Is that what I was supposed to do? Damn. I never get that right.” A sip of her tea. “Okay, so no fae-action for me. There was more to the story. Mainly what I saw in the cavern before getting hauled out.”

  Liv explained. He listened and then said, “Huh.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Logistically,
there can’t be an actual castle under the mountain, so I’m presuming it was a vision. But something must have been there if she was so quick to drag you out.” He paused. “Presuming that the fae is a she.”

  Liv grinned. “You couldn’t tell?”

  When he shook his head, her grin grew, and she said, “And don’t seem to care.”

  “Not particularly, though the light touch suggests female. And, yeah, before you ask, I do know the difference. I spent a few weeks as a camp counselor when I was fourteen. Another counselor thought I might be his type. At that age, I didn’t know myself. Turned out I wasn’t, but I won’t say it wasn’t fun finding out.”

  She laughed. “I love you. You know that, right?”

  “I do.”

  “The fae was female. If I thought otherwise, I might have been a little more cautious about encouraging you to enjoy the attention in case you wouldn’t have appreciated the surprise. It’s very refreshing to know that wouldn’t be an issue. Also, kinda hot. But I saw her arm when she grabbed me, and it was female. And she did drag me out. She wasn’t helpfully tugging me to safety. Which means there must have been something actually in that cavern.”

  “And the vision of castles suggests Celtic or Germanic fae.” He considered that. “Maybe not, though. It depends on which came first, fae castles or human.”

  Liv arched her brows.

  Ricky stirred more sugar into his tea. “If we say that fae castles are British or European, that suggests the fae copied them from humans. Could be the other way around. In which case, castles could still mean something to fae native to this region. A question of which came first. As for whether it’s a vision . . . Where were the original fae castles? Deep in the forest where humans just never stumbled over them? Or is it just that humans can’t see them? They aren’t in another dimension. We know that, right?”

  “Right. Fae live in this dimension, with us. As for the castles? I have no idea. I’ve seen them in visions. Real castles. Life size. What you’re saying, though, is that just because it makes no sense to have a castle under the mountain, doesn’t mean there can’t somehow be one. Which would make it not a vision.”