by Lauren Dane
He looked at her and he was wearing jeans and a light sweater and then they both were standing in her living room.
“Jeez! Warn a girl before you do that, will you?” she exclaimed with surprise.
He shrugged as looked around, nose wrinkled in distaste. “This place is a mess.”
“Yeah, well, my life was a mess.”
He put her hand over his heart and then brought it to his lips. “My apologies. Shall we go to deal with your family now?”
“May as well. But let’s take the human way, all right? We can meet at Lee’s house. It’s more neutral than my parents’ place.” She picked up the phone and made calls, arranging to meet in an hour at her sister’s home.
She looked at him. “It’ll just be my immediate family tonight, and Aidan and Alex. If we get through this alive the news will trickle outward to everyone else.” She went into her bedroom and rifled through the closet. “I really need to do laundry,” she muttered.
“Let me help,” Con said and suddenly the silky robe was replaced by a pair of cool linen pants and a sleeveless shirt. He’d even conjured a lovely pair of Kate Spade kitten heels to go with it.
“Perfect. This outfit is perfect. How do you do it?”
“I saw you looking at it in London,” he said with a shrug. “Now, we need to talk about other details. Where we’ll live when we are here in New Orleans and when we’ll go to Tir na nOg to do the Joining and for the queen to transform you.” He looked around the apartment with disdain.
“Listen, buster, this place isn’t so bad!”
“Em, this place is small, dark and cramped. I took the liberty of looking into buying something.” He shimmered them into the foyer of a large home. “This place is lovely, is it not?”
She walked through the foyer and into the house. The rooms were spacious and filled with antiques. She stood in the doorway of a gigantic library, complete with reading nook in an open second floor loft. Books lined every wall from floor to ceiling.
“These are my magic texts. When did you do this?”
“Yes. They’d need to be wherever you are of course so I moved them just now. Nice magic trick, hmm? The rest of this I did while you were running around the world trying to track the book down.”
She looked back at him and shook her head in wonder. They climbed a beautifully carved grand staircase. She went into the master suite and gasped. There were French doors leading out to a terrace that overlooked the river. “This is a plantation house!”
“Yes, or so the paperwork said. I’m guessing this is a good thing?”
Incredulous, she continued to stare at him for a moment and then looked back out over the grounds. “It’s breathtaking. How can you afford such a thing? I most certainly can’t.”
“Em, money means nothing to the Fae. It’s easy to conjure, just like your clothes. When I was watching you, you came out to one of these houses, back in March, with a visiting cousin. You seemed so smitten with it I thought you might like to live in one. I wanted the one you visited but they wouldn’t sell it.”
“Oak Alley? Only one of the most famous historical homes in the state? Yeah, I don’t suppose they would,” she said with a laugh and then reached out and snuggled into his body. “Thank you, Con.”
He smiled, absurdly happy that such a small thing could make her so pleased. “We’ll begin to live here tonight then.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes, why not? The furniture is here, the refrigerator and pantry are stocked. It’s your house, why shouldn’t you live in it?”
“Is everything so easily solved with you?”
“No, not everything. But, Em, I want to make you happy. I want you to be comfortable and surrounded by luxury. That’s easy for me and it pleases me to see you pleased.” He shrugged and kissed the top of her head. “I love you.”
Her bottom lip trembled. “I love you, too.”
He shimmered them back to her apartment. “Now, when shall we go back to Tir na nOg?”
“Tomorrow? I need to talk to my family and explain things and then we can go and meet yours.”
“And you’re sure you wish to be immortal? To be converted into what I am?”
“Are you sure you want me to be?” she countered.
“I love you, get that through your adorably thick head! It isn’t something my queen takes lightly. Humans have only been converted less than a hundred times over the tens upon tens of thousands of years she’s existed. I have served her for nearly ten thousand years. She has granted my request because she can see how much I love you.”
“Then yes, I want to be converted into what you are. I’m going to have to get used to the time thing, I can’t be gone from my family for years at a time. If I’m going to be immortal, I have to spend the time I can with them. I need to cherish their mortality.” A hint of sadness marked her eyes.
She was so kind and loving. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her temple. “We will work it out the best we can. Of course you want to be here with your family as much as you can be. You’ll be able to shimmer and sift at will when you become Fae, you know. We’ll spend lots of time in your New Orleans, I promise.”
Her smile brightened and she nodded.
A corner of his mouth quirked up. He flicked a hand and her apartment was straightened up. Another flick and her closet and drawers were empty, the walls next, then the bookshelves and counters.
“All moved in. Shall we go to your sister’s house now?”
She laughed and they walked out to her car.
* * * * *
Lee put the phone back in the cradle and looked at Alex and Aidan. “That was Em. He’s back. She wants to meet here in an hour.”
Alex smiled. He knew that Em wouldn’t have trusted the Fae without good reason. He looked at Aidan, who returned the same smile. They had both argued with Lee and the rest of the Charvezes that Em should be trusted but to no avail.
“I won’t say I told you so,” Aidan said smoothly, using his sensual thrall of voice to send sex with his words. Alex’s cock hardened at the sound and seeing it, Aidan gave a wicked grin as he reached out to stroke it. They both watched as Lee’s annoyance faded into something else.
“We don’t have time for this,” she said softly, eyes glued to Aidan’s hand popping open the buttons on the fly of Alex’s jeans.
“Ah, darlin’, we always have time for an appetizer,” Aidan said as Alex popped out into his hand.
“Five minutes! I have to call my mother. Don’t you dare start without me!” She turned and quickly dialed the phone as Aidan met Alex’s lips with his own.
* * * * *
Con vowed that if he survived Em’s driving he’d never allow her behind the wheel again. His hands were sore from the death grip he’d kept on the door as she careened through the streets of New Orleans, once narrowly missing a collision with a streetcar. “My gods! Are you trying to kill me? You drive like a berserker,” he shouted as she pulled up in front of Lee’s.
She rolled her eyes as he took her car keys from her hands. “You’re immortal. Big baby.” And he laughed as she stuck her tongue out at him.
They walked through the gate and he sucked in a breath. “I’m impressed. The level of warding is very complicated. Your sister did this?”
“No, although she probably could. She’s capable of just about anything.”
There was admiration there in her voice, admiration and deep affection. He put his arm around her shoulder and the door yanked open and a tiny redhead stood there, fury on her face.
“Get your hands off her! You bastard, how dare you show your face back here after you abandoned her in London!” she shouted.
Before Con could say anything Em stood between him and her sister and glared. “That’s enough, Lee. We’ve come to explain but if you can’t be civil, I’ll leave right now.”
Con squeezed the arm around her shoulder to calm her. “A ghra, don’t get so upset.”
“Con, I appreciate your c
oncern but this is between Lee and me.” She looked back to her sister and Con saw Aidan Bell standing there with a shorter, muscular man he assumed was the wizard that Em had spoken so fondly of.
“Lee, please,” Aidan said as he put a hand on her shoulder and smiled at Em. “Hey, sweet, it’s good to see you looking happy again,” he said and Con felt a bit better knowing that his old friend cared for Em’s happiness so much.
“Aidan, thank you,” Em said and looked back to her sister. “Are you going to invite us in or do I need to leave?”
Lee sighed and stepped back, waving them inside. Con could feel the menace coming from her as he followed Em into a front parlor, where he joined her on a couch.
Several other people came in and suddenly it was auditory chaos. There was screeching and yelling and cursing. A tall, dark-haired woman and an older man with reddish hair were there and two other men, probably in their late twenties or early thirties, had joined the fray.
Em stood up and stuck her fingers into her mouth and whistled loud and long. The din quieted and they all stared at her, surprised.
“Let me explain for god’s sake! No one talks until I’m done. Please.”
“You let this pig touch you again? After what he did to you? Do you so suddenly have amnesia? He caused you to shut your family out for months! You lost so much weight that I thought we’d have to put you in the hospital!” an older woman exclaimed.
Con jerked and looked at Em, who was blushing. “Hospital?”
“I said, no one talks until I’m done!” Em said, voice getting louder with each word.
“Let’s let Em talk, shall we?” Alex said.
Everyone sank into a chair or a couch and grudgingly shut up, waiting.
Em took a deep breath and told them all the story of the differing time lines and of how Con had come back to her only a day after he’d left her, totally unaware that months had passed.
“He did not know. I told you he’d never abandon me but you all found it so easy to believe that a man like Con could never love a woman like me. You never believed in me.” Her voice broke then and Con, while not an empath, could feel the waves of sorrow roll from her. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, waiting for her to continue. He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him.
“How can you think that?” Lee asked. “The way we felt was not about you, it was about him. Of course you could be loved. Any man would be lucky to have a woman like you, Em. Where did this idea that we don’t believe in you come from?”
“I told you that he didn’t abandon me! You wouldn’t believe me. You took away my free will with that binding spell! You kept me here against my wishes. I am an adult and you—all of you—treated me like a child. You didn’t listen to me and you bound me to a place I didn’t want to be.”
Con thought of the fierce way she’d defended her family to him earlier. She was so cornered she had nowhere to go. She loved them all so much but they’d hurt her, even as she herself was hurt by his attack on them.
“Look at what this creep has done to you, Em. You were a nice quiet girl, shy and sweet, and you meet this jerk and suddenly you won’t listen to your family, we have to drag you back here kicking and screaming! How do you know he wasn’t off with someone else for the last three months? All you’ve got is his word, the word of a guy who ditched you for three months, Em. You deserve better than this.” The tall man looked at Em with pleading eyes.
“Niall, are you saying that because I believed that Con loved me I am not nice anymore? And once and for all—I am not the shy, sweet girl you all think I am! That’s who you all wanted me to be and you’ve just kept pigeonholing me that way. I work with books. That doesn’t make me shy!”
Niall looked at Em and snorted. “See what I mean? You’ve never exploded this way at your family before. You chose an outsider over us. He’s turned you against us.”
The older woman who was clearly their mother turned and looked sharply at the man who’d spoken, but Con stood up before she could say anything. “Are you deliberately trying to hurt your own sister? Do you think she’s so stupid and weak that she’d believe a lie like that? And do you not trust her beauty and intelligence to attract someone better than a man who’d only lie to her?” Con’s hands were clenched. He wanted to pull Em to him and protect her from this but he knew she’d resent him if he did.
“The Conchobar MacNessa that I know is an honorable man. As I’ve said before, although I’ve never been through the Veil to Tir na nOg, if he says that time passes differently, I’d believe it. The two worlds are very different. If I recall correctly the same laws of physics do not apply,” Aidan said quietly.
“Tir na nOg is basically a construct of the magic and imagination of the Sidhe. When we fought our last wars and lost, we sought refuge there. Will and imagination are in the air. The Fae are older than you can imagine. Time, at least in the sense that humans perceive it, is more or less meaningless to beings who are tens of thousands of years old,” Con explained and the older woman nodded.
“You don’t know what we went though, watching her fall apart. Watching her lose it bit by bit, pulling away from us more each day until we had no choice but to keep her bound to stay first in the house and then in the city,” the other young man, clearly Lee’s twin, spoke. “She seems to have some crazy idea that we don’t believe in her but I know she felt what we did when we had to hold her down while Maman and Lee prepared the binding spell. While they had to force-feed her and we considered putting her in the hospital to get her a feeding IV because she’d gotten so thin. How we felt watching our sweet Em who each day continued to waste away into a shadow. You did that.”
Em winced and Con’s heart paused a moment.
“Let’s do some introductions, shall we?” Aidan interrupted. He pointed to the older woman and the man beside her. “Emile Brousard and Marie Charvez, Em’s maman and papa.”
Con inclined his head.
Aidan turned to the belligerent man. “That is Niall, Em’s oldest brother and next to him is Eric, her next oldest sibling and Lee’s fraternal twin. The gorgeous redhead here is Lee and the man beside her is Alex, Lee’s other husband. All of you, this is Conchobar MacNessa.”
Con took a deep breath and Em took his hand and kissed it. That small gesture helped him regain his composure and his intention to clear the air and make peace with these people who were so very important to Em.
“Niall, you are right. I did that. I hurt Em and I take full responsibility for it but I tell you truly, I did not know. I would never, ever, hurt her on purpose. I love her. I have been alive ten millennia. I have never, in all of that time, fallen in love. You have no idea how special she is to me and so I cannot blame you for being angry with me for hurting your sister and daughter the way I did. But she and I have moved past it. She’s forgiven me and I hope that you can too.”
Em took a deep breath. “There was nothing to forgive. He didn’t know. He didn’t intend to hurt me or to be gone for so long. I expect all of you to understand this salient point.” She squeezed his hand and moved on quickly. “And…I am going to Tir na nOg tomorrow with Con. We are going to have a Joining ceremony and I’m going to be made into an immortal.”
“What!” her father exploded and jumped to his feet. “This is insanity. First Niall is gay, then Lee marries a vampire and then marries another man who’s a wizard. Now Em is going to some place where she could be gone from here for years or decades and she’s going to turn into a Faerie too? Enough is enough! I blame you, Marie, for being so damned permissive with them all. I forbid it, Emily Charvez. You’ll do no such thing.” He sat back down, arms crossed over his chest.
Em looked at Lee and then at her mother. They all stayed silent for a moment and then began to laugh. The men watched, amused. Em was laughing so hard that tears were running down her face. She gasped for breath. “Well, thank god Eric is normal, huh, Papa?”
Which started another round of laughter. Emil
e just looked at them, shaking his head. “Make fun, go ahead. Don’t come to me, Marie, when Em is off in Never Neverland with Peter Pan over there.”
“Peter Pan wasn’t a Faerie,” Niall said.
“But you are!” Lee said, between guffaws.
“Hardy har har. Heck, you’re the one in the threesome! I may be gay but I’m only sleeping with one guy,” Niall said with a grin.
Con watched them all in disbelief but also relief as he saw the ties that bound them all together slowly start to weave themselves back together again. He met Aidan’s eyes and the other man nodded with a small smile.
“Really, I blame Eric for being normal,” Em said, face serious.
“I’ll bet he wears Delia’s clothes when she isn’t home,” Marie said.
“Maman!” Eric exclaimed with a grin. “You’re all crazy.” He looked at Con. “You sure you want her now? We all come with the bargain. We’re nosy and infuriating and constantly giving unwanted advice.”
Con smiled then. “Wait until you meet my family.”
* * * * *
The two women alone in the living room, Lee handed Em a glass of wine and sat next to her on the couch, tucking her feet beneath her. “You want to tell me what’s been making you so unhappy this last year?”
Con and Alex and Aidan were all in the study, drinking cognac and talking. Everyone else had gone home after they’d talked for another hour about their plans for the immediate future. For the time being at least, things were okay.
Em took a sip of the ruby red liquid and reached out and tugged on a long, coppery spiral of her sister’s hair. “I’ve been the less talented, less beautiful little sister to Lee Charvez my whole life. Niall and Eric have brilliant legal careers, Maman is a witch dreamer, you’re not only a witch dreamer but the most powerful witch in generations. Hell, you ran off to Tulane and Maman still put the majority of her attention on you. You weren’t even around and I was still in your shadow.
“I just began to feel like I couldn’t get out from under it all. Like I was no one except in relation to you or some other powerful female in our family. Worse, you all have this idea of me in your heads—Em the shy one, Em the quiet one. That isn’t who I am! You have no idea what it’s like to have your identity constantly be shaped by the way other people perceive you.”