Familiar Stranger

by Michele Hauf

  Had they stolen Jack into the affair? He might be invisible to Mersey once ensconced within the circle, but she should detect his footsteps in the grass.

  Nothing.

  Now she noticed the others standing along the outside. Sized as normal mortals, and regal. The White and Black courts were not recognized here in the St. Yve wood—it was a neutral forest, a borderland that sheltered those seeking sanctuary, and a virtual stew of paras—but Mersey knew there were a few renegades from both sidhe courts who took refuge here.

  “What did you do with him?” She rushed for the first sidhe, a male, who stood with his back to her.

  Elegant brocade fitted him from collar to knee in homage to the eighteenth-century French courts. Lace fashioned of spider’s silk fluttered at his wrists and collar. His breeches were of blackest leather. Gorgeous gossamer wings splayed in rest down his back, the palest violet filamented tips dusting the moss carpet.

  “Where is—” Mersey gripped him by the shoulder and twisted him about. “Oh. Crap.”

  Her heart dropped to her knees. Courage wilted and sticky humiliation rose at the back of her throat.

  Of all the faeries she had to run into. It was the one faery she had kissed.

  And he wasn’t smiling.

  Jack stumbled and caught himself against the trunk of a crippled oak. The musty odor of bark and, at his feet, toadstools, filled his nostrils. Normally a forest smelled verdant and fresh. It smelled wrong now. Dead and rotting. Sinister.

  He’d only wanted to touch Mersey. To imprint her curves against his palm. To lose himself in her serenity and banish the dark demons of his memories. And now she was gone.

  Or was it he who was gone? Where was he?

  He wandered aimlessly in the darkness, calling Mersey’s name. He could see the shapes of trees and roots and stones in shades of gray. Gone were the fantastical greens and faery lights. The world wasn’t right. Wait, that rock. Jack touched the boulder. He was sure this was the one he and Mersey had been sitting on. And there, in the clearing, a perfect circle of cut grass, now murky and silent.

  “I hope this isn’t one of those decades-long losts,” he murmured.

  “Bloody faeries.”

  Had he somehow slipped from the rock and fallen into the faery circle? P-Cell had not trained him for this. He knew the basics about faeries. Had read a brief discourse on the varieties and their culture, but he’d never expected to be dealing with their kind. If he’d been shifted to the dark realm…

  Swiping away low-hanging foliage from before his face, he paused, fingers spread to clutch a branch, and eyed the ring Mersey had slipped onto his little finger.

  “Protection, eh? Christ, Mersey, what have we done?”

  Jack lowered his head and clenched his jaw. This ring was all he had to connect him to a woman…he loved.

  He’d never been keen on gifts. Especially rings. No matter from a cat, or now, a woman who was also a cat. And to actually fall in love with her? No matter. “I’ve got something better than a stone wrapped around my finger.”

  Drawing out the .45, he cocked the trigger and wandered onward, cautious as his steps wobbled on the undulating ground. Could salt lay out a faery? What did he remember from Mum’s faery tales? Iron! That should put them out for a while. Where to get iron when he needed it most?

  An insect buzzed near his ankles. Jack strode in wide steps to avoid whatever creepies lurked.

  A wisp of fuzzy whiteness fluttered before him. Jack blew it away. He stepped carefully, not wanting to trip up on the roots and definitely not wanting to move into the clearing. It was the same clearing he and Mersey had been sitting near before.

  He’d walked a circle?

  “The never-ending circle,” he muttered. “Is this like her ever-changing trail? I don’t abide faery magic!” He shouted that last statement as a warning for any who might attempt it against him.

  The tuft of white moseyed by again. Jack swiped at the bit. It dodged and flickered brightly. A faery. Following him?

  “What can I offer you to get me out of these woods?” he tried.

  “A thousand kings’ ransoms and one lusty sea siren who has never kissed a drowned sailor,” sounded right at his ear.

  Jack swung around. The wood was dark. Not a leaf fluttered. Glimmer of fine particles settled through the air. Faery dust? He clasped the pistol handle with both hands. “Show yourself!”

  This time the voice came from across the clearing, loud and bellicose.

  “Fire a gun in these woods, Jack Harris, and the bullet will boomerang back between your ugly mortal eyes.”

  Briefly, Jack focused on the scar over his chest. Not a tingle, nor twinge of pain. It was not Beryth.

  “No demons in these woods. I would scare them off,” came the boastful voice right behind Jack.

  Jack swung around, and the tip of the pistol grazed the outstretched finger of a man who stood as tall as him. Long dark hair fell over his shoulders and halfway down his chest. Lean but muscled, he stood with hands to his hips. His trousers looked like leather rock-and-roll gear. Bare feet perched upon the mossy stone.

  “What are you?” Jack demanded.

  The man tapped the pistol barrel. “Is there iron in that idiot stick?”

  “Of course!” It was titanium and steel, but if the fool didn’t know…

  “Nasty business.” He made a gesture with his fingers of throwing something away.

  Inexplicably, Jack felt the gun shift, as if he wanted to toss it. But he held firmly.

  “At least put it away, then,” the man decided. “We cannot talk with that idiot stick between the two of us.”

  “Name!”

  “That is none of your concern, Jack Harris.”

  It was likely a bloody faery. He remembered something about the faeries keeping their names to themselves. A mortal knowing the name of a faery would give them power over the being.

  He didn’t appear to be carrying a weapon, but these creatures could probably zap something out the ends of their fingertips, for all Jack knew.

  “Boomerang,” the man repeated. “Go ahead. Try it. I will duck and then laugh when your mortal brains splatter the sky.”

  Trickery or not, Jack wasn’t willing to risk finding out. He tucked the gun in the waistband at the small of his back. “You know my name—”

  “And you do not require mine.”

  The faery twisted gracefully and did a balance-beam walk across a thick root emerging from the ground. Reaching the end of the root, he tilted a look over his shoulder at Jack. Deep sapphire eyes held the fathomless sparkle of a jewel.

  Jack avoided his gaze. Not so dangerous as a demon gaze, but he disliked the mocking insinuation he saw there.

  From the faery’s back, wings burst out much like a dragonfly’s wings. Four lustrous appendages, two on each side, fluttered. A sheen of sapphire colored them like stained glass run through with reticulated veins.

  Noting Jack’s awe, the faery chuckled gleefully. “Rather spectacular, eh?” He darted to stand before Jack. “Do you have any tricks, mortal? A soft-shoe across the roots? Calisthenics through the air?”

  “I have none.”

  “Of course not!” He drew up his arms to cross boldly over his chest.

  “Though my ears tell me you are a bold yet cowardly demon killer. Is that your talent? Cowardice?”

  “I’m no such thing!”

  “It is a coward who shoots without first assessing danger. Jack, you will never get to your mortal heaven that way.”

  “Not worried about that.”

  “Good and well! Perhaps it is leading demons you excel in.”

  “Beryth is not here.”

  “But he is near. What right do you have? Did you ask the demon why he wanted into the Cadre?”

  How could this creature know—? He would not ask; it would show his weakness. “What do I care?”

  “Oh, Jack. Daft, Jack. Time to have a conversation with your master.”

  �
��I answer to no master.”

  The faery reached out and touched Jack’s shirt, right over his scar. “I guess differently.”

  “I’m not controlled by the demon, and have no worries for his destruction.”

  “Then I will not, either. So!” He bent forward, the schoolmaster admonishing a tardy student. “You, Jack, are wandering willy-nilly through a forbidden forest. Did she give you the slip?”

  “You know where Mersey is?” Well, if he knew everything else, it was worth a try. “I dropped her hand.”

  “Ah. Mersey Bane. Should have known. Tough bit of luck then, old chap,”

  the faery mocked.

  Deciding he’d had enough of this joker, Jack started to walk the opposite way, but the flutter of white fuzz reappeared. He slapped at it, and it dodged expertly.

  Zooming before him, the bit of white flashed again and there stood his tormentor in the path.

  Those wings. Recognizing his wonder, Jack immediately pushed it back. These faeries, he had to remain alert to their dark enchantments.

  “I need to get out of this forest,” he insisted. “Mersey needs me. Can you show me the way?”

  The faery lifted an arm and pointed over Jack’s shoulder. Turning, Jack saw the faery round glowed with a gorgeous green light. Someone stood in the center. A man, older, but still in his prime. Gnarled fingers clued Jack to his trade of working the fields. Catching his breath, Jack clutched his gut. The ache of seeing him, standing there in simple white robes, lifted a moan to his throat. The uneven ground did not stop his strides to the edge of the faery round. A soft, weird chatter filled the background. Tiny lights constellated above him. And there he stood, arms held out to him.

  “Thought I’d never see you again, Jack,” he said.

  “Dad?”

  “He’s waiting for you.” The dusting of a wing against Jack’s spine momentarily stiffened him. The faery had followed, and Jack felt his luminous presence over his shoulder. “Go to him. Tell him all the things you never dared speak. He needs to hear what you have to say, Jack.”

  “Yes. There are things, Dad…” He took a step forward. The earth leveled as he left the tangled roots and neared the circle clearing. “I made a wish…”

  “I know you did, Jack,” his father answered.

  Could he confess? Would it change things? Could it change things?

  “It can change evv-rything,” whispered in his ear. Aware of his proximity to the circle, Jack knew one step would place him inside—next to his father.

  “You wished for a curious fortune, and you got it, boy,” his father snapped. “By stealing my life.”

  “No!”

  Jack reached out. Pressure against the back of his right shoulder pushed him forward. He lifted a foot. He bowed his head. Decades of regret flooded his heart with acute ache. “It wasn’t real. My wish couldn’t possibly have killed him.”

  “Oh, but it did.” The faery stretched out his thin arms and tilted back his head to announce “A child’s heart is hale and powerful!”

  Overhead the trees stirred with a flock of birds chirping and taking to flight upward toward the midnight rainbow.

  The faery lowered his sapphire gaze back on Jack, bestilling Jack with an unsettling sensation of being crawled over by insects. “Be careful what you wish for, Jack.”

  The faery leaned forward, craning his head to peer up into Jack’s downcast face. “You, Jack Harris, are not worthy to be her hero. Go,” it instructed. “Step forward.”

  And Jack took one more step.

  Chapter 24

  R askin Rubythorn wore handsome as vain glory. His sapphire eyes lit upon Mersey, but she felt the disgust lingering behind his marvel. Not a touch of grace in the faery’s cold soul.

  “Mersey Bane,” he said flatly. Raskin nodded to the companion he’d been speaking to, and with a gesture, directed Mersey to walk toward a chestnut tree. The massive bole had been hollowed out to form a gazebo. “Shall we?”

  “I want to know what you did with him,” she insisted. A squeeze of her fist and she felt a pinch. Another ring had broken. Only one left. Raskin glided on, without mind for her anxiety. Briefly folding down his wings, he bowed to step inside the gazebo.

  The bole had been carved in delicate cutouts resembling an Eastern Indian motif. Inside, plush chaises covered over with green velvet—

  though Mersey knew it to be moss so soft and fine that velvet would be bargain-rack next to it—were placed in the center. All of it fit for a prince, no matter he’d been ostracized from his court, the sidhe Black court that normally wintered well and mischievously, then crept into the shadows for the summer during the White court’s reign.

  “Your Jack Harris?” Raskin asked as he seated himself, crossing his legs and leaning back into the chaise. His wings flexed and propped high against the back, the filaments tufting the carved wall behind him. The fireflies at his toes remained in place as living jewels. Mersey did not question how he had the man’s name. Or that he labeled him hers. The sidhe knew things. She accepted that. Striding to the center of the room, she fit her hands to her hips. Maintain calm, she coached inwardly. Do not reveal your discomfort, or he will use it.

  “Jack’s lost. I must find him.”

  A tilt of Raskin’s fingers changed the pale light inside the gazebo to violet. The moss took on a gray cast and Raskin appeared like a cool jewel before her. A smirking jewel whom she had once coveted in her aching, crushing heart.

  Deep sapphire eyes seeped into her psyche, prying open the loose ropes she’d wrapped round her soul following her last miserable encounter with the faery.

  Her body softened and her breathing increased. Her shoulders fell back, lifting her breasts.

  “You led an unapproved mortal into the forest,” he spoke slowly, making every word an event. Not once did his eyes stray from hers. “That, my merciless Mersey Bane, is not allowed.”

  Swallowing, Mersey attacked the unwarranted desire with affront. “Oh, get over yourself, Rubythorn. So I made a mistake.”

  “Make it once, kitten, you shall never again make the same one.”

  Shoving her fists into her trousers pockets to keep from lashing out at the imperious bit of faery fluff, Mersey plopped herself onto the stool opposite his chaise.

  Don’t look into his eyes. There is where you always stumble. The kiss from Raskin had been her first. Just eighteen, and comfortable with the forest and its inhabitants, gushing with longing for boys and men, Mersey had been beyond the world to know this gorgeous creature had wanted to press his lips to hers. It had been summer solstice, a night that had glowed with joy and merriment. Mersey had become drunk on elderberry wine. But ever cautious never to enter the faery reel, for even a familiar could become trapped for eternity.

  Raskin had paid particular attention to her that night. She’d known him from a previous exercise with Cadre initiates, as they’d learned the ins and outs of the forest and the ways of its inhabitants. Whispers from female initiates had labeled him the Enchanter. Raskin had been her guide, and taught her all she needed to know of the sidhe ways. That he’d been ostracized from the Black court for seducing the White princess had only increased his attraction in Mersey’s eyes. A bad-boy faery with a taste for trendy mortal fashion—eighteenth-century trends, however.

  That night they’d kissed beneath a constellation of dancing faery couples. Mersey had closed her eyes and fallen into bliss. Skin flushing, her entire body had pressed up to the tall sidhe. Kissing was beyond all she had imagined.

  Too quickly, Raskin had pulled away, pleading he’d forgotten a precious engagement.

  Crestfallen, and yet brimming with the elation of one’s first kiss, Mersey had watched as Raskin met up with a fellow sidhe behind the hornbeam wall at the edge of the festivities.

  She had strained her heightened feline senses to hear their conversation. Raskin’s friend had asked, “How was it?”

  “Not so favorable.”

  Mersey had bravely swa
llowed back a cry. Pierced through the heart, she’d clutched the ache and fled the merriment. Later, the tears had come and she’d pressed her face into the pillow and wished for her longpassed mother’s hug.

  “Do you hate me, Mersey?”

  She looked up to find Raskin had slid forward, elbows to knees. The sidhe moved like ghosts. Spider’s lace spilled about his wrists and hands. The essence of rare night flowers perfumed his aura. The sapphires teased her to match his gaze—but she dared not. So easy to fall again.

  “W-why do you ask that?”

  “It is my curiosity. And very likely, my vanity. You never approach me during fetes. We were once quite companionable.”

  Once. And only for a moment. A moment that had embroidered humiliation upon Mersey’s soul. The sidhe tended to twist every encounter to serve them best.

  “You don’t remember our kiss?”

  He appeared to peruse memory, and then tapped the air between them.

  “Quick. Dry. Er…Well! It was not so memorable. Ah, so that is why you avoid me? Our fleeting forest snog remains quite the memory to you, my feline familiar?”

  Bowing her head, Mersey could not force herself to meet his glittering eyes. The displeasure in his tone humiliated her further. He brushed off her first intimate experience as if sweeping crumbs under a table.

  “It is simply we sidhe do not mix so well with familiars.” The touch of his finger beneath her chin irritated. Mersey jerked away. “We prefer your kind as pets, really.”

  The idea of purring about Raskin’s ankles made Mersey want to toss her cookies. She had no doubt if the faery could pull it off, he’d enslave her in cat form and do just that.

  Why had she followed Raskin into the gazebo? Nothing good could ever come of conversation with the sidhe.

  “I should leave.” She stood, yet the mossy floor suddenly undulated, toppling her to again sit gracelessly on the stool.

  “You will leave when it pleases me.”

  Raskin stretched languorously upon the chaise, the move bending his wings down and behind him. He reached back for one and curled it forward to toy with the tip. Looking up through his lashes, he captured the hidden tendril of desire Mersey still carried for the arrogant faery.