I’d never seen a magical do anything even remotely similar to the illusions cast by the two fae. Magic was of the world, of the ground under our feet and of the bodies of the creatures working the spells. It was, in essence, more real than the mundane reality around it, and always felt as such. But this, with the mirroring, and the in-the-head echoing, was otherworldly in ways that made every hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
“The elves never do anything that weird,” I said.
Ellie’s nervous chuckle came out as a high-pitched sneeze. “The fae are nothing if not theatrical.”
Theatrics had a purpose: Slight-of-hand saved magical energy. It acted as another layer of camouflage against the mundane world. It twisted and it gave cover.
It wasn’t a method the elves used. Norse practicality dictated a sincerity to the elves’ lives that made trickery and theatrics distasteful.
The magic swirling around my big red oak obscured and obfuscated. It put on airs and it puffed up.
Like a trickster.
The thought hit me in the same way that I knew what they wanted me to know. It hit like Sal. It smacked me upside the head as if the universe wanted me to pay attention. Trickster broadsided me like a truck and I wanted to yank Ellie against my chest as if to protect her from an incoming hit.
She was too far away. “What do you know?” I yelled at the two dryads as if threatening two fae would be enough to stop whatever was coming for us.
They looked to the side, as if someone or something in the trees had caught their attention. Then they looked at each other.
Reality blinked. They vanished.
Ellie exhaled as if she’d been holding her breath. “What happened?”
“Tricksters,” I muttered. I immediately returned to her side. “They tossed out trickster the same way they tossed out all their poetry.”
I scanned the trees looking for any telltale signs of abnormal magic. Nothing. No fae. No elves or wolves or tricksters. Only that word nagging at the inside of my skull.
I’d had my fill of lies and illusions. Of threats. Of powers dark and light deciding I was nothing more than a toy in their grand playpen. Of parents, All- or Royal or hubris-laden, so bound by their own fears that they paid no heed to the reality they manufactured. “Leave Ellie alone,” I rumbled. Leave me alone.
Let us live.
“Frank…” Ellie rubbed my hand. “You’re clenching your fists.”
“What?” I looked down at my hand just as I became aware of how deeply into my palm I was digging my fingers.
Not again, I thought. It was an amorphous not again, a blob of response formed from the many layers of gummy regrets left behind by so much of my life. Some of those layers had been caused by low-demons. Some by witchly interference. But not all of them.
“Hey hey hey…” Ellie cupped my cheeks. “You haven’t dealt with fae before? Other than me?”
Only the aftermath of a fae angry about the World Scars caused by the Civil War.
I shook my head.
“Okay.” She quickly kissed my lips. “Okay.” She pulled her backpack around again. “Those well-versed in fae spellwork leave a wake that can… stir a soul… when they return to their home realms.” She squeezed my hand. “They must have been well-versed.”
I nodded.
She set her bag on the tops of her feet. “We need to figure out who sent them.”
I nodded again.
“Hey.” She put her hand on the side of my neck. “Your heart is racing.”
It was. I inhaled deeply as I attempted to calm myself.
“No fae showed up when Chihiro got through my concealments.”
This still might be my interactions with her cottage. We didn’t know. Whatever it was about, it definitely affected me.
Ellie stopped digging in her bag long enough to give me a quick hug. She didn’t say anything else, but she watched me closely as if trying to figure out if I was okay. “Do you still feel strange? Is it coming from any particular direction?” She pulled out her camera and held it up as if to ask what she should photograph first.
No admonishments for my moment of overreacting. No shrinking away in fear. She trusted me to get through this.
I love this woman, I thought, as if I hadn’t fully accepted the possibility until now.
“Now that they’re gone, I’m taking pictures,” she said.
The fae better not mess up the best thing that ever happened to me. I nodded again, whipped out my phone, and dialed the one elf who might have answers.
Chapter 8
We found Marcus Aurelius waiting by the patio door. He cowered a little as if the two dryads had frightened him, and leaned against the glass.
No one was home to let him in. I rubbed his head again and tried calling Arne one more time.
He didn’t answer. I left him a message not unlike the two he’d left me—please call as soon as possible. Maura hadn’t answered, either. Nor had Bjorn. I left multiple messages. “Odd,” I said, and tucked away my phone.
Ellie stomped her feet and followed my dog through the door. She’d taken six photos, and had tucked the plates into her portfolio to await developing back at the cottage.
Neither of us expected much of the images. The two dryads left no residual magic I could see, and Ellie felt nothing. But still, we needed to try.
“Hello?” I called, just in case. Maura not being home was strange, since Akeyla should be arriving home from school about now.
Ellie rummaged through the mail and papers on the kitchen table. “A note.” She held up a bright pink piece of paper. “They’re going straight to the hospital after school.” She paused. “You’re supposed to call Arne.”
Which I already knew. “Hospital?” I took the paper and there, along the bottom in Maura’s elegant hand, was Mom needed to stay overnight.
“How bad were her injuries?” Ellie asked.
I stared at the words. “She told me to leave,” I said. “She hid how badly she’d been hurt.” Why would I have expected The Elf Queen of Alfheim to show me her real pain?
If I’d known, I would have carried Dag out, too.
Ellie gripped my arm. “You got Axlam to safety. You did as Queen Dagrun asked.”
But I didn’t go back. I might have saved Dag some of the severity of her injuries. But if I had, I wouldn’t be standing here fully aware of my history with Ellie. I wouldn’t have spent the night. And I wondered if we would have gotten a dryad visitation if I’d helped the woman I considered my mother instead of finding the woman I loved.
Ellie walked around the table and touched my hand so I’d put down the note. “Pack a bag. Get Sal. We’ll go to the hospital then home to develop the photos.”
I hugged her against my side. What was done was done. All I could do now was to offer the elves help and information. “Okay.”
I wrote my own note, fed my dog, and gathered my things while Ellie rummaged through the hall closet trying on Maura’s random winter coats and boots. We’d go shopping, but Maura wouldn’t miss a scarf or two in the meantime.
I set a bag full of clothes, my toothbrush, and deodorant, and a second bag with my fully-charged laptop next to the door. Ellie changed boots and picked out a ridiculous bright yellow knit hat with a massive white pompom flopping around on top.
She grinned. “I like it. It’s sunny.”
Sunny was what we needed, right now. I kissed her temple and I returned to the kitchen to get my axe.
Salvation did her version of a waking-up yawn when I lifted her off the top of the kitchen cabinets. I could reach her easily up there, but the kids could not, and Maura had to get the step-stool. Not that any of us thought Akeyla would do something stupid with the magical axe. Sal was pretty darned sharp, though, and without an adult elf around to add a guard spell on her blade, Maura thought the high-up resting place was a good idea.
Sal liked it, too. She had “a view.” She did have a straight line through the doors to the deck and
lake, not that she could see anything, but it made her happy.
Except for me leaving her with the elves last night. That did not make her happy.
“I had other business,” I said.
My other business was not important.
She hadn’t noticed Ellie when we came in, or anything out of the ordinary, though she was well aware of fae magic in the area. She was much more annoyed that I had not come home last night. Normally, I wouldn’t care, but this edging toward a more possessive version of being “hers” was not sitting well with me.
“I have a girlfriend now,” I said.
Sal had never met this mythical girlfriend and demanded an opportunity to magically vet the mystery woman. She wanted me to remember I needed to be careful. I had Akeyla to consider. Sophia and Jax, as well. The entire town. What if some harpy tried to mimic a real woman and used her entrancing wiles on me? Brother had been bad enough. My axe was not going to tolerate anyone else causing me damage.
I stood in the middle of my kitchen, Sal in one hand and my truck keys in the other, with my usually not-so-chatty magical artifact huffing and puffing about how mean I was for not considering her feelings when entering into a situation with a possibly menacing and dangerous other woman.
Ellie leaned against the wall into the hallway. She sniffed and shook her head. “I was hoping you breaking the concealments would extend to your axe.” She waved her hand. “Since a lot of her sensing of the world is done through you.”
I shrugged.
Sal thought I shrugged at her, and tossed me yet another jolt of huffiness.
“This is the first time I’ve ever been glad you can’t actually talk,” I said.
I got the distinct impression that she was working on the whole talking thing.
“What?” I asked.
Her talking was not important right now. My unwanted and unnecessary girlfriend was.
“Did you just push into my head that my girlfriend is unnecessary?”
Ellie chuckled. “At least your dog likes me.”
Sal responded with more huffing.
“You’ve met her, Sal,” I said. “She’s here, right now.”
Sal insisted she had not met any new female friend, romantic or otherwise, and that she and I were the only two standing in the kitchen.
“Do you remember the fae magic in Vampland?” I asked. “The fae magic that helped you get back to me?” Without Ellie and Sal, I would have died in a pocket land full of vampires.
She did.
“Well?” I asked.
If my axe had eyes, she would have narrowed them at me.
“Her name is—” And I couldn’t get it out. Helpful fae magic somehow managed to circumvent the concealments, as did referring to Ellie as her and my girlfriend, but her name was still not allowed.
“Did she sense the dryads?” Ellie asked.
“Have you sensed any other fae magic?” I asked Sal. “There were two dryads sniffing around.”
She had noticed fae magic outside just before I came in and she would like to make a report to King Odinsson. The fae were dangerous. Even helpful fae. I was to be careful. She did her version of a frown. You’re mine, she tossed into my head.
“Yes, yes, my dear,” I said. “But if this all works out, that helpful fae magic will introduce you to another helpful magical artifact.” I held her out in front of me and twirled her a few times, an activity that caused both her and Akeyla the same amount of enjoyment. “Don’t you want to make friends?”
Why would she want friends? All the other artifacts were stupid.
I chuckled. “She says she doesn’t care to make friends because everyone else is stupid,” I said to Ellie.
My girlfriend shook her head. “You have no idea how happy I am that my camera isn’t showing signs of jealousy.”
My axe was like some sort of maturing magical artificial intelligence. “You really have grown, haven’t you?” I asked.
I walked toward Ellie and the front door. “The elves,” I said to Sal, “seem busy.”
A sense of miffed flowed off my axe. She sensed the so-called helpful fae magic again, and she would not talk of elven secrets when a fae might steal a golden and tender morsel of knowledge.
I stopped just into the hallway, probably more shocked by Sal’s poetics than I was by those of the dryads.
Ellie walked to the front door and shouldered her backpack. “What?” she asked.
You may be enthralled manifested in my head. The words, the intent, the unease. “Sal…” I could hand her over to Akeyla, but I suspected if I did so, she would no longer consider me “hers.” And even though she and I hadn’t been in any battles with trolls or ogres, I felt better having her with me.
One day, I might need to face Brother again. “We aren’t dealing with vampires,” I said.
I handed Ellie the truck keys. She jostled her backpack and picked up the bag she’d filled with Maura’s cast-off winter clothes. “I’ll put these in Bloodyhood,” she said.
She opened the front door and a puff of cold air blew into the entry.
Sal wanted to know why I’d left the door open.
“How are we going to deal with this?” I muttered. How to prove to my axe that Ellie wasn’t the threat here? I had no idea what to do.
I hoisted my two bags and followed Ellie out. We tucked all the bags behind the passenger seat. “I’m going to put you in your pocket. Okay?” I asked Sal. She liked to ride in the cab. Usually. “Unless you want to be out in the cold.”
Sal did her version of a sniff. I was clearly prioritizing the helpful fae magic.
“I’m not going to leave you behind.”
The helpful fae magic was close again. It made her tingle, which she didn’t like, but she carried no fear.
That bit of understanding extended to all things: Sal feared nothing and no one. She was my Salvation.
There had to be some way to rein in her possessiveness. At this point, I suspected simply giving her to Akeyla wouldn’t work.
I tucked my jealous axe into her pocket. “We’re going to the hospital,” I said. “You’ll be fine.”
Ellie shook her head and waited next to the door.
Sal sniffed again.
Ellie hopped into the passenger side and closed the door as I walked around and got in to drive.
My phone rang.
“Where have you been, son?” Arne’s angry voice boomed into my ear. I pulled the phone away and mouthed Arne as I got into the truck.
“I…” I grunted. Damned concealments. I put the phone on speaker.
“Never mind.” Arne said it with such speed I suspected he knew why I couldn’t say. “The wolves are sleeping off the run.” After a Samhain full moon run, the wolves would likely sleep all day, not so much because they wanted to, but because that’s what the magic demanded. Gerard and Remy would be awake and available by early evening. Axlam, too, though I hoped that after her injuries inside St. Martin’s evil wolf magic, both her pack and the elves would make her rest another day.
“All’s well, wolf-wise?” I asked, just to make sure.
“Other than Lennart pulling in Ed in the middle of the blizzard, yes.” The annoyance in his voice was neither surprising nor all that harsh. Lennart would be on the receiving end of a lecture about mundane safety during wolf runs, and Arne would be on the receiving end of words from Ed about the safety of his daughter. All of which was likely necessary.
“Tell him Sophia’s touched,” Ellie said.
“Sophia’s touched,” I said. “I saw the magic.” A lie, since Ellie hadn’t yet shown me any photos of Sophia and I hadn’t seen any unaccounted-for magic when the kids came to help Axlam.
“Later,” Arne snapped. He loudly exhaled. “If Rose’s notebook grants you more of those magic-showing photos, please share.”
Ellie twisted her head as if to say See, he knows. “Tell him about those dryads.”
Arne sniffed as if, maybe, some of what Ellie said made it a
cross the phone connection.
“We had fae visitors,” I said. “Dryads came to speak to the trees.”
Arne inhaled. “Fae? Now?” He exhaled. “They smell blood in the water,” he muttered. “Damned prissy sharks.”
“That’s not very nice.” Ellie pointed at the phone. “Maniacal and manipulative fae is a stereotype.” She frowned. “Not all of us are prissy.”
From behind the seat, Sal sent out a wave of understanding that felt very much like an ironic but we have a helpful fae magic friend to me.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, happy that my girlfriend could not hear my jealous axe’s derisive comment.
“Did you say they Lorax-ed you?” Arne asked. “Oak sharks, those dryads,” he muttered again.
In the two-hundred-plus years of my life in Alfheim, I had never before heard an elf become so Americanized as to verbize a proper noun. “They came to ask the trees questions,” I said.
I swear I could hear Arne rubbing his face. “How many?”
“Two,” I said. “They were in full armor. They were sucking up information about the magical events last night.”
“They’re offended. Samhain is important to them.” He sighed. “Halfway between the equinox and the solstice is important to all magicals.” he said.
And we’d just suffered major Samhain-adjacent events: St. Martin’s wolf, even the entirety of the episode with Brother and the vampires were themselves part of something bigger.
Like tornadoes in a hurricane.
The phone clicked. Arne was pacing an acoustic floor, probably a tiled hallway at the hospital. “They were… opaque… weren’t they?”
“Yes.” Quite opaque. “Lots of slight-of-hand and turning of phrases.”
Arne hmphed much like my axe. “Fae,” he said. “Wonderful.”
Ellie blinked. “I took pictures after they left, King Odinsson,” she said as if to quell his annoyance.
Arne sighed. “Listen, Frank,” he said. “That little shit St. Martin snapped several of my wife’s ribs. She has internal injuries requiring observation and recuperation. Fae poking around won’t help handle the aftermath.”
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