by H. L. Burke
“The communication between rural villages can be poor. I’m not surprised no one noticed a pattern.” Auric scratched his beard thoughtfully. “Before that do you think it was in the Capital?”
“I can’t imagine how.” Frustration etched her face. “I have never been to the city, but with so many people, someone there would’ve seen something, someone would’ve noticed folks going missing. It’s not like in the farm towns where people go days to weeks without seeing a neighbor and there are large, empty stretches between homes. If gossip spreads like the pox through these quiet country towns, surely in the city everyone knows everyone’s business and would catch on that they are being harvested by something.”
Auric grimaced. “Not necessarily. I have lived in the city, and it is very easy for an individual to get lost in the crowd. Only last year an orphanage director was arrested for selling off his children to sweatshops, essentially as slave labor. The papers claimed he’d been running the scheme for almost a decade before someone caught on.”
Iris’s bottom lip went slack. “Selling children?”
“Yes, and I doubt he was the only one doing it. He was just the only one caught.”
She shook her head. “I suppose not all monsters are Fey. There are plenty of the human variety lurking as well.”
“Also, there are the street folk: the beggars, the drunks, the prostitutes. No one notices when one suddenly isn’t there.” Out of habit, Auric pulled his stylus from his pocket and twirled it between his fingers. “I imagine a sneaky Fey could prey in the shadows for some time without drawing any attention to itself. Especially if it mimics a shadow. Stake out a dark alley between a pub and a whorehouse and feast on the city’s rejects for ages with no one giving a fig about it.”
“Sometimes I miss the simplicity of the Fey Lands. Yes, many of its people are bloodthirsty, but at least we’re upfront about it. Human society tends to put a polite face on its cruelties.” She exhaled. “This creature needs to be sent back where it came from. The mortal realm offers too many potential food sources.”
Auric hesitated. The idea of leaving behind Spellsmith Manor with its memories and the mundane responsibilities of the shop tempted him. He wanted to run away. “Do you … do you want me to help you hunt it?”
“No. Not that you wouldn’t be a help, but you should stay here. With your father gone, the shop is fully yours and Jericho’s, and Rill will want you close by.” She turned and ruffled his hair. “You two need to be there for each other now.”
Auric shook his head. “She has Jericho. She doesn’t need me.”
“Oh, I think she does, though it would do you good to have your own Jericho.” Iris tilted her head, her ice-blue eyes staring into his soul. “Is Lotta coming out? She knows about your father, doesn’t she?”
His face warmed. There was an emergency-use only telegraph line at the train station, but the local stationmaster had made an exception for Auric, so he could send Lotta the news of Hedward’s passing. It had been three days since then, and no response from Lotta had arrived. “I … I wrote her when he … it can take a while for her to get away from the city. I mean … she has … I don’t know.” He sank his face into his hands. “I’m sick of making excuses for her. If I meant anything to her, she’d have found a way to be here by now. God knows, I’d have found a way to be there for her, but blast it all, I just lost Father.” His throat ached, and he could barely force out the words. “I don’t want to lose Lotta, too. Even if what we have is an illusion, it’s all I’ve got left.”
Iris wrapped herself about him. Auric stopped fighting the tears and allowed himself to weep on his mother’s shoulder.
After a several minutes, the tears subsided, and his head cleared. Auric untangled himself from her embrace. He was a grown man, the heir to Spellsmith Manor, and it was time for him to operate as such.
“Whether Lotta will be here or not, I need to go to the funeral, if only for appearances.”
“Give it time, Auric,” Mother whispered. “Everything is raw now, like an open wound. I’ll stay with you until you hear from Lotta.”
“No, you can’t do that. I mean, I want you to stay, but the Leecher needs to be caught, and you’re the best one to do that.” He drew a steadying breath. “I’ll stay here and take care of the workshop and the household. You do what you need to do. It’ll be all right.” A dark thought crossed his mind. “But Mother, please be careful. Whatever this creature is, it’s dangerous.”
A faint smile crossed her face. “Believe it or not, son, so am I.”
The rattle of carriage wheels across the courtyard outside drew Mother to the window. She glanced back with a smile. “Auric, you’ll probably want to greet our guest yourself.”
His heart leaped into his mouth, and he bolted down the stairs. He wrenched open the door and found her on the other side, her hand raised, ready to knock. Her dark eyes widened.
Lotta was tall for a woman, a half-inch at least taller than Auric, which he tried to make up for by carefully choosing his shoes when he knew she’d be around. He hadn’t expected her today, and her traveling boots were apparently thick-soled because her gaze now met his at a slightly downward angle. She had warm brown skin, rich black curls, and a stoic, almost severe expression. Auric had become familiar with her subtleties, however, and could see the light wrinkle around her eyes and the quiver in her bottom lip.
“I got here as fast as I could. I’m not sure what took the blasted post so long.” She touched his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Auric. I should’ve been here sooner.”
He drew her into an embrace, pressing his cheek to hers.
“You’re here now,” he whispered.
His aching heart eased as her fingers caressed his back. No, this wasn’t an illusion at all.
Chapter Six
Lotta sighed and nestled into the warmth of the mattress beneath her. A pleasant scent of lavender wafted about the room, and she felt soft, cozy, cradled in … her eyes snapped open. Was that an arm?
She bolted into a sitting position. Auric grunted and jerked awake. She gaped at him, then down at herself. They both appeared to be fully clothed—she even still wore her boots—but this was a bed, in a bedroom, his bedroom presumably. Her face warmed as she fought to remember the night before. After his father’s funeral, they’d sat up for hours talking … or he’d talked and she’d listened and held his hand. She remembered that. There had been a tumbler of sweet liquor which at first she’d found distasteful but after a bit of sipping started to enjoy. Then things got blurry. What had she done?
“Did we … did we have intercourse?”
He raised his eyebrows. “I’d like to think if we had you’d remember it.” He tilted his head. “Also, is that how you always refer to lovemaking? Because while technically accurate it kind of sucks the romance out of it.”
She let out a sigh. “Sorry. I just … I’ve never …What did happen?”
“You really don’t remember?” He sat up and caressed her cheek. “We talked well past midnight, then you started to get a little dizzy. I tried to escort you to your guest room, but you told me you didn’t want to leave me alone because …” He cleared his throat. “You said I looked like a sad ginger kitten and you couldn’t stand the thought of me lost and alone in the dark.”
“Oh.” She flushed. Standing, she faced the full-length mirror he had hanging on one wall, probably for checking the knots on his carefully-tied cravats. He always dressed so prettily. When other men fidgeted about their clothes, she sniffed and considered them dandies, but somehow with Auric, it became charming. Perhaps because it fit who he was inside rather than being a pretense.
Her work as an inventor and engineer often required her to dress with more of an eye towards practicality than presentability. However, Auric was careful in his appearance because he was sensitive to the opinions of others. It made her want to match him. Not in wearing impractical fads like hoop skirts or bustles and whatnot—no need to take it to extremes�
��but keeping a neat appearance had always been important to her, and she could stand to wear a little flourish for his sake.
Now she smoothed her hair and ran her hands over her shirt, trying to chase away the wrinkles.
He came up behind her and kissed the nape of her neck. “I’m sorry you don’t remember last night. It was wonderful. Like coming home after a long trip, spending time with you.”
“I think I remember most of it. It’s only after we went upstairs that it gets muddled.”
“Well, other than you comparing me to an infant feline, all that really happened after that point was both of us collapsing on the bed and falling asleep.”
A strange cry echoed through the house. What was that? A discordant bird? No, wait, his sister had babies. That was a crying baby. The muscles between her shoulders tightened. They weren’t the only ones in this house. His sister, his brother-in-law, the servants … his mother. They’d all know she slept in his room last night. What would they think of her? The shameless hussy who took advantage of their precious son during his moment of weakness?
His hold on her loosened. “Are you all right? You look as if someone replaced your favorite chromium tool set with a bunch of rusted scrap.”
“Your whole family is going to think we were intimate last night,” she whispered.
“No, they won’t.”
“What else are they going to think? I’m in your room. Are you going to smuggle me out the window down a rope of tied-together bed sheets and hope no one notices?”
A smile quirked the corner of his mouth. “Well, we can if it would make you more comfortable, but I don’t think it’s necessary.”
“They’ll think I’m a … a … floozy.” Even now they were probably whispering in the kitchen about how to exorcise her offending presence. Oh, why had she drank so much the night before? Not just a floozy, but a drunken floozy. She dropped her head into her hands, unable to even look at herself in the mirror.
“No, they won’t.” He placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Because I’ll tell them nothing happened. I’ll tell them you were as virtuous as an angel and didn’t so much as let me put a hand in the wrong place.” He fingered a curl of her hair. “Though believe me, I wanted to. You were obviously not in complete control of your faculties last night, though.”
His touch was warm on her skin, tempting her to lean into him, to go in for a kiss and feel his beard tickle against her cheek again, but she shook her head. “They won’t believe you. They’ll think you’re covering for me.”
“Oh, they’ll believe me. Especially Jericho. After how many times he’s rubbed it in my face that he’s slept with my sister, I have no qualms about him knowing intimate details of my life, and it would be very tempting to brag if I did manage to … well, you know.”
Anger rippled through her. “My virginity is not a trophy.”
He winced. “No! That’s not what I meant.”
“Yes, it was.” She crossed her arms. “You just said if you slept with me, you would brag about it!”
“I meant I would be tempted to. I wouldn’t. I swear.” His face reddened. “Can we please forget I said that?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. While she trusted Auric not to do anything untoward, it often seemed that he didn’t put much thought into the things that slipped out of his big mouth … it was a nice mouth, however. The memory of his tickling beard and warm lips silenced her brewing rage.
“My point was, the people here will believe me when I tell them the truth, and even if I don’t flat out announce that you were above reproach, they’ll give you the benefit of the doubt because they love me and I love you, so they are predisposed to love you as well.” He stepped closer. “You’re safe here, Lotta. I promise.”
The world around her softened as she considered his words. They played back in her head like a music box then got stuck on a word. A word he’d said so casually she almost missed it but in retrospect which shouted at her. “You … you love me?”
“Well, yeah.” He swallowed. “I guess I hadn’t said it yet, had I?”
She shook her head, her heart fluttering.
He let out a deep breath. “Honestly, Lotta, I don’t know where we’re going, I mean, us, as a couple. I know you have your engineering business in the city, and I can’t expect you to leave that, but I have my family here, and my father’s shop is now technically my responsibility, and I can’t leave that.”
Her stomach folded in on itself. He’d just said he loved her, but this new line of discussion seemed like all the reasons it would never work. He was about to rip the rug out from under her. It had never been real, someone like Auric wanting to be with someone like her, and it was about to end. She braced herself for the blow, determined to take the announcement with a large dose of decorum.
“And I know everything is working against us, but I can’t stand being halfway in, halfway out with you, especially now. I mean, having my father taken so suddenly, it makes life so precious, and I don’t want to waste it only seeing the woman I love a few times a year and trying to eke out intimacy via letters.”
What would she say? That she understood? That she didn’t blame him? Maybe offer to see him more often? Beg him to try and work it out? She didn’t want to lose him, but how could she fight for him if he didn’t want to hold on?
“So what I’m trying to say is—” He paused, closed his eyes, then dropped to one knee.
She raised her eyebrows. Did he have a cramp in his leg or something? He took her hand. She stared at him, realization fighting incredulity. What was happening?
“Lotta Tyckner, will you please marry me?”
The muscles in Lotta’s legs turned to gelatin. She staggered backwards and collided with the mirror which crashed down from the wall. She whirled and stared at her now fractured reflection. That’s bad luck. No, there’s no such thing as luck. Just … oh, he just proposed, and I’m not even looking at him!
She spun towards him, smacking into him as he stood.
“Easy!” He grabbed her by the upper arms to steady himself. “Are you all right?”
“I am, I think.” She gasped for air. “Really? You really want to marry me?”
“Yes.” He nodded, his beautiful blue eyes so earnest.
“But, you just got through saying how neither of us can get away from our jobs. Do you want me to sell my business and move here?”
“I couldn’t ask you to do that.”
“Are you going to move to the city with me?”
He dropped his eyes. “I can’t quite yet.”
“Then how is this going to work?” She blinked at him.
“I don’t know. We can figure that out later.”
“It feels like we should figure it out now.”
He scratched his beard. “I guess that makes sense, but I don’t have answers, Lotta. I simply know that I want to be with you, forever. If you don’t want that, I understand. I sprang this on you out of nowhere, and I won’t hold it against you if you don’t feel the same way.”
“I feel the same way, but I think this is crazy.” Her mind spun. “We have to know what’s going to happen in the future, not only want we want to do this very minute.”
“Well, let’s think about the future, then. Do you want to be with me in five years? Ten? Fifty?”
“Yes.” The answer came quicker than expected, but she felt it with certainty, so she repeated it. “Yes to all of the above.”
“What about what makes you happy?” He massaged his thumb into the side of her hand. “Does running your company make you happy? Is that what you want to do forever?”
“Inventing is what makes me happy. The company?” She snorted. “A lot of times it’s annoying, all the business meetings and paperwork getting in the way of working with my tools and making new things.”
“Believe it or not, I feel the same way about the shop sometimes.” He sighed. “I like magic. I like being near my family, but the repetitio
n of basic spells and waking up in this same dull little town day after day, I could live without. Sometimes I wish I could chuck it all to the wind and see the world a bit, you know?”
“I think so.” She wouldn’t travel without a detailed itinerary and a good idea where they were going and when they could be back, but if all that was in place, seeing the world might be nice.
A part of her brain she rarely paid attention to begged her to accept, to throw caution to the wind and simply be with him, forget her responsibilities in the city and enjoy life in the arms of the man she loved—and she did love him. She probably need to say that out loud. The more dominate thoughts, however, couldn’t get past the logistics of it. Still, his face loomed before her, so beloved, making her feel safe and cared for, making her half-believe everything was all right. His smile wavered at the corners. She couldn’t let that smile die.
She slipped her arms about his neck and pulled him in for a kiss. He melted against her, his hands squeezing through the cloth of her shirt into her back.
“Is that a yes?” He chuckled as she withdrew.
“It’s a maybe.” She kissed his cheek. “Auric, I’m not like you. I can’t make decisions instantaneously without knowing the details of how it will work. I need to think. I need to figure out if I can run my company from here or if I can stand allowing someone else to take over the day-to-day of it and what that will mean for my employees. I need to know they’ll be all right.”
He hung his head. “I understand. Blast, though, I don’t want to wait, Lotta.”