The Goblins of Bellwater

by Molly Ringle

  Small talk about jobs and neighbors and weather carried them for the short drive out to the island. Soon the truck was rattling down the gravel driveway between the stands of trees, and his brown cabin with its slanted roof came into view.

  “Here’s home.” He turned off the truck and pulled the parking brake.

  Livy peered out through the windshield. “Even more sculptures! I didn’t know these were back here. You can’t see them from the road.”

  Nearly everyone in Bellwater had walked across the bridge and around the loop road of the island at some point. It was a scenic way to get exercise, if you didn’t want to bother hauling out a boat to row.

  “Yep. I work on them here sometimes.” He hopped out and came around the cab to her door. She had opened it by the time he got there, but he took her hand as she jumped down.

  She shouldered the grocery bag and walked through the gap in the split-rail fence. Heedless of the drizzle, she strolled between his projects, studying them. “Wow, check you out,” Livy said, touching a gear on one of his metal-junk creations. “Is this the Statue of Liberty?”

  “You recognize it. I’m glad.”

  She laughed, admiring the goofy thing: a bunch of pipes and gears and washers and other bits, all welded together into an approximate Lady Liberty shape, six feet tall. Livy tipped back her head to look at the orange taillight the statue held aloft. “Does the torch light up?”

  “Of course.” With the toe of his boot, Kit knocked a switch at the base. The light came on.

  “Awesome. Why don’t you take this into town? You could sell it.”

  “Eh, she’s heavy. I don’t know, I’ve gotten kind of attached to her. Some of these I’m used to now, and I don’t want to sell them, even though I should. So instead I’ve got junk cluttering up the yard. The neighbors really love me.”

  “It’s not junk.” Livy wandered a few steps and set a wind-spinner rotating with a touch of her finger. “It started out that way, but you turned it into art. What inspires you to do it? A way to escape the monotony of work?”

  “A way to escape a lot of things. Well, and it pays, too. When I actually bring myself to sell them.”

  She lowered her chin at him in respect. “True, but this isn’t the work of someone doing it just for money. You dig it, and you have talent. Anyone can see that.”

  “Thanks.” Kit smiled, more touched than he expected to be. “Well, come on inside. No point standing around in the rain.”

  Having kicked off with that kiss in the car, Livy had thought she could carry on the bold seduction act through the whole date, like she had in her sporadic other instances of casual sex: acting sassy, being alluringly direct in her physical desires, keeping the doors to her inner life firmly shut.

  But it was too late for that last part already, wasn’t it? Tormented by worry about Skye, she’d told Kit her problems during their first two dates, effectively erasing any possibility that he hadn’t glimpsed her vulnerable, messy, true self. He’d even reciprocated, sharing tragic details about his parents. This was a physical attraction and they had laid those ground rules about not promising more, but nonetheless, it was also a friendship. Stranger still, he was a neighbor, or close enough, which was a first for her as dating went. All taken into account, this wasn’t quite like any other hook-up of Livy’s.

  Maybe this was how Kit operated every time, though. Could someone just be that open a person?

  Inside the cabin, he took her coat and hung it on a hook by the door, along with his leather jacket. His main floor was all one room, except for the bathroom tucked away against the south wall. The kitchen transitioned into the living room, and in front of the fireplace the sofa bed lay open, with folded clothes stuffed under it and hastily-smoothed blankets spread on the mattress. “Grady’s lair?” she asked, nodding at it.

  “Yep.” Kit waved toward the interior balcony that spanned half the room. “Loft’s mine.”

  “Cool. I love it.” She set the bag of fruit and cookies on the island counter in the kitchen, and ran her fingers over one of the barstools. Their polished wood surfaces gleamed in a wild swirl of grain colors: reds, pinks, and browns. “Madrone?”

  “Indeed.” He came up beside her, close enough that their arms touched. “Nice ID skills.”

  “Guess all those forestry courses paid off. So did you make these?”

  “Yeah, topped a set of old stools with them when I had some wood left over from a statue.”

  “They look great.” Livy hopped onto one and let her feet dangle.

  Kit hung out beside the counter, appraising her with patient brown eyes and a smile. “So, you want to see the array of wonders Grady left us for lunch?”

  “Maybe not just yet.” With one of her dangling feet, she hooked his leg and gave it a tug. Seriously, playing footsie? She was acting like a teenaged virgin.

  Lucky thing her date was a smooth enough operator to make up for her clumsiness. He rested his hands on the counter, one on each side of her. His thighs leaned against her knees. “Yeah, I could wait on food.” He sounded a little bashful, like he wasn’t sure how she’d respond.

  With him this near, she could smell him, fresh air and leather jacket and the indescribable scent of guy, the same scent that had surrounded her in those kisses in the car last night, and her diffidence began melting away. She met his beautiful eyes, finding not only desire in them but what looked to be a sea of loneliness; and she thought of how he didn’t really have anyone except maybe his cousin, just like she didn’t really have anyone except Skye. Everyone else, her friends and ex-lovers and family, had all drifted away from Livy’s life.

  Now she didn’t even have Skye like she used to. Maybe Kit Sylvain, of all people, got how she felt.

  Then he kissed her, and she closed her eyes and let go of those dark thoughts to make way for warmer ones.

  Half her lunch break later, Livy stretched across his bed, sated and pleasantly limp. Every scrap of her clothes now lay in a heap on the floor of his loft bedroom. Kit, returning from disposing of the condom, climbed onto the bed on his knees and ran his gaze down her legs.

  He caught one of her heels to examine the tattoos on her ankles. “Ooh. What are these?”

  “Earth. Air.” She pointed to the two on her right ankle. Then, on her left: “Fire. Water.”

  “Ah. The four elements.”

  “I have a soft spot for them, even though I’m a scientist.” She wiggled her toes, watching the tendons flex the little symbols in green, purple, red, and blue. “They were for my twenty-first birthday. Skye designed them. She even came along to the tattoo parlor to make sure the guy wielding the needle did it right.”

  “Ha. Well, they turned out awesome. So, show you mine?” He twisted around to display his back: halfway up on the left side curved a whale, the size of her hand, decorated in swirls of black, red, and white.

  She touched its fins. “Oh, beautiful! I love whales.”

  “Who doesn’t? That was the first chainsaw carving I did that sold, so this was a way to commemorate it. Plus whales are…I don’t know, free. They get to swim the world, thousands of miles a year. They’re cool and mysterious. They seem deep.”

  She grinned, letting her fingers drop. “Deep. That they are. So is that what you want to do? Travel?”

  “I’d love to. That and restore cars—the dream of most mechanics. But both of those take a lot of time and money, and…” He shrugged, his gaze dropping away. “No one’s ever got enough of those, do they.”

  They ate a lunch of Grady’s leftovers, sitting at the counter, chatting and laughing. They were both barefoot and not totally dressed, Kit with his shirt half-buttoned and Livy wearing her sweater but leaving her bra off till the last possible minute.

  “It was…fun,” she told Skye that evening, and heard the note of wonder in her own voice.

  Skye lifted her eyebrows, gaze fixed on Livy across the kitchen table.

  “I mean, I know.” Livy spooned up some Scotch b
roth and blew on it. “He’s had plenty of practice, if the gossip is true. He ought to be able to make it fun. It’s not like it means anything. But still.”

  “Fun,” Skye said, as if agreeing fun was worthwhile in itself.

  “Yeah.” Livy sipped the spoonful of soup. “This is yummy. Grady’s doing a good job.” She noticed Skye’s gaze slip down to the table. “Is it okay, having him around? You can be honest.”

  Skye nodded resolutely. Instead of looking Livy in the eye, she gazed out the dark, fogged kitchen window, toward the forest.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  MAYBE NYMPHOMANIA WAS PART OF SKYE’S CONDITION, GRADY THOUGHT THE NEXT DAY, AS HE TRIED TO CONCENTRATE on ripping up romaine over a colander in the sink while Skye held him in a languid hug from behind. Her hands trailed up and down his chest, slid over his hips, and inched dangerously close to his crotch. He could feel her warmth and breathing, could smell her shampoo, could remember so clearly the softness of her breasts and the slickness of her mouth when they’d kissed yesterday…

  Her hand slid between his legs and rested there. His lettuce-tearing motions faltered, and he closed his eyes, tortured with want.

  “You’re being a very disruptive kitchen helper.” But he made no move to escape her touch.

  Skye responded with a firmer caress, and kissed his shoulder blade through his shirt.

  Wouldn’t Livy have warned him if she knew Skye was a nymphomaniac? That was the kind of thing you would warn someone about if you were going to leave them alone with the person.

  To be fair, though, he was reacting almost like a nymphomaniac himself.

  “Didn’t we say yesterday we should slow down?” he tried.

  “Yesterday,” she pointed out.

  “What, like that was yesterday, this is today?” He was still pulling apart lettuce, but only slowly.

  Her hand still petted him. “Mm.” She slanted the sound with a tone that suggested Sort of.

  He glanced partway back, only enough to catch her shoulder in his view. “Or you mean, like, we waited a whole day, so that counts for something?”

  “Mm.” Closer to agreement this time. Her fingertips circled his groin.

  He swallowed and tried to focus on the romaine. “I should at least finish the salad.”

  Skye withdrew her hands and stepped away, the motion exuding sulkiness even though he couldn’t see her with his back turned.

  He glanced over his shoulder, and examined the frustration burning in her eyes. His gaze traveled down the black hoodie she wore over a tank top. Her nipples made visible peaks through both layers, and he set his back teeth together to keep from groaning. “But maybe, just for a second…”

  She stepped forward. He dropped the head of lettuce into the colander and snatched her up with his wet hands. A second later he had her propped against the fridge, their lips and tongues entangled, all four of her limbs wrapped around him. She had on black leggings, so thin you could almost feel skin through them, and she gasped in pleasure.

  His mind filled with strange, bizarre wants: not just stripping her down and plunging into her, the way he’d usually fantasize about at this stage of things, but also the woods. Sex with her in that mossy, semi-spooky forest, down in the undergrowth where he’d landed after he kissed her and got tripped by blackberry vines, or high up in the trees, in some kind of treehouse—the ones she drew, maybe—the two of them powerful and reckless like animals…

  What the hell?

  “God,” he said. “Okay…okay, just…” He slid her down till her feet landed on the floor, and wrenched himself back a step, though it almost physically hurt to break contact with her. He stretched out his fingers in front of him as a barrier. “Remember? How I didn’t want to do anything you’d regret?”

  “Regret?” Her face beautifully flushed, she looked down and shook her head. She seemed mournful almost, as if there might be many things she regretted, but not this specifically.

  Grady raked one of his damp hands through his hair. “I’m so confused. I’m sorry. But this whole thing, it’s making me want things, think things, that I don’t understand. And too much of the time, I don’t even care that I don’t understand. That scares me. It makes me think I’m going to do something I definitely will regret.”

  Skye tightened her lips and nodded, her gaze still cast down. Turning her from sexy nymphomaniac back into sad depressed waif made him feel like a complete asshole.

  He stepped forward and took her hands. “Listen. You have no idea how much I want you. Or—well, you probably do. I’m sure you can tell. But let me get the salad done like I’m supposed to, and then maybe we can try to be responsible grown-ups who do this right. Okay?”

  “Right.” She tipped her head forward to lean it on his chest. Then she chose another few words of his to echo, in a whisper: “I want you.” But erotic though the sentiment was, she sounded just as conflicted and disturbed as he felt.

  Skye backed off and let Grady finish assembling the salad. She understood his reasons for resisting, and could add a reason of her own: namely, that it was surely wise to fight the magic as long as they could. Maybe they’d even find a way to reverse their spell. How, though? She couldn’t even Google the question; the words wouldn’t transfer from brain to fingertips. She had tried.

  On the other hand, she didn’t see a lot of point in resisting, because at least kissing and fondling him felt good. Not nearly enough of life felt good for her lately. She had to admit, with a guilty sort of thrill, that it was a turn-on to know they’d be unable to fight their mutual magnetism much longer. Given this was the one single aspect of the curse that actually involved pleasure, why wouldn’t she pursue it?

  While Grady assembled ingredients and whipped up salad dressing, she sketched various parts of him, divided into random-sized boxes around the page. In one, she drew his big feet in their black socks against the kitchen tiles (he’d taken off his shoes at the door). In another, the back pocket of his jeans, with the shape of his phone making a rectangle of faded denim within it, and his T-shirt’s rumpled hem draped just above. The back of his neck, near-black hair inching halfway to his shoulders, vertebrae showing in subtle bumps. His hands selecting a knife. His profile, eyelashes swept downward, full lips set.

  As she finished shading in the stubble on his skin, he glanced at her and smiled. “I’m being lazy for this lunch. No actual cooking required. I brought some chicken that I cooked last night.” He pulled down two plates from the cupboard. “I figured, less time cooking, more time…doing other stuff.”

  She nodded, and slid the sketchbook out into the center of the table.

  He didn’t notice it yet. He loaded both plates with salad, already tossed with its dressing, sprinkled crumbled goat cheese on it, added chopped chicken and walnuts, and pulled over a plastic bag of something dark red. His hand was inside it, closing around a fistful of the stuff, when Skye recognized it as dried fruit.

  Her voice surged to the surface. “No!”

  He jolted and looked at her, then back at the bag. “Oh. That’s right. You’re off fruit.”

  She nodded, lips pressed together, stomach clenching. Would the goblins make her eat that disgusting magical fruit again when she did finally join them? Would she actually like it at that point?

  “Then no dried cherries. No problem.” He twisted up the plastic bag to close it. Turning to face her, he rested his back against the counter. “There was an apple in one of those pictures you drew. Evil queen with an apple. I feel like fruit is another clue.”

  Skye looked sadly at him.

  “It sometimes seems like I’m starting to get it.” His gaze wandered to the table, and halted at the sketchbook. The haunted look dissolved from his eyes, and his sunnier everyday expression slipped back in. “Hey. You drawing me?”

  She drew in a deep breath to settle her queasiness, and nodded.

  He came forward and planted his knuckles on the table to study it. “Dang. You’re good.” He flicked a nail
against the drawing of his sock. “Even got the holes in my clothes.” He kissed her forehead. “I love it. Can I take a picture of it?” When she nodded, he got out his phone. “Then we can have lunch.”

  After their salad, they settled on the couch, Skye nestled against Grady’s arm, to chat via text. This time the topic was past relationships. Both of them had gone through a share of drama, now worn down to amusing by the passing of time.

  It was probably inevitable that they’d detour through the woods again before he walked her to work. Probably just as inevitable that she’d end up leading him down a side trail into the quietest depths of the forest. She hopped up onto a fallen log, which had landed at a slant, propped against an upright tree. She pulled him in for a kiss.

  After what she’d started this morning, it was also inevitable that he’d slide his hands under her wool coat and grip her. Or that her hand, before long, would roam across the front of his jeans.

  He groaned against her mouth. Awash in spell-magic and normal lust, unable to tell anymore how much she owed to each, she clung to him and urged him on with rhythmic writhes. Moss squished and crumbled under her, his tongue tangled with hers, their hands teased and pressed.

  “We should stop,” he begged, not stopping.

  “Should,” she said, also not stopping.

  He gasped against her neck. “Or not.”

  “Or not,” she agreed.

  She took a foil-wrapped condom from her pocket and slipped it into his hand, a minor victory for human responsibility in the face of reckless magic, she felt.

  Grady turned it over in his fingers. “Brought some myself,” he admitted. “Just in case.”

  He lifted his blue eyes to her. Here was where he should have smiled, where the old Grady would have smiled. Instead his gaze searched her face, drenched with desire, drugged with magic.

  This was terrible of her. She knew full well they were watching. She couldn’t see or hear them; no one would in the daytime; but they were most certainly there, ogling the two of them as free entertainment, laughing, commenting to each other in the crudest and most offensive ways. She knew it, and Grady didn’t know it yet, and she did this with him anyway. Because that was how much she wanted him, and because in the house Grady might be able to resist her, but out here he couldn’t.