The Wayward Deed (Vacancy Book 2)

by A. K. Caggiano

  Fire erupted from the tip of Estrid’s wand. A small flame, tiny really, only enough to alight the muddled ingredients in the mortar and complete the spell. Zyr would have ignored it, and Lorelei could tell fire meant nothing to him, if not for the fact it came from behind him and not in front where Estrid currently stood. Or where it looked like she stood.

  The elven creature halted, the burning pits that were his eyes widening with recognition but a moment too late. A flurry of lights buzzed into the cabin from behind him, silhouetting his already dark figure. Faeries, hundreds of them it seemed, all poised at his back, ready to push.

  “Now. Go.” Bridgette’s voice was level as she turned, and Lorelei followed suit, stepping in front of the mirror.

  Lorelei’s body lurched, her balance thrown as she stumbled forward another step that should have landed her face first into the mirror, but instead she was engulfed in darkness, breath pulled out of her for an agonizing second and then slamming back into her chest. She blinked and threw her arms out, connecting with Bridgette’s flailing hand. For just a second, they grasped onto one another and then let go, the space on either side of them brightening, yellow light to the right, blue to the left.

  “Look out!” Bridgette’s hand slammed into Lorelei’s shoulder as she pushed her backward and out of the way. Zyr stumbled through the mirror with the slightest bit of help from the faeries. Towering over them and inches away, he swiped but missed which seemed impossible for the reach he had in the cabin, but then he wasn’t quite so tall anymore. His eyes lost their dark burning, his skin lost its smoky glow, and the voices, the hundreds and thousands of people screaming and crying, were all falling away.

  Zyr was still frightening, but a god? No, he was barely a man.

  “Huh, guess you were right.” Bridgette snapped a hand through the air, pink light following after her fingers. “We’re headed home, so my powers are back, but you,”—she smirked at Zyr—“you’re not where you belong.” With a deftness and speed Lorelei hadn’t seen before, Bridgette drew a symbol in the air in cheery pink light that she tapped with a perfectly manicured nail. It slammed into Zyr’s chest, and the creature screamed in a garbled, wet way as she held out the bottle toward him. “Come on,” she growled. “Get in, I wanna go home.”

  Zyr’s form began to turn to smoke, his fingertips dissolving first. Shocked, he tried grabbing at his own hands, but what was once his fingers slipped away and into the amber bottle. Lorelei bit her lip, watching, Bridgette standing sedately as it happened, but then Zyr screamed, and she straightened, holding the bottle with both hands and tightening her grip.

  “Come on!” she shouted again. “I literally don’t have time for this!”

  Lorelei watched as her arms began to shake, her knees bending in. She grabbed onto Bridgette’s shoulders, pushing to keep her up, and the witch steadied herself against Lorelei. Zyr’s body continued to collapse, sucked inward, and then with a last puff of smoke and a single, strangled cry, he was gone.

  Bridgette corked the bottle, falling over it and sighing. She took a few heavy breaths and stood, shaking off Lorelei’s hands from her shoulders and holding up the bottle. “Easy peasy.”

  “Blessed Powers.” They turned and Estrid’s reflection was on the other side of the mirror, still in her own time. All around her were the twinkling lights of many faeries, a notably ginger one hovering right by her shoulder. “You did it.”

  “Yeah, duh.” Bridgette gave the bottle a shake then stuck her tongue out at it.

  Lorelei waved at Estrid’s form as it began to disappear, and she called a goodbye, but Bridgette’s face was only growing more disgusted as she looked on the bottle. Quiet fell on them in the weird dark and light place as the sounds of the past fell away. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her own voice close and far at once.

  “He feels, like, so gross.” Bridgette swallowed, holding the bottle as far from her as she could. “Ugh, I hate it. Let’s obliterate him.” Bridgette wound back and chucked the bottle like it was an apple core into the lights streaming by. It was swallowed up just as the lights were going out, dimming as the world around them darkened once more. The mirror was no longer reflecting them but showing them its back panel, the rough stone wall at their other side, not there a second earlier.

  “We’re back?” Lorelei reached out to touch the wall, reminiscent of the weird room in the basement they had been in days earlier.

  “Lorelei?” Conrad’s voice came from the far side of the room as he turned, catching himself on the doorway. “Bridgette?” He looked as though he’d just been headed out, dressed exactly the same as when they’d last seen him. “That was fast.”

  “Oh, my god, it worked. Bridgette, you did it!” Lorelei jumped in place, her plan a success. Zyr had lost his powers just as Bridgette had immediately after entering the Hephaestian mirror, and even better, he had fallen for the trick of going after Estrid’s reflection so he would be close enough to be pushed in by the faeries when the spell was triggered.

  Estrid had kept herself on the far side of the room after opening the door, lining herself up with the mirror to look like she was standing with the other two women when Zyr came in. The man, elf, god, whatever, was too focused on his desire to realize the source was directly behind him instead of in front. The oison root compound had been enough for three beings, they had just taken Zyr with them instead of Estrid, leaving her in the past with the woodworker, his daughter, a horde of faeries being owed a favor, and the beginnings of what would be Moonlit Shores Manor, exactly as things were meant to be.

  Bridgette sniffed, wiping a stray leaf off of her sweater. “Yeah, of course it worked. How long has it been?” She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and started tapping around on it.

  “Barely a minute.” Conrad’s eyes were wide as he looked from one of them to the other.

  “You still exist,” Lorelei said, breathless, reaching over to slap Bridgette’s arm for her attention. “He’s still here!”

  Bridgette jerked away, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Yeah, I have eyes, I can see that.” She, however, was not looking at him, instead sending off a number of text messages.

  “You should have seen it,” Lorelei said, her heart still pounding. “Bridgette was amazing.”

  “As always.” The witch sucked her teeth then she finally glanced over at Lorelei. “And you were okay too. Like, I know I didn’t want to do it, and it would have totally been easier to avoid all that, but that was a smart plan or whatever.”

  Lorelei smiled at her. “Really?”

  Bridgette’s eyes went wide and her shoulders rose. “Yeah, like, I said it, didn’t I?”

  “What…uh, what happened to you two?” Conrad put his hands on his hips, eyeing them suspiciously.

  “Just defeated a god or whatever.” Bridgette shrugged. “No biggie.”

  “Well, that would explain how you look, I guess.”

  Lorelei went around to the front of the mirror and saw herself, the glass finally working as it was intended. Her hair was a mess, there was dirt smudged on her face and clothes, and bags under her eyes. She looked almost exactly like an evil, elven, fae, god thing had almost killed her. She grinned back at her reflection.

  “Ugh, rude!” Bridgette, though, was having none of it. She pushed past him and out into the basement hallway. “I am so not helping you anymore if you’re going to talk to me like that. Especially not after dealing with an ancient evil set on destroying the world or whatever. You wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for me!”

  He watched her go, then turned back to Lorelei. “Is she serious?”

  Lorelei shrugged. “You heard her.” She slipped around him and walked out too.

  CHAPTER 9

  DUMB THING

  A night in the comfort of her own bed hadn’t been enough to make up for the time she had spent, or perhaps lost, on the other side of the Hephaestian mirror, but Lorelei’s wakefulness before the sun even rose also did not
help. She got out of bed anyway and dressed for the outdoors, the alalynx at her side.

  Lorelei had her coat zipped up and her gloves on, but there was a bite to the still air. The sun shone as it began its slow creep upward from behind the trees that ran along the back perimeter of the manor grounds, orange and bright against the greys and browns of the still-sleeping yard, not even a breeze to disturb the orchard’s bare branches or the herbs hanging from the eaves of Seamus and Arista’s cottage.

  The barn, though, had a telltale warm glow of life, and when she entered, the alalynx chirped and shook out her wings, springing into a pile of hay beside one of the stalls. Lorelei looked around for Ren, but he was not inside. She called for him, but did not hear an answer. She peeked into a stall only to see the pair of massive stag-like creatures who pulled the freightage cart nestled together and asleep. Then she heard a creak from above, so she climbed the stairs to the loft and knocked.

  “Enter.”

  Lorelei eased the door open to Ren’s private quarters, a blast of warm air hitting her. The loft interior was rustic with a shelf of books and a braided rug on the floor, and it smelled of hay and savory herbs. The elf was sitting in a rocking chair by a burning, potbelly stove with a little bundle in his hands, and Lorelei’s mouth fell open.

  “It is quite early for you,” he said, the implication neither a compliment nor condemnation. “Is there an issue to which I must attend?”

  Lorelei just stared back, the alalynx trotting in between her feet.

  An elf could easily win a staring contest, they had much more time than most other creatures, but Ren must have read the look on the human’s face. “You are personally in need of something?”

  “You have a baby.” Lorelei blinked, but only once.

  Ren glanced down at the bundle he was holding, a tightly wrapped blanket that squirmed, and the bottle held in his other hand. “That terminology is not inaccurate.”

  Lorelei skipped across the room to him, the elf’s eyelids raising but almost imperceptibly. It was especially funny to see him there, cradling something so small and delicate without any of the scrunched-up affection on his face that one normally would have. Instead, he looked down stoically, long, pointed features only observing.

  Peeking out from the swaddle was a furry, orange face and a pinch of a snout that was clamped on the bottle and sucking hard. It had pointed ears too big for the rest of it, and its eyes were lined with black fur but squeezed shut as it drank. It certainly wasn’t an elven baby, as Lorelei had momentarily thought, sharing none of Ren’s features, the silvery hair, the mica-flecked skin, the cold, hard stare, but she shouldn’t have been surprised. Ren having a child was, well—she didn’t think he even knew how to go about making one, imagining elves reproduced by the least passionate means possible. But it hardly mattered, this was even better. “Ren! It’s adorable!”

  The elf nodded. “A popular sentiment.”

  “How are you not just dying right now?” She dropped down onto her knees to coo at the baby fox in his lap.

  “I am far from death myself. Do you believe elves are allergic to vulpes?”

  “No, I mean—never mind. Where did you get him?”

  Ren readjusted the bottle slightly. “My tracking was not entirely successful, but the pup is my spoil. The only one, sadly.”

  She had to sit on her hands to keep from petting it, knowing Ren would chastise her in some way, and squinted up at him. He had spent the last few evenings out in the woods on a search that he hadn’t said much more about. “I thought you were hunting something?”

  His face changed slightly, frowning. “In a way, yes. There was a creature that called out in the night, requesting help. She had been badly injured, but her pursuer found her before I could. Of her brood, this was the only one who had survived.”

  That made a bit more sense—Lorelei had never seen Ren eat meat or have any tendency toward violence. “Do animals always ask you for help? You must be busy constantly squashing the circle of life.”

  “This was no normal request.” He rocked the bundle for a moment as it squirmed.

  “Oh, of course.” She nodded knowingly. “So, what’s this guy going to grow up to do? Breathe fire? Fly? Grow a bunch of tails?”

  The elf leveled grey eyes at her. “Lorelei, this is a fox.”

  She blinked back at him. “A fox that can grant wishes?”

  “If one wishes to see a fox, then yes, but otherwise it is only a red fox.” Ren looked a bit uncomfortable then, the bottle running out, but he was perceptive enough to know why she was so confused. “Whatever took the pup’s mother made one failed attempt first. It enchanted her, and she became capable of communication in a way I have not encountered before with uncharmed fauna. A second life had found its way into her, but it was a magic I am not familiar with. She feared leaving her pups behind though she knew she would. I was too late for the others, but hopefully this one will honor her memory in some small way.” He wiped away the droplets of milk from the fox’s muzzle. “Now, you are here for a reason undoubtedly?”

  Lorelei sat back onto her feet and looked up at the elf’s stark face. Of course, she’d come out here as soon as she’d woken. The first thought on her mind after returning from the past was to talk with Bur, but the faery was still not back according to Tuatha and Habian, who did not appreciate being bothered so late. But Bridgette had called Zyr an elf, and Lorelei knew at least one elf. She didn’t see much similar to Zyr when she looked at Ren, only the shape of his ears and the length of his face similar, but Estrid had stressed that Zyr was of the faeries, and elves were fae just like lorelei. “Ren,” she started, not sure what was coming out next, “how, um, how old are you?”

  “I have lived 954 seasons.”

  She swallowed. “I bet you can tell me quicker than I can do the math what that is in people time.”

  “Seven months and 238 years.”

  “Wow, okay, well, you look great.” If there were an equivalent to humans, which truly there wasn’t due to their weird, alien beauty, Lorelei would have pegged him at a solid twenty-six-and-a-half. Of course, then he would open his mouth and sound positively ancient. Still, he wasn’t old enough to have been around when Zyr was. “So would you…would you say you’re pretty young?”

  “I would not say that, but older elves certainly would.” He began to unswaddle the fox pup.

  “How old can you live til, in general? Like, forever?”

  “Certainly not.” He placed the pup on the ground right in front of her, and it wobbled. “But if you are looking forward to my passing, I will have to disappoint you—I am not even a third of the way there.”

  “No, nothing like that.” She waved her hand, but the distraction of the fox was much greater, and she reached out a hand for him to sniff as the alalynx came barreling over. “Wait, you live, like, a thousand years?”

  “The elven way is to prolong life.” He stood and went to the stove where a kettle sat. “Only the true faeries live longer, but I cannot say how long as they return to their realm before passing. They treat this plane as a sabbatical of sorts from the Transcendental Plane.”

  Lorelei’s stomach turned, hoping that was not Bur’s plan. She kept a hand on the alalynx’s back so she wouldn’t pounce on the baby fox as it took careful steps toward her. Finally she huffed. “Ren, do you know who Zyr is?”

  Ren had been pouring a cup of tea. He was graceful in almost every movement, but at this he jerked. He composed himself quickly, but when his eyes fell on her, they were looking at her harder, deeper.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “The name is not spoken casually,” he said, focusing back on his cup. “And it is barely spoken at all in the tribe from which I come. Elves have long memories, but the history of our creation was not one of my clan’s values.”

  For some reason that sounded off to her, but Lorelei knew elves had a particularly tough time lying, so she pressed him. “What do you mean?”

 
; “Zyr is the name of our creator,” he said simply then sighed, a weird sound coming from him. “It is not something the tribes with which I have association are especially proud of.”

  After meeting Zyr, that made a lot of sense. “Is that like your god?”

  Ren paused a moment, moved to take a sip, then stopped, putting his cup down. “Lorelei, how old are you?”

  She squinted at him. “Twenty-two. Or, uh, eighty-ish seasons? Why?”

  “The story of elven creation is a bit salacious.”

  “You can leave out the details.”

  He looked relieved. “Zyr was of the first fae who came to this plane and sired my kind. Before him, there were no elves, only humans, even more primitive than you are now, and the very beginnings of charmed beings. He was not alone, and betwixt the four of them, the beings called fae came into existence. You can imagine how.”

  Lorelei swallowed. “Four? So, you’re talking about lorelei and stuff too, right? How long ago was this?”

  “The convergence,” he said. “Ten, perhaps twenty thousand years ago?”

  “That’s a big swing, Ren.”

  “As I said, history is not my tribe’s specialty. And even if it were, this is only legend.”

  “You’re saying it’s not real?” That made more sense to her, it was just a story, and the Zyr she had met was not the same one. Bridgette had destroyed him, after all, bound him up in a jar and obliterated it against the flow of time. Something like what Ren was describing, well, if it survived tens of thousands of years, it could survive a little toss, couldn’t it?

  “No, I am saying the stories are muddled through generations and embellished by those who would wish to paint history in a certain light. How did you hear of this name?”

  Elves were not good liars, but thankfully for Lorelei, humans were. “Read it in a book,” she said. “I was just curious.”

  ***