“Ow! A little more gently, please.”
Lorelei couldn’t help herself, peeking through her fingers. Before her lay Ziah’s bed, the silky sheets made up and a few layers of pillows untouched, but Ziah nor any clients were laid across it.
“We’re almost done.” Ziah’s purr of a voice sounded from just near the door where she sat at her vanity, legs crossed with a book in her lap, notes scattered beside her and a highlighter between her teeth. At her side was a man Lorelei had seen earlier that day, kneeling down and leaning very close to Ziah’s exposed upper arm though the rest of her was completely clothed.
Lorelei squinted, tilting her head. A dowel was protruding from Ziah’s arm, its end bright with deep red feathers, and the man beside her was easing it out of her skin. When the arrow finally popped out, its sharp point glistened with scarlet. Blood.
“That was much smoother.” Ziah closed up the book and put it on her vanity with the highlighter, pulling off her glasses as well. “Remember that technique.”
He held the arrow up between them, and the blood seeped into the triangular tip until it disappeared, a puff of crimson smoke rising up from the end in the shape of a heart. Then he slid it into a quiver where it clattered against others.
“There, that’s a full dozen.” She wiped at a drop of blood rolling down her arm, and when she uncovered the spot the arrow had been, there was no sign of a cut or even bruising. She balled up the tissue and tossed it into a small trash can at her feet, and the man watched, his mouth hanging open. “Oh, did you want that?”
Momentarily embarrassed, he shook his head, thanked her, and handed her a sachet that tinkled when it changed hands. She took it with a grin then sent him on his way.
“That was a client?” Lorelei pointed at the door after it closed.
“Uh huh.” Ziah held the back of her hand over her mouth, yawning. In the flickering candlelight, she looked worse than Lorelei had ever seen her, like she had just run a marathon with the flu. Her hair was flat, bags under her eyes, and she might have been sporting a few pimples along her jawline. Lorelei was pretty sure succubi didn’t get pimples. “His first time. Bad aim, but he was sweet.” She managed to push herself up onto her feet and stretched.
“I’m sorry, I don’t…was that cupid coating his arrows in your blood?”
She nodded, crossing the room to her bed where she sat and kicked off her heels. “Tis the season, you know?”
Lorelei scrunched up her nose.
“Well, it will be in a couple months, but if they want succubus blood, they have to get it early. We can only spare so much, but it’s lucrative, and Farrah’s apartment is expensive.”
“Farrah?” Lorelei remembered the succubus, Ziah’s youngest sister who had visited them not long ago.
Ziah was curling up on her side, pulling an especially plushy pillow under her head. “Yeah, she doesn’t know what she wants to do, where she wants to live, and Dad’s trying to get her to go work for him in the nether. I want her to have some more time to figure it all out, ya know?” She turned her face into the pillow and yawned again. “Cupids pay outrageous amounts to get a leg up on each other.”
“Oh, so your clients…they’re actually…you’re selling your blood?”
“It’s a lot better than the old days when they hunted us.” She laughed throatily. “Keeping their supply alive is easier.”
Lorelei rubbed her eyes. “Whoa, I thought you were—well, I didn’t know what you were doing with them, honestly.”
“Oh, Lore!” Ziah sat up from the bed, hair sticking up on one side. “You needed something, right?” The woman looked exhausted, eyes falling closed even as she sat up.
“It’s nothing.”
“No, it’s not. Come here, come here.” She wound her hand so that Lorelei would go sit on the edge of the bed. Ziah leaned on her elbow and looked up at her. “I think I know what you’re going to say, but tell me anyway.”
“Um.” Lorelei twiddled her thumbs. “Things are sort of messy.”
“Yeah, I was there. Ugh, I’m sorry we haven’t talked, I’m a bad friend, I just keep having appointments here and at city hall, and I need so many naps lately. Let me make it up to you.”
She reached out, and even though she practically slapped her, Ziah’s hand was warm and tingly pressed up to her cheek. Lorelei sunk against it, her shoulders relaxing. Ziah had promised not to manipulate her emotions without consent, but this time Lorelei didn’t pull away, desperate not to feel so bad anymore. For an intense moment, all the sadness in her welled up, and she thought she might cry, but then there was something else, a vortex of very strange, very strong feelings swirling around in her chest, each one beating against her heart in kind, and she felt them all distinctly as they passed by, fear, anger, anxiety, triumph, and then love.
A smile had spread over Ziah’s face, but it fell off sharply. “Wait, what was that?”
Lorelei leaned away from her hand, the vortex calming into little more than a strumming pool, but her heart sped up. She didn’t really have an answer.
Ziah pouted. “What’s really going on?”
Lorelei rubbed her own face. “Well, a lot of stuff.” And then it all came out at once. “You know when I went to city hall a month or so ago for the business license? I got to talk to the mayor, and he was really weird about a lot of things, but he made me think that he might have sent, like, a wizard cop here looking for humans. So, I’ve been totally freaked out about that. And then there’s the whole thing with Conrad and that potion, and I’m pretty sure I did the right thing, but he got so mad at me. Then he just ran off, and I really, really miss him, like a weird amount, more than I probably should. And speaking of Conrad, I haven’t told you this at all yet, so get ready, but—”
She glanced over at Ziah to see the woman’s eyes had closed completely, her mouth hanging open, breathing heavy, perched up on her own elbow.
Lorelei smiled wearily. “But you need to sleep.”
“What?” Ziah sat up, snorting herself awake.
“You’re tired; you need to sleep.”
“No, no.” She flopped out a hand, and it tumbled onto Lorelei’s knee. “I’m listening, I swear. What about the mayor? You miss him?”
Lorelei stood, and even as the succubus protested she really wasn’t sleepy at all, she was crawling under the covers.
“You want me to wake you up at any specific time?”
“Maybe two or three days?”
“Three days?” Lorelei chuckled. “Are you going to be okay? Can I get you anything?”
Ziah opened one eye and arched a brow at her, smiling wryly.
“Except that.”
“Go talk to Ren. He makes good tea. He knows how I like it.” She was mumbling, her eyes fully closed and mouth falling open. “He always knows…” Ziah began to snore.
CHAPTER 18
A RELIEF AND A DELIGHT
A week of feeling sorry for oneself can often lead to a form of desperation. For Lorelei, that came in the form of wandering out to the barn on a stagnant if freezing afternoon off, Aly loyally trailing behind. Lorelei had her sketchbook in a bag on her shoulder but knew she wasn’t going to be using it—every attempt she made to draw lately came out as some shadowy, monstrous figure or depressed little stick men that reminded her a lot of the margins of her notebooks in middle school. She also carried a surprisingly heavy box that rattled, addressed to Ren, and had come in the mail that morning. It was a good excuse to go see him.
Ren was coming down the stairs from his loft. Strapped to his chest was a bundle of blankets, the red-faced fox nestled within, asleep. He paused for a moment during his descent, looked at her, then alighted the hay-strewn floor with something like a sigh.
“Hey, Ren,” she said, depositing the box with a metal clang on a workbench and kneeling down as one of the nubby-headed goats pranced up to her looking for a treat. It gently butted her hand as she tried to scratch behind its ears.
“Hello.” The
elf’s voice was steady, but she thought there was a tinge of unease to it as he went to a tall cabinet and unlatched its door.
“Brought you your mail.” Lorelei watched the goat bound away toward its brother once it realized she didn’t have a carrot or tin can. “What’s up?”
Ren peeked out from behind the cabinet door. “The loft,” he said plainly, and returned to gathering supplies from inside.
Lorelei kicked at the ground, shoving her hands in her pockets. “How’s your baby?”
“Tired,” he said, closing the cabinet with a bag full of things in his hand. “And yours?”
The alalynx pounced on something neither of them saw in the dirt, her tail lashing. “Homicidal.”
The elf strapped his bag over his shoulder, shifting the bundled fox. Then he stared at her for a long, silent moment before relenting. “Come with me.”
Lorelei perked up, following as he went out the back egress of the barn, Aly on her heels. They walked without speaking through the orchard and past Arista and Seamus’s cottage. She caught sight of Hana sitting up by the manor on a bench beside Collier Coyote, the two talking and sharing things on one another’s phones, sitting awfully close. She made a mental note to check in with her and see how things were going.
Ren continued on up the unused path toward the most westerly forested area, a trail Lorelei had walked once before. She could see the old Rognvaldson house in the distance standing empty and unchanged from last she saw it, discomfort roiling in her stomach. She said nothing as they got closer, then felt the slightest bit of relief when Ren veered off and headed instead to the large and looming oak in its backyard.
Under the sunlight of the wintery afternoon, the tree looked quite different, significantly less ominous if just as huge. The house did as well, but Lorelei kept her back to it, reminding herself of the wards Arista kept up. Byron wouldn’t be there again, not this time. Ren stepped right up to the base of the tree, placed his bag on the ground, and started emptying it of its contents, a thermos, a bowl of dried fruit and nuts, a hunk of bread, and two cups.
Then Ren placed a hand on the tree’s trunk over a spot different than the rest. The bark there was torn away in a long swath, crawling over a knot, and there were marks where thin tendrils had dug into the wood. The elf closed his eyes, standing very straight, and after a few moments of silence, a green glow emanated from under his hand.
Against the grey cold of the afternoon and the leaflessness of the tree, it was brilliant and beautiful, and Lorelei watched as the color swirled itself into where the marks were, the ones she knew shouldn’t be there. They pulsed and glowed, and then they crawled back to Ren’s hand and went out, leaving the tree seemingly identical to how it had been before. Ren bent to collect the thermos and a cup, poured a drink, and offered it to her.
Lorelei was happy for the tea’s warmth in her hands. It smelled like plum and cinnamon, earthy and sweet. He poured the other cup for himself and sat cross legged on the ground just before the tree, the baby fox still strapped to his chest.
“What did you just do?” she asked carefully, sitting across from him and looking back up at the spot on the trunk over his head.
“I am healing it.” He offered the bowl of fruit and nuts to her.
Lorelei took a handful. “What happened?” She felt like she knew the answer, but didn’t want to give too much away.
Ren tipped his head to the side, chewed and swallowed slowly, then told her, “Hypoxylon canker. A parasite.”
Lorelei squinted at the mark. Elves were not known for lying—not well, at least—and when she thought back to the time with Conrad and Byron fighting beneath the same oak’s branches, she could not actually remember the tree itself being struck. She supposed it really was the work of something natural and not a wild spell one of them had shot off damaging the tree.
“I was able to cut it out with a pesticide I purchased at the harvest festival,” said Ren. “It was an exceptional elixir, strong, fast-acting, and complete, but as you can see, it was also a bit overzealous.”
The alalynx crawled to the bowl between them, sniffed, then saw the fox strapped to Ren’s chest. She hovered a little closer to the ground and Lorelei ran a hand down her back to make her relax as she glanced up at the tender bark.
“It will take some time to heal,” Ren went on after taking a slow sip of his tea. “Though if I had been a bit more delicate with the extraction, this would not have been so painful.”
Lorelei scratched her nose and chewed on the hunk of bread Ren had shared. “But you did what’s best for it,” she said, swallowing. “It would have died otherwise.”
“Certainly, eventually, as all things do.” Ren uncovered the fox’s face as it started to wiggle around in its swaddle, and Aly crawled up on his knee to watch. “But the parasite is gone, and there is only me left to blame, so in a way it is my fault. At least that is how the tree sees it in her infinite wisdom.”
Lorelei gnawed on a dried cranberry. “Did the tree, uh, did she tell you that? That she’s mad at you?”
“She does not need to.” He unwrapped the fox and placed him on the ground, and the alalynx chirped and fluttered her wings. She was bigger than the pup, and sturdier on her feet, but she reached out a paw with hesitation and booped it on the nose. The fox squeaked and jumped at her, and the two tumbled to the ground.
“So, you come out here and try to fix her?”
The elf took another long, slow sip then placed the cup down. “This tree is clearly very sturdy and strong, and it appears to need nothing from anyone, least of all to be fixed by me, but I must try. I am the one who planted her almost nine years ago after all.”
“Wait, what?” Lorelei looked up into the massive branches overhead. “Nine years? That’s it?”
“It is a very special tree.” He shrugged. “Sometimes she loses branches or has an infestation, but largely she does not need me. This is not what I was expecting when I planted her, not what I was told, but it does turn out that I can affect her greatly with my actions no matter how she pretends to not need or want my presence. And I would be remiss to not tell you she affects me in ways I was unprepared for as well.” He sighed a bit and looked up at the mark on the trunk again.
Lorelei twisted her lips. “This metaphor is getting a little heavy handed, Ren.”
“I do not know of what you are speaking.”
Lorelei dipped her head down and eyed the elf. “Okay, fine. So will the mark ever go away?”
“Not entirely, no.”
Lorelei didn’t like that answer, falling into silence. She watched the fox and alalynx play, hiding behind roots and pouncing on one another. The human and the elf sat under the oak, but the quiet was not uncomfortable, sharing the rest of the food until their tea ran out and their hands grew cold again.
Lorelei stacked her empty cup into the bowl and stood, touching the tree where the mark was. “So, the mark’s forever, but do you think she’ll ever actually forgive you?”
Ren stood as well, packing his things into his bag. “I certainly hope so, though trees can hold quite the grudge.” He scooped up the fox pup and nestled him back into the blankets strapped across his chest.
Lorelei whined in the back of her throat, the alalynx pawing to be picked up as well. As she cradled Aly, she snorted at Ren. “Ya know, Ziah is right about you.”
His silver brow lifted, intrigued. “Oh?”
“You’re frustratingly perceptive. It’s like you can just feel out the right thing to say.”
“Perception is only half feeling for the right words. The other half is being told them directly and simply listening. I have been at the manor for, as you and the others would say, a long time. Long enough to familiarize myself with each of you. Also, I recently had a very similar conversation.” He blinked slowly as if remembering and began leading the way back to the barn. “It was equally excruciating.”
She laughed. “Oh, with the tree?”
Ren paused in the middle
of the orchard, looking back, then down to Lorelei. “I am unsure if we are still using the metaphor.”
“You said there wasn’t one.” When he gave her only another long, stoic look, she sighed heavily. “Ren, listen, I just gotta say it: I did something pretty stupid, but I had to, and now I’m the bad guy in this really awful situation. I didn’t realize what Bridgette was going to say or how Conrad was going to react, and if I could go back, I’d definitely sit with those dumb coffee cups for a little longer before barging in like that, but—well, okay, let me start at the beginning. Back when I first met—”
“Please, do not.” Ren held up a hand, lips drawn tight and eyes closed. “I am agonizingly aware already.” The elf reached into the bag over his shoulder and took out a small slip of paper. He looked on her earnestly then, in a way he hadn’t before. “But I do wish to be clear, as well, so I will: warlocks are unfortunately not trees and a bit more complex. Over the past nine years, he has mostly changed, but there are times when he is no different than the first day we met. It is a failing we all have, to regress at the most inopportune times. He, like many of your kind, sometimes requires less of a constant presence and more of a grand gesture. I would like to propose a trade to assist in that.”
He offered her the slip of paper, and in Ziah’s handwriting was simply written the name Conrad.
Lorelei hesitated, recognizing it from the secret Santa hat. “What if I pulled your name? Then you’d have yourself.”
“That would be a relief and a delight.”
She snickered and took the paper. “Well, now you have Ziah.”
Ren let out a low breath and continued on through the orchard to the barn. “That is equally manageable. Now, I hope this has reconciled your issue. I am—”
“Very busy, yeah, I know.” She stuffed the paper into her pocket. “Thanks, Ren. I guess you don’t get to be two hundred and some odd years old without figuring the rest of us out along the way.”
“I do not know why any of you believe that.” He peered at the way ahead, brow pinched slightly.
The Wayward Deed (Vacancy Book 2) Page 19