Maeve’s Book of Beasts

by Deborah Cooke

  Eithne made the best quiche Sylvia had ever tasted. When it was hot out of the oven, it was divine.

  She tapped on the door but saw that the door to the garden was open, even though the evening was already getting cool. She noticed that the table was set for two for dinner as she passed through the apartment, and saw the quiche cooling on the counter. She leaned over it and took a deep breath. Leek with ham and little tomatoes baked on top. Her stomach reminded her that she’d skipped lunch.

  She found her aunt in the garden. Eithne was wearing the blue linen apron she always put on to garden, the one with the big pockets in front. She was cutting a bouquet of dahlias and chrysanthemums. They were in rich autumn colors of burgundy and gold, and she was turning the makeshift arrangement in her hands, as if deciding whether to cut more. Her silver hair was tugged back into a ponytail and Sylvia wondered again just how old her aunt was. She was slender and tall, and so active that it was hard to believe she was older than Sylvia.

  Eithne looked up and smiled in welcome. “This will be the last of it, I expect.”

  “They’re pretty, though.” Sylvia kissed her aunt’s cheek.

  “They are. Are you hungry?”

  “I don’t want to interfere if you’re having company...”

  “The company I’m having is you,” Eithne said firmly. “I knew you would come tonight and I knew you’d have questions. We might as well eat while I answer them.”

  It wasn’t the first time that her aunt had anticipated her, but on this night, Sylvia wondered at it. Maybe she came honestly by this ability to see auras—or whatever they were.

  “How did you know I’d come?”

  “Because there’s a new tenant and I didn’t tell you about it. You always come to check on things like that.” It sounded reasonable, but Sylvia had the sense that it was half an explanation.

  Maybe she was just getting into the habit of looking for things that weren’t there.

  Eithne led Sylvia back to the kitchen. She opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses, giving one to Sylvia before she arranged the flowers. She frowned as she worked. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know.”

  “You must have known.”

  “I did but not with enough time. One minute, Carlo was moving out with no notice and we were arguing about his deposit, and the next, there was Caleb on the doorstep. He had an answer to every question and looked so reliable.” Eithne pursed her lips, her frustration with tenants showing. “It was almost as if it had been arranged.”

  Sylvia didn’t like the sound of that. “Arranged? Who would arrange that?”

  “I don’t know, but that was the sense I had.” Eithne shook her head, then brought the flowers to the table. “But then I thought I was being silly. Here was a perfectly good tenant, a nice man with a job and perfect credentials, one who sleeps in the daytime and works at night. It’s not that easy to find good tenants so I decided not to turn away such a good choice.”

  “Why did Carlos move out?”

  “It was odd. He said there was a ghost and he wouldn’t stay one minute longer.” Eithne tasted the soup, then nodded before turning up the heat on the element. “No one has ever complained about a ghost in 2F.” She wagged a finger. “4B, now, that’s another story.”

  “Aren’t ghosts supposed to haunt the place they died?”

  “If they have unfinished business.”

  “So, did anyone ever die in 2F?”

  “No.” Eithne put down her spoon. “That’s the curious thing. There can’t be a ghost there, and I’m skeptical about the one in 4B, too.”

  “Someone could have died there before you owned the house,” Sylvia noted and Eithne’s gaze slid away from hers.

  “Mmm,” she said, even more noncommittal than usual, and she changed the subject. “Do you want to go upstairs to change or anything before we eat?”

  Sylvia agreed, then headed out of the apartment to climb the stairs. She couldn’t help feeling that she’d been dismissed for a moment, and that Eithne wasn’t telling her all of the truth.

  Could her aunt be hiding something from her?

  She frowned and hurried up the stairs. Once in her apartment, she hung up her coat and washed her face, then changed to jeans and a sweater. On impulse, she scattered the notebooks around her apartment, hiding each one in a different place. She left one on the couch, as if she’d been reading it, and tugged on a favorite big cardigan. She tucked the book from her purse into the pocket, finding the weight of it reassuring. Eithne’s place could be a bit damp, especially if she left open the doors to the garden—which she would—so her aunt would never realize Sylvia had brought a book along.

  Eithne might have secrets, but she wasn’t the only one.

  Five

  The key, the key, the key. How much would Sebastian do to retrieve his key?

  A lot, it was clear.

  Even more than he’d expected, apparently.

  He cursed the day that he had ever let a Fae put a curse upon his key, the key that opened his ultimate sanctuary, the key that Fae had ultimately stolen and that Micah had somehow found. The key opened the one lock Sebastian couldn’t pick.

  By his own scheme with the curse, which made that fact even more bitter.

  He’d lost the argument with Micah because of the fucking key and his need to reclaim it. And now he was an escort service.

  Not even the fun kind.

  Sebastian seethed as he made his way to Sylvia’s apartment again. He wasn’t a messenger boy. He wasn’t Micah’s slave.

  But he might as well have been as long as Micah had his key.

  He really had to figure out a way to steal it back and cut himself free of all these obligations and responsibilities. When he got the key and was back inside his sanctuary, he might not ever leave it again. He’d figure out a way to tempt some unfortunate inside at regular intervals so the thirst didn’t destroy him.

  First, the key.

  He needed something to negotiate with, which meant he had to get the book back.

  Why had Micah chosen Sylvia? Of all the mortals in Manhattan, it defied belief that Micah had chosen the one, possibly the only, who could see the truth of the book. It seemed like ridiculously bad luck.

  Maybe she hadn’t been someone who could see its truth before she got the book. Before she touched it, or opened it. Maybe Sylvia’s psychic abilities had been triggered by possession of the book. Now there was an interesting notion. Maybe any mortal who held the book would be able to see its truth.

  Huh. That would be bad luck, but of a different kind. An inescapable kind.

  Sebastian wouldn’t have put it past her to have included a neat little trick like that in the glamor defending the book.

  If that was even possible. One difficulty with having an enormous respect and thus a wariness of magick was that Sebastian didn’t actually know what was possible with magick and what was not.

  He still didn’t want to learn.

  Sebastian landed lightly on the terrace behind Sylvia’s kitchen and inhaled deeply. How he hated the smell of werewolf. The scent of any shifter, actually, made him recoil in disgust. He halfway agreed with Maeve that there was something deeply unnatural about the ability to change physical forms.

  It was a revolting power.

  He looked into the apartment, halfway surprised that Sylvia wasn’t home yet. Then he saw her coat on the back of a chair, her purse and shoes beside it. She’d been home and left, then. He wondered where she’d gone, then heard women’s laughter from below. There were lights in the garden at the back of the house, illuminating the patio.

  No, they were candles, flickering in the evening air.

  He crouched down as two people came out of the house, each carrying a wine glass. He smelled blood and perfume and vulnerability, a combination so delicious that it almost made him dizzy. It certainly heightened his protective urges. The thirst was only a low hum of awareness, or his urges might have been predatory. He’d sated himse
lf the night before and didn’t need to drink daily. His awareness of the women and their mortality was like a little buzz of interest, one that got an extra kick when he recognized Sylvia’s voice.

  She flicked a glance skyward and he retreated quickly, hearing her make a comment about the first sliver of the moon high overhead.

  Had she sensed his presence?

  Or had that glance just been a coincidence?

  Sebastian was skeptical of coincidence.

  He leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest, and listened to their conversation. This plant and that plant. Boring, boring, boring. They would all be dead in five, ten, forty years, the blink of a proverbial eye. This building would likely be rubble in twenty years, replaced by one of those towers. Maybe Manhattan itself would sink into the ocean. How quaint it was that mortals cared so much about time.

  What did Sylvia hope for her future? What did she dream about—besides him? Sebastian recalled the more interesting details of the night before and he found himself smiling in the darkness.

  Worse, he recognized that he was becoming interested in Sylvia.

  There was no future in that.

  If she fantasized about him, though, he might be drawn back to her, again and again.

  What if Sylvia was a pawn in Maeve’s game? What if he had been targeted by the dark queen? Sebastian straightened at the thought. It had been sobering to see his name inscribed inside the book the one time he had looked. He had no intentions of ever dying, and he certainly wasn’t going to risk his future defending a mortal. He might as well lay down his existence for an insect or a garden weed. Humans were a food supply, no more and no less, and becoming interested in them was a huge mistake.

  That had been, after all, one of the first lessons he’d ever learned.

  The second had been that relying upon anyone else of any kind was an even bigger mistake.

  But he had to maintain his alliance with Micah until he got his key back.

  Sylvia, however, was another thing.

  He had to guard her and the book, by Micah’s order, but he didn’t have to feed her sexual fantasies, as intriguing and pleasurable as they might be.

  The quickest solution might be to frighten her.

  Sebastian didn’t think it would be hard to do. She was a librarian who lived a sheltered and solitary life, one who thought trying a new restaurant was a great adventure.

  It would take him moments, and make his life vastly simpler.

  Theo was sure that his legs were going numb but he didn’t dare fidget. Rox was finishing the tattoo on his back, and they’d agreed on a longer session since her shop, Imagination Ink, was quiet on a Sunday. He’d been ready for the persistent burn of the tattoo gun, but not for the ache from sitting in the same position for so long.

  It also gave him time to think about how different Manhattan felt to him on this visit. It seemed crowded to him in a way that was entirely new.

  “Almost done,” Rox said, giving his shoulder a wipe. “Just a bit more detail in this eye.”

  Theo bowed his head and tried to ignore the tingling in his toes. He heard footsteps in the hall and knew that Niall was coming to join them before he even caught the scent of the other, older, dragon shifter. Both Theo and Niall were Pyr, but Niall had already found and won his human mate, Rox. Seeing them together always made Theo yearn for the spark of his own firestorm. He knew he was still young in Pyr terms, but he felt the absence of a lover and partner in his life.

  Niall and Rox’s sons made Theo long for a family, too. They had two sets of twins: Kyle and Nolan were eight while Ahern and Ruark were four.

  “Are you admitting defeat?” Rox asked in a teasing voice and Theo smiled.

  “Ahern and Ruark are having a nap,” Niall said, then two more pairs of footsteps sounded.

  “Cool!” Kyle said with enthusiasm.

  “When do I get one?” Nolan demanded.

  “When you’re eighteen and don’t ask me to do it,” Rox said. “I think you’re perfect just the way I made you.”

  The boys protested, then Niall suggested they get the sketchbooks that Rox kept in the shop for them. Within moments, they were at the table in the main room of the shop, drawing their own dragons. Theo smiled at the sound of them conferring. He’d often admired how they worked together. Maybe it was a twin thing, but Kyle always did the wings on their dragons, and Nolan always did the teeth.

  “How’s it going?” Niall returned and came to stand beside Rox. He didn’t say anything more for a moment, and Theo might have been worried if Rox hadn’t already given him several chances to look in the mirror. She’d done the outline and colored the dragon on his previous visits to Manhattan, but today, she’d been adding flames in the background. “That’s really something, Rox,” Niall said finally. “I think it might be your best dragon ever.”

  “You’re my best dragon ever,” she replied and Theo smiled.

  “Carnelian and gold, just like Theo’s own dragon form,” Niall said with approval. “Those flames look amazing behind him. I like the illusion of him bursting forth.”

  “A portrait in a way,” Rox agreed.

  “Dragon out of hell,” Theo said, then winced as the tattoo gun burned again. “Hey, Niall, does the city feel different to you?”

  “Different how?”

  “I don’t know. As if the shadows are full of...something.”

  “Maybe you just need more sleep,” Niall suggested. “The shadows seem exactly the same to me.” Theo didn’t say more, but he couldn’t shake his feeling that something had changed.

  Much less his misgivings about that.

  “Okay, there are flames in his eyes now, too.” Rox gave his back a wipe. “Come have a look.” She gave him a hand mirror, then urged him toward the big mirror on the wall.

  Even though Theo had seen the dragon already and guessed what the rest would look like, he was amazed to see it on his back. The flames and the dragon looked like they were surging out of a wound on his back, as if he’d been sliced open and the dragon had been set free.

  Which was pretty much what it was like to be Pyr.

  “It totally rocks.” He handed the mirror back to her and gave her a hug. She was tiny and he was careful not to crush her—even though he knew she was fierce enough to have helped Niall defeat shadow dragons and to be the mother of two sets of twins. “Thanks so much.”

  “I want to take pictures when it’s healed,” she said.

  “No problem.”

  She turned him around and considered her work. “It really is great. You owe me so big,” she teased and Theo laughed.

  “Which means you have something specific in mind.”

  Rox raised a brow and pulled a flyer out of the back pocket of her jeans. “The boys brought this home.” She gave him an intent look and Niall’s lips thinned.

  It was a flyer for a circus. Theo took it with surprise and read the back. “A circus? In New York?”

  “I know. It’s weird,” Niall said. “That’s why we shouldn’t patronize it.”

  Rox turned to face her partner. “Circuses have always provided havens for those who don’t fit conveniently into society’s expectations.”

  “Circuses have always taken advantage of those people,” Niall replied. “And exploited them for financial gain.”

  “The tattooed lady,” Rox said, her voice hardening.

  “The snake man,” Niall said, shaking his head with disgust.

  “The bearded lady,” Rox countered.

  “The dog-faced boy,” Niall said.

  “You of all people should understand what it means not to fit in...” Rox began.

  Niall interrupted her. “And I understand what it is to be exploited. When I was a boy, my father took us to the circus. I’ll never forget it. It was awful. I wanted to set all the animals free. They were so sick and sad.”

  “Your father’s been dead for two hundred years,” Rox pointed out. “Conditions in circuses have changed.”r />
  “Have they?” Niall glared at her and she glared back.

  Theo cleared his throat. “Let me guess. The boys want to go, but you want to be sure it’ll be a positive experience for them.”

  “The boys are out of luck,” Niall said flatly. “We’ll go to the museum.”

  “The boys might learn something about tolerance if they go,” Rox countered. She smiled at Theo. “Would you go and check it out for us? It’s not in a great area or I’d go myself...”

  “And you’d be inclined to see what you want to see,” Niall said.

  “You need an impartial judge,” Theo said, recognizing the truth. “I’ll go.”

  “You really don’t have to,” Niall said.

  “You’ve made me kind of curious.” Theo glanced down at the times. “Hey, they’re open Sundays and I’ve got no plans. I’ll go tonight.”

  “Thank you!” Rox said and gave him another hug. “Now, let’s see what we can scare up for dinner. I’m starving.”

  The last thing Sylvia felt like doing after having dinner with Eithne was going out, much less to meet with a coven of vampires in an antique shop. A good British mystery series viewed from her couch while enjoying a hot cup of herbal tea seemed like a better idea. The meal had been delicious and she’d eaten a little more than she should have, but then, she hadn’t had lunch. Even though she’d had only one glass of wine, she felt a little bit sleepy as she climbed the stairs.

  She didn’t see anybody but she heard the other tenants as she climbed the stairs—well, except Caleb, who had gone to work. His dog must have been asleep because 2F was quiet. Maybe the ghost was asleep, too. Sylvia smiled at Eithne’s doubts. Maybe the ghost had just been an excuse for Carlos to get out of the lease.

  Rachel in 2B was at her piano, playing scales. Sonia in 3B was quiet, but then, she was always quiet. She might still be at work at the fitness club. If she was home, she did yoga or knit while listening to audiobooks. Sylvia thought she could hear the keyboard in 3F, which meant Ethan was at his computer. He was a student who did day trading, apparently with success. The only sound Ethan made was when he forgot himself and sang along with the music on his headphones.