Chapter One #2
I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew someone was tapping at the window and I nearly spilled the now-cold tea for a second time.
Argyle lazily climbed down off the chair while I steadied myself and approached the door.
I never had visitors, and I couldn’t quite shake the wolpertinger’s warning.
Standing before me was a sodden boy with a twinkle in his blue eyes, dark hair plastered to his forehead.
“Finlay Barrow, what are you doing standing out in the rain at this hour?” My cottage was more than a mile from town, where he lived with his mother in an apartment above the print shoppe.
“I wouldn’t be standing in the rain if you’d let me in, Willow Stokes,” he said through chattering teeth.
I swore and held the door wider to let him pass. “Don’t go dripping on my nice clean floors now.”
“Fetch me a towel?”
I sighed and went to get him one, plus a spare shirt of my father’s, since Finlay seemed to have misplaced his coat and his shirt was soaked through.
“Well?” I asked him as he peeled off the wet linen and left it in a puddle on the floor.
“What was so important you had to come here and wake me from my lovely nap?”
“There’s a new lass in town,” he said, crouching before the fire and rubbing his hands together. He’d scrubbed his hair with the towel, and it was now standing up like a thistle’s crown.
This was hardly news worth coming across the moors for. “And?”
“And she’s Carterran.” He turned to look at me over his shoulder, and while I couldn’t see his mouth, his eyes were smiling.
Finlay had been itching to travel across the ocean for as long as I’d known him, which was one year, eleven months, and eight days.
It was easy to remember because he’d moved to town the same day Da died.
“Are you in love with her, then?” I asked, only slightly afraid of the answer. Finlay was my best friend, but that wasn’t saying much. I didn’t have any other friends.
Finlay had a glorious laugh that made his eyes go a bit squinty and showed his one crooked tooth.
I could gauge my sense of humor by how many times in a week I elicited a smile big enough to reveal that wonky canine.
But this hadn’t been particularly funny, and the stranger was beautiful.
Finlay had a habit of falling in love with every pretty girl.
“Of course not,” he said after his laughter had trailed off. “You know my heart belongs to you, Willow.”
I blushed, inwardly cursing myself for the way his words warmed me. I should be well used to his teasing by now. “Go home, Finlay. Your mother will be wondering where you are.”
He rose and picked up Argyle, who was purring and rubbing against his legs, the wee traitor. “Anyway, that’s not what I came here to tell you,” he said, and I almost growled at him for being so deliberately obtuse.
“Go on then, tell me.”
“You asked me to keep my ears open for any magical artifacts for sale.”
“Aye. So…”
He grinned and placed Argyle on his shoulder, making his way to the kitchen so I’d be forced to follow him. I scowled and plucked his sodden shirt off the floor, wringing it out over the empty ash bucket.
“So,” he said when I joined him in the kitchen.
He was pouring himself a cup of tea from the pot, even though it had undoubtedly gone cold by now.
I liked that Finlay wasn’t picky and, even though I pretended to hate it, I liked that he made himself at home everywhere he went.
“I heard from Jack that a man was in Ardmuir yesterday, talking about dragon teeth.”
I groaned and sat down at the little kitchen table only big enough for two. It had always been my father and me. Now, it was just me. “There are no dragon teeth left in Achnarach. Everyone knows that.”
“He’s not from Achnarach. He’s from the Sapphire Isles.”
I leaned forward on my elbows, curious despite myself. “Did you actually meet him?”
“No, but Jack did, and you know he’s not prone to lying.”
He was right on that front. Jack Turner, the owner of the print shoppe, was not a liar. But the Sapphire Islander might be.
“Is he still here?” I asked as Finlay drained his tea.
“The Islander? Yes, he’s here till Sunday. Staying at the Four Swans.” Finlay grinned, knowing he’d snared me. “Fancy meeting for breakfast tomorrow?”
I let out a long breath, suddenly exhausted. The promise of dragon teeth was certainly tempting, at least to the part of me that was my father’s daughter. But the rational part knew that this was another hoax, like all the others we’d inspected over the years.
True, some fakes were good enough that I managed to sell them in the shoppe to the unscrupulous or desperate.
The teeth had come from large sharks, wild cats, exotic lizards, or creatures I’d never heard of, but they were decidedly not dragon teeth.
A genuine dragon tooth, when ground up and added to liquid, made the consumer impervious to flame.
It was an impractical enough magic that most people who bought them never used them.
Or if they had, well, I’d never heard any complaints.
(I realize that sounds rather grim, but a girl’s got to eat, and only a fool would think they could buy a genuine dragon tooth for two pounds.)
A convincing fake was still worth something to me, assuming I could get a good markup for it. But even if by some miracle it were genuine, and the seller could somehow prove it to me, I didn’t have the money to purchase one. I barely had the money to feed myself and Argyle.
Finlay was still waiting for a response. “Well?” he prodded.
Well. The truth was, I was always going to be my father’s daughter.
Too curious for my own good, too thrilled by the prospect of a sale to say no.
The Stokes weren’t gamblers. My father never came away from a trade empty-handed, never paid money for promises or guarantees.
At the end of the day, he knew he could sell a fake as easily as the genuine article.
Anyway, what harm could it do to look?
“Fine,” I said finally, cradling the stoneware cup and placing it gently in the sink. It was Da’s favorite mug, and swindler though he was, I still missed him in my bones. “But you’re buying me breakfast.”
“I expected nothing less,” Finlay said with a wink. “Oh, by the way, the girl from Carterra is also staying at the Four Swans. Maybe tomorrow will prove lucky for both of us.”
I turned back to the sink, refusing to acknowledge the blush once again rising in my cheeks. I certainly wasn’t going to let him see it. I’d learned the hard way that the key to survival was never to let anyone know how much you needed them. “You? Lucky? I wouldn’t count on it.”
“And why not?” he asked, so close I could feel the heat from his body at my back.
“Because you’re an eejit, Finlay Barrow.”
A pause, and then a low chuckle. “Ah, but I’m your favorite eejit, Willow Stokes.”