Chapter 15
“ W ell you’re not fucking doing that,” Dallan said, crossing his arms over his chest.
He and the rest of the Monstrous Ink staff—barring Byrne who left before I could start claiming that he didn’t want to get involved—were all sitting in the lobby of the shop, listening to me tell them what I learned today.
“Even Alexander doesn’t trust it and that man has had his head up Arsenio Sidhe’s ass for damn near the last two centuries, Lass.”
“I didn’t say I was going to do it,” I told him primly, though I’d have been lying if I said I wasn’t considering it.
It was purely for selfish reasons. If I became the Guardian no one could ever look down on me for being a halfling ever again. My birth would have finally had a purpose .
But even I knew better than to trust Arsenio. Something was off about the whole thing and I could still hear echoes of that strange voice in my head telling me not to trust him.
Daphne, always the most observant person in the room thanks to years of having to watch every shift in her abusive ex-husband’s demeanor to protect herself, frowned from where she was reclined in Cash’s lap. “But you’re also not saying you won’t do it.”
Frustration filled me—mostly due to being called out so quickly.
“It would fix everything that’s happening in Port Haven. The strange weather, the weird currents, all of it is because the previous Guardian of the Source is about to pass away,” I said, turning to Dallan. “Aren’t you worried about Port Haven? Aren’t the supernatural creatures under your care suffering?”
Dallan put his hands up as if to ward me off, shaking his head. “I’m not disagreeing that something needs fixing, but not at the expense of your safety.”
Silence filled the room as we looked at each other and Dallan’s voice slipped into my mind. You are my first priority, always, Effie, come hell or high water .
His words made me immediately soften.
“What about that voice in your head? The one that helped you with Daphne’s barrier?” Cash asked, finally getting to the other half of what I’d told them about today.
I shrugged. “I’m not sure. Not many witches can speak mind to mind like that and there isn’t anyone else I can think of that would be able to help me with a spell like the one I performed on Daphne.”
Another, smaller lie. I had a feeling about who—or more aptly what—the voice was. But the more I dwelled on it the more confusing things became .
“You glowed like nothing I’ve ever seen before, it was like you had magic coming out of your eyeballs,” Dallan said, his lips pulling down into a frown. “And it was like you weren’t even in control of your body.”
“What you’re describing sounds almost like possession,” Ambrose said, speaking for the first time since he’d posted up against the wall at the start of our meeting. “Which isn’t a typical spell-user ability. Sounds like a more ancient magic.”
“I hate ancient magic,” Fiero complained with a grumble. “It just causes chaos. Every supernatural territorial dispute I’ve witnessed has some kind of ancient artifact at the center and I’m so damned tired of it.”
I’d known Fiero for nearly ten years now and the satyr rarely spoke about the time before he showed up one day at the shop asking for a job.
We all stared at him in shock until Heath, always the one to hate long, drawn out silences, spoke first. “Whoa, new lore just dropped.”
“What does that even mean?” Ambrose asked with a disbelieving shake of his head.
It was sometimes easy to forget that Heath was the youngest amongst us at twenty-four years old.
“He told us something new about himself,” Heath said as if it were obvious.
Ambrose glared at him. “Then just say that, you Millennials keep making up new words for shit where there is already a perfectly good English vernacular for you to choose from. ”
“Actually,” Heath waved his pointer finger in the air. “I’m technically a part of Gen-Z which is the next generation down and it’s not my fault you’re from Generation Dusty Ass—”
I cut him off before he and Ambrose could get into a silly fight that would last the rest of the evening and get us absolutely nowhere. “For now we’re just going to keep it business as usual. I go to lessons three times a week, Daphne, you keep going to treatments with Alexander, and the rest of you keep the shop up, just like you’ve been doing for the past few months.”
“Business as usual you say?” An unfamiliar voice asked from the corner of the shop.
A woman who I’d never seen before was leaning against the banister of the stairs, examining her nails.
It was clear she was a witch, but I hadn’t felt even a ripple in my magical protection and I’d just redone the enchantments earlier this week. “Who are you and how did you get past my protections?”
The woman looked relatively young with beautiful red hair that cascaded and swayed around her hips as she crossed the lobby. “Oh, those? Darling, if you’re going to put protections up you probably shouldn’t do it with flimsy enchantments. Those will barely keep out a vampire and you’d get the same effect from garlic at that point.”
I flinched at the immediate snub and it combined with her almost scolding tone grated against my skin.
Dallan stood and stepped in front of me, crossing his arms over his chest as he glared at the woman. “Identify yourself, witch, you are in my domain and no one enters my domain without first identifying themselves.”
It was the harshest I’d heard him sound in a long time, the very floorboards underneath our feet creaking with his displeasure.
But the woman didn’t seem scared by Dallan’s intimidation, no it actually seemed to bring a gleam of interest into her bright purple eyes that seemed much older than her young facade.
“I’m here for you,” then she leaned around Dallan’s bulk to look at Daphne. “And for you.”
Dallan stiffened with surprise, but Cash’s growl filling the space quickly distracted me as he wrapped his arms around Daphne and her stomach, hiding them from the woman’s gaze. “Touch my mate and I’ll rip you limb from limb.”
The woman’s auburn brows drew together in confusion as she pointed at Daphne. “Touch her? I’m confused, is this not the home of the Cthulhu who requires my services for prenatal spells for the human who got herself knocked up by a gargoyle? Did Art give me the wrong address? But you’re such a handsome, big guy, I was so hoping you were the right Cthulhu.”
The temperature in the room seemed to drop as I rounded Dallan’s front just in time to see the witch draw a red-painted fingernail down Dallan’s chest.
Anger filled me like a hot brand as I watched Dallan frown at the woman. “I told Art that I wouldn’t need your services, witch.”
The woman’s eyes sparkled with mischief .
“Please, call me Deanna. Lovely Art and I were getting nowhere with our negotiations for service and I decided to come and try my hand at it myself. I’ve never had a Cthulhu before and your ink will be so valuable for my collection.” Every word that the witch purred was sultry with innuendo and I gasped as she reached up to give Dallan’s tentacles a firm tug.
No one but me was allowed to touch Dallan’s tentacles. Ever.
Dallan reeled back away from her grasp and I used the opportunity to push her away with a gust of wind—the same wind that had eluded me completely only hours ago.
“Back off,” I snapped at her, wishing I could set that pretty red hair on fire. “Dallan is mine.”
Her full lips opened in an ‘O’ of surprise as she looked over my shoulder at Dallan. “Art didn’t say you had a girlfriend, though what you see in this mule I’ll never understand.”
The word ‘mule’ hit me like a truck. It had been so long since I’d heard it that every single time one of the coven members or other more traditional supernatural creatures muttered it under their breath like a curse came crashing back.
“We do not use that word here,” Dallan barked and suddenly my vision was blocked as Dallan wrapped his arms around me, showing me the inside of his forearm and the vine tattoos inked there. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave one more time.”
“You’re seriously going to kick me out? I’m here to help you, Cthulhu, not the other way around.”
“He asked you to leave,” that was Ambrose this time. I wasn’t sure when he’d left his post on the wall but when I glanced down at my feet sure enough his scuffed black combat boots were also in my line of sight. As much as Ambrose pretended like he hated us all, when push came to shove he was the most protective.
“And a Dark Elf is here as well? My , this town is positively crowded with creatures I haven’t had yet.” Deanna’s gasp of delight sent a shiver of disgust crawling down my spine.
“None of them want you here, witch. We never had a contract, never made a deal, and I want you out of my shop.”
The sound of a heel meeting the wood floor made me realize that the witch had stomped her foot like a petulant child. “I am not used to not getting my way. Seven hundred years I’ve been on this planet and no one has ever picked a dirty little mule over me and what I can give them.”
Dallan clearly had finally had enough because the sound of the shop bell tinkling signaled the door opening as did the sound of whooshing water as it filled the lobby. The witch let out a surprised squawk that was cut off as she was pulled from the shop by one of Dallan’s funnels of water.
Silence hung heavy in the lobby.
“So…” Heath began awkwardly. “Who’s gonna explain what the hell just happened?”
His words seemed to finally break the horrible numbness that had taken over me and I pushed Dallan’s arm up and ducked under it.
I glared at him. “Dallan can, seeing as he’s the one who was looking for the contract in the first place. ”
“Lass—” Dallan began but I ignored him as I made for the stairs. “So you’re not going to let me explain? At all?”
I shut the door to my apartment that didn’t feel like my apartment at all anymore and slid down the hard wood until I was sitting on the floor.
Every inch of this place was full of things that I loved and had collected over the years, but now as I looked at all of it I felt like I’d just been kidding myself.
Over the past few months all of the hurt and anger that had been twisted up inside of me had slowly started to untangle with my abilities growing and my relationship with Dallan finally moving forward. I finally felt like I belonged somewhere that had been closed off to me for so long and like I could move on from all of my bullshit.
But a random witch’s use of the word mule had brought me right back to being a little girl and not understanding what that meant until James Reid had told me in the meanest words possible when we were ten years old.
It had been largely disproven that all halflings would be sterile like the crossbreed between a horse and a donkey—but many pureblooded supernatural creatures used the word mule like a brand to warn people off from being with us. From mixing our already muddled bloodline even more.
Mule was a term that was largely frowned upon now, but that woman had used it so easily, reminding me that, outside of Port Haven, the world still thought of halflings as less than—like we shouldn’t exist .
There was a knock on the door that I was currently leaning against. “Lass?”
“I don’t want to talk right now.” My voice came out sharp as I closed my eyes and leaned my head back.
I heard Dallan sigh. “I was going to tell you about trying to find a witch to help Daphne, but I hadn’t found any viable options yet.”
“Bullshit,” I said with a derisive snort. “You seem to have found one just fine and you get a fuck and an ink extraction out of it too—win-win, right?”
“That was never an option for me, Effie, and you know that.” Dallan sounded upset, his voice lowering as he settled on the other side of the door.
“But I can’t give you everything someone like her can. I don’t even know if I can give you children,” I said, my voice cracking a bit. Last night Dallan had told me that he didn’t mind either way if we had children, but I wasn’t even sure if I could have children. I was a mule and no amount of magical powers was going to change that.
It was never something I’d let myself consider before. If I pretended the possibility didn’t exist, it couldn’t hurt me. The most fucked up kind of out of sight out of mind.
But now that I’d let Dallan in and we became each other’s, I found myself selfishly wanting all of that and thinking, maybe, just maybe we could.
There was a long silence on the other side of the door. “Effie, open the door. ”
“No,” I said, worried seeing his face would ruin my resolve to be pissed at him.
There was another heavy sigh before I heard Dallan get up and walk away, his footsteps loud on the stairs.
I pulled my knees up to my chest and buried my face in them.
Minutes later, a thump had me looking up to find Dallan stepping through the large windows that overlooked the ocean.
“What are you doing?” I asked as he crossed the living room and held a hand out to help me to my feet.
The tentacles on Dallan’s face curled inward as he grinned. “You said no about the door, but you never said anything about the windows, Lass.”
As furious as I was with him, I still had to admit it was charming as hell.
Begrudgingly I took his hand and let him help me up.
“In what world would I ever stop loving you just because you can’t have children?” Dallan asked softly, cupping my jaw in both of his hands as he forced me to look him in the eye. “Effie, you could bring home fifty cats and call them your babies and I would be their father. You could bring home a rock for all I care and if you loved it, I would love it too.”
“But don’t you need to keep your race going? Isn’t that the point of fighting against extinction?” This was the most frank discussion we’d ever had about this before and it was as if I was laying myself bare for him to see in a way that I wasn’t used to.
Dallan shook his head as if that was the stupidest thing I could have said. “If I wanted a mate just to keep my already dying race going then I wouldn’t look for one at all, Lass. If you want me and I want you, that’s all that matters. All of the other shit is just noise.”
Despite trying to put on a brave face, tears started to well up in the corner of my eyes.
“You make me feel like I’m worth so much sometimes that whenever someone reminds me of what I am it hurts even worse.”
Dallan sighed. Using his thumb, he wiped away one of the stray tears that had trailed down my cheek. “I’m sorry I can never truly understand how you feel, Lass, my parents are of different races but Cthulhu genetics don’t work that way. But I can promise to give an ocean swirlie to anyone who calls you that fucking word or any other insult like it again. Just like I gave that woman today.”
In spite of my still raw emotions, I smiled. “And if it’s a client?”
“Especially if it’s a client, my ink has no business being on the arm of a bigot,” Dallan said very seriously before wrapping his arms around me and giving me a tight squeeze.
“I’m still mad at you, you know.”
“I know.”
“Never keep anything like this from me again. If we have a problem we have to solve it together.”
There was a heavy pause. “Like mates would do?”
I nodded, pressing my nose into his chest and inhaling his unique scent. “Yes, like mates would do.”