Chapter 17 #2
The faerie was on the move again, dragging his one stone leg behind him and drawing chaos in his wake. The pond began to boil. Steam rose in thick clouds across the fairway.
I couldn’t see. The serpents could, though. They felt heat, movement, the disturbance in air pressure. I ran blindly into the steam, following their guidance, and my fist connected with solid flesh.
Riot staggered back, nose bleeding, and the grin finally faltered. “I haven’t had this much fun in ages!”
He touched the ground, and the entire eighteenth hole became a sinkhole. We both dropped into darkness, the manicured surface collapsing into some impossible space below. My back hit stone, but instinct kicked in; I rolled and came up fighting.
We were underground. A cavern that shouldn’t exist, lit by phosphorescent fungi that definitely weren’t there a moment ago.
The faerie wiped blood from his face. “Round two, milady?”
“Well, since you asked so nicely.” My serpents spread wide, casting writhing shadows on the cavern walls, except the shadows were no longer snake shaped. They were…mushrooms?
His eyes blazed bright with mischief. “You’ll have to secure my other leg another way.”
I unsheathed my dagger and charged. Dropping to my knees, I slid across the cavern floor and swept his good leg, slicing close to his femoral artery. Crying out, he collapsed on the hard surface.
I popped to my feet behind him. “I only did what you told me.” I pressed my foot on the wound. “Take us back to reality before you bleed out,” I said.
“Only if you undo the curse on my leg,” he croaked.
“Done.” I fixed my gaze on his leg and restored it to flesh and bone. I moved my foot back to the ground. “Do it. Now.”
The air shifted and we were back in reality, although we were no longer on the golf course .
Riot struggled to his feet, laughing heartily. “You shouldn’t have honored my request, lass.” He raised his hand, ready to warp reality once more. A streak of color flashed behind him, and the faerie face-planted on the ground in front of me.
“What the hell?” I looked up to see Hannya gripping a pickleball paddle. The demon’s stone-cold eyes fixed on me.
“Thank you,” I said, still in shock.
“Told you I’m real good at pickleball.” Resting the paddle on her shoulder, she observed the unconscious faerie. “What do you want to do with him? I’d offer to handcuff him, but I left mine in the drawer of my bedside table.”
I didn’t want to hear another detail about the demon’s bedside handcuffs. “I’d like to take him to Zachariah.”
“The necromancer? Why? I didn’t kill the bastard, although he likely deserved it.” She kicked his wounded leg for good measure.
“I need to entice a few answers out of him. Zach has what I need to make that happen.” Mainly, a table with secure straps.
“Oh, an interrogation? Why didn’t you say so?” She lifted the faerie like he weighed the same as a cat and tossed the slumped figure over her shoulder. “Where’s your golf cart?”
I looked around to get my bearings and started walking.
She fell in step beside me. “I was on my way to pickleball when I saw you. One second the space was empty, then poof! There you were.”
“How’s the new pickleball team?” I asked.
“Not too bad. Ruby’s a good choice for team captain. Would’ve preferred players with better skills, but at least I’m on the court. ”
“Baby steps,” I told her. “Help them win enough games and everybody will want you on their team.”
“See, I think that’s disappointing. I would much rather be included for the sake of it, not because I’m the most valuable player.”
“Here we are.” I pointed to my golf cart, right where I’d left it.
Hannya placed him across the back seat. “Guess you’re right, though. For the moment, I’ll take whatever crumbs I get.” She motioned to the passenger seat. “Need me to ride with you?”
“I can take it from here, thanks.”
I ignored the quizzical looks of Neighbors as I drove the body across town to the necromancer’s office.
Tension drained from my body when Zach pulled up in his golf cart at the same time. With his bag of clubs in the back seat, he seemed to have arrived straight from a game.
“Perfect timing,” I said. “I need your help.”
The necromancer observed the bleeding body in the back seat. “You can’t be serious.”
“Does this look like a joke?”
“Follow me.” He didn’t offer to carry the faerie.
I hefted Riot over my shoulder and carted him inside. No wonder Hannya had such an easy time carrying him. His bones seemed hollow like a bird’s. I set him on the floor, and his leg hit the floor with a hard thump.
Zach contemplated the body on the floor. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear you were murdering these people as an excuse to spend time with me.”
“He isn’t dead.”
“If he isn’t dead, then why bring him to me?”
“I need your interrogation table.”
To his credit, Zach didn’t ask any more questions. He watched as I lifted the faerie onto the table and strapped him down.
“I need something for his leg to staunch the bleeding.”
Zach retrieved a long strip of cloth and passed it to me.
“You’re very adept at this,” Zach said, as I tied the cloth around his leg. “Almost as though you’ve had practice.”
I ignored the comment. “We need to prepare a binding circle to keep him from slipping out of the straps. He can teleport in and out of reality.”
Zach blinked rapidly at the faerie. “That’s a new one.”
“Actually, it’s an old one. A very old one.” I glanced at his supply closet. “I’ll take a combination of any of these: ironwort, nettles, St. John’s wort, rowan—wood or berries, doesn’t matter—salt, yarrow, daisies, or verbena.”
“He’s fae. Can’t we just use iron? I’ll grab my golf clubs.”
“This faerie has lived in our world too long for iron to be effective.” Riot began to stir. “Hurry!”
Zach was remarkably fast. The necromancer had a bowl of mixed herbs ready before Riot opened his eyes. We sprinkled them on the floor in a wide circle around the table legs.
Riot struggled against the restraints. “I can’t move.”
“That’s the idea.”
His grin returned. “You demanded I leave and now you’re preventing me. Which is it, lass? Should I stay or should I go?”
“Why do you think I’m able to help you get home?” I demanded.
“Home where?” Zachariah interrupted.
“The Sídhe,” I replied. “The home for displaced Unwoven is the Sídhe, same as the rest of the fae, only the rest of the fae don’t want them there.”
“What makes you think there’s an entrance to the Sídhe on Evermore?” Zachariah asked .
Riot looked at me. “Not an entrance. A key.”
I withdrew. “What makes you think I have it?”
“I heard it was in your possession. The Thread-Thieves want it back, and the Thornborn don’t want either one of us to have it.”
The Thornborn didn’t want to be in the Sídhe either. The only reason they’d carved out a new world was because they’d been booted from this one.
“I don’t have any key,” I insisted.
“It was given to the mermaid. You must have found it, lass.”
“The only thing I found was—” I stopped short, processing the information. “The comb. It’s enchanted?”
Riot flashed a toothy grin. “It allows the wearer to enter the Sídhe.”
That was why the Thornborn had come to the cemetery in Savannah. They hadn’t been drawn to me—they’d sensed the presence of the key within range. In my purse.
“Why did Belinda have a key to the Sídhe?”
“It was a fair trade.” He giggled. “A fate-thread for a new life.”
There was nothing fair about that. “She didn’t know what she was trading.” Twice, Belinda had managed to make a regrettable deal that changed the course of her life.
“Who made the bargain with her? You? Are you Rory Bell?”
“Oh no. I don’t make tricksy bargains. That’s the provenance of thieves. They prey on unsuspecting people like your sweet mermaid.”
Belinda wouldn’t have understood the importance of a fate-thread. She may not even have believed in its existence. Naturally, she’d be willing to part with something she didn’t deem valuable .
“What did they tell her—they’d exchange the key for a strand they’d pluck from her head?
” If the faerie didn’t directly refer to a strand of hair, they wouldn’t have been lying.
It was, as Riot said, a fair bargain. They would’ve offered the comb first as a show of good faith.
Then Belinda would’ve obliged, not realizing the consequences of her actions.
“Nay, she was told it was a fate-thread,” Riot said, “but the silly fish believed its removal would change her fate rather than end it.”
Well, it did, just not in the way she envisioned.
“Why not give her a comb and tell her it was a key?” Zach asked.
“That would’ve been outright dishonest,” I explained. “The fae can’t do that.”
“I don’t understand why Belinda would want to leave the island. Evermore has everything she could’ve possibly wanted.”
“She wanted to start over somewhere new, reinvent herself again. To her, the Sídhe sounded like paradise.”
“And she would be right,” Riot said with a trace of longing.
Belinda had spent her life trying to find a place where she felt like she belonged.
The problem was it was her own skin she hadn’t been comfortable in.
First the reverse Ariel. The imaginationship with Buck.
Finally the Sídhe. No matter where she went, there she was.
Belinda would’ve been equally unhappy in the fae world, but now she’d never reach that phase of self-discovery.
“I can’t imagine she would’ve been welcome there, even if she’d managed to use the key,” I said.
The fae were protective of their home, having lost this one to gods and Fates.
No wonder the Thornborn had been so desperate to recover the comb in the cemetery.
In the wrong hands, a key to the Sídhe would be catastrophic.
“What about Judd’s involvement?” Zach asked. “I can’t see him making bargains with the fae.”
“I have no doubt Judd was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” But knowing Judd, it had been for the right reason.