18. Carter
18
Carter
I vy and I asked around the pub, but no one had seen Ashley since she sold the place a year ago. Some said she disappeared into the woods and never came out. Others said they saw her drive away in her truck with all her stuff piled in the back. If no one had seen Ashley, they definitely hadn’t seen Siobhan.
“Three days ago, you say?” one of the locals asked, shaking his gray head. “Well, if you find her, you tell her ole Bertie’s looking for her, yeah? She still owes me a pint for that Manchester bet she lost.”
We went by the local library, but that was a hole in the wall compared to the one at the university. When that failed, we grabbed a coffee to help with the jet lag.
“If we don’t find anything else,” Ivy said, sitting at the circular table outside a cafe, “we’ll go by the university library tomorrow.”
I slumped into the seat next to her and sighed. For someone who’d been gifted with luck, it certainly didn’t seem like the odds were in my favor that afternoon, not until the waitress came over to take our order.
“Oh my God,” she said, her eyes widening. “You’re Carter Scott.”
My momentary shock turned to joy when I realized I was the one being recognized.
“You’re James of Denwater. I fecking love you on Fractured Crowns. ” Her gaze shifted to Ivy, who she didn’t seem to recognize, before coming back to me. “When you had to tell King Henry you loved Princess Kalli, but not as much as you loved him—” She grabbed her chest and rolled her eyes into the back of her head with delight. “I thought my heart was going to break into a thousand pieces.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m glad you enjoy the show.”
“And when you had to pull Henry off the battlefield so he didn’t get hurt after his older brother was beheaded.” She dabbed at her eyes like she was tearing up thinking about it. “Carter…Mr. Scott…You’re one of my favorites. Can I have a picture or an autograph or something?”
“Sure,” I said, agreeing to a selfie with her. I signed a napkin, “To Sunny.” The name on her uniform. “All my best, Carter Scott.” I ignored Ivy’s pursed lips and the amusement in her gaze, that I, the lowly nobody from Chicago, would have fans in remote parts of the world.
“What are you doing in Killwater?” she asked.
“Looking for an old friend,” I said.
“Oh?” She preened and smiled wider. “I’ve lived here my whole life. Who are you looking for?”
“A woman named Siobhan.” It was a small town, sure, but I didn’t think she’d know who we were talking about.
“Oh yeah,” Sunny said. “I know her. She came through a few days ago.”
Surprise flitting through my blood, I glanced at Ivy.
“She’s always so nice to me.” Sunny ran her hand through her bright yellow ponytail. “She stopped for a coffee and some cigarettes.”
“Did she say where she was going?” Ivy asked.
She shook her head. “But she did say that if anyone asked after her to tell them, You already know the way .”
Ivy looked at me, raising her eyebrows up her forehead.
“Did she say anything else?” Ivy asked, seeming more excited the longer Sunny talked.
“No, sorry.” Sunny shook her head. “So, what can I get for you?”
I met my wife’s gaze, already knowing what she wanted to ask.
Should I do it?
It seemed like a violation to invade a person’s mind without their consent, but how could we ask? And how would we explain it to her once it was over? In the end, we didn’t need to.
“Two coffees,” Ivy said. “Cream and sugar.”
“Sure thing.” Sunny touched Ivy’s shoulder in a friendly gesture, but when their skin met, Ivy opened her mouth and her pupils turned completely white. Sunny froze, slamming her eyes shut like the touch hurt her. Neither moved for about thirty seconds, an entire fucking lifetime, as I waited to see what would happen. Then Sunny let go and stumbled back, righting herself on the brick wall of the building behind her.
“Okay,” she said, rubbing one of her temples. “I’ll be back with those coffees.” She walked inside, blinking and shaking her head as if nothing had happened.
“What the fuck was that?” I whispered to Ivy, leaning over the table to get closer. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.” Ivy rubbed her eyes as a flush crept up her neck and into her cheeks. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, I swear.”
“I saw. She touched you.”
Ivy furrowed her brows as fear danced behind her fiery gray gaze. Not much rattled her. She had social anxiety, and she didn’t like large crowds, but she’d spent her whole life preparing to argue for national policy. Ivy’s skin had turned to steel.
“Carter, I think Siobhan left a message for me in the waitress.” Ivy shook her head, clenching her eyes shut like she was trying to rationalize it to herself. “I don’t know, maybe I hallucinated it.”
“Tell me.” I put my hand on hers, squeezing it to reassure her.
“Siobhan came here and asked for her, specifically. When Sunny came out, Siobhan took her and…I don’t know…mesmerized her?”
What does that mean?
“She said she knew I’d come after her,” Ivy continued, “and that she knows what I want, but she can’t give it to me. Not yet. Not until we do what we’re supposed to do.”
That didn’t make any sense. “What are we supposed to do?”
Ivy shrugged. “I don’t know, but Siobhan is scared. She’s running from someone. Or maybe… to someone.”
I took a deep breath and scratched the back of my head, trying to put this new information in place with the research we’d done up until now.
“I know Lex doesn’t want to go into the woods,” she said, “but I don’t think we have another choice. That’s where Siobhan went. That’s where Ashley is.”
I didn’t want to agree with her, but I was running out of other ideas. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as Lex thought. Maybe my luck would protect us and make sure we returned to our realm safely.
“Siobhan told me how to get there,” she said. “I already know the way. I’ve been dreaming about it since Midsummer.”
I swallowed and sat back in my seat. Part of me wanted to go screaming for the hills. This was beyond anything I could have imagined—fairies and curses and enchanted forests—but I couldn’t deny it was, in fact, happening.
Everyone in this town believed fairies existed, and the more research I did, the more convinced I became. All cultures had some variation of a fairy myth, enough to make a credible argument that there must be a source to the archetype—an original monster that scared the humans enough to make up stories and pass them down through the generations to protect the species.
We finished our coffees and paid our tab, heading back to the B we’d all been strange since arriving. Miri couldn’t stop looking at the trees. Lex couldn’t stop smoking. Ivy couldn’t sit still. And me? Well, my skin had grown too tight for my body—like I’d used up all the good luck one person was supposed to have in their lifetime, and karma had come back around to bitch-slap me in the worst way.
Sleep didn’t come easy that night, knowing the next would be spent hunting down some fairy monster in the haunted woods. Sometime around 2 a.m., I rolled over and cracked my eyes open, my focus landing on Miri. She was back at the window, smoking a cigarette and staring out at the woods with that anxious crease between her brows. I extracted myself from Ivy’s limbs and slid out of bed, tiptoeing over to her. She gave me a small smile when I scooted into the alcove and took a cigarette from the pack.
“What’s going on, Juliet?” I asked, cupping my lighter so I could bring it to the smoke and inhale.
She shook her head, the moonlight streaming in through the window making her seem even more precious somehow, like porcelain or ivory. Leaning in close, she whispered, “They’re pulsing.”
I narrowed my eyes as I studied the seriousness in hers.
“The trees,” she said, holding out her hands so she could open and close her fingers. “I can feel them under my skin, the way I can with my plants.”
Realization dawned on me. Miri’s gift was organic. She said she could sense nature and give it her energy to make it grow. I’d bet those trees were like a live wire in her veins.
“Can I tell you something?” She grabbed my right hand with hers, vow to vow, our thumbs hooked around each other.
“Of course.” I inhaled on my smoke and kept my gaze on her.
“I’m scared,” she whispered. “This is unreal, and we’re going against something we don’t entirely understand.”
“I know,” I said. “But…with a bit of luck”—she tried to smile as I kissed her knuckles—“and some truth, and some telepathy, and some witchy plant shit, we might make it out of this alive.”
That made her laugh softly, and my work there was done.
“C’mon,” I said, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. “Where’s that eternal optimism?”
She shook her head, biting at her bottom lip. “Remember when I told you about my car accident?”
I nodded.
“This feels like that, deep down inside,” she said, clenching her eyes shut as tears streaked down her cheeks. “Smythe said we were marked. He called it a group gift.”
“We’ll find out tomorrow, Juliet.” I cupped her face with my free hand and rubbed my thumb over her cheek, clearing away the signs of her distress. “It’ll be okay.”
She stabbed out the cigarette and immediately lit up another one. “I have a bad feeling about Samhain.”
“Well, you’d be silly to have a great feeling about it.”
She gripped my hand tighter, and even though I had a warm bed with my Weeds a few feet away, I sat there with my princess until the sun came up. She needed what she could only get from me—a soul friend, one who had already seen her at her worst, one who could handle her vulnerability with the gentle care she needed.