Chapter 9 #3
A glamour, then. It made sense. Notice me not charms were pretty deeply entrenched in gnome magic, but those were fallible.
Finn must’ve been able to see Gnorman because Effie had been interacting with him.
Otherwise, it would’ve looked like she was talking to no one, like she had handed off her shopping bag to thin air.
It stood to reason they would have backup glamours in place in case they were spotted.
“Gnorman,” Effie said. “The G is silent. That’s who you saw.”
“The G is—” Finn broke off with a huff. “Gnomes.” He took a deep breath in, nodding slowly, and set his bags down on the sidewalk. “That’s…Huh. Okay. So those are…those are a thing.”
Effie drew her bottom lip between her teeth, fighting a losing battle as the corners of her mouth twitched. “Come on. You didn’t seriously think demons were the only supernatural beings to exist, did you?”
He frowned. “I guess I hadn’t really…”
“I suppose you wouldn’t know it because you’re human, so it doesn’t affect you, but this town sits atop the intersection of two ley lines, making it a magnet for the supernatural.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were all sorts of creatures living here, hiding in plain sight, with you none the wiser. ”
Finn chewed on that for a few seconds. He didn’t seem to be freaking out, just thinking. “What kind of creatures are we talking here?”
“Other than gnomes?” She shrugged. “Werewolves, vampires, succubi and incubi—neither of which, for the record, are actually demons—shapeshifters, fairies…Let me think…You’re not close enough to any major bodies of water for kelpies, selkies, or sirens, but if you’ve got any freshwater springs or streams nearby, there could be some naiads.
Then, of course, there’s witches and necromancers and—”
“Okay, I get it,” he said. “You think we’ve got all that living in Silver Springs?”
“All? No, no, that would be highly unlikely. A lot of supernatural creatures don’t play nicely with others. Vampires and necromancers, for example? Wouldn’t be caught dead living in the same town.” She paused, waiting. “Get it? Wouldn’t be caught— Forget it.” She thought it was funny.
“And how do these ley lines factor in?”
“Magic has to come from somewhere, right? And everyone knows mass can be neither created nor destroyed. You can’t create something out of nothing.
So supernatural creatures synthesize energy—telluric, celestial, sacrificial—into magic.
Ley lines are telluric pathways. Some supernatural creatures prefer other kinds of energy, but telluric energy is universal.
Doesn’t matter what kind of supe you are, you can always juice up on a telluric current. ”
“Do I even want to know what sacrificial energy entails?” he asked, face a touch paler than normal.
“I don’t know.” She smiled, teeth sharp. “Do you?”
Finn swallowed hard and widened his stance, crossing his arms over his chest. “Tell me.”
“Technically, soul bargains fall into that purview. Demons make deals with humans, wishes granted in exchange for souls forfeited upon the fulfillment of those wishes, and the energy generated by that covenant provides the magic required to make those wishes a reality. Of course, vampires are a pretty obvious example. Blood given and all that. Really, sacrifice in this sense just means offering.”
“And what did Gnorman want?”
“Martha was pretty torn up about what they’ve been doing to her garden. So I struck a deal to get them to take it easy. Hence my shopping trip. Gnorman’s terms were rather exacting.”
“Let me get this straight,” Finn said, staring blankly at her. “You have no problem stealing—”
“We’ve been over this.” Effie sighed. “It’s forgery, a completely different crime.”
“—but you’ll bend over backward to save Martha’s flowers?”
“The roses have sentimental value to Martha.”
He frowned, dark brows drawing together. “And you care about that? Sentimental value?”
“I don’t give a whit about sentimentality, but they’re not my roses,” she said, his tone rubbing her the wrong way. “Martha’s a nice lady, okay?”
“You don’t have to tell me that. I just…” He trailed off with a sigh, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t understand you.”
He didn’t understand her? Effie scowled. “Good thing I’m not asking you to understand me.”
For a moment, she thought that was it, their conversation over, Finn staring silently, not at her, but at the cracked sidewalk between them.
“I don’t want to fight with you,” he said, so softly she had to lean in to hear him speak, her eyes watching his mouth move. “It’s exhausting. I mean, aren’t you tired?”
Now that he mentioned it, she could see it in his face, signs of strain around his mouth and eyes, tension where it hadn’t been before.
“Maybe”—she had to swallow, her throat suddenly tight—“I just have better stamina than you.”
“I don’t know.” His lips twitched. “I’ve never had any complaints.”
It was shameful how long it took her to connect the dots, to realize what he was implying, even more shameful that she, who had no shame, flushed, her cheeks prickling, and not because of the blustery weather.
She opened her mouth but had no idea what to say, her brain stuck, thoughts snagging on the image his words had conjured, of Finn tangled up with some nameless, faceless woman, women, all of them satisfied.
Her chest burned and she felt a twinge near her heart.
It wasn’t jealousy. That would imply she cared what Finn did, and she didn’t care.
She didn’t. She just didn’t particularly want to think about it, Finn sleeping with other people.
It made no sense; she’d be the first to admit it. This Finn, as she’d told him time and time again, was not her Finn. She had no—no claim on him. And yet this duality sparked a strange sort of cognitive dissonance, because Fionnlagh had very much been hers—only hers. And she his.
But, of course, none of that mattered. Fionnlagh was dead, and in the 470-odd years since she’d become a demon, she’d slept with…
well, she hadn’t counted, and that had been by design, no need to keep score when nothing mattered anymore.
But in those first years, back when her bed had been too empty, too cold, back when she’d still wake and reach for a body that wasn’t there, when her grief had been too much, like a boulder—too heavy to hold, but when she tried to set it down, it relentlessly pursued her, gaining speed, threatening to crush her—sex had been a small escape, a way to lose herself, if only for a moment.
If afterward she’d been sick with guilt, those were her just deserts.
She didn’t deserve to be happy. Not truly happy. Not anymore. Not after what she’d done.
Thus ensued a vicious cycle—she’d fuck away her grief, feel guilty about doing it, try to fuck that away, wash, rinse, repeat.
Grief, she’d learned after many, many years, never went away—she just got better at outrunning it.
But that was exhausting, so was it really any wonder that she’d rather turn it all off?
Feel nothing—or very, very little—rather than feel all of this all the time?
Finn wasn’t the only one who was tired.
“—dropped a bomb on me, and I’ve been so busy thinking about what it all means for me that I didn’t think about what it means for you until you said what you did this morning.”
She’d missed the beginning of what he said, lost in her thoughts. But she was paying attention now.
“I’m not trying to make this harder on you than it already is.
I’ve just never felt certain about…shit, much of anything in my whole life.
Loving someone so much that ’til death isn’t long enough?
I guess I’m…envious?” He shook his head, mouth twisting.
“No, that’s not it. I just wish I understood what it felt like to be so certain about someone that you feel it in your—your bones, you know?
” He knocked his knuckles against his chest. “In your soul, I guess.” He laughed under his breath.
“Shit, I wasn’t even sure—I mean, I didn’t know those were real until I met you. ”
He scratched the back of his neck and shrugged helplessly, making her frown.
Uncertainty looked strange on him. His face, his body, his person.
Even at twenty-two, Fionnlagh had been so settled.
Not just self-assured, but unwavering in his convictions, his devotion, his mind, what he was meant for, the life he wanted.
The man standing in front of her seemed so…
at sea. “I just want to understand. I want to understand what makes a person promise someone forever and really mean it. And you can say we—you and him—were young and stupid, but…Look, I’m no expert on magic, but something tells me that a promise like that doesn’t stick if you don’t mean it. ”
Intent might’ve been nine-tenths of magical law, but—
“Doesn’t mean we weren’t still stupid,” she muttered, and damn it all if he didn’t smile.
“I looked it up,” he said. “Past-life regression? I even listened to one of those guided meditations where you’re supposed to relax and visualize a door, and you go through it, and you have to picture this…
this path in your mind’s eye, and I guess you’re supposed to see your past life—lives?
—along the way. But all I saw was…was you.
” A faint flush crept up the front of his throat, her eye drawn to it when he swallowed.
“Which was obviously me projecting, because the whole thing, it’s all bullshit, right?
It doesn’t actually work that way. Or what do I know?
” He pushed up the sleeves of his indigo-colored Henley and shrugged.
“Maybe it does. And look, before you say it, I know I’m not the man you married.
I heard you loud and clear on that this morning. But I would like to know who he was.”
She frowned. “What exactly are you saying right now?”