Chapter Seven Bargains
I pace. Deanna sleeps.
Rory stays in my arms, also sleeping, content with the slow, unceasing steps of my boots.
“Changeling law must have been activated. I don’t think it’s Saz, not wholly.”
“Not holy at all,” I mumble.
“No, not that. With a W. That sort of wholly.” Bonwit moves the puppy and puts a river rock green couch under a golden lamp.
He found a banshee this morning, and she owns a shop that sells everything from books and clothing to furnishings.
She’s giving us a discount, and Bonwit is simply winking her inventory into our house to make it look like a human dwelling.
“What, then?”
“Saz made a bargain with you, and that bargain included finding the boy and taking him home, yes?” he asks, a snap of his fingers putting two tan pillows and a blanket neatly on the couch.
“Yes and no. If I gave her part of my soul, I’d be able to find my son. She never said explicitly I’d be able to bring him home. What’s more, I was barred from the house she left Rory at. Of course, I never said I’d explicitly give her half of my soul, and I traded information for half a biscuit.”
“Well, my skills in the kitchen are worth a faeling’s ransom,” Bonwit preens, and a shelf appears, empty. “We need books.”
“I don’t know if we need books,” I grumble. “I don’t know if we will be there all that long. Go on.”
“It was implied that you’d be able to find the boy, and what good is finding him if you can’t bring him with you?”
“Maybe that was her play for the other half. Deals with demons are just as savage as deals with fae. Some fae,” I remark, gathering Deanna in my free arm, hauling her body over my shoulder, and then plopping her onto the couch. “That’s better,” I sigh.
And it does look better. Out of curiosity, I place Rory in the crook of her arm, and she instantly pulls him close, even in her sleep. Rory’s little body trembles as if he’s struck in a stretch, and then relaxes.
My curiosity is satisfied. It isn’t the beautiful sight I’m used to, but then again, beauty was never anything but nature, or sexual. Somehow... This is a new kind of beauty, mother and child, peace and sleep. Safe under my watch.
I can barely drag my eyes away from the sight, even though Bonwit is tugging urgently on my sleeve.
“Saz doesn’t know as much about fae as she thinks, or she’d never have made such a deal—and she never would have left a fae babe in the mortal world with a human mother.
Changeling law applies. The child is claimed and can’t be returned, not to his mother.
Perhaps not at all. Not unless some new bargain is struck.
” Bonwit looks at me. “How in the world are you going to pry those two apart? She’s a lioness, and that is her cub.
She’ll literally fight to the death for him. My death, very bloody nearly.”
“Yes.” A little smile quirks up one corner of my lips, even though it shouldn’t. It is very endearing to see how Deanna, the beautiful, fierce Deanna, guards my son.
“A new bargain must be struck—and I cannot think of anything that will take the place of a mother’s love.” Bonwit collapses into a small black chair that conveniently blinks into existence just before his rear hits the seat.
“I might know of something,” I muse. “But you’ll need to make yourself scarce until I call you back.”
“Oh, Dair... What are you thinking of doing?” he groans.
“Romancing her. There are great tales of women moving heaven and earth for the men they love.”
“Yes, because those men were worthy of it and would have moved the same mountains for their women.”
“I’ve never had a single complaint," I wink, and it’s true. I prided myself on being able to satisfy a succubus, a sexual expert—and everyone else who I took to my bed before her.
Bonwit rolls his eyes. “Yes, as a lover, not a man in love. You cannot break her heart; you gave your word not to hurt her.”
Damn it.
“Have you ever thought of telling her the truth?” Bonwit asks.
“I have seen firsthand that the truth isn’t stronger than love.
” I look at my boy, sleeping, snuggled so safely.
Deanna would be a better ally than an enemy.
“I might consider it. Still, go and see what you can learn about Saz and this ‘peak of power.’ What is it? What does she want? How can we stop it?”
Bonwit rises, muttering about being an errand boy. “Should I go looking in this realm or ours?”
“Either, both.”
“That’s very helpful.”
“And bake some oaty biscuits while you’re home?”
Bonwit groans, makes a rude gesture at me, and vanishes, leaving me alone with my son—and my son’s new mother and his new pup, in my pretty little human house.
My heart feels strange just looking at the two of them, curled together.
She would do anything to protect him.
So would I.
Maybe we could be more than neighbors. Perhaps we should be allies...
At least until I find the right bargain to get my son back without breaking my word.
Rain. Crackling logs. The scent of something freshly baked. Soft, cool air.
All my favorite sounds and scents gently wake me, and my eyes open to see the most gorgeous storybook fairy prince with his forehead to my son’s forehead as he holds him in his arms, looking at him like the most beautiful sight in the world.
He speaks to him softly in a musical, melodic language that makes the musician in me ache to understand—while the instincts in me suddenly understand something else, something so clear and undeniable that I have to say it aloud. “You’re his father, aren’t you?”
Dairmuid’s shoulders jerk back as if someone’s shot him in the back with an arrow. “You’re awake.”
“Yes.” I sit up slowly. I don’t know how long I slept, but I know I feel amazing. Sharp. Clear. Peaceful.
Which is odd, because I’m clearly in some magic mushroom hallucinogenic dream where people and monsters live together. Maybe the water in Pine Ridge is radioactive or something, and my brain cells are mutating.
But even if my brain is misfiring, my baby is still my baby—and the fear that Dairmuid is here to take him away is all-consuming. “Are you here to take him away? Where is his mother?” I whisper.
He sighs. “I hoped not to alarm you.”
“I’m alarmed. Are you?” I struggle to the edge of the couch, not sure what I’m going to do. I mean, Rory isn’t mine—but this guy is a stranger. And I’m a stranger to him. This is a bad hostage situation with someone innocent and defenseless in the middle.
Dairmuid shakes his head. “I promised you I wouldn’t take him or hurt him.
His mother could be anywhere, but at least she’s not in my realm, not now.
She is evil. I didn’t know she was evil until she told me she’d had my child and hidden him in the human world.
She wants my soul or Rory’s soul to claim.
Fae are immortal, which means something to Saz, a succubus.
She feeds on souls, but they’re not hers to keep.
A fae soul means she’ll never be hungry again—but it also means something else.
Something I don’t understand.” Dairmuid turns and looks at me, the baby now tucked in the crook of his arm.
Men holding babies is apparently part of the “Pine Ridge may be monstrous but it ain’t so bad” package, because my ovaries just purred.
Purred. Like one of those fake tan “cougars” in leopard print and stilettos at Ladies’ Night.
I have to restructure my brain and find the cool, detached part of myself before I can speak.
“So, you’re not taking him away from me? ”
I wait for him to argue that he has the right.
I might argue back that I have just as much right. His mother, evil or no, entrusted her child to me. How do I know Dairmuid is telling the truth? What if he’s the bad guy, and the mother was desperate to get the baby away from him?
All the peaceful, sleepy feelings vanish, replaced with a laser focus that has to burn its way through conflicting images of how ruggedly handsome yet ethereally pretty Dairmuid is and how much estrogen is pumping through my body at the mere sight of him cradling Rory.
Stupid bitch of a biological clock. I think that clock is real. No matter how many times Aaron and I hit the snooze alarm, Rory has set it ringing.
“No. But I am not leaving here, either. He is in danger. Saz made a bargain with me to reveal his location. She thought she was getting half of my soul—”
“What did she actually get?”
“Half of a biscuit.”
My eyebrows arch. “Talk about haggling.”
Dairmuid smiles crookedly, and I find myself gripping the sofa cushions just to keep myself in check. You know it’s wrong to have feelings about this guy? He’s not human. He’s tricky. He’s going to want his son back, no matter what he says.
“Once I knew Saz was tricking me, I simply tricked her back. I found my son, but he’s stuck here in the human world for now.
Maybe forever, if I can’t figure out Saz’s game.
But I wouldn’t take him without your knowledge or permission, even if I could.
” Dairmuid frowns, which, oddly enough, gives him a different kind of handsomeness, something more stern and commanding.
“She wants your soul? Or the baby’s? How... How would she get that?”
Dairmuid looks down at the baby, then back at me, voice dropping and one hand going over Rory’s ear, the one not nestled against his father’s arm. “Death or sex. Those are the only two ways I know to remove or share a soul if you’re a succubus.”
“But... But you said the baby is hers.”
Dairmuid nods, eyes unblinking. “She’s a demon. I thought she was reformed. Some can be. She is not. I was fooled. For months, years, I don’t know. Time moves very differently where I’m from.”
“Where you’re from?” I vaguely remember him saying something about this before I passed out.
“Hold him.” Dairmuid hands me Rory and wipes a finger along the air, along nothing—and yet he can grab the nothingness and lift it aside to show me—