Chapter Nine
The next morning I returned to the loch prepared.
Notebooks in a waterproof bag. Camera with an extra battery.
A digital recorder Julian had insisted I bring, small enough to fit in my palm.
I'd dressed practically—jeans, boots, and a jacket that could handle the wind off the water.
I looked like someone ready to conduct a proper interview.
áedán was waiting on the shore, hands in his pockets, watching me approach with an expression I couldn't read.
“Good morning,” I said. Professional. Composed. “I thought we could start with—”
He pushed me.
One moment I was standing on solid ground, the next I was falling backward into the loch. The water was shockingly cold. I went under completely, my jacket taking on water to drag me down for a heartbeat before I kicked back to the surface.
I came up sputtering and gasping, my hair plastered to my face. Water streamed into my eyes. My boots were full of loch. On top of that, my heart and mind raced. áedán had attacked me. Had he forgotten himself already? Would I have to defend myself?
áedán stood on the shore, laughing. Not a polite chuckle. Full, genuine laughter that bent him nearly in two. He braced his hands on his knees, shoulders shaking, trying to catch his breath.
“What—” I coughed, treading water. “What was that for?”
“Anyone studying a kelpie,” he managed between laughs, “should at least take a wee dip in a loch.”
I pushed my hair out of my eyes. The camera bag was still on shore, and my notebooks were in a waterproof bag. Thank God I had the foresight to protect the books. “I had equipment.”
“You had pretensions.” He straightened, still grinning. “You looked like you were aboot to conduct a census.”
I started swimming toward the shore. The water was deeper than I'd expected and colder. My jacket felt like it weighed twenty pounds. When I got close enough to stand, áedán waded in and offered his hand.
I reached for it.
He pulled me halfway up, then stopped. I hung there, suspended between the loch and him, water falling from me. His hand was warm around mine, and his eyes glinted with mischief.
“Why are you so serious?” áedán supported my weight easily, with no sign of struggle.
“I'm here to save you.” Water dripped from my nose. “I'm conducting myself appropriately.”
“You're conducting yourself like someone at a funeral.” His thumb moved against my palm. “Relax, Ethan. I'm not going to eat you.”
“Those new stories suggest otherwise.”
That made him laugh again. But he didn't pull me up, nor did he let go. We stayed like that, his hand holding mine, my body half in the water, looking at each other.
I found myself admiring his face once again.
The sun caught in his eyes, bringing out the glittering striations and setting the deep green to glowing.
Long, thick lashes framed his eyes, and combined with his pouting lower lip, they should have made him look feminine.
But the strength of his jawline and the cut of his cheekbones prevented that.
Damn it, there I went again. I was supposed to be helping him survive, not ogling him.
I looked away quickly, heat rising in my face.
áedán pulled me the rest of the way up. I stumbled onto the shore, dripping, my boots squelching with every step.
“Come on.” He picked up my camera bag. “I'll walk you back.”
We walked to and then through Luss in silence. I was acutely aware of the water dripping from my clothes, the way tourists stared as we passed. áedán seemed unbothered. He walked with his hands in his pockets, occasionally glancing at me with laughing eyes.
“This is the road to my rental.” I motioned.
He kept walking. “Can you cook?”
I frowned at the odd question. “I manage.”
“Good.”
“Why?”
“I've got food.”
“I'm soaked.”
“You'll dry.”
áedán led me past the tourist shops and down a southern road in the opposite direction of my rental cottage.
The pavement gave way to packed earth, and the 19th-century cottages gave way to nature.
We crossed a bridge over a river that led to the loch, and the sounds of the village faded away.
Then we walked through an open field. Across the field, we entered the trees and walked for several minutes, heading south along a footpath. Then the trees opened onto a field.
To the west of the field, on my right, was a dirt road.
At the end of the road, directly before us on a small rise, a weathered stone cottage stood, overlooking the loch.
Two stories tall, with a slate roof and mullioned windows, it looked straight out of a fairy tale.
Smoke curled lazily from the chimney. A narrow path led down to the water's edge, where a wooden dock extended into the loch.
I followed áedán to the front door. He pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the door.
Once inside, he hung his coat on a hook by the door.
I stepped up but stopped in the doorway, watching him go to the fireplace and bend to coax the flames back to life.
He added wood from a stack beside the hearth, set a kettle over the flames, then glanced toward me.
I dripped on his threshold. “You have a house.”
áedán looked genuinely puzzled. “Where did you think I lived?”
“The loch.”
He burst out laughing. “So in your mind I just surfaced dramatically from the loch every morning, shook the water from my mane, and went aboot my day?”
I shrugged.
“Thank goodness the Velasca sent me a clever one.” He shook his head, still smiling. “Come inside, Ethan. You're letting the heat out.”
I stepped over the threshold and closed the door.
The cottage was beautiful. Not in a magazine way, but in a lived-in way.
Hand-woven rugs on stone floors, a faded blue sofa near the fireplace with needlepoint cushions, and copper pots hanging from a rack over a counter that served as a border between the living room and the kitchen.
Bookshelves covered every available wall, with books standing vertically and stuffed horizontally into the spaces above.
Then smaller details caught my attention.
A collection of smooth stones arranged on the windowsill, each one a different color.
Pieces of driftwood on the mantle, twisted into strange shapes by water and time.
A jar of sea glass catching the light, shades of green, blue, and amber.
A little watercolor painting of thistles propped against books on a shelf.
I moved to the bookshelves. Books filled them in no particular order.
Leather-bound first editions next to cheap paperbacks.
Old Irish volumes with crumbling spines next to Latin texts and Scots Gaelic poetry.
Modern English novels with creased covers beside picture books.
There were a lot of mystery novels—Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and more recent ones I recognized from bookshop displays.
“You read mysteries.” I glanced at him over my shoulder.
“I like puzzles.” áedán stood at an ancient stove, pulling vegetables from a basket. “And I like knowing the answer before the detective does.”
“How do you pay for these?” I looked around. “For any of this? Do you work?”
He grinned at me. “In a way. I patrol the loch. It's amazing how much those numpties lose. All sorts of things fall into the water, and other things slip out of pockets right in front of me.”
“You're a pickpocket?”
áedán scowled at me. “I am a treasure hunter. I cannae help it if people are careless.”
Shaking my head and chuckling, I went back to perusing his books and noticed several were damaged, their pages warped and covers stained. I pulled one out and found the pages rippled and stuck together.
“Some of these are water-damaged.” I held it up.
He glanced over. “Sometimes I forget they're in my pockets.”
“You take books into the loch?”
“I take books everywhere.” He was chopping vegetables, moving the knife with practiced ease. “Sometimes I remember to take them out before I shift. Sometimes I dinnae.”
I put the book back carefully and moved to the window. The view was breathtaking—the loch stretching out below, mountains rising in the distance, the sky turning the water into a mirror.
“Come help me cook,” áedán said.
I went over, and we cooked together over the wood-burning stove.
áedán had vegetables, fresh bread, butter, and cheese, none of which came from a grocery store.
He stored the butter in water, and coated the cheese in lard.
There was no refrigerator. Instead, he had a slate-lined pantry where he had stored the butter and cheese.
He moved around the kitchen with easy familiarity, handing me things to chop, adjusting the heat, tasting, and adding salt.
I was terrible at it. I cut the vegetables unevenly and didn't know what to do with the cheese. áedán found this endlessly amusing.
“Did your grandmother not teach you to cook?” he asked.
“She tried. I was better at reading her books.”
“That explains so much.”
I motioned at the cheese. “Did you make that?”
“Nae, I buy it from one of the locals, along with milk that I use to make butter.”
“You could just buy it at the town grocer.”
“I dinnae like going among all those people. I go only when I have to pick up things I cannae make myself. Besides, the cheese they sell doesnae keep as well.”
“Hard cheese does.” I shook my head. “You don't have electricity?”
“Nae, dinnae even ken how to get it. Wouldnae be able to pay for it, even if I did.” He shrugged. “I'm fine as I am.”
“You could get a cooler.”
“A what?”
“It's a big plastic box that is insulated. When you put ice in it with other things that need to be kept cold, it will keep them cold for several hours, sometimes over a day.”
“Interesting.”
When the food was ready, we took our plates outside and down to the dock.
The dock extended maybe twenty feet into the water, the boards weathered gray by sun and rain.
No boat moored there. It was just the dock.
We sat on the wooden boards, our legs dangling over the edge.
áedán pulled a small pouch from his pocket and scattered seeds on the dock.
Within moments, birds appeared—sparrows and finches, landing fearlessly near his feet.
“They know you,” I whispered.
“I've been feeding them for a hundred years. They teach their children to come, and then those children teach their young.”
We ate in comfortable silence. The food was simple but good.
We had warmed the bread over the fire and laid slices of cheese on it to melt.
The vegetables tasted vibrant and decadent, cooked in butter and salted lightly.
I'd seen a greenhouse on the way to the dock, so I assumed áedán had grown the vegetables himself.
It made the meal feel special. He was sharing what he had grown and made himself with me.
áedán fed the birds between bites, making soft clicking sounds that brought them closer. One landed on his knee. He didn't move, just smiled and scattered more seeds.
“You're different today.” I glanced at him, trying not to stare.
“How so?”
“Less guarded.”
áedán considered this. “You've shown me who you are. I trust you enough to show you who I am.” He tossed a seed to a particularly bold sparrow. “You should laugh more. You're always so serious.”
I felt heat rise in my face again. “Your continued existence is a serious matter.”
“I appreciate that, but must you be serious all the time?”
I bit my lip. “I suppose not.”
We fell into an easy rhythm after that. áedán told me stories about the birds, the tourists who sometimes wandered too close to his cottage, and the time a film crew tried to shoot a documentary on the loch and he spent three days making their equipment malfunction.
I found myself laughing more than I had in months. Maybe years. He had a way of telling stories that made even mundane things funny. There was a timing to his delivery that caught me off guard. It was as if he were proving to me that I could relax around him.
áedán drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. “I'm glad you're here.”
“I'm glad you've let me stay.”
He sighed. “Ten years isnae all that long to a kelpie. But when you hear lies aboot yourself, over and over, a decade becomes an eternity. After a while...”
“After a while, what?”
He looked at me. His eyes were dark, tired, and infinitely sad. “After a while, you start wondering if maybe they're right. Maybe I really was a monster all along.”
“Then I'm very glad to be here. Because it's time you heard the truth.”
“What truth?”
“That they are the monsters for doing this to you. You protected them for centuries, and they do this? Not just forget you, but demonize you. That is evil, áedán. Not you.”
His expression softened. “I refuse to believe they're evil.
They forgot, aye, but that happens. As for the lies, well, people like to be scared now that there's little for them to fear. Someone must have found my myth and thought to make it more exciting. Then other people read it and enjoyed it. It went on, with more changes, until the truth was lost. That has happened to humans many times before, and not just with myths. Your people have lost great knowledge in just that way.”
“You're being extraordinarily kind about what's happened to you.” I knew if it were me in áedán's position, I'd be furious.
“I care aboot people, Ethan. I've seen such love, compassion, and bravery in humans. I cannae believe that humans have changed so much.”
“We haven't. Some of us are kind and honorable, all the things you admired. But others aren't. Some are even evil, like the man who would have hurt Moira's mother.”
“Aye, you're right. And maybe it was evil that twisted my myth. But I'd rather think it was carelessness or ignorance. People can be dafty, but that dinnae make them evil.”
My chest warmed as I listened to him. I'd gone to Scotland expecting to find a recluse or a loner.
Maybe even a madman. Instead, I found a magical man who had lost everyone he loved but still found the room in his heart to be kind to those who had wronged him.
He wasn't a creature without humanity. áedán was more human than I, born of our imagination and bestowed with humankind's best qualities.
Moira was right. He was an angel of the water. Except this angel was in jeopardy of fading. It was time for humanity to save its guardian.