When? Where? How many times had we done exactly what we were doing right now?
Her lips rounded. She blinked. And I swore she said my name.
“Hey!” I called again.
The interloper stepped around me, as if my interruption of his subtext-laden questions was a crime worthy of a kick in the gut. “Who are you—”
I refused to look down at his weasel-like face. “I am no longer speaking to you,” I said.
His head swiveled and he looked in Ellie’s direction, but frowned and blinked as if he didn’t see her. “You are Frank Victorsson,” he said.
He knew my full name.
I glared down at the little man standing between Ellie and me. He had the angular features and the brown eyes I associated with French heritage, and carried an echo of the Geroux brothers. But mostly what I saw was his Mafioso-style bravado.
Ellie glanced wide-eyed at me again, and I swear she hiccupped. Her hand extended toward me just a fraction of an inch, but she pulled it back.
She turned away.
“Wait!” I called. “Please!”
The interloper gripped my forearm. “Victorsson,” he said, clearly accentuating his lack of Mister in his words, “The leaders of this town need discipline.”
He was just a mundane. He carried no obvious magic. Causing him pain would be too easy. “Remove your hand from my arm,” I growled.
He let go, but did not step back. “You need discipline.”
Ellie stared at the interloper. Her expression hardened. She took a step toward us.
I shook my head no. She couldn’t come near this man. He might not be magical, but he was up to something, and I couldn’t risk his darkness interacting with her enchantments.
A loud truck full of local kids pulled into the Raven’s Gaze parking lot, followed by a second vehicle full of more kids. They tumbled out, laughing and touching like teenagers do, and moved toward the pub.
Ellie looked at the vehicles. She looked back at me. Then she ran into the trees between the church and restaurant.
“Damn it!” Without thinking—without considering the danger touching a rich man might bring—I gripped the interloper’s shoulders. I lifted. And before he could squirm or yell or threaten, I set him to the side.
I should call Arne. I should let the elves know that the annoying photographer with the terrible attitude had shown up at Raven’s Gaze. Or I could follow Ellie.
I ran for the trees.
“Come back!” I yelled. Why did she run away? I rushed toward the church, and rounded the building into a patch of buckthorn. Leaves drifted down from the ash and oak, and I could make out the brightly colored umbrellas covering the outdoor tables at Raven’s Gaze, but Ellie had vanished.
“I have…” I yelled. I had something for her. “I’m trying!” Damn it, where did she go? I peered through the underbrush. “Ellie!” I finally got out her name.
“Frank.”
I whipped around. Ellie stood next to the church, under a carving of a saint that looked more Norse god than godly. She adjusted the straps of the backpack and sighed deeply but didn’t reach for me.
I pushed my way through the brambles. “I remember your name,” I said.
The sigh turned into a slight quiver of her lower lip. “You remember that someone else told you my name,” she said.
“Yes, that’s true.” I stepped out of the brambles and extended my hand. “I’m trying to circumvent the enchantments.”
She pointed at my leg. “You ruined your pants.”
I looked down. I’d ripped a small hole in the thigh of my trousers pushing through the undergrowth. “Oh.” I patted at the hole as if my fingers would brush it away.
The interloper trotted down the path back toward the church. I moved to step between him and Ellie, but she put her finger to her lips and stepped in front of me.
The man peered into a window, then out into the trees. He walked toward us, stopped about seven feet away, and scowled.
Ellie was hiding me from him, and I’d ruined his good day by vanishing before he’d finished his insults.
He snapped a fingernail across the inside of his ring’s band, swore, and walked away.
She stared toward the parking lot for what felt like forever. “He’s magical, Frank. He couldn’t see me.” She jammed her hands into her hoodie’s pocket. “The concealment enchantments hide me from other magicals.” She stepped closer. “They hide you, too, when you’re close enough.”
Close like now. I could touch her elbow, or her hip. I could feel her skin.
Ellie adjusted the pack again. “He carries elf-level magicks. Please be careful around him. Please.”
Loneliness radiated from her like a cold heat. Or maybe it radiated off me and she was only reflecting a truth I’d been living for two centuries. But it was there in the set of her shoulders and the small steps toward me, then back, then toward me again.
Her concealments didn’t hide dark magic the way the interloper’s had. Hers turned her into a ghost with no moorings.
I reached for her. I had to. She couldn’t hurt like this. Not my Ellie.
She stepped into my embrace. She curled her arms around my waist. And the woman who lived her life behind a veil laid her head against my chest.
She pressed against my front as if holding on for dear life.
Nothing else mattered. Not our interloper. Not the coming blizzard. Not the elves or the damned town or Samhain or anything else. She touched me and the hurts of my life—all the pain and the conflict and the anger—it all vanished. It fell away, and I knew why I’d made the decades of effort necessary to leave it behind. I understood why I’d worked so hard to not be the monster my father built.
“I miss you so much,” she said.
She wasn’t a ghost, nor was she a phantom or a dream. Her heart beat against my chest. Her warmth touched my skin, and her breath my soul.
And I’d
