Ellie swore as she pulled her hat lower over her ears. “How do you live here?”
Once Ellie and I stepped through the cottage’s gate, I knew exactly where her cottage was in relation to my cabin, the lake, and the road. All this time, Ellie had been nestled into a stand of birch and cedar less than a quarter mile from my home, on a small rise in the dead center of the peninsula that separated my place from most of the new lots.
I came this way almost every time I went out to look for Marcus Aurelius. I’d walked by her gate at least thirty times.
My hound bounded happily by, obviously more excited about the snow than Ellie. His favorite humans were heading back to his primary living space. What else could a dog want?
“It’s not so bad,” I said. “Marcus Aurelius likes it. Could be worse. Snow won’t stay anyway. It’ll melt by tomorrow afternoon.” Samhain was too early for sustained snow cover these days. When I first walked into Alfheim, it wasn’t. But now? Mundanes were destructive to the natural world.
Ellie stopped trudging through the wet, deep snow and shook her foot. “I need new boots.”
“We’ll go into town. Roads should be clear by now.” Nothing Bloodyhood’s new plow couldn’t scrape off the driveway anyway.
I needed to check in with the elves and figure out some way to let them know about Titania. Maybe. On one hand, they should know, but on the other, with the concealments, “knowing” might end up being more panic than contemplation.
Unless I figured out how to permanently break the enchantments.
Ellie asked a continuous stream of questions about how best to outfit her and the cottage for a Minnesota winter. “I wonder if the cottage would allow solar panels?” She looked over her shoulder. “I’d like a laptop.” She gripped my arm as we moved around snow-heaped bushes. “And a regular camera. A DSLR. And a warmer jacket.” She hitched the strap of her backpack up her shoulder.
Mostly, though, all the little domestic desires and all the small changes felt needed, but not needed in a way that was being forced on me as a time-consuming to do list. She trusted me to pick out a camera, and to figure out how to wire her cottage to take solar panels.
Before any shopping, we needed to make sure Arne had taken care of Dag. She’d been injured when I left and was probably getting yet another cast on her wrist at the clinic right now. Then there was the question of the other elf, the one who’d helped me find Ellie. I couldn’t remember how he looked, beyond a strong sense of different. I couldn’t remember his name, either, even though I was sure he’d told me.
He’d helped the kids, too. Protected them, somehow. If only my brain would bother to remember.
Perhaps Ellie’s concealments were still messing with my head. Either way, my gut said to tread lightly with the unknown elf.
She squeezed my hand through our gloves. “I follow this path every time I go to your place. Now that the cottage has accepted you, you’ll be able to find your way back with no problems.”
There’d be issues, of course. Would the cottage let me bring a ladder down the path? The roof near the chimney needed a looking-at before we started thinking about solar panels. Could I bring Sal? Ed? No elves, obviously. Where was the actual edge of what the concealment enchantments would allow? And was there a way to make sure the cottage truly anchored here? I didn’t want to accidently scare it and cause a move.
The storm remnant still fritzing at Alfheim suddenly coiled down the sides of my neck, under my jacket, and to my chest. I’d been so focused on the all-in nature of fae magic that I hadn’t thought about the possibility that it might get miffed and do something passive-aggressive the first time I wasn’t able to spend the night.
Or fold me into the enchantments so all of Alfheim forgot me, too.
What was I getting myself into? I’d find out soon enough.
Ellie ran her hand over the trunk of one of the two big oaks that acted as a semi-gate between my property and the wooded area of the peninsula. “The other girl, Akeyla’s friend, Sophia, right?”
My phone chimed. We were far enough away from the cottage’s orbit I could check my messages. “Ed’s daughter.” I pulled out my phone.
“She’s touched.”
Which was pretty obvious from what happened when the kids showed up with Sal. “She remembered you. Jax didn’t. Akeyla, neither.”
Six messages, two from Arne, one from Maura, one from Remy, and two from Bjorn.
Ellie nodded. “It’s not a clean touch,” she said. “Not a direct descent from a hero kind-of-thing with one specific god. I swear there’s more than one kind of magic mingling in her blood. Like she’s an actual, honest-to-all-the-pantheons melting pot.”
All the kids were. The whole town was, even if no one here really thought about it, or cared. A lot of the mundanes would get mad, too, if you disparaged the purity of their Scandinavian heritage. Here, the elves were elves, the mundanes were good Norwegian Minnesotans, and kids these days were as confusing as the weather.
I held out my phone. “Looks like I should call in.”
Ellie nodded. “I need to take more photos,” she said.
My old backpack, the one with the stain on the pocket, had become Ellie’s favorite camera and portfolio carrying bag. I doubted she’d give it back. Not that I’d ask. Next she’d be stealing my t-shirts to wear as nightgowns. Which I wouldn’t mind. I’d never had a woman borrow my clothes before.
When I realized Ellie was watching me ponder losing my clothes, she smiled and squeezed my hand again.
A beam of sunlight pushed through the clouds and a snowflake caught the light. I instinctively turned toward the little glint, but it was gone before I could make sense
