It wasn’t a method the elves used. Norse practicality dictated a sincerity to the elves’ lives that made trickery and theatrics distasteful.
The magic swirling around my big red oak obscured and obfuscated. It put on airs and it puffed up.
Like a trickster.
The thought hit me in the same way that I knew what they wanted me to know. It hit like Sal. It smacked me upside the head as if the universe wanted me to pay attention. Trickster broadsided me like a truck and I wanted to yank Ellie against my chest as if to protect her from an incoming hit.
She was too far away. “What do you know?” I yelled at the two dryads as if threatening two fae would be enough to stop whatever was coming for us.
They looked to the side, as if someone or something in the trees had caught their attention. Then they looked at each other.
Reality blinked. They vanished.
Ellie exhaled as if she’d been holding her breath. “What happened?”
“Tricksters,” I muttered. I immediately returned to her side. “They tossed out trickster the same way they tossed out all their poetry.”
I scanned the trees looking for any telltale signs of abnormal magic. Nothing. No fae. No elves or wolves or tricksters. Only that word nagging at the inside of my skull.
I’d had my fill of lies and illusions. Of threats. Of powers dark and light deciding I was nothing more than a toy in their grand playpen. Of parents, All- or Royal or hubris-laden, so bound by their own fears that they paid no heed to the reality they manufactured. “Leave Ellie alone,” I rumbled. Leave me alone.
Let us live.
“Frank…” Ellie rubbed my hand. “You’re clenching your fists.”
“What?” I looked down at my hand just as I became aware of how deeply into my palm I was digging my fingers.
Not again, I thought. It was an amorphous not again, a blob of response formed from the many layers of gummy regrets left behind by so much of my life. Some of those layers had been caused by low-demons. Some by witchly interference. But not all of them.
“Hey hey hey…” Ellie cupped my cheeks. “You haven’t dealt with fae before? Other than me?”
Only the aftermath of a fae angry about the World Scars caused by the Civil War.
I shook my head.
“Okay.” She quickly kissed my lips. “Okay.” She pulled her backpack around again. “Those well-versed in fae spellwork leave a wake that can… stir a soul… when they return to their home realms.” She squeezed my hand. “They must have been well-versed.”
I nodded.
She set her bag on the tops of her feet. “We need to figure out who sent them.”
I nodded again.
“Hey.” She put her hand on the side of my neck. “Your heart is racing.”
It was. I inhaled deeply as I attempted to calm myself.
“No fae showed up when Chihiro got through my concealments.”
This still might be my interactions with her cottage. We didn’t know. Whatever it was about, it definitely affected me.
Ellie stopped digging in her bag long enough to give me a quick hug. She didn’t say anything else, but she watched me closely as if trying to figure out if I was okay. “Do you still feel strange? Is it coming from any particular direction?” She pulled out her camera and held it up as if to ask what she should photograph first.
No admonishments for my moment of overreacting. No shrinking away in fear. She trusted me to get through this.
I love this woman, I thought, as if I hadn’t fully accepted the possibility until now.
“Now that they’re gone, I’m taking pictures,” she said.
The fae better not mess up the best thing that ever happened to me. I nodded again, whipped out my phone, and dialed the one elf who might have answers.
Chapter 8
We found Marcus Aurelius waiting by the patio door. He cowered a little as if the two dryads had frightened him, and leaned against the glass.
No one was home to let him in. I rubbed his head again and tried calling Arne one more time.
He didn’t answer. I left him a message not unlike the two he’d left me—please call as soon as possible. Maura hadn’t answered, either. Nor had Bjorn. I left multiple messages. “Odd,” I said, and tucked away my phone.
Ellie stomped her feet and followed my dog through the door. She’d taken six photos, and had tucked the plates into her portfolio to await developing back at the cottage.
Neither of us expected much of the images. The two dryads left no residual magic I could see, and Ellie felt nothing. But still, we needed to try.
“Hello?” I called, just in case. Maura not being home was strange, since Akeyla should be arriving home from school about now.
Ellie rummaged through the mail and papers on the kitchen table. “A note.” She held up a bright pink piece of paper. “They’re going straight to the hospital after school.” She paused. “You’re supposed to call Arne.”
Which I already knew. “Hospital?” I took the paper and there, along the bottom in Maura’s elegant hand, was Mom needed to stay overnight.
“How bad were her injuries?” Ellie asked.
I stared at the words. “She told me to leave,” I said. “She hid how badly she’d been hurt.” Why would I have expected The Elf Queen of Alfheim to show me her real pain?
If I’d known, I would have carried Dag out, too.
Ellie gripped my arm. “You got Axlam to safety. You did as Queen Dagrun asked.”
But I didn’t go back. I might have saved Dag some of the severity of her injuries. But if I had, I wouldn’t be standing here fully aware of my history with Ellie. I wouldn’t have spent the night. And I wondered if we would have gotten a dryad visitation if I’d helped the woman I considered my mother instead of finding the woman I loved.
Ellie walked around the table and touched my hand so I’d put down the note.
