We did. I did. But I likely would have gone back for Dag. I glanced at Ellie. This time, she squeezed my thigh. “I’ll meet you at the hospital,” I said. We could check on Dag.
“No,” Arne snapped. He sighed again. “Not if you’re a fae magnet, son. Best let Dagrun rest.”
She’d be pulling IVs from her arm and yelling “I’m fine!” at the nurses if she got wind of yet another threat wafting into Alfheim.
“If you wish,” I said.
“I need to rouse Magnus from his jetlag anyway. Meet me at his farm and I’ll have him help you with this fae issue.”
“Magnus is back from New Zealand?” I asked.
Arne hung up without answering.
“Magnus flew in during the blizzard?” Ellie asked.
Not that a blizzard would hamper our elder Freyr elf.
Ellie ran her fingers over her camera. “I’ll stay in the truck when we get to his farm,” she said, “so as not to interfere with the elves.” She tapped the cantaloupe-sized piece of wood on her lap. “We’ll need to go home so I can develop the plates I exposed.”
She looked up at me expectantly.
I’d assumed me staying was now the default. But thinking about it—actually considering where I was going to sleep tonight—felt… nice. We were in the middle of a developing crisis and here I was calmer than I had any right to be because my brand-new relationship made me euphoric.
Ellie smiled. She leaned over the gearshift. “Thank you for figuring out how to get through the enchantments,” she said.
I had no doubts about us. I’d found something worth fighting for. I would fight for it, too. Apprehension, though, continued to knock at the back of my brain. Apprehension that those two fae had sniffed her out, no matter how well her mother cast her enchantments.
I grinned anyway. “Do I get a drawer in the bathroom?”
She poked my thigh this time. “You know the cottage already added space for you next to the sink.”
It had. I smiled.
But something was going to happen. Something always did. We were likely about to roll down Alfheim’s roads toward that happening the moment I pulled the truck out of the driveway.
I had no idea how to stop it, or see it coming, or whether there’d be damage. Maybe the price of being all-in with fae magic would end up being too high. Maybe it’d be another outsider, like St. Martin, or the wolf magic that had masqueraded as St. Martin’s “genie.” I’d already run into a powerful Wolf that didn’t like me. Why not two? I wasn’t lucky enough in love or life for such damages to pass me on by.
If Ellie had seen anything coming in her photos, she would have said. I started up the truck, wondering if I was just being paranoid.
“You make me happy,” Ellie said in a low, husky voice. She wiggled again. “So very happy.”
My girlfriend was wiggling suggestively in the passenger seat of my truck.
Something else new and nice, even if it did sidetrack my poor, awestruck brain. “Beautiful, you are one distracting woman,” I said as I started the truck.
A pop of annoyance rolled from Sal, followed by a declaration that she was sure I’d been enthralled by the so-called helpful fae magic.
I groaned and pulled out onto the road.
“What?” Ellie asked.
“My jealous axe.”
Ellie chuckled. “You and I are going to be the best of friends, Salvation!” She nodded toward Sal’s handle. “Just wait. It’s going to be you and me against the world. And who better to train me in hand-to-hand?”
Sif the Golden would be better for training Ellie in any martial arts. Or either of our mothers.
Family, I thought, and drove us toward town.
Chapter 9
Shortly after Ed and his family moved to Alfheim, when they were first getting used to winters with snow, he’d told me how surprised he’d been at the speed with which the Minnesota Department of Transportation cleared the roads. The kids had expected snow days every other Tuesday. He’d expected chains on tires and blizzard conditions solid from the Winter Solstice to the Spring Equinox.
He was about a century too late for that. Winter life in modern Minnesota was more about keeping your wiper blades in good condition and making sure your boots were waterproof. Plus every year, a day or two after Samhain, Arne went out to the Alfheim County MnDOT Maintenance and Operations Depot and charmed all the plows.
He clearly hadn’t done so yet this year.
The road from my place to Magnus’s stables was close to impassable. As the sun moved into late afternoon and the temperature began its slow slide into nighttime chill, what had been snow was now crusty slush on its way to becoming ice. Bloodyhood handled it well, but Ellie did not.
The road curved. Bloodyhood’s back end continued on in the direction we had been going while its front end compensated by going a little too far in the opposite direction.
These things happen when driving on ice. Bloodyhood is big, heavy, and brand-new, so it was just a little fishtail. I easily drove through it. Nothing to worry about.
Ellie sat ramrod-straight in her seat and white-knuckle-gripped the door. A little yip escaped her lips.
I was beginning to suspect that this was the first time her cottage had moved her into extreme winter conditions. Not that Minnesota had more than a few storms’ worth of extreme conditions every year. “I’ll teach you how to control a slide like that,” I said.
Bloodyhood bounced along over the crackling ice, which did nothing to settle nerves or stomachs. Ellie stared out the windows, still gripping the door, with the yellow hat pushed up on her forehead so that the pompom brushed the headrest every time we hit a particularly deep rut in the ice.
“Foot off the accelerator. Eyes straight ahead. Don’t overcorrect,” I said. “We’ll practice in a parking lot. It’ll be fun.”
She tossed me a you cannot be serious look.
Sal wanted me
