I had to catch him first.
We chased him through an open field, hopping row after row of harvested hay and chasing him around the big round bales. He vanished behind a bale.
Salvation and Bloodyhoof somehow compensated—the visible magic around us shifted—and the kelpie reappeared farther up, out from behind another bale.
The field also changed every time the magic shifted. We moved from the fields near Magnus’s farm to land that reminded me more of the fields that butted up against Alfheim proper. Same drop. Same bales of hay. Yet we were getting closer and closer to the lake and the cottage.
Close enough that we’d hit the fence at the edge of the property in no less than ten gallops.
The kelpie looked over his shoulder. He threw me a rude Scottish gesture. And he ran directly into the fence.
It exploded.
Inward first, then as a peeling back outward roll of wood and nails and snow. It exploded and ceased, or opened, and I knew exactly what was on the other side.
Chapter 20
Bloodyhoof did not pause. His gait did not falter. Salvation gave him a burst of brilliant horse confidence and he leaped through the hole with me on his back.
His front legs came down on the gravel behind the glass and chrome monstrosity that was the Carlsons’ house. We immediately skidded on the rocks, slowing as fast as the stallion could, so we didn’t smack full into the building’s side.
We were across the lake from my cabin, on the gravel drive that looped around my lawyer neighbor’s too-expensive vacation home.
Magnus’s magic-sensing enhancement had stayed in the veil. We were back to real world navigating by horse sense and my normal ability to see magic.
It’d have to do.
Aaron Carlson stood next to his BMW, a suitcase by his side and his mouth agape. His wife stood in the door of the house, face white as a sheet as if she was about to throw up.
They must have come up from The Cities for a long weekend and were unpacking their car.
Aaron pointed at the lake. “A man in a kilt hopped the fence and dove into the water.” He, thankfully, knew about the magicals of Alfheim.
I reined Bloodyhoof around. We were on the opposite side of the lake from the cottage’s peninsula.
The kelpie had a straight shot through the water. We did not.
“Aaron!” I said. “Call Bjorn Thorsson at Raven’s Gaze. Tell him I’m chasing a kelpie.” I reined Bloodyhoof toward the road. It’d be faster than going along the shore.
“Kelpie? Damn.” He pulled his phone out his pocket. “Claire! You and the girls stay away from the shore.” He waved me off. “Go.”
Sal wanted me to know that she liked this mundane man, though she could do without his terrified wife. Terrified wives were not warriors.
“Please stop,” I muttered to my axe. “Ha!” I called and took Bloodyhoof up the driveway to the road. Thankfully the plows had come through, and the stallion quickly returned to a gallop.
I had no idea if we’d get there in time, or if the cottage had a way to ward off the kelpie. But we had to try.
We made the peninsula quickly and Bloodyhoof slowed to thread his way between the trees. We passed the red oak where the dryads had first appeared, then the leaning cedar. Each showed their normal level of natural magic. No signs of extra fae-borne contamination.
We broke through the trees into the space in front of the small fence surrounding Ellie’s cottage.
Her home was still here. Still solid with no telltale extra magical energy signaling that it was about to move. We’d made it in time.
So had the kelpie.
He sat on the fence next to the gate, legs spread wide and knocking the heels of his boots against the fence post with a rhythmic thump thump.
He sniffed. “There ye are,” he said in his otherwise lovely Scottish accent. “Here I thought I’d have to do this all by mah lonesome.”
He held out his hand to call Bloodyhoof. The stallion ignored him.
We should kill him now, Sal pushed into my head. Kelpies were a level of danger that could not be left unchecked.
The kelpie frowned. “Gie off th’ horse, ye ugly doughnut of a monster. Face me like a man.”
Riding Bloodyhoof gave me an advantage. “Leave before I snap your neck,” I said.
He laughed. “Oh, ye pathetic animated pile o’ corpse dung.” He slapped his chest. “She’s gonnae give me mah bridle, d’ye understand? She stole mah property, an’ she’s gonnae pay.” His face cinched up and he sniffed at the air. “I smell it clear as day, her protection enchantments be damned.”
Was he following the bridle or Ellie? I couldn’t parse how much of what he said was bluster from how well he could sense Ellie through the concealments.
“They all pay, the lasses,” he said. “Dumb little fillies, aye? Come too close, they do, and th’ loch, it calls me.” He slapped his chest again. “Someone’s got tae teach th’ lessons.”
I could offer to broker the bridle in exchange for him leaving, but I didn’t think he’d go without inflicting some evil. They all pay, after all. If it wasn’t Ellie, it’d be Aaron’s wife and daughters. Or Akeyla. Or Sophia. He’d find at least one lass to harm before he made his way back to his homeland.
One cannot reason with a kelpie, Sal pushed.
“Oh, look at ye! Big mean paladin. Thinkin’ about how to save th’ world, are ye? Good on ye.” He slapped his knee. “Is that lady of an axe talkin’ to ye?” He slapped his knee again. “O’ course she is.” He shook his head.
“Every elf in Alfheim knew the moment you touched one of their lakes,” I said.
He threw his arms wide. “An’ yet not one of your wankpuffin mates has come to help ye or your lovely lass, my dear walkin’ mound o’ goblin excrement.” He closed one eye and pretended to peer at me as if reading
