Or knew things they should not.
Ranger looked at the sword in his hand. His mouth rounded.
He dropped the blade.
The hotheaded, exhausted part of Ed’s brain wanted to use the butt of his shotgun to beat Ranger into unconsciousness. To take care of the problem once and for all, even though he doubted he could do enough real damage to the kelpie to… what? Curb-stomp his brain into the sand? Incapacitate him? Haul him into a holding cell in Alfheim?
This wasn’t the same as the situation with the vampire. Ranger wasn’t actively attacking him. Nothing about Ed’s past mattered in relation to a kelpie who trafficked fae victims, except the victims part.
He shouldered the gun again. “On your knees. Hands on your head. Now!”
Ranger looked at Sophia. “I hope ye survive this, young one.”
White magical fire flared out from the sides of Ranger’s eyes like he was some cartoon character. Blistering white light, as if the brightness itself would cause wounds and welts.
And then it was gone and his eyes were back to their ice green.
Wrenn knocked him to the ground and dropped her full body weight onto his back, pinning his hips and arms. “The bridle,” she said. “On his neck. Get it off.”
Ed remembered something about kelpies and their bridles. He pulled out his pocketknife and flipped open the blade.
“Dinnae cut it!” Ranger wailed. “Please. Dinnae.”
Ed looked at the knots and braids as they wove themselves through the multiple silver rings. “What do I do?” he asked.
“I will find that fine wife of yours,” Ranger growled through a thickening accent. “I cannot help myself. I am a kelpie.”
A wrong accent. He sounded somewhere between Latin and Spanish.
The next string of words was not Scottish, or any Spanish Ed understood, though he knew the kelpie spoke Spanish. He picked out words that sounded very much like life and church.
The white fire around Ranger’s eyes reappeared.
“What the hell?” Ed’s instincts were to get away from the kelpie. To move back as far as possible. To not breathe the same air.
He cut off the bridle and yanked it out from around Ranger’s neck.
The kelpie immediately calmed down. The white vanished. Ranger coughed and inhaled sharply. “I must do as ye order, lawman,” he whispered. “Ye have my bridle.”
A thought manifested in Ed’s head. A terrible thought, one he would never admit to anyone. One that came out because of his exhaustion, and his hotheadedness.
Tell him to kill himself, he thought. Sweep away the problem, out of his thoughts and out of his life. To be judge, jury, and executioner as if he were as much an aspect of a god as his employers.
If it had been just them out here on this beach, he would have. But Wrenn would take Ranger back to where some of those victims might see a tiny bit of justice. And Ed heard shuffling behind them.
“We will take the bridle,” Sophia said.
Wrenn put out her hand. “Are you sure you want to keep a kelpie’s bridle? You’ll have him under control, but not his brothers.”
“We’re a syndicate, ye ken,” Ranger said.
Sophia stared Wrenn dead in the eye, her almost-ten-year-old face stern and her lips set. “Gabe, put the bridle in your pocket. Please, Papa. It needs to come home with us.”
She wanted Ed to give it to her brother. “Can you tell us why, honey?” he asked gently.
She pointed at Ranger and shook her head. “This is the oracle’s boon to you,” she said.
She knew exactly what she was saying, and why, and for whom. Of this Ed was sure. He handed the bridle to Gabe, who stuffed it into his pocket.
“Looks like my daughter wants the Alfheim Sheriff’s Department to be in charge of your life, Ranger.” He stood and backed away with his kids.
Sophia blinked. She inhaled. Then she hugged his waist. “Papa!” She hiccupped as if this were the first time during the entire ordeal she’d allowed herself to be afraid. “I don’t like Texas. I want to go home to Minnesota.”
He did, too. To his wife. To their new baby. To his annoying job he liked and to the annoying locals he mostly liked, except for the many random mouthy Brad Andersons. To the good schools and the clean air.
And the traffic accidents that always banged up expensive cars but never did hurt drivers beyond a bruise or two.
It was a cage, yes, but Ed was pretty sure the door was unlocked.
He still needed to figure out how dangerous the outside world was.
Now to get them home. “Sweetie,” he knelt down to give her a hug, “we’ll go home.”
Wrenn pulled Ranger to his feet. “Back to the station,” she said. “You pay the toll this time.”
He chuckled.
“Answer Wrenn Goodfellow’s questions thoroughly and truthfully,” Ed called. “And do as she says. Don’t cause more problems or inflame the ones you’ve caused already.”
Ranger stuck out his tongue.
Sophia stuck her tongue right back at him.
“I’m gonnae miss ye, my lovely Ne’er-the-oracle.”
She gave him the finger.
“Sophia!” Ed said. “Young lady!”
She shrugged. “Kelpies are evil, Papa.”
Wrenn pushed him into the brush. “I suggest leaving that sword right where it is. Let the elves deal with it.”
He had no intension of touching the blade. Not now. Not ever.
Gabe, though, seemed quite fascinated. “Leave it alone, son,” Ed called.
His boy looked up. “It’s glowing.”
He said it so nonchalantly that the words didn’t immediately register with Ed … sort of like the enchanted sword was supposed to glow, because that’s what they did, and it not glowing would have been the anomaly.
Except they were mundanes, and they didn’t see glowy magic, nor did they feel it. So it should have been just a sword lying in the sand.
A not-glowing sword.
“Gabe!” Ed ran for his son. “Get away from the—”
He ran headfirst into a strange woman wearing an antlered helmet.
Chapter 26
Wrenn knew immediately who had stepped out of one of the many veils
