by Hazel Hunter
Colm Longacre came to stand beside him. “In town there are wenches more than willing to help a man forget his worries.”
Jannon gave him a sour look. “How would you know?”
“Ah, you remind me.” Colm nodded. “I’m not a man, but a nosy, gelded, sodding ponce of a winge. Still, you’re not, so I wager you’d manage.”
Dimly Jannon recalled hurling those insults at Colm during his last wallowing, and felt regret grind salt in his wounds. “’Twas the snowine speaking.”
“Aye.” Firelight burnished Colm’s copper eyes to a dark gold. “This lass. She’s lovely, and helpless, and everything that stirs a man’s heart. Changelings are made to be so, Jan. Beneath all that pretty hair, behind those haunted eyes, there’s darkness waiting. It will bide its time, but when it’s ready…”
“…it will eat her soul alive,” Jannon finished for him. He wanted to pummel Colm, but all the man did was offer the truth. “My clan once took in a changeling. He’d been left in the hills to die by a mortal family too frightened to keep him. Tristan, they called him. He was only a wee lad when we brought him into the clan.”
“Changelings are spelled to be beguiling,” Colm said carefully. “But your family must have known he would turn.”
“Aye, and when my father and I caught him tormenting one of our hounds with his fire magick, he smiled so sweetly at us. As if he were only playing. He was almost too small for the chains.” He rubbed his eyes. “My father wanted him done, but my mother loved him, and slipped into the cave that night to release him. All she found were his charred clothes, filled with his ashes.”
“Tara Rowe is likely worse,” Colm said. “She’s wanted by the Blackstones, brother, and all they covet is power.”
“Aye, so it seems.” Jannon saw how he was looking at him. “Only know that I am not my mother.”
Colm nodded, clapped him on the shoulder and retreated to talk to some of the other men. Jannon left the fire and walked to the lodge, where he planned to spend the rest of the night drinking himself unconscious. Once inside he passed the hall leading to the Rowe sisters’ room, he paused, and then forced himself to keep moving.
Jannon wondered if there was enough snowine in the world to keep him from thinking about Tara. With every step he felt her presence more keenly. When he stopped at his door he could swear that he even smelled the delicate fragrance of her pale skin and moonlit hair. Suspicion made him glance up and down the hall. Light spilled from an open door at the end—an unused room. He stepped silently to stand in its opening. There seemed to be a bundle of velvet on the bed. But it turned, revealing a narrow face and a tendril of pale hair.
Despair and elation dueled in his chest. Had she come looking for him? Hadn’t she reached for him at the lake, and smiled at him by the bonfire?
He should wake her and send her back to her sister. He knew he should. And yet when had logic ever ruled his heart? Tara was so close. Quietly he stripped off his shirt and pulled off his boots, but left his trousers on as he approached the bed. She stirred as he drew near, her pretty lips parting on a sigh as he stretched out next to her. He thought she might wake as her silvery lashes fluttered for a moment, but she only sidled up against him. Jannon moved his arm around her, and the sound she made as her cheek nestled on his shoulder made him close his own eyes. For all the trouble Tara Rowe might be, a changeling poised on the path between the light and the dark, she felt as weightless and warm as a sunbeam.
During the few hours that followed Jannon did not sleep. He listened to her breathe, and thought of home and all that he had lost after being cast out. He had deserved nothing less for what he had done to his wife and her lover.
Bryn had been his greatest love, and his cruelest mistake. The daughter of a neighboring clan leader, she’d tantalized him from the moment they’d met. So ensnared by her was Jannon that he refused to believe the whispers about her. When his parents had tried to withhold their blessing, he’d even threaten to end himself. Bringing her into the clan as his bride had been the happiest day of his life.
Jannon’s clan wondered why he had been so blinded by Bryn’s wiles. Surely with all her flirtations, secretive glances, and disappearances he should have suspected something. But no, he had thought her a good and faithful wife. When he’d gone off to battle a rival clan, however, he’d been spell-wounded early, and sent home to recover. Jannon had found Bryn in their bed, slumbering naked in the arms of one of her many lovers. A moment later his power escaped him in one great, seething burst of rage, killing Bryn and her lover. It had left Jannon close to death for days.
Such a crime called for Jannon’s life in return, but on the day slated for his execution Bryn’s clan had come forward to reveal her power over men. The seductive enchantment she had used to control Jannon had been absolute until the battle, when the enemy had torn his body shields from him. That had also damaged Bryn’s secret enthrallment spell. Once confronted with her true nature, the enchantment had backlashed on Jannon, resulting in his lethal reaction. For that his life was spared, but he was cast out of his clan and forbidden to ever join another.
With his shattered heart Jannon had not cared about his fate after that. He no longer needed kin, or believed in love. He would likely be dead now if Ryan Sheridan had not found him drinking and fighting his way across Ireland. The master of Forever Faire had challenged Jannon to a contest of skills for an enchanted purse of gold against a hundred years of service. Knowing any manner of violence would bestir Sheridan to go berserk, Jannon had agreed, even allowing his opponent to choose the weapons and the field of play.
The game of chess that followed had been mercifully short. Ryan had trounced him in ten moves.
Once he had served his century of service, Jannon might have gone back to his pursuit of death by pub brawling. By then Ryan and the other men of Forever Faire had made themselves his brothers, so he stayed. There had been mortal females—too many, for he had always been reckless—but none of them had once touched his heart.
Yet somehow this slender thread of a lass had, the moment he’d looked into her ghost-gray eyes.
Jannon watched her sleep, and made himself remember Tristan, and the sly look he sometimes glimpsed in the boy’s bright eyes. Yet until the day they had taken him away in chains, he had been the best of brothers. Jannon might have saved him, if he’d known Tristan had been struggling against the dark path. The same could be said of Bryn, and her sad inability to honestly win the heart of any man.
And now Tara. Was she to walk Tristan’s path? Had she enchanted him, like Bryn? Or was she worse than either of them?
Finally Jannon rose, got dressed, and lifted Tara into his arms. She murmured something but remained asleep as he carried her out of his rooms and through the lodge. Kayla opened the door at his soft knock, looking as if she had searched the grounds, which she likely had. When she began to speak Jannon shook his head and carried Tara over to her bed, where he put her down and covered her with an old, soft quilt.
Kayla followed him out into the hall, and closed the door.
“Has she been with you all this time?” she demanded.
“She has.” He saw the fury blaze in her eyes, and added, “I found her in the men’s quarters. I let her sleep there, and that is all. She needs rest, and care, and kindness now.”
Kayla strode away from him, turned around and came back.
“Look, I appreciate you being nice to my sister, especially when everyone else around here is treating her like a disease. But Tara really is just a teenager. You need to leave her alone.”
“I do.” Jannon glanced at the door. “Yet I fear I cannot.” He looked down at the little mortal’s irate face. “Keep her close, Rowe. Keep her away from me.”
Chapter 4
IN THE MORNING, Kayla wanted to shake Tara awake so she could demand answers about her behavior. But the bruise-dark crescents under her sister’s eyes made her leave the room instead. Jannon was right. She did need rest. Nor was Kayla
in the mood to hang with the crew at their communal breakfast. None of them had any idea of exactly who was running the faire. On her way out she stopped long enough to grab some apples from the dining room before she headed to the barn.
The head of almost every horse under the roof appeared over the stall doors as Kayla came in and latched the door.
“Yes, I know I’m late,” she told them as she hung up her jacket and tucked the extra apples in the pockets before she took a bite of one. Once she swallowed, she said, “My sister is driving me crazy. The guy I just fell for turns out to be a complete jerk. Then there’s the magical asshole biker gang.” She shook the bitten apple at the horses. “Don’t even get me started on them.”
She didn’t see Titan’s big, noble head at his stall, and went over to peer inside. The enormous white stallion stood with his nose in a corner and his hindquarters facing her, his long golden tail drooping.
“So it’s talk to the butt day? I don’t think so.”
Kayla took down a coil of rope and unlatched the door. Standing just inside, she slapped the bundle of rope against her leg. Titan swung his head around to glare at her.
“I can make the kissy sound if you want,” she told him, measuring out a two-foot length between her hands. “Or we can go straight to an ass tap. Your choice, pal.”
The big stallion made a rude sound, but grudgingly turned to face her, his big eyes meeting hers.
She knew exactly what he was thinking. “Yeah, yeah. I’m being a whiny bitch, and Ryan’s still your guy. Peace offering.” She held out the rest of her apple, which Titan delicately retrieved from her hand. “If only a nice snack would solve all my problems.”
“Hey, Rowe,” a woman called out. “You in here?”
Kayla stepped out of the stall and latched the door before walking over to the raven-haired girl who had come into the barn. Christine Marszalek hadn’t yet changed into the peasant girl costume that she wore while running the faire’s hatchet-throw game. Instead she wore snug black jeans and an ivory sweater that loved her curves. She’d rolled up the sleeves to show off her colorfully tattooed arms, and while Kayla never much cared for body ink, Christine’s looked gorgeous.
“Hey,” Kayla said. She had liked the former stripper from the moment they’d met. “What’s up?”
“Serious shit, girlfriend.” Christine shut the barn door behind her. She had the kind of green eyes that invoked oceans and emeralds, and not even her liberal use of black eyeliner and smoky shadow could dim their beauty. “I heard Colm talking to one of the other guys. He said something about you and your sister having a tussle with someone named Blackstone.” Her soft Tennessee drawl turned chilly as she asked, “This guy, is he big and ugly, and running around with a biker gang?”
“Yes.” Even talking about them made Kayla’s chest tighten. “They’ve been hassling me and Tara for a while now.”
“Okay.” Christine seemed almost relieved. “So they probably don’t know about me working here.”
Kayla didn’t bother to hide her surprise. “You know them?”
“Not personally, girl. They took over the strip club where I was working before I hired on here.” Christine’s hands fisted at her sides as she told Kayla about the Blackstones’ invasion. “I got away, but Fred and all the other dancers are still trapped there. The bikers might know about my thing, too.”
Kayla frowned. “What thing?”
“It’s better if I show you.” Christine glanced around before she reached down and picked up a pebble. “Just trust me, and don’t move an inch for the next ten seconds, okay?” When Kayla nodded she took a deep breath, and hurled the stone at her face.
Kayla felt a little puff of air against her cheek as the rock whizzed by and hit something metallic behind her. A pitchfork in front of her suddenly fell from its hook. The tool’s handle hit Kayla’s jacket on the way down, knocking one of the apples out of the pocket. The apple bounced between her and Christine, who bent to catch it in her hand.
“Ta-da.” She straightened and held out the fruit. “What do you think?”
“Very neat trick.” Kayla stared at the apple. “So can you put it back, too?” She watched Christine eye her jacket, and then gasped as the woman tossed the apple, which sank neatly into the pocket. “All right, how did you do that?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve been able to do it since I was a kid. Maybe my folks were circus people or something.” She saw Kayla’s expression and grimaced. “I don’t know who they are. I grew up in foster care.”
Kayla suspected the other woman’s gift of precision had something to do with the Fae, but if she told her that Christine would probably think she’d lost her mind. “Did the Blackstones see you do your…thing?”
“Maybe. I used it to get away from them.” Christine went over and perched on a work stool. “These guys, they’ve got some kind of weird powers that let them take over people’s minds. I’m the only one it didn’t work on. The big, nasty one that runs the gang, he’s also got the other girls on drugs, and he’s using them like whores for his boys. I can’t go to the cops—these guys’ll just take them over, too, but I’ve gotta do something.”
“For now, you need to stay here at the faire. The Blackstones can’t, ah, get past our guys.” Kayla hung up her rope as she tried to think of what to tell her friend. “You should talk to Colm, too. Tell him all about it. You can trust him.”
“Yeah, I know he’s a good guy.” She stretched and sighed. “I only wish I knew what he looked like naked.”
Kayla smothered a chuckle. “I don’t think he’s really…available.”
Christine grinned wanly. “I got that message, too. He’s nice and all, but the minute I flirt with him all those big old ‘No Trespassing’ signs go up. I don’t know what his last gal did to him, but it sure put him in a cast-iron chastity belt.”
Telling her friend that Colm’s last gal had been the Fae Queen also wasn’t an option. “Maybe he’ll bust out of it one day.”
Christine laughed. “Yeah, that would be something. Maybe I’ll talk to Louisa and see if she’ll come out here. She reads the tarot, and she’s always been right about everything she’s told me.”
Kayla swallowed a chuckle. “I’d never guess you were one for fortune-tellers.”
“Me, either, until one of the dancers at the club took me with her when she went for a reading, and had her do one for me. That woman turned over three cards, and saw things about me that I’d never told a soul. Last time I went she said I’d be leaving my job in a hurry, which turned out to be true.” Christine’s expression grew thoughtful. “I could ask her to do a spread for you and Tara. She’s way good.”
Before coming to Forever Faire Kayla would have scoffed at such a suggestion, but now that she knew about the Fae she couldn’t dismiss anything even the least bit paranormal. “Sure. I’ll take all the help I can get.”
After Christine left, Kayla saw Titan and all the other horses were eyeing her. “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t spill any beans.”
Sampson whinnied, setting off the other horses, while Titan shook his head, making his golden mane shimmy.
“Be nice to me,” she told them as she walked back to the big bins that stored the feed. “I may not be able to make a pebble defy the law of physics, but I am in charge of your breakfast.”
Chapter 5
“WE’VE HAD SOME requests for the feast,” Lawrence Sharpe said, stroking his white beard. “It seems the mortals would like more modern fare for the visitors.”
In Lawrence’s little red cottage, Ryan Sheridan sorted through the menus and sketches in his hands without really seeing them. Disguising his clan of outcast Fae warriors as performers in a traveling Renaissance Faire required him to stage regular events for their mortal visitors, such as Forever Faire’s Winter Feast. With all the tourists coming to town for the holidays they could expect a large crowd, which usually cheered him. This year, however, he had a changeling on the faire grounds, the
Dark Fae lurking just outside the gates, and a lovely, stubborn mortal woman fully capable of driving him mad in the center of it all.
Kayla Rowe.
“The food stall vendors also ask that we not choose foods that must be fried,” the older man added, peering at the list in his big, work-worn hands. “It seems there are issues with the power needed for the deep fryers.”
Even now Kayla was somewhere on the faire grounds, working with the horses, smiling at other mortals, safe under his protection from the Blackstone clan. He had been fool enough to make her his lover, and he felt sure she still silently seethed with all that bright, hot emotion they had shared along with their bodies.
Ryan heard a tearing sound, and looked down to see he had ripped the papers in half.
“My liege, perhaps you could look upon the plans for the feast another time,” Lawrence said, his tone a bit strained. The short, bald old half-Fae gave his snowy beard several unconscious, nervous tugs as he added, “I’d be happy to discuss the matters tomorrow.”
“Calm yourself, before you pluck your chin to match your pate.” Ryan tossed the ruined papers on the desk between them. “Forgive me, but I am much preoccupied at the moment. Colm has told you of the Blackstones, and the changeling?”
“Yes—aye,” the old man corrected himself. “Forgive me, my liege. When one has only mortals to speak to day in and out, one begins to sound like them. If I may ask, why do you keep the Rowe girl here, when you know she is a cursed changeling? I thought such creatures always turn to the dark.”
Ryan suspected the rest of his men shared Lawrence’s concerns, but none of them had spoken a word. He felt a grudging admiration for the halfling’s mortal directness.
