Faerie Rising: The First Book of Binding (The Books of Binding 1)

by A. E. Lowan

  The girl, plainly ignoring her, dug into her back pocket and pulled out a plastic card. “Here.”

  “What?” The woman took the card, looked puzzled a moment, and then handed it back to the girl. “Please put that back in my wallet and put the punch card in the register.”

  Jessie nodded, moving to obey as the woman turned to face them. She seemed to try to focus on them, but she flickered her light blue eyes back and forth to the box and back to them. Without being asked the girl fished in the box and pulled out a large cup which she held out to the woman. Etienne noticed how the woman’s hand trembled delicately as she took it and he glanced to Cian beside him, who watched her hand with concern. He looked back at the sidhe woman. “Please excuse our intrusion, Mistress, but we seek Arthur Reynolds. Do you know of him?”

  The woman looked confused for a moment, her gaze moving from him to Cian and back again. The girl looked to her employer and whispered, “That was so cool! What was it?”

  The woman’s eyes widened with understanding and she shook her head. “I’m sorry. I never learned Faerie Gaelic. Do you speak English?” She spoke slowly to make her words easily understood, her voice low and melodic. Etienne liked it.

  “Oh, he speaks English just fine,” Jessie interjected.

  The woman turned to the girl with a raised eyebrow and the girl flushed. She then turned back to face Etienne. “I’m sorry about that.”

  Etienne gave his head a little shake. “Please, I’m the one who should apologize for assuming. You just look so much like one of our kind.”

  The woman gave a small smile. It did not reach her eyes. What was making her so sad? “I do, I suppose. I favor my mother. She was a sidhe mix.”

  “A what?” Jessie cut in. “I thought you said she was fae.”

  The women turned to the girl, glanced back at Etienne and Cian, and then replied, “She was. The sidhe are greater fae, though from what I have been told they do not like to admit it. They consider themselves above all other fae.” She gave Etienne and Cian an apologetic look.

  Etienne waved it off. “Don’t worry about me. I think they could use being taken down a peg or two.” He just wanted her to keep talking. Lovely voice. But – he glanced at Cian, who continued to look a little concerned – was she sick? Her hand still trembled on the cup.

  “I still don’t get it. She’s a she? So… she’s a woman, right?” Jessie looked from Etienne to the sidhe woman. “Dude, it’s the twenty-first century. If she wants to use female pronouns, that’s her right.”

  Etienne blinked. Was the girl talking about him?

  The woman’s blue eyes widened in annoyance and she shook her head and reached for a pen and paper, murmuring, “I could have sworn you’d have picked this up from somewhere by now.” She began writing, and in a louder voice said, “Using your proper pronouns is fine, but that’s not what we mean. Not ‘she’ like this. ‘Sidhe’ like this, Irish Gaelic for the Shining Ones, the Fair Folk.”

  Etienne frowned as understanding dawned. “I’m a faerie knight. A male one.” English was a stupid language.

  “Oh!” Jessie said, brows raised. Her cheeks flushed, but she plowed ahead. “Well, then… we all pick our identities. If you want to call yourself a fairy, that’s also your right.”

  The woman covered her face with her hands. “No… no. Jessie, no…”

  The girl erupted in giggles. “I can’t take it anymore. That one was too good to pass up!”

  The woman looked thoroughly exasperated. “For pity’s sake! Go in the back and organize something – right now.”

  The girl tried to hold back a chuckle, snorted as it escaped, and gave her employer a salute before disappearing behind the curtain carried on a current of laughter. The beads did nothing to dampen the sound.

  The woman turned back, cheeks bright pink to her ears. “I am so sorry. She’s been acting like a teenager all morning.”

  Etienne looked away from the curtain and back to the woman. He had no idea what the girl was laughing at or why she should find it so funny. “Don’t worry about it.” He motioned to Cian at his side. “This one’s started rolling his eyes at me.”

  Cian looked affronted and rolled his eyes.

  “See? There he goes again.”

  Cian stuck his tongue out at Etienne and then moved towards the curtain himself. “Fine. I’ll go organize something with the other kid, then.” His spoken English was much better than his written, though more heavily accented than Etienne’s.

  The woman gave him one of those sad smiles. “You go right ahead,” she said, reaching back to part the strings of beads.

  Cian reached the beads and froze. “What was that?”

  Etienne was at his side instantly. “What was what?” He looked around, suspicious.

  The woman gasped. “You felt that?”

  Etienne narrowed his eyes at her. It would not be the first time a sidhe woman betrayed him. “Felt what?” he asked, warning in his tone.

  Her jaw clenched at the change in his voice, the woman edged herself closer to the curtained door, putting herself between them and her girl. “I’m sorry. No one outside my family has ever felt that before. I-”

  “What was it?” Etienne cut her off, not trusting any unknown magic. The fact that it had been used on Cian made him burn. He slipped his right hand under his jacket, fingers brushing against Agmundr.

  She raised her chin and straightened her back to her full height – taller than Etienne by a few inches, though not nearly as broad. She looked as if she could blow away even as she pulled dignity about her shoulders. “I am a soul reader,” she said, “and you are strangers to me.” She looked at Cian. “I just gave you, a powerful young male, permission to be alone with my teenage apprentice. There was no way I would let you through that door without taking a closer look at you.”

  Etienne had never heard of a “soul reader.” “What sort of magic is this?”

  For just the briefest of moments she looked uncomfortable. Then, “I inherited the gift from my grandmother.”

  Etienne frowned, unsatisfied with the answer. He crossed his arms, the brown leather of his jacket too worn to creak. “Okay, so what did you see when you looked at him?”

  Her blue eyes flickered from man to man and she began to relax. “I saw great power and potential, both untapped. I saw a gentle heart and terrible pain.” She looked back to Cian, and he raised his hand to his chest, but did not look distressed. “I see… searching.” She blinked a few times and looked back to Etienne. “It’s not a very reliable or precise gift, or even a good parlor trick, I’m afraid.”

  Cian’s eyes were a little wide, and Etienne slowly uncrossed his arms. “What about me?” he asked, because he had to. What secrets had she seen? How bare had she laid his soul?

  Again she gave him that strange, sad smile. “I read you first. It was obvious you were in charge.” She paused, eyes turned away, fingers trembling around the cup in her hand as she chose her words. She looked back to him. “I saw that I needed to trust you.”

  Etienne’s brows rose. “Just that?”

  She nodded as she stepped aside. “Just that. I am an excellent judge of character, and it was the strongest feeling I’ve had in a long time.” She turned to Cian. “Why don’t you go on back and be a good influence on my troublemaker?”

  Cian looked to Etienne in confusion.

  Etienne returned his look with a small shrug and motioned for him to go ahead. He turned and watched the woman make her way to a stool behind the counter, where she pulled a second stool around for him. He still felt a little wary, but he shrugged off the backpack, setting it down on the floor at the end of the counter with a soft creak of ancient floorboards before he sat.

  Jessie exploded from behind the curtain. “‘Scuse me. Hungry woman, coming through.” She pushed herself between Etienne and her employer and rummaged in the box. “You,” she declared in a dictatorial fashion as she pulled out a bag and pushed it toward her employer, “Eat this. Al
l of it. Here’s your next coffee.” She looked over her shoulder to Etienne and said conspiratorially, “I’m waiting for her to vibrate to the center of the Earth. This is, like, her tenth coffee today,” before she grabbed the cup in the woman’s hand and tested the weight. “Drink this before it gets colder.” She made to hand the cup back and then snatched it back. “Why are your hands shaking again?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Uh huh. I’m telling Erik and Katherine.”

  The woman’s voice sharpened. “That’s enough. Now go eat your lunch and let me speak with this gentleman, please.”

  Jessie hesitated, worry playing across her face, and then she picked up the box. “Fine – for now.” She moved to the curtain and then spun back. “Hey, you guys hungry?” she asked Etienne.

  Etienne’s head was spinning a bit from the whirlwind that was Jessie. “No,” he managed, “No, we just ate, but thank you for offering.”

  She looked at him, head tipped to the side, her expression measuring. After a moment she chirped, “‘Kay,” and bounced back through the curtains.

  Etienne shook his head, amused and confused in turns by this place. “She’s quite something.” The woman was taking deep swallows from the cup, her long throat working.

  Finally, she set the cup down and tucked one trembling hand in the other, her face turned towards the back room. “She is, indeed,” she said quietly. The smallest of smiles pulled at her lips, but her love and affection for the girl were plain to see. She turned back to him. “Now, where were we?”

  Etienne’s smile did reach his eyes, though he had never heard it described as bright or cheerful, either. What was he doing judging the quality of someone’s smile? “Introducing ourselves, I believe.” He sat up straighter and gave her a small bow in his seat. “I am Etienne Knight, my lady, and my companion’s name is Cian.”

  Her eyes lit up with recognition at his name. “You did say Arthur Reynolds,” she said, her voice breathy with wonder. “I’m Winter Mulcahy. Arthur was one of my uncles. He used to tell us stories about you from the war. I think we even have a picture of you at the House.”

  Etienne’s heart jumped. Yes! Mulcahy was the name he had forgotten. “Do you know how I…” he trailed off, thinking over what she had just said. “Did you say ‘was?’”

  The sadness returned to her face, and she turned to look behind her at the various bric-a-brac hanging on the wall. Etienne followed her gaze and saw an old photograph in a scrolled frame. It was Arthur and his pretty wife, just as he had been during the war. “Arthur and Curiosity passed away a few years ago. I’m terribly sorry.”

  A burn started in Etienne’s throat and he swallowed past it. How? “I don’t understand. They weren’t that old.”

  Winter faced him again. “It was a car accident.” Her voice sounded hollow. She picked up her coffee and took another long swallow.

  He was quiet for several moments, taking time to mourn, letting her finish her coffee. She still had not touched the lunch bag. Finally, he had to gently let Arthur go and focus on the present. Cian needed him to find help. “Then maybe the rest of your family can help us?”

  Her mouth twisted as she looked away quickly, then back at him. “I can make no promises, but I’ll do what I can.”

  Etienne reached into his breast pocket. “No, if you’re unavailable, then surely someone else can do it.”

  “There is no one else.” She spoke so quietly even his sensitive ears barely heard her.

  “What?” Etienne leaned in closer. She had folded her hands in her lap and lowered her gaze. “Arthur said there were so many, and that was decades ago. Where did they go?”

  “They died,” she replied in that hollow voice, still so quiet as if by saying it out loud she would no longer be able to hide behind silence. “We don’t know why, and for some we don’t even know how. But, my father and I, we’re all that remain. Anywhere.”

  He wanted to soothe her pain, to make it right somehow. “My lady…” he began, reaching out to touch her face.

  Winter flinched away from him, slipping off the stool and around the counter to put it between them. She cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders. “My father is the Mulcahy, the head of the family and final neutral arbiter of this city. I speak for him.”

  Etienne sat back, accepting her rebuff. He barely knew the woman, after all. “Do I need to talk to him, then?”

  “No, he sees no one. I speak for him.”

  “Why?”

  Her lips tightened and she shook her head, answering him with silence as she turned away, but not before he saw the depth of the pain in her eyes. She turned back after a moment. “Tell me what you need.” She was cool, professional, reserved. Etienne glanced down. Her fingers still shook.

  He reached again into his jacket’s breast pocket and pulled out the page ripped from a business magazine in Kentucky. “I hunt a fugitive. Several years ago he violated two sidhe courts, one Seelie and one Unseelie, murdering their princes before disappearing.” He opened the folded page and handed it to Winter. “Nine days ago Cian and I found this. We’ve been in the Mortal Realm just over a year. Judging by this, I’d say they’ve been here longer. The younger one is one of the princes, apparently alive, and the older one is the fugitive.”

  Winter looked the picture over. “If this prince is alive, might the other – others? – also be alive?”

  Etienne lowered his voice. “Cian was one of them, yes. The other one, the Unseelie one, definitely not. From what I’ve heard, his skull was fashioned into a chalice and presented as a gift to his parents. It drove his mother mad.”

  She looked at the picture with revulsion. “That’s horrible.” She tapped the bottom edge of it with one short nail. “I think I know these men, but I haven’t met them personally.” She glanced over the text at the bottom and nodded. “Yes. I was right. They’ve been here for about four years with my family’s full permission, keep largely to themselves, never a day of trouble out of them.” She turned the picture around. “This is Jonathan and Jeremy Moore.”

  Etienne reached out to take the picture back, but she frowned slightly and turned it back to face her. “To you, perhaps. To me they are Midir the Proud and Prince Senán.”

  “Why do you look so much like Jeremy?” she murmured, blue eyes flickering from him to the picture and back again.

  Etienne took the picture from her and folded it back up. “It’s Senán, and it’s not important. He’s Cian’s friend and kinsman. Cian is desperate to rescue him. Can you help us?”

  Winter opened her mouth to reply, closed it again, looked perturbed. “I… I don’t know.” Etienne opened his mouth and she raised her hand. “We must maintain a balance among the different preternatural groups in the city.”

  “What is ‘preternatural?’” That was a new word for him.

  She tipped her head to the side. “Well… it’s us. You, me, vampires, therian, witches, dragons; everything else that really does go bump in the night. If it’s not human, not entirely, it’s probably one of us.”

  He nodded. “Thank you. Please continue.”

  “As I was saying, we maintain a balance, which means I can’t just go to Moore Investments, bang on the door, demand he turn this Senán over. They haven’t done anything to warrant that kind of action on my part.” Etienne slid off the stool and began to pace. “Honestly, I’ve heard no reports of any issues over there, and they looked fine in the picture…”

  Etienne turned to face her. “There is glamour all over the building. Wards like nothing Cian has ever seen, and even more glamour beneath hiding I have no idea what.”

  He watched her press her fingers together and touch them to her lower lip, her brows drawn in slightly in thought. After a long moment she said, “I need my father’s permission before I move forward, but I would like to at least get a look at that myself. I will talk to him tonight.”

  Etienne gave her a small bow. “Thank you, my lady.”

  She lowered he
r hands and her eyes brightened a little. “In the meantime, where are you and Cian staying?”

  Etienne froze a moment. Empty pockets, mostly empty gas tank – he had no idea where they were staying tonight. Finally, he made up something plausible. “One of the motels on the interstate. We’ll be back in the morning.”

  She raised her eyebrow just as she had with her apprentice.

  “What?”

  She sighed. “You’re old enough to take care of yourself, but I’m not sending that boy to sleep on the street,” she said as she moved past him towards the beaded curtain.

  “Wait…”

  “Jessie, can you run next door and ask Katherine or Giovanni if they have extra room for the next few days?”

  “What for?”

  “My lady, please…”

  “Call me Winter.”

  Etienne growled softly under his breath as she turned away from him again. Damn stubborn woman.

  “It’s for our guests. They need somewhere to stay.”

  “My – Winter, we can’t pay.”

  She looked back at him, her expression arch. “Family friends don’t need to. Besides, if you paid then you wouldn’t be guests.”

  “Why don’t they just crash upstairs?” Jessie asked, poking her head through the curtain, and looking from adult to adult like it was the most obvious solution in the world.

  “Are you sure, sweetheart? That’s your space.”

  She blew hair off her face. “Oh, yeah. I can always crash at the Theatre or someplace. No worries.”

  Winter turned to face Etienne again. “There is a small furnished apartment upstairs, but it does only have one bed. There is a couch…”

  Jessie came out from behind the curtain, Cian following close behind. “Totally recommend sleeping friendly. The couch is okay for sitting, blows for sleeping. Here, let me get your bag.” Before Etienne could do more than lift his hand in protest she bent, grabbed the backpack strap, lifted, and dropped to her knees. “Holy fuck!”

  “Language, and are you alright?” Winter knelt beside her felled apprentice, face filled with concern.

  Jessie cradled her right shoulder with her left hand, grimacing in pain. “Jesus, what do you guys have in there, anyway?”