by Sarra Cannon
The two Heaths merged, the colors went away, but his face—his face was full of his fear.
“Simone, can you hear me?”
“Yes, I can hear you. What just happened?”
“You went catatonic, and your energy had an unusually hot spike. I couldn’t make sense of it. It’s normal now.”
“There were two of you. Beige Heath and blue Heath.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Two of me?”
“You turned blue…when I didn’t respond, I guess.”
She could tell precisely when the realization settled into him. His features relaxed along with his body, and he let out a breath.
“You probably get that from your grandmother.”
“What is it? Happened before when we were making that mad dash with Olivia and Shaileen.”
“Wish I knew. Katie’s mother is a mystery to everyone, but it sounds like you’re seeing my aura.”
“I might have been, but it’s gone now.” She sat up and reached for the covers, not that Heath seemed distracted at all. That man really had compartmentalization down to a science. “But why would that happen now?”
He shrugged. “Could be natural, for all I know. I’ve heard that certain minor gifts only work in the presence of one’s mate.”
“Do you have any minor gifts like that? Anything…new?”
He gnawed on his bottom lip and seemed be looking through her and not at her for a moment. “Minor gifts? No,” he said firmly. “I think I’m all tapped out in the magic department.”
Chapter 17
The crew filed into the parking lot and swarmed them before Heath and the girls could even get their kickstands down and their detainees off their bikes.
“Any guests here at the moment?” Simone asked from behind him, her voice muffled inside her helmet.
Matt scooped her off and set her on her feet. “Nah. The two that were here checked out at twelve. Hope we didn’t mess up your books. I was kinda making shit up as I went along.”
Simone pulled off her helmet and handed it to Heath. “I bet there are a bunch of sheets needing to be changed.”
Matt cringed.
So did Simone. “I’ll get right on it. Someone come talk to me and catch me up while I work.”
“I guess that’ll be me.” Matt followed her toward the supply shed.
Heath turned to Ethan, who actually looked bathed for a change. His dirty blond hair was now just…well, blond. Perhaps they were all turning over new leaves. “What’ve you blokes been up to?”
“Don’t get mad.”
“You do realize preempting any statement with that will certainly hint to me that I should?”
“I mean, it’s not bad, just…the princess might not approve.”
Shit.
Heath left the girls to deal with the captured guards and their quarter-Sídhe fucktwat and let Ethan lead him back to the cottage. He whistled low upon spying the living room cluttered with wires, tables, and computers. Perry, in the corner, looked up from his screen and waved. “Hail, Prince.”
“What’d you do with Simone’s furniture?”
“Distributed it throughout the guest rooms.”
“She’s going to kill you.” Actually, not likely, because Simone didn’t seem to have Mum’s murderous tendencies, but she was certainly going to be flustered. “I hope you left her bedroom intact.”
“Sorta.” Perry made a waffling gesture. “But, listen, it’ll all make sense in a minute. We’ve got searches running to find online information about odd occurrences, crimes that can’t be explained.”
“You’re searching for magical weirdoes on the Internet?”
“Yeah. Well, initially, that wasn’t the goal, but it morphed into that. We were hunting down leads for Queen Contessa’s missing clanspeople the old-fashioned way.”
“Right. By shaking news out of the grapevine.”
“Mm-hmm. Since we had the closest thing to a home base than we ever had and time to spare, we decided to dig in and try some more modern means of search.”
“Hence the Internet laboratory.”
“Correct. And while we were at it, we figured out we’d try to find our Sídhe absconders, too.”
“I’m not particularly interested in them at the moment.”
Ethan furrowed his brow. “Why not?”
“Mum’s whims are the least of my concerns. You all know the deal. I found my mate. The magic binding the crew to me is already falling away. You lot can disperse, if you so choose.” He didn’t want them to feel obligated to do anything they didn’t feel compelled to. They had a choice, and he wouldn’t unduly influence it.
Ethan cut Perry a look that Perry shot right back.
“We’re not going anywhere, Prince. We’ve already discussed it. All of us. Even Thom.”
“When? You did this behind my back?”
Perry shrugged. “You were busy.”
Ethan cuffed Heath’s upper arm. “Suffice it to say, we know the stakes, and we choose to cast our lots with you and take our chances. You’ve got a princess. You’ll need people around her.”
“Princess has a mean right hook,” Heath muttered, but he knew Ethan made a good point. Simone might balk at being coddled and supervised like a child, but he’d meant it when he’d said she was the most important thing in his life and that he’d fight for their pairing. If that meant she had to endure a bit of inconvenience while out in public, so be it.
Heath leaned his palms against the nearby worktable and locked first Ethan, then Perry, in his gaze. “You’ve got to be careful what you say. If you show too much concern for my princess, certain people may interpret it to be treason against the king and queen.” Which it was.
Perry and Ethan shared that look again.
“We get that, Prince,” Ethan said. “Like I said, we’ve already discussed this backward and forward. We don’t see where we have a choice, really. We refuse to be absorbed back into her service—which I’m certain she’ll demand—and we’re safer as a group than we are on our own.”
“The way we see things,” Perry said, “nothing has changed. You still lead this crew. We just…assume you’ll be taking orders from someone other than Queen Rhiannon.” He blanched upon speaking her name. The woman was hardly omnipresent, but her bad moods were sometimes so far-reaching that it may have seemed like she was.
“If your crew needs something to do, Heath…”
Sídhe killers or not, all three men jumped at the sound of the newcomer’s voice.
“For fuck’s sake. Give us some warning before you pop in.” Heath turned and locked Hestia in his stare. “You’d cause a heart attack, even in the hardiest of fae.”
She stood near the door scanning the changes to the cottage, apparently, with her fingers folded primly over her belly. “I suppose you missed my signs. I always send a sign before I come.”
“What was it?”
She grinned and bobbed her goddess eyebrows. “There’s a flickering flame graphic on young Perry’s computer monitor.”
Perry looked down. “It’s the size of my thumbnail, and I haven’t even looked at my computer since Prince Heath entered.”
Her elegant shrug was full of your fault for not noticing it.
“What’s this about a job?” Heath didn’t intend to press the woman, but the sooner he got her out of their hair, the less risk they had of offending her and earning themselves hard-to-shuck curses.
“Not a job. A mission.”
“Explain, please.”
“Did you know that thousands of years ago, there was no fae realm? Everyone was muddled together out here. Humans and fae and shifters and practitioners of magic.”
Heath shook his head and could see Perry and Ethan doing the same in his periphery.
“I imagine it’s something your mother wouldn’t wish for her subjects to know.”
“Given how her power grows a smidgen with new citizen of the realm? I could see how that would be the case.”
“Yes, if your brethren were to all flee at once, she’d be practically impotent.”
“The same’s not true of my father, though.”
Hestia shook her head. “The nature of his power is different…but, you know that. They’re a matched pair. He would be a perfect foil for her.”
“If he wanted to be,” Ethan muttered.
It was a big “if” indeed. The king was very hands-off with the ruling of the realm, in spite of the custom of kings and queens being equal in power.
“If you were to take the realm from her,” Hestia continued, “she’d be like any other Sídhe.” She turned her hands over. “With an interesting skill set, for sure, but not like yours, Heath. It doesn’t stand on its own. Doesn’t run without power.”
“You make her sound like a lawnmower,” Perry said.
“An apt metaphor for Mum,” Heath said. She did so enjoy cutting people down as if they were just dandelions in her lawn. “But why is that? My energy magic comes from her.”
“And your ability to adequately wield it comes from your father. It might have been the same with you, but The Fates had other plans. My sources have informed me that you were born to undo her.”
Right. Her sources. The same voices in the ether that made sure curses stood and that fae kept their promises. “Am I a prince or a pawn?”
“Both. How you’ll undo her is up to you.” She shrugged again. “And your princess, of course.”
“I get a sneaking suspicion my princess won’t want to be involved.”
“No woman in her right mind would want to be involved, and that’s something you’ll never be able to accuse Simone of—being addlebrained. In spite of her curse, she has my blessing. She’s a woman fulfilled by hearth and home. By comfort and security. By sure things. But she is your princess, Heath. I imagine she will do what needs to be done should you ask her.”
He sighed. “She’s a key.”
Hestia nodded. “In more ways than one.”
“So what’s the plan?” Ethan asked. “That we just start herding people out of the realm?”
“Devising the plan is up to your prince. I’m merely providing information that may assist him in formulating one. I do my fair best not to meddle in important matters such as these, but it is time to return fae to the real world. At least, those who will be worthwhile additions to it. The realm was never meant to stand for this long. The curse that was spun to create it dissolved two thousand years ago, but your kings and queens grew to enjoy their power there. The realm is a bubble that needs to be popped, or at least shrunken, before it disrupts Earth’s physics in incalculable ways.”
“Got it,” Heath said. What was one more disaster for him to sort out?
“Splendid. I’ll leave you to work it all out, then. Give my regards to your princess for me. I’m certain you’ll be apologizing profusely for the mess you’ve made to her home.” She giggled as she faded back to…wherever goddesses went when they weren’t being insufferable nags on Earth.
The cottage door creaked open, and Simone stepped in, eyes widening more and more with each passing second.
Heath scooped her into his arms and pressed his face to his chest. “Um. We’ll…well. I won’t lie and tell you we’ll fix it. We kind of need it, but…we’ll figure out something better for you.”
Siobhan’s overreaching plans to build the parcel up into some kind of deranged fairy complex were sounding better and better.
“When, Heath?”
“Immediately.”
“How?”
“Money, love. Lots of money. Ready cash greases the wheels of change, even when it’s winter.” It was a good thing he’d invested his wealth outside of the fairy realm a long time ago. He had a sneaking suspicion contractors were going to try to gouge him for every coin he had, but what good was money, anyway, if he couldn’t spend it on his princess?
Chapter 18
Simone was on the phone putting in a renewal order for commercial strength laundry detergent when a familiar unregulated cab pulled up to the front of The Hearth and the driver hopped out of the front seat. He jogged away, ostensibly to the other side of the car that Simone couldn’t see from her position behind the reception desk. There had to be some sort of major event happening in the area if that particular cabbie was bringing a fare to her and not suggesting a chain hotel. They must have all been full.
Shrugging, she gave the customer service rep the motel account number and finished the order. She bent to pull out the box of registration cards and still had her head down when the bells hanging over the door chimed. The cards had gotten all mixed up when she was gone. Probably Matt or one of the others had dropped the box and didn’t have time to right all the contents. “Be with you in just a sec. Hope you don’t mind a single room. We’re a little tight right now.”
“Single’s fine, ’Mone.”
Simone froze there, bent at the waist. Her pulse kicked up like a Ford Mustang in a drag race and vision went spotty. ’Mone. Only one person called her that.
Shit.
She stood slowly, letting circulation return to her head and giving her center of balance time to adjust to the change in the position. That didn’t help her make immediate sense of why that particular woman standing in front of her.
Dasha Maurice stood with hands on hips, chin poked out at an aggressive jut, and one dark eyebrow pushed high over the top edge of her sunglasses.
Shit.
“Well, here you are,” Dasha said. “I guess this is better than what I thought—that you’d gone bougie on me and didn’t want to associate with the common class anymore.”
Simone sighed. “Dasha.”
“What are you doing?”
“Running a motel.”
Dasha pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head, snarling when the arms got caught in her tight curls. “Goddamn it,” she muttered. “Time to shave it off again.” She gave up and set the sunglasses on top of the counter. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly and dramatically. “Running a motel. Right. And a charming little motel it is. What I’m so curious about, and that curiosity is why I hauled my cranky ass to the other edge of the country, is why inheriting this place would make you disappear from society altogether.”
Simone cringed. The inheritance thing had been a little white lie. Or a half lie. She had inherited the curse, and technically she now owned the motel because of the curse, but most of the time she didn’t feel like The Hearth was hers. She hadn’t bought it, and didn’t really feel like she’d earned it. She pressed her palms to the counter and stared at the large calendar atop it. Spring would be coming soon, and another season with no hope of respite from guests.
Maybe they’ll see all the construction and decide to stay away? Yeah, right.
“How did you even find me?” Simone asked softly.
“A guy in the alumni records office has had a crush on me since freshman year. He gave me your address.”
“There’s got to be some rule against that.”
Dasha shrugged and pushed her tote strap off her shoulder. She set the leather monstrosity up on the counter and looked at the little office around her. “Of course there’s a rule against it, but I can talk people into pretty much anything. I’m good at my job.”
Simone grinned. “I always knew you would be.”
Dasha worked in advertising on the accounts end. She wasn’t a creative, though. Her job was to convince decision makers to hire her agency. She could talk a Bedouin man into buying sand.
Dasha leaned against the counter and locked those black-as-night eyes on her. Intense and serious, daring Simone to look away.
She wouldn’t, of course. “What, Dash?”
“What’s going on? Are you being held here against your will?”
Shit. Obviously, the answer was yes, but Simone was pretty sure the strictures of the curse would prevent her from saying so. She swallowed. “This is my job now. Running this place and making guests comfortable.”
“That sounds like a scripted line. Tell me the truth.”
“That is the truth. Look, the pay is shitty—when I’m able to pay myself at all—but I have to do this until I’m in a position to sell the place outright.”
Dasha cringed. “Ew, real estate. You’re upside down on the debt?”
“Something like that.”
“And you thought you couldn’t tell me about it? Or let me come and see it?”
“There’s not much to see.”
“You’re ashamed.”
Simone shrugged. She was, a little. If she had her druthers, she’d at least make the place something to be proud of—not something she considered a minor eyesore on the coastline. A place that obviously hadn’t been well loved in probably thirty years. It wasn’t the motel’s fault. She kinda felt sorry for it. It was like that bummy uncle everyone in the family liked to take advantage of, but never did anything to help because criticizing was easier.
“What’s with all the motorcycles parked outside? Is there some sort of rally happening this time of year? A little cold for it, isn’t it?”
“Not a rally. Just…some long-term guests.”
“I’ve been watching that motorcycle gang show on cable. You know the one with the murderous savages?”
“I’m aware of it.”
“Are they like that?”
Shit. “Not exactly. They’re—” Simone didn’t know how she was going to describe them off the cuff, but fortunately was saved by the bells, or rather, the door chimes, before she had to.
Ethan strode in carrying a sledgehammer and had his blond hair pulled up to the top of his head in a messy knot. He looked like a fairy samurai. “Entire back wall of the cottage was filled with empty booze bottles. What kind of hobbies did your grandmother have, exactly?”
“Great-grandmother, I think. And booze smuggling.” Simone chewed on her thumbnail and waited for Dasha’s reaction.
Dasha put her hand to her heart and leaned back against the counter. Her gaze raked over the tall fairy from the top of his head to his scuffed-up boots. She’d never been one for discretion, and Simone wasn’t surprised by Dasha’s enthusiastic assessment. She was more surprised by Ethan’s.
