I took another look at the sprawl and realized that the sleepers had fallen into same-sex pairs. The nearest, a couple of deeply tanned guys in cutoffs, flip-flops, and oversized shirts proclaiming their fondness for the Confederacy, practically spooned. “Relatively sober and…confused?”
Oberon’s predatory grin was immediate and inculpatory. “I never said I didn’t have any fun with them.”
“They’re helpless and—”
“Don’t start, Coileán,” he sighed, once more turning to the sea. “Indignant rants are obnoxious as hell, has anyone ever told you that?”
“And entirely warranted,” I snapped. “They’re going to wake and think—”
“Think what? It’s good for them.” He tucked his hands behind his head. “When they get drunk enough, they drop their defenses. I’ve got a dozen regulars here who flirt shamelessly with anyone if the hour is right. Not those two,” he admitted, pointing to the nearest couple. “But their girlfriends were busy, and I thought, why not? They have matching tattoos, at least.”
I noted the barbed wire inked around the big spoon’s thick bicep. “That’s cruel.”
“But so very amusing, you must admit. I didn’t choose this viewing spot on a whim.” With a last little chuckle for the drama to come, he looked at me and folded his arms across his chest. “So. Who’s annoyed you today?”
“Benatin.”
“And this is my problem because…”
He left the question dangling, and I fought to keep my temper down. “He used a child as a puppet and convinced her parents that she’d been possessed. I got the call in the middle of dinner when my priest realized what was going on, and then I had to get rid of a bunch of ghost hunters. And you’re still smiling.”
“Oh, please,” he said, grinning smugly, “don’t let me stop the story. Let me guess: Benatin’s in pain but not dead, your little priest is doing the cleanup, and you”—he paused and sniffed deeply—“you spent a few hours drinking it off. Close?”
“He terrorized those people,” I replied, not rising to the bait, “and on top of that, he ruined my evening. What are you going to do about it?”
Oberon laughed to himself. “Benatin kept you from screwing my daughter, and I’m supposed to be upset?”
I stiffened. “Since when have you cared about Meggy?”
“Since you started bedding her,” he replied, nonplussed. “I thought you’d be pleased. You wanted me to show her a little attention, didn’t you?”
The only factors standing between Oberon and a new face at that moment were my strained self-restraint and my stronger sense of self-preservation. Yes, Oberon had moved out of Faerie, but he hadn’t relinquished his claim, nor the power that came with it—and with that equalizer in force, I wasn’t his match in a fair fight. Eight hundred years of practice was sufficient in most situations, but not against a faerie who, I suspected, had long ago given up keeping count of his years as tedious.
“You know,” I muttered, “you don’t actually have to be an asshole.”
“Careful, boy.” His tone was light, but I heard the edge below the surface. “You presume.”
“Touch Meggy, and I’ll show you what presumption looks like.”
He smirked and looked away. “I’m going to let that one slide because you’ve obviously been drinking. Consider it a favor.”
I started to protest that I had my faculties well in hand, then realized what a stupid mistake that would be. Instead, I squinted past Oberon across the beach at the rising sun. “My offer stands.”
“Does it, now?” he asked the sea.
“Let them come home. Less work for you, less work for me—”
“And my court disintegrates. No.”
The light was strengthening toward yellow, and I produced a pair of sunglasses against the glare. “I’m not asking that they swear fealty, Oberon. Just follow some basic dictates to keep order. I assure you, I’m not trying to take them.”
He looked at me again, his face backlit by the sun. “A hypothetical, then. Suppose I give an order. Suppose you contradict it. What do they do?”
I chose my words carefully. “Within Faerie, as long as they live in the realm—”
“The correct answer,” he quietly interrupted, “is they do as I say. Anything less, and they’re no longer my court to command. Do you see the conundrum, Coileán?” He pulled his cap off, and the wind and sun turned his hair into a coppery corona. “This realm is mine. You may have Faerie for now because I have no need for it. But if you think you’re taking my court away from me, we’re going to have a problem.”
“Your realm?” I replied. “I’m sure the Arcanum would take umbrage at that. Or did you mean this island? I’ll grant you the rock, now.”
Oberon smiled. “My realm,” he murmured. “You have one minute to leave.”
I knew better than to fight a senseless battle, and so I stood and turned my beach chair into atoms. “The offer stands,” I said, wincing as a wave soaked my shoes and cuffs. “They just want to go home.”
“I’m well aware.” Oberon’s eyes flicked to the water as a trio of dolphins passed through the shallows. “Oh, and Coileán?”
“Yes?”
His smile never faltered. “How is that daughter of yours these days?”
I opened a gate without another word. There was nothing to be gained by meeting that threat.
I should have gone home, but instead, I found myself standing outside my old shop, looking through the plate window at the long racks of discarded books. Meggy had changed nothing—not even the faded wooden “Ex Libris” sign I’d hung over the door years ago—and I fought the urge to let myself in and surround myself with the comforting perfume of old paper. There was too much magic in Faerie to appreciate such scents properly. My awareness of the overwhelming smell of magic faded a short while after each return, but still, the scent of not-quite-citronella lingered like strong cologne, masking the subtler odors to which I’d become accustomed in the mortal realm.
Not Oberon’s realm. Never Oberon’s realm.
I didn’t realize I had dug my fingernails into my palms until a hand on my shoulder cut short my inner raging and made me aware once more of little things like pain. Startled from my reverie, I jumped and whipped around to find my former neighbor standing behind me on the sidewalk, newspaper in hand. I didn’t recognize her purple sweatsuit, but her hair didn’t budge in the breeze, and I was momentarily heartened to see that some things in my life remained constant.
“Out for a jog, Mrs. Cooper?” I asked.
Her rouged lips tightened into a wrinkled line. “A lady does not run, Mr. Leffee. Are you insinuating something?”
I had a mental flash of Mrs. Cooper puffing down the street in overstuffed yoga pants and a sports bra, then pushed that thought back into the hell from which it had arisen. “Never, madam. You’re looking quite dressed for the hour.”
“It’s seven-thirty, dear. The day’s half over, and”—her lips briefly tightened to white—“I have company. Taking a break from said company, in fact.” She gave me an appraising glance, then murmured, “You’re looking rather youthful today.”
I closed my eyes, kicking myself for the lapse, and threw the glamour back on. “Better?”
“Much.” She studied my features a moment longer, then nodded. “You’ll excuse me, I know, but you look terrible. I don’t want to pry…”
She let the question hang, and I shrugged. “Long night. Lot on my mind, nothing to worry about. I should be going—”
“Cup of tea, dear?”
There was something entirely too hopeful in her voice for that offer to have been purely altruistic. “What about your company?”
Mrs. Cooper pushed her bifocals down her nose. “Please come have tea.”
“That bad, is it?”
She sighed. “I don’t like to speak ill of family, but—”
“I do it all the time, and it’s remarkably cathartic. Go ahead.”
Befo
re she could begin, however, the door to Tea for Two opened, and a skinny man with a mop of mousy brown hair wandered onto the sidewalk. “Auntie Eunice!” he called across the street, cupping his hands around his mouth as a megaphone. “Are you all right? Do I need to call a doctor?”
Her eyes met mine and held my questioning gaze.
“Tea sounds lovely, Mrs. Cooper,” I said, and escorted her back to her shop.
Her company, Mrs. Cooper explained with as much civility as she could muster before breakfast, was her grandnephew, Stuart Purcell. “My only brother’s only daughter’s only son,” she said by way of introduction, “who’s recently come from California to look after me. Isn’t that nice?”
I extended my hand and waited for Stuart to make contact, but he held back and locked his fingers together, and I awkwardly aborted the gesture. “Colin Leffee. Welcome to Rigby.”
“Mr. Leffee used to live here,” Mrs. Cooper told Stuart. “And he’s seeing Ms. Horn across the street—have you two met?”
Stuart’s dark eyes—wide-set and slightly bulging—lit up. “Meghan? Sure! Lovely lady. I, uh…” He paused, giving me a second look. “I didn’t know she was taken.”
“We keep a low profile,” I told him. “For Olive’s sake, you know. She’s at that age, and for everyone to know that her mom’s dating…”
“Understood,” he said, but looked disappointed.
I took the seat Mrs. Cooper offered at her dinette and helped myself to the teapot. “So, Stuart, what do you do?”
Across the table, Mrs. Cooper’s eyes squeezed closed as if tensing for a blow, but Stuart, oblivious to her distress, sat between us and wrapped his long fingers around his teacup. “Perhaps you’ve seen my store, The Endless Knot?”
“Can’t say that I have,” I replied, trying not to cut my eyes to my hostess. “But I haven’t done much shopping in Rigby of late.”
He leaned toward me, eyes sparkling with the sort of excitement seen only on the faces of street-corner evangelists. “Now, I don’t want to alarm you, Connor—”
“It’s Colin. Or Coileán, I answer to either.”
Stuart paused, thrown off his rhythm, but quickly found the beat again. “Sorry, Colin. Anyway, I don’t want to alarm you, but I”—he smiled and steepled his fingers—“am a wizard.”
“You don’t say,” I murmured, and sipped my tea.
He seemed to deflate a degree, but pressed on. “I’ve studied The Craft”—I swear, he pronounced the capital letters—“for many years. It’s a passion, a…a calling, you see? My life’s work.” Stuart began to tear bites off a scone and roll them in the mound of raspberry jam in the center of his plate. “Now, that said, you have nothing to fear from me. I’m a white wizard.”
“Well,” I said, helping myself to the scone plate, “you’ve come to the right place, then. The American south has had more than its share of white wizards through the years. Though I don’t suppose most were practitioners as such…”
“Mostly in New Orleans and South Carolina,” he replied, popping a jellied scone ball in his mouth. “And those communities were more heavily involved with Voodoo…”
As he launched into a practiced lecture, I glanced at Mrs. Cooper, who alone of my companions had caught the reference. She silently covered her eyes, and I tried to pick up the thread of Stuart’s monologue. “So you’re a bit of a trendsetter, then?” I interrupted.
Stuart nodded. “Indeed. But the magickal community is growing, you know.”
He pronounced it with a k, I was sure of it.
I poured the last of the tea, then brushed past Mrs. Cooper to the kitchen and was surprised to see my chintz kettle on the range. “That’s all well and good,” I called back to the dining room, turning on the tap with a quilted potholder, “but what do you do, exactly?”
“To pay the bills, you mean? Manage my store,” he replied, raising his voice above the running water. “I do private readings—palm, aura, Tarot. Thinking of starting some classes later this fall, beginner stuff, nothing too esoteric. And spellwork, of course.”
“Of course.” I set the kettle back on the warm eye and leaned against the dining room wall. “Anything skyclad?”
Stuart resumed playing with his scone. “You jest, but only because you don’t know what a wizard can do.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it. But do us all a favor, hmm?” I said, folding my arms. “If you’re doing anything in the buff, take it outside of town. Folks around here are a little touchy about, uh…magic wands, if you catch my drift.”
Poor Mrs. Cooper looked like she wanted to crawl into the teapot and die.
The fool sighed and shook his head. “It’s amazing how much prejudice there still is against people like me. I only want to help,” he protested, spreading his palms. “Love spells, lucky charms—I’m happy to use my gift for the common good.”
“For a modest fee,” I countered.
Stuart shrugged. “Keeps the lights on and the lease intact. Wisdom is free.”
I forced myself to keep a straight face at that—Stuart couldn’t have been more than thirty-five, and I could only imagine the sort of wisdom he’d provide. “Good of you,” I managed, and headed back into the kitchen to locate the tea. “So, uh…how does magic work, anyway?” I called from around the corner.
As Stuart started up again, Mrs. Cooper joined me by the cabinet and muttered, “Two shelves from the bottom, and did you have to set him off, dear?”
“Just let him get it out of his system,” I replied in kind, reaching for the wooden tea chest. “Want me to knock him out for you? It’s no trouble.”
She snorted quietly. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t all the stories say not to accept favors from faeries?”
“This is an exception, but aren’t you the clever girl.”
“I like to think I’ve amassed slightly more wisdom than my nephew,” she retorted, “and yes, I know exactly what skyclad means. ‘Magic wands,’ my sainted aunt,” she muttered, lifting the lid from the teapot. “But you see what I’m up against. What do I do with him?”
“Do? Who said you had to do anything about that?” I handed her the chest and leaned against the cabinet, keeping my voice lower than Stuart’s half-shouted monologue. “He’s harmless, Eunice. Confused, maybe delusional, but probably harmless. How many cats does he have, anyway?”
“Five.” She measured out the tea by sight, squinting into the damp pot to gauge the strength. “He tried to give me one. I wouldn’t have it.”
“No?”
“If I’d wanted to clean up someone else’s excrement, I’d have bought my own damn cat.”
Mrs. Cooper’s spoon was showing no sign of slowing, and so I patted her shoulder and took the tea chest away before she could brew up something vile in her distress. “I’ll grant you he’s odd, but he’s nothing to worry about.”
“He’s embarrassing,” she mumbled, yanking the kettle off the range.
“There’s a lunatic in every family, you know.” I paused in time to catch Stuart embarking on a discussion of thaumic principles, then caught Mrs. Cooper shaking her head. “What is it?”
“He’s embarrassing,” she repeated, and gave me a long look over her bifocals. “It’s bad enough that he’s trying to sell rabbit’s feet and…”—she paused, flustered and momentarily stumped—“and Lord knows what else down there. You know why he won’t shake hands?” she continued, forcing the teapot’s lid back into its hole with a solid clink. “Says he’s afraid of aural contamination. Like you might be carrying some contagious juju, right, and he might get it on contact?”
“He told you that, did he?”
“He told Reverend Martin,” she quietly wailed. “We met for Sunday lunch after service last week, and Reverend Martin was there with his family, and, silly me, I introduced them…” She closed her eyes and exhaled softly. “And so my great-nephew’s sitting there, telling my pastor he’s a wizard and that Mrs. Martin’s aura shows evidence of psychic scars. I’m ne
ver going to live that down.”
In the other room, Stuart launched into an impassioned diatribe against Jack Chick.
“He can’t really see auras, can he?” Mrs. Cooper murmured.
I could only shrug. “It’s possible. I’ve run into a few sensitives over the years—they can barely see magic, and they certainly can’t do anything with it.” Her brow knit, and I explained, “You’re always standing in the middle of a magical field, with the exception of those few days last March. Living things give off certain energies, yes? Well, when those energies pass through a magical field, they interact. If you’re on the cusp of visual sensitivity to magic, you might see those interactions as color fluctuations. Following me?”
“I suppose.” She passed me the warm teapot and cocked her head toward the kitchen. “Shall we get this over with?”
“Really, I can get him out of your hair—”
Mrs. Cooper pushed her glasses to the tip of her nose and gave me a silencing stare. “Colin, dear, I am quite fond of you, but I’m not about to sic a faerie on my own blood. Is that understood?”
“Auntie Eunice,” Stuart called from the next room, “you really should let me guide you through a past-life regression. It’s so…cleansing.”
I met her eyes and smirked. “You’re sure about that, are you?”
“Should I forget, I expect you to remind me,” she muttered, and nudged me toward the table.
I slid back into my seat and passed Stuart the teapot. “Sorry about that. Your work sounds fascinating, really. Refill?”
He helped himself and grabbed another scone. “I don’t expect a layman to understand the technicalities, of course, but that should give you a better picture of my profession.”
“Indeed.” I filled Mrs. Cooper’s cup, then my own. “You’ll forgive a silly question, then, but how the hell are you planning to pay the bills in Rigby?”
Stuart flinched, though I couldn’t tell whether the enquiry or the profanity unsettled him more. “I don’t underst—”
“Come on, this isn’t Glastonbury. You’re trying to peddle witchcraft in a town of nice, churchgoing folks. How much success do you honestly anticipate?”
The Faerie King Page 11
