He reached out and gripped my wrist. “Coileán, it killed my sons. Please, I will give you anything you ask. Do anything you ask. Please.”
My gut clenched as I glanced down at the webbed fingers cutting off circulation to my hand. “I’ll speak to him,” I mumbled. “I can’t say how quickly he’ll see me, but I’ll bring this to his attention. That’s the best I can do right now. And…my sympathies.”
Grivam nodded slowly, then released me and slid back beneath the waves. After a moment of silence, Aiden peeled himself off his bench, looked down into the murky water, then muttered, “So…that went well?”
“Not particularly,” I replied, rubbing my wrist. “And now I’ve got to find an excuse to go back to Florida.”
He turned and grinned. “If you need one, I’ve never been to Disney World.”
“Nice try.”
“We could make it a bonding experience.”
“Aiden,” I muttered, shaking my head, “are you familiar with the phrase ‘hell on earth’? A fenced enclosure with a million hyped-up children and amusements requiring that you strap yourself into steel contraptions?”
He considered that briefly. “I’ve heard of a drinking game involving EPCOT. Think about it, eh?”
As the boat turned for home, I mulled over the likelihood of Oberon trying to kill me if I darkened his door yet again. He wouldn’t be pleased, no matter why I turned up, but if I could present the issue as a problem to him, he might be willing to listen…
Something swooped low overhead, and I jumped from my reverie at the sound of a splash to port. As I tried to pinpoint the source, Joey’s head popped up, and Valerius, who must have spotted him on landing, swung around to retrieve him. “What happened?” I called as we closed the distance. “Did she throw you?”
“Meant to fall!” he yelled back between long strokes. “My legs were cramping, she’s tired…thought you wouldn’t mind a hitchhiker.” He pulled himself over the side and landed in the bottom of the boat, dripping and sunburned but smiling even as he panted. “Morning! I’m starving. Any chance of snacks?”
“You’re insane,” I replied, producing a towel and chucking it across the boat.
He caught it and began rubbing his hair dry. “Oh, probably. But since this still beats seminary by a substantial margin, I think I’ll stay off my meds a while longer. So, why the field trip?”
“Had a little chat with Grivam,” I said, smiling to myself as Joey’s eyes widened. “You know, Ilunna’s probably around if you wanted to see her again.”
Joey’s frantic glare spoke volumes, but Aiden looked back and forth between us, blind to the subtext. “Is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?” he protested.
Valerius beckoned him to the back of the boat. “I don’t know the specifics,” I heard him whisper as Joey blushed furiously, “but I can hazard a strong guess.”
CHAPTER 13
* * *
The merrow, no matter how unhappy they were with their displacement, were safe for the moment. My more pressing concern was Olive’s new suitor, but short of lurking around the Friday night gatherings in hopes of cornering her with her young man, I suspected I wasn’t going to get much information by traditional routes. I might have looked into Olive’s thoughts, had she not become so adept at avoiding me—something always seemed to come up in her schedule every time I stopped by Meggy’s place that fall. For her part, Meggy had cajoled a reluctant admission from Olive that she was maybe seeing someone, but that was all. “I can’t just pry,” Meggy explained when we were alone. “If she thinks I’m pushing, she’ll shut me out. We’ll all be better off if I keep the lines open and let her know I’m here if she wants to talk.”
But seeing as Olive already disliked me, I decided that it couldn’t hurt if I pushed my luck.
My chance came in early November, as Rigby’s disastrous football season was limping to its playoff-less end. The penultimate match was an away game, but Olive’s usual ride had car trouble, meaning she was forced to endure the humiliation of getting a lift from her mother. With no after-party to look forward to, Aiden had bowed out that week, leaving Olive alone in the car with Meggy and me for a terse thirty-minute drive up the coast. She sprawled across the backseat, arms folded and lips tight, and glared at the back of Meggy’s head as if daring her to make conversation. Obliging Olive’s unspoken demand, Meggy kept her eyes on the road and the radio on the pop station. My tolerance for whiny teenage chanteurs is abysmal, however, and after listening to ten minutes of nasal drivel on relationship issues the singers couldn’t begin to comprehend, I turned in my seat and smiled at my daughter. “So, Olive, I understand you’re dating someone.”
Fortunately for me, she was still bound and too young to kill with a glance. “Yeah,” she muttered, tucking her arms across her tight uniform. “Got a problem with that?”
“No, not at all,” I lied. “Who’s the lucky fellow?”
“None of your business.”
“Olive,” Meggy warned.
She looked as if she were witnessing the greatest injustice in the history of the world. “What? It’s none of his business! I don’t have to talk to Colin if I don’t want to!”
Meggy exhaled slowly, but I caught her gloved fingers tightening and loosening on the steering wheel as Olive whined. “It wouldn’t kill you to be polite, sweetie,” she finally replied. “And I’m curious, too. What’s his name?”
Olive sat back and scowled at the universe, then muttered under her breath, “G.”
Meggy’s eyes darted to mine, and I played dumb. “G?” I echoed. “Just G?”
“Yeah. Just G.”
“And does he have a last name, this G of yours?”
Her lip rose in a slight snarl. “Does it matter?”
“Actually, yes. I think your mom would feel better to know you weren’t dating some sort of transient with an assumed name. I mean, maybe this is me, but you tell me this boy’s name is G and only G, and I assume he’s either a drug dealer or headlining a drag revue.”
At that, she not only rolled her eyes but went so far as to throw her head back and stare at the roof of the car in utter exasperation. “God, you are so annoying! Stop trying to be my fucking dad!”
“Olive Marie Horn!” Meggy snapped, glaring over her shoulder. “Language, young lady!”
“He’s picking on me again!” she protested. “Make him stop, Mom!”
Meggy grimaced apologetically, and I shrugged and turned back to stare out the windshield. “I’m not trying to make you miserable, Olive,” I said, keeping my voice level. “I’m concerned—and your mom is concerned, more importantly—that you’re spending time with an older man we’ve never met.”
“Did Aiden squeal about that, too?” she asked in a huff.
“Aiden didn’t squeal about anything,” I lied again. “He didn’t have to. Rigby’s not that big, kid, and word gets around. Now, as we hear it, you’ve been seen with a twenty-something guy no one seems to know. Want to put our minds at ease?”
“I don’t give a damn about your peace of mind.”
“Your mom’s mind, then,” I said, touching Meggy’s knee before she could fly off the handle. “Details?”
Olive sat silently for a moment, but when no one moved to change the conversation, she sighed and threw up her hands. “He goes to At Com, okay? Is that what you wanted? Can you get out of my personal life now, please?”
“Atlantic Community College,” Meggy murmured, and I nodded—the two-year school on the edge of town had been there since the seventies and offered courses mainly in automotive repair and cosmetology. I surmised that G wasn’t going to be transferring to Tech anytime soon.
After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence and the radio’s half-rapped anthem to secondhand clothing, Meggy asked, “So…any chance you could bring G over for dinner?”
“Mom!” Olive wailed, and the subject was quickly dropped.
I should have acted. I should have altered the bind, maybe tam
pered with Olive’s libido or strengthened her inhibitions. I should have followed her invisibly, stalked this G to the end of the earth, squeezed the truth from him, and left him to choke on his own vomit and bile.
But I didn’t act. I sat back, trusted that my daughter had a perfectly normal crush on perhaps a low-blooded witch, and left the matter to Meggy’s sound discretion. And if that was all we’d faced—a couple of hormonal kids figuring out the basics of coupling—then Meggy’s instincts surely would have steered us through Olive’s first relationship. Granted, knowing Olive, there would have been shouting matches and tearful accusations, but we’d have come through it in one piece, albeit a little battered.
I wish it’d been that simple, but then I’ve never had the best of luck.
The final football game of the season was a home match, and I attended so Meggy wouldn’t have to suffer alone. Aiden, having by then built three more robotic coolers and worked out a synchronized dance routine for them, shot odd reciprocal hand signs at other boys as we took our seats. The withdrawn child I’d met almost three months before had finally begun to open up, dividing his time between the peace of his workshop and the chaos of Georgie’s barn, and now, among his peers, he exhibited a touch of the cockiness common to youths, a subtle swagger that announced his confidence in his social standing. Aiden was never going to be homecoming king or Rigby’s starting quarterback—partly due to the fact that he didn’t attend the high school, of course—but he’d quickly carved out a niche once he found himself among boys who didn’t know or care about his magical ineptitude, but liked the idea of alcohol-themed innovation. He’d styled himself as a nerd with flair, a non-threat who was potentially of use, and while the males accepted his presence, I noticed a few of the female band members looking up and waving as he climbed the stands.
The kid had begun to fill out even as he’d stretched—his cuffs were skimming the tops of his ankles those days, and whatever tasks Joey had given him in the barn had added a little bulk to his arms and chest. He wasn’t finished, not by a long shot, but even under the stadium lights, he looked healthy, well-fed and slightly tanned. Best of all, I still had no desire to kill him—a remarkable situation, considering his age. The rest of our siblings had avoided him, as far as Valerius knew, and I had to admit that I’d not been the most attentive of guardians, but Aiden and Joey had become fast friends, and Galahad’s better bits seemed to be rubbing off on the boy. If Aiden needed a role model, I decided, he could do worse than the dragon-riding lunatic with the arming sword.
We huddled in the bleachers under blankets that night in the cold mist, watching as the beleaguered Buccaneers made their last futile stand. At halftime, the band took the field in ski jackets and fingerless gloves, and even the cheerleaders gave in to their leggings’ siren song. I surreptitiously produced bottles of coffee to pass around and thought longingly of the basketball game for which Olive was slated to cheer the following week. Those stands were of the collapsible steel type, but at that moment, I’d have chosen nearly anything over being cold and damp with a sea breeze blowing in. I’d almost drummed up enough resolve to leave the warmth of the huddle for nachos when I caught Olive waving coyly at someone sitting in the first row.
All I could see was the back of his head and part of his jacket, giving me little to work with. The kid was black-haired, perhaps olive-skinned, though it was difficult to tell with the lights. His thin jacket, black and slick, was stretched taut over broad shoulders, and when he raised his hand to wave back at Olive, I saw a heavy golden ring with a green stone—a signet, possibly—covering the lower half of his middle finger.
“Back in a minute,” I told Meggy, then strolled down the bleachers as casually as I could, winding a long path toward the concessions building that would take me in front of him. As I passed, I cut my gaze to his face, trying to find meaning in a split-second glance. Blue eyes, deep and heavy-lidded. Pale lips, slightly parted as he ran his tongue back and forth over his top teeth. And…there. I didn’t have Vivian’s strange gift, but something about the boy I assumed to be G made the hair on my neck rise. Before I could look away, he met my eyes, but there was no recognition in his stare, nothing to cause alarm…and yet…
I hurried to purchase my nachos and returned to my seat, then pointed down the bleachers and muttered to Meggy, “G’s sitting there. I don’t like him.”
“Where?” she whispered, and I noticed the gap in the shoulders on the front row an instant before I spotted G standing near the trees behind the goalposts, beckoning. Olive, who was sitting on the end of her bench, stood and headed for the water cooler, but when her continued checks over her shoulder reassured her that she hadn’t been noticed, she darted around the field to join him.
“Aiden,” I began, but he was already on his feet.
“On it.” He jumped the stairs two at a time and jogged toward the trees. I followed his progress, willing him on, but Olive had a significant head start. She ran into G’s arms and seemed to say something, but he tightened his grip about her and stared back into the bleachers.
Even from that distance, I knew he was looking for me. I felt it when our eyes met again, and G smiled. And then, in what I can only describe as a flash of black, he and my daughter were gone.
It goes without saying that students disappearing into thin air isn’t covered in the Rigby teachers’ handbook. The next two hours played out as I could have anticipated they would—the screaming people who insisted they saw something supernatural, the skeptics who chalked it up to a smoke grenade or swamp gas, the rational administrator who alone thought to call in a missing child report—but with the additional wrinkle of Vivian. Five minutes after the football field was swarmed by concerned students and parents, as I was holding Meggy back from the pressing crowd and swearing by any god she liked that I’d find her baby, Vivian popped up beside us, clutching Aiden by the wrist. “I’m getting the kid out of Dodge,” she announced. “Safest place for him in this town is Rick’s basement—the wards are solid. We’ll be there if you need us.”
Aiden tried to protest, but I cut him off before he got the chance. “Go with her,” I told him. “I need to be here. Rick’s a friend, he’ll look after you until I can get by. And what sort of wards were we talking about?” I asked Vivian. “I’ve been down there, and I didn’t feel anything.”
“That’s because you can’t,” she said with a condescending look. “Be safe.”
Before I could question her further, she had dragged Aiden into the throng, and I was left with the more immediate task of keeping Meggy somewhere in the neighborhood of calm. She sat on the front row of the bleachers—as far as she’d gotten before I stopped her from rushing the field—and rocked back and forth, her gloves over her mouth and her eyes wide. Eventually, someone made the connection between the missing child and the woman in a state of shock, and I was forced to deal with the police interrogation until Meggy could pull herself together. No, we’d never met the boy. No, we didn’t know where they could have gone. No, I wasn’t Olive’s father, just Ms. Horn’s boyfriend. No, we hadn’t fought—no more than usual. No, Ms. Horn didn’t need an ambulance.
By the time the questions had cycled through and begun to repeat, the crowd on the field had been driven back by Rigby High’s security squad, and a roll of yellow tape had been unspooled around the goal area. I told our interviewer that Meggy needed to rest, and after taking Meggy’s business card, she allowed us to leave the campus. I took Meggy’s keys, helped her into the passenger seat of her car, and started the short drive back to town. Halfway there, Meggy finally stopped rocking, but she stared out the windshield in silence, and I knew better than to continue to offer hollow reassurances that everything would be all right.
Business at Slim’s was brisk—the tiki bar lost some of its allure as winter rolled down the coast—but its proprietor caught my eye and beckoned us over as soon as I led Meggy through the door. “Aiden’s helping Vivi find the leak in my tap system,” he said loudly e
nough for the patrons near us to hear. “They’re in the cellar. You ready to take him home?”
“Yeah, I think we’ve had enough for one night,” I replied, guiding Meggy onto a barstool. “Could I get—”
“I’ll take you down to him, one second,” he replied, but his hands were already in motion over the shelves, pulling bottles and glassware with a rapidity of which I’d not thought him capable. Within a minute, he plunked a half-full tumbler down in front of Meggy and stooped to look her in the face. “You drink that, okay?” he said gently, pushing it toward her. “It’ll help a little.”
She lifted it, sniffed, then sipped and winced.
“Burns, I know, but you work on that, and we’ll be back in a minute,” Slim promised, then lifted the hatch and followed me down. When the trapdoor was closed behind us and the overhead bulb lit, he muttered, “Triple Dark ’N’ Stormy, hold the Stormy. Meg’s not the type to shoot whisky. Now, you want to compare notes?”
“Where’s Aiden?”
“Workshop. I’ve got solid wards around the place, he’s perfectly safe.”
“That’s what Vivian said,” I replied, “but if you’ve got wards, then why didn’t—”
“They’re not to keep you out,” he murmured, folding his arms. “This may come as a surprise, Colin, but faeries in the basement isn’t my worst-case scenario.”
“Dare I ask?”
He snorted and turned for the second trapdoor. “If you want to see that girl again, you’d better. From where I’m standing, it looks like you’re about to be up to your ass in alligators.”
I waited while he opened the door to the workshop, then followed him into the red glow of the sub-basement, where I found Aiden and Vivian playing cards across the long workbench. “We had to do something,” she said guiltily while Aiden packed the deck away. “You don’t get Wi-Fi down here, Rick.”
“And what part of this job requires Internet access, pray tell?” he retorted, closing the door behind us with a solid thud. “Now, Colin, about your alligators—see that little light over there?” He pointed to a dim blue bulb mounted on a shelf of the far side of the room.
The Faerie King Page 22
