“No.” Arden ruffled his feathers, sounding insulted.
My heart sank. The only people who could even find the path to the house were other members of our family, but they needed an invitation to come in. And the Sidhe themselves, but Hazel would have sensed Summer’s gate open.
“Maybe the Winter Gatekeeper found out.” I walked to the door, though apprehension dogged my every step. A chill breeze blew through an open window, a startling contrast to the house’s usual warmth. Grabbing the handle, I pulled the door open before I lost my nerve.
A dead man stood on the doorstep.
Chapter 3
The undead leant at an awkward angle, possibly because its leg had started to decay mid-walk. Its face was greyish, its eyes sunken, and as I stared, a maggot crawled across its pallid skin. I jerked back, wishing I’d grabbed the salt shaker. But I hadn’t exactly been expecting any more visitors. Least of all deceased ones.
“Nevermore!” screeched Arden.
The zombie didn’t move, because he couldn’t hear. Or see. They just flailed around and hit at anyone in their path. I didn’t recognise the dead stranger, but dread bloomed inside me. I’d been thinking all this time about how nobody could find our house. The living couldn’t. The dead were another story entirely.
I aimed a kick at the zombie, trying to unbalance it, but it stayed upright. A cold, clammy hand reached for my face, fingers grasping. Fighting a shudder of revulsion, I drew back and punched it in the throat. I had zero combat skills, but zombies moved slowly, and my strike sent it stumbling backwards. Then it lunged forwards again. I was ready with another kick, this time at its weaker leg. It crumpled, hands still pawing sightlessly at me. Another kick sent it flailing off the doorstep. Nothing like fighting a zombie to give you a self-esteem boost.
“Get out!” Hazel screamed, hurling a container of salt. I jumped into the hallway to avoid being hit, and the salt canister struck the zombie in the face. He went down, hard, his skin dissolving as the salt ate away at the necromantic magic keeping him standing. Reanimates, otherwise known as undead or zombies, weren’t conscious beings, but they were tenacious, especially in large numbers. Luckily, this one seemed to have come alone.
“Oh, that’s foul,” said Hazel, making gagging noises. “I hate zombies. Who sent that?”
I peered across the garden, making sure there weren’t any others. “Definitely not the Summer Court. Arden, did someone else follow us? Or did you give permission to everyone on the wrong side of the grave to come and visit?”
“Nevermore!” proclaimed the raven, landing on the zombie’s liquefying face. “No. This one came from the grave.”
“I know it came from the bloody grave, you menace,” I said. “Salt will dissolve it, but this whole place will stink of the dead for a week.”
“We need to get rid of it.” Hazel hung back behind the door, with no apparent inclination to come and look at the zombie.
“By ‘we’, you mean me, don’t you?” I’d always been able to handle gore better than she could—kind of funny, considering I hadn’t been exposed to Faerie as young as she had—but cleaning up dead bodies hadn’t exactly been on my list for today.
Hazel gave me the smile that usually translated as can I please have the last cookie? Or you won’t tell Mum I stole her circlet, will you?
And I, idiot older sister that I was, caved every single time. Older by ten minutes, but still.
“Keep an eye out for trouble,” I told her, and went to the shed in search of a shovel.
By the time I’d relocated what was left of the zombie to the abandoned part of the garden, I was in a thoroughly bad mood. No signs were evident of whoever had sent the damn thing, nor any other clues as to how it’d ended up in the garden. So when I returned to the doorstep to find a second unwelcome intruder, I elbowed him aside.
Or I would have, but he glided out of the way in a manner that would have made a professional dancer envious. The man was maybe in his late twenties, with light blond hair, and emphatically not an undead. No human could move that gracefully. I wished I hadn’t ditched the shovel, though most half-faeries relied on their magic, which would have no effect on us. Still, three confrontations in a single day was entirely too many for me.
“I apologise for startling you,” he said.
“Whatever you’re selling, we’re not interested.” I moved pointedly into the hallway and faced him. “And if you’re planning on making an attempt against the Gatekeeper, then look forward to spending the next hundred years as a tree.”
Hazel stepped in. “Who are you?”
The stranger’s gaze slid from her to me and back again. Clearly he hadn’t been expecting two of us. Maybe he was one of the people looking to make a claim on the Erlking’s throne. Like Hazel, his eyes were pale green, too bright for a human—a sign that his faerie parent was Sidhe. He stood at maybe six feet tall, and wore a knee-length, faerie-made coat embossed in the style of the Seelie Court. He was slightly more rugged-looking than the average half-faerie, but his pointed ears were unmistakable.
“My name is River,” he said. His accent was faintly Scottish, though he spoke in the formal tones of the Court. “I have been sent here by the Seelie Court to act as bodyguard to the Gatekeeper’s heir.” His gaze travelled to Hazel, taking in the symbol on her forehead. “You must be Hazel Lynn. It’s nice to meet you.”
Bodyguard? We were faerie-proof. Literally. What in hell was Mum thinking?
I placed a hand on his arm and firmly shoved him backwards. I wasn’t too worried about him retaliating. If he meant harm, the family’s magic would kick in and throw him off the property. Unfortunately, he didn’t budge an inch. Instead, he looked down at my hand as though he’d hardly registered that I was there.
“And you are?” he asked.
“Ilsa Lynn,” I said.
“Oh.” His gaze travelled from me to Hazel once again, taking in the resemblance. I knew that look all too well. He might as well have said, right. She’s the spare. The non-magical one. I didn’t even take it as an insult anymore, because I’d long since slotted those people into the category of ‘we’re probably never going to be BFFs’.
Coming from this guy, though, after the day I’d had? A sudden current of white-hot anger coursed through my veins, and my hands curled into fists.
“As you can plainly see,” I said, through gritted teeth, “we’re doing just fine here. Goodbye.”
And I closed the door in his face.
The door flew open again, and though his unassuming stance hadn’t changed, the air felt charged. Green light shimmered down his arms, with the earthy scent of Summer faerie magic. Half-faeries very rarely skipped over their family’s magical talents—not that it generally made any difference to the Sidhe, since half-faeries were mortal, like us.
Go on. Hit me. Find out the hard way about our family’s magical shield.
“I have been given a task, and I intend to fulfil it,” he said. “The Summer Court has sent me to act as bodyguard to the Gatekeeper-in-training, and I will.”
Oh crap. It wasn’t his own magic that brought him here, but the binding words of a Sidhe. Faerie vows were difficult to figure out, but the one rule was that the person under the vow couldn’t repeat those words to anyone who asked. Unlike a Sidhe, however, he wasn’t bound to tell the truth. He was definitely under some kind of spell allowing him to come here, otherwise the house wouldn’t have let him into the grounds—but that didn’t mean his intentions were benign.
Dammit. Quite apart from the fact that Hazel had no need of a bodyguard, the last thing either of us needed was someone from an unknown Sidhe family tailing our every move.
Hazel stepped to my side. “I don’t need a bodyguard,” she said, with a polite smile. “I don’t know who sent you here, but this house is not in need of any outside protection. We’ve got that covered.”
“Then why are there traces of the dead nearby?” he enquired.
How do you know that? I’d
moved the zombie, and faeries weren’t sensitive to the dead. I guess I did have dirt all the way up my arm. That might have clued him in.
“You smell like you’ve been digging in the dirt. There’s also salt all over your doorstep. There’s been a recent plague of undead in the village, so I put two and two together.”
“Good for you,” I said. “As you can see, we dealt with the undead ourselves. We have more than enough salt, iron, and weapons in this house—which also happens to be designed as a fortress against attacks from outside forces. Including faeries of all types.”
“I am no threat to you,” he said, having apparently picked up on the warning undercurrent to my voice. “I’m only here to do my job.”
His own voice was laced with the clear hint of a threat, or at least firm reassurance that he wasn’t leaving until the Sidhe said so. But which Sidhe? Summer ambassadors my family might be, but I’d be a fool to believe every member of the Court was an ally.
“Listen,” I said. “Whatever your orders, we have them, too. Nobody is to enter this house without permission from the Gatekeeper, and you do not want to piss her off.”
“I don’t need to enter the house to perform my task,” he said. “I merely wanted to inform you of my intentions, should you see me outside at any time.”
I blinked. “You’re… going to stand on the doorstep? All day?”
“That was the plan, yes. Were you aware that there’s a disembodied hand underneath your doorstep?”
“I am now.” I kicked the undead hand out onto the path, where it flopped around pathetically. “There. You get to make yourself useful after all. I’m trusting you’ll deal with the terrifying zombie hand while I clean this grave dirt off my arm?”
This time when I closed the door, he didn’t open it again. Walking to the kitchen, I checked nothing inside the house had moved when he’d blown the door open. Nope. All show, evidently. He was a nuisance, but I’d dealt with worse.
“Did he say he’d been sent to guard the family, or the heir?” Hazel wanted to know.
“The Gatekeeper’s heir,” I said. “If he’s telling the truth. Those probably weren’t the words of the original vow. Why?”
She swore under her breath. “Because it means that if I leave the house, he’ll follow me. How are we supposed to go looking for this missing Seelie heir with him hanging around?”
“Precisely what I was thinking.” I ran the tap and set about washing the grave dirt off. Lucky Mum wasn’t around to nag me for getting bits of zombie in the kitchen sink.
Or not-so-lucky. Had she sent River after us? Maybe he’d come to help us with the Sidhe’s ridiculous quest. But he’d have come out with it right away if he had, and while Ivy hadn’t actually said not to tell anyone, for all I knew, he was a wannabe faerie prince looking to sneak onto the throne. He looked the type, but most Seelie faeries came equipped with the same startling looks and bright green eyes. Noble, obnoxious, and… staring at me through the open window. I damn near jumped out of my skin. “What are you doing?”
“Checking your defences,” he said. “Your house is well-protected.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” I dried off my hands.
“I didn’t know there was a sister,” he added.
“Yes. There is. She even has a name.” I wouldn’t normally be so rude to a guest, but most guests were actually invited, and he couldn’t comprehend the violation of striding right onto our property. As much as his presence was a glaring reminder that it belonged to the Sidhe first, the Gatekeepers second.
“Ivy?”
I took a step back. “No. Ilsa. You know someone called Ivy?”
“The name rings a bell, but no. Ilsa.” The way he spoke my name, in the slightly melodic tone of a half-faerie, made an irrational jolt of annoyance zip up my spine. But I was more fixated on the way he’d said Ivy. A genuine error, or an accidental slip? Sure, Ivy had claimed we were related, but for all I know, he and Ivy were both conspiring against the Gatekeeper.
“Why are you really here?” I sent a silent plea to the house’s magic to give me some kind of reassurance he wasn’t the enemy.
“I told you why.” He gave me a dazzling smile. “If I meant you harm, you’d be lying beside that zombie.”
“That’s a nice comment to make to someone standing directly behind a stack of knives.”
Okay, the only thing in my hands was a towel, but the knife rack was a foot away. Given how quickly half-faeries moved, though, I wasn’t too confident I could lunge and grab one if he attacked. But he didn’t have to know that. Besides, like all half-faeries, iron was deadly poison to him.
“Who’s threatening who?” Hazel walked into the room behind me.
I put the towel down. “I was letting our uninvited guest know we have no shortage of iron knives in here.”
“That’s right,” Hazel said, striding up to my side. “And that’s not counting the weapons room. Were you winding up my sister?”
“No,” he said. “I rather think she was threatening me.”
“You appeared under the window and startled me. Besides, you showed up right after an undead attacked us. What am I supposed to think?”
“That you have enemies.”
“You’ve clearly never met a Gatekeeper before,” Hazel said. “Anyone who isn’t a direct associate of the Seelie Court is a potential enemy.”
“Then it’s a good thing I have this.” He held up a piece of paper. Or rather, parchment. The Sidhe’s level of technology hadn’t reached the printing press stage yet. When magic did everything for them, they probably didn’t need it. Even through the window, I recognised the Summer Court’s official seal on it.
“You might have stolen it,” Hazel said, as the same thought passed through my head. Great. Next we’ll be talking in sync. “What’s our mother’s name?”
“Flora Lynn,” he said, not missing a beat. “She’s often mentioned around my family’s home in the Summer Court.”
“So you live there?” Hazel asked. “I assume you do, if you work for them.”
I looked at her in surprise. He could be the best bodyguard in all the realms and it wouldn’t make a difference to the Sidhe. They hated the idea of anyone mortal setting foot in the Court. Things had apparently changed recently.
“Yes, I do,” he said, his tone indicating that he’d prefer to change the subject. Hmm. Did he get kicked out in disgrace?
Did it matter? I should know better than to initiate a conversation with a half-Sidhe. The Seelie Court had never particularly cared for our well-being before. If they wanted anything, they just needed to ask Mum and she’d be compelled to give it to them. And if they thought Hazel and I knew more than Mum did about the Erlking’s heir, they’d be sadly disappointed.
I didn’t need to beckon Hazel to follow me into the living room—she knew when I wanted to talk to her alone.
“He knows Mum,” I whispered. “Not that that’s saying a lot…” The Summer Gatekeeper made enemies more often than she made friends.
“I don’t think he’s the enemy,” said Hazel. “I can pretty much guarantee he didn’t send the undead. Most half-faeries go into hysterics when they see a dead body. Reminds them too much of mortality.”
Mortality. I didn’t know where to begin with the part of Ivy’s message that had kind of got buried under the missing heir crap. But what if he could hear us? If the Sidhe of the Seelie Court didn’t know they could die now, then that information might ignite a war. So many things in Faerie depended on death not being permanent.
Hazel’s expression sobered like she’d guessed my thoughts. “He doesn’t look like the type to go into hysterics anyway. The Sidhe only recruit the best.”
“I didn’t know they recruited half-faeries at all.” I sat down on the sofa, fiddling with the hand-knitted throw. One of Grandma’s creations. Half the stitches had come undone and I wasn’t sure whether the pattern was meant to be a bird or a dog, but it was one of few things in the house
which didn’t have the Sidhe’s handiwork all over it.
“Some do,” said Hazel, leaning her elbows on the back of the sofa. “I get the impression the Sidhe pay their professional bodyguards pretty well. Didn’t you see his fancy coat?”
I frowned. “River? You think he’s important, then?”
“Important enough to send to guard the Gatekeeper’s heir? I’d say so.”
Hazel’s instincts were well-honed—as Gatekeeper, they had to be. So if she trusted River… I’d reserve judgement.
“Is it possible you’re projecting your past experiences onto the guy?” Hazel asked.
She knew me too well. The Lynn family’s rule was: don’t get involved with the faeries. Gatekeepers were supposed to be impartial. But I’d had a rebellious phase as a teenager, and back then, I was confident that Hazel and I would eventually find a way to free ourselves of Faerie forever. So I’d wound up having a fling with a local half-Sidhe. It hadn’t ended well.
“No,” I answered. “I think not trusting strange faeries who wander onto our property is a smart move.”
Her eyes narrowed like she didn’t believe me. Keeping anything secret from my twin sister was an impossibility, and she likely knew that guy had set my anti-faerie radar blaring. Admittedly, the human guys I’d tried to date hadn’t been much better, but I could more or less take humans at face value. Half-faeries raised as human got some of the magic but not the amorality that came with being immortal, so we mostly left one another alone. This guy, though, came from the Courts. That meant he’d likely been raised to see humans like the Sidhe did. We were toys to them, nothing more, and the idea of leaving my sister alone with a potentially dangerous faerie in the house put yet another wrench in my plan to get the hell away and back to my own life.
Hazel shrugged. “It’s fine. He can’t get into the house, and we can keep an eye on him from the window.”
“Not when we’re asleep,” I pointed out. “And he never said for how long.” I looked at Arden, who perched on the sofa arm. “Can he be trusted?”
Hereditary Magic Page 3
