by Dani Harper
“Because you were a grim?”
“Nay, because I am a smith.”
She looked at him as if he were teasing her. “What does blacksmithing have to do with being a witch?”
“The shaping of iron involves many techniques and measures, most of which are kept absolutely secret and handed down only from master to apprentice.” He paused, but it was plain that she didn’t understand what he was saying. “Secrets are sometimes mistaken for alchemy and magic, for the devil’s work, are they not? Throughout the ages, blacksmiths have sometimes been banned from villages or even burned for their skills, in spite of the good they did and the need for their work. At the very least, smiths have oft been required to ply their trade outside of the town just in case the devil was involved.” He nodded at her. “Just like those who practiced the healing arts.”
She nodded as she refilled the pitcher. “People often fear what they don’t understand.”
“Do you fear me?” He was surprised by his own question. Where had that come from?
“No. You’re a mystery, which puzzles me. A helluva kisser, which intrigues me. And often rude, which annoys the hell out of me. But I’m not afraid of you.”
I’m rude? Before he could protest that, the littlest cat, the young black one called Rory, chose that moment to make a tiger’s leap from the top of a chimney to his mistress’s shoulder. Rory had misjudged the distance, however, and landed on Brooke’s back instead, surprising a yell from her as he scrabbled frantically for purchase. Water soaked the front of her shirt as she released the pitcher she was holding in favor of trying to capture the panicked feline—and from the looks of it, she’d had a lot of practice. Rory’s claws were well tangled, however, especially the hind ones, and Aiden had to help extricate them from her shirt (and from her skin as well he feared) while she held the errant cat. Finally, they were free of each other, and she put Rory down with relief. The cat immediately scampered off to play-wrestle with his companions.
“Some of those scratches are deep,” Aidan said. “I think you might need some curitas.”
“Aha.” She pointed at him. “Those are Band-Aids, right? Olivia said you speak Spanish fluently. And that you might speak some other languages too. Is it true?”
Aidan couldn’t say which was more pleasing, the way the fabric matched her widened blue-green eyes or the way the damp cloth clung to her breasts and revealed her nipples. He cleared his throat and coughed, hoping to loosen the invisible fist around his neck that was cutting off his air. “My native tongue is Welsh, but your ears tell you that I can speak in English. It’s true that I also know a number of other languages.”
“Explain that. How would you learn something like that as a smith?”
He shook his head. “Not as a smith but as a grim. I have walked among humans for centuries. I’ve had a lot of time to listen and learn. Perhaps being Death’s messenger made it both necessary and easier to understand the many languages I encountered.”
Understand but never use. He had learned the languages in mute silence, and it was strange to have words all but pouring out of him now. Aidan didn’t remember being so inclined to talk before his mortality had been interrupted. He had nothing against conversation, but in his former life, he didn’t indulge in it overly much. Perhaps being unable to speak for a thousand years had given him a new appreciation of it—or perhaps this woman was just unusually easy to talk to.
Strange, he couldn’t recall having talked with Annwyl very much. He remembered her as quiet, saying little. But then his own parents had seldom conversed. In fact, most couples didn’t say much to each other, though there might be great affection between them. From what he had observed, things were very different now—and people themselves seemed different.
And perhaps that included him.
“I guess that makes some sense,” Brooke was saying. “I’d like to hear more about it, but, oh man, I have got to sit down. It’s been a very long day.”
Brooke squeezed between the greenhouse and the near-solid wall of garden carts and felt her heart plummet to her shoes. She’d been putting off this moment, delaying the inevitable. Now she stood with her hands numbly at her sides, surveying the damage to the skylight. To the roof.
She knew that the iron frame of the twelve-foot window was gone, but she wasn’t expecting that the knee-high walls that had supported it were gone as well. No wonder there had been such a mountain of debris in the room below. And of course there was the blue tarp that was presently darkening the interior of the entire second story. Close up, it looked to be the size of Rhode Island, and the way it covered the entire mess reminded her uncomfortably of a crime scene. The tarp was nailed in place with two-by-fours and surrounded by a hastily assembled fence of fluorescent orange mesh to discourage anyone—even the cats—from stepping onto the tenuous blue surface.
What a mess. What would happen if it rained? And how on earth was she going to afford to have this disaster repaired before cold weather came?
Gradually, she emerged from her dismal thoughts and noticed that Aidan was standing close beside her. “It’ll be put right. I don’t know how, but I give you my word it will be set to rights.”
Swallowing hard, Brooke scolded herself. Here she was getting upset over a window, a silly damn window, when she should be grateful that she had friends—including this new, though somewhat odd, one—all of whom had been willing to work their asses off to clean up the site and make it safe.
“Thank you,” she managed. “Thank you for all the hours you put in to straighten this up and take away all the garbage.” Brooke looked Aidan in the eye—possibly a mistake, as once met, those iron-gray eyes were tough to look away from. “It wasn’t very fair to you. Here it is, your first day on the planet as a human being again, and instead of celebrating, all you’ve done is work.”
“Seems fair enough, since I’m the one that ruined your roof. Did I not put the hole here? And it’s good to work,” he said. “I’m a man again, and a man works. I like it. I think you’d say it feels normal.” He chuckled then. “It even feels good to sweat. It reminds me of pounding iron in my shop. Perhaps that seems like a strange thing to miss, but I do.” He held out his big hand to her. “You’ve worked hard today too. Why don’t we both sit down?”
She nodded and slid her hand into his—and she could sense power. Magic. Was it left over from being a grim for so long? From spending time in the fae realm? He had asked if she feared him, and here she was alone with him on the rooftop. The answer was still no. It wasn’t like he was going to bite her—and she was immediately sorry she’d thought of that, because hey, it sounded kind of hot. What she wouldn’t give just for a repeat of that killer kiss…
Immediately, she felt guilty about her wish. The kiss had not been intended for her at all, but for the fiancée Aidan had lost. Brooke hadn’t dared ask any questions yet, but Annwyl must have belonged to his human life before he became a grim. There was no telling how far along he might be in the grieving process, when or if he might be ready to be with someone else. Besides, according to Aidan, Brooke resembled Annwyl—and she wasn’t sure she liked that idea.
And she was obviously getting waaay ahead of herself. She hadn’t known this man for twenty-four hours yet. Aidan could still turn out to be the creepy stalker-pervert who George had initially pegged him as. Should that turn out to be the case, however, she knew plenty of fast spells that would make him damn sorry he’d ever set foot on her property. She supposed she could always just knock him on his ass again too. George had taught her that handy little trick, although it tended to work better with the element of surprise—and the powerful boost of magic she used with it. Right now, though, she was too tired to want to muster that kind of energy (not to mention that Aidan was likely too smart to be caught a second time).
So for now, she would simply trust—trust Aidan and, most of all, trust her Gift—and see where that went. She permitted him to lead her around the big blue scar that was once a hundr
ed-year-old skylight, to what she laughingly called her terrace dining room. It was just a little open-air space with lattice walls on two sides, furnished with a couple of chairs and a table, and in calm weather, a big green umbrella. Sometimes she brought her dinner up here at night and stargazed while she ate. Sometimes she brought her spell books and…“Oh!”
The table was set with bright clay dishes on a striped linen cloth. A basket of bread, an assortment of cheeses and meats, and a small pot of butter accompanied a couple of bottles of Tucannon Star Mead. An empty planter with a scrap of plywood across it was being utilized as a serving table and a bright plastic picnic cooler sat there. Rory was already there, standing on his hind legs, trying to discover the contents.
“What’s all this?”
“This is why I was on your roof tonight.” Aidan looked a little embarrassed. “It is but a gesture, to thank you for your kindness. It was your spell that called me back to my mortal form, and your home has suffered a great deal of damage because of it. I am in your debt and not all can be repaid. I know that this”—he waved at the food—“this cannot set anything aright, but good food can sometimes make hard times less burdensome, at least for a short while. And—”
“And?”
“I will try not to be rude.”
Brooke laughed and slid into a chair. The sun had dipped below the horizon, leaving the city streetlights to keep the coming dark at bay. It was her favorite time of night. Venus, the Evening Star, was hovering low in the colored sky, and a cluster of her scented candles was burning in a glass bowl on the table. Aidan fumbled a little with the cooler lid but eventually extracted two steaming cartons that smelled like heaven surely ought to. “I’m told this is called gumbo,” he said. “I asked George to help me find something that was truly American.”
It’s a wonder he didn’t take you to Mickey D’s. “It was a good choice,” she said, as she spooned rice in her bowl and ladled the fragrant sausage and shrimp over it. She took a bite and closed her eyes to savor the Creole spices intermingled with the famous holy trinity of onion, bell peppers, and celery. “It was a great choice.”
He nodded in agreement. “I like it too.” He flipped open the bread basket and tore a fist-sized chunk off an artisan loaf the color of black coffee, then dunked it in the gumbo. “Better,” he mumbled as he chewed. “Much better.”
She tore off a considerably smaller piece and spooned butter on it. The bread tasted like a coarse-grain rye and was solid enough to make a meal by itself. Almost solid enough to pound nails with too, but it was flavorful. She could feel her body wake up and pay attention as she chewed—she hadn’t realized just how hungry she was. “Better than what?” she suddenly asked.
“Better than the little circles on your table this morning. I fear someone has sold you some very poor flour.” He had the grace to look abashed as he realized what he’d said. “Rude?”
“Rude. Lucky for you, I didn’t bake the bagels. I bought them at the store.” She turned in her chair to look at Mel’s Gas and Grocery down the street. The giant gold and red sign lit up just as she pointed her finger at it. “So my feelings aren’t too terribly hurt.”
Aidan looked relieved. “I may have become far too particular about breads. It comes of being a smith. Most people don’t—didn’t—have ovens of their own, and a smith must keep a fire going almost all the time. So I built a big brick oven off the back of the forge and people could come and bake their breads in there each day. In return, they’d give me a share of it, or maybe some cheese or a bit of pork if they had some to trade. I came to know who the best cooks were.”
“Sounds like somebody never had to shop for groceries or make a meal for himself.”
“No,” he said as he spooned up the last of the gumbo in his bowl. “I didn’t. But I would surely travel to market for this if I could.” He dished up another helping and ate with a will.
Brooke sampled the cheeses and recognized the brightly colored Talavera pottery plate they were arranged on. “Olivia’s dishes?”
He smiled a little. “You have very kind friends, Brooke Halloran.”
“And excellent conspirators.”
“I simply asked them what I might do for you, to cheer you. You had a very difficult day, and it showed in your face at times.”
“It was kind of you to notice, and doubly kind to care enough to do something.”
He grinned. “I’m not always rude.”
“Okay, I’ll give you that,” she laughed. “Besides, it’s not the usual kind of rudeness as in being impolite or mannerless. Well, maybe about the bagels,” she amended. “But it’s mostly a case of you being pleasant one moment and extremely abrupt the next. You’re so angry, all sharp edges sometimes. Perhaps it’s grief, and I can understand that. It’s natural. But I also feel an absolute fury coming off of you in waves and I don’t know why.”
As if to illustrate her point, the smile vanished from his face as if it had never existed. His iron-gray eyes looked past her, through her, as if seeing something else, and his voice was flat.
“It has nothing to do with you. My ire is all for the Fair Ones, especially the one who took me. It was my wedding day, and a fae princess, Celynnen, stole me away to her realm beneath the Black Mountains. I wouldn’t give in to her, wouldn’t lie with her, and so she declared I would be her pet until I consented. It was Celynnen that made me into a grim.”
He said it so simply, and yet the enormity of what had happened to him rocked Brooke in her chair. She’d read storybooks as a child of course, knew the old tales of faeries kidnapping mortals, but never in a million years would she have imagined it could be true. “On your wedding day? To Annwyl? How horrible for both of you! Did she see what happened to you? Did she know?”
Aiden shook his head. “Celynnen made certain that Annwyl died of a fever a year earlier, when her mother did—and so she never met me, you see. That ice-hearted gast then spelled everyone I knew, thinking she was doing me a great favor. I didn’t exist in the mortal world anymore, and no one remembered me. Not my friends and family. Not even my own mam and tad. No one.”
Brooke could feel the color drain from her face. “Aidan, she’d have to change time itself to do that. Who has that kind of—well, who has that much power?” Dark power, she’d almost said. Messing around with time was acknowledged as one of the darkest arts and highly dangerous. No sane witch would risk trying to manipulate a single hour, never mind a thousand years. “As a member of the royal House of Thorn, Celynnen has exactly that kind of power, and she thinks nothing of using it. It suited her whim, so she could have what she wanted.”
“But what she did to you, to all of you, was unspeakably cruel. It was beyond wrong, it was evil.”
“Aye, it was all that and more. And I’ll not let it stand. Now that I’m human again, I’ll be able to face Celynnen as a man and not a dog, and fulfill my vow.”
“What vow would that be?” asked Brooke, afraid that she already knew the answer.
“I’ll see her blue blood spilled upon the ground, of course—right after I put fear in her icy heart and force her to return me to my life.”
FOURTEEN
Whoa. Wait just a minute. There were so many things wrong with those goals, on so many levels, she hardly knew where to begin.
“You’re going to kill somebody?”
“I have sworn to slay Celynnen. You yourself said she was evil.”
“Yes, but—”
“Celynnen deserves to die many times over, not only for what she did to Annwyl but also for the countless lives she’s either taken or destroyed,” declared Aidan, and the anger of a thousand years burned in his hot blue gaze. “Do you not agree that evil must be opposed?”
“True evil must always be opposed, yes. But must it always be killed? I believe in doing no harm.”
Aidan shook his head. “You have a gentle heart in you despite that ready fist of yours. But Celynnen is older than you can imagine—and she will live forever and co
ntinue to wreak havoc in the human world unless she is stopped once and for all.”
She hadn’t thought of that. Dear goddess, was it possible that Aidan was right? Were there some cases where some harm must be wrought to prevent greater harm from being done? The daunting question seemed to lodge solidly in her brain, and even now she could feel the beginnings of a headache.
“Okay, I don’t know what the answer is. Let’s leave that alone for now until I have a chance to think about it, and maybe we’ll discuss it later.” Brooke knew she would be spending a lot of time meditating over the Code on that particular subject. “But there’s something else to be considered, something that might have even greater implications.”
His eyebrows went up, and she wished it weren’t her job to bring up the issue. Sometimes the responsibilities of her calling made her feel like a goddamn hall monitor. “I can understand that you’d want to return to your world, to the life that was stolen from you, I really can,” she said. “I mean, it seems so reasonable to just step back into your old shoes and pick up where you left off. But have you thought about the consequences?”
“There are no consequences. It’s my life. I want it back. Simple.” Aidan banged his mead bottle down on the table for emphasis.
Oh, good. This was starting to sound like that potential client she’d talked to on the phone recently, the one who wanted what he wanted, period. And she so did not feel like getting into an argument now. Maybe she could just excuse herself—it wouldn’t be stretching things to say she was tired, right? But a line from the Code came to her mind, strong and clear: to hold the Gift is to protect the balance, and restore harmony. And if Aidan pursued his stated course of reinserting himself into the past, balance and harmony might be upset beyond all repair. For many, if not everyone.
