Afterward, we snuggled on the sheet that was recently a skirt, my dress folded into a pillow beneath our heads. “About my next lesson,” I began.
“Yes, love?”
“Can we get you a proper kilt for that one?” I asked, tracing small circles on his belly. “I’m beginning to see what you like about all these skirts.”
He laughed, hugging me a bit tighter. “I thought you were against this…how did you put it?…‘damsel in distress’ nonsense.”
“Maybe it’s not all bad,” I conceded. “After all, what if you were the one in distress, and I needed to rescue you?”
“What if, indeed.”
14
The day after our swordplay/wardrobe lesson, Micah was off somewhere, doing something important yet again, and I was once more trolling the manor trying to find new and interesting ways to amuse myself. This particular important event of Micah’s had something to do with the annual tithe from the village. Yep, he used the word “tithe,” which I then learned was really just a fancy word for taxes. It also meant that I now knew one of the ways Micah managed the Whispering Dell, not to mention how he earned some of his money. Finally, I’d learned something about how Micah managed the village. It was just my luck that I learned the most boring part first.
It seemed that taxes really were unavoidable, even in the Otherworld. Being that I have no great love of tax payments or bureaucracy, I wasn’t exactly pining to join Micah. I was just bored. Again.
Mom’s advice echoed around in my skull, mostly because she was right. If I wanted to be happy here in the Otherworld, I needed more in my life than just Micah. I mean, even when (and if) I became his full-fledged wife, he won’t always be around to entertain me, what with his many obligations as the Lord of Silver. Then I remembered that being his wife meant having babies, lots of babies, and realized that too much free time probably wouldn’t be one of my problems. I hope this tithe was large enough for us to hire a few nannies. For the sake of the babies, of course.
I sighed and stepped outside the manor to walk in the gardens. I suppose I could have passed the time by helping Sadie set up her library, but with the exception of a few comic series and some trashy prewar paperbacks, I’d never been much of a reader. Of course, I’d never done much of anything in my spare time, except go to happy hour and watch television. So much of my life had been devoted to being unremarkable that I’d never bothered developing any hobbies, not even a lame one like stamp collecting. All of this unremarkableness had led directly to my current plague of boredom. Now, when I was finally free to do whatever I wanted, I couldn’t think of a damn thing to do with myself.
Maybe I’ll take up sculpturing. My feet had led me to the knot garden, and I was contemplating the statue of Micah’s mother that was its centerpiece. I was a passable artist, at least where drawing was concerned, even though all I’d ever really done was copy my favorite comics. While I didn’t think that qualified me as an artiste, I figured that my metal abilities should give me an edge in sculpting; I remembered Max telling me how he had made tiny metal flowers for a girl he liked. I decided not to dwell on the fact that those flowers were what made him the Institute for Elemental Research’s favorite science experiment.
I can start with roses, I mused, fingering a velvety petal. I can make the thorns sharp as needles, like barbed wire, and the petals will be so lush and—
“Sara.”
I turned to see my mother skulking behind the boxwood hedge, axe—or rather, one of the hatchets the silverkin used for chopping wood—in hand. Being that the boxwoods were only knee high, she looked utterly ridiculous, like an extra in a low-budget slasher film. Just like that, I wished for more boredom. “Yes?”
“Shh!” she hissed. “We’ve a boggart loose.” She motioned for me to follow, and we headed toward the orchard.
“One of Max’s?” I whispered.
“Aye,” she replied. I wondered if Mom realized that, the longer she was in the Otherworld, the more her Irish accent returned. Before I could ask, she held up her hand. “Look, the wee beastie’s eaten itself into a stupor.”
I followed her gaze and saw that the boggart was propped up against a tree, belly swollen and peach pits scattered around its feet. With its mud-colored skin, elongated snout, and pointy ears, it looked like a cartoonist’s acid trip.
“What is it?” I asked. When she quirked a brow, I added, “You know. Is it a boy or a girl?”
“Does it matter?”
“To other boggarts.”
Mom glared at me, and then she started up with these obscure hand movements. Eventually, I figured out that all those slashing motions meant that she wanted me to find a weapon of my own. I trotted off to where the silverkin kept the firewood and found myself a sizeable branch. “Are we going to kill it?” I asked, once I returned.
“That would probably be best,” Mom replied. “We can’t have these sorts of things turning up here, making a mess of things.”
“He didn’t mean to make a mess. He was just hungry.”
“Sara, you don’t understand. Once a boggart is tied to a family, only misfortune will follow.”
“Is that why Max was cursed with boggarts when he couldn’t pay his debts?”
“Most likely.” Wow. That bookie had a cruel sense of humor. “I broke the curse upon the others, but it looks to be well and truly stuck to this one. It was probably laid on this poor creature first, so it’s strongest with him.” Mom stood and hefted the hatchet. “Well, best get it over with.”
“You mean now?” I stood and grabbed the back of her shirt. “You’re just going to walk right over there and kill it while it’s sleeping?”
“That is the plan, yes.”
“But that’s…that’s not fair!” I shrieked.
“Sara, it’s the boggart or Max’s fortune.” Mom’s eyes softened. “I know that killing a creature in cold blood is a terrible thing to do, but I must. What kind of mother would I be if I left this beast alive to torment my son?”
A sane one. “Can’t we re-curse him? Or bind his powers, or…or something?”
“Mmm.” Mom let the hatchet’s blade rest against her leg, one hand rubbing her chin. “How do you propose we bind him?”
Well. It looks like we do have options. “Salt!” I all but shouted. “A circle of salt!” Salt binds everything, right? Hopefully?
Mom stared at the boggart, her lips pursed. “If we also use a poppet, it may work,” she said. I attributed her disappointed tone to the impending work of binding the boggart, not over missing out on hacking it to bits. “But if it doesn’t—”
“Then we’ll deal with it.” Before she could change her mind and go all psycho-killer, I called for Shep. Moments later he appeared, and I asked him for a sack of salt, some old fabric, thread, and stuffing for the poppet. I figured I could manage the pins and needles as sculpting practice.
To my surprise, my nascent metal-sculpting skills wouldn’t be needed, since Shep delivered not only a sack of salt and ball of twine, but also a lump of brown clay from which to fashion the poppet. How the little guy had known that I hated sewing, I had no idea, but at least I still got to work on my sculpting. While Mom poured the circle of salt around the boggart, I carefully molded the clay into a reasonable facsimile of the creature, pointy ears and all.
When I’d considered taking up sculpting, this was not what I’d had in mind.
“Now we bind the poppet,” Mom murmured, once the salt circle was complete. Just as we’d completed winding the twine around the clay, Shep appeared with a shovel. Mom gave me a look (apparently, queens do not dig holes), and I started digging next to the tree it snoozed against. Throughout all of this, the boggart snored away, clearly the Otherworld’s heaviest sleeper.
“What are the chances of this working?” I asked, as I patted down the loose earth.
“Fair to middling,” Mom replied. “If nothing else, it should work until the poppet’s disturbed or the salt washes away in the rain. Hopefull
y, by then it will have attached itself to another poor soul.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then I shall take care of it.” The hardness in Mom’s eyes, the set of her jaw, made me wonder exactly what she’d done in the past in order to keep her children safe. She did seem to know an awful lot about boggarts.
“Have you done things like this before?” I asked. “You know, have you had to deal with things,” I gestured toward the boggart, “like this?”
“Aye.”
“Even at the Raven Compound?” I pressed.
Mom sighed, her lips pursed. It was the oldest I’d ever seen her look. “Being Beau’s children has always made the three of you targets. It’s one of the many reasons I couldn’t go off and look for your father, and later for Max; who would have protected you and your sister? And, once you two were grown, there was the matter of the family artifacts…” She shook her head, then grinned. “Why, I remember one good fight, not long after Sadie went away to that university of hers.”
“Fight?”
“Nearly a battle,” Mom confirmed. “Why, it was a hand of goblins, led by a glaistig, of all things. They must have had old information and thought that your brother was still in residence.”
I rubbed my temples; this was why I didn’t ask Mom too many questions. She tended to answer them. “You fought off five goblins and a twig all by yourself?”
“Glaistig,” Mom corrected. “A seductress with the legs of a goat. Really, Sara, you should learn more of your heritage.” I nodded, pinching the bridge of my nose; yes, I think I finally understood why Sadie had started hanging out in the library so much.
“Come, now,” Mom said and began walking toward the manor. “I’ve a mind to be gone when the beastie wakes. Think your Shep’ll let bygones be bygones and brew me some tea?”
15
I went to bed early that night, bone tired after all the cursing of boggarts and burying of poppets. When I woke the next morning, I was in Micah’s arms. To call me content would have been a severe understatement. I kissed his nose while he was sleeping and again once his eyes opened.
“Hi,” I murmured, drowning in his silver gaze. I could just stay there forever, and, from the way Micah kissed me back, I suspected that he felt the same way.
“What are my Sara’s plans for the day?” Micah asked, after we’d snuggled for a while.
I opened my mouth to say that I had no plans beyond breakfast and a walk in the orchards, when Mom’s advice came rushing back to me. If I ever wanted to be more than an ornament on the fringe of Micah’s life, I was going to need to develop my own interests.
“You know, I think I’d like to go back to the Promenade Market,” I said.
“In the Mundane realm?” Micah asked, his brows peaking.
“Yeah.” For a moment, I thought Micah would forbid me to go. Wait—could he even do that? I was his consort, not his subject! I was his almost-equal, right?
Since he remained silent, and I really didn’t want to learn the answer to those questions just yet, I continued, “When Max and I were there the other day, I wanted to get a few things from the jeweler’s stand, but we didn’t have time. The stand is the same one where I got the supplies for this.” I traced the edge of Micah’s copper cuff, the token that marked him as mine. “I thought I could make a few more things. You know, like a hobby.”
“An excellent notion,” Micah murmured.
“Really?”
“Of course,” he replied. “The few items you’ve created have all been exquisite. If visiting this jeweler’s stand is the first step in creating more beautiful things, then I encourage you to go.” Relief cascaded over me; I’d been so worried that Micah wouldn’t approve of me traipsing across dimensions with Max. Then he said, “May I accompany you?”
“Don’t you have stuff to do?” I blurted out.
“Yes, but nothing so important it cannot wait. Nothing more important than being with you.” He kissed my hair, and I had to admit, a day spent strolling around the Promenade Market with Micah seemed very inviting. “Besides, I do still need to verify your claims about this Land of Scott.”
“All true,” I said, kissing his nose once more before I leapt up to dress. “We can bring Max with us.”
“Max?” Micah repeated. I ignored Micah’s frosty tone, just as I ignored my brother’s equally bad attitude when I told him about my plans over breakfast.
“You think he’ll like it there?” Max asked, eyeing Micah over the rim of his coffee mug. The rest of us ingested our caffeine from the dainty silver teacups Shep was so proud of, like civilized folk, but Max’s cup was as large as a beer stein. He was such a caffeine addict, he’d snort the stuff if he could figure out how to do it without drowning.
“I think so,” I murmured. “He likes to travel.”
Max snorted. “Yeah. Well. I don’t know if I want to go to the Promenade today.”
“Bullshit.” Max and I, both startled, looked at Sadie, who had just lobbed a curse at us without even taking her nose out of her book. “You love the Promenade; you always have. You just feel stupid because Micah had to clean up your mess with the iron warriors. Just go and make nice with our brother-in-law, okay?”
When the Metal Inheritor tells you to do something, you do it, and in a short time, Max, Micah, and I were walking along the border of the Whispering Dell. We easily found the static portal secreted amongst the pines, and, a heartbeat later, we were in the Mundane realm. Micah had used some innate navigational talent, and instead of arriving in REES’ parking lot, we were only a few blocks from the Promenade. The short distance let us walk right up to the gates, lest any drones spy the three of us appearing out of thin air. It also gave Max time to go on ahead and pretend that he didn’t know us. Jerk.
Once we were inside the market, Max immediately took off for the newsstand. Instead of following him, I grasped Micah’s arm and led him toward the flower sellers. Before we’d entered the portal, Micah had donned his human guise of Mike Silver, a tall man with brown hair and a genial smile. We walked practically unnoticed through the customers and stalls, almost like we were a regular couple. As if I had any idea what regular people did.
Micah had also magicked up some metal bits into an approximation of Mundane money, and what was his first purchase? He bought me a bouquet of daisies.
“For me?” I squeaked, far more pleased that a few limp flowers usually warranted.
“Of course,” Micah murmured, closing my hands around the stems. “Did I not once promise to gather flowers for my consort?” My cheeks warmed, and I hid behind the petals. “Now, let us find some refreshment.”
A few stalls later, Micah and I shared some tasteless lemonade; after these many weeks being fed from the manor’s kitchens, I’d forgotten just how terrible Mundane food tended to be, and that the government liked it that way. Still, the liquid was a welcome coolness on a hot day, and Micah’s arm around my shoulder made me forget all about the lack of citrus in my citrus-based drink. Then we turned a corner, and I came face to face with one of the last people I wanted to see—Peacekeeper Jerome.
Frickin’ Peacekeeper Jerome.
“Sara!” Jerome’s eyes lit up at the sight of me, thus ending all hope for a quick getaway. “I was hoping I’d run into you again soon.”
“Were you?” I said shakily. Micah pulled me closer, an action that Jerome didn’t miss.
“Is this another one of your brothers?” Jerome asked.
“No.” I took a deep breath and introduced my elfin consort to a Peacekeeper. Luckily, Jerome wasn’t one of the smarter Peacekeepers. “This is Mi—Mike Silver, my boyfriend. Mike, this is Jerome. He’s a Peacekeeper.”
Micah didn’t miss a beat. “A pleasure,” he acknowledged, with a nod. Jerome, however, proved to be less than mature.
“I didn’t know you had a boyfriend,” Jerome said with a pout, which was quite possibly the least becoming expression a grown man could wear.
“Sara is mine,
” Micah declared. “We are quite taken with one another.”
Jerome’s brow furrowed at Micah’s wording, then his eyes settled on my left hand. “At least there’s no ring,” he commented with a grin. “I guess I’ll see you around, Sara.”
With that, Jerome sauntered off down the aisle, and I breathed a healthy sigh of relief. That relief was short-lived, since Micah was less than pleased about that little encounter.
“Explain to me what a boy friend is,” he murmured in my ear.
“It’s what a girl calls her special man,” I replied. “When they’re not married, but exclusive. Like us.”
“And the ring he mentioned?”
“The rings are like tokens,” I replied. “Humans exchange them when they get married.” I finished off my lemonade and turned to toss the empty cup into a trash bin.
“Do you come here often to see that man?”
Micah’s voice was soft and even, but it froze me where I stood. “Micah, I didn’t want to come here to see him. Today was only the third time I’ve spoken to him.”
“The third time I spoke to you, I gave you my token.”
Those words might as well have been a knife in my heart. If there was anything I would never, ever do, it was cheat on Micah. I didn’t know what to say or do, or how I could possibly convince Micah that nothing would ever happen, not with Jerome or any man—
Wait, why was he freaking out?
“Are you jealous?” I asked. Micah frowned and looked at the ground. “You are!”
“I am nothing of the sort!” he snapped.
“Of course not.” I took his hands in mine and stepped close so I was looking up into his eyes. “Micah, you have nothing to be jealous of. I would never be unfaithful to you.”
“My Sara, I do not doubt you,” he murmured. “Still, I cannot help that it heats my blood when a man looks upon my consort with lust in his heart.”
I couldn’t help it; I laughed. “I don’t think anyone’s ever looked at me that way.”
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