"Because your Maserati doesn't come with Bluetooth? That would be ridiculous."
She laughed a little too long, making him feel as if he'd missed a joke.
"So I'm guessing the answer is yes, you need me at the office," she said.
"No, I just had information for you. On the Johnson case. You may wish to investigate the hit-and-run that killed his wife."
He waited for her to ask what hit-and-run. When she didn't, he deflated. So much for pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
"You know his wife died in an unsolved hit-and-run, I presume," he said. "That may be a motivation for Johnson. I have the police report here. Johnson said he saw what looked like a small, dark SUV. They were both going around a curve on a paved country road. The other driver lost control. The weather was fine, so it appears to have been careless driving, likely at a high speed. Johnson saw a woman start to get out of the vehicle, but the driver--a man--pulled her back inside, and then they sped off. The descriptions are far from compelling--it was night on a dark road and Johnson had just been hit, his wife in distress. Yet the Nansens did own a black Land Rover, and they purchased a new one a few days later."
Silence. Then, "How long did it take you to get all that?"
"I had a late lunch and ate in."
"So, about an hour. Without leaving your desk." She swore. "I hate you."
"No, I do believe you've said you love me. On multiple occasions. I even have it in writing."
"In writing?"
"Yes, on a note you left me once. I saved it for exactly such an occasion--in case you ever attempt to alter your stance on the matter, I have proof."
She chuckled. "I don't think it works like that."
"Of course it does. Having established that you do not, in fact, hate me, dare I ask what prompted that response?"
"The fact that I've spent all afternoon chasing answers and learned less than you did while eating lunch. Explain to me again why you need an investigator?"
"I don't. But I'm rather fond of you, and you seem to like the job."
Another laugh. "Fair enough. Well, I didn't find out about the hit-and-run until I untangled a vision I got from Johnson. When I brought up Alan Nansen's death, Johnson remembered the Hunt and an accident. Which helps link that accident to Nansen's murder. I learned about the new vehicle through licensing, which they are still paying on the old one, but I also called Heather and spun some bullshit excuse for needing to confirm they only have one car."
"And she did?"
"Yep. But she also quickly mentioned the other one, saying Alan gave it away a while ago, and she knows nothing about that...naturally. My guess is that Alan got his brother-in-law to scrap it. As for the police report of the accident, I was still trying to figure out exactly where the accident happened, so I would know which contact to bribe it from. Add all that together, though, and I have no doubt that the Nansens killed Johnson's wife. Alan was driving, and Heather tried to get out and go help, but he stopped her, which I suppose makes Alan more liable, though Johnson still wants revenge against Heather."
"So it seems."
"The problem now is...well, I still don't like it. As Cwn Annwn justice, I mean. In fact, I'd say it kind of sucks. Technically, Johnson is responsible, so I guess it qualifies but..."
"In a court of law, Keith Johnson would have a jury's sympathy, but he would still be charged. This was a meticulously planned revenge."
"And for that, he'd get life?"
"No. Given the circumstances, I would expect a severely reduced sentence. You were hoping he was fully culpable. This is complicated and uncomfortable."
"Putting it mildly," she murmured.
"I'll speak to Ioan."
"Thanks, but this is on me. I have to work this out with him, which will probably mean going on that Hunt and watching... Shit."
"That is unacceptable. Ricky will agree. However much he might trust the Cwn Annwn, this goes too far. I want to speak to Ioan and confirm that this would be a proper case of Cwn Annwn justice as it stands now."
"You think there's more to it?"
"I think that, either way, you need that information. I would like to try getting it from him myself. May I do that?"
"All right."
Eighteen
Olivia
Did Johnson's case qualify as Cwn Annwn justice? It was rough justice, to be sure, but absolute justice, too. Ioan had hinted in the past that they didn't consider extenuating circumstances, and I hadn't thought much of it. To me, that term implied excuses. Like using the defense of intoxication. Unless someone poured that booze down your throat, you were still responsible for your actions because you chose to drink, knowing that alcohol impaired judgment.
But what if someone did pour it down your throat? Would Cwn Annwn justice still call you responsible?
I could say it was old-world justice, but was it? I knew enough history to understand the concept of a blood debt. If you killed my wife, I had the right to exact a price, and it might be fifty head of cattle or it might be your wife or it might be your life. That was the world that gave birth to the Cwn Annwn.
If Keith Johnson caused Alan Nansen's death for a less righteous reason, I'd accept Ioan's judgment. I didn't care whether Johnson pulled that trigger or not. But if he spurred Heather on as revenge for his wife... I really struggled with the idea that he deserved to have his throat ripped out by a giant hound.
I chose to help both the Tylwyth Teg and the Cwn Annwn because I believed it was the right thing to do. Divide my power between those who offered fae sanctuary and those who offered fae justice, both equally righteous causes. Yet there was a reason I couldn't choose just one, and it wasn't about righteous causes at all. I made a promise to Ida, the leader of Cainsville, before she died saving me. I promised I would not abandon the Tylwyth Teg. But while Ida saved me, her sacrifice wasn't for me--it was about winning me for her town. The Cwn Annwn had done more for me. They had been honest and fair, so I had to be the same in return.
I had not dug deeper into the ramifications of my promise to the Cwn Annwn because I feared if I did, I would second-guess my decision, and they did not deserve that. I'd put on my blinders and said, "Sure, I'm okay with hunting killers," and hadn't stopped to consider what exactly that might entail.
Now I had to.
I drove home to Cainsville and walked to the diner. A man sat at the corner table, windows on two sides, the best seat in the house. Not that he noticed--his gaze was glued to his laptop screen as his fingers flew over the keys. He looked about my age, sharp-featured, dark hair to his shoulders, goatee, dressed in jeans and boots, needing only a man-bun to complete the look of a cafe poet, laboring on his latest ode to cold-brewed coffee.
I picked up the coffee pot from the serving station. It was the regular stuff--no cold-brew here, where you'll get a scowl if you ask for decaf. The owner--Larry--smiled and said nothing as I took the pot. I walked up behind Patrick and, without looking from his keyboard, he lifted his mug.
"My favorite server returns," he said.
I filled his mug, returned the pot and slid into the seat across from him. "I need access to your books."
"Lovely to see you, too, Liv. How are you? And how is my son? I haven't seen him around in a few days."
"I filled your coffee, bocan, which buys me a ticket past the small talk."
Patrick lifted a brow. "No, I believe the coffee buys you access to that seat. Small talk is still required, to make me feel like a valuable ally rather than your personal librarian."
"All right. I'm not fine, at the moment. That's why I'm here to see you. Gabriel is doing well enough, considering he has to endure visits with his mother, which I'm trying to curb. Is that what you wanted? Or would you rather I just said we're both doing awesome?"
"We need to talk about the Seanna issue. I'm glad you brought that up. But first, let's deal with your problem. We can discuss it on the way." He closed his laptop.
"How's the writing going?" I asked.
/>
He smiled. "Thank you. I'll even pretend you care and aren't just tossing me a bone. I've hit a point in the novel where I know where I'm heading but am not quite sure how to get there, so a break is a very welcome distraction."
"Meaning you now owe me? Cool."
"That depends on your request. To be distracting, it must also be interesting. Otherwise, you still owe me."
"Now that is how you commit a murder," Patrick said as I finished telling him the story. "Ingenious."
"On paper, yes. In reality, he just got lucky. Johnson, that is. Not Alan...or Heather."
"Oh, I think the jury is still out on Heather. Both literally--depending on the outcome of the charges--and figuratively. The loss of a spouse doesn't always affect one quite as dramatically as it did poor Mr. Johnson. But it's a brilliant plot that could either succeed or go horribly awry. Both are equally good fodder for fiction."
I turned onto his street. "Mmm, pretty sure there's a third--and far more likely--option there. That the plan goes nowhere at all. Johnson set up the board, but Heather had to make the final play, and all it would have taken was for Alan to say 'Honey, I'm home!' and he'd still be alive."
"Unless..." He waved it off. "I'll save that for a book plot. So yes, I do owe you for this one."
"Great. But I'm not actually here to entertain you. There's a moral to this story. A moral quandary."
"There is, isn't there? A delicious ethical conundrum."
"Far less delicious when you're the one experiencing it."
"Oh, I wouldn't know." He took out his house keys. "But the way I see it, Mr. Johnson took this chance knowingly. He rolled the dice. He realized that the end result, no matter how clever he'd been, could be his arrest and subsequent jail time."
"And execution? I don't think he was counting on that."
"No one ever counts on death by cwn. Which is a shame. People might be far more respectful of fae if they knew the punishment for harming us."
"Which would first require them to know about fae."
"And that would be terribly inconvenient. As for Mr. Johnson, I'll argue that when one commits murder in revenge, one must accept the possibility of counter-revenge. An eye for an eye seems all well and good until everyone's blind."
"True," I said as I climbed his steps.
"I would also argue that Mr. Nansen, while an entitled ass, did not intend to kill Mrs. Johnson. So is killing him justifiable? If you were to take a corner too fast in your little sports car, hit another vehicle, panic and flee, would you deserve to die for the crime? No court of law would say yes. No more than it would agree to kill Mr. Johnson for his crime."
He pushed open the door. "If you don't get the answers you want from my books, Liv, that might be what you need to remember."
"Two wrongs don't make a right."
"So I've heard."
"Thank you."
He glanced back at me, brows raised.
"I mean it," I said. "Thank you for that rationale. I have a feeling I might need it."
Nineteen
Olivia
One would expect a writer to have books, of course, but Patrick's were unique. Not the ones he wrote--those were currently paranormal romance. I mean the reference books on his shelf. He might snark about me treating him like my personal librarian, but he was indeed the local archivist, even if he held the title unofficially. He collected books written by fae, and they were...a unique reading experience.
Patrick walked to one shelf and took down a book on the Cwn Annwn. Ioan didn't know Patrick had it. If he did, he might demand it back. The Cwn Annwn were not archivists--they were more book-burners, sometimes literally. Chronicling real tales of fae or Hunt life was dangerous, risking exposure, so the Cwn Annwn preferred an oral tradition.
The book Patrick handed me was one I'd read before, by a Huntsman whose views fell more in line with Patrick's own on the value of historical record. He'd written a massive tome on everything he knew about Cwn Annwn history. After his death, his fellow Huntsmen hadn't known quite what to do with the book. Pages were burned, as if it'd been thrown into a fire but then yanked out again. Some pages were torn away. Others had passages redacted with heavy ink.
The book made the Cwn Annwn nervous, but they couldn't bring themselves to destroy their brother's work completely. If they'd known it would end up in the hands of a Tylwyth Teg elder, they might have tried a little harder.
I skimmed the pages, mentally translating the Welsh. I tipped my hat to the Huntsman who wrote it, and I was sure Patrick did too. The man wasn't just some amateur, jotting down notes as they came to him. The book was meticulously organized by section, and I only had to flip through until I came to the part I wanted. Justice.
I'd read enough of this book to confirm that everything Ioan had told me about the Cwn Annwn was true. I expected no less. For a branch of fae, the Cwn Annwn were astonishingly resistant to lying. Perhaps not so astonishing, I guess, if they'd broken from the main group and established themselves as a separate entity with a clear mission and a very different worldview.
I trusted Ioan to be honest with me. The problem was that, being from an oral tradition, he was largely reliant on his own experience and that of his predecessors. If they hadn't experienced a thing, they knew little about it.
The Huntsman author began the justice section with explanations. All things I knew. Cwn Annwn hunted humans who killed fae or fae-blood humans. It wasn't like a bat signal that went off every time one died. Instead, the Cwn Annwn became aware of their prey in different ways. For example, I'd seen visions of Cwn Annwn ravens circling the site of an ancient massacre, looking for fae-blood humans among the dead. I'd also had visions of Huntsmen walking past a human, looking at his eyes and getting an inner alert that said: this one. In the case of fae deaths, the news also traveled through the fae, and the Cwn Annwn would investigate. All this meant that not everyone who deserved a Cwn Annwn death got one--just the killers they came across, one way or another.
Once the Cwn Annwn had their prey, they tracked him or her, using their ravens and hounds. They needed to get their quarry to a forest for the actual Hunt. That was the only way they could take a life.
But the author did more than just expatiate. He gave examples. That was the part I needed. I learned best when shown. And Patrick's books really did show me.
I ran my finger over the text, and the writing began to blur and pulse, and then the words opened up, and I fell through into darkness, smelling damp forest, a cold spring chill in the air.
I heard a voice then. As always, while I doubted I was listening to modern English, that was what I heard. "Albert Mays, you have been found guilty in the murder of your wife and her lover."
The scene cleared, and I saw a medieval peasant held in the jaws of a cwn, the pack around their alpha, a mounted Huntsman towering over them.
"Your life is forfeit for theirs," the Huntsman said, voice booming from inside his cowl.
"Wh-what? No. The law set me free. Within my rights, they said, walking in on them like that. They had it coming, they did."
"No, they did not. Your wife broke her marriage vow. That is a violation of contract. Nothing more. The human courts might set you free, but we do not. Now run!"
The scene darkened again as I tumbled into another vision, this time hitting the ground in a bog, the stink of death and decay heavy in the air. A woman crouched by a well-trodden path through the swamp. She wore even older garb, from the time of nomadic Celtic clans. Night had just begun to fall. A dog howled in the distance, and she listened. Then she shook her head and settled back into her crouch.
"Are you sure you wish to hear the hounds?" a man's voice asked.
The woman leapt up, drawing a blade from under her cloak. "Who's there?"
"A concerned passerby." A man stepped out. He was about my age, with a thick fur over his shoulders and a bow across his shoulder. He lifted his hands. "I am unarmed."
She snorted. "A man doesn't need arms to be a
threat to a woman."
"True enough." He stopped a few feet away. "Is this better?"
A rustle sounded in the bushes, and she spun. The man gave a low whistle and waved his arm.
"Merely my hound," he said. "I've sent him off."
She peered at him. "I don't know you."
"Do you know everyone in these woods?"
"Yes."
He smiled. "Perhaps not, then, if you don't know me. You might not wish to pursue your current course."
"And what might that be?"
"Waiting for the Cwn Annwn. Do you think the Huntsmen enjoy finding humans lying in wait for them? They have business to attend to, and they do not appreciate the distraction from their Hunt."
"I have business with them. My husband has been murdered, and his family say they have the blood of the fair folk in their veins."
"Hmm." The man eyed the woman, his gaze piercing hers. "Killed in war?"
"Yes, with a neighboring clan."
"And he was a warrior, taken down in the field by yet another warrior?"
"Yes. Murdered--"
"No, killed in battle. Having willingly gone to battle. Slain fairly. That is not the concern of the Hunt."
She bristled. "He had fae blood--"
"Perhaps, but it would not matter."
"That is for the Cwn Annwn to decide."
"I would suggest that they already have."
Another rustle, and the woman turned as a giant black hound stepped out. She staggered back. The man raised his hand, stopping the cwn. Then he turned to the woman.
"You will go home, yes?" he said.
She nodded.
"Good. Mourn your husband there and hope that your children's generation will not find war-making quite so palatable a solution to their disputes."
After that vision had faded, I tumbled through two more, one from the eighties, a woman in big hair and aviator frames fleeing from the Hunt, swearing she'd killed her lover in a drug-induced rage. The lead Huntsman said it did not matter--she took the drugs of her own free will, and thus she was guilty.
The other vignette was set in the thirties or forties, with a man calling on the Hunt to avenge the death of his brother, strangled by a friend during a psychotic break. Like the woman in the swamp, his case was refused. The young man had sought help for his illness and been ignored; therefore, the death was not his fault, but that of the society that turned its back on him.
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