by Holley Trent
She switched one of her grandchildren, Marta, he thought—the twins looked so much alike—from one hip to the other and slipped a plate in front of Tamatsu.
Reflexively, he reached for a fork, because after so many years of hunger, that’s what he did.
“You’re pretty much the only one around here besides me who eats that with onions inside,” she mumbled.
He looked down at the plate. Chicken salad on lettuce circled by fancy whole wheat crackers.
“I believe she chose that recipe on purpose,” Gulielmus said flatly. “I hate onion.”
Tamatsu paused his fork halfway between the plate and his mouth and glowered at the man. Years ago, Gulielmus would have sounded pointedly accusatory saying the same thing. His mannerisms had changed after he’d woken from a year-long coma. Tamatsu still wasn’t quite used to his old friend’s less aggressive personality. He wasn’t even sure if the new personality would stick. Like him and Tarik, Gulielmus couldn’t help being what he was. He’d fallen because of what he was. Being aggressive and frustratingly alpha was in his nature, and eventually those tendencies would resurface.
“I’m so confused,” Noelle said from somewhere on the other side of the kitchen.
He didn’t look up at her. He’d received enough of her ball-withering glowers for a lifetime or two. Instead, he shoved food into his mouth and chewed. When he was done, he’d see about making her pay up. Then they could go their opposite ways. She wouldn’t get to fix sour looks on him anymore, and he wouldn’t get caught staring at her again and again.
He didn’t want to stare at her, but fuck. She’d been the last woman to make him submit, and he’d memorized the things her face did when she was too stuffed to beg, or even moan.
Carefully, he rebent the fork he’d mangled during his mental meanderings back into the correct angle.
“Those are … his grandchildren?” Noelle asked Clarissa.
“Uh-huh,” Clarissa said. “The girls.”
“But you two aren’t …”
“No,” Gulielmus said, twining his long fingers.
Still so odd seeing dirt under his nails.
“They’re my great-grandchildren,” Clarissa said. “My granddaughters Ariel and Marion are married to two of his sons.”
“Apparently, I have many,” Gulielmus muttered.
“What do you mean by apparently?” Jenny asked.
“He can’t remember, dear,” Clarissa said.
“And no one wishes to tell me what I want to know when I query further,” Gulielmus said.
Rolling his eyes, Tamatsu forked salad onto a cracker. There was at least a fifty percent chance the statement had been directed to him.
His glance upward confirmed as much. Bottomless blue eyes bored into him, and one of Guliemus’s wings twitched at the top.
Cope, you devil.
Tamatsu turned his attention back to his chicken salad. He did like onion, and he did make a habit of not sharing with Gulielmus the things the ex-demon had done in his past. Tamatsu and Tarik had agreed to let their friend discover his history on his own. It’d come back to haunt him soon enough.
“Three of my sons are here,” Gulielmus said, ostensibly to Noelle and Jenny. “Sometimes four or five. And some of my daughters come by often, though not to see me.”
Clarissa sighed. “You act like they’re pointedly ignoring you. They’re not. They need some time to get to know you.”
“As do I.” Gulielmus pushed back from the table, and took his plate with him. “I’ll finish this on the way to the fields. I’m told I have a board meeting this afternoon, though I can’t imagine what good me being there will do. I can’t remember anything about the company or how I came to found it.”
He was nearly at the door when Clarissa called after him, “Bill?”
He turned, one dark blond brow raised.
“Charles’ll be there. He always covers for you, doesn’t he? No one knows you don’t remember.”
“Be that as it may, I know.”
Clarissa threw her hand up in frustration.
Gulielmus stepped outside and slid the deck door closed behind him.
“I swear …” Clarissa placed the child into Jenny’s reaching arms and padded to the refrigerator. She withdrew a jug of tea and bumped the door closed with her hip. “May as well lay everything out, boys, right?”
Tarik grunted and drummed his fingers atop his thighs. Turning to Noelle, he said, “She’s tethered to him.”
Noelle’s eyes went shockingly wide.
Tethering was an odd phenomenon of elves that Tamatsu didn’t understand all the nuances of. If there were such a thing as a “typical elf,” Clarissa wouldn’t have been one. Even without her full arsenal of magic, she was an extraordinary psychic. Though small in stature, she had a way of intimidating much larger opponents. She’d certainly brought Gulielmus to heel a time or two.
Jenny gasped. “How did that happen? And when?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Clarissa said. “Perhaps when he did this to me.” She pointed to her face—the face that made her look so much younger than her middle-aged daughter. The face she’d likely had when the elves lost their magic.
“What did he do to you?” There was hostility in Noelle’s voice. She likely itched for a fight, but she wouldn’t find one. Clarissa wouldn’t let her.
Tamatsu was glad that there was one person who could make sense of the wretch, because he sure as shit couldn’t.
Clarissa grimaced and set a glass of tea in front of Tamatsu. “There’s a very long story I prefer not to recount. Suffice it to say there was an incident about three years ago after Ariel found his son John. I relinquished a great deal of what was left of my magic when I married my late husband. I wanted my children to be normal, and being more human, I starting aging as humans do. Bill reversed my aging. The best I can tell, I’m aging like an elf again.”
“Why would he do that?” Noelle asked. “You need to tell me what happened.”
Tamatsu bumped the underside of the table with his knee and drew her attention toward him. She was seeking answers on a topic that was truly none of her business, and he was certainly the kind of angel who’d choose sides if he had to. Perhaps Gulielmus hadn’t been good for a very long time, but he was Tamatsu’s friend, and there was a code. He wasn’t going to let her meddle.
She turned slowly toward him, gripping the edge of the table, pale eyes narrowed. “Is there a problem?”
He tipped his chin toward her.
“Me?”
He nodded.
“You seem to have forgotten that I still have something you want.”
He ground his teeth and mounded chicken salad onto his cracker. She may have been hostile toward him, and he certainly wasn’t feeling so generous toward her at the moment, either, but people of their ilk didn’t break deals. He was going to get what he wanted, even if he had to squeeze it out of her.
“Oh, Noelle, be nice, love,” Jenny said. Sighing, she turned to Clarissa. “I suppose we don’t understand how that could happen. You can’t force a tethering. At least, that’s what me mum always said. I’d never known a soul it’d happened to.”
“Your mother is correct,” Clarissa said. “And let us leave it at this: in spite of the antagonistic nature of our early acquaintance, he’s my mate. Protecting him may seem like a foolish venture, but I’m bound to him. Am I clear on that?”
Jenny lowered her head. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
Noelle, as always, refused to demur. “Does he know what sort of gift he’s getting? Does he know that he gets something that not even your husband—” She huffed. “Husbands, had?”
Clarissa twined her fingers in front of her belly and pressed her lips into a tight, pale line.
“You never used to be so coy with me,” Noelle said.
“Perhaps I’ve changed, darling. Perhaps I’ve had to, to fit into this place. I’m not a queen anymore. Here, I’m a lady with a farm, who gets a little Social S
ecurity check every month. I’m someone’s mother and grandmother and great-grandmother. No one cares about what I was once able to do, and I believe I enjoy that.”
“I’ll not judge you,” Noelle said. “If he is your choice, I won’t disparage you for claiming him, but you have to know what sort of heartbreak you may be setting yourself up for when dealing with his kind.”
Tamatsu cracked his knuckles.
His kind.
She couldn’t possibly have known so many of them. Her insults always flew as true as her god Goibhniu’s knives.
“He would not have been my choice,” Clarissa said. “But I choose to accept that he is mine.”
“Why? Why him? Why make yourself suffer when you suffered so much with the king and his constant mania?”
“Because when I knitted myself into this world and found a man to cherish me, I learned something about love.”
“We loved you.”
“Of course you did, but that was different. You know that. If you’ve lost love and have a chance to seek it again, you do. I’m bound to him forever. Who else should I seek love with if not him?”
“I’m afraid for you.”
Clarissa moved around the table and hugged Noelle from the back, and Noelle closed her eyes.
Noelle gentled under the embrace, shoulders falling, jaw unclenching, fingers loosening their grip front the table.
“I can’t stop you from being afraid,” Clarissa said. “That’s in your wiring, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Noelle grimaced. “I suppose so.”
“I hope that in the time that we’ve been parted that you’ve known peace.”
“Not a single day of it.”
“I’m sorry.” Clarissa kissed the top of Noelle’s head and gave Jenny’s ponytail a flick. “I suppose there’s no chance of you pretending you haven’t found me, hmm? Being in my company may be bad for your health if Lorcan’s bastards were to ever find me.”
Tamatsu would have grunted if he’d had the ability to make the sound. Even he knew better than that. He could say many nasty things about Noelle, but she was, above all, loyal to her queen. She’d spoken endlessly about the woman during their time together, and he’d devoured every word because her passion was so infectious. He’d craved her fleeting moments of joy in the midst of her profound sadness the same way he craved decadent meals and fine wines. The same way he craved the feel of her body against his.
She was his favorite indulgence.
Still his favorite, but she was far too dangerous for him to be pondering what-ifs about. There would never again be a him-and-her.
She could do what she wanted. Touch and fuck whomever. He starved, and would deal with it.
“We’ll be careful. We won’t tell anyone, if that’s what you want,” Jenny said. The tiny hands pressed against her mouth muffled her voice. She’d somehow gained a second toddler to hold, and the child was tugging playfully at her lips. “We see other elves every now and then, but we won’t tell them we found you.”
“I’d prefer if you didn’t,” Clarissa said. “I’m just as afraid of the ones who don’t wish to harm me but still have demands of me. I can’t be what they want me to be. Not anymore.”
“You … truly won’t make us stay away?” Noelle asked tentatively.
“No. Of course not. I’d never be so cruel.”
Tamatsu let out an unexpected breath of relief. Noelle had wanted to renew their acquaintance for so long. Clarissa could possibly have a soothing effect on the wretch.
Noelle was certainly smiling broadly enough for such to seem feasible. A real smile, at that. It wasn’t like the sterile studio headshot she put in her real estate marketing materials. Her grin went all the way to her eyes, and her skin seemed to glow with happiness.
Squinting, he put his forearms on the table edge. She was glowing, or sparkling, really. Her skin at all her blush points had taken on a luminescent pink hue. He’d seen that before, but he’d been touching her at the time. It’d been one of the last times they’d touched. He’d promised to show her the world, and her fury had come the next day.
She’d been so fucking angry, and he still didn’t know why. He hadn’t been able to ask why because she’d taken his voice before he could, and then she’d vanished with her anger. He’d searched for her on and off for four hundred years before deciding to conserve his efforts until he had a better plan. She’d been just as good at staying off his radar as Clarissa had been at staying off Noelle’s.
“Since you’re here, you may as well run some errands with me,” Clarissa said to the elves. “I hope you don’t mind that my conveyance nowadays is a minivan. There may be French fries ground into the carpet.”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” Noelle said. “I can’t remember the last time I vacuumed my car.” Both Noelle and Jenny stood, with Noelle taking one of the children from Jenny. “We’ve traveled in worse. Remember?”
Clarissa sighed. “I try not to. We certainly had our adventures, I’ll say that. Let me grab my bag.” She placed her coffee mug in the sink and then left the room.
Tamatsu stood as well, eying Noelle pointedly in case she’d already forgotten why he was there—why they were there. They’d had an agreement. He wanted his voice and, further, he needed to check her on some things before she flitted away with her queen. Whether or not he’d speak the hostile quips he’d been banking up for centuries, he didn’t know. All he knew was that she needed to be told that what she’d done had been reprehensible.
Noelle let out a breath and rolled her eyes. “Oh, fine.” She set down the tot, who immediately scrambled to Jenny’s leg and held up her arms. “I swear, all the stories are wrong. There’s nothing patient about angels, is there?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jenny said, smiling at her new charge’s sudden interest in Jenny’s fluffy ponytail holder. “They don’t seem to be any more impatient than anyone else.”
Noelle rubbed her palms on her skirt and eyed Jenny as she made her way around the table. “They’re supposed to be infinitely patient. They’re supposed to be the best at waiting, but they screw around, too.”
It was a good thing Tamatsu had no choice but to hold his tongue, for it had been sharp once upon a time. What he wanted to say probably shouldn’t have been uttered in the presence of such young ears.
Clearing her throat, Noelle stopped a foot from him and rubbed her palms on her skirt again. She rolled her gaze to the ceiling and muttered that she needed to fish something out.
Clarissa rejoined them in the kitchen, holding the hand of the eldest of her great-grandchildren. “Do you need some help, Noelle?”
“No, finding it isn’t the issue. I’ve always been pretty good at pulling my magic back to me, even out here in this realm.” She furrowed her brow and crinkled her nose, still staring at the ceiling. “Huh.”
Huh was what she’d said when she’d confirmed that not all Fallen angels were neuter. He’d liked that sound coming from her way back then, and the way she’d stared openmouthed for a full minute before finally putting her hands around him. In the present, her huh had a sardonic tone he didn’t like as much.
She swished her hand through the air as if she were pushing aside irrelevant file folders or sorting through the wrong sizes of shirts on a rack. “Hmm.”
“Noelle?” Jenny queried.
“Hold on. I’ll get it. I’m a bit rusty at this.”
Tamatsu crossed his arms and shifted his weight. He looked across the room at Tarik, and while his friend’s expression was usually an unreadable blank, the blank was almost always a nuanced blank. He could always guess what Tarik was thinking.
Right then, however, he couldn’t.
That wasn’t good.
Noelle pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and made that swishing gesture again. “I can find all the last ones I took,” she muttered. “There’s that guy who tried to rob Jenny. There’s that guy who set fire to one of my properties. Here’s an old one. Huh.” She flick
ed that one away as though it were nothing more than trash needing to be binned. “He’s long dead. Let’s send that magic home.”
She kept flicking. Kept gnawing at that damned lip. Making his apprehension spike. He didn’t like that foreboding feeling. History had taught him to respect and fear it, because the proverbial shit would be splattering from the fan soon.
“Noelle?” Clarissa asked gently.
“It’s there. I’m sure it is.”
“How long ago was the snatch?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
As if he’d needed further evidence of her disregard of him. Tamatsu knew how long ago to the day.
“Perhaps eight hundred years? Or was it nine?”
Eight.
“Noelle, dear?” Clarissa asked.
Noelle turned to her. “Hmm?”
“There’s a chance it may be gone to the unreachable place.”
Noelle shook her head and scoffed. “No, I would have known that. I would have felt the magic slip, wouldn’t I? I usually feel the slip.”
“It may have slipped so long ago that you didn’t realize it was going.”
What the hell are they talking about?
Tamatsu couldn’t touch Noelle for so many reasons, but he could touch Clarissa. Someone needed to talk—to tell him what the fuck was going on.
He didn’t get far across the room, though, because Tarik was there suddenly, between him and the queen of elves, and rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“Please,” Tarik said in a neutral tone. “Explain to us what the muddle is.”
“Well, there are certain kinds of magic that can be stored elsewhere for later retrieval,” Noelle said in a rush.
“We used to have to hide our magic all the time before we were forced out into the open,” Jenny said. “One of the ways we did that was to send it into the air. Think of filling a helium balloon and tying its string to your wrist. We could always pull the balloon back if we didn’t let the knot get too loose.”
