by Molly Ringle
Carol’s Diner had been Bellwater’s staple greasy-spoon for thirty years. Everyone knew Carol by sight. “I haven’t eaten there in a while,” Livy said. “We used to get milkshakes at Carol’s in high school.”
“As did we all. Hey, I still owe you coffee. Or milkshake, if you’d rather. I’ll treat you if you’ve got time.”
Given that was what she’d walked over here to claim, Livy felt silly for hesitating. She nodded after a moment. “Of course, yeah. Let’s.”
“Come on. I’ll tell Grady where we’re going.” He strode back into the office, and she followed. This time they veered off to the left, into the garage. It was small, probably fitting no more than three cars at a time. Today it only held one maroon SUV. Livy smelled motor oil and heard the repeated clang of a metal tool hitting some car part. “Grady!” Kit said.
The clanging stopped, and a few seconds later a young man’s head popped into view above the SUV. He had dark hair with bits sticking up here and there, protruding ears, cheerful eyes, and full lips. “Yeah?”
“Livy and I are going to grab some coffee.”
“Milkshake,” Livy corrected, on impulse.
Kit sent her a grin. “Right, milkshake. I owe her. She’s the one who didn’t bust me for picking up that cedar piece.”
Grady’s smile turned his face handsome. “You helped carry that? Dude, that thing was heavy. You must be strong.”
“I shove logs around now and then,” she said. “Part of the job.”
“Right on.” Grady lifted a wrench in farewell. “Have fun. Nice to meet you!” He vanished behind the SUV again.
“He seems nice,” Livy said as they walked out the front of the shop.
“He’s all right. Barely knows what he’s doing in the garage, but he’s learning.”
He glanced attentively at Livy as they turned toward Carol’s. “So is it just you and Skye? Any other siblings?”
“Nope, just the two of us.”
Kit opened the glass door of the diner for her. “I don’t have any brothers or sisters. Always wished I did. Someone to share the load.”
“What’s this, Sylvain, now you’re bringing dates?” Carol’s voice boomed. “Hoo boy, and a Darwen girl, too, you lucky stiff.” She strolled over to them, a purple apron stretched around her wide form, and ensnared them in town gossip for a few minutes.
Carol settled them into a window booth and took their milkshake order: French vanilla for Livy, salted caramel for Kit. A minute later she brought them the shakes, then strolled back to the kitchen.
Kit pulled the long spoon from his shake and sucked it clean. “So you work mostly out of town?”
Livy nodded, stirring the whipped cream with her red straw. “The office is in Quilcene. But I’m only there about half the time. I do a lot of driving around to forests, checking out one problem or another.”
He laid the spoon on a napkin. “Not much time spent here in town, then?”
“Well, more lately.”
He lifted his brown eyes to her in curiosity, and she realized she had to explain after saying that.
She pulled out her spoon too, watching it drip onto the mound of whipped cream. “My sister’s been sort of sick lately. Well. Not sick exactly, but…depressed, I guess.”
“That counts as sick.” Kit sounded sympathetic.
“I don’t want to leave her by herself too much, just because…I don’t know. She hasn’t been herself. We’re still trying to figure it out. Mom lives with her boyfriend in Portland now, so she’s down there, even though she comes to see us when she can. So, anyway, it’s mostly fallen to me, looking after Skye.” She pulled in a breath and forced a smile at him. “Jeez, sorry. T.M.I.”
He looked thoughtful, brushing the scruff on his cheek with one knuckle. “Nah, believe me, I get it. Do they think it’s seasonal affective disorder, or…”
“Could be. I mean, it’s winter, and it’s only been going on for a few weeks. It’s just…this is so not like her. Winter never bothered her before. Still, she’s getting to the point of finding a serious career, and I think maybe it’s hitting her hard, becoming a grown-up and all that. She’s an artist, so, moody temperament.”
“Oh yeah. We’re practically unstable.” He smiled.
She laughed, abashed. “I forgot you’re one too. Sorry again.”
He shrugged, rolling the remark away with a casual wrinkle of his nose. “Well, then you’ve got your hands full.”
“Yeah.” She sucked up a sip of vanilla shake. “Hoping one of the medications will finally work. And she’s seeing a therapist, but that’s not a lot of use either when she’ll hardly talk. Or maybe when spring approaches she’ll get better. I don’t know.”
“Sounds like you’re the one who knows her best.”
“I suppose. Probably.”
“Then I bet you’ll get her through it. Whatever it is.”
He didn’t say it in a fake encouraging tone, the way too many people did when trying to make Livy believe everything was going to be fine. Even their mother used that tone; she was still in denial. Instead Kit sounded grave but sincere. She lifted her gaze to him. His eyes were a tea-brown with depth and clarity to them, shaded by thick brown eyebrows, the same shade as his facial hair, which in turn was a tint lighter than his hair…
Yep, he was cute, but he was only treating her to milkshakes out of obligation, and he surely wouldn’t be interested in her now that she’d spewed her family mental health problems onto the table. Nor was she in the best place in life to start dating someone.
She averted her eyes to the counter, watching Carol’s back as she moved around and fetched plates. “Thanks. I hope so.” She looked at him with the brightest smile she could manage. “So, what’s Grady going to do around here? Is he looking to become a mechanic?”
Kit smirked. “No way. He only does it because I can pay him some, and there’s not a lot else to do in this town. Really, though, he wants to be a chef.”
“A chef?”
“For real. He’s taken community college classes and worked in restaurants and everything, just not, you know, the serious certification the fancy restaurants in Seattle would want.”
“Does he cook for you, then?”
He nodded, swallowing a sip of shake. “All the time. Oh my God, he makes crazy shit. I never in my life thought I would like kale chips or—what the hell was it last week?—coconut curry soup, that was it. With broccoli in it, I’m serious. But he actually made it good.” Kit’s eyes widened, as if he were still not over the shock.
Livy laughed. “Wow. Those sound awesome. I’ll be happy to take the leftovers if you have any.”
“For sure. Come out to the island and try them sometime.” The low, lazy way he said it, and the way his gaze held hers—suddenly her face grew hot with a blush.
All that un-sexy talk about Skye’s problems, and her own general awkwardness, and he was still hitting on her? The guy was a pro. Or not very particular. Or both.
She took another slurp of shake through the straw. “So how did you get into chainsaw carving?”
He told her about picking up the skill from an old guy who used to live on the island, with whom he used to do side jobs cutting down loose branches or slicing up trees that had fallen on roads. But Kit didn’t like climbing up in the trees like that, so he stuck to making art with the wood and being a mechanic like his late dad instead. Those topics carried them until they’d finished their shakes, plus another ten or fifteen minutes beyond.
Finally, Livy pulled out her phone to check the time, and declared she’d better get back home—though truthfully she was liking it a hell of a lot, sitting here in a bacon-scented diner with steam on the windows, riding a sugar rush and talking with a handsome guy. Imagine that.
Outside, on the weedy gravel between the diner and the sculpture garden, she stuck her hand out to him. “This was fun. Thanks.”
Rather than shake her hand, Kit took it, bent over it, and kissed it. He didn’t mak
e it cheesy; no lingering or smacking. He pulled it off with perfect courtier grace. She felt only a tickle of lips and beard, then he let go and slipped his hands in his jeans pockets, smiling. “I enjoyed it. Stop by again. Or hey, I’ll track you down if Grady makes something awesome to share.”
“You’d better.” She smiled too, and turned toward her car.
CHAPTER SIX
KIT CHEWED ON HIS THOUGHTS ALL AFTERNOON, THROUGH SCHOOLING GRADY ON SPARK PLUGS AND BRINGING IN the wind chimes before closing for the day. Livy’s sister had been “not herself” for about a month, and it was about a month ago Kit had ticked off the goblins by not getting them enough gold on time, and had to make it up to them with the milk steamer. He had suspected them of messing with someone in retaliation, though hadn’t been able to find any proof. Could it have been Skye?
Then again, he suspected the goblins every time something bad happened to anyone in town. Car accident, health trouble, tree falling on a house, didn’t matter, his first thought was always goblins, and his second was always whether he could have prevented it by somehow appeasing them better.
Trouble was, he usually couldn’t prove it wasn’t them. They didn’t always fess up to their mischief, and only sometimes boasted about their crimes.
The worst case, as far as Kit knew, was the man who died of hypothermia two years ago. Kit hadn’t known him, really; he was a fisherman in his fifties and lived alone. Spent most of his time on his boat, the neighbors said. Then one icy morning a hiker found him dead of exposure in the forest, wearing just a single layer of clothes, insufficient for the cold weather. Why he’d gone out there at night without a coat or hat, no one could say. He hadn’t been drunk or anything. His neighbors did say, after the death, that he hadn’t been himself lately. Just like Livy’s sister.
Kit knew the goblins were responsible for the man’s death because Redring casually told him so, several weeks later. They had met the fisherman a while back, lured him onto a path, enchanted him, gotten him to hand over all the gold and valuables around his house, then lost interest in him and allowed him to pine away and ultimately wander out into the forest and die. They weren’t interested in keeping him, and that was the way they treated those people.
If they wanted to keep someone, though, that was almost worse. Because that meant turning them into a goblin.
The majority of goblins in the tribe had once been humans. Possibly all of them; Kit hadn’t unearthed a clear answer on that, nor had his ancestors. Seemed like some of them had been goblins so long they barely remembered where they came from. That, apparently, was the up side, if you could call it that: they couldn’t die, or so Redring claimed.
“All fae are pure energy,” she had told him once in scorn. “We change shape at will, we heal at will. No, Sylvain, there is no getting rid of us.”
His ancestors’ written records agreed: the goblins couldn’t be killed. At best, they could be changed into some other magical form, or so the other liaisons had heard, but that kind of power was beyond human ability. Only other fae could pull it off, and other fae never showed up to talk to Kit, precisely because he was the goblin liaison.
Which was exactly why he was out of luck when it came to throwing off this family curse. And whoever came after him would inherit it. That would either be his own offspring if he was dumb enough to have any and subject them to this, or the next of kin, whom the goblins would track down and latch onto. Could be Grady, for example.
They closed the shop and walked out to Kit’s truck to go home. Kit glanced in concern at his cousin as Grady hopped into the passenger seat. No one on his uncle’s side even knew about the goblins. Kit ached to share the load, but at the same time didn’t want to dump this on anyone, especially people who were more or less cool.
Grady gave him an arch little smile.
“What?” Kit said.
“You’re so dreamy about your date you’re forgetting to turn the truck on.”
Kit irritably turned the key in the ignition. “That’s not why. I’m just…thinking about stuff.”
“She did seem cool. And not bad-looking.”
“Not bad-looking at all.” Kit’s thoughts shifted back to Livy talking to him over milkshakes, her face flushed in the warm diner, her lips shaping each word so deliciously. A more pleasant thing to think about than curses. Not that he should think too fondly about any woman. It’d be inhumane to bring a girlfriend into this lifestyle. Then again, if things got serious between him and some woman, such as Livy, he could always invoke immunity from the goblins for her. However, they might have already enchanted her sister, in which case such a gesture would be too little too late.
“Did I see you kiss her hand?” Grady’s question came out innocent enough, though teasing danced plainly behind the words.
Kit backed onto Shore Avenue, the one and only main drag through town, and set the truck forward toward the bridge to Crabapple Island. “Some moves never go out of fashion. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“Well. I won’t expect you to understand tonight’s dinner. It involves eggplant.”
“God help me.”
“You’ll like it.”
He probably would like it. And Livy’s sister probably was just depressed, not goblin-struck. There was even probably a way to axe the contract with the goblins and send them packing.
Kit just had no idea what it was.
While Grady sliced up eggplant, tomatoes, and smoked gouda in the kitchen, Kit claimed he’d left his wallet in the shop, and took off.
He brought another scrap of gold from his meager stash at home, this time a spoon from the flatware set that had finally come in the mail, 24-karat gold over stainless steel. Garish, ridiculous-looking stuff. No wonder it had been cheap. But Redring and company would seize it happily.
In the woods, in the cold windy dark, he whistled a few notes. A goblin whistled back, and the path opened to him: a line of hemlock cones this time, dangling from spider-threads, the tip of each cone alight with a blue glow.
As he glanced up, he spotted their dwellings, now that he was in their realm: little lights lined their bridges and roofs in the treetops, a motley collection of stolen electric bulbs and magical glowing stuff. He’d never accepted their invitation to climb up there and check it out up close, and hoped he never would.
“Sylvain, what a sweet surprise.” Redring descended to him and morphed into her pink-clad quasi-human form.
He held out the gold spoon. “I’m bringing you this, and I have a question for you that I want you to answer honestly. Please.”
She grabbed it, licked it, and stuffed it into her bathrobe pocket. “You can ask.” Her tone suggested honesty wasn’t promised.
He forced himself to respond as calmly as possible. “Did you invite a young woman recently? Around last month, when you were looking for that milk steamer?”
Smothered laughter rippled through the trees. Lights bobbed and boughs swayed. But then, they laughed at nearly everything he said.
“Kiiiit,” Redring reproved. “You think we would steal away your fellow citizens?”
“I know you have. That’s where most of you came from. You used to be citizens somewhere or other, right?”
Redring flicked her long nails through the air. “Oh, so long ago, who can remember?”
“Did you invite this girl?” he asked again. “Her name is Skye.”
“Mine!” someone else shouted above, and others cackled.
Redring looked straight into his eyes, sending a chill along his spine, and said, “Of course not. We know you don’t like that. And you’re so good to us.”
All the other unseen goblins snorted and giggled.
“Look,” Kit said, “I can get you two more forks and a butter knife to go with that spoon. But you’ve got to tell me the truth.”
“Do we have to?” Redring tapped her lower lip, and looked over her shoulder as if consulting her minions. “I don’t recall that we do.”
“Yo
u’re messing with me, as usual. Fine. But if you could just tell me if there’s anyone under a spell, so I have some idea what to expect—”
“I told you we didn’t.” But she sounded a little too saucy. “We’re hurt you would doubt our word.”
Hysterical laughter now from above.
He was wasting his time. Maybe, even, they really hadn’t done anything to Skye, but if he bugged them enough, they would go mess with her, or with someone else.
“Never mind. Forget I showed up.”
“Bring us the gold forks!” Redring insisted.
“Yeah, sometime.” He turned and walked off.
Why had he even bothered? He had read that some types of fae couldn’t lie, but goblins were clearly an exception. They lied all the time. He knew it firsthand, and all the former liaisons had written down the fact. If they’d attacked Skye or anyone else, and if it was like every other crime of theirs, he’d never learn about it until way too late, if at all.
He had to admit, in some ways, he truly did not want to know what they got up to. He might never sleep again if he knew.
CHAPTER SEVEN
YOU WILL COME TO THE WOODS AND CHOOSE YOUR MATE.
The phrase played on repeat in Skye’s brain. It was more stomach-turning than any other piece of the spell, even the part about leaving the human world and becoming a goblin. Hanging out in the trees in another form, okay, maybe she could find a way to make peace with that, as long as she were autonomous and got magical powers out of the deal, which seemed likely. But being obliged to choose a mate? From among them?
She shuddered.
It was a mild afternoon for January, the temperature almost fifty, and she was wandering in their overgrown backyard for some fresh air. Livy was at work; Skye was home alone. The forest loomed close, just across the railroad tracks. She chewed on a fresh fir needle. It filled her mouth with a sharp green flavor, which combated the taste-memory of saccharine fruit. She prowled back and forth, gaze combing the dark trees. Her feet were chilly in her rubber boots, but at least not wet. She hugged herself for warmth; her black crocheted sweater let too much cool air through its holes, and all she wore under it was a tank top and jeans.
