The Faerie King Read online

  “Déodat Roux?” she asked incredulously. “The Déodat Roux?”

  “We both had scores to settle with the Arcanum,” I explained, slipping my leather gloves back on, “and he thought an alliance could be mutually beneficial. I wasn’t about to jump on that crazy train, but I wasn’t above passing on what I knew—and he kept the wine flowing.”

  She began to reply, floundered speechlessly, and then shook her head. “Jesus, Colin, what do I do with that?”

  I met her waiting lips.

  When we broke apart, she gave me her best look of prolonged suffering. “And it’s so bad for business when you provoke my customers.”

  We kissed again with new intensity, my hands tangled in Meggy’s hair, the small of her back pressed against the counter, and all about us the teasing ghost of the jasmine perfume she favored. I was about to shuck off my gloves again and begin exploring the regions beneath her deep-necked T-shirt when she pulled back and murmured, “Olive’s upstairs.”

  “She’s in her room,” I said, surprised at the growl in my voice. “Door closed. Won’t notice.”

  Meggy nuzzled the side of my neck and whispered, “Her friends are coming over.”

  I sighed, forcing the frustration down. “Later?”

  “Later.” She slid away from the counter and straightened her shirt, once more Olive’s socially appropriate mother. “Where did you want to go for dinner?”

  I cut my eyes pointedly to the wide oak counter, which had of late seen a type of use never attempted during my tenure in the building.

  She snorted and smoothed her hair. “Yeah, that’s not dinner. Szechuan Garden?”

  Rigby’s sole attempt at international cuisine was mediocre on its best night, but chopsticks eliminated the need for gloves at the table, a perk we both appreciated after too many meals spent lying about eczema flare-ups and a mistrust of all silverware not cleaned at home. “Sounds good,” I said. “You’re driving?”

  Before she could respond, the doorbell jangled, and four girls in short skirts and midriff-baring attempts at shirts trooped into the store in a perky clump. “Hi, there,” Meggy called across the shop, stepping out from behind the counter. “Olive’s upstairs, if you want to get her.”

  The pack thinned into a single-file line as they quickly threaded their way through the aisles and up the stairs, and I winced as the apartment door slammed. “Quite the conversationalists,” I muttered, looking to the ceiling at the sound of squealed greetings overhead.

  “Friends from camp,” Meggy replied, tidying a shelf of special orders, a few hardbacks in library binding and a selection of bagged books of older vintage.

  The special special orders, the stock Toula had retrieved from Meggy’s old house and delivered to her new place, were stored in a locked room in the dark recesses of the shop, protected by wards of my creation. On separate occasions, Toula and I had tried to teach Meggy the art of ward building, but Meggy was young and new to her power, and her attempts fell apart. My style of construction was still too technical for her to master, while the technique Toula used was too close to spellcraft to work properly. She had been practicing, but until she could create a ward she trusted, she allowed me to protect the books for her.

  I couldn’t tell how far she had progressed, though. Meggy learned primarily from Toula, who had been unknowingly working her own blend of magics for years. Toula had a wizard’s discipline and a faerie’s strength—a strength amplified by her father’s unusual ability—and she proved an apt teacher, even if, as she admitted to me, half of the things she produced were the result of intuition and luck. Still, even if she was winging it, Toula had proven herself formidable, and I rested more easily knowing that she paid Meggy regular visits.

  There was much I could have taught Meggy and saved Toula the trial and error, but Meggy and I had agreed it would be better if I left her instruction to another. I had been her friend, her employer—and now that the truth was out in the open between us, I was free to be her lover without guilt. Complicating a relationship that was already complicated would have been awkward at best, and certainly mood killing. Meggy wanted to be with me, but on her terms, which meant coming together as equals. And so I held back, letting Toula guide her and correct her missteps.

  I also refrained from evident displays of magic around her—why, I couldn’t say, but something cautioned me to go slowly. Meggy was learning about her abilities, but when we were together, she seldom mentioned them, and she never spoke of Faerie. Granted, her only stay in the realm had been ten days of slow torture and the shock of her life, but she avoided the subject, asking for no details of where I went when I left her.

  There was no sense in pushing Meggy. I reasoned that she would come around in time, that her curiosity would get the better of her, that she would come over and see she had nothing to fear with Mother gone. She was, I had realized, still in denial to a degree: able to accept her newfound power, happy to have Olive and me back in her life, but unwilling to process the news that she had joined the ranks of the half fae. The latter could, in some way, have been due to the minor fact that her father threw a fatal bind on her at the time of conception and never looked back, or it could have been due to the years she had spent sourcing books for wizards, who seldom spoke well of anything out of Faerie. In any case, the last thing Meggy wanted to discuss was my new status as the only active monarch in the realm, and so we avoided the topic, talking instead of the book trade, summer on the Atlantic coast, and our child’s first foray into public education.

  As Meggy finished her cleanup, the upstairs door opened again, and the girls marched back down from the apartment with Olive in the lead. I looked up at the noise and stopped cold at my daughter’s change of wardrobe. “Hang on, Olive,” I said, sliding over the counter. “Where are you going?”

  Her friends slowed, but Olive tugged the nearest along. “That’s just my mom’s weird boyfriend. Ignore him.”

  “Olive Marie Horn,” Meggy snapped, and the girl reluctantly paused. “Colin asked you a question. There’s no need to be rude.”

  She heaved an award-caliber sigh and turned back to me with her hand on her largely exposed hip. “What?”

  “Where are you going?” I asked again, trying not to stare at her skirt. I’d seen hand towels that afforded greater coverage. “Dressed like…that?”

  Her eyes, pale blue and now fringed by spider lashes and glitter, narrowed in challenge. “Like what?”

  “Like you come with a price tag,” I retorted, briefly wondering where she had procured see-through platform heels in Rigby. “I’m being honest, Olive—you look like a prostitute.”

  She snorted her disdain. “Asshole.”

  “Olive!”

  “Mother!” she mimicked, and absently pushed her blonde locks over her bare shoulder. “We’re going to a party. You don’t want everyone to think I’m a loser, do you?”

  “They’re going to think you’re for rent,” I protested.

  Meggy silenced me with a pointed look. “Sweetie, unless this is a costume party, there’s no need for you to go out dressed like a stripper.”

  “I look cute!” she argued, stamping her foot as both hands went to her hips. “And all the guys are going to be there, and you want me to look like a freak…” The tears came on cue, dramatic sobs that stopped just short of turning into an ugly cry, and Olive’s posse closed in around her.

  “Really, Ms. Horn,” one of them whined, “Olive looks great! She’s so on trend.”

  Olive wiped her eyes, avoiding her lacquered lashes. “You used to be cool, Mom,” she said, sniveling for effect. “What happened? Why are you being so mean?”

  Meggy surveyed the pack of girls for a long moment, then closed her eyes and sighed. “Okay,” she murmured. “Go to your party. But if you get there and want to change clothes, I’m not coming to bail you out. Understood?”

  The tears dried instantly, and Olive flashed a smile of faux gratitude. “Thanks, Mom, you’re the best,”
she replied, and breezed out into the night.

  When the ersatz streetwalkers were gone, I muttered, “What the hell, Meggy? She can’t go around like—”

  “The first rule of parenting is to choose your battles,” she said, cutting me off mid-protest. “I’m not going to fight her over a miniskirt.” She stuffed her hands into her pockets and stared out the plate-glass window, watching Olive until she rounded the corner, heading toward the beach.

  The silence hung between us, but it confirmed what I had begun to fear. “She’s fighting you, isn’t she?”

  “Not always,” Meggy said quietly, staring into the night. “But it’s getting worse.”

  I joined her at the window. “Is she remembering—”

  “No, not like that. Not that she’s shown me, anyway.” Meggy’s shoulders tightened as she spoke. “It’s the false memories, I think—she has this great picture of the two of us living together happily, and our current reality doesn’t live up to that past. Then again, she’s sixteen—I gave my mother a hard time at that age…”

  “Eh, she probably had it coming,” I replied, kneading her taut muscles.

  She stiffened, then began to relax under my hands. “She told me the truth about my father when I was fifteen. What she could tell me, at least.” Meggy glanced at me over her shoulder as I continued the massage. “Did I ever tell you that?”

  “No.”

  “It explained why Dad doesn’t want me around, at least,” she sighed. “Haven’t spoken to him in three years.” She hissed as I hit a sore spot, then said, “Mom calls on Christmas and my birthday. Mike and Justin sent me birth announcements for three nephews I’ve never met. Nor do I plan to. It’s…you know, better this way.”

  My stomach twisted as I heard the pain Meggy tried to hide. Charlie Bellamy was no saint, at least not when it came to his wife’s daughter, but he’d been present in Meggy’s life. I had moved to the fringe, at best, of Olive’s orbit, and part of me berated myself for being a terrible parent. The other part pointed out that, given her true memories, Olive almost certainly wanted me dead, and that this was a shaky foundation for building any sort of father-daughter relationship.

  “Say the word,” I told Meggy, releasing her with a final squeeze, “and I’ll take her elsewhere. If she’s too much—”

  “She’s mine,” she said with the same finality as always, but her eyes were still troubled. “We’ll get through this if it kills me.” Forcing a smile, she walked over to the counter and retrieved the car keys by their palm tree fob. “Enough about Olive’s wardrobe. Still hungry?”

  I followed her into the garage and waited until she cranked my old Accord, then asked, “So, would now be a good time to tell you about my little brother?”

  Chen Yang, the owner, host, and half the wait staff at Szechuan Garden, seated us at a cozy table behind a cheap folding screen in the back of the restaurant, a spot he seemed to reserve for frequent diners and, I suppose, any passing Mafiosos in need of eggrolls. When he left us with a pair of laminated menus, Meggy let her mask of polite anticipation drop, leaned across the table, and furiously whispered, “I can’t believe those asses waited until now to tell him! What were they thinking?”

  “Wouldn’t have been my choice,” I replied, turning past a splotch of dried sweet and sour sauce. “But he was handling it well when I left him—with Joey,” I quickly added, seeing her expression shift. “I left him with Joey and a baby dragon, and that should take his mind off the situation until I get back. Right?”

  Meggy blinked. “Baby dragon?”

  “She found Joey in the woods last night. He didn’t want to leave her out there alone.” The next page was stain-free, and if I concentrated, I could almost understand the dish descriptions. Chen kept a decent restaurant, but he had always seemed to get around Rigby by smiling and pointing. “What did you get last time, the one I kept stealing?”

  “Cashew chicken, and quit changing the subject. Don’t you think it’s a tad risky to have a freaking dragon around the house?”

  I looked up from the menu and saw that she was not to be ignored. “Just a hatchling right now. I’m sure Joey can handle her, and Aiden…well, he’s a smart kid, he’ll stay out of the way if she starts rampaging.”

  Sighing, Meggy lowered her gaze to the page of poorly-lit appetizer photographs. “Promise me you won’t end up crispy, okay? I’d like to keep you around for a bit.”

  “Only a bit?”

  “We’ll see.” She pursed her lips, scanned the options, and murmured, “I’m kind of in the mood to get dessert and go home. Olive’s going to be out for a while, but just in case…”

  The thought trailed off tantalizingly, and I was about to find Chen and order a plate of fortune cookies to go when Meggy’s purse began playing wind chime scales. “Sorry, one sec,” she said, pulling her phone free, then frowned at it and tapped the screen. “Hello?” she asked, keeping her voice down. “Oh, hi, Father…yeah, actually, he’s right here, do you…okay, sure. Here you go.” She passed the device across the table, righted it in my hand, and whispered, “Hold it up and talk like normal. The screen doesn’t get in the way.”

  I didn’t trust her phone and its discomfiting lack of buttons, but I could think of only one priest who would have Meggy’s mobile number. “Paul?” I muttered toward the microphone. “Something wrong?”

  “Sorry to interrupt,” he replied, “but we have a slight situation in Southport. Any chance you could stop by?”

  “We? What we?”

  He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “I’ve got a blasted camera crew, Colin. These fools called the paranormal investigators right after they called me.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “Why would they—”

  “Ten-year-old girl seems possessed, which is why the diocese got involved and brought me in. When I pulled up, I had to fight past a pair of vans and an SUV to get in the door, and then they wanted me to sign a waiver. Heathens.”

  “Let me guess, she’s not possessed.”

  “Not in the traditional sense. Something’s speaking through her and throwing half the house around, but I don’t think it’s demonic. Voice sounds a bit like the one from Harrow last spring. I made a recording if you want to hear it now.”

  “Don’t bother, I’m on my way.”

  I passed the phone back to Meggy, who touched the screen until it went dark. “Got to go?” she asked.

  “Unfortunately.” I pushed back from the table, by turns seething and frustrated. “Paul’s out of his depth, and whoever’s messing around is doing so for ghost hunters.”

  She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Be careful. Will I see you later tonight?”

  I bent and kissed her one last time. “No. I’m afraid I’m going to have business in Florida when I’m finished here. Maybe tomorrow?”

  Meggy mulled it over. “Could work. Olive wants to spend the night with a friend.”

  “Or you could come over and see the dragonet.”

  She smiled sadly and pushed me away from the table. “You know where to find me, Colin.”

  CHAPTER 6

  * * *

  For someone like me, there are few things more annoying than having to work around mortals who believe they have “the paranormal” studied, sorted, tagged, and catalogued. Witches with inferiority complexes I can handle. Run-of-the-mill nonbelievers are a cinch. But idiots with expensive cameras, gadgets used off-label to commune with the spirit world, and bags of sage and saint medallions make my work far more complicated than it need be.

  Under ordinary circumstances, if I helped Paul on a job, he would corral the victims elsewhere while I convinced the faerie amusing himself at their expense to hit the road. But paranormal researchers refuse to be removed from the scene—they want to be in the middle of the exorcism, shouting down demons and shrieking every time the house settles—and thus, they try my patience. It’s not easy to have a quiet conversation with an invisible entity in a language unknown to everyone else in the
room—a conversation that occasionally devolves into a full-blown, fire-slinging, wall-smashing fight—when there’s a boom mic hanging in your face.

  Fortunately for Paul, I once spent a long weekend in Southport, a little seaside hamlet half an hour from Rigby and best described as long past its heyday. He and I had found a group of Oberon’s thugs lying low in a farm outside the city limits, and I pursued them into an abandoned cannery up the coast. A decrepit warehouse filled with bits of rusting equipment is roughly at the bottom of the list of places good for my health, but I’d made the best of it and managed to crawl out the back door while the complex burned. Paul deflected suspicion from us during the resulting arson investigation—which morphed into a homicide investigation once someone stumbled across the charred bones I’d left behind—and I holed up in a nondescript motel, treating my many wounds with copious quantities of liquor.

  Southport was tiny, and the relatively central motel was as good a starting point as any. I opened a gate between Szechuan Garden’s men’s room and the alley behind the motel, then strolled out toward the main street and observed the deserted downtown square. Night had long since fallen, and Southport was the sort of place that rises and sleeps with the sun, but there was a light in the motel’s office, and I rapped on the security glass to get the bored attendant’s attention.

  He lowered his magazine, the sort of periodical one finds sold in black plastic, and squinted at me through the sand-pitted window. “What do you want, a room?”

  I supposed his confusion was due to my lack of companion, as Southport’s finest accommodations were available for hourly rental. “Information,” I replied, leaning against the counter.

  “I don’t deal, man.”

  “Not that sort of information.”

  His puzzlement deepened. “You want a girl?”

  “No.” I leaned close to the speaker and kept my voice low. “Looking for a camera crew. Not the kind from CNN, if you know what I mean. Couple of vans, probably a bunch of twenty- and thirty-somethings, and maybe someone in the bunch talking about residual energy. Got a lead for me?”