Secret Worlds (115 page)

His eyes flashed astonishment, followed by a peculiar combination of relief, guilt, and gratitude.

Skye closed her eyes and forced herself to think of the problem at hand. The buzzing noises in the shop’s basement crowded to the front of her mind. “I know where the fairies are trapped and killed. They’ve even flown around me, asking for help.” She put a hand to her mouth. “All those things on the floor, the dried-up insect-looking things with wings. They’re dead fairies aren’t they?”

His eyes darkened, the topaz flecks burning. “I’m sure of it.”

Skye groaned in disgust. “I saw those beautiful creatures flying outside when you gave me the hagstone. I even think I saw them once when I was little, thinking they were fireflies. Of course, I’ll help them. But what can I do?”

“I want to go down in the basement and have a look for myself. Could you arrange that? Sometime when Kyle’s not around. I don’t want to freak him out, and I don’t want anyone at the store to see us together and make connections or ask questions.”

She gave him a reproachful look. “You think an employee at the store is doing this.”

“Absolutely. Someone, or more likely, several people there, have figured out a way to lure pixies in.”

Skye crossed her arms. “No one at the store would do that, except maybe Glenna.” She shook her head. “Scratch that. Glenna’s not smart enough to put together a trap.”

“I know you don’t want to believe it. You imagine everyone is kind like you, but face facts, Skye. The world is a dangerous place, far more than you’ve ever realized.”

She shivered at the ominous words. “There’s only one way to find out, and I say the sooner we know the truth the better.” She walked over to her purse and pulled out a set of keys. “Let’s go right now.”

Kheelan checked his watch. “It’s 9:00. You think everyone’s gone for the night?”

Skye grabbed a coat and hunted for a flashlight. “They should be by the time we get there.”

***

The only light in The Green Fairy was in the crystal display shelves, the rocks burning liked multi-hued hot embers from alien planets. With a mixture of relief and guilt, Skye entered, using the keys Claribel gave her. Ditch the guilt. Her boss would do the same thing given a chance to save pixies. As soon as she locked the door behind Kheelan, she leaned against it with jellied knees.

The trip to town had been horrendous. Once her eyes were opened from the ointment Skye saw creatures worse than any nightmare. Beasts with human torsos and snake tails; hobgoblins with malicious, red eyes and pointed ears; ugly hag women with jagged, bloodstained teeth; wailing banshees with faces etched in terror and elongated, skeleton hands that clawed through the winter wind. Kheelan said it was always worse as they approached Samhain, but that he’d never seen it so bad.

She didn’t know how he stood it. From what he told her, he didn’t have much choice in the matter. Skye turned on her flashlight and kept the light pointed downwards. “This way,” she whispered, walking to the back of the store. As she went down the steep steps, she gripped the iron railing for support, thankful Kheelan was along. She would never come down here alone at night again.

Skye directed the flashlight beam on the floor and saw it was completely covered again with the brown, dried-out carcasses of dead fairies. She gasped when the light appeared to skip and jump of its own accord, then realized it was only because she was shaking. Kheelan’s large hand covered her own. “I’ll take that.”

The light steadied and she followed him further back, wincing as their steps crunched the little skeletons.

Kheelan bent to examine one. “They’re pixie bodies all right.” He straightened and they trudged further into the dark recess.

Skye waited, fearful yet hopeful, the fairies would come to her again with their buzzing pleas for help.

The silence was deep and unrelenting. She was sure they were the only mortals present.

“What’s behind this door?”

Skye jumped at his voice. “I didn’t know there was one down here.”

Kheelan aimed the flashlight at the door handle and gave it a tug. “Locked.”

Skye raised her keys to the light and they tinkled like a faint echo of tiny bells. There were over a dozen keys, but on the fourth attempt, the door gave way with a long, drawn-out creak. A draft of dank, stale air assaulted her nose, and again she smelled that vaguely familiar scent of licorice and menthol.

“Do you recognize that smell?” she asked.

He sniffed, wrinkled his forehead in concentration, and then shook his head. “No. Could be some kind of herb.” He reached overhead and pulled a chain. A single bulb, suspended by wire from the low ceiling, thrust the room in sudden light.

A rough-hewn wooden workbench lined the wall to the back. In the middle was a clean, elaborate crystal decanter and fountain with a set of glasses set around it like diamonds on a chain.

“It’s beautiful whatever it is.” She walked closer and touched the unusual fountain whose base had the figurine of a woman, sculpted in silver and holding up a large glass bubble. At the bottom of the bubble were spigots. There was also a crystal tray with tiny, wrapped packages of sugar cubes and two large flat-bottomed, slotted, silver spoons. Oh, she knew what this was about.

Kheelan lifted a spoon as Skye rummaged through one of the wooden crates and pulled out a large bottle marked
Absinthe, Esmeralda Distillery, 150 proof alcohol
.

“Swamp juice.” He nodded. “Absinthe. Also known as the green muse, nectar of the poets, the poor man’s cocaine, and most interesting of all, la Fee Verte, which is French for
The Green Fairy
.”

“Just like the store,” Skye whispered. She examined the bottle of the luminous green liquid. “And now I know why it smells familiar.”

“You mean you’ve actually drunk this stuff?” Kheelan lifted a brow in surprise. “I know it’s legal to sell in America now, but alcohol’s bad enough, let alone mixed with a hallucinogenic.” His tone was mildly reproving.

“Artemisia absinthe.” Skye echoed the words she remembered from the scary Ouija board disaster when she and Callie were twelve. Their encounter with evil spirits was immediately followed by the licorice, menthol odor of absinthe, the drink favored by Callie’s warlock father. “I’ve seen what this drink can do to people, knew a man who drank it heavily. The wormwood in it is said to rot the brain.” She stared in the murky green liquid.

She wanted it.

Skye was overcome with the urge to taste it, her mouth watered and she gripped the bottle tightly. “I say we give it a little taste,” she whispered.

“It’s dangerous stuff.” Kheelan shook his head. “And besides, it’s not ours.” He reached for the bottle.

She hugged it to her chest and scowled. “No one will ever miss it.” She nodded at the dozens of wooden crates strewn over the counter and on the floor underneath it. He crossed his arms in front of his chest, unrelenting.

She tried a different approach. “C’mon Kheelan. Aren’t you curious? It won’t hurt to try it this once. After all, it was the drink of Hemingway, Edgar Allen Poe, Picasso and Van Gogh. American writers used to drink it at the Algonquin Lounge.” Skye winced at her own voice. She sounded desperate, like some kind of stupid addict. She cleared her throat. “I know wormwood’s supposed to be bitter, but we’ve even got sugar cubes and matches down here.”

“I don’t follow you.” His face darkened with caution. “Besides, what are you, a . . . a . . . absinthe-
ologist
or something?

“I’ve always been fascinated with it. There’s a whole ritual people follow in drinking absinthe. You pour the drink, then a bit of water. Take one of these silver spoons,” she lifted one off the counter, “and light a sugar cube on it. The heat caramelizes the sugar, which drips in the drink, turning it into a cloudy froth.”

Kheelan didn’t move. “You sure seem to know a lot about it for someone who says she’s never tried it.”

Skye flushed. Hey, he could think what he wanted. Skye swiftly opened the bottle in her arms and reached for a crystal glass. The licorice smell erupted, tart and bracing. Her body responded with a shaking desire to down The Green Fairy.

Now
.

Just as suddenly, the bottle was snatched away.

“Coming in here was a bad idea,” Kheelan muttered, screwing the lid back on the bottle and returning it to the crate. He took her hand. “Let’s go.”

“But –” she sputtered, desperate to think of a reason to stay. “We haven’t looked at everything in here.” She swept a hand over the room. “There’s plants and bottles of herbs, and –”

“Another time.” Kheelan’s hold on her arm was relentless as he dragged her to the door. She cast one last longing gaze at the absinthe set up before the door slammed shut. An unaccustomed anger flooded her body. He had no right telling her what to do. She was the one who worked here, the one who led him to this place to start with. The one with the keys.

Skye’s muscles melted with relief. The keys. She could come back anytime she wanted. She didn’t need Kheelan.

He narrowed his eyes. “Why are you smiling?”

“No reason.” Skye shrugged and walked past him, heading for the stairs. “We’ve seen enough for one night. I’m ready to go home.” She yawned for good measure, but Kheelan halted beside her, a knowing look in his eyes.

“No problem.” He held up her keys and rattled them. “But just to be safe, I think I’ll keep this one key with me until we figure out why you have a sudden craving for a dangerous drink you’ve never tasted before.” He slipped out the key they’d used for the locked room and put it in his pocket.

Skye stomped up the stairs ahead of him, irritated. What was the matter with her? Something wasn’t right. Once upstairs, out of the basement, she aimed her flashlight into the store’s darkness. Without thinking, she went immediately to the glowing crystals and placed her hands on the glass counter. The healing vibrations of the crystals soothed her spirits more intensely than ever. She took deep breaths, drinking in the comfortable, familiar store smell of herbs and incense as the anger and strange cravings faded.

The storeroom terrified her, yet drew her in at the same time. Drink absinthe? Ridiculous. Kheelan must think she was a basket case. She was too embarrassed to face him, even as she felt his presence closing in from behind.

“Don’t be mad, okay?” His breath on the back of her neck was hot, exciting. All thoughts of absinthe were wiped out with an altogether different desire as she caressed the strong hands wrapped around her waist, stroked the broad fingers splayed against her abdomen. Instead of the bitter wormwood draught, she craved the taste of his tongue and the hot stimulus of his skin touching hers. She wanted to be drunk on nothing but him.

The flashlight dropped with a dull thump as it landed on the carpet at their feet. From the fallen light and display lighting, Skye made out the contrast of her pale hands against Kheelan’s darker flesh. The binding tattoo above his wrist twisted and slithered like thin black snakes. Skye gently ran her fingers over the inked feather and Celtic knot and felt squiggles of movement beneath his skin, like baby spiders crawling below the flesh.

“Does it hurt?” she asked, startled.

“It’s uncomfortable,” he admitted. “But I’m used to it.”

Skye lifted his hand to her lips and kissed the throbbing skin where he was branded, more filled with tenderness than passion now.

I’ve only known him a week
. But everything was different. She’d been exposed to great marvels with the pixie visions, but also evidence of the fairies’ cruelty. Even though Kheelan had opened up a completely new hidden world, the biggest change was within herself. She realized Tanner was a childhood crush. He represented normalcy and fun times and entrée into a life of friends and acceptability.

But Kheelan was different. He didn’t care if she was a witch, talented or not. Didn’t mind if she stood out as different. Kheelan wanted her, needed her. She read it in his haunting brown eyes. It was in his possessive, hungry touch. She sensed desperation and longing for human love and acceptance. Just like her.

He didn’t ask, and she didn’t tell, but Skye committed to more than helping him with his Fae mission.

She was in this for Kheelan, for his heart.

Because her own heart was bound to his as surely as the blood moon, witches’ moon, reigned the Samhain night.

“Pick a card, any card.” Glenna bore down on Skye, who’d just finished helping a customer select a crystal for self-confidence in an upcoming job interview.

Skye cautiously regarded the fanned-out tarot deck in Glenna’s hand. Last time she touched one of them her fingers had burned on contact. “You know, I’m not a big believer in the power of the tarot.”

“The cards never lie,” Glenna said with her usual solemnity. “Think of something, or someone, you’re curious about.”

That was easy. Ever since last night, all she could think of was Kheelan. The way he looked at her, the taste of his lips, the feel of his skin and his masculine scent. Skye closed her eyes, fingers hovering over the deck.

“Don’t think too hard about it,” Glenna said. “Pick one if you feel any heat or tingling sensation from it. If you don’t feel anything, it still doesn’t matter which you choose. The universe knows.”

Skye bit back a laugh. Glenna sounded like a two-bit palm reader at a circus fair and she put way too much faith in the randomness of the cards.

“I choose . . .” she placed an index finger on a card, intending to pull it out, when her hand involuntarily shifted to the far left and touched a different card. Her finger burned and she knew what the card was before Glenna announced it.

“Knight of Pentacles,” Glenna murmured. “A man in his twenties who strategizes to make his ideal become reality. Know who this might be?”

“Maybe.” Oh, she knew who he was all right, but best not confide to Glenna.

“He seeks action and things that can be used for results.”

Things that can be used.
Or possibly people that could be used, like herself. The thought made her squirm. She had agreed to help him with the pixies. He didn’t have anything to gain from all this. He was only doing his job. “Your turn.” Skye took the deck from Glenna and fanned them out as Glenda had done, deliberately distracting herself from the dark doubts.