Wicked Lovely (14 page)

She pushed her dark glasses farther up the bridge of her nose. Looking past him, where several of Keenan's girls stood listening, she smiled wryly.

"Are you Ash's …" She waved her hand in the air.

Somberly he prompted, "Ash's what?"

"Beau?" she said, and then winced.
Beau.
No one uses that anymore.
The years sometimes blurred, the words and the clothes and the music. It rolled together.
"Her boyfriend?"

"Her beau?" he repeated. He poked his tongue at a ring in his bottom lip, and then he smiled.
"No, not really."

"Oh." Catching an unusual scent, Donia sniffed slightly.
It can't be.

Seth stood and picked up his bag. He stepped close to her, a handsbreadth from her, as if he were trying to make her step back, asserting some sort of male dominance.
That doesn't change over the years.

She stepped back—just once—but not before she caught the slightly acrid scent of recently handled verbena, not overpowering, but there.
It is.
In his bag.
Underneath it were the slight scents of chamomile and Saint-John's-wort.

"I look out for her, you know? She's a wonderful person. Gentle.
Good."
He slung his bag over his shoulder and stared down at her.

"If anyone tried to hurt her"—he paused, scowled, and continued—"there's
nothing
I wouldn't do to keep her safe."

"Right.
Glad I could help with that the other day." Distracted, she nodded.
Verbena, Saint-Johns-wort, what's he doing with
those? They were chief among the list of herbs thought to give a mortal faery sight.

Then he left, trailed by several of Keenan's girls.
I wonder if they'll notice what he carries in his bag.
She doubted it.

Once the door swung shut behind Seth and the Summer Girls, Donia sat down at the terminal and pulled up his search history:
Faeries, Glamour, Herbs for Seeing, Summer King.

"Oh," she whispered. That couldn't be good.

When Keenan got to his loft on the outskirts of the city, Niall and Tavish were waiting. They lounged as if they were relaxing, but he didn't miss the assessing looks they gave him when he walked in.

"Well?" Tavish asked as he muted the television, silencing the weather report about a freak hailstorm.

Beira
must have heard I spent the day with Aislinn.
She often snarled over any progress he made with the mortal girls, but she couldn't—by rules of the contest—actively interfere.

"Not great." Keenan was loath to admit it, but Aislinn's resistance was wearing on him. "She doesn't react as they usually do."

Niall flopped into an overstuffed chair and grabbed a controller for one of the game systems. "Did you ask her out?"

"Already?"
Keenan picked up a half-eaten slice of pizza from the box on one of the geode tables scattered around the room. He sniffed it and took a bite.
Not too old.
"Isn't that too soon? The last girl …"

Niall glanced up from the TV. "Mortal habits change faster than ours. Try a casual 'friends' approach."

"He doesn't want to be her friend. That's not what the girls are for," Tavish insisted in his usual stiff manner. He turned and held out a hand for the box of leftover pizza. "You need protein, not that. Why you two insist on eating mortal food is beyond me."

Because I've had to live so long among them?
But Keenan didn't say it. He handed over the pizza and sat down, trying to relax. It was easier here than most places they'd lived. Tall leafy plants dominated every possible space in the loft. A number of birds flitted through the room, squawking at him and retreating to nooks in the columns that supported the high ceilings. It made the room seem open, more like being outside. "So casual's what they like now?"

"It's worth a try," Niall said, his attention still on the screen. With a muttered curse, he tilted to one side and then the other in the chair—as if that would make the onscreen image move. It was hard to believe he could speak more languages than a faery would ever need: give him a toy, and he was hopeless. "Or perhaps try aggressive—
tell
her you're taking her out. Some of them like that."

Tavish returned with one of the green concoctions he was forever insisting Keenan drink. He nodded approvingly. "That sounds more fitting."

"Well, there you have it: sure wisdom on which to try"—Niall paused and shot a grin at Tavish—"casual."

"Indeed." Keenan laughed.

"How is this amusing?" Tavish sat the green protein drink on the table. His lengthy silver braid fell over his shoulder as he moved; he flicked it back with an impatient gesture, a telltale sign that he was agitated. He didn't let his temper slip, though. He never did anymore.

"When's the last time you dated?" Niall asked, still not looking away from the screen.

"The girls are more than adequate company—"

Niall interrupted, "You see? He's rusty."

"I am the Summer King's oldest advisor, and"—Tavish stopped himself, sighing as he realized that he was only underlining Niall's point—"try the boy's advice first, my liege."

And with the impeccable dignity he wore like a comfortable cloak, Tavish retired to the study.

Keenan watched him go with more than a little sadness. "One of these years, he's going to strike you for your belligerence. He
is
still summer fey, Niall."

"Good. He needs to find some passion in his old bones." Mall's humor fled, replaced with the cunning that made him every bit as important as Tavish in advising Keenan these past centuries. "Summer fey
are
made for strong passions. If he doesn't loosen up, we'll lose him to Sorcha's High Court."

"The search is hard on him. He longs for what the court was like under my father." Feeling every bit as somber as Tavish, Keenan let his gaze drop to the park across the street.

One of his rowan-men saluted.

Glancing back at Niall, Keenan added, "What it still should be."

"Then woo the girl. Fix it."

Keenan nodded. "A casual approach, you say?"

Niall came to stand beside him at the window, staring down at the already frost-laden branches, more proof that if they didn't stop Beira's ever-growing power,
it
wouldn't be many more centuries until the summer fey perished. "And show her
a
exciting night, something different, something unexpected."

"If I don't find her soon…"

"You will," Niall assured him, repeating the same words he'd been repeating for
almost a
millennia.

"I need to. I don't know if"—Keenan drew a steadying breath—"I
will
find her.
Maybe this one."

Niall merely smiled.

But Keenan wasn't sure either of them believed it anymore. He wanted to, but it became more difficult each time the game was played out.

When the Winter Queen bound his powers—making him unable to access much of summer's strength, freezing the earth steadily—she'd also begun crushing the hope of many of his fey. He might be stronger than most faeries, but he was far from the king they needed, far from the king his father had been.
Please let Aislinn be the one.

Everything is capricious about them…Their chief occupations are feasting, fighting, and making love.

—
Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry
by William Butler Yeats (1888)

After the taxi dropped her at the railroad yard, Aislinn paced outside Seth's door.
A few faeries stood nearby, watching her, talking among
themselves
. They never stayed long so close to the old train cars and lengthy tracks, but others would come and replace them. Since Keenan had first spoken to her at Comix, faeries seemed to gather wherever she went.

"She pays too much attention to the mortal boy," a lanky faery with birdlike limbs grumbled. "The Summer King
oughtn't
put up with it."

"Times are different," said one of the female faeries. Like the others, she had flowering vines creeping over her skin, but unlike them, she wore a slate-colored suit instead of the sort of girly outfit the others seemed to prefer. Her vines started around her neck and snaked through her ankle-length hair, making her seem somehow both wild and sophisticated.

"She goes into his home every day." The bird-thin faery circled the female faery like a predator. "What's she doing in there?"

"I know what
I'd
be doing," she said. With a sly smile, she reached up and grabbed his face with both hands. "Might as well in case she ends up with Keenan for eternity."

Eternity?

Aislinn turned her back so they didn't see her face. She paced back across the dead grass, close enough to hear the faeries, but not so close that they would find it odd.
With Keenan for
eternity?

The female faery pulled the birdlike one down toward her until they were nose to nose and added, "Doesn't matter what she's been doing, though. She's changing already,"— she licked from the tip of his nose to his eye—"becoming one of our court. Let the girl have her fun with her mortal while she's still able. Soon it won't matter."

Where the hell is Seth?
For the fourth time Aislinn pulled out her cell and hit 2 to speed-dial Seth's number.

It rang right behind her.

Stabbing the End button, she turned.

"Relax, Ash." He was walking toward her—holding out the now-silenced cell, strolling obliviously past the faeries.

"Where were you? I was worried that something…"

He lifted an eyebrow.

"…that you forgot," she finished weakly.
I
know better.

"Forget you?" He looped an arm around her middle and steered her forward. Opening the door, he motioned for her to go inside. "I'd never forget you."

The birdlike faery skittered over, sniffing Seth and wrinkling his nose.

"Answer your phone next time. Please?" Aislinn poked Seth in the chest. "Where were you?"

He nodded and followed her inside, closing the steel door in the faery's face. "I was talking to Donia."

"What?" Aislinn felt like her throat was closing.

"Not terribly friendly, prettier than I realized, though." Seth smiled, calmly, like he hadn't just told her that he'd been chatting up one of
Them
. "Not so pretty that I didn't tell her to watch her step. But still, she's almost as pretty as you."

"You did
what?"
Aislinn shoved Seth—gently, but he still winced.

"Talked to her."
He put a hand on his chest where she'd touched when she shoved him. He pulled his shirt away and looked. A puzzled expression on his face, he said, "That stung."

"She might seem nice, but she's still one of them. You can't trust them." Aislinn turned to stare at the faeries loitering outside. One of them—the girl in the suit—was sorting a handful of leaves, folding them like origami.

Seth came up behind her and rested his chin on her head. "How many are out there?"

"Too many."
She turned so she was facing him, chest to chest, too close to glare up at him. "You can't do stuff like that. You can't risk—"

"Relax." He caught a length of her hair in his hand, letting it slowly sift through his fingers. "I'm not an idiot, Ash. I didn't say, 'nasty faery, stay away.' I thanked her for her help the other day and mentioned that it would be bad if anything happened to you. That's all."

He stepped back so he could look down at her upturned face. There were dark circles under his eyes. "Trust me, okay? I'm not going to do anything that could put you in more danger."

"Sorry." Feeling guilty for yelling, for doubting, for the shadows under his eyes, she took his hand and squeezed. "Sit down. I'll make tea."

"I made some progress in the research on faery sight and faery defense. Not a lot, but some." He settled into his favorite chair and pulled out a sheaf of papers.

When she didn't answer, he laid the papers in his lap and asked, "Or do you want to tell me what's got you spooked first?"

She shook her head. "No.
Not now, at least."

All the talk of faeries, research on faeries, avoiding faeries.
How fair is that to him?
"I thought we could try talking about something else for a while. I don't know. …"

He rubbed his eyes. "Okay. Do you want to tell me about school?"

"Umm.
Definitely not school if we're trying to avoid discussing faeries." She filled up the teakettle and opened the chamomile tea on the counter. Holding it up, she asked, "Does this taste awful?"

"I don't think so, but there's honey in the bottom cupboard if you want it." He stretched, exposing bare stomach where his shirt lifted, flashing the black ring in his navel. "We could talk about after, when life gets back to normal. I was thinking we should go out to dinner when this is all over."