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Parenting, he had discovered, was harder than he’d thought.
Chapter Fifteen
I awoke to rain seeping in the side of my tent and a crick in my neck. I poked my head out of a flap to see deep blue darkness spread over the lawn like a blanket, fey tents glowing faintly in the gloom, and somebody moving around in the kitchen. Well, okay, I technically heard the latter, not being able to see them from here, and because they were cursing softly.
My stomach growled. It seemed that half of a large swan hadn’t been enough to satisfy it. And I knew the drill: it was either stay here and stare at the top of my tent, because I wasn’t going back to sleep, or get up and do something about it.
I unfolded myself, cracked my neck, and padded into the kitchen. And found one of the royal guards staring at the coffeepot in annoyance. I grinned, and not just because the fey loved coffee, although they re
fused to admit it, since that would also require admitting that something about the human world was superior to their own. But because they refused to understand how electricity worked.
I plugged in the pot, and it started gurgling and burping its way toward heating some water. “Thank you,” the fey told me, looking slightly abashed. “I always forget to do that.”
“No problem.” Coffee sounded pretty good. My body was all wonky from sleeping much of the day; I could use a pick-me-up. Of course, I could use some food, too.
I mentally started running down the list of takeaway places open at one a.m. that might still be willing to deliver to us, when a package of something appeared under my nose.
“I don’t know that humans will like them,” the fey said, a little awkwardly. “But they go well with coffee.”
“They” turned out to be hard little wafer things, which could have passed for biscotti if I hadn’t been given them by a glowing blond god with a basketball star’s height.
I tried one.
They did, as it turned out, go well with coffee.
The fey and I sat at the kitchen table, chowing down. He wasn’t one I’d had any contact with, and he looked young. Not that they all didn’t. I’d yet to see a wrinkle or an age spot, even on Caedmon, who looked maybe thirty on a rough day.
This one didn’t look much younger, maybe twenty or so, but he felt younger. The easy assurance with which Caedmon did everything, as if he were an actor on the final take after days of rehearsal, was totally missing here. This one had not only forgotten to plug in the coffeepot; he’d also been standing in the dark until I’d switched on the light, which had made him jump. And seemed fascinated by the self-sealing coffee bag, with its little zipper closure. And was now examining the condiments in the center of the table, delicately sniffing the Tabasco sauce before rearing back in alarm.
And blinking at it worriedly.
“We don’t usually put that in coffee,” I told him, and he nodded, setting it back in place.
I got up and rummaged through the cabinets, which were pretty much back to normal. There were a few oak sprigs poking out here and there, but nothing that interfered with functionality. And the apple tree was completely gone—a pale scar cut across the ceiling boards, some of which were still out of alignment, but other than that, you’d think it had never existed. Even the old ship’s lantern was back in place and shining smugly, because I guess it had won.
Okay, it had definitely won, I thought, noticing a discreet pile of apple logs stacked by the stove. That was a little disturbing, but not surprising. This house had had issues long before the fey showed up.
The big old Victorian had been built a century ago, right smack on top of a vortex. Yes, one of those vortexes, the wells of power created when two or more ley lines cross. And, yes, those ley lines, the rivers of magical energy that flow across our world and then beyond, serving some purpose in the grand scheme of things that nobody has quite figured out yet.
Some people think that they’re the result of two universes rubbing together, ours and the one Faerie resides in, like great tectonic plates, with energy bubbling up like lava along the fault lines. Others believe that the planets act as giant talismans, collecting the magical energy of creation and distilling it into rivers of current, which they then send rocketing across metaphysical space. Still others believe that the earth itself generates them as a kind of by-product, like gravity or lightning, just one that’s not detectable to nonmagical humans.
There were a thousand theories, and no one knew which, if any, were right. But that didn’t stop people from sussing out vortexes, and building structures on top of them to benefit from all that free energy. Of course, the main whirlpools of power, those that weren’t too strong to use, had been claimed centuries ago, but not all were so obvious.
Some vortexes had formed on cadet branches of the lines, little ones that didn’t go anywhere interesting, and thus didn’t get much traffic. Or that weren’t well explored, because the ley line system hadn’t been known about for all that long, magically speaking. And then there were those that formed in a field of vortexes, such as the one that lay all over New York City, allowing them to hide in the glow and remain undetected.
At least, long enough for someone to plop a house down on one.
That someone, a retired ship’s captain, hadn’t known what he’d had, but Claire’s uncle Pip did, and snapped it up as soon as the old boy died. And started layering his treasure with protection spells, which in themselves hadn’t been a problem. The trouble came when he decided to link said spells, not to his own power or to a talisman, the magical equivalent of a battery, but directly into the vortex itself.
And then to just leave them there, to do their own thing, for decades.
That had caused some problems, because spells aren’t meant to last forever. They peter out if not renewed, or expire with the death of the caster—which is actually a good thing. Because it prevents them from becoming weird.
Unattended magic can become problematic over time, as the rules of the original spell become confused, or get overwritten by pieces they borrow from other spells around them, or link up with the wild magic of the earth. The upshot was that the house had become a little . . . eccentric . . . over the years, almost like it had a mind of its own. Or a personality, anyway.
Specifically, that of a crotchety old woman who didn’t like people messing with her stuff.
Really didn’t, I thought, glancing at the hall. Where a bunch of small things were writhing helplessly under sheets of faded floral wallpaper, which had previously been shredded by burgeoning pecan pods. And which were now whole again and set on revenge.
