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The night felt young, and the darkness had no fleeting sensation to it, but the castle was a long way off, and I didn’t know if there was anywhere we’d be safe to hide if the moons vanished and the sun came out.
I didn’t know if Ghillie would help us in that situation, so I kept quiet and followed the tree guardian as he strolled casually ahead of us, his bare feet coated in the fine sparkling silt of the road.
“We trust this guy?” Holden whispered to me.
“We haven’t got much of a choice, do we?”
He huffed. “Come on, Dorothy. We don’t need the Scarecrow for this. You, me and the Cowardly Werewolf could take it alone from here. ”
I stopped walking and stared at him. At least he’d been honest enough in his analogy to color himself in the role of the heartless Tin Man. “And if we come up on a swarm of pissed-off bugs? Or worse? Need I remind you about the bog fae?” My hand reflexively went to the back of my head, where a homicidal fae had once slipped its tongue beneath my skin. I shuddered. “You’re forgetting we’re not in Kansas anymore,” I grumbled. “We don’t know what’s out here, and I’d rather travel with him than do it alone. ”
“I don’t like it. ”
“You don’t have to,” I reminded him.
“You know,” Ghillie interjected from farther up the road, “I can still hear you. ”
I stared at Holden, waiting for him to decide what he wanted to do. “You can stay or you can come. But I need to get Kellen. ”
The vampire frowned, his brown eyes dark and full of annoyance. “Secret…”
“Look. We’re going. You can hang on to that I told you so, and when the time is right, I won’t even argue with you for using it. But please, for now, can we do this my way?”
His lips thinned into a line, but he didn’t argue with me. Desmond, a ways back on the road with his arms wrapped around himself and his skin more sallow than before, piped in. “Cowardly Werewolf my ass. ”
I sighed. I could take my boys out of the human world, but I couldn’t make them behave like grown adults no matter where I brought them. I swore if I dragged them into the fiery pits of hell, they’d still be bickering like little old ladies the whole way down.
“Fine,” Holden said.
Ghillie was still walking, having gained a significant amount of ground while we stood around and fought, but when he spoke again, it was evident he had been listening the whole time. “Marvelous, marvelous. Now we may continue. ”
He was an odd guy.
I wasn’t sure what I had anticipated from a fae tree guardian. Really I wasn’t sure what I expected at all from this world. It was more sparkly than a Mormon vampire, and so bizarre it would make it difficult for me to find anything in the real world strange after we left.
Providing we did leave.
I didn’t love Ghillie’s announcement that bringing Kellen home would have its costs. It wasn’t so much I’d thought it would be easy to reclaim her, but I thought I’d be walking into a fight, not a barter. Fighting was something I understood. I wasn’t terribly good at wheeling and dealing. My credit card bills were a testament to that.
Briefly I wondered if I might be able to petition them to swap one Rain for another, give me Kellen back and take Lucas in her place. The idea of sending Lucas into an alternate reality to be a fairy’s bitch had some appeal to it.
Dealing with the pack fallout did not, however.
I sighed and placed one hand on each of Holden’s shoulders. “I need you to be with me on this. Tell me you’re here to help. ”
Holden, back to his surly best, glared at me. “I’m here to help. ” And he would be. If he’d stuck it out with me through the boggy backwoods of Louisiana, then by God he would stick this out with me too.
“Let’s go. ”
There were days being a New Yorker paid off in the strangest ways. Walking all over hell’s half acre in the fae realm turned out to be one of them. Were I not accustomed to walking everywhere already, the long jaunt to the palace would have exhausted me.
As it was, my feet were starting to protest the distance. Was there something this trek was supposed to teach me? Or was Calliope trying to punish me for thinking she was a murderer by making me walk for miles instead of just dropping me at the front door?
The more I considered the latter option, the more it sounded like something I might do, but I wasn’t sure how Calliope would deal with her anger.
I had drifted free of the men, trying to give Desmond whatever space he might need and not wanting to make it appear like I was favoring Holden’s company. Jealousy or any kind of heightened emotion might be all it took to push Desmond over the edge, and I was hoping to keep him in his human form until we were able to leave the fae realm.
My lips parted to sigh, but before the sound had a chance to escape Ghillie came to an abrupt stop. “My lady, rest assured, we are very nearly there. ”
