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How are they related? Why do I keep seeing them?
Her fourth eyes failed to see an answer. The deaths themselves clouded and overwhelmed everything else. As always. “I keep seeing these two women being killed. They’re soldiers in uniform. Others of some kind. I don’t understand how, but they’re related to the source of the danger in some way.”
Janice sat next to her on the couch. “Well, whatever you decide to do, Madame Anna, you watch your back. Those widow spiders hurt you pretty bad. Whatever is coming sounds like it’s a lot worse.”
Despite the lingering horror all the visions of death left her with, she smiled. “I will be careful.” Janice Willoughby worried about her. It was nice that someone did.
Clocks chimed, telling Liliana it was almost time for her next appointment. She had to ask Janice to leave. She found that she did not want the rabbit-kin to go.
“I’ll see you next week then, at the regular time,” Janice said.
Liliana nodded, said, “Goodbye,” as social rules required, and started to shut the door.
“Um, Madame Anna?” Janice said.
“Yes?”
“I’m glad you’re okay. You be real careful helping your friends, and…I really enjoyed lunch.”
Liliana smiled at Janice’s tennis shoes. “I did too.”
After she shut the door, Liliana considered the Fae Colonel, wondering if he could be the source of so much danger. Having a Sidhe with the potential to bond with the land on this side of the ocean was something she’d feared since she was smuggled into this country. The land always chose Sidhe Fae as rulers. So as long as there were no Sidhe royalty on this continent, all the Others who had fled here were safe. No non-native Fae had bonded with this land in over two-hundred years, and most of the native Fae had been killed or driven into hiding.
If the Colonel did manage to bond to the land and another Sidhe Fae opposed him, like his sister Aurore Principessa, who was known for her cruelty…
It was a recipe for war.
Maybe he is the source of the rising tide of death.
Letting the Colonel’s fated death happen without interfering might be best for everyone.
But he is handsome.
The thought came unbidden and was supremely unhelpful in her attempts to find a logical way through the morass of death and intertwined fates.
But he was handsome, from his shimmering obsidian demi-stone form to the high cheekbones, full lips, and intense gaze of his human form. Regardless of her attraction to him, she could not condemn a man to death without knowing more about him. After all, he had protected both Pete and Sergeant Giovanni. Plus, he was strong and fierce, and had a smooth, deep voice that made her belly warm. While it might be wiser to do nothing and let his death find him, she would not find that at all easy.
The right kind of Fae ruler had, historically, caused the land to flourish and ushered in golden ages of plenty and peace. Arthur Pendragon had only been half Sidhe and therefore mortal. Yet his brief rule was still remembered.
Baba Yaga, on the other hand, blasted her own land to win a war. Countless died, both millions of Normal and thousands of Others. It took a century for the land to recover. Baba Yaga was gone now. The Green, the power and soul of the earth, did not take kindly to those who betrayed it.
Liliana did not know what sort of man this Fae prince was or what his ambitions might be. But he had nearly a year to live. Later, Liliana would decide if she should try to save the Fae prince.
First, she would have to save Sergeant Giovanni. Again. And Detective Jackson, and possibly Pete as well. And then Doctor Nudd.
A knock on her business door let her know that her next client had arrived, a nice seelie Fae sylph. His wife was a soldier deployed overseas, and he worried constantly.
After work, she would explore future paths to find a way to change her favorite people’s dark fates.
Chapter 2
Camp Killer
Two weeks later, Liliana carefully laid a trip line between two tree trunks across a hiking path in Carver’s Creek State Park. She tied one of the nearly invisible cords of silk at ankle height, grateful that her ribs no longer ached when she bent over. Even her shoulder was finally back to normal. The other line, she could just walk under, with a brush along the top of her head. She ducked anyway since the silk was still damp and she didn’t want it to stick to her hair.
That used to happen to her a lot when she was young. More than once, one of her mothers had to cut out silk that had become hopelessly stuck and tangled.
Her fourth eyes supplied an image from her childhood.
