Page 2 of Beyond the Veil (Endangered Fae #4)

Cerith took it and turned it over. “It’s called a ‘knife’. An extra sharp tooth for humans to use since their teeth are flat like deer.”

“We should take it to him, shouldn’t we? Won’t he need it? How far of a swim is it? If he needs it to eat, why haven’t I seen it before?”

“I didn’t say he needed it to eat,” Cerith said with an exasperated chuckle. “I’m sure he has others. You keep that one as a remembrance.”

Limpet turned the long, razor-clam-shaped case in his hands as he wandered down the beach. It wasn’t a gift. Isn’t keeping it the same as theft? Why couldn’t we go find him and give it back? What are they all so frightened of?

The pod’s hesitance over returning to the human world both puzzled and irked him. They had been there. They had seen it, but they wouldn’t give him the chance. This was certainly not the first time he had asked.

He fiddled with his scarred right ear as he let the waves lap over his toes, his resolve growing.

He wasn’t a child any longer. Perhaps he would never reach his father’s height or Whelk’s breadth of shoulder, but he was grown, by all the water goddesses.

If he wished to see the world, he would simply do it.

The door lay in the sidhe court lands. Everyone said so.

If he swam up the Alainn, he would reach those lands and the door to the human world, or so he’d been told.

He glanced back at the pod, getting ready to settle in for the night. Perhaps, though, it will be best if I wait until it’s dark so no one sees me go.

“Odd. I wonder what I did with it.”

“With what, beloved?” Finn flopped down on the grass by their rest-stop stream. At the halfway point to home, they’d both agreed Finn needed a break.

“My penknife.”

“Ah, well. You dropped it somewhere, I expect. We’ll be home soon enough where you’ve no more need of it. Plenty of pens at the embassy.”

Reams of notes took up most of the space in Diego’s pack, records of conversations and lessons from the wild fae over the last three years.

At first, he had used a ballpoint and notebooks he had brought.

But when the ink and paper ran out, he had used the penknife to sharpen reeds into pens, using whatever berries were at hand for ink and large Otherworld leaves and rolls of fae flower silk as paper.

Diego dumped out the rest of his pack. “I know, but I’ve had that one a long time. It’s just…distressing.”

“My heart, my own, will you be angry with me if I suggest your distress is not caused by lost small objects?”

“Are you hungry?” Diego stood and brushed off his knees. “I saw a stand of golden berries over there.”

“Diego…”

“Or maybe there are some of those red pods around here. The ones that taste like chorizo ?”

Finn surged up and seized Diego’s head between his hands. “Beloved, stop. Please. Tell me.”

He gazed up into Finn’s coal-dark eyes that looked human until one knew the wild magic fires that simmered within. Pooka’s eyes that burned red in anger and glowed blue at the height of passion. His husband’s eyes had seen every moment with him, good and bad.

“I’m… All right, yes. I’m nervous. Anxious.”

“We go back to friends. To the home we built. Are you afraid you won’t be welcome?”

“I don’t know.” Diego gripped Finn’s wrists. “Things change. I don’t know what’s happened. How the world’s changed. How people will react. How I’ll…fit.”

“We’ll find our way.” Finn’s thumb brushed his jaw, his hand sliding into the curls Diego had let grow to shoulder length. “I’m right beside you.”

“I know. It’s… Thank you.” Diego leaned in to lay his head on Finn’s shoulder. “You’re what keeps me moving forward. Without you—”

“Without me, you would go on,” Finn whispered, his voice tight and fierce. “Don’t say otherwise. You would find a way to go on.”

Diego nodded, swallowing against the stone in his throat. Without Finn, he would have ended things three years before, but he couldn’t tell his pooka that. It would break his heart. He was done breaking Finn’s heart.

It’s today. Zack chewed on his bottom lip but it didn’t help him concentrate on the long-winded email on his screen.

He really was supposed to be working but what if Diego came home early?

It was the last day of his exile. Would he come back before noon when he’d left?

Would that be allowed? Would anyone care?

Most of the fae, except for the few with jobs at the embassy, didn’t have to watch the clock in the human world. They could sit by the Alainn and wait for Diego’s canoe for a week in anticipation if they wanted to. Hell, for all he knew, waiting sidhe and Fomorians packed the banks already.

He could just…but, no, he was the Consul for at least another few hours and, damn it, duty came first. Not to mention there was no guarantee Diego would want his job back.

Zack’s cracking knuckles echoed like rifle fire in the deadly quiet office and he tried once more to absorb the information from the Canadian ambassador.

Something about detained magic users…isolation camps that sounded more like concentration camps…

Oh, here we go . None of the details of the camps were news to him, but apparently some Canadian college students had managed to get themselves snapped up by the authorities while visiting the kingdom of Shera’alej.

Sounded like the kids had pulled some illegal magical prank and got themselves thrown in the magic user zoo there.

“And you want me to do what, Mr. Ambassador?” Zack muttered to his screen. “Get my super ninja fae commando squad together and save these boneheads?”

The purpose of the email wasn’t entirely clear, something Zack was used to by now in diplomatic missives.

So often, the real meaning lay in what was not said.

Implication. Obfuscation. Allusion. The ambassador couldn’t ask directly for the Fae Collective to intervene but that was what he was asking, all the same.

For this, he needed to consult. Before he even composed an ‘I received your message’ response, Zack needed to talk to the fae authorities, namely the sidhe and Fomorian rulers and their ambassador to the human world, Prince Lugh.

His phone chirped the first notes to the Battle Hymn of the Republic , his signal that one of the security staff was on the line.

“Morrison.”

“His Highness is on his way back to you, Consul,” Theo Aguilar’s soft voice came through.

“Why aren’t you with him?” Zack tried to modulate his tone but the sharp edge made him cringe. It wasn’t Theo’s fault that he was Lugh’s bodyguard now and not Zack. Also it wasn’t their newest bodyguard’s fault that Zack still resented not being able to watch over his royal lover personally.

“He’s on the ferry. I still have line of sight. Marcus is with him.”

“Not an answer, Theo.”

“Kevin’s taking me to the range for my qualification.”

“Oh. Damn it. I knew that. Sorry, kiddo.” Zack pinched the bridge of his nose. “You all right out there today?”

“Yes, sir.”

Zack waited but that was all he was getting. Theo would never complain about sun headaches, nausea or any of the other symptoms vampires suffered in full daylight. Truth was, even feeling poorly, Theo was more deadly unarmed than any other security officer with an arsenal.

“Sir?”

“Yeah?”

“Is he home yet?”

“Not yet.” Carol would’ve told me, right? “Theo, you all right with him coming home?”

There was a long silence on the line. Finally, Theo said in that quiet, expressionless voice, “I am. I know…he won’t be the same.”

“Not the way you first knew him, no.” Zack spoke carefully but firmly. “That’s really a good thing.”

“Yes, sir.” Theo hesitated. “Still, it will be strange.”

“I think it will be for him, too. Good luck on the range. You got this.”

Zack knew Theo well enough by now to hear the hint of a smile. “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

He’d had serious reservations about taking a rogue vampire on as security.

Inexperience aside, Theo had made some bad choices as a lone vigilante and some not much better ones working for Diego in his soul-shredded state.

Still, Theo wasn’t a monster, and a kind heart lurked under his chilly, laconic exterior.

These days, Zack worried more about Theo as Theo.

Was he happy? Was he getting what he needed, this young man who had been thrust out into the dark without a safety net?

Legally, Theo was an adult but Zack couldn’t help feeling like a surrogate parent sometimes, especially since Theo didn’t make friends and didn’t seem interested in having them. The cliché phrase one heard on the news when someone snapped kept nagging at Zack. He was a nice kid, kept to himself.

When the phone rang again, it was the internal line with Carol’s extension. “We have word?”

“Hello to you, too, Consul,” Carol said at her driest. “Angus spotted them. They’re about fifteen miles from the ford, airborne.”

“You think I have time? Can I—” Blow off the rest of my day, be a friend instead of a diplomat?

“I’ve cleared your schedule, Zack. I think a fit man, jogging, could probably make it in time.”

“Thanks, Carol. I owe you.”

“Again.” Her voice quieted as she said, “Tell them welcome home from all of us.”

“Yes’m.”

Zack left his dress shoes under the desk and stripped down to his T-shirt and boxer briefs as he hurried down the hall, through the kitchen to the basement stairs.

The fae wouldn’t bat an eye if he arrived in the Otherworld naked, but Zack hadn’t managed to let go of his modesty that far yet.

He hesitated at the silver door that led through the Veil.

Should he wait for Lugh? But no, the big guy was on his way and would zap himself right to the riverbank when he heard.

Zack didn’t have the whole teleport option thing going for him.