Page 14 of Out of Time (The Ice King Chronicles #3)

Glorfindel

Slightly disoriented, I steadied myself against Ethan’s body, and he leaned over to press his lips against my forehead. We had landed in the kitchen, and it seemed to be sometime after dusk. The lights were off, and the kitchen was almost dark. The store beyond the door was quiet too, so it must have been closed. I found that I was back in my “Salem” clothes again. I reached up to my ears and they were smooth and round too, so the glamour was back in place.

“All right?” Ethan asked.

“Just a little dizzy. Did you decide against going to see King Stefan then?”

“Yes, I think so. At least for now. He did allow you to leave his kingdom after all.”

“On the back of a donkey,” I pointed out, a bit resentfully. Stefan could have provided a much more elegant mode of transportation, except for the fact he was punishing me.

“But he did allow you to leave. I’m not sure I would have been much kinder to you had I found you in flagrante delicto with another man.” I glared at him, but he was totally unaffected. “And though the Dokkalfar are called the Dark Elves, the name refers only to their affinity for living in cave structures, rather than any darkness of spirit. No, I really suspected Tarrak’s consort, Sergey. But I didn’t sense any real anger directed at you inside him at all, and he actually helped us. He does have an affinity for the Infernal. Tarrak needs to be careful with that. Still, it makes things much easier. I didn’t relish going up against the Quendi king.”

“Sergey and Pavel both were a little in awe at your power, though. I could tell. Not so much Juul.”

He pulled me into his arms and nuzzled my neck, laughing. “Yes, he was fierce. I thought I might have to fight him for your honor.”

“Would you have done that?” I asked, no doubt looking as starry-eyed as I felt.

“I would,” he replied, kissing me again.

And again. And then one more time. He couldn’t seem to get enough of me now, as if once he’d finally admitted to himself how much he cared for me, he had to keep demonstrating it. I loved everything about that idea and returned the sentiment.

“What about you, Glori?” he murmured against my throat. “Are you in awe of me like Pavel and Sergey or do you want to fight me like Juul? I’m ready either way.” He was backing me toward the kitchen wall, putting a hand around my waist and then slipping his other hand down inside the waistband of my tight jeans. He was kneading my ass and whispering to me what he was going to do to my ass when he got me upstairs when a voice called out from the other side of the kitchen door.

“Ethan, is that you? Are you back?”

Ethan gave an aggravated sigh, but he took a step away from me as Dee’s voice came again. “Ethan? I need to speak to you.” The door handle jiggled.

He stepped away and went over to open the kitchen door that led down a short corridor and then out to the shop. “What’s happening, Dee? Is everything okay?”

“I’m sorry to bother you at this time of evening, Ethan. You too, Finn. But I had to tell you what’s happened—Marcy was arrested.”

“Arrested for what?” Ethan asked, looking surprised.

“It’s okay. She’s already bailed out, but it was for arson. The police were told she was the one who set the fire at Pat’s shop. Well, Pat told them.”

“What?”

“I know. It’s total crap, but that’s what Pat said.”

“But why?” Ethan asked.

“Because she’s an ogre,” I said, trying to be helpful. “I told you so.”

“A what?” Dee asked.

Ethan shook his head. “Never mind. Why on earth would Pat say such a thing?”

“Because Marcy was there at Pat’s apartment, and they had argued. And her fingerprints were on the lighter she used to light the candle. Pat said she must have deliberately set it too close to the curtains before she left.”

“I don’t believe it. Marcy isn’t capable of doing such a thing.”

“No, I would never think so either. It makes me so mad that Pat would say that.”

“I don’t believe it,” Ethan said with a steely look. “I’ve known Marcy since she came to work here five years ago now. She wouldn’t do anything like that. Do you know if she’d retained counsel?”

“An attorney? No, I don’t know. You could ask her—she’s out on bail already.”

“Good. Thanks for letting me know, Dee. You’re a good friend. I’ll check on this.”

Dee left after a few more minutes, saying she’d lock up the store behind her as she left. Ethan got out his little phone thing to call Marcy as I shamelessly eavesdropped.

“We did argue,” Marcy told Ethan on the call. “Pat was drinking so much and that’s not like her. She picked an argument with me about…”

“About what?” Ethan prompted her.

“About Finn. Pat was so jealous of him. I told her I barely knew Finn and that he’d never made any kind of pass at me, or anything, but she kept drinking and kept getting madder and more jealous. I did light the candle at Pat’s request. She said it would be romantic, but I didn’t put it anywhere near the curtains. Pat just went on yelling at me about Finn, so I finally had enough and left.”

“Sounds like the evidence is pretty thin. This probably won’t go anywhere, but I’ll talk to you about this more tomorrow. Try not to worry.”

Ethan ended the call and glanced over at me.

I nodded. “See—an ogre!”

“No, just a silly human who’s easily influenced. But this gives me an idea. I think I need to talk to Drogheda about this.”

Without another word, he suddenly disappeared, and I was left alone in the kitchen. I didn’t like the bereft feeling I had once he winked out of sight. I trailed over to the stairs and went up, turning on the lights as I went. I was really coming to like the electric lights, considering I had no servants here to light my way. I went into Ethan’s bedroom to feel closer to him and sat on the bed to wait. It had been a pretty eventful day, however, so I decided to lie down and rest. The next thing I knew, Ethan was bending over me and trying to wake me up. Drogheda was standing behind him, this time dressed in some long garment Ethan told me later was called a stola, a long sleeveless garment worn by high class Roman matrons. Apparently, Ethan had dragged her away from a dinner with one of the Caesars. I had to admit, Drogheda did live an interesting life.

She was standing impatiently behind him, tapping her foot. “Really, Ethan, this is going to be hard to explain. Romans have no concept of Fairies, you know or Sidhe either.”

“This is more important.”

“For you, perhaps,” she grumbled, not totally under her breath. “Oh, very well, I’m here now. Tell me what you need now.”

“I have a theory about the thing inside Glori, but I need your advice. I think this could be a vengeful ghost.”

Drogheda looked intrigued. “What? Why?”

“Because of all the chaos that’s been happening here just since Glori arrived. I learned about more of it tonight and I think a vengeful ghost is behind all this. It seems to fit.”

“But whose? Not the pixie’s?”

“Yes, I think it may be. After all, vengeful spirits are most often female, right? And they’re usually trying to get revenge for what they perceive as their own cruel or unjust death.”

“Drusilla killed herself!” I loudly protested, interrupting them.

“Yes, but she thought you drove her to it. You did put a hump on her back.”

I folded my arms across my chest. “Which I offered to remove if she removed her curse first.”

“Not the point, Glori.”

Drogheda nodded. “It could be her. Vengeful ghosts often present as demons since they influence bad behavior on the person they blame for their deaths, which would account for much of Glorfindel’s so-called curse. It could be why neither of us detected any real curse on him at all. And Drusilla’s last thoughts were apparently of Glorfindel, according to the note she left.”

“So if there was never any real curse, then maybe a lot of what happened to Glori was due in part to his own personality. Yes, I can see that.”

“Hey! I’m sitting right here.”

Ethan glanced down at me, and I gave him the dirtiest look I could muster—which bounced right off him.

“But not all of it. This woman’s spirit did attach itself to him. It was what we saw inside him, and it’s still refusing to leave. Our spell wouldn’t have affected a ghost.”

“Vengeful ghosts can be disruptive to everything around them too. Have there been more fights or arguments since Glori has arrived? Perhaps even fires in the area.”

“Yes, there has. And Glori has been involved in almost every one of them.”

“This really could be your answer then.”

I jumped to my feet and got between them so they couldn’t ignore me. “But how do I get her out of me? That’s what I want to know.”

Drogheda lifted an eyebrow. “Of course, the preferred method is to locate the body, cut off the head, burn the remains, and then salt them and dump the whole mess in the sea. That should do the trick. But where is Drusilla buried?” She sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to leave my lovely orgy and return home to speak to her family. I’ll find out and let you know.”

With that, she was gone again, leaving me standing uneasily beside Ethan, feeling like I wanted to throw up at the idea of that ungovernable, hateful pixie ghost inside me.

“My grandmother and Roman orgies is not something I wanted to hear about.” He glanced down at me. “Cheer up, Glori. This is finally making some sense, at least. It accounts for the fact I couldn’t find any curses, and for all the recent chaos around here.”

“But you said it also means that part of my problems are because of my bad personality.”

He slung an arm around my shoulders. “You’re a Fairy. This actually doesn’t come as a surprise to me.”

“Thanks.”

He smiled and kissed me. “You’ve already come a long way. Your apology to Sergey was really impressive. I was very proud of you.”

He kissed me again and so much heat sparked between us that I was surprised my clothes didn’t catch on fire. I was ravenous for him, but he pulled away from my mouth and began trailing kisses down my throat. I was humping his leg and begging him to make love to me, when Drogheda picked that very moment to pop back in the room. As my father said, all this coming and going so quickly was disconcerting.

“Sorry I took so long,” she said, but I had to go to the Pixie territory to make inquiries. Her family buried Drusilla under the same tree she hung herself from. It’s on the Northern banks of Crumlin Lake, not far from the village of Briton Ferry. Do you know it?”

“I should be able to find it. Is there a marker to show the tree?”

“Her family carved her name on the trunk. It’s a tall oak and shouldn’t be hard to find, especially since you’ll be roaming there.” She took his hand in hers. “Can you see the location of the lake in my memory?”

After a moment Ethan nodded. She kissed him on the cheek, waved goodbye to me and then she was gone. Ethan turned back to me, and I shook my head.

“No. Not tonight, please. All I want to do is go to bed—with you, in case I haven’t made that perfectly clear.”

“It’s still early evening here, Glori, and the shop is closed for the night. In the morning, there will be things that’ll get in the way, so we should strike while the iron is hot, don’t you agree?”

“No, but I suppose my disagreement won’t do me any good.”

“But just think how much better you’ll feel when that nasty spirit is out of you,” he said, kissing down my neck again. I moaned and pressed myself against him, and he chuckled in my ear.

“Don’t try to distract me. I’ll go downstairs and grab the salt and the shovel from the back shed. You get our jackets. Then we’ll be on our way.”

****

Ethan

Once we arrived at the lake, it took only about fifteen minutes to locate the ancient oak tree where Drusilla was supposed to be buried. Glori was the one who found her name carved on the old oak.

Here lies Drusilla , the carving read. A false lover laid her low.

“That’s outrageous,” Glori pouted as I read it aloud to him. “I was never her lover, and she did this to herself.”

I let him rage around and kick the dirt under the tree, cursing all pixies and throwing Drusilla’s name around a lot. It kept him busy and didn’t hurt anything. The ghost was already in possession of him, so it couldn’t get much worse.

The first thing I did though, was make a fire, because the air was freezing cold, and despite all his blustering around, Glori was trembling so hard I could hear his teeth chattering. I made him get busy finding some sticks lying around the snow, though I didn’t need them. They were wet, and my fire wouldn’t be made from natural means anyway, but he needed to get moving around to warm himself up a bit and get his mind off what we were about to do. It wasn’t going to be pleasant.

I had no qualms about it myself. The pixie had died with a troubled and tormented mind—she’d probably been that way since before Glori had met her. And though we were going to desecrate her grave, it was the only way to put her evil spirit to rest. It wasn’t as if anyone ever visited her here—weeds and brambles grew over her grave, and I knew her family had buried her and then mostly forgotten about her.

It was in a picturesque spot by the misty lake, though a bit spooky. Glori began pressing up against me, because the area really did look like something out of a story by Edgar Allen Poe. Not that Glori had ever read Poe, but the tall trees looming over us and the mists from the lake reaching up toward us like ghostly fingers set a scene right out of his short stories. I put down the shovel and the salt I was carrying and began to feel around the base of the tree for where to dig. I found the grave soon enough and began to dig while Glori fussed around, adding sticks he’d found to the fire and didn’t look at what I was doing.

The ground wasn’t frozen, and they hadn’t buried the girl deep in the ground, so within about an hour or so I uncovered her skeletal remains. I grabbed the salt, and raised the shovel, then asked Glori to sit down.

I wasn’t sure what effect, if any, this might have on him when I cut off the pixie’s head, and I didn’t want him falling in the fire.

“Why?” he asked, turning around and blanching when he got a good look at the bones gleaming whitely in the moonlight. “Oh, my goodness,” he said and sat down abruptly, his mouth a round O of surprise, though I don’t know what he’d been expecting.

I brought the shovel down sharply over the neck bones several times to sever the head, and then I grabbed the salt—a bag of ice cream salt that I thought would work nicely—and began scattering it over the grave. I glanced over at Glori and saw that he was pale but seemed to be fine. I had just turned to face him when an unearthly wind suddenly whipped up out of the grave itself and started swirling in the in the air around us like a tiny tornado.

I ran to him and scooped him up in my arms as the wild wind roared and howled. The sound that clawed at us reminded me a bit of the banshee’s wailing. As it went on, I could almost pick out words and phrases from the sound, like “faithless,” and “treachery,” and most sadly, “remember me.”

I held out a hand toward the grave. “Abiit maligni spiritus!”

I said the phrase again and again to banish the vengeful ghost, and I felt Glori’s body shaking all over. With a cry, he suddenly threw back his head and from his mouth a dark shadow flew up and soared outward, swirling over our heads. I threw a bolt of fire after it as it sailed toward the grave, and with a loud pop and one last anguished howl, the wind dropped down and the vengeful ghost disappeared.

I bent toward Glori to see if he was all right, and he opened his eyes and looked at me. They were wide with horror, but clear and bright. I hugged him fiercely to me, and after he regained a little strength, I set him on his feet. I cast more flames toward the grave itself and set the bones on fire. They blazed up high, and I drew Glori down toward the lake to get us both away from the terrible stench of sulphur, until the bones burned in the fire down to ash.

As my fire was magical, it didn’t take all that long, and then Glori held out the garbage bag I’d tucked in my back pocket, and I used the shovel to fill the bag with the salted ashes. I threw in a bit more salt on top and tied up the bag. Before five more minutes had passed, I was able to take an unnaturally subdued Glori back home.