Page 5 of Out of Time (The Ice King Chronicles #3)

Ethan

I took them both to my office, then drew Drogheda back to the door to have a private word with her, out of the Fairy’s hearing.

“He’ll never pass as mortal,” I whispered to my great grandmother bitterly as I stood in the doorway. I folded my arms over my chest and glared at the beautiful little fucker, sitting so innocently in a chair by my desk. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but just look at him. He’s far too-too...damn it, I don’t think both of us together have enough magic to make him ugly.”

“He doesn’t need to be ugly—we just need to tone him down a bit.” Drogheda replied, looking at me critically. “Blur his edges some. Go ahead and say a glamour spell over him but corrupt the syllables a bit here and there. That ought to work.”

She walked back over to him and motioned for him to stand up. “Glorfindel, my great-grandson thinks you’re far too beautiful to pass as mortal.”

I glanced at her and frowned. She didn’t have to go into details. It would only go to his head.

“I need to tone you down. So stand still,” I told him, coming to stand over him.

He looked alarmed and tried to take a step backward, but I grabbed his arm to hold him, and maybe I gripped a little too hard. Then I did as Drogheda had suggested, saying the words of a glamor spell, “Maleas, galitas, borribim, ” but changing them a little, slurring over the middle consonants and leaving off the final consonants altogether. It helped a bit. He looked up at us in wonder and his perfect features now were not quite so perfect as they’d been before—his cheekbones not so high and bold, his nose not quite as straight and his eyes not so exotically tilted. He gazed over at me then for my inspection.

His eyes were still topaz, though, damn it, and the eyelashes were as thick as ever. His hair was a bit better. It wasn’t so golden blond anymore, and not quite the riot of platinum, gold and blond that it had been before. It was shorter too and more modern. Still not enough, in my opinion. I lifted my hand to try again, but Drogheda pushed it down.

“No. Leave him be. It’s enough. He still has to attract his true love, you know.”

I frowned at that idea but turned away from him and stared back at my grandmother. “He no doubt still has that same smart mouth.”

“Ethan, I’ve never seen you act this way before. You seem to have taken an instant dislike to the poor boy. What’s wrong with you?”

What was wrong indeed? I had no idea why this little Fairy prince rubbed me the wrong way so completely. I knew I wasn’t being fair, and I knew I was projecting all of the stuff I knew about how capricious and graceless and heartless Fairies could be onto him. Not that I didn’t think he was more than capable of living up to it. How could anyone who looked like he did not be a selfish, spoiled, self-entitled little prick?

Yeah, I knew exactly what he was, and I hated—no, I despised—the small, insignificant part of me that wanted him so badly it made my teeth ache.

I knew I would give myself away if I stayed there, so I mumbled something about having work to do and fled from the room. If he said one more smartass remark to me, I wouldn’t be responsible for what happened. But I was very afraid it would involve me stripping those too-tight jeans off him and pushing him down on my desk with his ankles over my shoulders. And that would be disastrous for all of us.

****

Glorfindel

The room Drogheda took me to next was depressingly small and ugly, with a small bed set up under a window, a chest of drawers and an old, green chair. It was clean at least, and it did have a small bookcase filled with books that had thick paper covers with bright designs on the front. There was also a little square thing on the bedside table with red numbers on it. The numbers kept changing and Drogheda explained that it was a clock. She said it was “old-fashioned,” and called it a “clock radio” and turned it on. Music began to play. A fast, lively tune about some girl having a feeling that things were going to be all right, because it was “about damn time.”

I certainly hoped she was right.

“Is this some kind of witchcraft?” I asked Drogheda, and she said no, it was a machine that played music that had already been recorded. I didn’t know what “recorded” meant, though I probably should have—technology of a sort was around in the mortal realm, but so much in the Fae realms. There, things remained the way they always had for centuries. I was worried that I’d say something to give myself away in front of these mortals who didn’t know what I was, but Drogheda assured me that most people probably wouldn’t know exactly how a radio worked either. The music was just to amuse people, and I didn’t have to worry about it. When I got tired of listening to it, I could turn it off, and she showed me the button to press.

I had a small room attached to my bedroom called a bathroom, though there was no bathing tub in it. There was a narrow sort of booth instead that Drogheda called a “shower,” along with an indoor privy. I was aware of indoor plumbing, of course, though none of us in the Fae realm had any such thing. She showed me how to make the water come on in the shower and how to wash away whatever might be deposited in the privy. She claimed none of it was magic, but I was skeptical.

We went over to look at my closet then, which was another tiny room off the bedroom that wasn’t even big enough to stand in. She said this was where I’d hang my clothes. While she was there, she conjured up four more pairs of the tight pants and four more of the shirts like the soft cotton one I was currently wearing and hung them all up in the closet. She said if I needed more, then Ethan would provide them for me.

“I really need to get back home now, Glorfindel,” Drogheda told me. “Ethan will help you with anything else you need. Just remember his bark is far worse than his bite.”

I doubted that it was, but I pretended to believe her and after she left, I lay down on the bed for a minute just to rest, and the next thing I knew I was waking up with a dry mouth and drool pooling beneath my face on the pillow. I couldn’t believe I’d fallen asleep like that, but I guess traveling a hundred years through time took it out of a person. I wish I could say my sleep was dreamless, but it was far from that. I’d had a terrible nightmare about getting lost in time and having creatures follow me here to this town of Salem to attack me.

I got up and went in the bathing room Drogheda had shown me. I took care of everything I needed to do there and then got dressed in an outfit from the room called a closet, because my other things were wrinkly. Then I took a deep breath and went downstairs to find Ethan. I was apprehensive about seeing him again and the other employees Drogheda had mentioned to me. She called them Ethan’s “salesclerks.”

When I walked into the store from the back, I saw a young woman with flawless brown skin, standing at the front behind a counter, punching buttons on some device as she chatted with a young man in front of her. She had a mass of pretty, dark curls standing out like a small halo around her face, and she was attractive, in her late twenties or so, with brown eyes. She was also wearing one of the shirts like I was, only hers was black and had the words Salem Magick Shoppe emblazoned across the front in red letters. Over that she wore some kind of red vest. I was waiting for her to finish with the young man so I could go and introduce myself, when behind me came a rough, hostile voice.

“Don’t even think about it, asshole. She only likes women.”

Startled because I’d allowed someone to come so close to me and hadn’t realized it, I whirled round and simply stared at the individual who had spoken.

“You heard me, Cupcake. Stop leering at my girlfriend.”

For one horrified, panicked moment I thought ogres had followed me to this realm. Not that the person looked exactly like an ogre, except for the hair, which did bear a remarkable resemblance, actually. Most ogres were gray skinned, though, and not pasty white, like this one. Usually they were tall and thin, not short and fat. But they definitely had similarly strange, reddish crests of hair that stood up in a wide strip along their scalps, and they were bald on either side of that. This might be a young one, for all I knew, and it hadn’t yet achieved its full growth. After all, gender was difficult to figure out with ogres.

The creature growled menacingly at me, showing me its teeth, so I could see it was losing patience. I decided I’d better answer them.

“I do not leer, sir.” I looked at the person again and gave a slight bow just in case. “Or madam, as the case may be.”

I meant no disrespect, but I couldn’t actually tell which one the ogre was, and I was trying not to offend. But the bright magenta-red hair, cut into that aggressively ugly, ogre-like style that had a long strip of hair spiked up so that each one stood on end on top of its head was highly suggestive of a male. Not to mention the large nose ring, which was also a well-known ogre fashion among the males of the species, though this one was made of gold and not bone.

They took a step closer to me, baring some large, unattractive teeth at me. “Are you trying to be a smartass?” Then the creature growled at me again.

Well, what was I to do? In that first momentary panic, I suppose I did overreact. But in my defense, ogres have been known to eat people practically without warning, so I didn’t have much time to carefully consider the situation.

I raised my hand to defend myself when someone clamped their fingers around my wrist and squeezed.

“What the fuck are you doing?” came Ethan’s loud, horrified voice in my ear. Meanwhile, he waved his own hand over the young ogre’s face, and they froze in place as their eyes glazed over. Suddenly, no one was home behind those blue orbs.

“Were you about to use magic to kill her?” Ethan gritted out in a horrified whisper.

“No. Yes. Well, I’m not sure.”

“Damn it, I could sense it. What’s wrong with you?”

I huffed out a breath, feeling put upon and misunderstood. “This ogre growled at me and showed me its teeth. I was in fear of being attacked and possibly eaten!”

We both turned and looked down at the small person who I now noticed was at least a foot shorter than I was.

“I may have been caught up in the moment.”

Ethan shook his head and scoffed loudly. “You think? This isn’t an ogre, damn it.”

“Are you sure? I know it’s little, but young ones can eat people too.” He kept glaring at me, so I hung my head. “But perhaps I misjudged the situation in all the excitement.”

“I’d say so. This lady is the shopkeeper next door, damn it, and she’s not a fucking ogre! What’s wrong with you? Her name is Pat; she sells candles, and she doesn’t eat people, you lunatic. Her girlfriend Marcy works here.”

“Well, how was I to know all that?” I hissed back at him, feeling embarrassed. I pulled my wrist out of his grip. “He accosted me as soon as I came downstairs.”

“Again, Pat’s a ‘she,’ and why? What were you doing to her?”

“Nothing at all!” I shouted, sputtering a bit at the rank injustice. “I was simply looking at that black-haired woman over there, about to go over and introduce myself. She’s your salesclerk, isn’t she?”

Speaking of his clerk…when I glanced over at her, I could see that the young man she’d been talking to had gone, and she was looking at our little group with curiosity. A smile broke out on her face as she noticed us looking back at her and she waggled her fingers in the air. She must have decided to come and see what the hell we were doing, because she began to move toward us. Her voice called out to us across the shop.

“Oh, hi, Ethan. Is this the new guy? And is that Pat there with you?”

Ethan quickly stepped in front of me, waving a hand over Pat’s face as he moved. I kept my focus warily on Pat as she came out of her fog, not completely convinced of her non-ogre status. They were very tricky creatures and could be wily when young. She could have been fooling Ethan for years, for all I knew, just biding her time. Pat was blinking rapidly as she came out of Ethan’s spell, looking around in confusion and wiping a little drool off her chin.

“Oh, hi Pat, I thought that was you back there,” Marcy called out as she approached us. “Where did you come from?”

“I was, uh...I don’t quite remember.” Pat scratched one of the shaved sides of her head. “I think I was coming to see you to remind you of our date later tonight when you get off work.”

“Hmph,” I grunted suspiciously, remaining unconvinced.

Pat shot me a look dripping with dislike.

“Oh, okay,” Marcy said brightly, ignoring the tension in the air that was so thick you could cut it with a knife—or one of the sharp spikes of the ogre’s hair. Marcy smiled again at Ethan and me. “And who’s this, Ethan?”

“This is uh, Finn, our new employee. I was thinking you and Dee might begin training him today.”

“Sure. Dee is around here somewhere. Maybe in the back with a customer.”

“Finn’s going to just be cleaning the store for now and straightening stock. Can you get him a vest?”

I cast him a horrified look. Was he talking about the hideous red, sleeveless things made of some cheap material that he and Marcy were both wearing? I’d thought it was some kind of terrible new fashion, and I’d been thanking my lucky stars he hadn’t put me in one.

“Yeah, of course. Let me go grab him one.”

She turned and went toward a little room in the back, and I tugged on his arm. He ignored me for a moment and then leaned toward me irritably. “ What? Did you need something?”

“I’m not wearing that vest thing.”

“Yes, you are.”

I shook my head. “No. I refuse. It’s hideous.”

He gave me a mean smile. “Oh no, you’re wearing it.”

“No. I’m putting my foot down.”

“You can put your foot anywhere you want, but you’ll do it wearing that fucking vest.”

We stopped talking and just glared at each other. I had forgotten Pat’s existence until he—she—laughed out loud. Then I shot her an evil look.

“What’s the matter, pretty boy? Don’t want people to think you work here?”

I turned and gave Pat a smile. “Keep rolling your eyes at me, Pat. Maybe you’ll find a brain back there.”

Ethan growled my name and Pat’s grin slipped a bit at the look I gave her.

Marcy arrived back at our little group as Pat was snarling at me, and she gave her girlfriend an odd look. “Uh, here’s your vest, Finn.”

I managed not to snatch it from her hand, but it was a close thing. I put the hateful thing on and turned back to Ethan. “Happy now?”

“Ecstatic. Now get to work sweeping.”

“Oh,” Marcy interjected. “You don’t need him to work the register too?”

“No. Definitely not.”

She looked a little surprised but smiled gamely at me. “Okay, then. How about readings, Finn? Can you do readings?”

“Of course, I can read,” I said.

At the exact same time, Ethan said, “Hell, no.”

She glanced back and forth between us in confusion and Ethan gave her grisly smile. “I mean, no, he doesn’t read cards.”

“What kind of cards? Maybe I do.”

“No,” Ethan said, glaring at me. “No, you do not.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, but Marcy was still talking. “Oh well, no problem. Dee does great readings for us, and I do some myself,” Marcy explained to me. “Dee’s a witch, you see.”

“Is that right?” I asked, pursing my lips. I had no idea what they were even talking about, but I was absolutely sure I could do whatever it was better than any mortal who was just pretending to be a witch. Especially one who had only a letter for a name.

“Our customers like to have their cards read. Dee does it in a little curtained closet off the back,” Ethan explained, jerking his head toward a claustrophobically small area. “It’s very popular.”

“What kind of cards does she read? Calling cards?” I had a set of exquisitely calligraphed calling cards on heavy embossed paper that I used when paying social visits. They even had my father’s crest. I thought it sounded a bit boring to sit around and read them, but mortals were odd creatures and if that was a custom with them, I was sure I could do it to everyone’s satisfaction. It was a much better job than cleaning the store.

They all three looked at me like I had two heads. “What are you talking about? She means Tarot cards, of course,” the ever so charming Pat replied and then added in an undertone, “Dumb ass.” The last part of that was perhaps not meant to be heard, but I had excellent hearing. It suddenly occurred to me that Pat would look so much better as a toad—a big, ugly one with red hair.

I turned to her, lifted a hand and said, “ Bufo rana ,” or I tried to anyway, but before I could get the words fully out of my mouth, Ethan had once more snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and clamped his big hand over my mouth. A tiny little bolt of lightning flew from my lips anyway, exploding harmlessly against his palm. Almost harmlessly, that is. It made a popping noise and gave him a little shock. He gave me a nasty look and pressed his hand against my mouth even harder.

A cloud of green smoke seeped out around and through his fingers, floating off harmlessly in the air. Almost harmlessly, that is. There was an awful stink of brimstone left behind. Both Pat and Marcy’s mouths fell open as they watched the cloud drifting up toward the ceiling.

“What just happened?” Marcy asked. She looked directly at me. “What did you do?”

Ethan quickly waved a hand toward the two of them again, but this time the entire store seemed to freeze in time. A few customers near the back stopped moving and just hung there frozen.

Actually, I was a little alarmed, too, at what had happened, because nothing quite like that had ever occurred before. Not ever. Not anything so explosive anyway. In the past when I’d had occasion to use the little cantrip, nothing much had happened outside of a little distant thunder and maybe a few sparkles, which was normally my victim’s only warning before they were looking up at me from a lily pad and reconsidering their life choices.

But nothing like actual sparks and that extremely noxious smelling smoke had ever happened. The smoke drifting in the air around us had the decided stink of sulfur, which meant only one thing—Infernal magic!

But my magic had never been infernal. Not ever. That was dark magic and mostly demonic and could be really, really bad. Instead of a toad frog, Pat might have turned into a fire-eating dragon, or an alligator and eaten us all.

Did Ethan know this too? From the look on his face, he most certainly did. His eyes widened in shock, and he suddenly pushed me against the wall with all that heat and muscle of his and got right in my face. He leaned down close enough that I could smell his hot breath, with just a sweet hint of his morning coffee. He smelled like some warm, delicious pastry my father’s chef might make, and I wanted suddenly to lick him all over. I inhaled deeply and moved closer to him.

“What the fuck was that? Was that demonic?” he shouted down at me.

He sounded horrified and he pulled back his hand to...well, I have no idea what he planned to do. But purveyors of dark magic or Infernal magic were almost universally evil and dangerous. When a purveyor of infernal magic was found, he could be imprisoned or even put to death, and Ethan was strong enough to do whatever he wanted with me.

His muscles tensed as he leaned against me, his eyes widened a little in surprise and anger. But then something else sprang to life in his eyes. Something just as dangerous but it wasn’t anger. Not exactly. And whatever it was began to seep into me too. It made me tingle all over and that tingle went straight to my cock, which was already hard as a rock. What was this? Was Ethan feeling this whatever-it-was too? I tried to get even closer to him and sighed as I leaned forward and rested my face in the hollow between Ethan’s shoulder and his neck and then nuzzled my face against him.

Behind us it was really quiet in the store. He pushed me away to stare down at me, and I wondered how long he could keep this going. After a few more moments of both of us just breathing heavily and staring at each other from an inch away, he tried to be stern with me. He pushed me away, but not hard, and held one hand on the back of my head to keep me from hitting it on the wall. Finally, he cleared his throat and tried to sound tough.

“I don’t know what the fuck that was, but if I ever see it again, I’ll have to—I don’t know what I’ll have to do. But don't try me. I don’t want to hurt you, but don’t ever, ever do that again. Do you understand? I warned you not to use any more magic, didn’t I? I told you I’d make you sorry if you did.”

I looked up at him, making my eyes go wide. I batted my eyelashes at him. “Yes. And I am sorry.”

He shook his head. “No, not just ‘yes.’ You have to mean it.”

“I do mean it,” I said, nuzzling him again. “Kiss me and I’ll show you how much.”

He inhaled sharply. “W-what? I’m not kidding around here, you know.”

I shoved my groin toward his. “Neither am I.”

He hesitated for just a moment, and I believe he was still thinking over what to do with me. I wasn’t exactly afraid of him, but I knew he was really powerful, so I wasn’t sure I wanted to let him decide. I had strong magic myself, but Ethan’s was at a whole other level and really rather incredible, though I didn’t think either of us was using magic now. Still, something unusual was happening. Sparks were shooting off between us again and what the hell was that anyway? Was he doing this? Because I wasn’t.

I thought maybe he was, though he hadn’t meant to. His magic was instinctive and easy for him, like the way he could wave his hand and stop time or make people fall into a trance, while I had to remember the words to a spell in Latin to do anything close to that. Which meant he was much faster and stronger than I was, and his magic was just unconscious, like he didn’t even have to try. It just came seeping out of him whenever he was aroused.

And speaking of aroused... He definitely was and that was becoming increasingly clear from the big bulge pressing against me.

I sighed and leaned forward to kiss him, but he shoved me away again.

“No,” he said kind of desperately, pointing his finger in my face, and the air crackled and another flood of little sparks flew from his fingertip, lighting up the air between us. They hit my face with little tingles.

I’d been with many men in the past, but I’d never felt anything like this desperate desire rushing through me. What was this?

I strained forward, rubbing myself shamelessly against him again and again, and he groaned and gave in as he pulled me closer, and his hands began to move over my body, caressing and stroking. There was a humming sound all around us, and I suddenly wanted things I’d never wanted before. I needed them. I needed him . His mouth began trailing burning kisses down the length of my throat, and I moaned out loud.

He took my face in his hands and thrust his tongue in my mouth. I pushed hungrily back. Our kiss deepened as I felt the insistent prod of his rigid cock through his clothing. His kiss was almost unbearably sweet and oh goddess, it was so hot. I’d never felt this way before—tears sprang to my eyes, and I whispered to him frantically. “Please, Ethan, please.”

I didn’t even know what I was asking for. Suddenly he pushed me away and stared down at me.

“What are you doing to me?”

“W-what?”

“You’re doing this, aren’t you? This has to be some spell. Some Fairy enchantment.”

He ripped himself away from me, his chest heaving with effort and emotion. “Stay away from me.”

I tried to ask him what was wrong, but he put his hand over my mouth again to shut me up. That’s when I stuck out my tongue and thoroughly licked his palm. He snatched it away and stared down at me in horror, shaking his head, and wiping his palm on his pants.

“My God, you’re actually crazy, aren’t you? Like certifiable.”

“I can explain.”

“No,” he said, pointing his finger in my face again. “We’re handling this right now. Come with me.”

****

Ethan

I grabbed Glori’s arm and hauled him out of the store and into my office. And since when was I calling him that stupid name and why did it seem right? After shoving him inside, I murmured a spell to keep him inside. I needed to gather some things before I went back to him, but first I had to stop a minute to wake people up.

I was lucky and no one had come in while I was in my office kissing Glori. I waved my hand again to rest time and turned to Pat and Marcy.

“Um, what were we talking about now?” Marcy asked as soon as she saw me back in front of her. She was still staggering a little as she stood there, blinking hard and looking dazed.

“You were telling Glori—uh, Finn that Dee does the card readings,” I could lie fluently and as smooth as glass, when I had to. Another legacy of my Fairy ancestors.

Not that this was particularly smooth. I was far too rattled for that.

“Oh yes. Finn.” She blinked a few times and looked around. “Um, where is he?”

“He had to go upstairs for a while, remember?”

She frowned, so I pushed a little more compulsion at her to plant a false memory. “Oh,” she said. “That’s right. Well, come on, Pat. I need to get back to the front, and I’m sure you must need to get back to your shop.” They walked away, Pat looking around suspiciously, but the weaker minded a person was, the easier they were to compel, and Pat was easy indeed. She’d forget all about it soon. I turned and hurried back to office.

Glori was sitting in a chair by my desk, his lips all pouty. I staunchly resisted the urge to kiss him into submission and told him I had to go to the storeroom to gather some supplies.

“I had the thought that just the fact that Drogheda brought you here to the modern mortal world might have been enough to break the curse. I should have known that would be far too easy, but we need to check.”

He glanced up at me. “Check what? What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to do a quick spell to see how strong this thing is. I’ll get some supplies from the storeroom and be back in a moment. You stay here.” It was only partly a lie. I wanted to see if he’d put some spell on me to make me feel this way too. I glared at him as I left the room. I knew I was being rude, but I didn’t want to be nice or pleasant to him. I didn’t want him to thank me or look at me with those beautiful topaz eyes and those damn thick eyelashes. I didn’t want to see him looking so innocent and sweet and sincere. I knew that was all a lie anyway.

I knew the moment I saw the Fairy that he had magic in him—it shone like bright strands of silver under his creamy skin—but he couldn’t be allowed to use his sorcery here. He still looked outlandish and out of place, even after getting rid of the rich velvet clothing with silver flounces and embroidery. He still wore silver rings on each of his fingers, some with fat pearls embedded in the bands, and some with large diamonds perched on top of them, as clear and sparkling as big drops of dew.

I suppose it could have been worse. Though I didn’t think much of him and what he’d started to do to poor Pat, I didn’t sense any real wickedness in him. Nothing too dramatic, anyway. Yet, there was a definite affinity for darker magic inside him—and there was something else. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on that was swirling around inside him too. Something that ducked and dodged out of sight when I went looking for it, trying to hide from me.

Of course, I knew that cruelty ran deep in the blood and bones of all the Fae. I was about a quarter Fairy, on my mother’s side, as near as I could tell, though I tried my best to live it down. I abhorred the Fairy blood I had, seeing as how most Fairies were little better than capricious sociopaths, and in fact, it was said that where the Fairies danced, the rules of social conduct, physics, and even mortal fate changed. It was good to be wary of them and keep your distance.

Drogheda always fixed me with one of her cold glares whenever I spoke like that. Like Drogheda, her daughter, who had also been my grandmother, had been half Sidhe and half Woodland Fairy, often a bad combination. Sidhe didn’t consider themselves to be strictly Fairy, and thought they were a cut above them, actually.

She was also a Timeroamer, like her mother before her, who had traveled to the future and somehow come across my grandfather, a very mortal, very earthbound professor of Literature at Boston University. He never spoke of how they met or came to be together. He refused to, in fact, and carried that story with him to his grave. Their daughter, who was my mother, had been a quarter Fairy and a quarter Sidhe, had been abandoned by her mother with typical Fae cruelty when she was a newborn. It seems from what I’d heard of my grandmother, she had taken almost completely after her Fairy side.

Thus, a two-day old infant had been left on my grandfather’s front doorstep one cold Boston night, and she might have frozen to death if he hadn’t heard her soft cries. She had a note pinned to her chest that told my grandfather she was his daughter.

He had raised the beautiful little girl, telling her all the stories of Fairies and magic by the time she grew up and met my father. She was terrified to have children, knowing they would inherit Fairy blood. So when I was born and immediately started disappearing for whole swaths of time from my crib, she and my father had no choice but to beg her father for help. He told them he had no way to get in touch with my grandmother, but one morning, Drogheda brought me home to them, after she’d followed my trail. I’d been nine months old at the time and hadn’t been walking long.

Drogheda, who, as it turned out, was my Sidhe great grandmother, had been in my life ever since. She had taught me how to control the Timeroaming, to my parents’ everlasting relief. She also taught me about magic and magical creatures. My parents weren’t quite as happy about all that.

I knew I’d have to be wary of this beautiful Fairy prince she’d brought me. It was impossible not to feel the pull of his beauty, even though I fought it. Fairies often lured unsuspecting humans into their circles, using trickery and their extraordinary beauty to trap them. The Fairy might lead their victim to an “elfin grot,” and feed him “relish sweet, honey wild, and manna dew,” as Keats wrote in his strange and surely enchanted old poem, with its dream visions of skeletons, medieval warriors, princes and kings. And once the victim ate and drank, according to the legends, they were lulled to sleep with songs of unearthly beauty, not realizing that once their eyes closed, they’d stay that way forever.

My father, who was a high school teacher, had never talked to me about my own heritage over the years, no matter how many times I’d asked. He, like most people, saw little difference between Sidhe and Woodland Fairies. Only once had he come close to mentioning it. He’d been helping me with my homework, the assignment being to analyze that same Keats’ poem, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” and he got an odd, faraway look in his eyes as he described Fairy women.

“I think the Fairies have what would now be called ill-disguised personality disorders. Some of them, like your mother, try to fight it, of course, but they all share two traits in common. They’re ruled by a totally incomprehensible set of laws and ethics, and they have an uncanny ability to cause emotional turmoil in their lovers.”

He went on to speak of another topic, but I’d never forgotten that description. I knew he’d done research on the Fairies once he married my mother, but I also wondered if he hadn’t spoken from experience too, though if my parents had trouble in their marriage, they had hidden it well from me. My father always seemed enthralled by my mother, or maybe that was the problem. Or perhaps he had just one day wandered into a Fairy ring and had a narrow escape.

Now this impossible creature was in my shop and in my home, and I’d somehow made a promise to allow him to come into my life and even to try and help him break a curse and find his true love. And I’d kissed him.

I wondered if this was how my poor grandfather had felt when he first laid eyes on my full-blooded Fairy grandmother. There was a British word for it—gobsmacked. It came close to describing it, but I shook the thought off before it could burrow into my head like a brain-eating amoeba. The sooner Glori was gone from here, the better.

I went back to the task at hand, determined to stop woolgathering. What was it about this beautiful creature in my office that seemed to plunge me into reflection about things I hadn’t thought of in years?

I knew I had the kind of supplies I’d need to check the curse in the storeroom. The curse the Fairy prince had on him, from what Drogheda had told me, was both vicious and nasty. Maybe the pixie was a witch who laid the curse and had probably intended to kill him but didn’t have quite enough nerve to try to destroy the king’s son right in front of him. It hadn’t been any kind of high magic that the pixie had used, though obviously it had been strong. It felt almost like a kind of folk magic. Like a hex, but one on steroids. It was a strange mixture of ill-wish and magic I wasn’t totally familiar with. Something about it felt definitely infernal—almost demonic. Who had this creature been who had laid it? Drusilla, Drogheda had told me, but I’d never heard of her. I somehow thought there was more here than just a curse from a pixie.

Glorfindel was a prince and had been betrothed to various kings and other royals from what Drogheda had told me of his history. All had been powerful men, who no doubt hadn’t taken kindly to being cuckolded or played false by this Fairy. Any one of them might have killed him first and asked questions later. The two Elven kings, Tarrak and Stefan, in particular, were powerful and dangerous men, who could be ruthless when crossed. I’d never met either of them, but I knew of them by reputation. From what Drogheda told me about what happened while Glori had been in the Elven world, he had been fortunate, indeed, to have escaped with his life, and not once but twice.

If it were only this so-called curse that had made him so reckless and thoughtless, it was a wicked one indeed and would get him killed one day if he kept on as he had been.

I went to look for the candle supply I always kept, along with the other tools of my trade. I may have practiced high magic, but I knew all about curses and hexes and other forms of Folk magic, too, and I believed in fighting fire with fire. It took me a while to prepare the candles, but he was sitting quietly in my office when I came back in. I could sense how tired he was. His eyes were still wide open, and he seemed nervous and twitchy. I had a stupid urge to comfort him, because I knew it had been an eventful day for him.

I stifled it and started setting the candles on the floor around him in their glass holders. The candles I used were black, and I’d scratched the word Crossed on each one, with an arrow pointed backward. I whispered a spell as I set then around him in a circle. My magic was based more on instinct than spells, but of course I knew all the important ones. I began the ritual with simple words.

“I send back any curse laid on Prince Glorfindel of the Woodland Fairies to the one who laid it on him, no matter where that person may be. I give back to you what you gave to him. Any curses placed on him are sent back to the one who dealt them and hereby voided.” I handed two small black candles to him to hold in his hands. Then I snapped my fingers to make them burn. “Once and then twice, to turn the luck and make it nice.” All the candles I set around him and the ones in his hands flared up and began to burn brighter, their flames all bending in a counterclockwise direction around him, as if held in a strong breeze, yet none of them flickered. I took the candles from his hands and said, “If the curse is deep, its hold on you now must leap.” The candles made a sudden bright flare and then settled back down to a counter-clockwise motion.

That relieved my mind on one score—he hadn’t sent any spells my way. If he had, the flames would have turned inward and back toward him.

I took the candles in their holders from him and set them down on the floor on either side of his chair. “Let these burn all the way down to ash. Sit here and rest. It would be late in your world, so sleep if you can. I’ll come back later when the candles have burned away.”

He nodded and looked relieved at the difference in my tone. I was still upset, but I knew I’d been hard on him. Dutifully, he sat still and even closed his eyes.