Page 5 of Outside the Veil (Endangered Fae #1)

Chapter four

Not a Leprechaun

D iego jerked awake. He’d dozed off after returning heartsick and exhausted from one last, futile search.

The knock sounded again. The door?

A nightmare-white face stared through his window. He shot from the bed. “Holy shit!”

Finn. How the hell?

He must have climbed the fire escape. Diego’s heart leaped, and then the fear returned. Finn’s last words to him, that feral snarl. What if he’d come back with murder in mind?

Finn pawed at the glass like a cat, and now that the sleep-muddled moment of nightmare retreated, Diego could observe his actual expression. Pain. Uncertainty.

He flicked on the light and threw open the window to half-support, half-drag Finn over the sill.

“Damn it, where have you been?”

“I tried…” Finn blinked and swallowed hard. “I tried to leave this cursed city. It goes on into eternity. There’s no end to it. I’ve nowhere else to go.”

Diego shoved the wild hair from Finn’s face. “You’re burning up. What happened? At the clinic? What was all that?”

“They stabbed me with iron.” Finn held out his arm, the collection site an angry red, his arm swollen from wrist to elbow. “Iron, Diego. It still hurts.”

He sat Finn down on the edge of the bed. “Good God. She must have used a dirty needle or something.”

Finn let out a short bark of laughter. “You are the kindest man I’ve ever met. But also the blindest. Now I know you’ve no idea. I’m so sorry, Diego. I accused you falsely. Your heart shines in you like a sunbeam through diamonds. You still think I’m human, don’t you?”

No idea of what? “Of course you’re human. You’re not taking what Rodney said seriously, are you? Lie down. Crawl under the blankets. I’ll get some ice for your arm.”

When Diego came back, Finn had curled up on top of the blankets. He shivered so hard the bed rattled, though the heat radiating from him could have baked a soufflé.

“I should get you to the ER. A doctor should—”

“No!” Finn grabbed his arm and yanked him down on the bed beside him. “No more human doctors. Sit still, boyo. It’s time you heard the truth. I owe you that much.”

“If you’re an escaped murderer or something, I don’t think I want to hear it.”

“I’m from Eire. Ireland now, I hear.”

“I knew that much.”

“Just listen…” Finn clenched his teeth, his eyes squeezed shut. “Cursed, nasty, vicious…Dagda’s balls, it hurts!”

Diego covered him with the comforter and stroked his back until he could speak again.

“Somewhere close to seven hundred years ago, I was betrayed. Wounded. Heartsore. I retreated into the Dreaming and slept away the centuries, my body cradled by my beloved Shannon.” Finn stopped and seized Diego’s wrist in a painful grip. “You don’t believe me.”

“It’s a little hard to swallow,” Diego admitted softly. “You don’t look much over twenty-five, and sleeping underwater?”

“I’m not human. You have to get that through your skull before any of this will make sense. I’m one of the fae. The people who inhabited Ireland before humans came.”

Diego couldn’t help a nervous laugh. “Are you telling me you’re a leprechaun?”

Finn shoved him so hard he fell off the bed. “No, I’m not a bleeding leprechaun! Are you completely daft? Everyone knows they don’t exist.”

“Sorry. Well, what are you then?” Diego muttered as he picked himself up.

“A pooka.”

Oh, yes, much more believable than a leprechaun. “Ah. Aren’t pookas sort of like poltergeists?”

Finn hid his face in the pillow.

“Never mind. We’ll talk about it in the morning. You need anything?”

A shake of that black-maned head.

“You want me to stay with you?”

“Please,” came the muffled response. Diego slid under the blankets, leaving Finn on top of them.

After a few moments, Finn shifted over to nestle his head in the hollow of Diego’s shoulder.

Caught off guard, Diego wondered if he should say something or move away.

In the end, he did neither. Finn had fallen asleep.

“Yes, he’s here.” Diego took the phone into the front room, trying not to wake Finn.

“ Está bien? ” Clanks and clatters told him Tia Carmen was in her kitchen, phone tucked under her chin while she cooked.

“More or less. He’s not well, but at least he’s alive.”

“ Gracias a dios . I will come to see you later.”

Diego ran a hand over his face and debated taking a short nap. Finn had tossed and muttered most of the night. Instead, he powered up his computer and searched out everything he could regarding pookas.

There was precious little to be found and much of that was contradictory.

They were mischievous sprites who delighted in breaking crockery and knocking fences over.

They were guardian river spirits who appeared to people as black horses with flaming eyes to entice the unwary into a ride and then dump them in the swamp.

They were vengeful fae, resentful of human encroachment and prone to violent reprisals.

Ghost, woodland deity, fairy, monster—no two accounts agreed on the nature of the legendary creature. But at least none of the websites called them leprechauns.

A soft knock at the door heralded Tia Carmen’s arrival. He hurried out to greet her.

“He’s still sleeping,” he whispered.

“ Pobre nino ,” she murmured, as she handed Diego the cardboard box she carried. Wonderful, complex smells rose from under the cover of dishtowels. He jerked his head toward the kitchen where he placed the box on the counter.

“He thinks he’s a pooka.”

“Pooka?” Tia Carmen’s white eyebrows nearly disappeared when her forehead crinkled.

“ Un hada de Irlanda , an Irish fairy,” Diego explained. “Though ‘leprechaun’ offends him somehow.”

She only nodded as she unpacked plastic containers from the box.

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“I am too old to be surprised.” She shrugged. “You must have noticed strange things about him.”

“Please don’t tell me you believe him.”

Her hands stopped in the middle of folding the towels into precise squares. “For a smart man, Santiago, you are sometimes a little heavy.”

“Dense,” Diego corrected automatically, his ears burning.

An odd dislocation of time and space struck him—six years old rather than grown, standing in his abuela’s kitchen in Miami.

He sat down hard on one of the red plastic chairs.

To head off her inquiries after his health, he told her about the trip to the clinic and Finn’s odd return.

“ Por supuesto , no wonder he is so sick.” She pulled one of his aluminum pans out of the cabinet and poured two bottles of water into it. “ Los hadas , iron burns them. And steel. It is poison to them.”

“I know the stories, Tia Carmen. But, honestly.”

“He was out on the iron fire escape last night? Have you looked at the bottoms of his feet?”

“No, but…”

She threw a handful of herbs in the water. “Tell me again what you believe after you do.”

“If they’re burned, it’s from frostbite. It was eight degrees last night.”

“ Ay , Diego. So stubborn.” She raised her eyes to the ceiling as if help might be found there.

“They are. And it wasn’t the cold.” Finn leaned in the doorway, white as milk. Diego leaped up to catch him before he could fall and eased him into a chair.

“Hush now, my hero, I’m well enough.” Finn gave him a tired smile when Diego pulled over a second chair to prop up his feet. “Don’t fuss so.”

Red lines crisscrossed the soles of his feet where they had touched the frigid fire escape. “I should get you some slippers,” Diego murmured.

“Are you hungry, caro ?” Tia Carmen crossed the room to kiss the top of Finn’s head.

Finn beamed at her, adoration in his eyes. “For your cooking, dear lady, I will always be hungry.”

If those eyes looked at me that way… Diego cut the thought short. Don’t be an idiot.

She had brought chicken and stuffed poblanos, red beans and rice. The heavenly scents filled the kitchen and Finn leaned back in the chair, nostrils flared as he took in a deep breath. His forehead crinkled when she put a steaming mug of the herb brew from the stove in front of him instead of food.

“For the fever,” she informed him. “Drink it down.”

“Must I?” Finn sniffed at the concoction dubiously, sounding closer to ten years old than the several hundred he claimed.

“You want to eat? You take your medicine first.”

Why this half-feral man obeyed Tia Carmen so meekly, Diego couldn’t fathom, but every last drop of the herb tea disappeared in short order.

“When did you come here?” Diego asked while they ate. Not that he wanted to knock holes in Finn’s story, but he wanted to make some sense of it all.

Deeply engrossed in making a disaster area of his poblano, Finn looked up and licked the cheese from his fingers. “The day before you found me.”

“No luggage? No clothes? No passport?”

Finn turned to speak sotto voce to Tia Carmen. “I do believe our Diego thinks I’m a liar.”

“Aren’t you?” She nudged him.

“When it suits me.” Finn’s smile faded into a puzzled frown. “Though it’s difficult to lie about things you’ve no inkling of.”

“I’m not calling you a liar,” Diego protested softly. “I’m just confused. You seem so homesick. Why did you come here?”

“For the food,” Finn answered with a straight face.

Later on, when Diego saw Tia Carmen to the door, she whispered to him, “He can’t stay here. You know that.”

Diego stared at her in shock and then ducked his head, a flush of shame creeping up his throat. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t be taking in strange men, endangering your other tenants. I’ll…I’ll find him someplace as soon as possible.”

She patted his arm. “I should be very angry with you for thinking me so heartless. I didn’t mean he should leave your place. He may stay with you as long as he likes. But he must not stay in the city. He will never be truly well again if he does.”

“You mean I can’t keep him because he needs trees and grass and room to roam?” Diego forced both the smile and the joke.

“ Si, precisamente .”