Page 28 of The Mermaid’s Bubble Lounge (Sam Quinn #8)

TWENTY-EIGHT

Revelations Right, Left, and Center

“Do you have the axe the queen spelled for you?” he demanded.

Dave swung out of the kitchen to stare at Grim’s back.

“Yes.” I pulled it out of its sheath.

“Well, that’s good, at least. Press it up against everyone’s skin. See if anyone reacts.”

I held the axe tight against my chest. “It would hurt you and Meri.”

Liam and his friend Dermot were sitting at a table by the ocean entrance.

I hadn’t seen them arrive. They must have come in when I was on the stairs with Owen.

Liam and Dermot were selkies. Liam used to be a regular until my vicious sorcerer aunt possessed him and forced him to try to kill me.

I survived, though we were both hurt. Liam was horrified by what had happened, so he was avoiding The Slaughtered Lamb and me these days.

Dermot waved. “Us too.”

“The blade won’t kill us if we touch it,” Grim explained, his brows slammed down low.

“Don’t be daft. The queen wouldn’t give you a weapon that would kill us willy nilly.

If we have ill intent against you and try to hurt you, you can fight back with an artifact that has the power to destroy us.

She did it to give you a fighting chance against the king’s assassins. ”

“How do you know so much about Sam’s axe?” Dave growled.

“Stand down, demon.” Grim didn’t bother to turn around. “You aren’t the only one here to protect her.”

Dave and I shared a look.

“Wait. What? Grim, you were sent to this realm to protect me?”

He shrugged one of his beefy shoulders. “’Twasn’t sent. I was here. Algar said our lady would like eyes on you. I’m just here to observe and help if needed.”

I took an involuntary step back. “You’ve been spying on me?”

“Not spying.” He was clearly annoyed with our questions. “I had started coming here anyway. Algar said that as long as I was here, I should keep them informed.”

“Sounds like a fucking spy to me,” Dave sneered.

Grim finally looked over his shoulder at Dave.

“’Tweren’t like that.” He turned back to me.

“No one’s checking up on you. I’m more like a phone, but slower.

If you wanted to get a message to the queen, you could go through me.

The same is true in reverse. If she wants you to know something, you can get the information through me.

That’s all. No one’s asking me to pass on secrets.

It’s more that I’m ready if you need me. ”

“That was why you went with me when I had to travel into Faerie last year?” I ventured.

“Aye. Liam, Maggie, and me. Though in Liam and Maggie’s cases, they were just doing it to look after you. I’m the only one who agreed to take on the role.” Hands on his hips, he scowled at me. “None of this is here nor there. Algar needs to know we have a pooka.”

“My dad already passed it on,” Meri told him.

Grim turned his attention to her and then flicked his gaze out the window, where Meri’s dad was watching us. “Who did he tell?”

She glanced at her dad and gave him a big, fake smile and a wave. “Everybody smile at my dad,” she hissed, and we did. “He was already worried about me before I started asking about pookas.”

“If he’s here, how did he let Algar know?” Grim wore a pained grimace, which seemed to be as close to a smile as he could get.

“There’s a spot nearby, at the bottom of the bay, that’s a doorway into Faerie,” she said.

Dave, Grim, and I all looked at each other with mirroring expressions of what the fuck?

“Wait. Has that always been there?” I asked. Maybe that was where the kelpies that hated me kept coming from. I turned to Liam and Dermot. “Did you two know that?”

They nodded. “There are a lot of water fae here because of it,” Liam explained.

“I thought the Wicche Glass Tavern was the closest doorway. You’re telling me I built my bookstore and bar over a doorway?” I started to rub my hands over my face and then remembered the axe. I swung it over my shoulder and replaced it in its sheath.

“Don’t put it away,” Grim scolded. “We need to check for the pooka.”

“Who are we checking?” I countered. “All the fae in the room have proven who they are and my touching my axe to a wicche isn’t going to do anything to them.”

“I already checked,” Dave said. “Everybody is who they seem to be.”

“Okay. First thing’s first,” I said, walking behind the bar and placing my hand on the wall. “Let me fix the ward.”

I closed my eyes, unspooling my magic like a long gold thread in my chest. I mentally wrapped it around the hand touching the wall and thought, I, Sam Quinn, key to the ward on The Slaughtered Lamb, ask that pookas, no matter what or who they look like, be barred from entering.

Whether by the stairs, the water, or the air, no pooka shall pass my ward and enter.

I felt a pull on my arm as my magic traveled through the walls, floors, ceilings, and windows, locking us away and keeping us safe.

When I opened my eyes, I found Dave watching me. “I’d already put a demon ward on the place when I heard we had one.”

“Thank you.” Our voices were both quiet.

Regardless of our standing in a room of a dozen people, we were only talking to one another.

I’d once thought of Dave as my most trusted and beloved grumpy uncle.

Some hard truths had been learned recently, and we were now uncomfortably cautious with one another.

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him. I’d trust him with my life.

It was more that I was struggling with grief and disillusionment.

I knew he was trying, and he knew I was too.

Forgiveness over my mother’s dead body was proving difficult for me.

“I know,” he said softly.

“Well, why the devil didn’t you tell us from the start you’d already warded against them?” Grim grumbled, climbing back up on his stool and taking a gulp of mead.

“Okay, but, Sam, I still have something to tell you,” Meri said.

I turned to her. “Right. I’m sorry.”

“Dad did some investigating.” Her voice was low.

Dave and the fae could still hear her, but the wicches, who didn’t have sensitive hearing, went back to their own conversations.

“He said that the merfolk at the wharf have been feeling something off. They hadn’t seen the pooka, but when my dad asked about one, it made them realize that must have been what they were feeling.

They’re pretty nervous. Pookas don’t care for water fae.

“My aunt Nerissa started closing the club early the last couple of days because all my cousins were feeling super creeped out at work. When they leave at the end of the night—if they’re not returning to the ocean—they walk together in a group to their cars.”

“Do you know,” I asked, “is there a doorway to Faerie at The Bubble Lounge?”

Meri glanced at Grim and then lowered her voice even more. “There’s not supposed to be one there, but a couple of my cousins said they felt a pull into the other realm more strongly in the last few months.”

“Do they know where it is?” Maybe someone could close it.

“Um.” She coiled her long blonde hair around her nervous fingers.

“They think it’s the glass ceiling that your cousin Arwyn made.

They said they sometimes hear the high-pitched buzzing voices of the flower fairies and smell the blooms that grow along the riverbanks in Faerie when they are in a back corner of the club.

No one has tried to jump up, touch the glass ceiling, and test the theory, though.

When they have to clean in that corner, they do it quickly and go.

Auntie Nerissa even moved the tables so no one has to serve in that area. ”

I rubbed my forehead. This was crazy. “There’s no way Arwyn did that on purpose.”

“Oh, no,” Meri said, shaking her head. “No one thinks she made the doorway. Maybe more like her spelled glass focused the fae-ness, like a magnifying glass in the sun.” She grimaced. “When a lot of us are all in the same area, the veil between realms becomes thin.”

“That seems dangerous,” I said. “I’m surprised the queen lets the fae stay in this realm if their presence here destabilizes Faerie.”

Meri nodded sadly. “It’s true, but I don’t want my dad to leave.

The queen wants them back in Faerie—not us halflings, of course, but the true fae.

” She glanced out the window. “But the queen loves her people and wants them to be happy. A lot of fae have lived in this realm for so long, this is home. They don’t want to go back. They have lives and loved ones here.”

“Like your dad.” I reached out and rubbed her arm.

“Yeah.” She looked down a moment and then shook her head.

“I haven’t told you the important part yet.

Dad was told that the only way to kill a pooka was to attack when they were in their in-between state.

He said they never go directly from one form to another instantaneously.

There’s a state in between when they are vulnerable, and completing the shift won’t heal them. ”

“Okay,” I said. “Thank you and please thank your father for us. I’ll pass it on. Hopefully we can figure out a way to stop it.”

Owen walked down the stairs. “Hey.”

“I’ll go back to shelving now,” Meri said before ducking back into the bookstore.

Owen watched her go. “Everything okay?”

I nodded. “She was passing on some information about pookas.”

“Oh, good.” He stared down at the phone in his hand, clearly not paying attention to my response.

“Owen, is everything with you okay?”

“George wants to fly to Brazil,” he said, “and look for Jade’s family now. Alec overruled him, saying she wasn’t ready.” He ran his hand through his hair. “The thing is, George isn’t sure if that’s really what’s best for Jade, or if it’s Alec who isn’t ready to let her go.”

“Nothing needs to be decided now,” I told him.

“My great-uncle knows the family. You guys wandering around the looking for them makes no sense. When everyone is ready, he’ll call, and they’ll likely come here to get her or maybe tell you where to meet.

Either way, there’s no rush. I think Alec is right. ”

“Yeah.” Owen dropped onto the stool beside me. “George wants to go now because he remembers how torn up he felt when they were in the same position as Jade’s family is now, not even knowing if Alec was alive or dead all those years. It’s killing him to knowingly do this to other people.”

“I get it. Maybe if he understands that my uncle can contact her family at any time, that he doesn’t have to go find them, it’ll ease the anxiety a bit.”

“I’ll tell him,” he said, pulling out his phone again.

I stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “Just go. We’re fine. Go to the zoo and meet him at the merry-go-round to talk it out.”

He nodded, pocketing his phone and grabbing his backpack from behind the bar. “Thanks, boss. I will.” And he was up the stairs and out.

Thankfully, after all the hubbub, the afternoon was blissfully quiet and uneventful.

Liam and Dermot donned their seal skins and went back to the ocean.

The wicches who’d joined us for lunch had gone.

It was too early for the after-work crowd, so Grim was on his stool with his mead.

Meri was pretending to shelve while reading in the stacks, Dave was baking, Rose, one of my regular wicches, was drinking tea and reading a paranormal romance, and I was sitting on my stool behind the bar, wondering if my dog wished he was Vlad’s.

I was feeling sorry for myself and my lack of pooch to keep me company when there was a loud thump at the water entrance. What in the world? I rounded the bar to check as Grim looked over his shoulder.

When I got close, I could see it was Liam. He was pushing at the ward, but it didn’t give. Shit. Did I adjust the ward wrong?

“Why isn’t he in his seal skin?” Grim growled from beside me. “His eyes are wrong.”

I yanked out my axe and plunged it into the water. It hit the Liam-looking pooka in the face, causing a large red welt to form on his cheek.

He bared his teeth, his eyes now glowing red, as he punched the magical water membrane. There was another loud thump, but the ward didn’t give.

He began shifting and I pulled the axe back to throw it through the patch of water, but Grim grabbed the axe handle, stopping me.

“That axe is too valuable. We can’t lose it. Only use it when you’re sure you can kill him; otherwise he could destroy it and we’ll have no weapon against him.”

Liam shifted into a large orca. He eyed us, looped around to swim away, and then torpedoed through the water to smash into the window, the asshole.

Rose stood, her fingers twitching as she built a spell.

Dave pushed out of the kitchen and fire engulfed the orca.

He smashed his fiery body against the glass again and again.

My eyes flew to the edges, looking for cracks or leaks.

This was just like that horrible vision my sadistic aunt had trapped me in last year, the one where the Kraken squeezed and broke the glass, causing tons of seawater to wash out my bookstore and bar. My stomach dropped.