Page 26 of Through the Veil (Endangered Fae #2)

Chapter sixteen

Boys’ Night Out

A n honorable man…

Yes, Diego was that and so much more. Finn sat on a sandspur with his knees pulled up under his chin, downstream from some of the river’s most spectacular rapids.

The Flathead crashed and sang, music that should have made his heart leap, but it wasn’t his beloved Shannon back in Ireland, and it wasn’t even the Pointe Wolf where he had first courted Diego.

Beautiful as it was, this river only made the lonely hole in his heart grow to a chasm.

The memory of Lugh with Diego tormented him, the words between them and the easy friendship. When Lugh had kissed Diego, Finn had half expected him to haul back and wallop the sidhe warrior, but he had not. Diego had stood stunned, rubbing at his lower lip as if savoring the sensation.

Not that Finn blamed him. Lugh was handsome enough to make anyone’s knees weak and his kisses held such careful fire, as if he might consume his lovers if he let his unbridled passion loose. Worse still, he had a hero’s heart, something Finn would always lack.

“Diego deserves a hero,” Finn murmured to the dragonfly sharing his sandbar. “Someone who makes things right instead of making them worse.”

The dragonfly paid no attention, whispering dragonfly thoughts, intent on catching its dinner.

“You’re right, of course.” He heaved a shaky sigh. “Dinner must still be caught, no matter how sorry certain pookas feel for themselves.”

He waded out into the rushing water, the pull of any river beyond him to resist for long.

The soft blue of his own personal magic danced over him as his body condensed and his arms shortened, shining scales rushing to replace skin.

Soon a huge salmon leaped upstream, fighting for every inch of gained ground against the whitewater onslaught.

Diego stared out of the window, steam from his coffee caressing his face. Finn hadn’t come home the night before, hadn’t appeared for breakfast, and now Tia Carmen was announcing she had booked a flight home.

“You don’t need me here anymore, Santiago,” she told him briskly as she washed dishes. “You have everything settled.”

He turned to her with a crooked smile. “Settled? With all these loco fae coming and going?” He held up a hand when one of her white eyebrows arched at him. “I understand. I do. You need to get home. We’ve kept you too long, and with the snows coming soon, the flights out get a little spotty.”

“I promise to come back for a real visit. In the summer, though.”

“Thank you for everything you’ve done. For putting the puzzle pieces together.” Diego’s brow furrowed. “How long has it been that way?”

“What way, mijo ?”

“That you knew you could feel things, see things other people couldn’t.”

She shrugged. “I have always seen different things. Heard things no one else heard. Mi abuela , she was a witch. She saw it in me and taught me. To heal, to comfort, to soothe, to help things grow. Little magics, not grand, dangerous things like yours.”

“How long have you known about me?” he asked softly, turning his gaze out of the window again.

“From the first time I met you.” She laughed. “Why else would I let a deadbeat writer with a credit report full of holes move into one of my apartments?”

Outside, a lean, compact man curled up on one of the Adirondack chairs, his bald head gleaming in the sun.

Dressed in the jeans and T-shirt the fae males had adopted as their ‘human’ uniform, the man had tattoos of green scales running up the backs of his arms from his wrists to disappear under his shirtsleeves.

The only visitor who remained entirely in the garden, Nathair seemed content to putter about and sleep in the sun, waiting for Faolchú to recover his strength.

The tomatoes and peppers, sad, scraggly things under Diego’s care, groaned under a surplus of ripening abundance since Nathair had begun to sing to them.

A much taller man shambled out of the trees, his careful gait indicating residual pain.

Thick salt-and-pepper hair tumbled past broad shoulders and huge hands clutched a bloody fur bundle.

Faolchú crouched on his heels in the center of the garden and tore into the rabbit with his teeth, a bright red stream trickling down his chin.

Good to see him hunting on his own, disturbing to watch him eat . Diego pulled his gaze away. “What time’s your flight?”

“Two-thirty,” Tia Carmen said in a too-serene voice.

“Two- what ?” Diego shot a glance at the clock. “ Ay, Dios . We need to go now. Are you packed?”

“Almost.”

“Okay, give me just a sec.” He leaned out of the back door. “Nathair?”

Nathair cracked open one golden eye.

“I’ll be back in a few hours. Try to keep a handle on things for me?”

“I shall,” Nathair said on a yawn as he sat up. “Faolchú, love, what a mess…”

While the garden-snake in human form took a damp cloth to the bloody ruin on Faolchú’s jaws and neck, Diego reached out toward the river. “ Finn? Mi vida? I need to take Tia Carmen to the airport.”

The reply came back, distant and distracted. “ Tell her farewell for me, love.”

“Will you be home when I get back?”

“Soon. I’ll come soon.”

At least Finn had answered this time instead of pretending not to hear.

With some creative driving and a few traffic laws bent, Diego managed to get Tia Carmen to the terminal in time. Many tearful goodbyes and promises of phone calls later, he made his way home again.

No Finn still on his return, though Angus and Sionnach had taken over his living room.

The sidhe herald knelt by the powered-up stereo, a look of intense concentration on his face as he eased the tuning knob through the frequencies, listening to the voices, the music, and the static in-between, all with equal fascination.

Sionnach was sprawled on his stomach on the floor, leafing through catalogs of men’s clothing, his illusory clothes changing every few pages as he ‘tried on’ what he saw on the glossy pages.

“Do you like this one?” Sionnach asked, his feet swinging above the perfect, firm mounds of his ass, now encased in white PVC micro shorts. A sleeveless mesh shirt clung to his torso, showing off every lean line of muscle.

Angus turned his head, nostrils flared. “You will not wear that for anyone but me, do you hear, little fox?”

“So possessive suddenly,” Sionnach snorted, but a little smile tugged at his lips as he ducked his head back to the catalog. The glamour shimmered again, the scandalous clubbing outfit replaced by a black silk button-down and fitted slacks. “This one?”

“Better,” Angus growled.

“The black shirt’s a little severe for you. Maybe green?” Diego chuckled when the midnight silk shifted to a rich emerald. “Very nice. You boys seem more comfortable with the human world than some of the others.”

Sionnach shrugged. An expensive pair of boots joined his ensemble when he turned the page. “I missed humans.”

“Missed tormenting them, you mean,” Angus muttered. He turned off the stereo and rose to join Diego by the sofa. “Heralds have always spent more time out in the world. There was a time when messages went back and forth between the fae and human courts.”

“I guess that was long ago.”

“Diego, are you well?” Angus gripped his shoulder.

“I’m okay, really. I just wish Finn would come home.”

Angus shook his head, golden hair sparking in the late afternoon sun. “Fionnachd has always done as he pleases, when he pleases. Better to try to command the sea to cease its assault on the shore than to think to command a pooka.”

“Hush. You do not comfort him, Far-seer,” Sionnach said. “He will return. He loves you.”

By the next morning, though, Finn’s side of the bed still sat cold and empty. He was nowhere to be found in the house or the garden.

“I could track him for you, Light-wielder.”

Faolchú’s rough growl startled him and Diego whirled to find the wolf-warrior in his kitchen. How does such a huge being move so quietly?

“Thank you, no. You need your rest and, really, I can track him myself.”

“And you have not done so because…” Faolchú crossed his arms over his chest. The bones still stood out too prominently at his ribs and collarbone, but the mass he had regained in such a short space of time was nothing short of miraculous.

“I know…where he is. I feel him.” Diego pulled a slow breath in through his nose. “I’d hoped he would work things out in his head and come back to me on his own.”

One of Faolchú’s grey ears twitched. “Perhaps he believes his offense too great and he waits for your forgiveness first.”

“Maybe.”

“Listen to me, little one.” Faolchú’s hands gripped Diego’s forearms, claws digging into his skin. “You cannot be hesitant with Fionnachd. He needs strength, needs someone to seize him by the nape and shake him.”

Odd, how everyone wanted to tell him how to handle Finn all of a sudden. Though Faolchú was right about one thing. It was time to go out to the river.

“Right. Um, did you need me for something?”

Faolchú’s teeth bared in a lupine grin. “Nathair tells me you have sweet cream which has been frozen. He raves over the virtues of it so. I yearn to try it myself.”

What is it about predators and high milk-fat food?

Still, the calories could only do him good.

Diego reached into the freezer and picked the peach ice cream out from behind the cartons of Rocky Road.

While Finn loved chocolate, there was a good chance Faolchú’s body would have a canine toxic reaction to it.

He handed the carton off with two spoons and received a wet-nosed nuzzle to his ear as a thank you.

Outside, the wolf head and paws vanished again under the human glamour.

Faolchú made a handsome man, with a strong jaw, Husky-blue eyes, and that arresting mane of thick hair that looked so finger-burying soft.

He settled Nathair on his lap and allowed himself to be fed by the spoonful when Nathair discouraged him from going face down in the carton.