No. It is for the best that Njáll and I parted ways when we did, and I need to maintain that distance.
So lost in my musings, I almost miss the sight of the first redcap as it darts through the shadows. My magic feels it, dragging me back to the present, to my job, and I switch direction, slipping inside a tower and taking the narrow, perilous stairs.
Of course they are not waiting at the top, but here gives me a good view of the castle and the moat that surrounds it, so I settle in to watch. Redcaps are usually left alone, being as they are both weak and usually disinterested in sites that aren’t battlefields, but these are mischievous and have been leaving the ruins and terrorising the town nearby. Not that anyonethereknows what is truly going on, of course. By the end of tonight, it won’t matter.
The Huntsman has taken a hard line, in the wake of his news about the fae queen. No interference with humans can be tolerated. It only takes one fae pushing things too far for a war to starthere, and though humans are, in terms of power, at a disadvantage, none of us truly believe they would lose should push come to shove.
The redcaps scurry about now that they’re not certain where I am, and it takes no time at all for me to locate their nest. They always return well before the sun comes up, so I still have a few hours of darkness when I descend from the tower again and hunt them down.
Hunting involves little violence when I am dealing with opponents like this. Redcaps are generally small and angry but easily handled with the right spells. They have no leader, so I make sure to stun them all at the same time and gather them together as I tell them where they’re to go.
“They’ll kill us if we go back,” one spits when I say I’m sending them through the veil. “The Unseelie are losing it.”
“You’ve been here for nigh on a century. How would you even know?”
She shifts guiltily from foot to foot. Her clothes are covered in what looks like cat fur. Oh, I don’t think she killed the creature. Probably irritated it into running around a house all night; that, or a particularly vicious house cat might have chased her off.
“The Seelie come,” another says. “Tell us things.”
“Like what?”
He presses his lips tightly together and I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose. I am not supposed to be investigating. I am doing my duty. I am keeping humans safe from the fae.
The fae blessing the Huntsman gave us has one stream of magic we can all access, at all times, though we know how careful we are to be with it. We can open the veil, the magic that separates our world from the fae’s, just long enough to send our prey through.
The Huntsman told me, too, that it only goes one way, and I never need to worry about a high fae pushing through from the other side. I know he is fae, too. I know he cannot lie.
Still, part of me does not believe him.
I open the veil with a flick of my hand and a wordless twist of my lips, and the redcaps all startle as one. They babble at me, frantic to stay in a world where they can get by a little easier, and guilt twists in my stomach, but what else am I to do? Their reckless behaviour risks us all.
Once it is done, once all the redcaps are returned to the Otherworld, I close the veil again and lean back against the wall. No one will find the nest unless they go looking for it, so I leave it behind, climbing into the hire car I left parked nearby earlier.
I am not so far from London. My hands tighten on the steering wheel, and it takes me a moment to let go and start the engine.
I should not go.
I should head somewhere I can rest because I will have another hunt tomorrow night.
But then…
The base is in London, and I can rest there. Vlad is coordinating our hunts anyway, so that way, I can speak to him directly, and perhaps even get a list of the next three or four places I should go.
And if I happen to drive past the clan house and see Njáll? Well, that is no one’s business but my own.
I think I have officially lost it.
Not only have I driven to the clan house—out of the question, really, as the Huntsman made it clear I was not to return—I have parked the car three streets away and now I am circling the building, hidden from the guards, trying to find the window that looks into Njáll’s office.
When I do locate it, the lights are off, the room empty. I frown. Where else could he be? The entire time I was by his side, he was either there, or out investigating with me, or in his rooms…
I frown, taking a few steps back to look the entire building over. It was a hotel once, sometime in the 1800s, and there is a rickety fire escape up one side, which I take as slowly as I am able. I know where the room I was staying in is, and Njáll’s is just a few windows over…
I must be out of my mind, but still, I find myself shuffling along a narrow ledge until I can see into what I hope are Njáll’s rooms. The bedroom first; the curtains are open, and light spills in from the living area, but there is no one inside.
I cling to the brick as I move further along. There! Njáll stalks across the living room, and my heart stops for a moment. His hair is a mess, as though he has been running his fingers through it, shirt unbuttoned to his chest. I fight the wild urge to knock on the window and ask him to let me in—no good can come of him knowing I am here.
No good can come of mebeinghere.
