He didn’t have to sound so feckinguncertain.
A few moments later, the sting faded a little, and I managed to regain some function in my face. I found I could move the muscles in my mouth enough to twist them up into a semblance of a smile. I tried to blink, and found that my eyelids worked again.
Light flooded me as the kitchen came into view. Four concerned faces stared down at me.
“How do I look?” I croaked out. I raised my hand to my cheek, feeling the gritty paste on my skin.
“You look shite,” Corbin said.
“Like a creature from the black lagoon,” Arthur added.
“I think it’s an improvement,” Corbin said.
“I’mglad you’re okay.” Maeve wrapped her arms around me, pressing her head into my shoulder. I reached up and rubbed her back, my hand gliding over the strap of her bra and instantly sending my thoughts to a bad place.
Mother Mary.
“I’ve never been better.” I turned to Rowan. “How long until I completely heal? I can’t rely solely on my charm and good graces to pull in the ladies.”One particular lady,I thought but didn’t say.
He shrugged and stared at the floor. “I don’t knew. I’ve used the standard healing potion for spirit attacks. It seems to be working, but I have no idea what the properties of this new fae magic actually are.” He sucked in a couple of deep breaths and counted something under his breath for a few moments before continuing. This was probably the most words he’d ever spoken at once since I met him four years ago. “If this were a standard spirit attack from another witch, it would take a few days for the signs on your skin to fade, and of course, your mind will be pretty weak and vulnerable?—”
“So no different than normal, then?” Arthur grinned.
I stuck my tongue out at him. “This is the thanks I get for trying to be chivalrous.”
Corbin sighed. “Now that we’ve got Flynn back, can we get the full story of what happened?”
I started to tell them about taking Maeve to see the sidhe, but my head throbbed and I found myself unable to think of the right words. I collapsed back against Maeve’s arms while she finished the story, carefully describing the scene with a scientific level of detail.
“So it’s confirmed, then.” Arthur said as she finished her description of clonking Blake over the head with that shovel. “We have one bad-ass babe on our side.”
“I was damn lucky that shovel was there, and I still didn’t manage to save that poor baby. How could they take it, anyway? I thought you said humans couldn’t pass through the barrier between worlds?”
“Today is confirmation that’s no longer the case. But we don’t know how or why—” Corbin’s face lit up with that stupid look he gets when he discovers some dumb fact in a history book and has to share it with the rest of us.
“What?” Arthur demanded.
“To the library!” I cried, in my best Batman impersonation. Corbin was already running for the hall. Maeve helped me down from the stool, and I leaned on her and Arthur as we trudged down the wide hallway. Rowan shuffled along at the rear.
By the time we entered the library, Corbin was already throwing books and newspapers around, mumbling under his breath. I wanted to tell him that if he couldn’t find what he was looking for, it was because his filing system was shite (Corbin was rather proud of his filing system), but the walk down the hallway had exhausted me so much I was struggling for every breath.
“Ah-hah!” Corbin held up a section of the local newspaper, his cheeks flushed with triumph. “I knew I’d seen something. Look at this.” He laid the paper out on the coffee table, holding down the corners with little brass weights like a complete twat. We all leaned in.
“Do you mean, ‘half price vibration machines? Vibrate the pounds away! Call Helen Wilde in Argleton for a demonstration.’” I pointed to an ad in the top left corner. “Because honestly, I didn’t want to say anything, but you’relooking a little hefty around the middle. Too many of Rowan’s mutton pies?—”
“I think I liked Flynn better when he was in too much pain to talk,” Arthur said.
“Just a modicum of seriousness while we do this would be appreciated, Flynn.” Corbin jabbed his finger at an article in the middle of the page – a local mother appealing to anyone who had news about her missing baby. Apparently, the child had been kidnapped from its crib in the middle of the night.
“This was two weeks ago,” Corbin said. “I hadn’t connected it to any fae activity because I had no idea they were powerful enough to kidnap children again. But now that a second child has been taken, I think it’s a pattern. This last time they did this was centuries ago, when the Briarwood coven was particularly weak?—”
“If the fae have taken two babies, what does that mean?” Maeve asked. “What are they going to do to them?”
“It means that they’re more powerful than we thought,” Corbin frowned. “As to what they’ll do, we don’t know. That’s what we need to find out. My guess is that they want the children for some kind of spell. The fae were known for stealing infants to raise as their own – they didn’t usually kill them. If we want to get these children back, we need to find the fifth.” He said this last bit with a pointed look at me.
“The fifth?” Maeve looked confused.
Shite, Corbin, is that how you’re going to tell her? That’s an…interesting angle, mate.
