He needed to feel like he had a purpose.
It had been nice being useful for the night, but it also had reinforced the fierce notion he held that the Clover was no longer his. And when he walked out the door that night, Aelin on his shoulders, take-out bag in hand, he had done so without looking back.
Looking back never helped. He’d always known that.
He didn’t love the restaurant industry the way he loved the bar industry, and wasn’t interested in explaining the differences to someone who didn’t understand either, Silva included.
The Pixie wasn’t his either, not anymore, not really. He would always love his old girl, and she recognized him the instant he set foot over her threshold, but the business felt like it belonged to someone else now.Because it does. Because you walked away.
She would revert to him if Thessa ever changed her mind, a provision in the contract he’d worked out, so walking away from the Pixie felt more like saying “until we meet again” to an old friend, which he could live with. Time existed differently on thisside of existence, in the world where the sun moved across the sky, but time was something he had in an endless supply, and he would get his old girl back eventually.
He needed to feel useful.
Needed to feel as though he had a purpose larger than simply keeping his hands busy with a task, but at the moment, there was nothing he enjoyed doing more than making up for lost time with the most perfect little princess in all the land. He would never feel more useful than he did making her lunch or tucking her into bed. Finding a project that even came close was an impossible feat, for there was no purpose he could find greater than being her father and actually being there to act like one, protecting her from the cruelty he knew existed in the world, on both sides of the veil.
What he couldn’t stand was being so far from her. He loved his old girl and he always would, buthislittle girl needed him more, which was why his thoughts had turned increasingly to digging up his roots and planting them in a new garden.
Clamshot Clague was a beautiful little town. The humans were few, the schools seemed excellent, and there was no shortage of diversions for a little girl and her father on a summer afternoon.
Tate wanted to ask Silva if there had been some sort of earthquake while he’d been gone, some natural calamity that had befallen the town, potentially disrupting their ley lines, for whatever disturbance he had felt crossing into the place with Silva, like slamming into a brick wall, he did so no longer. The brick wall had been replaced with a swooping sensation, as if he were free-falling for a brief instant, immediately passing with no ill effects.She didn’t live here while you were gone, eejit. She wouldn’t know.
He and Aelin had developed the habit of catching the trolley at the stop just in front of Silva’s condo, getting off in a differentneighborhood every time, him pulling her in her wagon as they explored.
There were the snaking housing developments, yards made of sand, grass strips along the sidewalks, water features, and extra-wide doorways, denoting the sort of species who lived within. Tate disliked admitting that he was rather sheltered. He had grown up on the outskirts of an enclave, moving to Cork City as soon as he was able, and hadn’t looked back until he’d relocated across the sea. He was used to living in cities with humans, was used to being the minority species wherever he went, and everything aboutthisplace was a revelation.
He and Aelin had taken the trolley as far as it went one afternoon, getting out at a large manor house with huge gardens and expansive fields of fruiting and flowering trees. At another stop, they’d looked at the three-story townhomes that sloped down a hill with identical little yards, the coolly sophisticated sort of development that attracted young professionals.
They had gone to that bleedin’ coffee shop, where he was still convinced the entire town squatted day after day, and found an old-fashioned little toy shop that sold carved puzzles made of wood, reminding Tate of something he had as a boy. Aelin had picked out a puzzle shaped like a puppy, and in the jewelry shop just up the street, she picked out a bracelet for Silva, one they were hiding away.
The best trolley stop, in his opinion, was the one that let off in a neighborhood called Oldetowne. Tate loved the architecture, loved the feeling that the entire neighborhood had been plucked from a different age, as he had been. He and Aelin liked making up stories for the fanciest houses, describing what sort of princess lived inside, which house held a dragon, which was full of tea-sipping ghosts.
It was one of those afternoons, listening to her chatter away as he pushed her down the sidewalk, when they happened uponthe hedgerow. Tate could tell immediately that the thick line of shrubbery was concealing more than someone’s yard. It was too overgrown, too dense, visibly full of birds’ nests that had been there for years, an indication of how long it had been since it was pruned.
“What are we stopping for?” his impatient little passenger demanded.
“What do we think is behind here?” Tate mused. “Do you think there’s some secret pixie garden behind this wall? Should we have a look?”
He knew Silva would be displeased if he were arrested for trespassing. Knew she would be incensed if he did so with their daughter. Fortunately, slipping out of trouble was one of his few talents.
It didn’t take long, following the overgrown hedgerow, before they found the stone pathway that led into the yard — a pathway the hedge had grown over, concealing it entirely. Another indication of how many years had passed since anyone had set foot behind these shrubs.
He hadn’t had a prickle of possibility move through him since that first night he had stepped into the Pixie to shoot pool with Ainsley. Tate felt a whisper of something at the corner of his ear, reminding him that he had once loved standing on the edge of things.Possibility.
The hedgerow had been double-planted, too dense to push through. It was a good thing he was tall. Even better that he had a co-conspirator. Aelin shrieked as he held her legs, instructing her to lift herself from where she sat on his shoulders, using his head for leverage to pull herself up to her feet.
“It’s a house!”
A house.
“A scary house,” she added. “The windows are falling off.”
Those would be the shutters. A house hidden behind this overgrown wall of greenery, untouched for years, falling into disrepair right there, just a few yards from the street. He couldn’t abide something with memory being lost to the world, inevitably mowed down to be replaced with something soulless instead, drywall and linoleum taking the place of heartwoods that still thumped with a pulse of their own.
When they came back, he was better prepared.
When Aelin lifted herself to stand on his shoulders, Tate had a vision of his brand-new cell phone going tumbling down to meet its end on the pavement, or else, being dropped into the hedgerow itself, lost forever, but his little rabbit performed beautifully. He was certain Silva would not approve of him enlisting their toddler to assist in taking illicit photos of a stranger’s house, but, well, Silva was at work.
He laughed when she was back safe in her wagon, seeing how many times she had clicked the shutter on the camera. Most of the shots were blurry. She was unable to hold still, but a few of them were good enough. He could see it there. At least two stories, maybe three. Italianate in style, from the mid-1800s. The porch sagged, the door was hanging from rusted-out hinges, and Aelin was correct — most of the shutters were falling off.
