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“He won’t be!” she bellows. “Don’t ya dare insult my judgment, James Sinclair. I’d not have let him go if I thought for one moment this house was in danger.”
I rake a hand through my hair, breath coming too fast now. “How could you know that?” Then I brazenly add, “You cannae possibly know that.”
“I do,” she says. “And I need you to trust that. Because if we’re to speak plainly about what’s happening, you’ll need your wits about you, not your temper.”
Then she comes forward, hands flat on the table, voice dropping to a deadly calm. “Now sit,” she commands. “Or I’ll remind you—properly—what Irish mothers do to wee lads who can’t mind their mouths.”
Slowly, I sit back down. Embarrassment follows hard on the heels of fear, hot and unwelcome. I nod once. “Aye,” I mutter. “Fine. Ye’re right.”
Silence spreads across the table. I keep my eyes on my plate—on the grain of the wood, the edge of my cup, anything but the surrounding faces. My jaw works once as I force my breathing to steady. I don’t look up until I’m sure my temper won’t show.
When the moment finally settles, Mannie speaks.
“The creature you encountered,” he says at last, “doesn’t hunt in daylight. It moves after dusk, when the boundary between things thins the most. You were unlucky in your positioning near a liminal line—and I’m deeply sorry for that.”
Alex shifts. “Unlucky how?”
“I don’t yet know for certain why it came for you,” Mannie admits. “That’s why I intend to investigate further.”
“How are you familiar with this creature?” Robert asks quietly.
Mannie looks up, meeting each of us in turn.
“I am what’s known among my kind as Sí uaisle,” he continues. “Noble Fae, if you prefer more modern phrasing.”
The room fills with a wary weight.
“My people have watched this world far longer than most can fathom,” Mannie goes on. “We keep records—not written, but remembered. Patterns. Stirring things.”
Given all that we saw last night, this information isn’t beyond comprehension, yet it is.
Alex lets out a short breath through his nose, as if he’s trying to laugh and can’t quite find it.
“I woke up this morning thinking I must’ve had one hell of a night,” he says slowly, voice careful. “Like… maybe I drank too much and all of this was a drunk fool’s dream.”
His eyes flick to Robert’s bandages. Then to his own.
“But then I saw these.” He swallows. “Now you’re telling me you know about the thing that attacked us because you’re what—” He gestures vaguely at Mannie, at the air, at the impossible. “—one of them?”
Mannie actually laughs—soft, brief, almost surprised.
“Not at all,” he says, still smiling faintly. “I am saying I know of it. And I know enough to be certain you were not drunk, and you were not imagining things. It is my responsibility to know when old things like this stir.”
He folds his hands together on the table.
“Creatures like that do not appear without cause. They are drawn to disruption, so to speak.”
“What was so disruptive about last night,” I ask.
Mannie inclines his head. “I believe it recognised something it hasn’t in a long time. Something called it here.”
He pauses, choosing his words with care.
“My people do not live in your world—not fully. We dwell in the Síd… not a place you can walk to, but a realm folded alongside your own. Close enough to brush against it, and bleed through where the boundaries grow thin.”
His gaze shifts to the window, to the pale line of morning. In that thin light, the blue of his eyes sharpens to something unnerving—too clear, too cold. The human parts of him don’t vanish, but the otherness steps forward, undeniable.
“Last night, when I crossed from one realm into the other, I believe I added to an already growing disturbance. Crossing leaves a briefly loosened stitch in the boundary. It generally goes unnoticed. But when the boundaries are thin—when something is already stirring…”
