CHAPTER NINETEEN

 

Alexander postponed his trip to New Jersey, deciding instead to take Sophia and his father back home to the estate. As I stood at the backdoor of the shop waving goodbye, a brown truck came down the alley and stopped in front of me.

The driver jumped out of the truck's cab. He loaded three cardboard boxes onto a hand truck and came toward me with a smile. I held the door for him as he pushed the boxes into the store and asked for my signature.

I pulled the tape from the top of the first box. "Sloan, come give me a hand," I called.

The girl came into the room, Lady by her side. The dog curled up on the floor, laying her head on her feet, and watched as I brought a stool up to the boxes to sit on while I unpacked them. I pulled away the bubble wrap and found the Belleek pottery Holly had ordered to prepare for St. Patrick's Day. The demand for Irish products inevitably grew around the holiday.

I unwrapped the first item, a nine-inch white plate hand-painted with a blessing and wispy vines of shamrocks, and inspected it for damage. It was in perfect condition, so I re-boxed it and handed it to Sloan.

"Put this on the third shelf over there, beside the pile of fabric," I instructed her. I went through the same routine two more times while I debated how to start the conversation. In the end, I decided to be blunt.

"Sloan, you're stealing from the town's merchants, and it has to stop," I said, handing her the next box to be shelved.

She glared at me, ignoring my outstretched hand. I shook the box. She grabbed it and plunked it on the shelf. She came back and stood before me with her hands on her hips.

"I told you—I'm not a thief."

I kept my silence, making my position clear as I inspected and passed her the rest of the pottery. When she had shelved the last box, I stared at her pointedly. Finally, she wilted under my gaze.

"I always ask before I take anything. Honest," she said with true conviction.

What was she doing when she asked for these things? I considered this as I opened the second box and discovered that it contained raw materials for Holly's purses.

"Mrs. Krauss next door doesn't recall you asking for her food. She says someone stole it." Sloan shrugged, but at least she had the decency to look abashed.

"It's not my fault if they don't remember giving things to me," she said.

"How exactly did you phrase the question?" I asked, allowing a bit of my anger to seep into my voice as I realized what she was doing. The girl looked at me warily, confused by my irritation.

"I just asked. I asked what her name was, I repeated it, and I asked her to give me the food… or whatever."

"Sloan, you're a smart girl—smart enough to know that those people weren't willingly giving you their things. Somewhere inside you, you knew what you were doing was wrong." I worked to keep my voice calm. She twisted her mouth and looked at the floor, refusing to meet my gaze. "So this will stop now. No more stealing. No more holding Dominion over people." She nodded, still not looking at me.

"Are you gonna call the cops on me?"

"Not this time. However, you will have to figure out how to make it up to the merchants around here."

Sloan opened the flaps on the third box to reveal printer toner and several reams of paper.

"Why are you always so nice to me? What's in it for you?"

"I believe you can do better, given the opportunity. Now put those things on the bottom shelf over there. We're going to my house." She shook her head briskly, her face going pale.

"No. I'm not going there. Call the cops; I'd rather go to jail."

 

ALEXANDER

 

"So you're telling me that Sloan is an Unseelie?" I asked, hands on hips, not quite believing what I was hearing.

We stood at the fieldstone entry gate to Pine Ridge Estate. Tressa had pulled her car onto the shoulder several yards down the road and then called me to meet her here. Sloan sat in the car, looking uncomfortable and staring into the woods that lined the estate. The big dog watched us from the back seat, with her pink tongue lolling from her mouth.

"Aye, that's what I'm saying."

I squinted at her, totally perplexed that she stood there calmly stating that this teenager—woman—whatever she was who had infiltrated our lives was one of our enemies.

"You will need to explain." I leaned sideways against the stone pillar on one side of the gate with my arms crossed in front of me.

"Well you have to admit, the evidence was mounting. She brightened each time I healed her, she has the pointed ears, she flitted here on the wind... but the thing that finally convinced me was the fact that she's been holding Dominion over people in town, getting them to give her things."

"Wait. She's been holding Dominion over people?" I repeated, shaking my head in disbelief.

Tressa always emphasized the immorality of holding Dominion over someone without due cause. At times the fae even considered it illegal, as Gilleagán's trial had proven. And yet here she stood, calmly telling me that this young girl had been frequently overriding other people's free will.

"Remember when she told us that she wasn't stealing? That everything she had people had given to her? Well, she was asking while holding Dominion over them. That's how she's been surviving."

"And the Unseelie part?"

"The wards are keeping her off the estate. That's why she wouldn't come in when I brought your father home. I think the first day she flitted here the wards repelled her. That's what she hit before she landed at the back wall of the store. She set off the security systems."

Everything she said made perfect sense, but she said it as if speaking about a wayward child. I shook my head again, astounded by her naiveté.

"The evidence certainly has been mounting. Tressa, think about it. She made an anonymous call to get us to New Jersey where an Unseelie fae attacked us. When that didn't work, she brought you back again and another Unseelie tried to kill my father and capture you to hand you over to Mór. And now we find out that her routine involves basically enslaving people to her will?"

I pushed off the pillar and walked away from Tressa, taking deep breaths in an attempt to assuage the anger building inside me. Before going far, I turned and went back.

"So, I'm confused. Why bring her here?" I asked, clipping my words. I glanced over to see the girl glaring back at me.

"I'm going to ask Shamus to adjust the wards to allow her to cross over them."

"Oh hell no. No you are not."

The tension rising in me threatened to explode in a blast of fury. The now familiar itch to grab the sword that hung between my shoulder blades returned, and this time the sensation was nearly overwhelming. I fisted my hands and stretched out my fingers, fighting the urge to strike the girl down.

Tressa reached out and touched my arm, which calmed the impulse for violence, but her pleading eyes somehow only made me angrier.

"We've spent nearly a year securing our home from the Unseelie. This girl is volatile. She's a product of the streets. She's a liar, a thief, and a probable conspirator with our enemies, and you want me to welcome her here? To trust her with you and with my daughter?"

"I can hear you, you know," Sloan yelled as she got out of the car and slammed the door shut. "I'm out of here. I'm not listening to this crap anymore and I'm not staying where I'm not welcome."

"Young lady, stay right there," Tressa demanded. "All these things he's saying are true. If you leave now that's all you will ever be. Stay here and fight to be better. You may not get another opportunity."

The girl stood glaring at Tressa defiantly. Then she kicked at the gravel that covered the shoulder of the road. She slumped against the car and turned her back to us.

"Tressa, I think your maternal instincts are in overdrive here and blocking your common sense."

"Xander, I understand what you're saying. I'm asking you to trust that I see something better in Sloan. Another thing we did this year was put our faith in the wrong people. Gilleagán was Seelie by birth, but he came to be Unseelie in his heart. There's every reason to believe the opposite can also be true. Sloan is a lost child who has never had the nurturing and education she deserves."

I walked away again to put some space between us while I thought about what she said. She had a point about Gilleagán, but did that mean I could trust the girl? After a moment's contemplation, I knew I couldn't take that leap. Not yet. The best I could do was to compromise.

"She can stay at the farmhouse," I said at last, "but the Manor house is off limits." I looked over at girl's back and shouted in her direction, though she could hear me without my yelling. "And just so you know, the Manor House is highly secure." Sloan turned and looked at me, rolling her eyes.

"Yeah. Whatever."

"And you're not taking that knife of yours onto the estate. Matt will bring down a metal detector to make sure you're not carrying it."

"I don't have the knife. It's not mine," Sloan yelled back, shaking her head.

"Yeah, I know. Just like the dog isn't yours."

"Well, that all seems fair. At least until we get to know each other better," Tressa said with forced cheerfulness. "Now we just need to get Shamus down here to adjust the wards."

Just as she spoke the words, the old Brounie came walking through the gate from the driveway.