The music at Carter’s left something to be desired, but Rain danced to it anyway. She had never particularly been a fan of what she thought of as “thump-thump dancing,” but being out on the dance floor meant not having to watch Brianna and Cole get snuggly again, which she got enough of at the house, and meant she didn’t have to play second fiddle to Jonas, who was yet again picking up more offers for dates from men than she was. None of the brochures she’d read about the Isle of Man had prepared her for being out-dated by her gay roommate, which just went to show that either you couldn’t believe everything you read in tour books, or that Jonas was the god of sexuality that he believed himself to be. She smirked, realizing she almost preferred the second option—at least then there was no commentary on her own lack of love life.
The bass shook her rib cage, music filling her all the way down to her toes. She was too close to the speakers for good sense, but she had always liked the reverb that seemed to push her cells out of place, seemed to infiltrate her entire physiology. Letting the music take over, she could stop wondering why she was still here, what she was even doing living on the Isle of Man, dancing at a club in Douglas she didn’t like, failing at her independent studies, and generally wasting a year abroad. She wanted so much to not have to think about that, ever; to just be able to lose herself to the island, to actually study the history and read the books she’d meant to read, to have her papers materialize. But since none of those things were happening, she mostly wanted to go home.
The music slowed, incessant backbeat falling away to a ballad, and she moved to the edge of the dance floor, eyeing the bar. Two good looking men stood next to Jonas, neither of whom she’d seen before.
“Figures,” she muttered, wiping away some of the sweat that drenched her forehead.
“What does?”
Rain liked to think of herself as reasonably laid back and in control, but the stress must have been getting to her. That was the only reasonable explanation for the height of her jump. The man who had spoken just laughed as she grounded herself. He looked down at her from his impressive height. His hair nearly glowed in the dim light of the club, and the piercings along his left ear caught the colored lights that flashed across the dance floor. Despite knowing that the Isle of Man had as much Nordic heritage as it did Celtic, Rain was always surprised when one of the tall, super-blond residents strolled her direction—natives of hundreds of years, rather than transplants from England like most of the population.
“What?” she shouted over the music, even though she’d heard him.
He gestured with his thumb over his shoulder toward a couch at the far edge of the room emptied of its usual wallflowers. She followed the gesture, still stuck on the idea that he must have been almost two feet taller than her—her shoulder was about the height of his waist!—before nodding and trying to find her usual grin. He started off toward back of the room territory and she followed.
Game face, she thought, trying to bolster her confidence. First time a cute guy has approached you in a month, and you act like a complete dork.
He grinned back over his shoulder, as though he’d heard her thinking, and the blush spread through her, starting somewhere near her shoulders. She hoped between the heat of the dancing and the dark of the club, it wasn’t noticeable to anyone but her.
The stranger swung onto one end of the couch like it was part of his living room, and Rain perched on one arm, trying to give herself enough space to see his face. Even here, the hair and piercings glowed. Now that he was sitting, she could see his face better. He had smile lines at the edges of his eyes, despite being only a year or two older than she was, and his smile itself looked devil-may-care. But something about it was false. She glanced around the room again, spotting Jonas and the table where Brianna and Cole were snogging, planning an escape route if she needed one.
“You’re safe enough here,” said the stranger. “I’m Fin.”
“I’m Rain,” she said, taking his outstretched, and very polite, hand. He shook it, his grip far less tentative than her own. “I didn’t mean to look nervous.”
“Hard to know who to trust these days,” he said, not sounding judgmental at all, “but less on the Isle than other places. Old fashioned morals and values here.” His eyes flicked over to Jonas and he grinned. “Open minded though. We’re good folk.”
“I’ve noticed,” Rain said wryly. “That’s my roommate.”
“Ah, so not a beau.” Fin sighed in dramatic relief. “Here I thought you were pining.”
“Nope, just jealous,” Rain said with a laugh, watching his face to see how he’d react. He just continued to grin at her, carefree on the surface, but… “You’re a native then?”
“Born and bred,” he said proudly. “What tipped you off? Accent or good looks?” He must have seen her blush, because he rushed on before she could answer. “Hulking Nordic body on top of the traditional Manx charm, I bet. It’s a sure combination. And you’re American?”
“Yes.” She wondered if he’d said all of that so quickly to save her embarrassment or to avoid hearing something that might not have flattered his ego. A bit of both, she decided. “I’m doing independent studies here.”
“On?”
“Mythology and archaeology,” she said. “You’ve got a fascinating hybrid of both stories and architecture here, part Irish, part Norse, a bit here, a bit there…” She stopped, feeling silly to be telling him about his home.
“You’ve been up to Maughold, then?” he asked, and she nodded, tickled that he knew one of the sites—the largest collection of crosses on the Isle—off the top of his head. She’d expected that everyone who lived on the Isle would be like that, but their landlady hadn’t known about them.
“I wanted to stay up in Ramsey so I could be closer to the church,” she said, “but Jonas and my other two roommates had a house rented in Port St. Erin, and they were looking for a fourth. It’s not far from the hill fort at Cronk Moar, but otherwise…” She trailed off with a shrug.
The music changed again, and he moved off the couch like a wave crashing on the beach: fluid and swift. “I’m partial to this one.” He put his hand out for her.
She took it, more confident this time in the way his hand felt around hers. His fingers were long, like a guitar player’s. She hoped he wasn’t. Nothing good ever came of her dating musicians.
“Never been good at any part of music but dancing,” he shouted when they got out to the dance floor.
The music filled her up from her toes, and there was movement and chaos and electricity, and her thoughts vanished as she enjoyed the moment, enjoyed the tension in the space between them, the way he never let his body get uncomfortably close to hers. Likely because our proportions are all wrong, she thought to herself, looking up as he loomed over head. He winked down at her, looking as full of the music as she was, as though the drumbeat had become both of their pulses at once.
They danced through a second song, not talking, just being part of the music, two bodies on the dance floor. Thoughts floated through her mind, none of them sticking longer than a moment. She wondered what Jonas might think to see her dancing with a good-looking Manx giant, far too tall for her and with far more piercings than she would normally look at twice. It crossed her mind that Fin really wasn’t her type, although it would be helpful to know a local who actually knew something about the Isle, which could, in theory, prevent her from failing her independent studies. If all she liked about him was the attention—which is nice, she admitted—she’d probably better make that clear from the beginning. A person could always use more friends.
But then she looked up at him, saw his eyes closed as he felt the music more than heard it, watched as the lights that sprawled across the dance floor caught in his hair and his ear studs. Just a little while, she thought as her stomach squeezed. I’ll pretend for just a little while.
A claw grabbed Fin’s shoulder and jerked them both out of the music as he spun, pulled downward so that his face was almost even with Rain’s. Behind him was a middle-aged woman only slightly taller than Rain, her red hair streaming around her shoulders, and her face contorted in fury. Her fingernails dug into Fin’s shoulder, and he hissed.
“Do not forget your place, above-grounder,” the woman snarled. “Playtime’s over. Get back to work.”
She shoved him forward, and Fin stumbled off the dance floor toward a door in the back corner of the room Rain hadn’t noticed before. As she watched, it seemed to fade, an effect of the swirling lights on the dance floor. Rain stood still, frozen in the presence of the red-haired woman who looked her up and down. Rain didn’t breathe until, after a moment, the woman appeared satisfied. The anger bled away, leaving a brilliant smile in its place.
“He’ll use you just like he used the others,” she said, her tone confidential, almost pitying. “You can’t trust someone like him.”
“No,” Rain said automatically, and for half a moment, she believed it was true. It had only been pretend, after all. He must have approached her because she looked lonely, because she was an easy mark.
“It’s no fault of yours, dear,” the red-haired woman said kindly, and her words wrapped around Rain like a shawl against the chill. “There are many evil people in the world.”
“Hard to know who to trust these days,” Rain said, and as the words left her, she remembered that Fin had said them before they danced, that he had told her she was safe. And as the woman left her, apparently satisfied, Rain thought of the sadness she suspected was lurking behind Fin’s carefree expression.
Jonas was still at the bar, though he’d lost his companions. Rain stopped next to him, sliding a cocktail napkin in front of her.
“Looks like you caught a good one tonight,” Jonas said cheerfully, “until that bitch snagged him.”
“Tell me you have a pen,” Rain said.
Jonas pulled a pen from inside his jacket—he never danced enough to get over warm—and handed it to her. “I hear he’s a bouncer here,” he continued. “Very pretty, if I may say.”
“Mine,” Rain warned him, handing the pen back. “No touch.”
Jonas squeezed her hand as he took the pen. “You ready to call it a night?”
Rain looked toward the back corner of the room, where the door had been, where Fin had stood. “Am I ever.” She slid the cocktail napkin across the bar to the bartender with a five-pound note and asked him to deliver it to Fin. She headed out with Jonas to the streets of Douglas to catch a taxi.
The National Folk Museum at Cregneash was hidden in the countryside on the center of Spanish Head, a long hike from Port St. Erin on a foggy day—and they were all foggy—but one Rain was used to making by now. It took less time to go straight there than it did to hike around the Head, like she’d done the first few times. There was supposed to be a stone circle somewhere along the cliffs below the Head, and she’d skirted the edge of the cliffs, looking downward, as much as she could through the fog without risking a fall.
Cregneash looked like a traditional village, rising out of the fog, surrounded by nothing with only one small road passing through it. A good half of the buildings had thatched roofs. The stone walls surrounding them fit together without mortar in the traditional fashion. Rain sat on the wall outside the museum entrance, waiting. The prior evening played over in her mind, the way that she had felt content dancing with a stranger, and how that moment had been stolen. She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, though it wasn’t cold. Rain had decided that if there was someone not to be trusted, it was that woman, who reminded her of nothing so much as fire—beautiful but destructive, and quick to burn. She also thought she remembered a look of abject terror on Fin’s face—something that could not be caused by a woman with good intentions.
When Fin drove up on a motocross bike, Rain was suddenly conscious of her legs, swinging back and forth against the wall because her feet didn’t touch the ground. She shoved off of the stones—carefully so she didn’t knock anything out of place—and approached while he was still removing his helmet. Even here, outside the lighting of the club, his hair had a metallic shine to it.
“Surprised to see me?” he asked, tentatively, watching her face as she watched him.
Rain shook her head, in part to break her gaze and in part because she wasn’t surprised. “I had a feeling you were the kind of guy who couldn’t deny a lady’s request.”
He tucked his helmet under one arm and offered her the crook of the other. “Lady, are we?”
“I don’t know about ‘we.’” She slid her fingers along his elbow, shivering at the touch, despite the fact that his heavy jacket was between them. It was leather, but not in the style that bikers in the U.S. wore—almost more like an old B-movie flight jacket. “I’m kind of hoping you’re not.”
He laughed, and the worry she’d seen lurking behind his expressions at the club was nowhere to be seen. They started forward, in tandem, through the museum entrance. “I thought you Americans didn’t hold with titles.”
“Figured it out, did you? Was it my accent, or my good looks?”
She snaked away from him and walked over to the desk, pulling out the exact change for a new four-visit pass. Janeice, an older woman who had probably been working at the museum longer than Rain had been alive, tapped the pass she’d pulled out as soon as Rain had walked in the door.
“Needing a new one, then?” the curator asked, in the process of taking the money and handing over the pass. “It’s good we see you so often. You’ll soon know more than me!”
“Oh, I doubt that,” Rain said, holding the new pass out to be stamped. “Punch one for my friend, too?”
Janeice looked over Rain’s shoulder and her face, already pale, whitened. She whispered something in Manx—which Rain had learned the curator spoke fluently—shaking her head. “Oh, no, miss. MacLeirrs never pay here on the isle.”
Fin stepped forward, looking completely apologetic as far as Rain was concerned, but Janeice held her breath. Rain squeezed Janeice’s hand, noticing for the first time how frail the older woman was. “It’s all right,” she said, though she had no idea what was wrong in the first place. “You can charge me twice or not—either way, it won’t be him paying.”
Janeice handed her back the pass with only one entry punched. Fin said something in Manx behind Rain, and she turned, staring. No one their age spoke Manx fluently, from what she’d been told. It was one of the greatest regrets of the island. He finished, smiled at Rain—again apologetically—and walked toward the outside door. Rain looked back at Janeice, surprised to see all the tension gone from the woman’s face, her cheeks their usual rosy shade.
“I’ve not seen a MacLeirr here in years,” she whispered. Rain squeezed her hand again and followed after Fin.
He was waiting for her outside, leaning against the wall and looking out on the thatched roofs. With his shoulders shrugged and his knees bent, he gave the impression of trying to make himself small—something that would be impossible for someone his height. Rain leaned next to him, purposefully not looking at his face.
“And I thought I had questions before,” she said.
He snorted, shifting his weight in such a way that he gained three inches. “My family used to be very important on the island,” he said tersely.
“Used to be?”
He shoved off the wall and strode forward; Rain had to match two of her paces to each of his. “It’s a long story. Politics. Not as interesting as you’d think.”
They wandered through the village, not really talking, just watching the workers—all in the costume of Manx villagers generations gone by—as they went about their speeches and demonstrations. The tension drained out of Fin as they walked, and soon he was joking with the parents and young children stopping to visit. Despite what Rain thought were obviously edgy looks, the parents seemed comfortable around him, and the children gave every appearance of wanting to use him as a jungle gym. Instead, he taught them the Manx words for grass and tree and house and sent them on their way to the next cottage.
“Does everyone like you?” Rain asked as they watched a family go.
“Not everyone.” Fin stood his full height, hands on his back. “If everyone likes you, you’re not being yourself.”
“I wonder if Jonas knows that…” He looked down at her and she grinned. “My roommate. The popular one.”
Fin nodded in recognition. “Surely there’s someone who doesn’t like him.”
“He’s terribly likable.” Even when Rain was irritated with him, he was hard to dislike. “But so are you, Fin MacLeirr.”
“Finbar, actually,” he said, starting off toward one of the cottages.
“What does it mean?” she asked, hurrying to keep up with his long strides. “I assume it’s Manx.”
He nodded. “Wave crest.”
“Finbar MacLeirr,” she said, trying out the sound. “It suits you.”
He raised an eyebrow as he looked down at her. “And how would you know, Lady Rain?” She just grinned. “Speaking of which, your own name is still a mystery.”
Her grin fell. “You have to promise not to laugh.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“It is.” She took a deep breath. “But you have to understand that my parents missed out on being real hippies by just a few years, and they were very committed to civil rights and equality when they got married.”
He brushed some of her hair away from her shoulder, and she thought how drab her brown hair must seem when he looked at his own metallic, silver-gold hair every day in the mirror. But rather than moving his hand away, he tangled his fingers in her unspectacular locks. “I’ll take it all into account,” he said.
“Rainbow,” she blurted. “Saltperson.”
His lip twitched and she crossed her arms over her chest. “You promised not to laugh.”
“So I did,” he said, but his voice quivered just enough that she knew he wanted to. “Saltperson?”
“It used to be Saltman, but they thought that was too gender biased.” She groaned inwardly. And wanted to curse their children forever with explaining their last name. Thanks Mom and Dad.
“It suits you,” Fin said, letting her hair loose, slowly, so that it fell against her shoulder in clumps. She shivered.
“Thanks.”
Fin ducked into the doorway of a cottage and stood at the back of the room, staying out of the way of a group of children crowded around a basket-weaver. Rain waved at him, just slightly, as he looked up from his weaving. He nodded back, continuing to explain the difference between the pattern in Manx baskets as opposed to European or American Indian styles as he wove his fibers back and forth. The children were fascinated, and after letting them watch for a bit, the weaver set them up at a table with some fibers of their own to give a simple pattern a try. Parents loomed over their children and the weaver stepped aside, settling back on his normal seat.
“Nice to see you, Rain,” he said. “On foot again?”
“Always,” Rain answered, pulling up one of the small stools. “Thanks again for the ride to Castle Rushen last week.”
“A pleasure.” The weaver tightened the fibers in the pattern, pulling the bottom taught. “It’s hardly out of my way.”
“I suppose they put you to work there a few days a week, too?” Fin asked, and the weaver looked up at him, expression turning from annoyance at the question to delight in recognition.
“Well if it isn’t Fin MacLeirr,” the weaver laughed. “Glad to have you here, boy. Been too long.”
“It has,” Fin agreed, taking the weaver’s suddenly outstretched hand. “I haven’t gotten out much lately.”
The weaver’s face darkened, but just for a moment. “Well, since you’re out, and in the company of my fine friend Rain, I should take the opportunity to invite you both to a bat barbecue we’ve got going on Friday next. Up at Billown. Caves up there are fabulous for it.”
Rain blanched. “You don’t eat them?”
Both men laughed at the question. “We watch ’em come out of their caves at dusk,” the weaver explained. “Whole clouds of them! It’s something to see. And then there’s food, because what’s a gathering without a bit to eat?” He looked from Fin to Rain, and then back to Fin. “You’ll come?”
Rain looked up at Fin hopefully, knowing too well that she was showing all her cards. She wanted to go, and she wanted to see Fin again. Fin smiled and nodded, but the worry she’d noticed back at the club had returned. “It’s a date,” he said, and her stomach flipped.
They met and ate at Billown, watching the bats swarm out of their caves in thick clouds. The locals cheered, gossiped, talked, and shared recipes. Only two hours after they arrived, when there was no arguing that dusk had faded well into night, Fin gave his apologies.
“Work,” he said, before Rain could protest.
“For that witch of a woman?” Rain crossed her arms in front of her chest, but Fin just laughed.
“If you only knew the half of it,” he said, reaching out to touch her hair. She shivered. “Cold?”
“No.” She thought back to that first night, remembering the door, far from the entrance. “Jonas heard you were a bouncer.”
“Of sorts,” Fin said neutrally, pulling his hand back and glancing over her shoulder, avoiding her eyes.
“For a back door no one uses?”
His look was sharp, as bright and dangerous as the studs in his ears. “You shouldn’t have seen that.”
“But…”
He reached out for her again, putting firm hands on her shoulders. “Rushen Abbey, Saturday afternoon?” He flashed her that carefree grin, but it no longer hid his worry so well.
“Saturday afternoon,” she agreed.
They toured the island together, always during the day. They visited the Old House of Keys, the seat of government formed by the invading Norse, who had given the isle something akin to democracy and their first centralized government. Fin took her to several of the Norse sites in the north, showing her small collections of crosses that weren’t large enough to make the heritage map. He’d obviously studied them, and he knew the people in the parishes well enough to find her experts. She took notes, finding that her independent study had changed from homework to a reason to travel with Fin. She even became accustomed to riding on the back of his motocross bike.
“Do you race?” Rain called over his shoulder one day, squeezing around his chest.
“No,” he hollered back. “The big race here—the TT—stands for the Tourist Trophy.” His voice was muffled through his helmet, but she could hear his amusement. “You could give it a go if you wanted to borrow my bike.”
He took a turn faster than he needed to and Rain shrieked. That, apparently, was answer enough.
One night, at home, while she was typing up notes on her laptop, Jonas wandered in and perched on her bed. He watched her, never interrupting with words, just waiting for her to invite him to talk.
“Yes?” she said finally, not looking up from her keyboard.
“You really like him, don’t you?”
She sighed, hit save, and swiveled around in her desk chair. “What is it, Jonas?”
“I don’t think Brianna and Cole have bothered to notice how often you’re gone these days,” Jonas continued, ignoring her question, “but when a good looking guy like that keeps arriving on that bike of his, I’m aware of it.” He smiled broadly to counter her glare. “Seriously, Rain, you never mope at me anymore. I’m beginning to miss you.”
The blush crept up around her ears. “That’s really sweet, Jonas.”
“You miss confiding in me, too, right?”
Rain laughed, and realized that she actually had missed it. She started telling him about their travels and discovered that sharing her good dates was a lot more fun than moping about her non-existent ones.
“It’s weird how many people he knows, and how much they respect him,” Rain said after awhile. “Something about his family. Have you heard anything about the MacLeirrs?”
Jonas’s eyes got big. “You are positively the worst mythology student ever.”
Rain swiveled back and forth in her desk chair. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“What’s Manannan’s last name?” Jonas quizzed her.
She sniffed. “He’s a god. He doesn’t have a last name.”
In response, Jonas settled into poetry stance, his eyes half-closed as he began to recite. “Manannan Beg Mac y Leirr/Little Manannan Son of the Sea,/Who blessed our island,/Bless us and our boat, going out well./Coming in better, with living and dead in our boat.” His eyelids fluttered and he looked at her again. “It’s a prayer, recited into the twentieth century by fisherman along the Isle.”
“The whole thing about Manannan the god also being Manannan the necromancer, right.” Rain stretched her arms out behind her, leaning the chair back. “So the MacLeirr family must be associated somehow.”
Jonas stroked his chin. “Mmmm, Rain’s dating a godling. Have you thought about sharing?”
“I can still kick you out of my room.”
He feigned a hurt look and stood, placing a hand mournfully over his heart. “I forgive you, but only because I know you have been pierced by love’s sweet sting.” She grabbed piece of paper from her desk, crumpled it, and threatened to throw it at him, but he just grinned. “I have some poems I’d like you to look over, if you have time. Mostly responses to Manx hymns and such. They could use a mythologist’s take.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Because your poems are mythic?”
He sighed heavily and moved to the door. “There’s no romance in your soul, Rain.”
Jonas shut the door quickly enough to avoid the crumpled paper Rain had aimed for his head.
Maybe it was Jonas’s association of Fin and the Celtic god of the sea that made Rain want to go back to the House of Manannan, which she considered the best of the formal museums on the Isle, or maybe it was that she hadn’t been there since just after she’d arrived months before. In either case, she suggested it to Fin as they were leaving the Braaid, an archaeological site of two Norse longhouses next to an Iron Age roundhouse near the village of the same name. Their hands were intertwined, so she felt it instantly when he stiffened.
“No.”
She looked up at his face, frozen and stiff, no longer hiding behind his lazy smile. Her fingers tightened around his, small hand around his long one, like she could protect him from whatever had him—frightened, she realized.
“It’s okay,” she said quietly. “What about Peel Castle?” She stopped, swinging around in front of him and grabbing his other hand. “We could look for the ghost.”
His lips quirked, but he didn’t smile. “It’s a big black dog,” he said. “Do you really want to look for the ghost of a dog that’s bigger than you are?”
“It’s supposed to protect people, not harm them,” she chided. “And besides, I’d have you to protect me.”
He pulled away, looking back over his shoulder at the ruins. “I might not be as much help there as you’d think,” he said.
Rain put her hand on his elbow, hiding behind the leather jacket, and he didn’t pull away. “It doesn’t matter to me where we go.” As long as I’m with you.
He turned toward her, running his long fingers through her hair, a touch that Rain had begun to suspect was the closest he would come to kissing her. She looked up at him, wondering when her feelings for him had stopped being pretend.
“Have you been out to the Calf?” She shook her head, feeling the tendrils loosen as she moved away from his hand. “Then that’s where we’ll go. Meet me at the harbor in Port St. Erin Tuesday morning.”
The harbor was just a short walk from her house, so she nodded, again feeling the pull of her hair against his fingers. He pulled her closer then, kissing her forehead, so softly his lips might have been feathers. Fin let her go, backing away with his face still as closed as it had been when she’d suggested the museum.
“Bring warm clothes,” he said, and she nodded.
On Tuesday, she waited at the harbor, watching boats leave and come back with families and picnickers, out to enjoy the wildlife so carefully preserved on the island just south of the Isle of Man’s own shores. At noon, she took out the sandwich she had packed for herself. At two, she took out the one she had packed for Fin. She waited. He never came.
It took only three days of moping before Jonas dragged the story out of her. He sat her down on the sofa with mugs of their favorite teas—Earl Grey for Jonas and raspberry leaf for Rain—and convinced her to tell him everything. He paced as he listened, sipping only occasionally.
“Bastard,” Jonas said when she finished.
“I just don’t get it,” Rain said.
“Men are idiots,” Jonas said with a shrug. He pulled her up off of their sofa and looked her up and down. “Come on. We’re going to get you all dolled up—”
“Jonas—” Rain protested.
“—and once you’re looking incredibly hot, we’re going out.”
Rain sighed. “Do I have to?”
He put his hand in the middle of her back and guided her to her room. “Hot,” he repeated, shutting the door behind her.
Rain changed, and little by little, she found herself feeling better. It was almost as though by changing her appearance, she changed herself. Eventually, she believed that she felt like going out, because her reflection obviously did. She pinned up her hair, letting two brown tresses fall just in front of her ears. Combined with the low dip of her blouse, the effect lengthened her neck, which she always thought made her look taller. She slid on a pair of heels, ones she usually left behind when she was going dancing because her ankles would be unforgiving at the end of the night.
Jonas had already changed and was waiting outside her door.
“That was fast,” Rain said.
“I can only improve so much on nature,” Jonas answered, holding out her jacket. She slid her arms into the sleeves and rolled the coat up onto her shoulders. “You cleaned up alright yourself.”
“Hot?” she asked.
“Smokin’. Almost as good as me.”
The taxi was waiting for them, and not long after Port St. Erin disappeared into the dark fog behind them, the lights of Douglas loomed ahead, diffused by the moisture in the air. As the cab navigated the streets, Rain grabbed Jonas’s wrist and squeezed.
“Tell me we’re not going there.”
Jonas patted her hand with the one she didn’t hold in a vice-grip. “You want to know,” he said. “And the mystery will just keep bothering you if you don’t find out.”
She pursed her lips before responding. “You’re so incredibly mean.”
He peeled her fingers from his arm. “That’s just one of the many reasons you enjoy my company.”
Carter’s looked the same as it had the month before, though the decorations in the windows had changed. They now sported lanterns that looked like large turnips. Painted on the windows in bright red were the words “Hop-tu-Naa.”
“Halloween?” Rain guessed.
“Don’t let the locals hear you say that,” Jonas said wryly. “Hop-tu-Naa’s the old New Year. There’s singing, rather than trick or treating. Still costumes though. I learned one of the songs if you’d like me to recite.”
“Not sing?” Rain poked Jonas in the shoulder. “If it’s a song—”
“The world will be blessed for my having kept silent,” he said, and opened the door.
Rain held her head high as she walked in, as though she and Jonas owned this place, as though they were the hottest people to come through the doors. She scanned the room, looking to compare their dress, intentionally not looking for Fin. “Top ten percent,” she murmured to Jonas, who raised both eyebrows at her disapprovingly. “You’re in the top one, but I’m dragging you down a little.”
“I’ll forgive you this once.” He reached for her jacket and she slid out of it, letting him deliver both of their coats to the coat room. The music pulsed through the floor, just as bad as she remembered, but the familiar throbbing in her ribcage felt better than the sore heart she’d been nursing. Jonas returned, took her hand, and led her out to the dance floor.
“What are you doing?”
Jonas found a spot under the lights, near enough to the speakers that her whole body quivered. “Dancing, moron,” he said. “Start looking for likely candidates so I don’t have to spend my whole evening out here.”
She smirked, squeezing his hand in thanks, and looked over his shoulder. She wondered what she would do if she saw Fin. The hurt of being left waiting for hours fought against logical excuses she’d made for him over the past several days. He didn’t have a phone number for her because they’d always made plans in person. He could have gotten sick. Maybe he actually did feel bad. And what if he doesn’t? she wondered. She pursed her lips, studiously avoiding letting Jonas see her face. That’s it, she decided. He gets one chance to apologize, and maybe I’ll accept it. Then we remedy the lack of contact info.
But when she saw him, her whole body froze. He was leaning against the wall next to the door she wasn’t supposed to have seen, looking at her. But it wasn’t his gaze that held her—it was how sick he looked; so pale his skin glowed almost as much as his hair in the dim lights, so thin he looked like a ghost. He wasn’t wearing his jacket, like he had been every other time she’d seen him, and she wondered if he’d been losing weight since the first time they met.
“You can do this,” Jonas murmured, taking her stillness for fear. But she wasn’t afraid of talking to him. She was afraid of whatever it was that made him look like that.
Rain only moved because Jonas nudged her in the right direction, muttering how bad it made him look to be dancing with a mannequin. He made his way to the bar and she stumbled back toward the door Fin was supposed to guard. His eyes never left her as she walked toward him, stayed on her when she stopped just a few feet away. She reached for him with one arm and he cringed back into the wall. Her hand dropped to her side.
“What happened to you?” she whispered.
“I’m sorry, Rain,” he said, his voice scratchy and rough. “I never should have—”
“Don’t.” The tears that pricked her eyes surprised her. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“Rain—”
“Tell me.”
The club might have been silent for all Rain could tell, waiting for whatever words might come.
He leaned off the wall, looking unsteady on his feet, tipped her chin up, and kissed her, fully. But despite the heat of it, it tasted sad, salty. Like goodbye.
She pulled away. “Fin, whatever it is—”
“You have to leave,” he said, and there was an edge of panic to his voice. “She can’t see you here, Rain, or she’ll think I’ve dragged you into the whole thing—”
“What whole—”
“Go!”
He pushed her away, roughly enough that in the heels, she only barely kept her balance. Fin leaned back against the wall, eyes closed, head tipped back, and lights sparkling off of his piercings. Rain stumbled backward, then turned and hurried toward the bar, looking over her shoulder every few steps.
The door behind Fin opened, and the red-headed woman stepped out, dressed to kill. Her hand wrapped around Fin’s arm, nails grazing him until dark spots popped up on his white skin. Rain made it to the bar, nearly sobbing, and turned back, torn between getting away and wanting to help Fin, to stop the woman from hurting him. The woman yanked Fin down to her own height. Dark streaks ran down his arm and his face was pinched with pain and terror.
“Rain.”
Rain buried herself in Jonas’s arms, letting the sob come out this time. “We have to call the police,” she begged.
“Put on your jacket,” he said, holding it out for her.
“She’s hurting him!”
Jonas gritted his teeth and forced one of her arms into sleeve, then whirled her around and shoved her other arm into the second. At once, the lights shifted, and when she looked at Fin and the red-haired woman, she saw bright glowing forms around them, the woman’s much larger than Fin’s. Rain looked away from them and out onto the dance floor, where others—maybe one in ten—had the same glow: a brilliant light surrounding their bodies that was so beautiful it was almost painful.
“The police won’t be able to do anything,” Jonas said quietly. “We’ve got to go.”
He pulled her away and caught her as she stumbled on the too-tall heels. She kicked out of them, leaned over to pick them up, and then let Jonas help her outside. The concrete of the sidewalk was cold beneath her feet, but Jonas kept her walking three blocks until they got to a pub where three young people were exiting a cab. Almost before the last of them got out, Jonas was shoving her inside.
“In a hurry?” the driver asked.
“No,” Jonas lied.
“Where to?”
“Surrey,” Jonas supplied. “Port St. Erin.”
The driver pulled back out into the street. “Turning in early,” he said casually. “Your jackets seem to be inside out. Did you know?”
Rain looked down and saw that it was true. Jonas, ever perfect in his fashion, was wearing his jacket inside out, and he’d put hers on the same way.
“How clumsy,” Jonas said, squeezing Rain’s knee. Despite the driver’s attempts at small talk, which Jonas would have normally engaged with flair, the conversation remained awkward and stilted all the way home.
Jonas refused to explain until she had changed clothes. Rain pulled on her most comfortable jeans and a hooded sweatshirt with her college logo. Then she went into the bathroom and washed her face, surprised that there were tear streaks along her cheeks. The water helped her to stop shivering, and when she finished, she felt almost pulled together.
Jonas was pacing in their living room, still wearing his inside-out jacket.
“I hate it when I’m right,” he said to the floor, then scowled up at her. “And you really are the worst mythologist ever.”
Rain slumped onto the couch, trying not to think of the blood she’d seen on Fin’s arm or the glow around his body. “Fine. I’m stupid. Tell me what I’m supposed to know.”
Jonas ran his hand through his hair, and she realized he was shaking. “All right. God, I wish I smoked. I could use a cigarette.” He took a deep breath, and when he let it go, he seemed to have pulled himself together. “I didn’t think it would do that, by the way, but I had this hunch, have since you said Fin’s last name.” Rain bit her lip, trying to keep herself from interrupting. “Turning the jacket—or frock or whatever—inside out is an old trick. It used to be used to see past fairy glamour.”
She blinked at him, trying to make the words make sense. “I don’t understand.”
He sat down next to her on the couch, hard. “Rain, tell me what happens to the Tuatha de Danaan when the Milesians come.”
“The Tuatha de Danaan, who had been like kings and gods of Ireland, lost the war to the new invaders, like the Fomorians had lost to them when they came,” Rain recited. “The Milesians won all of Ireland, but the Tuatha de Danaan stayed, living in sort of a shadow Ireland, behind illusions.”
Jonas wrung his hands. “They were forced underground, and they came to live in hills, so that they were called the Sidhe, the hill folk,” Jonas said.
Rain frowned. “Those are fairy tales.”
Jonas snorted. “Rain, what do you think happens to myths when they stop being religion?” He picked at the seam of his jacket, still on the wrong side. “And beyond that, what do you do when old folk tales completely change how you see the world?”
She looked at his inside-out jacket and thought of the glow that filled the night club, surrounding only a handful of the dancers, surrounding Fin and the woman who controlled him. “So you think it’s true.”
“Truth is for philosophers,” Jonas said curtly. “I think that we have to look at the information we’ve got, figure out how to interpret it, and decide what to do from there. Option number one is we can forget all about this and never speak on it again.”
Rain thought of the blood on Fin’s arm and shook her head. “I can’t.”
“I knew that was too much to hope for.” Jonas leaned back on the couch, drumming his fingers on his knee. “God, I can’t focus. Remind me how the story of Manannan goes.”
“What does that—?”
Jonas bit his lip, and she noticed that the knee he was drumming was bouncing. “Humor me. I’m in no condition to go over it in my own head.”
“Fine.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, breathing in and out, trying to focus. “In the Irish legends, he’s the sea god, husband to a giant, father of Llyr, who later took over as the sea himself. Roughly.” She rubbed her eyes, then pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them. “On the Isle, he’s the first ruler of the island, the son of Leirr—I looked it up after you called me an idiot last time. He was a wizard, some say a necromancer, and he would wrap the island in fog any time the invaders came. He only asked for a tithe or tax of rushes, once a year, from the people of Mann to keep them safe.” She leaned her chin against her knee and looked at Jonas. “I’m not sure where we’re going with this.”
He was still bouncing or shivering—it was hard to tell. “Imagine just for a moment that when the Milesians came, not all the Tuatha de Danaan stayed.” She started to interrupt, but he put his hand on her shoulder, leaning closer, and she could feel his jitters. “What if Manannan came here instead, with all the power he’d had before, and took the Isle of Man and made it his home? He would never have to hide the way the rest of the Tuatha de Danaan did.”
“He could have had a family,” Rain murmured, finally seeing where Jonas was going. “Children.” She blanched. “When Fin’s boss first grabbed him, the night we met, she called him an above-grounder.”
“Because the MacLeirrs were never hill-folk,” Jonas said, coming to the same conclusion she’d just made.
“So those others in the club—” Rain faltered. “They’re fairies?”
“Minus the little green coats and leather hats,” Jonas answered, and he stopped shaking. “I think I’ve just completely run out of energy.”
Rain leaned back against the couch and Jonas mimicked her posture. They sat in silence, letting it all wash over them.
“Tomorrow is Hop-tu-Naa,” Jonas said quietly. “The new year. It used to be a harvest ritual. And even you, the worst mythologist in the world, should be able to figure out what that must mean.”
She didn’t have the energy to be frightened any more. “You think he’s going to be a sacrifice. You think they’ve made him the year-king, the one who has to die in thanks for the crops, to make sure that the land stays fertile for next season.” Jonas nodded. “How are we supposed to stop that?”
Jonas’s fingers drummed against his knee. “I don’t know.” He looked down at his hand, as if just realizing that his fingers were moving. “I don’t even know where the ritual would take place. It doesn’t seem like—.” He cut off and then groaned. “Unless they’re doing it in their own realm.”
Rain thought of the guarded door in Carter’s. “We’ll never get through that door, not if that bitch is guarding it.”
“Cronk Moar,” Jonas said.
“The hill fort?” Rain asked incredulously. “It was a Norse fortress, and it might have a barrows, but it’s never been properly excavated—”
“Don’t you listen to anyone around here?” Jonas asked tersely. “Everyone in Port St. Erin says it’s a fairy hill.”
If Rain had slept better, she might have been able to convince herself the entire evening had been a dream. As it was, her night was less than restful, and she thought she could still feel, lingering on her lips, the kiss that Fin meant as farewell.
She swung out of bed, still in the jeans and sweatshirt she’d put on the night before. She’d been too tired to change. With a yawn, she stretched her arms above her head and looked out her window. The mist made it difficult to tell what time it was, but she suspected from what light shown through that it was past noon.
“Cronk Moar was a timber fort,” she told herself. “Maybe a castle at the top of the hill, small trench dug around it for protection. Built around 11 A.D., if the people who did the excavation back in 1900 guessed right.” She put her hands on the windowsill and looked out at the foggy morning, though even on a clear day, there were hills and houses in the way of the ruin.
“Fairies,” she said, as though it were a curse. But Fin had glowed, right along with the rest of them. Not just his hair or his piercings or pale skin; he himself had glowed like a lantern. “Tuatha de Danaan. People of Dana. Danaans.” That was somehow better. They’d been a people—fantastic though they were—that had ultimately been conquered in a war. “I wouldn’t hold it against him if he were any other ethnicity,” she said, knowing very well she was rationalizing to take the terror away. “Right. So, I just have to tell the queen of the Danaans that she can’t sacrifice him. No problem.”
“I’m glad you’re so confident,” Jonas said from her doorway. He looked rumpled, but at least had new clothes on. His jacket, however, was still inside out. “How did you sleep?”
She looked at his hair, usually perfectly in place. “About as well as you did, by the look of it.”
“Then we’ll both be exceptionally well rested for our stake out tonight,” he said dryly. “Come on. I made sandwiches.”
They hiked up to Cronk Moar, seeing the hill rise up from its flat surroundings well before were close. “It used to be a marsh,” Jonas said, looking up from the book he’d brought along. “And fairies weren’t supposed to chase you through water, so if you were able to stay in wet land until you got to a church, you were safe.”
Rain looked down at the field beneath them—moist ground, certainly, but not marshy. “Great. What are you reading?”
He showed her the cover. Manx Fairy Tales. “Brilliant,” she muttered.
“It’s got a charm to say against the fairies,” he offered.
Rain sighed. “Keep it ready.”
Trees and brambles grew in the ditch that surrounded Cronk Moar and kept Rain from climbing the hill to see the ruins at the top, which she always assumed were overgrown. The shrubs were prickly—hard to walk through and worse to fall on. But there was no place to hide on the flat area beyond the trench, so she led Jonas down into it and behind a tree.
“Watch for the prickers,” she warned, pulling her rain coat out of her pack and spreading it on the ground.
Sitting still, surrounded by damp air after a night with little or no sleep made it difficult to stay awake. Rain daydreamed, only really aware of her surroundings when she noticed how stiff her legs were. They ate sandwiches in the afternoon, then again when the sun began to set, and they shared a canteen of water between the two of them.
“Turn your shirt inside out,” Jonas said as dusk fell around them.
Rain pulled her raincoat off the ground and shoved her arms through the sleeves the wrong way. The dirt she’d been trying to avoid sitting in now rubbed against her sweatshirt, and she tried to think of it as something other than a bad omen.
Dusk deepened into night, and Rain fought against the cramps in her legs. They could hear singing from Port St. Erin, presumably the celebrants of Hop-tu-Naa. But Rain thought she heard a harp as well, then flutes, all the time moving closer, even though there were no houses nearby. Rain looked at the hill beside them, seeing the light coming from the other side. She grabbed Jonas’s arm and pulled him forward, both of them moving as quietly as they could through the underbrush until they saw the door. There in the hill, plain as the door on a house, was an open doorway. Light poured out of it, the same kind of glow they’d seen at Carter’s.
Rain started forward, but Jonas pulled at her coat. “Don’t eat anything,” he said quietly.
She nodded and stepped inside.
It looked like the inside of Carter’s, only brighter. She imagined that if she had ever been to the club during the day, with all the lights on, it would have looked like this. The dance floor was full of people, all of them glowing fiercely, some of whom she’d seen before. The place was just as crowded as the night club, and people sat around private tables, lounged in couches, and lined the bar. Despite the fact that she and Jonas were not dressed like they belonged there, no one seemed to pay them any mind. They danced, not to thump-thump music, but to harp and flute and drum.
As Rain started to head toward the mysterious door where she knew she would find Fin, it opened. The crowd parted as a brown horse pushed through the door, the rider on its back was the red-haired woman, fierce and terrible, her features as cold as stone. Rain pushed her way through the crowd as the second horse left the door, this one black, bearing a male rider she’d never seen before, but who glowed as brightly as the woman. And then, on a white horse, came Fin.
Rain burst through the crowd and grabbed Fin’s leg. The white horse reared, and Fin tumbled from its back into Rain’s arms. They both collapsed in a heap, and Rain held onto Fin’s arm fiercely, as though he might disappear if she released him.
A scream from ahead of them stopped the music, and the club was suddenly silent. The red-haired woman dropped off her horse as Rain and Fin scrambled for their feet. Fin trembled and Rain held him tighter, wrapping her arm around his waist.
“I knew it!” the red-haired woman shrieked. “You had this planned all along.” She reached her clawed hand out toward Fin, but Rain pulled him back. The woman whirled on her instead. “What did he tell you? That he was a human kept by fairies, trapped in their lands? That you could save him and be his bride?” She laughed, deep and terrible. “Those are the old stories, older than the world, but still people believe.”
“He told me nothing,” Rain said, surprised at how steady her voice sounded. “I object to this sacrifice.”
There were gasps in the crowd, and the red-haired woman smirked. “You object?” she asked incredulously. “And who are you to stop us from breaking the veil?”
“You can’t have him,” Rain said firmly.
The smirk fell from the woman’s face, and suddenly her expression was hideous, distorted in rage. “See if you can hold him.”
“You shouldn’t have come,” Fin croaked, his voice worse than it had been the night before. He jerked in a spasm, and she looped her other arm around him. He was so much bigger than she was.
“I couldn’t let you die,” she whispered into his chest.
His knees buckled, and she held him from collapsing. “Then don’t let go,” he gasped.
His body jerked again, tight, and the glow that surrounded him shifted into flames. Rain shrieked, and then realized that there was no pain; the flames didn’t burn.
“Take her jacket!” the red-haired woman shrieked.
Rain felt someone grab her collar and Fin’s body quaked, jerking hard against her arms. He groaned in pain.
“Peace of God and Peace of Man!” Jonas’s voice rang out.
The hands dropped away from her, and Jonas’s voice continued over the crowd, but she couldn’t hear the words over the bellows of pain from Fin. As she held onto him, Fin’s eyes burst open wide, and his body shuddered and began to shift. His waist shrunk in her arms and his face narrowed; he thrashed back and forth, hissing like a snake. She locked her wrists, bracing against his pulls.
Then his eyes widened again, and he looked at her in terror. “No!” he shouted, shadows drifting across his irises, as though he was seeing something else. “I won’t go! I won’t be tricked! Let go of me!” He pushed against her shoulders, struggling to get free.
“Fin, it’s me!” she shouted.
His hand tightened on her shoulder, pushing her away. Her fingers slipped on her wrist and she cried out. He pushed against her and she bit down on her lip hard, blinking back tears as she felt her teeth bite through, as the trickle of blood dripped down her chin.
And then Fin stopped struggling and the red-haired woman screamed.
“On every hole admitting moonlight!” Jonas called out.
“The blood is paid,” intoned the man on the black horse. “The sacrifice given.”
“I will not be trapped here!” the woman screamed, the brilliance surrounding her shifting from the fiery red of her hair to a hot white.
Fin threw his arms around Rain as the burst of energy seared over them, charging the air with static shocks that burst all along her body.
“On the four corners of the house!”
Fin yanked her forward, his arm around her shoulders, her arms both still locked around his waist. Rain saw Jonas in the crowd as he backed through it, brandishing his book of fairy tales like a ward, reading the charm from the page.
“On the place of my rest!”
They were almost through the crowd, Jonas scrambling backward, still looking at where they’d left the horses behind. Fin turned the door handle into the darkness of the field around Cronk Moar and he and Rain tumbled into the trench.
“And peace of God on myself,” Jonas said, dropping to the ground behind them. He scrambled up the side of the trench and looked back down. “Get up! The ground isn’t wet, remember?”
But Fin was murmuring in Manx, and the fog surrounded them—thick, cold, and almost suffocating for just a moment before the clouds above burst open in a shower of rain.
“Come on,” said Fin, reaching for Rain’s hand. She sobbed as she let go, her arms burning from exertion. He pulled her arm over his shoulder and lifted her into his arms. She was too exhausted to protest. Instead, Rain looked at Jonas, who was alternately staring up at the downpour then at the puddles forming around his feet.
“Fin, this is Jonas, my roommate,” she said. “He’s a poet.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Fin.
“Yes, well,” Jonas stuttered. “Next time maybe we can do this without the sacrifice.”
Fin adjusted Rain in his arms and started walking across the field. “I’d like that.”
Jonas had to double his steps to keep up, which made Rain feel just slightly better about her own height. “Rain,” Jonas said after a few moments. “You’re glowing.”
“It’s the sparkle of success,” Rain said tiredly. “Or the fact that I’m soaking through my coat.”
“No,” he said slowly, “I mean you’re glowing.”
Rain looked up at Fin and saw the same haze around him she’d seen in the club and then in the hill. She held up one of her own hands to the sky, and against the rain, she had the same glow, dimmer, but there.
Rain leaned into Fin’s shoulder. “Huh,” she said.
The house on Surrey was a welcome place to dry off, though no one had any clothes that would come close to fitting Fin, so he ended up in an oversized sweatshirt and a skirt of Cole’s (notably, not a skirt of Brianna’s, but the wardrobe choice didn’t seem a surprise to anyone but Rain). Cole and Brianna wandered off to bed, their usually unsociable selves, and Jonas, Rain, and Fin sprawled in the living room. Fin took up most of the couch and Rain curled up next to him. Jonas sat at the table, drinking a mug of Earl Gray.
“They’ve been trying to get out for a long time,” Fin said finally, his voice sounding almost normal after the storm. “They thought if they had one of us—one of the Danaan—as the sacrifice, it might break the bindings of the old treaty. So here I was. She laid a geas—a magical obligation—on me, and that was it. I couldn’t get out of it.”
“But you are now,” Rain said, hoping that it didn’t sound like a question.
“Yes, thanks,” Fin answered, pulling her into his body. He nodded at Jonas. “That was a foolish thing you both did, and dangerous, and I’m grateful.”
“Yes, well, I’m a poet, so that’s my excuse for foolishness,” said Jonas. “And that one must just like you a lot.”
“Mmmm,” murmured Rain, not bothering to deny it.
“But speaking of Rain,” Jonas said, “why does she glow now?”
“Residual effect of being in the mound?” Fin said hopefully.
“Jonas doesn’t glow,” Rain pointed out.
Jonas looked irritated. “You don’t know.” He ran his hand through his still damp hair. “What good is it to be—whatever you are—if you don’t know the answers?”
“Part of the fun is finding out,” Fin said, his carefree tone not hiding a single thing. Rain yawned in his arms. “I don’t suppose I could kit out here tonight? It’s a bit of a hike home to Douglas, and I don’t really fancy taking the shortcut through Cronk Moar.”
Rain pulled his arm more tightly around her. “Stay as long as you like,” she offered through a yawn.
Jonas stood and threw a blanket over them, then shook his head, grumbling about fairy hills and house guests as he went off to his room.
“Fin?”
“Yes?”
Rain snuggled back into him. “Don’t let go.”
He squeezed her tightly, and then let up, leaving his arm draped around her. She laced her fingers in his, and when she woke up the next morning, they were still intertwined.