Bloodyhoof did not pause. His gait did not falter. Salvation gave him a burst of brilliant horse confidence and he leaped through the hole with me on his back.
His front legs came down on the gravel behind the glass and chrome monstrosity that was the Carlsons’ house. We immediately skidded on the rocks, slowing as fast as the stallion could, so we didn’t smack full into the building’s side.
We were across the lake from my cabin, on the gravel drive that looped around my lawyer neighbor’s too-expensive vacation home.
Magnus’s magic-sensing enhancement had stayed in the veil. We were back to real world navigating by horse sense and my normal ability to see magic.
It’d have to do.
Aaron Carlson stood next to his BMW, a suitcase by his side and his mouth agape. His wife stood in the door of the house, face white as a sheet as if she was about to throw up.
They must have come up from The Cities for a long weekend and were unpacking their car.
Aaron pointed at the lake. “A man in a kilt hopped the fence and dove into the water.” He, thankfully, knew about the magicals of Alfheim.
I reined Bloodyhoof around. We were on the opposite side of the lake from the cottage’s peninsula.
The kelpie had a straight shot through the water. We did not.
“Aaron!” I said. “Call Bjorn Thorsson at Raven’s Gaze. Tell him I’m chasing a kelpie.” I reined Bloodyhoof toward the road. It’d be faster than going along the shore.
“Kelpie? Damn.” He pulled his phone out his pocket. “Claire! You and the girls stay away from the shore.” He waved me off. “Go.”
Sal wanted me to know that she liked this mundane man, though she could do without his terrified wife. Terrified wives were not warriors.
“Please stop,” I muttered to my axe. “Ha!” I called and took Bloodyhoof up the driveway to the road. Thankfully the plows had come through, and the stallion quickly returned to a gallop.
I had no idea if we’d get there in time, or if the cottage had a way to ward off the kelpie. But we had to try.
We made the peninsula quickly and Bloodyhoof slowed to thread his way between the trees. We passed the red oak where the dryads had first appeared, then the leaning cedar. Each showed their normal level of natural magic. No signs of extra fae-borne contamination.
We broke through the trees into the space in front of the small fence surrounding Ellie’s cottage.
Her home was still here. Still solid with no telltale extra magical energy signaling that it was about to move. We’d made it in time.
So had the kelpie.
He sat on the fence next to the gate, legs spread wide and knocking the heels of his boots against the fence post with a rhythmic thump thump.
He sniffed. “There ye are,” he said in his otherwise lovely Scottish accent. “Here I thought I’d have to do this all by mah lonesome.”
He held out his hand to call Bloodyhoof. The stallion ignored him.
We should kill him now, Sal pushed into my head. Kelpies were a level of danger that could not be left unchecked.
The kelpie frowned. “Gie off th’ horse, ye ugly doughnut of a monster. Face me like a man.”
Riding Bloodyhoof gave me an advantage. “Leave before I snap your neck,” I said.
He laughed. “Oh, ye pathetic animated pile o’ corpse dung.” He slapped his chest. “She’s gonnae give me mah bridle, d’ye understand? She stole mah property, an’ she’s gonnae pay.” His face cinched up and he sniffed at the air. “I smell it clear as day, her protection enchantments be damned.”
Was he following the bridle or Ellie? I couldn’t parse how much of what he said was bluster from how well he could sense Ellie through the concealments.
“They all pay, the lasses,” he said. “Dumb little fillies, aye? Come too close, they do, and th’ loch, it calls me.” He slapped his chest again. “Someone’s got tae teach th’ lessons.”
I could offer to broker the bridle in exchange for him leaving, but I didn’t think he’d go without inflicting some evil. They all pay, after all. If it wasn’t Ellie, it’d be Aaron’s wife and daughters. Or Akeyla. Or Sophia. He’d find at least one lass to harm before he made his way back to his homeland.
One cannot reason with a kelpie, Sal pushed.
“Oh, look at ye! Big mean paladin. Thinkin’ about how to save th’ world, are ye? Good on ye.” He slapped his knee. “Is that lady of an axe talkin’ to ye?” He slapped his knee again. “O’ course she is.” He shook his head.
“Every elf in Alfheim knew the moment you touched one of their lakes,” I said.
He threw his arms wide. “An’ yet not one of your wankpuffin mates has come to help ye or your lovely lass, my dear walkin’ mound o’ goblin excrement.” He closed one eye and pretended to peer at me as if reading the world from my expression. “I wonder how come that is.”
He understood Ellie’s concealments.
The bridle is part of him, Sal said.
So part of him had, like me, gotten inside the enchantments. And now that part was no longer affected. But from the way he sniffed the air, his breaking of the concealments was only partial—or the cottage was actively fighting him.
Kill him, Sal said.
I knew Sal was correct—the danger this kelpie presented ranged well beyond the threat to the town St. Martin had carried in with him. It ranged beyond his clear and present danger to Ellie. She had me. She had the cottage.
If the kelpie got away, he’d go on a murder spree. “If I chop off your legs, you won’t be able to run to the lake,” I said.
He frowned. “She’s gonnae give herself tae me willingly. They always do, y’ brutish plum.”
A flare of magic moved along the far roofline of the cottage’s new sunroom addition. Someone with exceptionally high amounts of natural magic was creeping along back there, doing her best to keep quiet and invisible.
Ellie. She’d come out the door on the other side of the cottage and was sneaking up on the kelpie, who sensed her but couldn’t see her.
I would not look and give away her presence. The magic roaring up and over the roof rivaled the intensity of anything I’d seen from the elves and I had no idea what that meant, or how she would use it, or if she could, or…
Or if she’d get hurt.
And for the second time in all this, the hole left behind by my stolen mate magic became a gulf. We weren’t connected and I had no idea, or feeling, or gut understanding, data, words—anything—to tell me a truth I could trust. I was out here as blind as the kelpie and full of every single yearning and need and desire I’d experienced this morning but without the safety net.
No matter what I did, the certainty that the woman I loved wasn’t going to reject me had evaporated at Titania’s hands.
And there it was, the most familiar and agonizing of all the knives in my gut.
The kelpie peered at me. “Och, ye poor dear laddie.” He leaned toward Bloodyhoof. “Ye yearn.” He clapped his hands. Bloodyhoof neighed and tossed his head, but reading my emotions held the kelpie’s attention.
Ellie rounded the corner of the addition, her back against the wall and a baseball bat in her hand. Her magic coiled in opposite directions from itself as green, blue, and a scattering of red flame-like licks. She moved as a double helix of power.
I’d never, not once in all her time in Alfheim, seen anything other than mundane-level wisps of magic around her body. The cottage always drained it off at night.
It wasn’t drained right now.
The kelpie hopped off the fence. “Will she love ye when this is all said an’ done? I doubt it.” He sniffed the air, leaned back against the rail, and smirked up at me. “She knows what ye are. She loves the idea o’ an attack dog.” He sniffed the air again. “Until that dog kills somethin’ in front o’ her. Lasses dinnae like guts on the floor.”
Killing him might make everything he’d just said come true. Ellie might turn away. I put my hand on Sal’s handle anyway.
“That’s how ye show all yer ugliness, paladin. All those scars take on meanin’ when ye slice an’ dice, aye?” He sniffed once more and his face crunched up as if he was confused about something.
Ellie ran across the yard, bat up and aimed at his head.
I needed to keep his attention. Once Ellie smacked him and he was down, I’d get between them. “Shut up, kelpie!” I barked.
He glared and pointed up at me. “I ne’er kill where th’ lasses can see! I’m th’ beauty that lets them—”
The bat slammed against his right temple with enough force to knock him sideways. He rolled with it, twisting around and doing a header over the fence into the yard.
I slapped Bloodyhoof’s neck. “Jump the fence, boy!”
Ellie swung the bat again. “Submit, kelpie!” she screamed.
Bloodyhoof backed up to do as asked, but stopped.
The kelpie roared as he stood up. “Submit tae what, lass?” He rolled his shoulders. “I smelled ye but I couldn’t see ye beyond th’ fence. Nice of ye tae knock me in from th’ other side.” He rubbed the side of head. “Where’s mah bridle, mah sweet an’ lovely mistress?”
“Bloodyhoof…” I said. He wouldn’t jump the fence.
“I burned it,” Ellie said.
The kelpie laughed. “Ye did no such thing, sweets. I’d know.”
The place of the helpful fae magic is beyond the fence, isn’t it? Sal asked.
“Yes,” I said.
The stallion is like the kelpie. He’s seeing one thing and smelling another. That’s why he won’t jump.
“You can’t hurt me.” Ellie held the bat between them. “The rules say that whoever has the bridle controls the kelpie.”
The kelpie laughed again. “Let’s talk about what control means, shall we?” He quickly thrust his chest out to scare and startle Ellie.
“You gotta trust me,” I said to the horse. “You’ll be safe if you take the leap.”
Ellie’s magic condensed down toward her, but it didn’t respond as if she could direct it toward the kelpie. “Let the elf horse in!” she yelled.
The energy around the cottage shifted and the boundary at the fence pushed toward us as if reaching out to Bloodyhoof. The horse snorted.
Salvation pushed out her own inquiry to the cottage’s magic.
The horse can enter, Sal said. I cannot. I am dangerous.
So was I.
The kelpie slapped his chest again. “Ye need tae be specific, lass,” he drawled.
He was too close to Ellie. She held her ground, but the kelpie was taller and stronger.
I could drop Sal again. I could leave her behind. But I’d promised not to allow the fae to get her, and if the kelpie jumped the fence again, she’d be vulnerable. I was pretty sure I’d allowed the fae to get Hrokr. And that kelpie—
“Let Salvation through!” I yelled at the cottage. At the world. At the giant ash tree in the yard and at the kelpie. “Please,” I whispered.
The air shifted toward warmth as if the world had stepped back from its winter dormancy and decided to hold onto its summer life.
Bloodyhoof tossed his head. His front quarters tensed, then his hind. And the three of us jumped the fence into the cottage’s yard.
I don’t know if the cottage listened to me, or if something else did, but my horse rammed the kelpie into the ash tree with such force I heard bones snap.
I jumped off the horse.
The kelpie panted and thrust his chin at Ellie. “I’m gonnae drag ye under an’ eat yer eyeballs, ye pissy little frog-faced—” he yelled.
I curled my hand around his throat. “My axe wants to cut you in half.” I pulled Sal from her scabbard and swung her blade at the tree just above his head. I stopped her momentum a fraction of an inch before cutting into the bark. I did, though, skim curls off his head.
He yelped when Ellie pressed the end of the bat into his wounded shoulder. “You can’t intimidate us when we’re both on the same side of the fence, now can you?”
He groaned. I grinned.
“Control means you do as commanded,” Ellie said. “Do you understand that you must submit to and follow the commands of the individual who possesses your bridle?”
“Yes,” the kelpie hissed.
“I command you to go back to your loch,” Ellie said. “I command you to inflict no more harm. You are to say nothing of me or my home. You will listen for my call, and when I desire your company, you will come. Do you understand these commands?”
The kelpie groaned. “Yes,” he hissed out like a deflating tire.
“If you break these commands, I will destroy you and your bridle. Do you understand the consequences?”
“Yes,” he hissed out a third time.
She pointed the gate. “Leave.”
We need to kill him, Sal said.
The helix of magic around Ellie flared up toward the sky. “Not yet,” she responded.
The kelpie looked confused.
Ellie snarled. Her eyes shimmered dark with the cosmos. Magic flared from their sides in much the same way as it had from Hrokr’s while we were in the veil—like a witch about to overheat. “I will string a violin with your entrails, horse.” Her voice echoed between the cottage and the trees. “I will drain your loch and burn your bones.”
He blinked. “Witch,” he breathed.
“Kelpie in five pieces,” she responded as she moved her hand to indicate the chopping off of his head and limbs.
He blinked rapidly as he worked his face away from his terror and into a mask of pure, unadulterated hate. He pointed at me. “Ye’re gonnae pay, dead boy.”
Magical dust blossomed around Ellie as if her emotions had exploded into a sweet, lovely firework. It burst up and out, then flowed down her shoulders, over her arms, to settle around her hands.
“Harm my mate and I will geld you with a dull saw blade, you pathetic excuse for a fae,” Ellie said.
She will, Sal said.
I had no doubt that if we didn’t drain off her overheating magical power, she would—and that she might not be able to stop with just the kelpie.
“Listen to Titania’s daughter,” I growled.
The kelpie slowly pushed off the tree and limped toward the gate. He stopped just before crossing and looked over his shoulder. His lips thinned to a line.
He stepped through and disappeared, hopefully forever.