“THE MERMAIDS DIDN’T KEEP THE RAIN OFF YOU DURING YOUR PADDLE?” KIT TUCKED THE BLANKET OVER LIVY’S shoulder.
Her hair was still damp from the rain, sticking itself into ringlets. “Not their department. I think they try to get people extra wet.”
“Oh, just like me, then.” He captured her laugh in his mouth, rolling her onto her back. He lay kissing her another minute or two, still turned on even though they’d just had sex.
It was Saturday afternoon and she had pulled in to his beach on her kayak, as pre-arranged by text. Grady and Justin were manning the garage from lunch till closing today. Owner’s privilege, getting to take the afternoon off, he’d loftily told them. Of course, they knew what he’d be doing instead of working.
“This is fun,” he murmured. He’d found himself saying it during most of their dates over the past couple of weeks. It was the most fun he’d had in a while, actually. Livy surprised him. When he got her alone, she blossomed from formidable, chilly Forest Service scientist into naughty, up-for-anything friend with benefits. Even setting the sex aside, they hit it off great. They made each other laugh, and kept finding interests in common.
His “little crush” was developing into something that made him think about her at all hours. And worry about her safety at the hands of the goblins, even though Flowerwatch had said they wouldn’t touch her. He didn’t trust any goblin.
“Ever gone swimming at night in summer, when the bioluminescent plankton’s sparkling in the water?” Livy asked.
“Mmm. I love it when you say things like ‘bioluminescent plankton.’ Yeah, ’course I have. It’s awesome. Like swimming through stars.”
“It’s times like that I see why people used to believe in nature spirits. It totally looks like magic. So I don’t know about mermaids, but some kind of sparkly water faeries—maybe I could believe in those. Almost.”
She still grinned, but Kit’s heartbeat began doing funny things, the way it did when he was about to try something especially stupid. “Huh.” He slid off her, leaving one arm draped across her. “What about the forest? You spend a lot of time there. Any…run-ins with the fae, like you and Skye used to make up stories about?”
“The fae?” Livy lifted her eyebrows, teasing but impressed. “Scholarly word there.”
“It’s what people call them sometimes.” He wasn’t even smiling now. He just watched her, and waited for her answer.
She smoothed her hair back and folded an arm behind her head, gazing at the log beams of his ceiling. “Well…I could almost believe it some days. Once in a while.”
His heart beat against his ribs. “Yeah? Why’s that?”
“Skye’s said this too. Like, there’s been a couple of times we swear we saw a path that wasn’t there before. Then we couldn’t find it again later. Just goes to show how easy it is to get turned around in the woods.”
“Was this at dusk? At night?”
“Hmm. I guess right as it was getting dark, yeah. Things get harder to see then, is probably why.”
“Listen. You ever see a path like that, don’t follow it.”
Her eyes turned to him, bemused. “What?”
He lifted up onto his elbow. “I’m serious. Promise me you won’t follow paths like that.”
“Why not?” Doubt sharpened her voice.
“There’s…” He dropped his gaze to his hand, which he ran along her warm skin, between breasts and navel. “My family, we’ve all seen things, things people wouldn’t believe, things I wouldn’t have believed until I saw them myself. First and foremost, between dusk and dawn, do not follow paths that weren’t there before.”
She hitched up onto her elbow too, dislodging his hand. “You’re kind of freaking me out. What is it you think would happen?”
He was almost shaking. He couldn’t just go telling people, especially someone he liked as much as her. But now he’d said this much, and he needed to finish, or he’d sound like a serial killer. Or at least someone aiding and abetting a serial killer.
“Well…you know how there’ve been people found dead in the woods, like that fisherman a while back?”
“He died of exposure, if I recall. It was cold. I mean, yeah, people get lost and die in the woods once in a while, all over the world. It’s not usually foul play.”
“I’m not talking foul play, exactly. Not by other humans.” Kit already wished he hadn’t started down this road, but now he was stuck on it. “It’s more like…enchantment.”
Her eyes narrowed. She waited.
“Fae,” he said, his voice weak. “Goblins, technically. A type of fae. They…followed my family here, generations ago. It was…”
“Wait. What?” Her voice had gone flat, her demeanor buttoning itself all the way back up to hard-line scientist, even while she lay there naked. “Goblins?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re messing with me. Right?”
He shook his head. “I wish.”
She studied him a few more seconds. “You really believe this.”
“It’s a long story and I know it sounds crazy. But I can prove it.”
“How?”
“In order to hear them yourself…it’s dangerous and I don’t recommend it, but you could summon them in the forest. They might answer. They’d open a path to you, then if you don’t take the path you’re all right; that’s the important thing. But you’d at least see the path, and hear them, so you’d know it’s true…”
Livy scooted off the bed and grabbed up her underwear, bra, jeans. She started putting them back on. “Okay, that? Freaks me out even more. You realize you sound like a murderer? You do know that?” Her voice quivered.
His heart dropped as he realized how badly he’d frightened her, how horrible he’d made himself look. “I’m not. I swear. Wait—Livy, come on. Listen to me, please. I’ve never hurt anyone. What I’m trying to do is to keep them from hurting anyone.”
She rushed into her socks, her sweatshirt. “In that case I’m thinking we have very different belief systems. I should…go back and check on Skye…I just have a lot to deal with.” She wouldn’t look at him.
“God, don’t—all right, wait, there’s another way.” He scrambled out of bed and pulled his boxers back on. “I have the letter from my great-grandmother that explains it all. It’s here in the house. I’ll get it and show you.”
“No, I really ought to go. Maybe we can talk about it later.” Dressed in all but her boots, which she’d left by the front door, she padded quickly to the spiral staircase and descended.
Kit chased after her. “Livy, I am not insane. You know I’m not. Give me a chance. Stay and listen.”
At the door, she held up her hand to silence him. Her eyes closed a moment, then opened to regard him with something between compassion and hurt. “I really don’t have time. Right now. For this.” She said the last two words softly, but they fell upon him like hammers.
As she stuffed her feet into her boots, he stood watching, shirtless, barefoot, trembling. “You think I’m crazy. I don’t blame you. But I am begging you…”
Livy slid into her coat and rounded on him. “Goblins? You’re begging me to listen to how there are goblins in the forest? I’m a scientist, Kit. What do you think I’m going to say?”
“I think you should look for proof. Not run off.”
She zipped up her coat, lips set tight. “Yeah, well, maybe there’s more wrong here than just the goblin story. I’ll see you later.” She slipped out and trudged down the beach to her kayak.
Kit stood with the door open, letting the cold wind slice against his skin, watching her shrink in his line of sight without a single glance back at him.
He slammed the door shut, kicked it with his bare toes, then closed his eyes and leaned his forehead on it. If the curse was going to kill him young the way it had for his ancestors, he fervently wished it would get on with it.
Livy slashed at the water with her paddle. The cold air stabbed her lungs, and her shoulders burned with exertion, but she kept at it. She paddled farther than necessary, past the tip of the island and out into the middle of the inlet. The afternoon wind picked up, rocking her kayak and frothing the little waves into whitecaps. Belatedly, she recognized the danger of being out here alone in hypothermia-inducing waters.
Though probably it was no more dangerous than having sex with a delusional freak.
She bowed her head and let her paddle rest across the top of the kayak. Damn it. He had seemed so fabulous. Of course he’d have to turn out to be deranged.
She plunged the paddle blade into the water to swing back toward shore.
A gray wave slapped back. Stiffened with cold, her hands fumbled. The paddle escaped her grip and knifed into the water. She grabbed at it, but it washed out of reach, floating away from her with the next wave.
She looked around in despair for something else to use as a paddle— her water bottle? Driftwood? Where the hell were the stray flip-flops sailing through the water when you actually needed them? All the while she kept an eye on her paddle, which hadn’t gotten too far away yet. But if it did, maybe someone on shore was watching, and would figure out she needed help, or at least she could phone someone to bring out another boat and tow her in before it got dark…
A madrone log bobbed up alongside her kayak, five feet long with an end full of twigs. She seized it. Drenched in chilly salt water, it numbed her hands at once, but she plunged it in and managed to use it to turn the kayak toward her drifting paddle. She stretched the branch toward it, aiming to catch the blade in the twigs. Her first three swipes fell short by several inches.
Tears stung her eyes. “Come on,” she wailed. “Please.”
Something poked up from the water and batted her paddle back toward her. Something like…a hand. Except green, and webbed. It dunked back under before she got a good look. Her paddle, meanwhile, skated a foot closer. Livy smacked the branch down on top of it, raked it in, and pulled it back aboard.
“Oh my God,” she mumbled in relief.
She tossed the branch back in the water, then sat motionless, watching the choppy surface where the hand-thing had disappeared. What had she just seen?
Seal flipper, maybe. Fish happening to jump at a lucky moment. Sodden log or trash getting pushed to the surface for a second.
Definitely not a mermaid or a water-goblin or anything of that sort. God damn Kit Sylvain. He was making her see things now.
The sun was setting by the time she hauled the kayak onto the public dock in Bellwater. Her arms shook with exhaustion and her hands stung with cold.
She sat in her car a while after loading up the boat, staring alternately at her phone and out the window. Kit hadn’t tried to contact her in the hour since she’d left. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or hurt.
When the streetlights came on at the dock, she switched on the car and drove home.
Skye had just returned from her shift when Livy walked in. The smell of espresso wafted off her even from five feet away. She was hunched over the kitchen counter, texting someone. Not Livy, it would seem. Probably Grady. Skye and Grady seemed thick as thieves lately. Ugh, Sylvain men. Fucking womanizers.
Livy threw her keys onto the counter and kicked out of her boots. Skye gave her a double-take, concern entering her otherwise impassive face.
Livy shook her head, and shuffled forward to get a glass of water. “I know how to pick ’em, Skye.”
Skye lifted her eyebrows.
Livy swallowed half the glass of water. “Yeah. Kit. He’s…ugh. How do I not see they’re crazy until after I’ve slept with them? How do they hide it so well?”
Skye stood up straight, elbows leaving the counter. “Crazy?”
“I know. Judgment-laden word, not cool. Sorry. Either he honestly believes some weird shit, or he’s trying to mess with me in this lame and bizarre way. Or he’s actually dangerous. I mean, maybe I should be thankful I’m here and not wrapped in duct tape in his crawlspace, right?”
“Duct tape,” Skye said, skeptically.
Livy finished the glass of water, set it down, and pushed her tangled hair out of her face. “Oh, I know, I should listen to him. Just—God, I’m embarrassed even to tell you what he said. It’s so…I’m sorry, the only word is ‘crazy.’”
“What he said?”
Livy shuffled to a chair and flopped into it. “I would never tell this to anyone but you, Skye. He says, get this, that I should be careful in the woods, because goblins live there.” Livy covered her face in mortification. “He seemed genuinely concerned. What the hell?”
Skye’s hissing intake of breath made Livy drop her hands and frown at her.
Skye had gone white. She stared wide-eyed at Livy, lips parted but without saying a word.
Alarm flashed through Livy. “What? What’s wrong?”
Skye turned and ran out of the kitchen. Her footsteps thumped down the hall to her room, then thumped back, and she smacked her sketchbook down in front of Livy on the table, open to a page where she’d drawn a creepy gremlin creature.
Livy frowned at it. “Okay? You showed me this before. What? You’re saying…this is a goblin?”
Skye just stared into her eyes, breathing hard. She seemed unable even to nod or shake her head. That always did happen when Livy tried to ask important questions about what had happened to her, though…
Livy examined the picture again, then looked back at her sister. “This is something you believe too? You seem as concerned as he did. Look, I don’t—”
Skye grabbed Livy’s wrist and pulled her out of the chair. Next thing Livy knew, Skye was shoving her boots at her, grabbing car keys and the sketchbook, and hauling Livy to the front door.
“Skye! What? What are we doing?”
Skye stalked down the front path, beckoning impatiently to Livy. Stumbling into her chilly, damp boots, Livy hurried after her.
“Where are we going?” She followed Skye to her silver Volkswagen.
“Kit,” Skye bit out, in the numb-tongued way she did when she had to come up with a word instead of echoing it. She swung into the Scirocco’s driver’s seat and started the car.
Livy jumped in, but only to keep Skye from harm, not because she approved of this errand. “Skye, whoa. I really don’t want to see him.”
Skye tightened her lips and backed the car out of the driveway.
Though Livy kept up a stream of “Skye,” and “Come on,” and “No,” Skye drove them straight through town and across the bridge onto Crabapple Island.