David’s cheek throbbed and his ear stung—a small price to pay for such an awesome adventure. Faerie vanished, along with any sight of Mal—but no hounds with freakishly glowing eyes burst through the invisible gateway, and the stream continued to burble as if to say, Who, me? I would never.
Alun, still drop-dead gorgeous, was apparently also straight-up pissed, although why he should be grumpy after the incredible adrenaline rush of their escape was beyond David. They’d made it, hadn’t they? Although David still had no clue why they’d had to run.
He helped David to his feet, but didn’t speak a single word to him on the way back to the car, or spare a glance as he burned rubber—okay, scattered gravel—out of the parking lot.
As they drove down I-5, David darted a glance at Alun’s profile. His perfect jaw was clenched and he was staring straight ahead at the nonexistent traffic.
“So. Do all these shindigs end like that?”
“Mmmphm.”
“Because usually when I’m in the middle of a riot, it doesn’t involve dogs, swords, or impromptu tidal waves. So, you know, this was different.”
“Mmmphm.”
David stared out the window and counted three mileposts before he tamped down his irritation enough to try again. “The fourth time I was abducted by aliens, I managed to hijack the spaceship, drive through Jack in the Box for cheeseburgers, then land in the middle of the cricket pitch at Oxford.”
“Mmmphm.”
Brother. David gave up. Clearly Alun was not in his happy place. When they pulled up in front of his house, he reached to open the door.
“Don’t,” Alun barked. “Wait for me.”
He flung open the driver’s-side door and slammed it behind him.
Just freaking great. Dr. Bossy strikes again. Someone seriously needed to give the fae some tips on how to win friends and influence people. David slumped in his seat, arms crossed, and waited for Alun to stalk around the car. Then he crowded so close after opening the door that David couldn’t climb out.
“Do you mind?”
“Mmmphm.”
“Oh, do not start that again.” David shoved Alun’s granite-like chest and managed to thrust him back far enough to slither out of the car. He marched up the front sidewalk with Alun dogging his steps as if they were attached at the hip.
Which, unfortunately, they were not.
He stopped on the porch and turned to face the mountain of surly man in back of him. “Gosh, Dr. Kendrick. Thank you for a lovely evening. The sex was great, but maybe next time we should bring some travel games so we’ll have something to talk about on the ride home.”
“Open the door, David, and let me in.”
“Why? Is this some juju like inviting vampires across the threshold?”
“No.” A muscle ticked in Alun’s cheek. “I need to speak with your aunt.”
Not to me. Not “I can’t bear to leave without touching you again.” Not even a hint that he wanted anything to do with David at all.
“It’s four o’clock in the morning. She’s not well. What makes you think I’ll wake her up to be scowled at by you?”
Alun sighed and ran a hand over his forehead, surprise flickering across his face. He forgot what he looks like now. “Let me in. Please. I would like to speak with your aunt, but I would really, really prefer not to be behind the wheel when this potion wears off at dawn.”
Crap. The potion. “Right. Sure. Um . . . come on—”
The door swung open. Aunt Cassie was standing there, leaning on her cane, with all of David’s honorary aunts gathered in the living room behind her. All of them were wearing identical dark-gray homespun robes. D’oh—I forgot about their solstice party.
“Please join us, Lord Cynwrig, Davey.” She gestured for them to enter. “We need to talk.”
Goddess. A full druid circle. After he’d learned Cassie’s nature, Alun should have assumed it—druids never worked alone. He ought to have realized that the extraordinary effects of David’s candies and coffee and potpourri weren’t near-mystical at all—they were real magic.
“Auntie,” David bustled inside and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. “What are you doing up at this hour?” He met the somber gaze of each of the other women in turn. “Don’t your little parties usually end earlier than this?”
A rawboned woman with a long salt-and-pepper braid stepped forward. “We had to wait until you got home, pumpkin, so we could give you your gifts. Although . . .” She peered more closely at David’s face, tracing his cheek with a fingertip, then pinned Alun with the druid equivalent of the evil eye. He barely managed to endure it without retreating out the door. “I sense there are more pressing issues to discuss. How did you come by this bruise?”
A bruise? David was injured? When had that happened? Alun surged forward, only to run into a wall of druid anger when all seven of the women turned on him.
David caught the woman’s hand. “I took an accidental elbow to the cheek, totally not Alun’s fault. It’ll be fine with a little ice and ibuprofen, Aunt Regan, so don’t fuss.”
David might as well have spoken to an oak grove, because Regan and three others hustled him to the sofa and coerced him into lying down. With the force of the druids’ attention aimed at David, Alun was able to breathe again without his lungs feeling like stone. Only Cassie was still regarding him, grim and still, her hands folded on the head of her cane.
Regan tucked a coverlet around David’s legs as two women hurried into the kitchen and returned with a bag of frozen peas, a glass of water, and two pills in a porcelain egg cup.
David raised himself on his elbows. “Thank you, aunties, but—”
“Take the pills and lie down,” Regan ordered.
He sighed but did as he was told, then accepted the peas and held them against his face.
Cassie rapped her cane on the floor three times. “I declare our gathering at an end.”
Regan frowned. “Are you sure, Cassie? With the interrupted ritual, your health—”
“Enough. I must speak privately with Davey and Lord Cynwrig. We’ll talk tomorrow. Good night.”
After each woman kissed David’s forehead, they filed out, glaring at Alun on the way. Regan was second to last in line.
“Don’t look so terrified, Lord Cynwrig. We don’t cut out people’s hearts on stone altars by the light of the full moon anymore.”
The next woman, with a platinum bob and a double strand of pearls over her robe, snorted. “That was nothing but Roman propaganda.” She slanted a sly glance at Alun on her way out. “The sacrifices took place at twilight. More time for the barbecue that way.”
He closed the door behind the last one and gave fervent thanks to the Goddess for their absence. The weight of their druid ire notwithstanding, he had no wish for them to witness his imminent transformation. If he had a choice, he’d spare David and Cassie the sight as well, but the chances of hitting early rush hour traffic and being delayed were too great.
Alun moved to the foot of the sofa where he had an unobstructed view of David. The achubydd glow wasn’t as obvious here in the Outer World, but Alun could no more tear his gaze away than he could cut out his own heart. So beautiful, inside and out—and now permanently beyond my reach. David lifted the peas off his face, and Alun winced at the bruise blooming under his eye. My fault.
“Since you both obviously know what’s going on—and don’t think I missed that all the girls seemed in on the joke too—I think it’s time to spill the magic beans. I warned you before—no secrets. Screw the supernatural NDA.”
Cassie sighed and sank into a rocking chair next to the head of the sofa. “Davey—”
“So what are you? You and the girls? I take it you’re supes too.”
“We are more . . . meta-supernatural, I suppose.”
“That doesn’t tell me squat, Auntie.”
“We’re—we’re druids.”
“Seriously? What else have I always believed that turns out is a total fricking lie? You’re probably not even my real aunt.” Cassie dropped her gaze to her cane, and David slapped the peas over his eyes. “Oh lord. You’re not. Perfect. Just. Fricking. Perfect.”
She reached for him, laying a hand on his shoulder. “You’re as much my family as if our ties were of blood, not affection. The secrecy was for your own protection.”
“I hate that excuse. I hate it almost as much as But that’s how we’ve always done it. Ignorance is never positive. Don’t you think I should have the whole story and be allowed to make my own choices?”
“He’s right. He deserves the whole story—as do I, if I’m to keep him safe.”
She nodded. “Very well. David’s parents were killed when he was just a child, barely more than a toddler.”
He peeked out from under the peas. “I was four, Auntie.”
Alun’s sword hand clenched, his instinct to arm himself and seek out the perpetrators. His gaze flicked to Cassie’s face. “Was it a fae attack?”
She shook her head, her mouth twisted in a half smile. “Ironically enough, no. A simple car accident—drunk driver, something that would never have occurred if they’d remained in Faerie.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive. We cast a number of divination spells, although we weren’t able to do it until two years after their deaths.”
“Two years. Not long. The evidence should have still been relatively fresh.”
David glared at Alun with his uncovered eye. “Two years in foster care seemed like eternity to me. One-third of my life at the time, bouncing from foster home to foster home, waiting for the place to blow up around me.”
Alun leaned against the wall, folding his arms so he wouldn’t give in to the temptation to hold David. “Did the homes really explode?”
Cassie cut a glance at her nephew. “Davey exaggerates. No actual pyrotechnics were involved, but I can’t deny that his presence was enlivening to the human families.”
An achubydd child without a trained caregiver? I should think so. He studied the flat line of David’s lips, the tense muscles in the side of his throat. “Why did it take you so long to find him?”
“We had no idea that his family existed. His parents had managed to stay off the grid for their entire lives. We only discovered them by accident, after they were already dead, because of some anomalies in the ley lines. We didn’t know of the existence of a child until later, and it took time to locate him inside the foster system, and longer to fabricate the credentials to allow me to take custody of him.”
“Why did you want me though? I mean, am I supernatural too, like you and Alun?”
“Yes, cariad.”
“Really?” David sat up, letting the peas fall into his lap. “What’s my superpower? Is it something cool? Can I turn invisible? Fly? Read minds?” He scrunched his nose. “I don’t have to drink blood or anything, do I?”
She chuckled and shook her head. “None of those. You are able to comfort the sick, aid in healing.”
“So what you’re saying is . . . I’m a nurse.”
“And sometimes,” she said, “if you encounter a being motivated by greed and self-aggrandizement, your superpower is to die.”
David fell back into the nest of pillows. “Well, that sucks.”