Tempestuous

  “No,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  “Good.” His own voice was cold and hard in his ears. “Then tell me what you’re doing here.” He stood and backed away from Kelley where she knelt upon the ground. “Are you with them? The ones killing the Lost—”

  “No!” Kelley protested, climbing to her feet. “How could you even think such a thing! I came here with Fenn to help stop them!”

  Fennrys. Sonny felt as though he’d been sucker punched. Kelley was with Fennrys. “I see,” he said.

  The blood drained from Kelley’s cheeks. “I don’t think you do,” she said.

  Sonny uttered a brief, humorless laugh and turned to walk away.

  “I lied, Sonny,” Kelley said abruptly.

  Sonny’s glance snapped back to her face. “What?”

  “I lied,” she said emphatically. “I almost can’t believe that you haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “You . . .”

  “Lied. To you. About you. About the way I feel.”

  “So you never—”

  “Stopped loving you.”

  It was Sonny’s turn for shock. He shook his head slowly in disbelief, uncertain whether he’d really heard what he thought. “But . . . Faerie can’t lie,” he said.

  “Of course they can!” Kelley said. “They do it all the time. They just do it while telling the truth.”

  He stared at her. A single word clawed up his throat and tore from his lips: “Why?”

  “I . . .” Kelley hesitated. “I can’t tell you.”

  “I see.” Faerie games, Sonny thought bleakly. “May I ask, then,” he said with brittle politeness, “exactly how you managed such a thing?”

  His gaze followed Kelley’s hand as she dug into her pocket and pulled out the clover charm on its silver chain. Sonny stared at the green amber pendant for a long moment as it swung before his eyes, gleaming softly. Then he shook his head.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The charm lets me lie,” Kelley said, her cheeks turning red. “It reins in my . . . my Faerieness so well that I can lie just like a normal person.”

  “No,” Sonny said. “I understand how you did it. I do not understand why.”

  “I know. Just . . . let me explain,” Kelley pleaded. “I promise this will all make sense and then you and I can be together and things can get back to normal—”

  “No. Kelley.” Sonny stopped her before she could say anything else. His mind was reeling. “No. I don’t think they can.”

  “What?” Kelley’s voice cracked on the word. “What do you mean?”

  Sonny turned and looked at her. “I mean that—whatever’s really going on here—when this is all over, I’m going back to the Otherworld, Kelley. Alone.”

  “You can’t be serious. Do you really think I would have done what I did without a really good damned reason, Sonny? Is that what you think of me?”

  “No, Kelley. I—”

  “Then what? Is your going back to the Otherworld supposed to be some kind of punishment for me hurting you?” Kelley asked. “Is that it?”

  “No. I’m not punishing you.” His heart ached. “I wouldn’t do that. I just don’t know if I can ever actually trust you again.”

  “Because I lied to you.”

  “Because you can lie to me!” Sonny rounded on her, finally. Angry. Hurt. More hurt than he’d ever been and more angry than he’d ever thought possible. “How in hell will I ever know when you’re telling the truth?”

  “That’s called being human, Sonny!” Kelley almost shouted back at him. “No one ever knows! Some things you just have to take on faith and believe in at the risk of getting hurt. It’s one of the things that the Fair Folk will never understand, and it’s something that sets us apart from them. The fact that each and every time we believe in each other we take a risk. Because we know that it might not be truth. But we also know that it might be.”

  Sonny didn’t know what to say. Kelley was standing right in front of him, telling him she still loved him . . . and he stood there arguing with her. What in the name of the goddess was wrong with him? He didn’t know.

  Of course you do. You’re afraid.

  Sonny had never been afraid of anything in his life. Not like this. He’d faced down nightmares—Black Shuck and Wild Hunters, all manner of Faerie abominations—without so much as breaking a sweat. But this girl he’d once thought of as nothing more that a “silly little actress” could reduce him to a quivering boy. The thought of losing Kelley again sent panic tremors cascading down his limbs, and Sonny realized that the only thing he was afraid of was her absence. And as much as he’d tried to shield her all those times, tried to be her hero, Kelley wasn’t the one who needed protecting.

  What she’d done . . . he didn’t even remotely understand why she’d done it, but at least now he knew that it wasn’t because she’d stopped caring. Sonny wondered—if the tables had been turned—if he would have had the strength to drive her away.

  He doubted it. She was stronger than he was. He was proud of her.

  And it was killing Sonny to have her standing there in front of him, close enough to touch and so achingly beautiful. Her damp hair cascaded in dark auburn ringlets around her pale cheeks, and her eyes glittered fiercely, lashes spangled with water droplets. His Firecracker . . .

  “Don’t leave me, Sonny,” she said softly.

  It was too much.

  He was across the space between them in two strides, and she was in his arms again. Sonny shoved aside his uncertainty for the moment and lost himself in her kiss.

  “I cannot lose you again, Kelley,” he said urgently. “I will not. Not again. You have to tell me the truth. If this is not . . . real . . . if it’s not . . .”

  She kissed him, silencing his doubts as he gave in to the elation of having her in his arms once more.

  “Did that feel like a lie?” she whispered against his lips.

  Sonny pulled her close in a fierce embrace. Kelley’s hands splayed across his chest as he held her. He could feel the coolness of her fingertips dancing lightly in the hollow at the base of his throat.

  “Sonny,” she asked, after she’d been silent for a long moment, her head resting in the hollow of his shoulder, “where’s your Janus medallion?”

  “I lost it in the Otherworld,” he murmured, brushing his lip across the top of her hair. “Fighting alongside your other boyfriend, the Fennrys Wolf.”

  Kelley sputtered hotly. “He is not—”

  But Sonny silenced her with another kiss. He took her face in his hands so that he could look into her eyes. “I know,” he said. “It was a joke.”

  “It was a lousy one.”

  “Will you please tell me now why you lied to me, Kelley?” he asked.

  She hesitated for another moment, looking up at him. She opened her mouth to speak.

  Overhead, another cloud of demon birds swept past, cawing harshly, and Carys vaulted suddenly over the stone parapet, breathing heavily and bleeding from a cut over her eye. She nodded curtly to Kelley, then spoke directly to Sonny. “We could use you back in the fray. We are outnumbered.”

  Sonny reluctantly broke away from Kelley and looked back toward the main cavern, where the sounds of fighting had intensified. Suddenly, a terrible thought occurred to him. “Outnumbered and outwitted,” he said grimly, and swore under his breath, stooping to pick up the sword he’d borrowed from the huntress earlier.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Kelley asked.

  “He means this is no joyride, Princess,” Carys explained, wiping her forehead with the back of her arm. “No whim of an excursion. There is muscle and a lot of magick behind this attack.”

  “Thanks. Yeah. I got that.” Kelley bristled at the huntress. “Why are they doing this, Sonny? Why attack the Lost?”

  “Because they were defenseless,” he answered. “And because the attack here drew off all of Herne’s warriors that were topside. The two attacks were coordinated,
yes—but the objective, I think now, was not the sanctuary.”

  Carys’s eyes went wide. “It was the Tavern. . . .”

  In the distance, the sounds of violence erupted again, and the entire structure of the reservoir seemed to be in danger of collapsing. A rain of dirt and small stones rattled down the far rock face of the cavern, where a huddle of dryads shrieked and scrambled for cover.

  Carys’s expression became anguished.

  “Go,” Sonny said. He turned to Kelley and she nodded. He swung back to Carys and said, “Go—I’m right behind you.”

  The huntress nodded and disappeared swiftly back over the earthen wall.

  “Kelley . . .” Sonny turned to her. “I need you to do something.”

  “Anything,” she answered without hesitation.

  “I need you to go.”

  Anything except that, it seemed. “What?” She looked stricken. “Why? Sonny—”

  “It’s not that.” Sonny gripped her shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “I cannot go back up to the Tavern. But I need to find out what’s going on up there. Can you do that for me?”

  “Why can’t you come with me?”

  “Herne made me promise him I would not go back that way. I don’t know why.”

  “Oh . . .” Kelley went suddenly very still.

  Sonny looked at her, wondering.

  “You’re right,” she said abruptly. “You should stay here. I can handle this by myself.”

  She gazed up at him, unblinking, with those perfect green eyes, and Sonny felt a surge of longing. He’d only just gotten her back. How could he send her away again? “You know how to cast a veil now, right?” he said.

  Kelley nodded. “Yeah. Pretty good one.” She flickered out of sight and then reappeared right before his eyes.

  “That’s my girl,” he said, grinning. “Cast a veil and hold it fast. Don’t drop it for anyone. Not even Herne. Just find out what’s going on up there and come back and tell me. Can you do that?”

  “Of course I can.” She lifted her chin and returned his stare.

  “All right,” he said, wanting to hold her fast and not let her go. . . . “Go then.”

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  He felt his heart clench but struggled to smile encouragement.

  “Sonny . . .”

  He held a finger to her lips. “We’ll talk later,” he said. “For now, just . . . go.”

  “Okay.” Kelley nodded and headed toward the archway.

  “Kelley . . .”

  She stopped and looked back.

  “Be careful” was all Sonny could say. Then he turned his face away so that Kelley would not see what it cost him to let her leave him. Again.

  “You, too,” she said.

  When he looked back, the only thing left of her was the sound of her already invisible feet pounding up the dark passageway toward the tunnel.

  Chapter XVI

  Kelley slowed her pace as she approached the end of the corridor. She stepped up to the wall blocking her way and placed her hand on its smooth surface. It almost felt like water under her palm. A veil. A strong, magickal barrier between the passageway and Herne’s Tavern, which would have been impossible for almost anyone to break through. Kelley simply ran her fingertip down the center of the veil, and it parted as surely as if she’d just undone a zipper.

  She stepped into the hallway, staring at her finger. It tingled a bit.

  The polished marble floor branched off to the left and the right. Kelley mentally flipped a coin and followed the left passageway. It led through a series of galleries, curving toward the courtyard at the center of the Tavern. By the time she reached the yard, Kelley had been forced to step over no fewer than five bodies of dead Faerie warriors and she was nearly hyperventilating. The air in the garden was filled with the perfume of night-blooming flowers and Kelley gulped at it, trying to clear the horrid images of the dead Fae from her mind and maintain her focus and concentration enough so that her veil would not fall. Not, she thought, that it would do her any good if her heart kept beating so loudly.

  The garden courtyard lay silent, relatively undisturbed. At least, it certainly wasn’t the shambles it had been in the aftermath of Mabh’s attack on Halloween, when she’d come to claim her daughter. Rather, it was eerily still. Kelley noticed that all of the fire sprites—the tiny incandescent fae that had lit up the garden like strings of Christmas lights the last time she was there—were gone. Fled, most likely.

  The whole place had a stark, forlorn feeling to it. Moving between the delicate garden furniture and the splashing fountains, Kelley realized something was different. Wrong . . .

  Missing.

  The Greenman.

  The great old gnarled shrubby creature was gone. Kelley ran over to a hole in the earth that gaped like a jagged wound. It was the spot where Kelley had once seen the Greenman—all that was left of the Greenman—rooted and settled, a giant living lump of tangled forest greenery, drinking whiskey from a barrel-sized mug. It looked as though someone had dug him up by the roots and carted him away.

  Now there was only the scent of wet clay and the sharp, piney tang of broken branches. Bright green sap oozed from the splintered ends of roots still stuck in the ground. The hole went down so far that Kelley could barely see the bottom in the dim light.

  A splash of color in the corner of her eye caught her attention. Trampled in the dirt at the far edge of the hole was an orange floppy hat. Not far from it lay the crumpled form of a small, gnomelike creature. A dagger lay on the ground next to him and there was an arrow in his back. Kelley swallowed and turned away. There was nothing to be done for the poor thing—that much was certain.

  Over near where the fountain stood in the middle of the flagstone terrace, Kelley saw a dark shape spread out upon the ground. She approached it warily and saw that it was a large, dead bird. Kelley nudged it with her foot, turning it over. It was just like the ones that had attacked in the underground sanctuary, with midnight feathers on its back and long, tapered wings. Splashes of silver-gray and white ran down its front. Its beak was long and sharp—Kelley thought it looked like some kind of heron, maybe—and its eyes, frozen open in death, were blood-red. There was something familiar about the dead bird. It reminded her of . . . something. A powerful sense of recognition swept over her, and she could not tear herself free from the gaze of that unblinking crimson eye staring reproachfully up at her.

  Finally she turned away from the courtyard and went running through the Tavern halls, from room to sparkling room, checking to see if she could find anyone else. Here and there, another dead Fae warrior in glittering armor lay crumpled on the floor, but she found no one who could tell her what had happened. She investigated the ballrooms, the chandelier-festooned dining hall, the hidden oak-paneled hallway that led to the shores of the lake surrounding the Isle of Avalon.

  Kelley stepped through the archway and saw with relief that the Isle still slumbered peacefully far out in the middle of the lake. Whatever strife had occurred in Herne’s sanctuary, it had not reached this far. She gazed out upon the scene of timeless tranquility and felt a sharp pang, remembering the time when Sonny had brought her here. He had first kissed her on that shore.

  You don’t have time for this, she told herself sternly, and turned back toward the Tavern. Invisible, sneakered feet carried her swiftly, silently, as she backtracked all the way around to where she’d come up from the reservoir. Only this time, she started down the hallway that angled off to the right—and stumbled over a patch of empty space. At least, it looked empty. Kelley reached out a hand, feeling tentatively for whatever it was that had tripped her. A barefooted leg shimmered into view, followed by the rest of the tanned, heavily muscled form of Herne the Hunter, sprawled on the ground, his fingers curled senselessly around the hilt of a sword.

  “Herne!” Kelley gasped in horror, dropping her own veil of invisibility as she fell to her knees next to the Hunter’s inert form. She pushed the ch
estnut-brown hair from his face and saw blood at the corner of his mouth. A consequence, no doubt, of at least one of the two arrows that protruded from his chest. Kelley went weak with relief when she saw that the feathered fletchings still quivered slightly with his breathing.

  She tried to lift him into a sitting position but he was deadweight. She heaved with all of her might, and he moaned in semiconscious agony. He slumped back down in a heap. Kelley was struck in that instant by how much Sonny resembled him. It was in the small details—the line of the Hunter’s jaw and the set of his eyes—but it was unmistakable. She felt a sharp stab of fear at the thought, her mind replacing the father with the son. What if it had been Sonny lying there?

  It was an eerie echo of her recurring nightmare, and Kelley felt a momentary sense of rising panic. But then Herne twitched and coughed raggedly, spilling more blood from his wounds onto the Tavern floor. Kelley knew she had to do something quick.

  She moved around behind him and tried to help him sit up, gasping when she felt a searing pain along her forearm. She glanced down and saw that Herne carried a small, elegant dagger tucked into his belt at the small of his back. The blade must have been pure iron because the barest brush of her skin along its surface had left an angry red welt. Kelley figured that the Hunter must have carried it as insurance against Faerie violence. He hadn’t drawn it, though. Hadn’t had a chance to use it, because he’d been attacked from afar—by an archer. Kelley thought of Selene, and a hot, violent wash of rage flooded through her.

  She heard a noise coming around the corner, and the anger was replaced by cold fear. Jenii Greenteeth stepped into view, the goat hooves hidden under her long green skirts making a delicate clicking sound on the polished marble floor.

  “There you are, you naughty Hunter.” The glaistig’s eyes flashed with red fire as she regarded Herne with venomous hatred. Her gaze flicked to Kelley. “And if it isn’t the little princess. Thank you so much for saving me the trouble of having to track you down in the city. My brother craves his property back.”