I slid out of Gabriel's grip just enough to rise and press my lips against his. I couldn't help it. I'd often wondered what it'd be like to wake up and lean over and kiss him. To watch those inky lashes flutter against his pale cheek and see the first sliver of those insanely blue eyes and know that he wouldn't jump up in horror, which was kinda important for a proper morning kiss fantasy.
So I kissed him. And those lashes never even fluttered. But his lips did part, just a little, kissing me back, still deep in sleep. I moved against him--
That's when Ricky snored, and I remembered we weren't alone.
I slid out and headed for the kitchen, Lloergan padding after me.
I'd barely opened my laptop browser when I sensed Gabriel behind me. I was about to say something, but he continued to the counter and silently started the coffee machine. I slipped from my chair, eased the kitchen door shut, and crept over behind him. Then I slid between him and the coffee machine, put my arms around his neck, and gave him a proper kiss.
"Sorry," I murmured. "I had to finish that."
"I was hoping you would."
"So you weren't sleeping?"
"I was. But the advantage to not dreaming is that if I wake thinking you were kissing me, I can be quite certain you actually were."
"I couldn't resist. You're very kissable."
He chuckled, shaking his head.
"Let me guess," I said. "No one's ever told you that, either?"
"Certainly not. But I'm glad you think so, and I'll make every effort not to disillusion you."
"Good." I gave him a peck on the cheek and then headed for the table. "I woke up realizing we'd forgotten to research the name Seanna gave my father."
"Greg Kirkman. He disappeared twenty years ago."
"Uh, okay. So only one of us forgot."
He handed me the first cup of coffee. "I did a quick search during a spare moment, found that much, and then promptly forgot about him. Which might be even more grievous than your oversight, considering that I discovered he disappeared under mysterious circumstances and then forgot."
"We've been busy."
His lips twitched.
"I meant with the sluagh and all the associated drama. But, yes, that too. It's very distracting. We might have to stop until the case is solved."
He snorted, not even glancing over to see if I might be serious.
I sipped my coffee and typed one-handed while he brewed himself a cup. When he sat across from me, I glanced up. His eyes were half lidded, that drowsy, unfocused look I'd only seen when he'd been drinking. Or after sex.
"Too sleepy to even read over my shoulder?" I said.
A glimmer of a smile. "I'll enjoy my coffee. I know you'll tell me when you have something."
That, too, was a milestone, not just that he didn't feel the need to watch over my shoulder, but that he wanted to relax with his coffee, not gulp it down as a mere vehicle for the caffeine required to jump-start his day. In that moment, Gabriel seemed happy in a perfectly average way, pleased by nothing more than a quiet morning, fine coffee, and agreeable companionship. It looked good on him. It really did.
It only took a moment to confirm that he was right about Kirkman. The man had gone missing almost twenty years ago.
"A month before the Tysons killed Amanda Mays and Ken Perkins," I said. "I don't like the timing of that."
"It may only mean that Seanna was clever enough to find an open missing person case from the same time period. That would allow her to suggest she had evidence to wrongly accuse your parents of killing Kirkman. Which is exactly the sort of scheme she'd attempt."
"Clever enough to find a case fitting the time frame. Yet not clever enough to realize that Kirkman doesn't fit the pattern. They were convicted for killing couples."
"She could suggest he was murdered with a secret lover. It's a ridiculous stretch, but..." He shrugged.
"Typical for Seanna."
"Yes." No hint of anxiety or discomfort touched his eyes, as if that coffee contained a generous shot of Irish whiskey. He took my cup and rose to make another, saying, "Keep looking."
"Yes, boss."
I searched while he fixed me a second coffee and added chocolate chip cookies.
"Little early for sweets, isn't it?" I said.
"Carpe diem."
I had to sputter a laugh. For Gabriel, eating cookies for breakfast was indeed seizing the day.
"So, Greg Kirkman," I said. "Thirty-two years old when he disappeared. Never married. Last seen in Chicago. He went out drinking with friends, got in his car, and disappeared."
"Did his route cross any bridges or inconveniently located steep embankments?"
In other words, after that night of drinking and then getting behind the wheel, had the police thought to check anyplace where Kirkman's car might have plunged off the road?
"Actually, that is a possibility," I said. "Kirkman lived outside the city. He was a construction worker and had built his own house in the forest." I ran searches as I spoke. "Which was apparently about five miles from here."
That had Gabriel's coffee cup lowering, his eyes focusing. "Any connection to Cainsville?"
After a few minutes of searching, I shook my head. "Nothing's jumping out. It seems he'd built the place only a few years before he vanished, and he hadn't made any local ties. Only one of the regional papers even mentioned his disappearance."
"City business."
I nodded. Even growing up in the suburbs, there'd been some of that mindset. What happened in the city stayed in the city--that foreign and vaguely sinister place best suited for quick visits to take advantage of the superior shopping and dining. Even after a few years in this region, Kirkman would still have been considered a Chicagoan.
I kept searching, both casting my net wider and zooming in on specifics.
"Lived alone, never married, no local connections," I said. "No known girlfriend or boyfriend. Something of a loner, but sociable enough if he was drinking with friends." More keystrokes. "Or maybe not. Got a longer article here. I missed it because they misspelled his name as Kirkson."
Gabriel rolled his eyes.
"Yes, not exactly fine journalism. It's the archive of a local crime magazine. I use the term loosely. It was one of those mimeographed newsletters mailed out to a couple hundred subscribers. The guy writing it might not have been professional enough to fact-check names, but he fancied himself an investigative reporter and seems to have done some serious digging on this case. He interviewed the guys Kirkman had been drinking with. They were coworkers from a construction job, and they said Kirkman didn't usually join them, but he had that night."
"Hmm."
"Yep, anytime someone acts out of character--and that action leads to trouble--it could be significant. Which may only mean that it's significant in the sense he decided to be more sociable and paid for it with his life, because he wasn't accustomed to driving after a few drinks."
"True."
"It's also possible that this amateur sleuth, in his zeal to tell a good story for his subscribers, made shit up."
"Also true."
"The guy wrote a couple more articles on Kirkman's disappearance. I'll need to double-check them against more reliable..." When I trailed off, gaze still fixed on my screen, Gabriel walked behind me to read over my shoulder.
"Hmm," he said.
"Exactly."
It was a quote from Kirkman's neighbor, who said she'd seen a police car in Kirkman's drive twice in the weeks before his disappearance. When the intrepid reporter contacted the state police, they refused to comment, saying it was part of an ongoing investigation.
"And of course it's Saturday," I said. "Which means contacting our police sources will cost extra."
"Do it anyway."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I was just about to start making a proper breakfast when the doorbell rang. Veronica stood on the porch, holding a paper bag from the diner.
"Perfect timing," I said.
She brought the bag into the kitchen. When I hovered, she said, "Sit. I might be a terrible cook, but I'm perfectly capable of serving food from boxes." She glanced around. "I saw Ricky's motorcycle. Are the boys around?"
"Ricky's upstairs talking to his dad. Gabriel is taking a shower and..."
Footfalls sounded on the steps.
"And he's done." I leaned out of the kitchen. "Can you call Ricky down? Veronica's here with breakfast."
Gabriel's steps reversed.
"I hate secrets," Veronica said, still emptying the bag. "Odd for fae, but my kind simply don't see the point of them."
"Your kind being coblynau."
She smiled. "Nice try, but that's one secret I'm forbidden to share."
"I think you kind of did."
"Did I mention I'm terrible at secrets?" She took plates from the cupboard. "Other fae find them delightful. To me, they're just tedious. Dangerous, too. You get knotted up in lies and misdirection until you can't find your way out. That's what's happening here. The elders spent the night in a meeting. Well, all except Patrick, who wasn't in on the original secret, and when he finds out, he'll be rightfully furious, mostly with me, as the one elder he can count on to keep him informed."
She set out a plate stacked with flapjacks. "Disagreeing with secrets in principle does not mean one is exempt from keeping them...or from suffering the consequences."
"And this secret concerns the sluagh," Gabriel said as he walked in.
She smiled at him. "Yes, Gabriel, I'll get to the point. I was waiting because it concerns you. Patrick as well, and I considered having him here, but I suspect that's a conversation best had in private, where he can properly tell me what he thinks of me for keeping it from him."
She tried for a wry smile, but the sadness behind it made me curse Ida all the more. Veronica was right. Nothing good comes of secrets. People get hurt, often those who least deserve it.
"And Ricky," she said as he walked in. "Good to see you." There was no sarcasm in her voice--unlike some elders, she treated Ricky like an actual person. "Sit. Eat. You may have little stomach for it by the time I'm through."
"That sounds ominous," I murmured.
"Anything concerning the sluagh is ominous," she said as she pulled out a chair.
"Before you begin," Gabriel said. "As much as I want the truth, I need to ask how much trouble it will cause you to tell us. If you'll suffer for it, I'd rather confront Ida. I do have leverage. I'm quite prepared to use it."
She smiled. "They know I'm here and what I'm doing. I may have lost my temper at about four a.m. Blame a low tolerance for endless meetings and endless bickering. I informed them that I was telling you the truth, and if they had an issue with that, they could banish me." Her smile grew, her sunken eyes twinkling, and I caught a hint of a much younger fae behind them. "Let's just say that's not an option."
"Ida didn't insist on coming along?" I said.
That glint in her eyes sharpened. "She insisted. I told her I'd lock her in the closet and bind her there if she kept insisting. She knows better than to test me. So it's just me, which means we'll get through this much faster." She looked at Gabriel. "Once I actually start saying something useful, right?"
"I believe I was the one who stopped you."
"Which is never wise. Derail a fae in conversation and you'll spend an hour herding her back on track. So, in the interest of staying on track, I'll get straight to the point. Thirty-five years ago, we made a bargain with the sluagh. We..." Her voice quivered, and her glamour wavered. She took a moment to pull it back. "This is difficult for me. I'm shaken by what happened yesterday morning, and angry at the role we played in it. At our lack of foresight. This will be easier if I don't need to maintain my glamour. I realize that may be disconcerting for you..."
"Whatever makes you comfortable," I said.
"Thank you."
Her body shimmered. A pop of light, like a low-voltage flashbulb. Not enough to make me blink but just to lose visual focus for a split second, and when my sight cleared, she sat in her true form.
Veronica looked about Gabriel's age, with curling black hair, tan skin, and green eyes, brighter than usual. She bore little resemblance to the coblynau statue in my garden--a squat, ugly gnome. Yet I could see where the caricature might have come from. As in her human form, she was small, particularly for a fae, maybe barely topping five feet. Sturdier than others I'd seen, with a fifties pinup-model figure. Beautiful for a human, perhaps not by fae standards.
She settled in and said, "Back to my story...You were not a surprise to us, Olivia, as you may have realized. We knew a Matilda was coming. The signs were there long before you were born. There would be a Matilda for Cainsville. The question that concerned us most was..." She looked at Gabriel. "Would there be a Gwynn? While we could still win over a Matilda without one, it introduces an obstacle. Particularly if there is an Arawn for the Cwn Annwn."
"It would slant the odds."
"Yes. So we called in favors. We made bargains. We gave up some of our already dwindling power to get an answer from those who could give it. Would there be a Gwynn? Would there be an Arawn? The response was exactly what we most dreaded hearing."
"An Arawn but no Gwynn."
She nodded.
"That was the deal you made with the sluagh," I said. "Somehow they were able to guarantee Cainsville a Gwynn."
"They have powers beyond our own. Dark magics. They heard of our dilemma and offered us a deal. They could promise us a Gwynn. In return for a favor."
"That you give them Olivia," Gabriel said, barely able to force the words out. "She is marked for the sluagh."
Veronica's green eyes rounded. "Absolutely not. We promised them no one. Nor any power over either of you. That would be unthinkable."
"So what did you give them?" Ricky said.
"Access to Grace's building," I murmured. "It's a refuge for fae. You give them asylum there."
"Yes."
"And you allowed Olivia to move in?" Gabriel said. "You let her--"
"We granted access to the building for one manifested sluagh who had been injured and could not cross back to its own dimension."
"Manifested?" I said. "A high-ranking one, then. A powerful sluagh."
"Yes, but we only granted it five years of access, on the understanding that it would not provide us with a Gwynn until the end of those five years. We didn't want the sluagh in Cainsville after he was here. Of course, that didn't work out as we'd hoped, and you did not grow up here, Gabriel, but the sluagh was still gone before you were born."
"Except it left a door open," I said. "So it could come back."
Veronica let out a bitter laugh. "A mere child sees what we did not." She shook her head. "Sorry. I know you aren't a child, but compared to us, you are, and the fact you can see what they did is only all the more damning."
"But I have the hindsight of knowing it came back. I'm just making the logical connection."
"Still, we should have foreseen the possibility that we'd been tricked. They are sluagh, after all."
Ricky pushed his plate aside. "So you guys let it board at Grace's, and it kept the key when it left."
"You granted access once," Gabriel said, "which inadvertently granted it permanently."
"Yes and yes," Veronica said. "In order to allow a sluagh to stay at Grace's, I had to undo some of my wards. Of course, I reactivated them afterwards, but it seems that once it had been allowed in, the wards were no longer effective against that particular sluagh. It had the key, so to speak."
"Like vampire lore," Gabriel said. "Once they are invited in, you can't rescind the invitation and your wards are no longer effective."
"Looks like you finally get vampires," I said to him. "I know you've been waiting."
He sighed.
I turned to Veronica. "Okay, so you guys made a deal with the sluagh to get Gabriel. That deal granted the sluagh access to Cainsville. I know you're kicking yourselves for not foreseeing the tricker
y, but what's done is done, and neither of us was harmed by the sudden appearance of the scary sluagh, so presuming you can keep them out now, we're okay, right?"
"Can you keep them out?" Ricky said. "Is Liv safe here?"
"Yes, we need to know that," Gabriel said. "We also need to know what the sluagh meant when they said Olivia was theirs. The implication is that there is a mark. I looked for it on Olivia and--" He stopped short. "That is to say, I looked as best I could, on her arms and such, and I did not see it."
"Do you know what it looks like?" Ricky asked Veronica.
"I do."
"Can you check Liv?"
"Of course."
--
"You aren't marked," Veronica said as she finished her examination in my bedroom and I began redressing. "If I sound less relieved about that than you'd expect, it's only because the sluagh wouldn't dare take a Matilda."
"So they're bluffing?"
"No," Gabriel said from outside the closed door. "They simply don't mean it in that way."
"You can stop hovering and come in, Gabriel," Veronica called. "She's dressed. Though even if she wasn't, I don't think it's anything you haven't already seen."
I looked over at her sharply. She chuckled. "It's rather hard to miss the signs."
"Great," I muttered.
"The other elders aren't as astute at reading those signs. You can buy yourself some time yet. I won't spoil it." She turned to Gabriel as he walked in. "Yes, you're correct. If they said they have some hold over Liv, it means something other than the obvious."
"I'd say that's a relief," I said. "But I suspect whatever they do mean, I'm not going to like it a whole lot more."
"We will resolve this," Veronica said. "We owe you that."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The elders were letting us leave town, on the understanding we'd return at night. The next step was to speak to Ioan about the sluagh. I now suspected the local Cwn Annwn had more dealings with them than Ioan was letting on. And I suspected one of those "dealings" might be a bargain made twenty-three years ago, to see human killers punished and a broken Matilda healed.
Ricky was about to make that call when Gabriel got one from the state police contact I'd set on Greg Kirkman's trail. While Gabriel talked and jotted down dates and names, I typed them into a search engine.
"Greg Kirkman was being investigated for murder," I said when he hung up. "Multiple murders."