Cold Iron Page 19

  Miach said nothing, and Conn left him staring out over the dark water.

  Chapter 10

  Beth became used to the sight of Elada outside her office window. He didn’t attract any attention from the museum visitors or staff, so she assumed he was cloaked in his human glamour. And that the Fae didn’t need bathroom breaks or regular meals, because he never seemed to stir from his post. After a while she forgot about him and got on with her work.

  She was so absorbed in the map on her desk that she didn’t notice Conn until he came all the way into her office and flicked the lamp on. And kissed her.

  “Hello,” she said, enthralled by the feel of his lips on hers. So this was what it was like to have a lover. A real lover. One who wanted you, was happy to see you, enjoyed your company.

  “Good evening,” he said. “What is so consuming that it keeps you here when we could be home, in bed—”

  “With Elada in the living room,” she finished for him, nodding toward the grim Fae outside her window.

  “True,” he said shifting the box from Miach to make room on the chair for himself. The coat slipped out, a year’s salary-worth of silver lamb and silk lining, and Conn frowned. “What is this?”

  “It’s from Miach.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What is Miach doing sending you gifts?” It was almost a snarl.

  Beth came around the desk and stuffed the coat back into the box. “He didn’t send it to me. He sent it to Helene. Along with flowers. And Irish crystal. And God knows what else. Plus a grudging apology from our favorite kidnappers, the Bobbsey Twins.”

  Conn looked momentarily baffled.

  “Liam and Nial,” she explained, laughing. “You have the most hit and miss knowledge of our popular culture. You know a Porsche from a pickup but not the Bobbsey Twins.”

  “I suspect the Porsche is more fun. Let me drive you home in it and find out.”

  “Where will Elada sit? In the trunk?”

  He grew suddenly serious. “Until I have the sword, Elada remains with us. It is better than the alternatives.”

  “What alternatives? Living in Southie with Miach? No thank you.”

  “He had another proposal. That he help you unleash your powers so that you might defend yourself if the Prince Consort or the Manhattan Fae come calling.”

  She retreated behind her desk. “You mean kill someone. That’s how my power is unleashed. No. Not now. Not ever. I couldn’t live with it.”

  “Even if it were a criminal, someone who richly deserved to die, who wouldn’t be missed? Even if you did not have to wield the knife yourself?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  Conn sighed. “For the time being, Elada stays.” He got up and closed the blinds. Then he locked the door, dragged the spare, ladder-back chair out of the corner, and sat in it.

  “What are you doing?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Making the most of our privacy. Elada is waiting in the parking lot, and as far as I am concerned, he can go on waiting until we’re finished.”

  She flushed. “You don’t need to . . . service me like this all the time. The geis doesn’t make me frantic for sex with you.”

  “No,” he said, flicking open the top button on his jeans. She couldn’t take her eyes off his hand there, and what lay beneath. “But it does make me frantic for sex with you. My lovely Druid, all silver shouldered. The geis may not rule you, but it serves to amplify your enjoyment. And mine. And I want you, Beth Carter. Now, and for all time.”

  She felt the geis tighten in response to him. It brought with it fierce and sudden arousal, and a pang of guilt. “How can you want me when I’ve condemned you to a mortal life? When you could have lived thousands of years more, and now you’ll have only a few decades.”

  “Centuries,” he corrected. “Even if you never become a fully operating Druid, you’ll live a few hundred years. You aren’t powerless—or entirely mortal anymore. You can heal yourself, keep yourself young, for a long time. That’s small magic for a Druid, and you’re already capable of it.”

  He paused, looked deep into her eyes. “And I want you because I love you.”

  Something inside her fitted neatly into place when he said the words, and she stepped around the desk and stood awkwardly in front of his chair. Shameless, he’d begun to stroke himself through the denim, and there was no mistaking his intentions.

  “On the chair?” she asked, skeptical.

  “On the chair,” he affirmed, shoving his jeans down to display himself. He was perfectly formed, like one of the Greek statues in the gallery. She suspected she would never tire of looking at him.

  He tugged her forward, reached under her skirt, twitched her panties aside and bade her straddle him. The blinds were drawn and the door was locked, and no one except Helene ever came to visit her little one-woman department, but it still felt risky to make love at work. Her eyes darted to the lock on the door.

  “Beth,” Conn chided, taking himself in hand and stroking her bud with the silky tip of his cock. “Do pay attention. Put your hands on my shoulders.”

  She did. He grasped her hips, positioned her, and impaled her. “Now hang on,” he said. Then he slid his hands below her thighs, and lifted them, so her feet left the floor. His maneuver changed the angle of his penetration. She gasped, forgot, for a second, to hold on to him, started to fall back, then clutched his shoulders. She’d barely found her purchase when he started to thrust.

  The position forced the head of his cock tight against the most sensitive spot inside her. It felt so good she couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, only wanted more, deeper, harder. She arched her back to increase the angle, then hooked her feet on the ladder back of the chair, and let go with her hands.

  And opened her mouth to scream with the intensity of it.

  “Yes,” Conn encouraged her, even as he clapped his hand over her mouth. “Scream for me, Beth. Don’t hold anything back.”

  She didn’t.

  Later he deposited her, sweaty and disheveled, back in her own seat. “Ready to go home now?” he asked, flicking open the blinds and checking that Elada was still there. “Has he been in that same spot all day?”

  “Yes. It was unnerving at first, but then I forgot about him.”

  “Don’t,” he warned. “Keep an eye on him. If he makes any sudden deviation from pattern, or tries to take you someplace alone, get away from him as fast as you can, and don’t go home.”

  She swallowed hard. “I thought he was supposed to protect me.”

  “He is. And to kill you if Miach decides the sword is lost to us and you’re too dangerous to live.”

  That reminded her of what she had been working on to start with. “I’ve been trying to find it. The sword,” she said. “When it first arrived at the museum, I could feel it. A vibration. Similar to the one I get when I’m dowsing for Fae sites. So I pulled out some maps.”

  She showed him. It was a map of Boston. She’d marked the sites that felt Fae to her. “Unfortunately, most of them are what you might expect. Museums. Art galleries. Wealthy homes with private art collections. Places where Celtic antiquities might be sold or displayed. And none of them feels like the sword.”

  “Still,” Conn said, scanning the maps over her shoulder, “it was a very good idea. I can begin searching these places tomorrow.”

  “You think big museums and wealthy art collectors are going to let you rifle through their treasures?”

  “Yes.” He beamed.

  “Of course they are,” she replied sourly. “You’ll use your glamour on them.”

  “I won’t have to try very hard, Beth. Collectors like showing off their trinkets. Can you search a larger area?”

  “Yes, but it’s slow. I spend a lot of time finding the right maps.”

  Conn raised an eyebrow.

  “Not all
maps are useful. They need the right details. Sometimes I can feel a site simply from looking at a watercolor of a place, if the details are right, if they make the place real. Or even a couple of lines drawn on a napkin, if they’re the right lines. A road map of the state won’t work. It’s too zoomed out. It doesn’t show me the correct details.”

  She paused, then ran her finger over one of the maps. “The Mass Pike isn’t important, but a river or a hill or an old post road might be. The map has to be . . . true in some way. Only, there aren’t any hard and fast rules about what makes a map true for me. Mostly, I know it when I see it. I’ve spent half my day finding the right kinds of maps. Our library isn’t much good, but the Internet helps.”

  “What did you use to find the mound in Clonmel?” he asked.

  “Aerial photographs, at first.” She pulled her photos of Clonmel out of a drawer. “See, there’s the outline of your mound. Of course, it might have been merely a natural formation, or the impression of some later building. Lots of things look like this from above. But with Clonmel, I could feel it.”

  “I think I understand,” he said. “Keep searching your photographs and maps. We’ll find the Summoner. Miach is pursuing his own inquiries as well.”

  “But he’ll kill me if they don’t pan out,” Beth said bitterly.

  “I believe he would prefer not to. That’s small solace, but for now, we can’t afford to scorn his help.”

  Conn was right. She knew he was. But driving home in the Porsche, with Elada following in the Mercedes, she couldn’t help but feel chilled every time she caught sight of his headlights in the rearview mirror. Her bodyguard. And her executioner. Convenient. For Miach.

  He liked waking up next to her. They had settled into a routine after the first night, retreating into her bedroom and leaving the world, and Elada, on the other side of the door.

  He also liked working with her. She’d gotten into bed those first few nights, determined not to succumb to his seduction again with Miach’s henchman in the other room. Her defense was a stack of books, research for her work in progress, a popular history of the Celtic peoples, and, of course, cloaked in myth and legend, of the Fae.

  He knew firsthand the world she was studying. Not all of the places and events she named, to be sure, but many. He could tell her what history had gotten right and what history had gotten wrong, and theorize with her about the reasons for the grossest distortions in Fae lore. They were creating something together, and it was . . . fun.

  They talked into the wee hours of the night, and when she was soft and pliant with sleep, they pushed the books to the foot of the bed and made slow, quiet love.

  He liked breakfast in her simple kitchen, liked the tea and honey she made him in the copper kettle on her stove, but never the iron pots hanging over it. She still wore the iron hoops in her ears, and that was quite enough iron for him in his life.

  Three weeks passed like that, with Miach assuring him he was following every lead, and Conn forced to take his word for it. The geis on his wrists pulsed insistently all the time now, a reminder that until he reclaimed the sword, he grew weaker, more vulnerable. And that made Beth vulnerable, too.

  He made a habit of visiting her in her office at lunch. Partly because he enjoyed seeing her and taking advantage of the relative privacy they had there, and partly because he still didn’t entirely trust Elada. But the Fae bodyguard never moved from his post.

  Conn had come upon Helene in Beth’s office twice, and she’d charged from the room without a word both times.

  “She doesn’t want anything to do with the Fae, ever again,” Beth explained.

  He didn’t think Helene had much chance of success with that. Miach had marked her. And though sorcerers were more patient than most Fae, he would claim her in time.

  Beth had not wanted roommates after living with Frank. She’d had no privacy in his cold, modern apartment with its open floor plan and plate glass windows. As their marriage had disintegrated, the lack of personal space had become oppressive. There had been no place to hide from him, from his pointed indifference and casual cruelty.

  She supposed that was why she had chosen an older apartment with many small rooms over a newer one with a modern layout. It made her feel comfortable and safe. Her little flat afforded her a cozy living room, adjacent dining room, separate kitchen, and three tiny bedrooms.

  The bedroom that had served as her home office was now occupied by Elada. She doubted he was comfortable in there. His muscular frame was too large for the gleaming brass daybed Beth had rescued from the thrift store down the street, but he made no complaint.

  Beth herself had not shared a bedroom with anyone apart from Frank since college, but somehow Conn did not destroy her sense of privacy the way Frank had. Conn never disturbed her when she worked, papers spread out over the bed, her laptop perched on a heap of pillows. Sometimes he brought a book in and nestled beside her in whatever space remained free.

  And though they had not welcomed Elada at first, Conn took care not to offend the other Fae. When she asked him about that, he explained, “Elada is Miach’s right hand. He is bound to carry out the sorcerer’s will. I cannot fault him for it.”

  The first time she woke up to the clash of swords outside her window she had panicked, convinced the uneasy peace between the two Fae had been broken. She’d run through the kitchen out to the back porch and leaned over the wooden rail to find Conn and Elada battling up and down the long narrow garden. The little girl and boy downstairs had been watching from their own porch, awestruck.

  Conn was the superior swordsman, that much had been clear. He moved with a dancer’s grace. But Elada possessed determination and technical skill. Their blades flashed in the sun. Beth understood now why the Fae Court had enjoyed such matches.

  Conn drove Elada to the center of the yard, then struck in a blur of motion, disarming the warrior. The children downstairs squealed with joy and Beth noticed for the first time the fuzzy pink pom-poms hanging from the hilt of her lover’s sword. A little girl’s hair ornament. He made a great show of bowing and tossing it back up to its beaming pigtailed owner on the porch.

  After a few days of such mornings Beth became used to the ring of the swords at dawn. Her neighbors did not complain, although she suspected that had as much to do with the fact that Somerville was the haunt of all manner of eccentrics—actors, reenactors, role-players—who might be expected to spend their mornings dueling in the garden, as it did in the way that Conn and Elada welcomed their young audience downstairs with open arms.

  On the second Sunday of their odd ménage Beth woke to find the sun shining full in her window. She’d overslept. She could hear Conn and Elada sparring in the yard, by now a comforting, familiar sound. She wrapped her robe around her—Conn loved it, so she had begun to wear it all the time—and wandered into the kitchen to make coffee for Elada and tea for herself and Conn. She’d replaced most of her iron pans with copper for the comfort of her Fae houseguests, but they still avoided the little cabinet beside the range where most of the cold iron resided.

  She had the coffee maker percolating and the kettle on by the time she realized they were out of milk and down to the bottom of the honey jar. She stepped out onto the porch. The day was unusually warm and both Conn and Elada were stripped to the waist. She took a moment to admire their sleek muscled bodies, then called down to them, “We’re out of milk. I’m going to the store.”

  Elada nodded. “I will accompany you.”

  “I’m only going a few blocks,” she protested.

  “I will accompany her,” Conn said, pulling on his shirt and strapping his borrowed sword over it. He’d told her that Fae glamour hid their weapons from human eyes, but it didn’t hide them from Beth’s, and the gleaming blades both Fae carried were constant reminders of her danger.

  “I am obligated to attend as well,” Elada said.

 
“This is silly,” Beth said. “No one has come after me for weeks. If you both shadow me everywhere, even in your human glamour, we’ll start to attract attention. Fae attention. The kind you’re trying to protect me from.”

  “I must remain near you at all times,” Elada insisted. “Miach charged me with protecting you. If you go to the store for milk, I go to the store for milk. The Betrayer may do as he likes.”

  Conn strode toward the garden gate. “I will go to the store by myself. Do we need anything else, my cow-eyed beauty?”

  “A jar of honey.”

  A little smile quirked the corner of his mouth at that. They both took honey in their tea. He liked tasting it in her mouth when he made love to her after breakfast on lazy weekend mornings, like she knew he would today. She flushed at the thought.

  She slipped back inside the kitchen and turned the oven on to make toast. Elada came padding up the back stairs a few minutes later. He was still shirtless, and though she’d seen them practicing like that before, she’d never been alone with him in such a state of undress. She quickly averted her gaze from the finely honed muscles of his chest.

  The moment struck him as awkward as well. “Apologies,” he said, donning his cotton T-shirt. “It has been a very long while since I spent so much time with another Fae. I forget human courtesies.”

  She hadn’t thought about that before, what life must be like for Elada, with most of his race exiled and only Miach for company. “Is there no one else for you to practice with?” she asked, curious.

  “Practice, no. I teach Miach’s sons sometimes. And I have dealt with the Fianna, when there are difficulties between the two families.”

  “Have you no family of your own?” she asked.

  “I have had children in the past, but none now live. I am the right hand of a sorcerer,” he said. “Miach must always come first.”

  “Why?” she asked. “Why can’t you be your own Fae, like Conn?”

  He laughed and took a seat at the kitchen table. “You have studied our world your whole life, little Druid, and yet you know so little of us. Every Fae champion, free or in exile, covets the skill—and freedom—of Conn of the Hundred Battles. Your lover is perhaps the finest warrior the Fae have ever known. He may pick and choose whom he serves. He owes fealty and loyalty to none. I, on the other hand, am an able swordsman with no other talents. My options were to join a band, like Finn once commanded, or pledge myself to a sorcerer.”