Iron (The Warding Book 1) (4 page)

There was that dark side again. Good going brain. I splashed my face with another round of cold water, ignoring the sting in my eyes. I could chalk those dark, depressing emotions and the tears they summoned up to the booze I had pounded back all evening, but I wasn’t fooling anyone. Especially myself. I pulled a face at myself in the mirror as I clicked the light off. I stuffed my feet in the worn, plush froggy slippers I kept by the linen closet—the hardwood of the living/dining room was unbearably cold in the morning—and shuffled into the living room. I reached up for the pull-cord of the floor lamp behind my couch and froze as my poor, abused brain wracked itself to make sense of the scene in front of me.

My couch was not empty. Nor, a quick glance determined, was the battered old recliner under my window. And hell, why not add the dude standing in front of my fireplace to the tally? My eyes bounced back and forth between the three strangers like a ping-pong ball, my mind refusing to catch up. It took a moment before I recognized the girl in the chair and the guy leaning against my mantle as Mr. Hottie and jailbait; the couple I had seen earlier at Gilroy’s.

Right before they disappeared mysteriously.

And I was attacked by Goliath the monster.

Lovely.

The woman on the couch was the only one I didn’t recognize. She was middle aged; gentle and motherly looking in her violet cardigan and dark blue jeans. As she peered up at me, her heart-shaped face framed by waves of rich brown hair that matched her big, doe eyes, an unexpected calm filled me. I lowered my hand from the lamp cord, leaving the light on. Of course, the urge to run for the phone, screaming bloody murder crossed my mind but—somehow—it didn’t seem to be the appropriate course of action. Maybe it was the desire to find the missing puzzle piece of how I had gotten home from the bar that overrode my fight-or-flight instinct. Maybe it was that not one of them had moved or spoken, and that all three looked just as uncomfortable as I thought I should feel. Or maybe I was still half-convinced my brain had sprung a gasket and I was hallucinating. Again.

Whatever the reason, instead of losing my shit I calmly gripped the back of the couch to steady myself and said a prayer of thanks that I hadn’t stripped down to my panties before coming out of the bedroom. (Score one for skanky laziness.) I looked at them each in turn once more and cleared my throat. “So. Someone want to catch me up on what’s going on here?”

Maybe if the situation had been just a little less weird I would have found the baffled looks the three of them exchanged comical. I understood their surprise. Really, I did. No one in their right mind would expect a single gal not to freak out if she awoke from a nap to find a trio of strangers in her living room. Of course, I don’t know if anyone in their right mind would put themselves to be in the position of being said strangers either. I mean, what if I had been some gun toting right-wing nutbag? Riverview wasn’t a rough city, per say, but there was a high enough crime rate that the idea had crossed my mind once or twice.

Finally, it seemed that the burden of answering me fell upon the older of the two women. She twisted around on the couch, once again looking up at me. Her smile was hesitant as she said, “Please, do not be frightened.” Her voice was low and soft, like verbal velvet. “My name is Seana.” She gestured to the others in turn. “The young lady is Mairi, and the gentleman over there is Kaine.”

I digested those names for a moment. Weird ones, to be sure, but it was a weird situation all around so they almost seemed fitting. I might have been more surprised to find a Bob, Carol and Suzy waiting around for me to wake up, like we were old friends. Seana had fallen silent and I realized that all three of them were staring at me again, as if I were expected to do some sort of trick. I cleared my throat. “Well, that’s great. Nice to meet you all. I’m Catlin, but I have the feeling one of you took a look in my wallet—which better still have the last three dollars I have to my name in it—and you already knew that.”

“Yes, ah, we did.” Seana’s cheeks colored a bit. She was one of those women who could blush prettily. “We crossed paths with you outside of the bar. After Kaine scared off the troll, we tried to rouse you but you were unconscious from the spill you had taken. When the taxi arrived, we thought it best not to send you off alone in such a state.”

“That’s nice of you.” That right there put a big hole in my hallucination theory. If they had seen the… “Wait, did you say the
troll
?”

Seana didn’t so much as blink. “Yes.”

My stare had to have accused her of having three heads, but she didn’t look the least bit ruffled. I, on the other hand, had begun to regret not making a beeline for the phone straight off. “Okay,” I said slowly, drawing out the word. “You mean ‘troll’ as in the whiny Internet variety, right?”

“I’m sorry?” Her brow furrowed in a delicately befuddled sort of way. “I’m afraid I do not understand.”

“I guess not then.” I wondered what word was tripping her up. I had the sinking feeling that this gentle, motherly looking woman had no inkling of current slang. Hell, she might not even be aware of the existence of the Internet. “You said that freak who attacked me was a troll.”

Seana nodded. Both of her companions were watching me with matching deadpan stares. If this was a joke of some sort, they were playing along remarkably well. Somehow, I didn’t think they were acting. “And by that you mean an actual ‘lives under a bridge, threatening to eat poor little billy goats’ kind of troll?”

Her smile was the sad sort usually reserved for mental patients, making me feel like the crazy one for having to clarify what kind of troll she was talking about in the first place. She patted my hand where it rested on the back of the couch. “As you have seen from the one that crossed your path, trolls are a nasty sort, though they do not commonly stray from their colonies. Their rarity in these lands is a boon, seeing how easily they are given to violence. They often seek out…
larger
prey than the livestock featured in the myths your people tell.”

“My people.” She nodded again when I paused, as if in encouragement. My knees were starting to feel a bit weak and I wondered if I should have taken my head wound—missing state notwithstanding—a bit more seriously. “And that would make you…?”

“We are Aos Sí, the descendants of the Tuatha Dé Danann.” It was the young woman who spoke; the pale waif Seana had called Mairi. She sat statue still in the exact center of my recliner, perched on the very edge of its seat with her hands folded in her lap. Teenage looks aside, when she met my stare it was with unwavering sureness. There was something frighteningly old about the eyes that gazed back at me. As I stared her down, her eyes seemed to change colors, flashing from hazel to a shimmering yellow. A chill ran down my spine.

Not wanting to stand there with my mouth hanging open like a complete tool, I managed, “That’s, uh, Irish right?”

“Yes, of a fashion. Mairi speaks the truth. We are the descendants of an ancient race who once lived side by side with the ancestors of humanity, most notably on the Emerald Isle. It has been many ages since those days. So long, I’m afraid, that your people have long since come to think of us as myth. Those who remember us call us fae,” Seana said.

“Fae.” The word sounded ridiculous coming out of my mouth. “Like…faeries?”

She bristled. Her disapproval seemed to ripple around the room in a wave through the others. “Yes, if strictly speaking, but there are many connotations with that word that we would rather avoid. We much prefer the term ‘fae,’ please.”

“Oh, sorry. I guess that makes sense. I mean, who in their right mind would want to be associated with Tinker Bell, right? And I don’t see any wings or a bag of magic pixie dust on any of you.” My mouth was getting ahead of my brain again. The nervous giggle that escaped me probably wasn’t helping my cause much.

Seana’s smile seemed a tad bit forced, which I assumed meant my jokes were not going over well. “Ah, yes. I’m afraid your modern culture has some skewed perceptions of us. We have been relegated to bedtime stories and cartoons. Too few remember the old myths these days, which are much closer to the truth.”

“And that… ‘troll’? He was also fae?” Good lord, those words sounded crazy rolling off my tongue.

She nodded. “Fae is what one might call our entire species, much as you are human. Trolls, shape-shifters, elves, merfolk, ogres, Aos Sí —we are all faekind. Such races had interbred with our own over the centuries, giving many of us mixed heritages, again much like modern-day humanity. Some of us may pass for what you would think of as human, even without a glamour, while others… Well, they cannot walk among humanity without it.”

“Sure, sure.” My eyes darted around the room. Not a single smirk or knowing wink among them. They were all damn near expressionless; as serious as the brain tumor I was so wishing I had.

Have you ever had that sudden, sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realize someone you formerly thought was messing with you… wasn’t? Or, maybe you even just had hoped that they were deluded and grasping at straws? You know; that gut churning, I just ate too much fast food kind of feeling that hits you when it becomes crystal clear that they really believe what they’re saying. No matter how sad or wrong or just plain bat-crap crazy it sounds to you, they believe every single word that has come out of their mouths. Of course, that means you only have two choices: to be the dream-smasher who breaks the cold hard reality to them, or to be the poor sap who keeps a big fake-ass smile on your face while nodding agreeably and looking for the nearest exit before shit gets ugly.

This situation had obviously just become the latter.

Chapter Four

Saviors or not, the whole situation was too weird for me. I was only partially aware of my death-grip on the back of the couch as I berated myself for having failed to panic earlier, when it might have done me some good. (Obviously, I had never been good at making the correct life decisions.) As they watched me digest Seana’s little speech about their freaky mythical nature, I wondered just how much of a chance I stood if I were to turn tail and tear-ass down the hall. Could I reach my phone before one of them tackled me? Who would I even call if I did? Would 911 send someone to the rescue of a girl being held hostage by fairies?

“She doesn’t believe you.” Mairi’s breathy little voice was maddeningly calm. Her eyes bore into me. There was something hypnotic about that shifting gaze. It was almost inhuman in its detachment. I felt naked. “She is frightened of us.”

Goddamn, she gave me the shivers. Faeries or crazies, there was definitely something beyond weird about these people. I blurted out, “Can you read my mind?”

Mairi cocked her head to the side, the corners of her mouth upturning in the tiniest of smiles. “I read emotions, not thoughts. My gift doesn’t work on you but I don’t need it, to tell what you’re thinking. You look scared.”

“Oh.” Well, duh. While that didn’t make me feel any better, it was probably true. Having never been cornered by fae folk in my own home before, I suppose my poker-face wasn’t up to snuff for such a situation. Trying to tread waters that had gone way above my head, I settled for dumbly echoing the things my slow human brain wasn’t capable of processing on its own. “What do you mean you ‘read emotions’?”

“Mairi is an Oracle,” Seana said, pulling my attention back over to her. “She sometimes sees events that have yet to pass. Her Gift also makes her sensitive to the emotions of others, allowing her to interpret them as easily as you and I converse with words.”

“Well, that sounds…” I struggled to find the right word. Interesting? Unique? Downright crazy? “Nifty. And are you all…?”

“Not precisely. All Aos Sí possess such powers, passed down through our ancestral bloodlines, but there are many different Gifts. I myself am a Healer.” I raised a hand to the back of my head as she said that. She smiled and nodded. “I took the liberty of taking care of that lump you took while you were sleeping.” A chagrined look came over her face. “I hope I did not overstep in doing so.”

“No, uh, thanks. You’ll never hear me complain about not waking up with a concussion.” Mairi was still staring at me and I found my gaze drawn back to her. “You said your gift wouldn’t work on me. Why?”

“You have the Warding.”

I stared at her blankly. That explained absolutely nothing. I took a deep breath and tried to keep calm. Trying to make sense of this nuttiness, trying to understand these three wackos, was about as easy as pulling teeth and I had never been the most patient gal. “And that would be…?”

“It’s your Gift. It prevents mine from working on you,” she said as calmly as someone stating the irrefutable fact that the sky was blue.

Okay. So, that water wasn’t just only over my head; it had gone ball-shriveling cold. I felt the hair on my arms raise as a chill swept over me. “Excuse me—did you just say
my
Gift?”

“It was how we knew you were the one we have been searching for. You saw through my glamour inside the pub, and again through that of the troll.” Mairi smiled. “Only someone Gifted with the Warding could do that.”

I phrased my come back with delicate deliberateness, “And what the flying fuck, may I ask, is ‘the Warding’?”

“It is our most rare Gift, one that has all but died out among our people. Other fae Gifts cannot be used upon a Warder—such as your being able to see through the magic that should have kept Mairi hidden from sight, or the similar enchantment that would have made that troll look human to those who laid eyes upon him,” Seana explained. “In the days of old, Warders were the right hand of royalty. They guarded the king from magical subterfuge and advised him on many matters of great importance. Given its power, those who possessed the Warding were long ago hunted to extinction. Or so we thought.”