“Oh! You did that on purpose!” I dragged a sleeve across my face, mopping at it. It didn’t help. My sweater was soaked.
He didn’t deny it. Just cocked his head, studied me. “I will tell you about the one you call Lord Master.”
“I don’t call him Lord Master and never will,” I bristled. I battled the urge to leap out the window, grab him, and demand to know whatever he knew.
“Would you like to know who he is?”
“You said you’d never heard of him when I told you about him.” I studied my nails, knowing if he knew how badly I wanted the information, he’d make it harder to get. Probably try to trade it for sex.
“I have learned much since then.”
“So, who is he?” I said, in a bored voice.
“Accept my gift.”
“Tell me what your ‘gift’ is first.”
“You have no plans for the afternoon.” He glanced at the flooded street beyond his warm, sunny oasis. “You will have no customers. Will you sit in your chair and pine for lost things?”
“You’re pissing me off, V’lane.”
“Have you ever seen the Caribbean Sea? There are hues in those waves that nearly vie with Faery.”
I sighed. No. I’d dreamed of it, though. Sun slanting off water was one of my favorite things in the world, whether it was swimming-pool-blue or shades-of-tropic. During the winter in Ashford, I used to go to the local travel agent’s office in town and thumb through the pamphlets, dreaming of all the exotic, sunny places the husband I hadn’t met yet was going to take me. Part of the reason I was so depressed in Dublin was from simple lack of sun. My time in the subterranean caves beneath the Burren had sapped me. I not only love sun, I need it. I think if I’d grown up in the colder, drearier North, I’d have been a completely different person. Sure, the sun comes out here, but not nearly as often as it does in Georgia, and not the same way. Dublin doesn’t get those months of long, blissfully blazingly hot summer days, crowned by a sky so blue it hurts to look at, and a sultry heat that warms you to the core. My bones are cold here. So is my heart.
A few hours in the tropics, plus information about the Lord Master?
The rain slanting in through the windowless hole pricked my skin with the icy spines of a dozen porcupines. Would he really forgo retaliation against me for breaking our bargain? I was in no position to shut the Seelie prince out of my life. Whether I trusted him or not, I needed to be on decent terms with him, and if he really was offering me a Get Out of Jail Free card, I’d be crazy not to take it. I couldn’t cower in the bookstore from him every time he showed up. I was going to have to confront him on unwarded ground eventually.
“Put the window back.” I wasn’t going to be blamed by Barrons for another missing window, or risk that big nasty Shade out back getting in.
“Do you accept my gift?”
I nodded.
When the pane was back, I went to the counter, swapped my soaking cardigan for a dry jacket over my damp shirt, and bent to extract the spear from my boot and holster it beneath my arm. It was gone.
Apparently the bookstore being warded only kept him out. It didn’t keep him from performing his tricks in or on the store itself. I made a mental note to discuss this problem with the intractable owner and keeper of the wards. Surely with all his secrets and inexplicable abilities Barrons could do better than that.
I flipped the sign to CLOSED, locked up, splashed through the puddles, stepped into the sun and, when V’lane offered his hand, nullified my intent to Null, and laced my fingers with his.
I was in Cancún, Mexico, sitting in a disappearing-edge swimming pool, on a bar stool that was actually under the water, watching palm trees sway in a sultry breeze against the unmistakable aqua splendor of the Caribbean Sea; drinking coconut, lime, and tequila from a scooped-out pineapple, with the salt spray of breaking surf and sun kissing my skin.
Translation: I’d died and gone to heaven.
Dublin, the rain, my problems, my depression: All of it had vanished in the blink of a Fae Prince’s sift.
My bikini today, courtesy of V’lane, was leopard print, three embarrassingly tiny triangles. A gold belly chain, inset with amber, draped my hips. I didn’t care how nearly naked I was. The day was blindingly bright and beautiful. The sun was warm and healing on my shoulders. The double shots of Cuervo Gold in my drink weren’t hurting, either. I was glowing golden inside and out.
“So? Who is he? You said you’d tell me about the Lord Master,” I prompted.
His hands were on me then, rubbing suntan oil into my skin that smelled of the coconut and almond, and for a short time I forgot that I even had a tongue that could ask questions.