Cold Iron (19 page)

“Miach was right,” he whispered in her ear, kissing the back of Beth’s neck as she tried to find the salt on the cluttered shelf above the sink. “You distract me. And until I find the sword and resume obedience to my
geis,
I am doubly handicapped. If Miach knew I had bound myself to your mortality, he would insist we shelter with him in South Boston, and he would be right. But I find I am too selfish to accept his wisdom. I want to be here, alone, or as alone as possible, with you.”

His mouth trailed down her neck. She tried to ignore him, reached up on tiptoes to grasp the saltshaker. His hands circled her waist and untied the belt from her robe. The cotton fell open, and her belly touched the cool wooden countertop.

“Conn!”

“If I am going to put up with Elada’s presence to compensate for my distraction,” he said, cupping her breast, “then I am entitled to be well and truly distracted.”

Her fingertips grazed the saltshaker, his grazed between her legs, and she shuddered, knocking the shaker from the shelf to clatter off the countertop and land with a crack on the floor. Salt spilled everywhere, but she didn’t care. What he was doing to her was too good. She felt the buttons on his jeans digging into the small of her back, reached behind her to tug them open, then froze when she heard the boards creak in the hall.

Conn didn’t stop. He growled and looked over his shoulder at Elada, standing in the hall.

“I came to check on the girl,” Elada said, taking up a firm stance and eyeing the salt on the floor.

“She’s fine,” Conn bit back, still stroking. She should stop him. There was someone else in the room. She was shielded from Elada’s sight, but it was still wrong, wicked, and totally irresistible.

Elada didn’t move.

“Tell him,” Conn said tapping her clit, “that you are fine.” Tap. Stroke.

“I’m fine,” she gasped.

The boards creaked again and Elada was gone, and in another second Conn was there, where she needed him.

I
n the morning Beth dressed
and went to work, Elada trailing her at a discreet distance. Conn left to see Miach. “He is our best hope of tracking your errant ex-husband,” Conn explained. “He knows the Fae in this region, and he has the resources to find a man on the run.”

She wasn’t entirely certain what she would find when she got to the museum. The opening in the Maya gallery had been on a Thursday night. She’d missed a day of work on Friday, nothing unusual among the curatorial staff who came and went as their outside commitments dictated. But she had also missed the meeting with Frank and Dave Monroe, at which her fate had probably been decided.

She was shocked to find Helene at her desk, coiffed and calm and looking for all the world as though she had never been abducted and abused by Miach’s fractious family.

“Frank never turned up for his meeting with Dave, and he hasn’t returned any of Dave’s calls, so as long as you don’t raise the question of the stolen artifacts again, I suspect your job is safe for now.”

“That’s a relief,” Beth said. “But how are you doing?”

“Me? I’m fine. Why?”

That’s when Beth noticed the flowers in the trash. An enormous arrangement, hundreds of dollars of roses and orchids and baby’s breath crushed beneath a vase that looked suspiciously like Waterford.

“Because we were both kidnapped and held overnight on an abandoned island and you were out of my sight for hours and obviously traumatized.”

Helene smiled pertly, wrinkled her nose in that dismissive way she did sometimes, and said, “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“I’m not sure it’s the kind of thing you just don’t talk about.”

“Remember when you turned up at my house with a suitcase, and you insisted you couldn’t remember what happened with Frank and Egan? It’s like that. I don’t remember.”

It
was
like that, and it had been a mistake, burying it. Beth knew that now, so she took a deep breath and said, “I did remember, but I didn’t
want
to remember.”

Helene looked at her blankly. “Is that supposed to make me open up? I told you I don’t want to talk about it.”

Then Helene’s lip curled. She was looking past Beth’s shoulder, and when Beth turned, she almost jumped out of her skin. “What are you doing here?”

Liam and Nial stood in the doorway. Nial looked unhappy to be there, and Liam looked embarrassed. “We’re here to apologize.”

“The old man sent us,” Nial added, spoiling the effect.

“He asked how you liked the flowers.”

Beth couldn’t stop herself from looking at the trash.

“Oh,” Liam said. “Hopefully you’ll like this better.”

He placed an enormous box on the chair in front of Helene’s desk and backed out of the room. Nial trailed after him.

“I’ll tell security not to let them back in,” Beth said.

“Don’t bother,” Helene said, her voice finally breaking. “Those assholes can glamour their way past. There’s no getting away from them,” she whispered.

“Helene, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just get out. And take that with you.”

Beth did as she asked. The box was heavy but manageable, and when she got to her office, she closed the door and untied the wrappings. Curiousity overcame any finer feelings.

The coat inside was silver Persian lamb, fashionably cut, the lining embroidered with Helene’s initials. Beth knew that things like that cost more than she made in a year. And that the dramatic style and striking color were definitely Helene. A gift calculated to placate and seduce. The note tucked in the pocket read:
With apologies for the cold night you spent in my house, Miach.

M
iach was not at the
bar. Conn followed the directions he was given to City Point and immediately spotted the warded house overlooking the harbor. It was a sprawling Victorian, limned with porches and crowned by half a dozen cupolas of varying size. The style appealed to his Fae love of ornament and chaos, though his own taste in human architecture ran more to the classicism of the Greeks and Romans.

Miach received him in a second floor office with an impressive view out over the harbor’s choppy gray water.

“Frank Carter has disappeared,” Miach said. “Likewise his friend Egan. We attempted to trace the man, but he’s a dubious character. Trained as a doctor, used to be affiliated with a tony addiction clinic at one of the local hospitals, but lost his standing there when one of his patients died after changing her will in his favor.”

It did not surprise Conn. “So what do we do now?” Conn asked.

“We wait. My contacts in New York say Carter went to meet the Manhattan Fae at one of their Hudson River compounds, but, wisely, didn’t take the Summoner with him. He demanded a higher price than they had originally agreed upon. Naturally the Fae acquiesced at once, since they intended to kill him in any case. But Carter must possess enough Fae blood to be sensitive to such things, because he never returned with the sword.”

“So the Manhattan Fae will be hunting him, too,” Conn surmised.

“The sword,” replied Miach, “and the girl. I must insist that you bring her here where she will be safe.”

“And where she will be convenient to hand if you decide she must be killed,” Conn guessed. “Her name is Beth. Do not think I have missed the fact that you never call her by it. She read you well. You shrink from killing women. But you are trying to harden your heart to kill this one.”

“I cannot promise you that I will not do so. I have my family to think of.”

“Forgive me, sorcerer, if your family does not engage my sympathy.”

Miach looked out the window, across the water, to the unseen island where his son was stranded. “Brian, for all that he has human blood,
is
Fae—as we were before the fall. Petty, puerile, and cruel. Because he can be. Because everyone he has ever known, save Elada and myself, is weaker than he is, and no one has ever thwarted his will. I know that he is a monster, every bit as much as the Prince Consort. But this monster is my son.”

“He is also a fool. The Prince Consort would as like kill him as look at him if it suited his purpose. Your family is mortal and vulnerable, Miach, as mine was, but if you help me find the Summoner, I’ll stand with you against any who would do them harm. Even the Prince Consort. I swear it.”

Another
geis
laid upon himself, another commitment to honor, but hopefully not one that would conflict with any of the others and lead him down the path to ruin that Cú Chulainn had walked.

“Thank you,” Miach said carefully, turning to face Conn. “I accept your pledge. However, there is another solution. If the girl were trained, if her power were released—”

“It would destroy her. To release her power, she would have to participate in murder.”

“Not murder. An execution,” Miach soothed. “I could bring her a felon. Someone deserving of death. A worthy—that is to say, to others worthless—sacrifice. And she needn’t wield the knife. I could do that. All she would need to do is accept the power. And afterward I would train her myself, as I did so many Druids before the fall. I could teach her to defend herself from any Fae who tried to bend her to his will. Even the Prince Consort.”

“I can protect her from the prince,” Conn insisted.

“Only by keeping her under glass, and she will never tolerate that. She has too much spirit, but that is part of the reason she has such potential. There is only myself and Elada here. You know as well as I that half a dozen true Fae could overcome us, then cut my family down like flowers in the field. You know they would do it, for sport or for spite, depending on their whim. Your Druid could fight alongside us, if trained.”

“She will not be.”

“You say that becoming a full Druid would destroy her, but you cannot know that. She may be stronger than you think.”

“It is not a question of strength. It is a question of conscience, and character.”

“Human terms,” Miach said dismissively.

“She is human. Mostly,” Conn added, remembering her wild appearance in that kitchen on the island.

“And she is exciting, because she is beautiful and dangerous,” Miach observed. “But ask yourself this, Conn. Are you protecting her, or yourself? At the moment she is a blade without an edge. Lovely to look at but unlikely to kill. If she became a full Druid, would you still be able to enjoy her in bed, knowing she could drain you with a touch?”

He didn’t know.

“Speak with her about it. You owe me that much. My family was safe here before you came,” Miach said.

“No, Miach, they were not safe. Brian must have been in communication with the Prince Consort long before Beth and I arrived. You have kept your family too close here. They are shamed and quiet for now, because of how Brian treated the women, but they will not stay cowed for long.”

“I give you my word that
Beth
will be safe from my family beneath my roof,” Miach said.

It was a vow, and binding. “But Elada is not of your family, and you do not give me your word that you will not order her killed if you think it necessary.”

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

Chapter 10

B
eth 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.

H
e 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.

B
eth 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.”