Dangerously Charming (8 page)

“Maybe,” Barbara said, not wanting to sound too encouraging. From the look on Mick's face, she succeeded. Barbara knew she would have to play this very carefully, or risk having the situation backfire and become worse instead of better. But if she was right, the solution to the riddle might solve two problems at once. And as far as she was concerned, she was willing to bend more than a few rules and, if necessary, twist a few arms, to make that second one happen.

“The riddle clearly follows the traditional format. The first stanza explains why the curse was cast—in short, because some bad-tempered faery thought your great-great stole her man. Who wasn't hers in the first place and who she would have lost interest in sooner or later anyway. But never mind that. The
why
is rarely fair, unless you happened to be stupid enough to steal some enchanted item from the witch it belongs to.” That had happened once or twice, and in her experience it never ended well for the other party.

She went on. “The second stanza spells out what the curse entails, of course.”

Jenna held one hand protectively over her belly. “Yes, that part is crystal clear, unfortunately. And the section after that just tells me I have to solve the riddle to lift the curse, and something about a ‘pathway through' that my grandmother thought meant that the solution lay in the Otherworld. The true riddle is that last stanza, and that's the part no one has ever been able to decipher. I don't even know where to start.”

“I suggest starting in the land where the sun's rays are never slanted,” Barbara said with a grin. “With the sun's bright ray.” She lifted her mug in Day's direction. “Have you met my friend the White Rider, sometimes known as my ‘Bright Day'?”

DAY
snorted coffee out through his nose.

“What? What?” He grabbed a napkin and wiped his face, then waved it like a white flag. “No way, Barbara. You are
not
going to tell me that I am in the goddamn riddle.” He glared at Barbara, which had about as much effect as it usually did. Which is to say, none whatsoever. This was SO not going the way he'd planned it.

Barbara shrugged, not bothering to try and hide the hint of a smile that hovered around the edge of her lips. “I wasn't telling you. I was telling Jenna. You just happen to be sitting at the table.”

“That line does
not
refer to me.”

“Really?” Barbara said. “You don't think ‘The sun's bright ray where none is slanted' refers to the Baba Yagas' Bright Day, who comes from the Otherworld, where there is no true sun? It seems like rather a good fit to me.”

“It could refer to Gregori Sun,” Mikhail said, knowing he sounded a little like a child wanting to put the blame for a
broken vase on someone, anyone, else. “After all, it says ‘sun' right in the phrase.”

Barbara just stared at him.

“Okay, fine! Day threw up his hands. “It has to refer to someone from the Otherworld, and it does sound like it could mean me. But it could mean something entirely different. That's all I'm saying.” He subsided back into his seat and picked up his coffee again, glowering equally at Barbara and Jenna (but not at Chudo-Yudo, since, after all, he was depressed but not suicidal).

“I don't understand,” Jenna said, glancing from Barbara to Day and back again. “How can Mick be part of the solution to a riddle that was created hundreds of years ago?”

“That's the funny thing about curses and riddles,” Barbara said. “And why fairy tales are such a pain in the butt.” Chudo-Yudo snorted in agreement, almost setting the edge of Barbara's pants on fire. “Once such things are set in motion, not even the people involved have any control over them.”

Day took pity on Jenna, who looked even more confused than ever. “Think of it like this: once someone casts a curse—in this case, Zilya—destiny kind of takes over. I suppose that's the only way it could truly be fair, with no room for cheating.”

“Which, let's face it, Zilya would have done, if she could have,” Barbara added.

“So Zilya cast the curse, but once your many-great-grandmother invoked the riddle clause, whatever riddle Zilya made up on the spot didn't actually come from her. She would have opened her mouth and recited it, but without any conscious power over how it came out. Then both she and your family were stuck with the results. The universe maintains the balance. Think of it as another unseen law, like gravity. Nobody really knows why it works the way it does; the universe is just designed that way.”

Jenna wrinkled her nose in a way that Day found absurdly endearing. “Well, okay, I kind of get that. I mean, it goes along
with a lot of the fairy tales I've read. But that still doesn't explain how Mick could be in a riddle that was given to my great-great-great-great-whatever-grandmother all those years ago, does it?”

Day and Barbara exchanged glances, and the witch raised one eyebrow in question. Day shook his head at her and sighed.

“There are a few possibilities,” he said, putting off the moment of truth. “Maybe you really are meant to be the one who solves the riddle.”

“Or maybe any of your relatives could have met him, somewhere along the line,” Barbara said flatly. “Mikhail is, or rather he was, the White Rider, companion to the Baba Yagas. He has been around for thousands of years.”

Jenna's eyes got round and her jaw dropped. She stared at Day. “So when Zilya said something about you not being immortal anymore, she wasn't making some kind of snide comment? You really are immortal?”

“Not now,” Day said, and pushed his chair away from the table with a scraping noise that made Chudo-Yudo put his huge paws over his ears. “And I still don't believe I am any kind of solution to this riddle. I'm not any kind of solution to anything, as Barbara well knows.”

He winced inwardly at how unpleasant he sounded, but he couldn't just sit there and have the rest of this conversation. Not with Jenna. Not with Barbara. Not with anyone.

“I'm sure Barbara can come up with some ideas on the rest of the riddle,” he said abruptly, heading for the door. “Since she was clever enough to figure out this bit. I need to get some air.” He figured he'd duck back into the Airstream and be gone before either of them realized he'd left.

“Just be back in time for dinner,” Barbara said. And added in a deceptively sweet tone, “By the way, I've locked the trailer from here, so if you're planning on returning to your hideout in the woods, you've got a long walk ahead of you.”

Day grunted and slammed the door behind him. Hard.

*   *   *

DAY
stared at the trees behind Barbara's barn blindly, not seeing sturdy oaken wood and tall pines. Instead, his sight was filled with the memory of his fellow Riders' limp bodies, dragged into magical cages when they followed him into Brenna's trap. A trap that never would have worked if she hadn't played on his well-known weakness for rescuing helpless women.

Vision after vision played out in his mind, as they had so many times before. Alexei and Gregori, tortured until they passed out or screamed in agony. Alexei's hands burned red and oozing from his attempt to distract Brenna, Gregori bleeding from a dozen stab wounds as he did the same. The look on their faces when the Queen pronounced the three of them immortal no more.

He doubted they'd ever forgive him for that. It didn't matter; he'd never forgive himself. Brenna might have been the one who stole away their futures, but it wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for Mikhail.

Mikhail had no idea where his brothers were now. Out seeking their new lives and their new paths, like him, probably. He didn't even know which side of the doorway they were on. He hadn't spoken to either of them before he'd left the Otherworld, and they'd barely spoken to one another while they were still there and healing. Everyone insisted they weren't angry, merely recovering, as he was. But how could they not be angry? He was so furious with himself, sometimes the heat of it threatened to burn him up from the inside like the fires Brenna set to fuel her rank potion.

His cabin in the midst of the woods was the closest he'd come to peace, of a sort. Not forgiveness, never that, nor excuses for the harm he'd allowed to befall his beloved comrades. But at least until today he'd stopped seeing their bruised and battered faces, except in his nightmares.

Now this. Jenna had no idea what she was asking. He
wanted to help her, really he did. She was sweet, and no one deserved to have their baby stolen away just because a faery had suffered a fit of pique centuries before and Jenna's entire family had suffered the consequences. But he just couldn't. Not after what happened. Never again. She would have to find her help elsewhere.

Day blinked rapidly, coming back to find himself kneeling on the grassy earth, white-knuckled hands clenched on his thighs, so tight he could barely loosen them again. He dragged in a ragged breath, suddenly tired beyond measure.

He staggered to his feet, not sure if it had been hours or only minutes since he'd sunk into the fugue state he thought he'd left behind him in the Otherworld along with the two men he loved best in all the world. Apparently he wasn't quite as healed as he'd thought. Clearly he needed more time on his own to regain his equilibrium. A lot more time. Maybe as many years as he had left in a life now measured in decades instead of centuries.

No matter. He knew himself well enough to admit that he would never be able to find the peace he sought if he simply abandoned Jenna. But with any luck, by the time he'd taken a long walk and pulled himself back together again, Barbara would have solved the entire thing and figured out a way past whatever barriers would prevent her from telling Jenna what to do.

And then he could just go home and . . . well, do whatever he was going to do with the rest of his life. As soon as he could decide what that was.

*   *   *

“IS
he all right?” Jenna asked Barbara softly. The look on Mick's face before he'd stormed out just about broke her heart. She could tell he'd been terribly wounded by something in his past, but she had no idea what to do or say to help. And was a little afraid to ask what had happened to him. She really wanted to know, but it was none of her business. Not to
mention that Barbara didn't seem like the type to gossip about her friends.

“It kind of seems like being involved in my mess is bringing up some bad memories and making things worse. Maybe I should go.” Although where she'd go if she left, she wasn't sure.

“Not a chance,” the other woman said, glaring down her slightly long nose. “You and Mikhail were brought together for a reason. I know it, you know it, and deep down, he knows it too. Baba Yagas don't believe in coincidence, and neither do Riders. He just needs a little time to adjust to the idea that his time for hiding out is done.”

*   *   *

“I'M
not hiding out,” Mick protested a few hours later, when he returned from wherever he'd disappeared to. “I just need some space to figure out who I am now. Hell,
what
I am now, since I'm not a Rider anymore.” He took a sip of the tea Barbara had forced on him. He would rather have had vodka.

“Ding!” Barbara said cheerfully. “Time's up. Life calling on line two.”

“I knew I would regret the day when Liam introduced you to television,” Mick muttered under his breath. “So, what have you been talking about since I've been gone? Have you come up with any more answers?”

“Not exactly,” Jenna told him, shaking her head ruefully. “We went over all of my grandmother's notebooks, but we didn't spot anything helpful.” She gestured at the leather-bound books spread all across the table, next to her empty knapsack.

“We also talked about how the fact that Jenna showed up on the doorstep of the only person for miles around who actually had years of experience with faeries and the Otherworld was too convenient to be a coincidence,” Barbara added, giving Mick a pointed stare. “I told her you would agree.”

Mick sighed. “Yeah, there's really no escaping that one. Sometimes fate is a relentless bitch.” There was a bitter tone in his voice.

Jenna gazed at him across the table. “I'm sorry. I really didn't mean to drag you into my troubles.” Not that she wasn't grateful that his long walk seemed to have brought about a change of heart.

“No, I'm sorry,” Mick said. “I don't mean to be so ungracious about this. It's not your fault.” He gazed at her over his mug, his eyes a startlingly bright blue. “I don't know if I believe in destiny, exactly, since that would imply that we don't have the freedom to choose our actions, and I think we do. But I have seen enough in my very long life that I've come to believe that there are times when some power—call it the gods, the universe, whatever you please—decides to take a hand in events. Maybe this curse has gone on too long, and the universe feels a need to right the imbalance. Maybe your baby is going to grow up to be someone special and the gods want him or her to stay on this side of the doorway.” He shrugged. “Either way, I'm clearly a part of this whether or not I want to be. We'll just have to make the best of it.”

Jenna held back a sigh. It wasn't exactly an enthusiastic endorsement, but she supposed it was the best she was going to get. At least he was willing to help, no matter how reluctantly.

“What do we do next, then?” she asked.

Barbara pulled a laptop out from underneath the cupboard. “Now we search the World Wide Web,” she said. “There has got to be a clue out there somewhere, and by golly, we are going to find it. Preferably before dinner. I'm a terrible cook when I'm rushed, and I'm not all that great when I'm not.”