Gods and Swindlers (City of Eldrich Book 3) (9 page)

“So then let’s make it three witches,” Lynette said as she walked toward the door. “I’ll be in the basement with Natalie and Gretchen if you need me.”

“I’ll head down there with you,” Owen said.

“Good,” Lynette said. “You can tell me all about you and Natalie.”

“Uh . . .”

“I’m sure Gretchen’s already gotten it out of her. Come on.”

Owen rolled his eyes as he followed Lynette out of the room.

“It said something,” John said, his voice sounding choked. “About not all of the Fahrayans being turned human. Is that possible?”

Terry shook his head. “It’s screwing with you. You told me yourself you’re sure the missing Fahrayans are dead.”

“But what if they are not? What if they’re out there? I have heard the stories—”

“The gossip,” Meaghan said. “It saw a soft spot and went for it, that’s all.”

Unless it knows something
we don’t.
The gossip continued to circulate in magical circles that the missing Fahrayans had been grabbed for nefarious purposes when fleeing the destruction of their world. Even older gossip claimed that a band of Fahrayan raiders, gone missing in Europe during World War II, had been captured by the Nazis and taken to a secret lab in Berlin.

Conspiracy theories aside, many Fahrayans were not happy with their human transformation. They grieved their lost family and friends, and they wanted their wings back. Desperately. It was exactly the sort of longing the fair folk exploited to garner devotion.

Terry put his hands on John’s shoulders. “Johnny, these things are liars. Everything about them is a lie. They’re the most evil creatures I know of, and I’ve tangled with some scary things. Meaghan is right. It went after the one thing it knew would hurt you the most.”

John nodded, his face etched with misery. “I still want to talk to it.”

Meaghan shook her head. “Absolutely not. You heard what Terry said.”

“I was sober on and off for fifteen hundred years before AA. I can’t blame the fair folk for every time I fell off the wagon, but they definitely pushed me a few times. You need to keep your distance. Trust me. That thing downstairs would love to see you pick up a bottle.”

“All right.” John sighed. “I need to check on my bees today anyway.”

“Would you stay up here for now?” Terry asked. “There’s more of these things skulking around and they got your number. Let me talk to Meg and sort out a plan. After that, I’ve got nothing going today, so I can stick close. If you’d like the company.”

John smiled. “Sure I’d like the company. Or is it babysitting?”

Terry laughed. “A little of both. And not only for you. These things have me rattled, too.” He turned to Meaghan. “Meet me downstairs, okay? We need to talk about this some more.”

Meaghan nodded, then turned to John. “We still need to talk too, but—”

“Now is not the time.” He wrapped his arms around her. “I understand. Go. Do your job.”

“My job . . . Oh, shit. I’m supposed to go into work today and walk through the new offices and finalize the furniture and—”

“Can somebody else do it? Jamie, maybe?”

“No, it has to be me. How is he, by the way?”

John shrugged. “He seems to be better, but—”

“You don’t believe it.”

“I don’t know. I think maybe I am seeing too much of myself in him. And he still doesn’t tell me much. More than he did, but some wounds are slow to heal. I can’t make up for all those years away when he needed me.”

“All you can do is be here now.”

He nodded. “And then there is Patrice.”

Patrice, Jamie’s wife, had exhibited mysterious superpowers during the Order’s siege of city hall. Cooper, the head wizard and all-around bad guy, had made cryptic sneering references to Patrice’s “sisters,” and Patrice—or more accurately, whatever had possessed her at the moment—had called herself a vessel. As soon as the danger was past, Patrice’s powers receded and hadn’t reappeared. At least not as far as anyone knew.

Meaghan sighed. “Yeah. We need to figure that one out, too. But first, there’s the evil elf infestation to take care of. Let me go talk to Terry and get you sprung from house arrest.”

“It never stops,” John said.

“Look on the bright side,” Meaghan said. “At least we haven’t seen any evil wizards.”

His look grew dark. “Yet. We haven’t seen them yet
.
”

Chapter Eleven

T
ERRY MET MEAGHAN
at the bottom of the stairs.

“So now what?” she asked.

Terry pointed at the floor and shook his head. In a cheerful voice, he said, “Why don’t you come over to my place for a cup of coffee?”

She gave Terry a quizzical look and pointed at her ear and then the floor.

He nodded.

“Let me get my boots and coat,” Meaghan said, then added in a whisper, “Should I let them know I’m going?”

He nodded, then leaned over and murmured in her ear, “Keep it casual.”

Meaghan made her way back to the kitchen and pulled open the basement door. She took a steadying breath. “Guys? I’m running across the street for a minute.”

“Okay,” Natalie called back.

“Who’s down there with you?”

“Owen, Gretchen, and Lynette. We’re fine. It won’t be pulling anything else on us.”

“Call me if you need me,” Meaghan shouted. She pulled on her boots, found her coat in the hall closet, and followed Terry outside.

The gray clouds were back and the air was still and hushed. “It’s going to snow again, isn’t it?”

Terry nodded. “Feels like it.”

“Is it safe to leave them?”

He nodded again. “I took a look and made some threats. They’ve got it locked down tight.”

“So why the secrecy?”

“Not here,” he said, his voice tight.

Meaghan raised an eyebrow. She pointed back toward her house.

Terry shook his head, pointed at his eyes, and then gestured around the neighborhood.

“Here?” she whispered, her heart pounding.

“Maybe,” he said. “Let’s get indoors.”

In silence, they trudged across the street to Terry’s house. He and Steph were in the middle of remodeling and the place was a maze of plastic sheeting and construction materials. They found Steph, still in her quilted bathrobe, sipping coffee in the outdated kitchen.

“Meg,” she said, with a smile.

Terry shook his head, put a finger to his lips, and pointed toward the backyard.

Steph nodded and headed toward the tiny mudroom. She stepped out of her slippers and into her boots, grabbed a jacket from a hook near the door, and the three of them headed out the back door into the cold. The previous homeowner had let the holly run wild, but Terry had cleared a wide path back to his newly constructed forge.

His magical safe room.

Okay, this is bad,
Meaghan thought.

He slipped a key into the deadbolt and unlocked it, then pulled an amulet from around his neck, squeezed it, and muttered something.

They stepped inside and Terry pushed the door closed. He exhaled a shaky breath and leaned his head against the door a moment as if to steady himself.

Steph put her arm around him. “You okay?”

He nodded. “For now.” He gave her a worried look. “I’m sorry this keeps happening.”

She shook her head. “Nothing to be sorry about. We knew it was only a matter of time.”

Terry moved away from the door and gestured toward a battered folding chair. “Meg, have a seat. Sorry I can’t really offer you that coffee.”

Meaghan sat. “This guy isn’t your typical elf, right?”

“No.” Terry turned to Steph. “They sent one of the heavy hitters and it let itself be caught.”

“How heavy?” Steph asked.

“It managed to mess with John and with one of the witches, even with a spell wall and an iron chain around its ankle.”

Steph clutched the collar of her robe. “Where is it now?”

“Still in the basement, but with a lot more iron on it. There’s three witches guarding it, plus Owen.”

Steph relaxed a little. “Okay. I still think we should kill it.”

“I agree,” Terry said. “But not before we try to pry some information out of it.”

Meaghan frowned. “How are you going to do that?”

“I have some ideas,” Steph said, with a dark look.

“Now, honey—”

“I know. We can’t stoop to their level. But after—”

“I know,” Terry said.

“I wish you’d at least try to—”

He gave her a warning look. “You want to talk about this now?”

Steph glanced at Meaghan. “No. I guess not.”

Meaghan sighed. They were obviously frightened and while she wanted to respect their privacy, she had to know what she was dealing with. “I get it. I know you have things you don’t want me to know, but this cryptic shit is driving me crazy. Keep your secrets, fine, but tell me what we’re dealing with.”

Terry sighed and ran his fingers through his beard. “Like you said, that thing in your basement is not a typical elf.”

“Yeah, I got that. Which is why we’re hiding out here—”

“Freezing our asses off,” Steph added.

“Oh, yeah. Right. Hang on a second.” Terry fiddled with some knobs and within moments had a steady flame going in a small square box that sat on a pedestal in the middle of the concrete floor.

“What’s that?” Meaghan asked.

“Gas forge.”

“I thought this whole thing was a forge.”

“No, not technically. The forge is really the heat source where you soften the metal so you can work it. But people also use the term to describe the entire workshop.” He stopped puttering and looked up at Steph. “Better?”

She smiled. “Thank you.” She looked at Meaghan. “I don’t manage temperature well. Imagine going through menopause for several centuries.”

“Ew. No thanks,” Meaghan said. “If that’s the price of immortality, you can keep it.”

Steph rolled her eyes and pointed at Terry. “You sound like him.”

“Immortality’s like sobriety. You manage it one day at a time.” Terry leaned back against the anvil and looked at Meaghan. “So, you want to know why we’re having this conversation out here.”

Meaghan nodded.

“It’s been rumored for a while,” Terry said, “that some of the fair folk were developing an immunity to iron. Like how humans are developing immunity to magic.”

“And that’s bad?” Meaghan asked.

“Very bad,” Steph said.

“But if their magic doesn’t work on humans, they’re no threat at all, right?”

“Yeah,” Terry said. “Eventually. But we’re not there yet. There’re still plenty of humans who have no immunity at all.”

“Iron has always been the one thing that could short-circuit the elves’ magic,” Steph said. “At least enough for humans to begin fighting back. It was the sheer volume of iron and steel used in the modern world that gave humans enough of an edge to force them to a draw.”

Meaghan mulled Steph’s words a moment, then said, “This is what I don’t get. If we forced them to retreat, why are they still screwing around in human affairs?”

Steph snorted. “Because it was a draw. Not a victory. They agreed to stop killing humans and we agreed to stop killing the fair folk.”

“But it’s okay to feed off us?”

Terry sighed. “Yeah. You aren’t the only one who wasn’t thrilled with that resolution.”

“So then why did you agree to it?”

“Hey, don’t blame me. I wasn’t even there. I had nothing to do with it. You need to ask your father.”

“Or Luka,” Steph said. “Who has the advantage of still being alive.”

The mystery cousin?

“Steph, we talked about this—”

“No,” Steph said. “You talked about this. I didn’t agree to anything. If the fair folk are breaking the truce, he’s going to get involved, you know that.”

“Yeah, but—”

Steph nodded. “I know you don’t want to dig up the past. But, if the—”

“Everyone will be afraid of me.”

Steph went to him and put her arms around him. “In Eldrich? Doubtful. There’s much scarier things here than you.”

“Like the stinky space squid,” Meaghan chimed in. “Or Patrice. We still don’t know what’s up with her.”

At the mention of Patrice, Terry glanced at Meaghan, a guilty look on his face, then looked quickly away as his cheeks grew pink. Steph, curled up under his arm, didn’t notice Terry’s reaction.

What the hell?
But Meaghan knew better than to push him. She filed it away with the mystery cousin as something to look into later.
Time to change the subject.
“So, did you guys know my father?”

Terry shook his head, obviously relieved not to talk about Patrice. “Not personally, no. But we knew of him. My cousin knew Matthew a bit.”

“Is that Luka?”

Terry gave Steph a warning look. She scowled back and said, “Yes. And don’t you look at me like that. Meg already knows Owen works for him. Ninety seconds on the Internet and she’ll know all about him anyway.” She turned to Meaghan. “Luka Volkhov. Because I know you’ll start Googling the moment you get a chance, and you won’t let it go until you find him. This saves us both some time.”

Meaghan smiled. “Thank you.”

Terry threw his hands in the air and pulled away from Steph. “Geez, why don’t you just tell her the whole thing? Spill all our secrets?”