Jumping in Puddles (21 page)

And the biggest question—what should she do? Even if she had the Kewen, it seemed she was damned if she gave it back, damned if she didn’t. The advice to Jago to sell and sell fast still stood. Maybe she could convince her father to send a message to Faerieland and tell Oberon the jewels had come up at auction. Her family was only tasked with finding them. They didn’t have to get them back, did they? Ellie chewed her nail. That might have worked if Pixie hadn’t blabbed. If others knew the jewels were here and that
she
was here, Ellie would have a lot of questions to answer.

Maybe she could use Pixie to reverse the damage her loose lips had caused. If her sister spread the rumor that Ellie had found the jewels and taken them to Whitendale, it would give Jago time to reach London and get rid of them. She sneaked out of the baron’s hall and exited the building. A route around the edge of the garden took her to the gatehouse unseen, and then she called her sister.

“Sorry, sorry,” Pixie blurted.

“It’s okay. I’ve got the Kewen. I’m on my way to Whitendale to hand it back.”

“Dad? Ellie says she’s got the Kewen and is taking it to Whitendale.”

“No point anyone coming up here,” Ellie said quickly before Pixie handed over the phone. “I’m already miles away from Sharwood. You might as well tell your friends not to bother coming.” She winced at the lie.

“Ellie?” Her father had, as expected, grabbed the phone. “What’s happening?”

“On my way to Whitendale with the Kewen. I’m going to have to outrun those Pixie’s blabbed to.”

“Pixie!” he snapped. “What have you done?”

“Sorry, sorry,” her sister mumbled in the background.

“Why are you going to Whitendale?” he asked. “I need to use the slate to contact the elders and ask them—”

“That’s my responsibility now.” She winced at her abrupt tone.

“Is Micah there?” her father asked. “Ask him to go with you.”

“I’ll call him.”

“Ellie?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you, sunshine. You did it. You actually did it. I wish you were here so I could hug you.”

Oh no, don’t be pleased with me. I’m lying to you.

She ended the call and then phoned Micah. “Where are you?”

“Here.”

Ellie barely managed to muffle her shriek as her brother stepped from behind a hedge. She stuffed her phone back in her pocket.

“Was that all a lie? You’re obviously not miles away from Sharwood, so do you have the Kewen? Why would Dad think you needed to go to Whitendale?”

“When he thinks about it, he’ll realize I lied so Pixie didn’t blab the truth by mistake. As to whether I have the Kewen. Yes and no. It was under the hearthstone, but there’s a problem. Oberon the fifth gave it to Jago’s ancestor in exchange for three children.”

“What?” Micah didn’t hide his shock.

“There’s a signed document proving it.”

“How do you know it was Oberon’s signature?”

“I…I don’t.” She hadn’t thought of that. “But the date’s right, and no human would sign themselves as Oberon the fifth.”

“Does Jago still have the jewels?”

Ellie nodded. “I also gave him the ring.”

“You’re intending to lead whoever was coming here on a wild-goose chase to the Bowland Fells while Jago does what?”

“Sells the Kewen. He can complete the deals on Monday. I wasn’t actually going to go to Whitendale.”

Micah dragged his fingers through his hair. “How does selling the Kewen help us?”

“We were only tasked with finding it. If it’s on sale in London, won’t that be enough?”

He frowned. “I don’t know.”

“Who are these
others
that Pixie told? Who’s on their way here?”

“Four banished fae, two werewolves, and a vampire. Oh and the zombie that’s still obsessed with her.”

Ellie groaned. “That’s the company she keeps? I thought she wanted to be normal.”

“So do the banished fae, werewolves, and the vampire. The zombie’s just an idiot.”

She snorted. “Will you stay here and keep an eye on things if I follow Jago to London? I need to protect him. I’ll go and explain things to Mum and Dad.”

“Good luck with that.”

Ellie let out a shaky breath. “Why do I feel so bad? Everything hurts. I’ve done what our family has been trying to do for hundreds of years, and I’ve never been so miserable. What’s wrong with me? Think you should share some power? Maybe that’s my problem.”

Micah pulled her into his arms and gave her an uncharacteristic hug, followed by an even more uncharacteristic kiss on the top of her head. “It’s not that,” he said. “It’s love.”

“That’s just great, you bitch,” Jago snapped behind her. “As if what you’ve done isn’t bad enough, you have some bastard helping you. I can’t believe I fell for your act. I’m a bloody doctor, and you still managed to convince me I was fucking a virgin.”

Micah stiffened, and Ellie swallowed her groan. Micah was so fast Jago didn’t stand a chance. Her brother caught hold of Jago’s shirt at the neck and lifted him onto his toes. The two were about the same height, but Micah had the advantages of faerie power, fury, and brotherly love.

“Ellie is my sister,” he hissed. “You don’t talk about her like that. You don’t talk
to
her like that. If I didn’t know how much she cares for you, I’d snap your fucking neck so you’d never talk to her again.”

She tugged at Micah’s arm. “Micah, you’re choking him.”

Micah let go, and Jago collapsed to sit coughing with his head in his hands. The bag containing the Kewen lay at his side.

“Ellie, go and pack,” Micah said quietly. “Wait by my car.”

“Don’t—”

“I won’t hurt him. I just need a moment with him.”

Chapter Sixteen

Jago watched Ellie walk away, and pain curled around his heart and squeezed like a snake.

“Get up,” her brother snapped.

Jago pushed himself to his feet. He suspected he was going to get another black eye.

“You’ve slept with my sister.”

Oh fuck
. He nodded.

“And you doubt you’re her first?” Micah raised his eyebrows.

Jago clenched his fists. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“You could start with believing her. You
were
her first. She was supposed to wait. She deserves better than you.”

“She slept with me to—”

“Do you honestly think she got into your bed because she needed to find the Kewen?”

Jago sucked in his cheeks. “No.”
I’m an idiot. Nothing new there.

Micah looked at the bag. “Is that it?”

“If you mean the jewels and precious stones, yes. Going to try and take it?”

The guy crossed his arms. “You think you could stop me?”

“Yes.”
Not a hope in hell
. “The jewels belong to me. I have a bill of sale.”

“The Kewen wasn’t Oberon’s to sell.”

Jago laughed. “Oh yeah, Oberon the faerie king. Right.”

“There is nothing amusing in this. You’ve hurt my sister.”

“She fucking hurt me. She came here pretending to help get Sharwood back on its feet, and all she really wanted was what’s in this bag.”

“Was today pretense? Were the crowds of people not real? Did she try and take the Kewen? She gave you the ring and walked away.

“Just as you have a responsibility to this place and your family, so Ellie has responsibilities too. It’s her duty as the eldest child to prove our family’s innocence so we can reclaim what we lost. If she should fail in her allotted time, her eldest child must continue the hunt. After three hundred years of searching, we understand about duty and obligation. Your parents are dead. Ours still live, yet Ellie has chosen you over them and over her brothers and her sister by giving you the Kewen.”

Jago swallowed hard.

“She could have taken it in the blink of an eye but chose not to. I could take it in less than a blink, but I respect her decision. She thinks she can find a way out of this, and she tried to help you avoid trouble by advising you to sell fast. A firestorm will fall on her for that. Although I might respect her decision, our father will not. Nor I suspect will the progeny of Oberon the fifth. So go and sell your jewels before they’re snatched away from you. Rebuild your fine house, and when you’re living in all that splendor, remember the price you really paid.”

The way Micah was talking, Jago felt like he’d wandered into some other dimension, the whole Kewen thing, the idea that a family could hunt treasure for so long purely to clear their name. Who cared after all this time? But then if the TV people got hold of the idea that Rupert had sold his kids, and made it the focus of the story, Jago would be very unhappy.
The family name—oh shit.

“I’ve completely fucked this up.” Jago dragged his fingers through his hair.

A set of car keys hit him in the chest. “Go and make it right. Tell her I’ll stay here in case Pixie messes up and others come.”

Jago bent to grab the keys, and when he straightened, the guy had gone.

Ellie had her back toward him, leaning against an E-class Mercedes convertible, her bag at her feet. She turned before he reached her, and when Jago saw her red eyes and the way she shrank against the car, he hated himself. This whole thing with the Kewen was crazy. For all he knew it was a giant scam, though that didn’t explain a rusting box that clearly hadn’t been touched in a long time, a bill of sale that made his great-great-whatever-Uncle Rupert look like scum, nor the way Ellie had given him a five thousand pound ring and stepped away. He had to stop trying to look at things logically and believe his heart, and his heart told him he should trust Ellie.

Jago stopped in front of her and held out the bag. “Take it.”
Did I just give away twenty million pounds?

“Why?”

“Because I think you need it more than me. But there’s one condition.”

“What?”

“That I come with you to London to sort this out, and then you come back here with me.”

“Back with you?” she whispered.

“I don’t want to let you go, Ellie. I…need you, not the money.”

She smiled, and he showed her the car keys.

Ellie’s eyes widened. “He gave you his car keys? Micah never lets anyone drive his car.”

Jago opened the driver’s door, threw the jewels and her bag onto the backseat, and sat inside. “Are we going?”

He held his breath until she climbed in next to him and clipped on her seat belt.

“Micah said to tell you that he’d stay here in case Pixie messes up and the others come. What does he mean?”

He pulled out of the drive and headed for the main road.

“She’s told…people that I’ve found the Kewen. Better neither we nor the Kewen are here if they come. She didn’t mean to cause trouble. She opens her mouth without thinking.”

“A bit like me.”

Jago shot her a glance, but Ellie stared straight ahead.

“What does Kewen mean?”

“It’s just a word that describes a special treasure.”

“It belonged to this guy called Oberon?”

“Not him personally. His…family.”

“What relationship was your family to his? Why were your ancestors accused of stealing?”

“Because they were in charge of the Kewen. They were supposed to guard it, and it vanished while under their protection. They knew it was no longer in the…country and came here to look for it.”

“What about the children Oberon took in exchange?”

“I don’t know anything about that. That’s something I have to talk to my father about. We were told the Kewen was stolen, not sold.” She gave a loud sigh. “I’m sorry about all this. I want you to know that from the moment you opened the door of the hall and I first saw you, it was never just about the Kewen.”

Jago’s stomach lurched.

“I thought I could look for it and help you at the same time.”

“You did help me.”

“If I hadn’t…cared for you, I’d never have…” She let out a shuddering sigh. “I don’t want you to think I slept with you because of it.”

“I know you didn’t. I’m sorry.”

She glanced at him and smiled.
Oh God, her smile
. Jago had begun to wonder if he’d ever see it again.

If he’d been thinking straight, he’d have seen that she hadn’t needed to get involved with him at all. He reached for her hand and squeezed her fingers. She squeezed back, and Jago’s heart lightened.

“Tell me about your family,” he said. “What does Micah do?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“What?”

“Seriously. It’s something secret. We’re not allowed to know. Pixie works at the British Library, and Asher’s a lawyer. Mum’s an artist, and Dad works at the British Museum.”

“And what about you—apart from business development? Do you really do that?”

“I mend old jewelry.”

Jago let go of her hand to make the turn onto the motorway and then reached for her again. “Country house rescue is a bit of a change.”

“You know, I don’t think it is really. I take old, tired, and broken things and make them beautiful again. It just requires patience, common sense, and hard work.”

“And money.”

“Money too.”

“Talking of hard work, thank you for all you did to make today a success. Until I saw that bloody ring on the bouncy castle, it had been one of the best days of my life. It…still is. I lost sight of that in all the… You seemed to be everywhere, doing everything. I don’t know how you managed it. And those balloons—Christ, I was about to make a small boy cry until you fashioned a tortoise out of my interlinked snakes.”

“Mum was always making things like that with us. The school holidays were full of activities.”

While Jago’s mother, love her as he did, had always seemed to not quite know what to do with him and his brother.

He glanced at a sign on an overhead gantry. “Congestion ahead. Motorway closed two junctions away. We better exit and find a different route. How much farther is it?”

Ellie tapped directions into the sat nav, and a sarcastic male voice announced, “Oh, you need my help? Go straight. If you can.”

They both laughed.

She groaned. “It says we’ll arrive at two in the morning.”

“Arrive where?”

“My parents’ house.”

“So had we better find a place to stop and arrive at a respectable time? Or do you want to keep going? Maybe we should find somewhere to eat.”