Not Your Ordinary Faerie Tale (6 page)

“Lucifer?”
she repeated, still looking quite uncomfortable.

“Luc,” he corrected brusquely, barely softening the syllable with a small nod.
“Luc Macanaw.
It’s a—” He broke off.
“It is interesting to meet you.”

Her brows flew up and a wry sort of amusement joined the unease in her expression.
“Yeah, the, uh, interest is all mine,” she said.
She turned back to Rafe, giving Luc her shoulder and a vague sense of annoyance at being so easily dismissed.

“Look, I’m sorry to just barge in like this, in the middle of your meeting or whatever, but I thought you might want a heads-up about this, so you could…” She guestured vaguely, then let her hand fall back to her side.
“Anyway, I just thought you should know, since it’s got to be one of you guys, right?”

“Think nothing of it,” Rafe dismissed, easing her smoothly toward a large armchair.
“What has to be, er, one of us?”

“The elf everyone is talking about.”

Luc, who had just begun contemplating how best to remove both himself and his unfinished brandy from the room for the duration of this conversation, tuned right back in.
“Elf?”
he repeated, glancing at the Felix.

Rafe seated himself across from the woman and leaned forward.
“I’m afraid you’ve caught us off guard, Corinne.
I’m not sure I follow.
Who, exactly, has been talking?
And about what?”

“The elf,” Corinne repeated impatiently.
She searched their faces for a moment, then seemed to read in their carefully controlled expressions that she needed to give them more.
Luc watched her take a deep breath, then start again.
“Look, I definitely don’t want to get involved in any kind of…issue you people have among yourselves, but Reggie and Missy made it pretty clear when they spilled the truth about this whole Others business to me that you guys consider it pretty damned important that no one knows about you.
So when my boss handed me this assignment today, I thought it was weird.
And I thought someone should let you guys know.”

She paused and made a face.
“Unfortunately, I was the only someone I could think of.”

Luc struggled to follow the woman’s garbled explanation and discovered she might as well have been speaking a foreign language for all the sense he could make of it.
Hell, she might as well have been waving semaphore flags; and normally, he wouldn’t have cared, but her mention of an “elf” when he was here in
Ithir
looking for a missing Fae had definitely piqued his interest.
So he could admit later that he may have been a bit brusque when he snapped, “For the stars’ sake, woman, you’re making no sense.
At all.
Do you need smelling salts or something, or can you maybe pull yourself together and let us know what the hell you’re babbling about?”

Rafe shot him a speaking glance, but the woman seemed to have no need for anyone else to defend her.
She swept him an utterly dismissive look, then turned fully away from him to face Rafe alone.

“I know from meeting you guys that the Others don’t want humans to know you really exist,” she continued, speaking directly to the Felix.
It didn’t take a genius, though, to realize the frigid tone of her voice was aimed at someone else entirely.
“Aside from people like Reggie and Missy.
And the rest of our little circle now, I guess.
But I know it’s not supposed to be common knowledge.
Reggie made us all swear an oath when we first found out.
And I know that an occasional article in the tabloids about Dracula attacking a hiker in Romania or a werewolf impregnating a housewife in Arkansas doesn’t concern you.
Which it shouldn’t, because people can make fun of those, and when they make fun of them, that means they don’t suspect anything.
But this isn’t like that.
This is bigger.”

She paused for another deep breath, blew it out slowly.
“Today my boss asked me to look into half a dozen reported elf sightings here in Manhattan.
None of the witnesses was an obvious crackpot, all of them are willing to swear on a Bible about what they saw, and all of them apparently have pretty big mouths.
Now, if it were just my boss looking into it, I wouldn’t have freaked, and I probably wouldn’t be talking to you.
Well, I definitely wouldn’t be talking to you, but the word is that we’re not the only ones on the story, and that’s…unusual.”

“Your boss asked you to look into it?”
Luc demanded.
“Are you with the police?”

Rafe looked up.
“Corinne is a reporter.”

Luc felt himself blanch.
“A reporter.
Wait, does that mean these sightings will be announced on your television sets?
That the entire human world will hear of it?”

Corinne deigned to reply frostily over her shoulder.
“Not yet.
Maybe.
I’m a print reporter.
I work for a small local newspaper.
But like I said, I’m not the only one on the story.
There are other papers snooping around, and my boss thinks the TV stations might be getting curious.”

The curses Luc let fly stretched the bounds of legality and creativity, but fortunately he retained enough presence of mind to utter them in his native tongue.
This wasn’t good news.

“While I may not understand the sentiment, I’m afraid I likely agree with it,” Rafe said grimly, standing to thrust his hands in the pockets of his tailored trousers.
“This is…distressing.”

“I’m guessing from your reactions that you haven’t heard about this before.
Which means I was probably right to come here and warn you.
Yay for me.”
Corinne stood as well and shouldered the battered leather backpack she’d carried with her.
“Anyway, I’m sorry if this is trouble for you guys, but at least you know.
So, you know, good luck and everything.
I hope you…do whatever you need to do with the…whatever it is.”

She turned toward the door but didn’t manage a single step.
Instinctively, Luc reached out to stop her.
She’d just given him his first lead in discovering Seoc’s whereabouts.
Right now he needed her, and he didn’t intend to let her go until she gave him everything she had.

He just didn’t expect that to include a punch straight to his chest.

Not literally, of course.
She didn’t raise a hand to him.
She just arched one dark, curving eyebrow and let her gaze trail slowly from his face to the hand he had wrapped around her upper arm.
She stared at it as if it were covered in leprous black spots.

“Excuse me?”
Her voice sliced into him with excruciating politeness.

He made no move to release her.
He doubted he’d be able to if he tried.
Grabbing her arm had been like grabbing on to a live electrical cable; his entire body had clenched with the strange and powerful current that coursed through him.
The hair on his arms and legs stood up and vibrated to an unheard frequency.
He wouldn’t have been surprised if the hair on his head did the same.
He was frozen, paralyzed by some force greater than himself, something he had never seen coming, and he couldn’t have chosen a less appropriate time for it if he’d charted the stars and consulted a damned oracle beforehand.

Shit, just when he’d thought her attitude had dampened that initial burst of attraction, he’d had to go and touch her.
What the hell had he been thinking?

Corinne did not appear similarly moved.
If she had been, he doubted she would have yanked her arm out of his grasp with such obvious ease.
Not to mention relish.

“I’m going to pretend that didn’t happen, because if I didn’t, I’d feel obliged to deck you for it,” she said tightly, “and frankly, I’d rather just be on my way.
So, toodles.”

Rafe stepped forward, holding his hands up near his shoulders, palms out, when she turned her snarl on him.
Luc seized the opportunity to try to get control of himself.

“Please, Corinne.
Don’t leave yet.
We could use your help,” the head of the Council admitted.
“I—
we
—certainly appreciate the favor you’ve done us by alerting us to this issue.
Clearly, you were under no obligation to do so.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, but she stopped heading for the door.
“Have you actually met Reggie and Missy?”
she grumbled.

The Felix offered a wry smile.
“You did it out of loyalty to your friends.
I understand that, and I still owe you thanks, no matter your motivation.
We knew that there was a…visitor to the city at present, but we were not aware before now that he’d been spotted by the human media.
The information you’ve given us is not what one would call welcome news, but it
is
valuable to us.”

“Valuable?
Look, I’m definitely not asking anyone for some kind of reward—”

“I never thought you might be.
I only mention it because we would find it equally valuable if you could stay a few more minutes and answer one or two questions for us.”

In other circumstances, Luc might have laughed at the expression of horror that suggestion evoked.
Unfortunately, in the present circumstances, he couldn’t afford to be amused.
Nor could he afford to be feeling the gut-deep, elemental attraction that had flared between them the moment he touched the bare skin beneath the arm of her short-sleeved top.
Too bad no one had asked him about it first.

He cleared his throat and hoped he’d tamped down his reaction to her sufficiently for his words not to spew out like liquid idiocy before he spoke.
“Rafe, I think we need to explain to her what’s going on before we ask her for any more help.
It’s the least she deserves.”

She looked a bit surprised that he’d suggested such a thing, but she nodded at Rafe anyway.
“I think that might be a good idea.
Especially since my editor is determined to get this story.
I suppose if I know what’s really going on, I can make sure the article I turn in is far enough from the actual truth to be safe.”

“You’re right.”
Rafe nodded and waved her back to her seat.
“It is senseless not to fill you in when you already know almost as much as we do.”
He waited for her to sit, then settled himself back into his lazy pose, but his fingers beat restlessly against the arms of his chair.
“The problem you’ve brought to us this evening is the very reason for Luc’s visit to our city.”

Corinne glanced at him.
“You’re not from around here?”

Luc shook his head.

“Luc is Fae,” Rafe informed her.

Corinne just stared at him.
Then she turned her head and stared at Luc.
She looked back and forth between them at least half a dozen times, but her blank expression never changed.

“I’m Fae,” Luc repeated, then sighed.
“As in Faerie.”

The blankness dissolved beneath a surprised laugh.
“You’re a fairy?
Sure, Tinker Bell.
Pull the other leg while you’re at it.”

Luc scowled at Rafe.
“You see?
That’s the problem with mortals.
We leave your world for a couple of thousand years and everyone either forgets all about us, or they reduce us to little glowing balls of tutu-clad good cheer.”

Corinne continued to chuckle.
Even Rafe had caught the bug.
He met Luc’s glare and shrugged.
“You have to admit, the mental image of you in such a costume is amusing.”

“Fuck you.”

Corinne watched the interchange and managed to stifle her laughter, but she couldn’t quite wipe the grin off her face.
Luc tried not to notice how it made her mouth look wide and mobile and wholly inviting.

“You’re serious?”
she said, shaking her head.
“You two honestly want me to believe Luc’s a fairy?”

“No, I want you to believe I’m Fae,” he said firmly.
“Faerie is where I come from, but it was the most convenient word I could use to make you understand.
Faerie
is a place.
Fae
means a being from Faerie.
Calling someone a Faerie is like calling someone a France.”

Corinne nodded, then shook her head, then nodded again.
Then she just sat there and looked confused.
“So you’re trying to tell me that fairies are real.
Does that make the elf a fairy?”

Rafe must have seen the irritation in Luc’s face, because he cleared his throat and jumped into the fray.
“
Fairy
is considered a bit of a derogatory term by the people of, erm, Faerie,” he explained.
“They really prefer being called Fae.”