The Earl's Childe (8 page)

“Not really, but…” For some reason, I couldn't articulate that I needed to talk to her right now. No, it wasn't urgent like she described, but I
needed
to tell someone now!

She bent and kissed my cheek. “Once I get back and get them settled in, I'm all yours. Promise.”

I stood there with an open mouth, throwing some of my recently acquired curse combinations at myself for not being able to tell her what was going on. I slumped on the wall as I heard her shut the door from the private part of the castle to the front courtyard. Rubbish!

I heard the
swish
of a kitchen door, heavy footsteps, and my dad's voice, speaking quickly. And angrily.

“…are you at least going to come if we have it here? She is your granddaughter, you know, and she
asked
for you, thinking you'd be supportive…”

He was talking to his dad, a minister, who must have finally given him an answer—one he didn't like—about the wedding of my eldest sister and her fiancee. Despite the hard lines in his face, Dad met my eyes with a soft look and gently ran his hand over my head as he passed me and headed into the office he shared with Mum.

“Aye, I
do
know. I know the church's opinion is split, and it would be an unofficial ceremony with Scotland's current legislation… I've done quite a bit of reading on this…”

He touched the edge of the door to close it behind him. Crap. He could be in there
forever
, and I needed to talk to
someone
. I jumped forward, stopped it before it closed, and followed him in. “Dad!”

“Hold on a second, Dad.” He spun around beside his desk and fixed a hard look on me. Just barging into the office was a big deal in the house. Well, barging in anywhere. Mum and Dad went out of their way to respect us kids' privacy and demanded the same back. “Heather, can this wait, please?” It was barely a question.

Like last night, in the round pen, a huge well of anger surged inside me from I don't know where, and it yanked me with it. “No, it can't wait! I promised you and Mum that I'd tell you if anything important happened in regards to anything Faerie and I'm trying to now and she was in a rush and now you're too busy, and I need you to listen to me!”

There was a pause. Then, he nodded. “Dad, Heather needs my help right now. Let me call you back… Yeah, I know. Love you, too.” He waited for the phone to show the call was really dismissed, then came over and hugged me. “I'm sorry, love. What's wrong? Are you hurt? Are—”

“I'm not hurt. I'm fine.” I assured him, pulling away from the hug. “But there was a big meeting with a bunch of faerie last night and I sort of went with Tom—”

“You
what?”
He stepped away from me, eyes bright and narrow, face growing red.

“Wait! I didn't leave the castle! I swear! Please, just listen! Please?” I held my hands out. He shifted his weight and folded his arms, lips tight. “It was a vision thing. I was right in here. I promise! I looked it up in Mum's book. Anyway…” I gushed as much of the story as I could to my dad, as fast as I could, barely remembering to breathe.

When I was done, my lungs were sore, so I leaned on Mum's desk and took a few deep breaths. My dad closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, undoubtedly struggling to process the huge info dump I'd laid on him.

“What, exactly, does vowing allegiance mean?” His eyes remained closed, but his fingers had moved to massaging both his temples, and he was tapping his heel.

“I don't know. I thought Mum would.”

Dad took a deep breath and slowly let it out through pursed lips. Then, he quickly straightened up and looked at me with so much energy in his face I couldn't help but flinch. “Would Tom know?”

“Probably, I guess.” I don't know why, but I felt leery of saying even that to my dad.

As he zipped to Mum's pile of books and slid the worn
A Wicca Guide to Faerie
off the top of her pile, where I'd left it last night, that wary instinct kicked me even harder in the gut. “What was the spell you and Rowan planned to use to summon him that time you ended up sneaking out to Faerie with Tom?”

“Um…” I felt paralyzed. There was still anger in his tone, but way more than that. So many feelings, I couldn't even begin to pick them apart.

“Heather?” He looked from the book to me, and I felt pinned by his gaze. He handed me the book. “Show me.”

Swallowing the ill taste that was now creeping from my stomach to my throat, I turned to the spell and handed him the book.

In a blur of motion, he snatched a sticky-note from Mum's desk, marked it, and held out the book to me again. “Now, show me the second spell he told you to use that night to prove his intentions.”

“Wh-what?” The sick feeling now was on the back of my tongue.

He spoke more slowly—almost at normal speed—but that didn't tone down the sharpness of his voice or his posture or his every movement. “Turn to the spell that he showed you when he wanted to prove he could be trusted.”

Seeing my dad like this, being at the end of this level of intensity, gave a complete smackdown to my own emotions and energy. I almost felt like I was under a spell myself as I gingerly took the book, turned to the right page, and handed it back to him.

He marked that page as well, and then proceeded to read each spell. Neither was very long, but part of me almost expected the book to start smoking, as if he were holding it under a magnifying glass before the sun.

After he read through the second spell, he closed the book, tucking it under his arm. With a nod for me to follow him, he headed to the kitchen. I glanced to the folded blanket beside Dad's desk, where Isis sometimes slept. The brindled greyhound pair, when they were a pair, had always been Dad's dogs, and they'd usually stuck close to him when he had bad mood swings. But it was nice outside, and greyhounds need lots and lots of running, so Dad had probably sent her out in the gardens to play. I jealously wished she were here, even though I couldn't imagine what she might do to help, besides whining or groaning pitifully at Dad.

Sighing, I followed him to the kitchen, where he was gathering spell components. It wasn't until Dad got to the candles on the top shelf of the linen cabinet that I found my voice. “Tom doesn't like the smell of lavender,” I choked out, remembering Tom telling Rowan and me this when we'd tried to summon him. I also remembered he hadn't been all that pleased about us trying to summon him, but the look on my dad's face kept me from mentioning that.

Dad nodded. “Unscented.” He held up a tapered candle briefly before adding it, and a candlestick, to the pile of stuff in his arms.

He paused at the kitchen doorway and quickly inventoried everything he carried, then turned his almost-painful-to-experience gaze back to me. “From where did Tom enter last night? I thought I'd covered every door and window with salt. Did it not work?”

“M-my room. I-I brushed the salt away, but I put it all right back when he left.”

Dad frowned at me, for what felt like a month, then turned and climbed the back stairs so quickly I pretty much had to run to keep up. He was already waiting outside my door, tapping his foot, when I reached the top of the curved stone stairs that came up by his and Mum's room.

At least, even in his super-manic state, he wasn't going to just run into my room.

I bowed my head as I walked by him, giving a little nod that he could follow, but really just wanting to avoid his eyes.

He started setting things up in the empty area near the middle of the room I shared with Lily. I leaned on the foot of my bed, feeling my heart pound. This wasn't the first manic mood I'd seen my dad in. Not even close to the first.

The only other time I'd seen him so
frighteningly
manic, though, was when Jessica, Lily's mum, had kidnapped her… and then lost her. I sincerely thought Dad was going to kill someone—anyone who got in the way of him getting over to the States and finding my sister.

The only other time I'd ever thought that he might kill someone was when he faced off with Ehrwnmyr. And Ehrwnmyr had believed it, too. He still thought my dad would kill him.

No one ever wants to think of their dad like that.

After about the twelfth swallow of burning sour in my mouth, I finally found my voice again. “I think we should wait for Mum, right?”

“Your Mum's not going to be back for hours, and I want some answers from that damned cat now.”

This was not good at all. Unlike Mum, Dad
never
outright swore in front of us kids.

“But Mum knows more about faerie, yeah? And…she might be able to get more answers quicker.”

My dad didn't even answer that. It
always
took forever for Mum to get to the point of something. I was grasping for any reason to make him hold off on whatever he was planning to do.

“It might be better to wait, just to make sure the spell works?”

Now he looked at me. “Had you done any spells before this summer? Ever?”

“No…but we didn't even do the summoning spell—”

“You did the other spell. And some projection vision spell last night, no?”

“Tom helped. Both times.”

Dad hesitated, and I held out hope he might wait for Mum. He scrunched his lips. “I forgot paper. Do you have some in here? A clean white sheet.”

I didn't remember that from the summoning spell. Where was he getting this from?

“There's some in the library.”

“Get it for me, and a pencil. A pencil. Not a pen.”

I balked.

He looked up at me. “Now, Heather.” His voice managed to be both calm and charged at the same time. I scooted from my room like he'd lit a firecracker under my behind and retrieved some computer paper and a pencil.

Placing the paper on the floor, he drew a large circle on it. “Clear the salt from your windowsill and open your window.”

Taking a deep breath, I did as he asked.

“Now, come sit beside me.”

I did so.

He lit the candle and began the summoning incantation.

When I cast the whole two spells I'd ever cast in my life, both times it felt like a gentle wind around me, along with a fuzziness, like static electricity on a balloon.

I also remember the time Mum cast the protection spell to help Rowan not be afraid of goblins. It felt like church, just after a song was sung. Powerful.

With just the first words Dad began to recite, it felt very different.

Wind whipped—literally, whipped, making the curtains and sheets snap—around my room. Rather than the soft fuzz of static electricity, it felt like a web of tiny pops on every part of my skin. The air felt
hard
.

I don't even remember hearing what my dad was saying, just his voice. Not just the sound, but the
feel
of it—like every word landed in my stomach with the weight of a stone.

When he was done, there was an audible
pop
, and Tom was standing in the circle Dad had drawn. His tail was straight up, his back arched, and all his fur was standing on end. He looked at me with wide yellow-green eyes. Rather than words, I got feelings from him.

He was scared.

I looked at my dad, who was pouring kosher salt into his left palm.

I looked back at Tom. I was scared, too.

Dad poured the salt in an unbroken circle around the fey cat. There was a hiss and a crackle as Tom tried to move out of the circle. Blue sparks sizzled as he hit the perimeter. I could smell singed fur.

“Stand still and answer my questions.” My dad glared at Tom.

Tom went from scared to terrified. His tail swished and he tried to turn around, but he kept hitting the edges of the circle.

“Dad, stop it! Let him out!”

“No, we need answers.” Dad looked at me. “He told you not to tell us what you were doing last night, didn't he?”

“We were in a hurry! And he knew I'd talk with you today!”

Tom began to meow loudly, trying to circle tighter. More crackles of blue sparks fizzed around him.

“Stop moving, and speak with me,” Dad ordered again.

Tom stopped circling and stared at my dad. He cringed backward. An especially bright and loud flash of blue sparks erupted as his whole tail hit the perimeter. He yowled, then hissed at us.

“Dad! You're hurting him!”

“He just needs to stand still.”

Another crack and yowl was enough for me. I shoved in front of Dad and wiped away the salt barrier.

“Ah!” The crack that hit me didn't exactly hurt, but surprised me. I fell backwards into my dad and then quickly rolled away from him.

Tom had flown the second he could. I caught just a glimpse as he paused on the windowsill to hiss at us before running away.

“Heather, what did you just do?”

My dad was furious. But now so was I. “You were hurting him!”

“We need answers if we're going to be under attack from some Unseelie faerie!”

“We could have just asked! Nicely!”

“Heather, as much as you want to, you can't trust faerie. You just can't!”

“Tom never hurt anyone to get them to do what he wanted!” I stood up, and so did my dad. I felt my arm shaking as a sensation of pins and needles started to set in. I looked down and saw the skin was bright pink, like a sunburn. I held it up to show Dad. “And he never hurt me, either!”

My whole body started to shake right then.

Dad took half a step back. “Heather, I—”

“Don't! I tried to get you to stop, and you wouldn't listen. I did what I promised and told you when there was trouble with faerie, and you made things worse! Now Tom might not ever come back and I don't know how else to contact Lady Fana and Lord Cadmus and I don't know what it means if I don't give them an answer tonight.”

“We'll figure it out. I can fix this—” He took a step towards me.