Trueheart (Portland After Dark Book 1) (9 page)

He would show Tess his real self and in that way convince her to stay away from Underbridge. It meant she would stay away from him as well, but the urge to keep her safe was becoming more primal the better he got to know her. If she continued with her search for Aaron and the lady, she would run afoul of the Queen, and Thomas feared her life would be forfeit.

"I'd really like that." He couldn't keep the warmth from his voice, and Tess responded to it by coloring faintly.

"Me, too. Did you want to drive, or shall I? Passenger buys the chowder."

"I...uh, don't drive."

Tess's eyebrows went up. "No phone, no car? You live a pretty streamlined life."

Thomas shrugged, watching her closely for her reaction. "It's not hard, when you live in the city. Everything's right here. I don't need to go far." He wondered if she thought he belonged to the streetfolk.

"I guess that's true. I'm just spoiled by my conveniences. All right, I'll pick you up in the morning."

"I'll meet you at our coffee shop. My place is hard to find and there's not a lot of parking."

Tess sat back and looked at him carefully.

"The coffee's on me," he added. He had to tread softly. He was about to overplay his hand. He could feel her caution simmering to the surface. "And the chowder."

"Is it that you don't want me to see where you live?" Her voice was quiet, but her wide brown eyes were direct and piercing.

"Partly," he admitted. "It's not in a great part of town, and it's...well, you could say I'm a slob."

It was the right tack to take. She relaxed and smiled. "Okay then. So...shall we say the coffee shop, nine a. m.? And I'll have—"

"A hazelnut mocha, two shots. I remember."

"Make it three. I'll need the jolt, especially after all this pizza." She looked ruefully at the two slices remaining. "Those go home with you. Otherwise I'll eat them for breakfast and seriously overdo it."

Thomas smiled at the pizza wedges. He already had plans for them. Given the example, Sharpwit could make something similar, and it would be a change from fungus and bug wraps.

"Walk me back to the Jeep, Thomas?"

"Of course. My pleasure."

Once he'd seen her to her car, Tess insisted he at least accept a lift down the mad spiral of the parking garage. Thomas could have taken the stairs, but after the discussion at dinner, it seemed wiser to accept Tess's courtesy instead of continuing to rouse her caution. He climbed into the passenger seat, doing his best to ignore the seasick feeling caused by so much metal around him. The fae portion of him had difficulty with iron unless it was well insulated by concrete or space. It was one reason he'd chosen his home in the pier of the Burnside Bridge. So much iron kept the true fae at bay and allowed him a certain privacy. Even the Queen had never bothered to visit his sanctuary, though she knew exactly where it was.

Over the years, as the trow nature asserted itself more integrally, his home had become less pleasant, and he could see that in the long run, unless he were able to break the armband, he would have to move. But by then he'd be more fae than human, and he'd want different things.

The thought was not a comfort.

"Too much pizza?" Tess said, as he settled himself irritably.

"Yeah."

"Me, too. But it was delicious."

The Jeep rolled steadily down the twist of concrete that led to the street. Thomas fought the pull of the forces that dragged him toward Tess, and clung to the side of the car, even though the metal made his skin prickle.

Outside, she didn't pause at the exit. She turned left and headed in the general direction of the Burnside Bridge.

"Anywhere's good," Thomas suggested. "I can walk from here."

She slid him a glance while tending to the traffic, minimal so late in the evening. "I'll at least get you closer to the bridge. Even if I can't get you to your door. You're not the only one who wants to make sure someone's safe. All right?"

"All right." He hid a smile and struggled with his trow self. It was late, and he was tired, and the closer to the goblin market they got, the more habit insisted he shift. But all the same, it was nice to think she cared.

Because by tomorrow afternoon, that would all be over.

In a few blocks, she pulled over by the Skidmore Fountain, put her Jeep in park, and turned off the engine. Thomas looked around with a quick assessing glance. The place was, as always, crawling with the fae, something in every shadowy corner. He opened his mouth to turn and ask Tess to drive south a few more blocks, where it would be safer for her, when she gently laid her hand over his. Thomas let go of the wrapped slices of pizza to turn his hand beneath hers and lace their fingers.

Then he sat very, very still and looked down at their hands.

His heart thundered in his chest. They were inches from being seen by the fae, he was half sickened by the iron of the Jeep, and yet the only thing he wanted was to sit hunched in the squeaky bucket seat holding her hand forever.

"I had a nice time tonight," Tess said. "Thank you."

Thomas had to clear his throat before he could speak. "The feeling is mutual. It's been a long time since I enjoyed myself that much."

"Are you sure I can't drop you closer to your home?"

She was almost like the fae themselves, making their offers in triples, waiting for three confirmations or three negations, before they considered a deal done one way or the other. "I'm sure." The chill of the outside air meant that as he spoke, his breath condensed on the inside of the windshield and fogged it. He exhaled a little more, putting up a thin scrim between the two of them and the fae loitering outside the car. Thomas closed his eyes for a moment, concentrating hard on the foggy windows, thinking of the fog as glamour and encouraging it along.

Tess gave a short laugh. "Wow, looks like I need to get the Jeep in for service. The windows are fogging up awfully fast. The defroster must be having trouble now that it's getting colder at night."

"It's all the garlic on the pizza." Thomas tried for a joke, opening his eyes to see the extent of the fogged windows, and relaxed a little. They were better out of view of the fae, but the effort had made him tired and a little twitchy.

Tess gave a soft laugh, and squeezed his hand. Thomas turned to gaze at her in the dim cab of the vehicle. Her eyes had the liquid gleam of ripples on the Willamette long after midnight, and the crescent moon shadows of her eyelashes lay over her cheeks each time she blinked.

When she leaned toward him, he met her halfway, his free hand reaching out to cup her shoulder. Her lips met his in a soft kiss, nothing as startling or overwhelming as the unplanned kiss beneath the lamppost a few nights ago, but far, far sweeter. There was trust in the kiss's softness, in its slow bloom from shy tenderness to heat.

One kiss. That's all he would allow himself tonight. One perfect, trapped-in-amber kiss to take with him into sleep and beyond.

When their lips parted, he touched her mouth with the tips of his fingers. The trow shuddered within him, but he controlled it for a few moments longer. For the length of the kiss, he had forgotten the iron sickness, forgotten the prowling fae in the darkness beyond the bubble of Tess's Jeep, forgotten the Queen's shackle on his arm, and forgotten that Tess almost certainly had the Queen's baubles. Now all those things crashed over him like a fall of earth inside one of the Forest Park tunnels.

He stroked his thumb over Tess's bottom lip and whispered, "Sleep well till morning." Then he opened the door and hurried away, pulling up his collar and hunching his shoulders to hide whatever trow bits might escape his hard-fought glamour before he was out of Tess's sight.

L
ONG
RIDES IN THE
J
EEP
were often chilly because of its soft-top and aging heater, but the trek over the Coast Range to the beach south of Lincoln City was doubly so, with Thomas insisting on having his window down all the way. Tess was glad she had dressed warmly. As was so often the case, the weather at the coast would be windier and wetter than inland. Thomas didn't seem to mind the damp blowing in, or the raindrops that shone like dew in his close-cropped hair.

The fresh air smelled of rain and wet earth. Though Tess liked the smell, she preferred the sugary fragrance of balsam in the summer heat. As they crested the Coast Range, Tess looked for elk but saw none. The towering Douglas firs and Sitka spruces lined the roadway, giving over to stands of yellowing birches where the roadcuts and loggers had denuded the slopes of evergreens.

As if the sight of the birches had summoned Stephen's ghost, she heard her brother's singsong in her head.
She's like a birch girl, a birch girl, a birch girl, all white and golden and green and beautiful and I am her dark elf.
Tess gripped the wheel harder, trying not to scowl. She didn't want to ruin the first good day in weeks with unhappy thoughts.

The road took them through part of Lincoln City before it joined the highway edging the coast like a doily frilled with sea foam. Thomas seemed to relax once he saw the ocean, and turned to her with a smile.

She parked in one of the viewpoint pullouts along the highway, and they went down the steep cliff-hugging staircase to the beach of mingled sand and pebbles. They had the quiet cove to themselves, which pleased Tess, and seemed to please Thomas, as well. In simple accord they turned north, with the Pacific curling eagerly to shore to their left. They trudged through the soft dry sand until they reached firmer footing at the tideline, dodging the more ambitious waves.

Thomas wandered slowly, his eyes on the ground like any good beachcomber. Tess lifted her face to the spotty sunlight, watching gulls soaring overhead and ravens hopping from wind-bent tree to battered rock on the cliff to their right. At one point Thomas paused and dug at the sand with the toe of his boot, then bent and pocketed whatever he'd found. Tess, waiting for him a few feet farther on, met his smile with one of her own. As he rejoined her, their meandering strides brought them bumping together, arm and hip. When the backs of their hands bumped and bumped again, it seemed natural that their hands should link. She studiously ignored her racing pulse and hid her sudden joy by looking at the cliff face again.

Conversation was unnecessary. Tess felt there had never been a more perfect moment between the two of them, never such an exquisite unity of communication, despite the long evenings of conversation and the kissing. A half-mile along the crescent curve of shoreline, Thomas drew her to a beached silver log whose stumps of branches were draped with sea-wrack and delicate, dried algae strands. They sat leg-to-leg and shoulder-to-shoulder, staring out to sea, hands still linked.

Tess wondered if he would try to kiss her again, or if she could try to kiss him instead. Either solution suited her.

"I want to show you something," Thomas said, after they'd been sitting in silence a while.

"Oh, really." Tess allowed herself a little humor in her tone, and was rewarded with a sidewise quirk of his mouth.

"This stone I found." He let go of her hand to fish in the pocket of his oilskin. He shifted to his left to make room between them. He brushed the damp sand from the stone until it was clean, and Tess saw there was a hole in the rock. "It's a stone with a hole, one not drilled by the hand of man." He held it up to his eye and looked at the waves through it.

Tess blinked a little at his odd phrasing. "Those are kind of rare, but I've seen them before."

He half-turned and held it out to her. "The old tales say that if you look through one of these, you can see what the fairies don't mean for you to see. You can see through their glamour to what lies beneath. Why don't you try it?"

Tess took the stone from his hand, feeling the brush of their fingers. She lifted the perforated stone to her eye, smiling. She did it to please Thomas, because his story was so preposterous and charming. An ocean-drilled stone, proof against fairy glamour? What kind of nonsense was that? But she'd learned in her years as a counselor that sometimes the oddest statements held a nugget of wisdom or truth concealed in outrageous metaphor. She watched the waves for a moment, then turned and looked at him through the hole. She blinked once and dropped the stone.

Her heart rate rocketed into the stratosphere. What she had seen looking back at her through the hole was...
not Thomas
.

It was something...
other
.

I am her dark elf, birch girl, birch girl...I am a Green Man, a Man of the Forest.

Her hands began to shake, so she clenched them and jammed them into her lap. A stab of pain in her mouth made her realize she had bitten the inside of her cheek, and she jumped up from the log. She took two steps backward before getting control of herself.

Thomas bent and picked up the stone, brushing away the sand afresh. He set it on the log between them. "Look again. See me as I am.
Really
see me."

Her voice was as shaky as her hands. "It's a trick."

"It's no trick. Sometimes the legends are true." He sat very still, his eyes anxious.

Tess bent, keeping her eyes on him. She reached for the stone and turned it over in her hands. It was simple wave-tumbled agate, flattish and smooth, shaped like a fat raindrop with its narrow end curved to one side. The matte, whale gray of the stone was starred with a spiderweb of white quartz. Near the center of the spiderweb, the stone had been soft enough to be worn away. The hole was large enough for her fingertips, and she put her index finger into it, as if to satisfy her brain that there was no optical trick, no distorting glass.

"Please." He shifted a few inches farther away, as if to reassure her of his good intentions. "I know you trusted me until now. Nothing's changed except you can see the truth of me now. You can trust me still. Just...
look
."

Until this moment, Tess had thought she knew Thomas as well as anyone could know someone with whom they'd spent a few hours and a few kisses. But now he wasn't making sense, and the trick with the stone was disturbing. Tess wondered if his reality was warping, somehow, the way her clients' did. How many times had she heard addicts begging for someone to believe them, trust them, only to prove time and again they were unworthy of that trust, however sincerely they wished for it, and however pure their intentions? But whenever the source of their addiction was present, pure intentions fell by the wayside. Tess stared at him. Her eyes opened wide as they flickered over his earnest expression.