Page 29 of Crown of the Fae King

Throughout the meal, conversations moved like the Egg Scramble ride at the fairgrounds. Everyone talked in clusters, then new topics made new clusters. I eavesdropped here and there, free to ignore them all while I ate.

Everly and Urban cleared the table and refused to let me help. The table boards that had been put together with sawhorses were taken apart again, stored somewhere, and we shifted to the more comfortable furniture against the walls. The extra chairs disappeared. I would later find them stacked in the corner of the room I'd been assigned.

Wickham, Kitch, and I waited in comfortable silence for the MacKenzies to join us. When they did, I felt comfortable enough to start asking questions.

“I know Everly is an Uncast, like me. I assume you men are all…wizards, like Wickham?”

They all burst out laughing, then exchanged some rather telling glances, as if my guess wasn’t too far from the truth.

Kitch answered first. “Afraid I’m just another Uncast.” Then he grinned at Urban and waited.

Urban gave him a good scowl that didn’t intimidate the shorter man in the least. But finally, he cleared his throat and smiled my way. “I am…not strictly an Uncast, I suppose. Wickham’s niece was once a powerful witch who brought myself and a few dozen of my fellows…back from the dead. We’d perished on the battlefield at Culloden Moor and had been haunting the place for nigh three hundred years when she came along. She set her cap on freeing us from our chosen fate, and nearly all of us were given the chance to live again.”

He and Everly shared a sweet smile and a kiss. I had to look away.

“Obviously, I was clever enough to catch him.” Everly reached for her husband’s hand. The man rolled his eyes but kissed her again. “This O’Ryan creature and his monsters came looking for the Muir witches who lived one floor below my sister, and we just happened to get into the middle of it. Killed them with a silver cake server. Now I never leave home without it.”

I didn’t dare laugh. Though everyone else smiled, she wasn’t joking.

“Kitchens has been my head of security for years, guarding my family when I had to be away.”

“And where is your family?”

Everyone sobered, and though no one moved, an invisible tension flooded the room.

“Where they are,” he said, “they need no protection.”

“Wine,” Urban muttered, got to his feet, and disappeared around the corner.

“Glasses.” Everly jumped up and followed him.

Wickham’s answer made it sound like his family was dead, but I wasn’t about to ask. That would explain the tension. And the sudden need for wine.

Once we all had a glass in hand, Urban offered a short toast in Gaelic, which the others repeated. Then he turned to me, “It’s a proper Scottish welcome that means ye’ve made a terrible mistake and ye’ll live to regret it.” Everyone chuckled, assuring me he was joking. When it grew quiet, he addressed me again. “So, Lennon. Tell us. Have ye any ken what plans Fate has for ye? A theory as to why ye’ve been set apart for our wee hunting party?”

Of course, I thought of Hank. I trusted Wickham hadn’t mentioned him, just as he’d promised. But for the first time in my life, I was honestly tempted to share my secret. After all, they’d confessed some pretty crazy things to me. And if we were going to hunt together, protect each other, they probably should know what they were protecting.

“I do,” I said, then wondered if Wickham had drawn in a quick breath, or if I’d imagined it. “I have a talisman that was handed down through my family. I call it Hank. Maybe one of these days, I’ll tell you about it.”

There it was. I hadn’t let Hank out of the bag, but the ties were loose.

My heart pounded. I imagined the same pounding coming from the money belt, and I nearly cried out, just to burn off the adrenaline dump.

“Hank?” Everly was amused. “Why Hank?”

I took a deep breath and blew it out through tight lips. I could do this. I could talk about it without giving any more away. "It's a love/hate relationship. Like I have with country music. So I started calling it Hank, after Hank Williams."

She laughed, and I relaxed, believing she understood me, though just a little. Everyone else was probably just playing along.

I finally looked to my left. Wickham sat with his head down, listening. Suddenly he straightened. “I dinnae believe Hank has anything to do with the Fae we’re against. I was given the impression it was yerself we’ll need, not whatever ye have in yer pocket. Perhaps Hank was just the means to opening yer eyes, so when we came along, ye wouldnae be so surprised.”

“You believe in Fate? Or is it God who has pre-ordained us to fight fairies?”

“I am a believer in everything.Everything. Except, perhaps, Country Music. I have seen too much not to be.”

While we snickered, he straightened in his chair and scanned the faces in the room.

“The gift of precognition, among Muir witches, is far from perfect, but some warning is better than none. I would never dismiss a prediction made by my sisters, for example. As for the Grandfather, the ancient chieftain of the Muir witch clan, whose mantle I am expected to assume, I believe his insight was more to do with the past than the future. With a thousand years behind him, he had plenty of experience from which to draw.”

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