Page 19 of Crown of the Fae King

I moved to the chair but remained standing to expose more surface to the heat. When I turned to warm my backside, I noticed a laptop on a big wood table that took up most of the space in the room. It wasn’t until that moment I realized I hadn’t been taken back in time.

I also noticed the old man was a duplicate. His twin, identical right down to the laugh lines around his eyes, sat in a chair beside the front window.

Most Muir witches come in pairs…

The brother winked. “Welcome, like.”

I thanked him by winking back.

The main room took up the center of the house with windows at the front and back. The fireplace took up most of an inner wall with the kitchen on the opposite side, the table splitting the space in half. Brian turned from the stove with a large tray in hand. After he set it on the table, he brought a steaming cup of something to me. “Hot broth, lass. I could hear yer stomach growlin’ an hour ago.”

“Thank you.” I had thawed enough to take a seat. The chair rocked, so I sat forward to keep from spilling.

“Dinnae fash,” Wickham said, as he settled down at the table with both brothers, the second of which had been introduced as Flann. “Ye needn’t watch yer words around Lennon. She’s all in, ye might say. Learnin’ as we go.”

“So she is,” the old men said in unison.

Warmed both inside and out, I found myself half asleep, trying to catch snippets of their conversation. Unfortunately, they spoke with such strong accents—and occasionally in another language—that I only caught a few words here and there.

The subject seemed to be a man--or rather, a fairy--called O’Ryan. That explained why we’d come to Ireland. They talked about gold. Maybe gold hair? Or maybe, considering my traveling companion, the reference was to pots of gold, since money was no object.

Were leprechauns just short fairies? I made a mental note to ask later and suppressed a sudden craving for Lucky Charms.

I didn’t know what to think. I was a Tinkerbell fan from way back. If this O’Ryan fairy had wings, it shouldn’t be too hard to find him. He’d be the talk of the town, on national news, but maybe not in Ireland…

In my mind, witches were women and any man with magical powers called himself something fancier. Warlock, Sorcerer, Druid. A male witch didn’t seem too manly, but then again, maybe none of those would-be warlocks and sorcerers had been man enough to pull it off.

I turned my head and studied Wickham through half-closed eyes. He could call himself a sissy and half-men like Andy Weaver would aspire to be one too.

One of the brothers mentioned Oxford and Wickham hissed. “It cannot lead there. My sisters saw their deaths there at the Bridge of Sighs. And where I go, they inevitably follow. We must find our answers elsewhere.”

“Then send another,” Brian suggested.

Wickham glanced at me. “Perhaps one day, I must. But not Lennon. I must keep her close by.”

Flann frowned over the table at me. “And why is that?” His brother turned to stare as well.

Wickham’s expression was full of both pity and promise. “I dinnae ken.”

At last, an entire sentence I recognized.

That night,Wickham slept on the floor. I slept on the short couch, on my stomach, my knees bent, and my feet hanging over the end. Considering how well I slept, I wondered if I was still in shock. By morning I needed to move to get blood moving in all the right places, so I offered to help with breakfast.

Brian gently refused. “But I promise ye’ll have food in yer stomach in twenty minutes, so ye will.”

Wickham was on the phone and didn’t seem to care what I did, so I bundled up as best I could, borrowed a hat and gloves, and stepped out into the fields of Irish snow on my own.

If I ignored the thatched roof of the cottage, I might have been standing on any farm between Hazelton and Burley. The large barn behind the house was made of cinderblocks and had a red metal roof that snow didn’t bother sticking to. There was a hundred-gallon gas tank on a high platform for refueling farm vehicles. Even the lean calico streaking across the yard and squeezing under the barn door could have been an Idaho cat.

Maybe Europe wasn’t as exciting as they made it seem on TV.

A snowplow had come through, so I had a nice snow-packed road to walk on. My tennis shoes weren’t going to cut it if we were going to spend much time there. As I trudged up the rise looking for a better view, I had to stop now and then to stomp the loose snow off my feet before it had a chance to melt and soak through.

At the top of the rise, I could see another farm about a mile away. Just beyond it was a nice straight line of black asphalt, a main road. Traffic was sparse, but constant, and the sight of it put a crazy thought in my head.

What if I ran off?

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