Page 66 of Crown of the Fae King

I stepped out of the stacks and looked over the railing to the tables below, then pointed to an empty one. “There.”

He followed my finger and nodded, then took for the stairs. I followed like a worried bird whose eggs were being carted away. My heart and I were relieved when he placed the heavy pile on the table. Then he winked and started away. “If I can help again, you know where I’ll be.”

Three tables down, Kitch and the brothers were watching, mouths open, eyebrows raised.

I rolled my eyes and waved my fingers. They scooped up their things and moved down to join me.

Flann pulled out a chair. “Nice lookin’ fella.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” I said, but I could feel myself blushing. The truth was the man had been ten degrees better than nice looking. He’d been clean shaven, well dressed, with slightly golden brown hair that reached just below his collar, combed back from his face and still wet from a shower. And best of all, he in no way resembled a Highlander from the 18thcentury. “He smelled like old leather and fresh air, probably the literal name of his deodorant.”

While my companions laughed quietly, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand. I looked up at the railing above us, and though I saw nothing, I was sure someone was watching. But after a few minutes, the paranoia faded, and I helped sort through the books I’d gathered. Since some were in English, I did some skimming of my own and decided to research healing stones another day.

We decided to split up to get lunch. The brothers stayed with the books while Kitch and I went for a quick bite. Then the two of us stayed while the brothers took their turn, all so the books wouldn’t get tied up on a trolley somewhere.

“These are grand, Lennon,” Brian said at the end of the day. “But tomorrow, I think we should search for mentions of Moire, with an e. As opposed to Moira with an a, which involves the Greeks. If she did the naming, we should find out what she named. Perhaps yer star stone was among them.”

A gentle reminder that the man could read my mind easily.

When we reached the car, alarms clanged in my head. Kitch slipped behind the wheel and I waited until we were all buckled in before I told the others. “I don’t think we should drive straight home. I’m sure we’re being watched. And Wickham said—”

“We’ll head south.” Kitch sounded calm, like he’d been followed was old hat for him. “There’s a chance it’s just yer admirer, but we’ll take no chances.” He dialed his phone. “Wickham? We’re being tailed.” He told the brothers to make some space between them, and a few seconds later, Wickham joined us.

“Everyone, grab a handle if ye please.”

I gripped the door handle as if my life depended on it, and a second later, we were rolling up the drive headed for the dormant fountain in front of the mansion. Kitch hit the brakes a little hard and apologized.

I turned in my seat. “But Wickham, didn’t we just give away one of our weapons? If it was a fairy following us, won’t he know now that we can disappear?”

“Nay. No matter who was following, they’ll keep on following, for I sent ghosts of ourselves and the car on toward London, to fade into the fog. A little trick I learned from my niece. She used to leave the specter of herself in her bed when she needed to leave the house in the middle of the night. I’ve found it quite useful.”

Two weeks passedwith no reports of slaughtered twins anywhere along the Ninth Meridian East, but that might have been due to the fact that Wickham brought home a pair of witches from Tunisia to add to the house staff. Meral and Reem Bahri were young and energetic, he reasoned, and could save the not-so-young Youngs from overdoing.

He avoided me after he brought them home. He disliked being thanked almost as much as he hated me pointing out that he wasn’t the heartless man he thought he was.

I saw that “nice lookin’ fella” in the libraries now and then. We smiled from a distance but never spoke, and I never again had that sense I was being watched.

As a team, we came up with a route home that took us out of town in the opposite direction, across stretches of road where stalkers would be exposed, then around the outskirts and home again. It was tedious, but we didn’t have to rely on Wickham to save us every day.

One morning, Brian asked me to find a book for him that he’d skimmed before. It was one from the section of fairy books on the upper floor, where I’d first met “Nice Lookin’ Fella.” I was both relieved and disappointed to find the desk and the leather chair empty.

“Why is it,” a familiar voice asked from the end of the shelf, “you are with a different man every time I see you?”

I looked up and smiled into rich brown eyes, crinkled at the corners. Nice Lookin’ Fella’s smile made the high planes of his cheeks rounder than I remembered. “Hello.”

“I can either be disturbed by it or encouraged. Either ye fancy a lot of men—bad news, or you haven’t landed on one in particular—good news. That means I have a chance.” An Irish accent, but slight. If he was trying to hide it or had simply lost it, there was no telling. “Come to dinner with me so we can have a proper conversation, one we won’t have to whisper.”

I shook my head but couldn’t shake my smile. “You don’t want to have dinner with me.”

“I don’t?”

“No. I’m a package deal. I’d have to bring a chaperone.”

“Ah. I see. You must be some sort of princess, then?”

“Hardly.”

“Excellent. I have a policy against wooin’ princesses. I’ll pick you up at six?”

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