Page 65 of Beltane

“You all right, little coz?” Edward rushed toward me, throwing his arms around my shoulders to pull me into a big hug. “Bleeding Christ, have I got a proper story to tell you.”

Jon and Kit walked a few paces behind him, their faces lighting up when they saw Ivy. The three Washington siblings hugged, and Lizzie leaped into Carter’s arms, crying while she hugged her big brother.

“Fucking hell.” Edward put me down and stepped back to run his hands over my face. “You look like shite.”

His ginger hair stood on end around his head, caked with almost as much mud and grime as was on his face. His emerald eyes shimmered with emotion, making his golden-tanned skin even more blush.

“You look like you’ve spent too much time in the bogs.” I brushed a piece of grass off his face, and his lips broke into a smile. For half a heartbeat, I’d forgotten what we’d lost. I’d forgotten my prince of darkness had given himself up so that we could have this reunion.

“There has to be another veil,” Ivy said, returning my focus to the present. “Between all of us, we can find it. We can go through it and?—”

“Ivy, you claimed the entire human realm and everyone in it,” Carter said. “That includes the other veils, too.”

She looked crestfallen but resolute, her defiant chin jutting out as a rebuke to Carter’s logic.

“Let’s regroup, okay?” I said. “We’ll go back to our room and?—”

“No,” Ivy said, glancing in the direction of where the entrance to Faerie had once stood. “No, he wouldn’t stop looking for me, and I won’t stop looking for him.”

Carter and I exchanged worried glances, but it was Kit who finally broke through to her.

“Hey, hey, hey.” She grabbed Ivy’s face and rubbed her thumbs over her cheeks. “We’ll find him, okay? I promise. But we’re exhausted now, and we can’t pour from an empty cup. We need rest.”

“Diana won’t hurt him,” I added. “Remember, she said we were honored guests. She’ll keep him safe until we can save him. Siobhan, Finn, Donnelly…they’ll protect him.”

Ivy didn’t like it, and honestly, I didn’t either. But I didn’t see how we had another choice.

With our hearts heavy, we returned to Killwater, only to discover the town repaired to the way it had been before Beltane. People bustled around, completing their business like they weren’t just in the woods devouring each other a day ago. When we charged our cellphones, we realized we had been gone for two months. Today was Midsummer, and that seemed appropriate given that was when all of this started. It had to end where it began.

We went back to the same bed-and-breakfast we’d stayed in the last two times we’d been here. Bill and Keely were surprised to see us but welcomed us all the same.

“You look like you’ve been through hell and back again,” Bill said, handing us keys to a few rooms.

“Something like that,” Carter quipped, taking one before handing the others to Edward and Kit to sort out.

“Will there be a Midsummer celebration tonight?” Ivy asked. “Out in the woods?”

I knew where her mind was going. She thought we could go back and try to find the fairy realm that way.

Bill glanced between us, perhaps seeing more than our appearance, and raised his eyebrows. “By the looks of ya, I’d say your days out in the woods are over. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Ivy did not, and perhaps I’d always been a romantic at heart because I wanted to believe my gut feeling was wrong. I wanted to think we’d go back into the forest and find fairies dancing around bonfires with flowers in their hair and ambrosia on their lips.

But we didn’t. After a day of fitful rest and passionate deliberation, we snuck into the forest at twilight, the peach haze of the darkening sky not nearly as vibrant or beautiful as I remembered from four years ago. We wandered our tired, achy limbs down the trail that led to the valley, and my heart raced when I heard drums in the distance.

Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe all is not lost.

We crested the hill, but we did not see large flames raging in the distance. There were no fairies and barely any townsfolk, only a small gathering huddled around a tiny campfire. No more than thirty people sang and chanted, banging on tiny drums as they recited their ancient hymns. But there was no magic in the air. No one handed us bouquets and condoms and wine. Compared to four years ago, this hardly ranked as a party, much less a celebration the way we’d known it.

“No,” Ivy murmured before running down the hill. “No. This isn’t right. This isn’t?—”

My heart sank because I knew Faerie and everyone in it were gone forever. There would be no Midsummer festival, never again.

“Weeds,” Carter said, taking off after our wife, but I stood there with my arms wrapped around my midsection, struggling to pull air into my lungs.

Some of the locals called to Ivy as she burst through the middle of their ceremony, but she didn’t stop to talk to them. She took off into the woods in the same direction as we’d headed on Midsummer and Samhain. But I knew what she’d find.

There was nothing here for us. There was no Lex, no Siobhan, no fairy queen to bargain with.

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