Page 20 of Never Nix Up

It is Trisantona who speaks this time. “You are not your father, and you are not your brother. You are quite yourself, in the most frustratingly stubborn manner possible. But this was not your fault.”

“Yes it was. I let Marla and Johnny hang around with us nix kids. I knew it was dangerous, knew that my family hated humans, and I let them spend time with us.”

“You’re still friends with Marla now,” pointed out Finn, gently.

“Yes, because I’ve been protecting her and the rest of her family ever since it happened. Because Ryder knows that I’ll kill him myself if they ever come near them again.” Her voice cracks again. “We never even found his body. He was just… gone.”

That’s the one thing in all of this that I can help with. I look at Trisantona who shrugs in a very un-Goddess-like manner. It’s my decision.

“I think I know where his remains may be. I don’t know for certain,” I added hurriedly, when Kit turned her tear-stained face in my direction, “but I can certainly try. In the dreams I… I see it all. And I think I can probably locate it, with my Goddess’s help?”

Everyone looks at Kit and she grins ruefully. “Will this put me in your debt?” she asks Trisantona, not hiding her reluctance.

The Goddess looks thoughtful. “If I say no, will you come back and talk to me—on your own terms? You are the last nix in the village who refuses to have anything to do with me, and I find that I am curious about you, and about why.”

A shadow passes across Kit’s face, but she knows, as we all do, that this is far fairer an agreement than most could expect of a god. “Yes. I will come back and talk to you, on my own terms.”

“Then yes, I will do this because you have asked. And because you, dear friend,” she says, turning to me, “because you want it too.”

Finn and Kit goggle a little at the use of the phrase ‘dear friend’, but I ignore that and just smile quietly at Trisantona. “We can’t do this now, and Kit, I think it is best if you are not there to witness it. I vow that I will do my best to find him though. Finn, after work tonight?”

Finn and Kit exchange looks, but Finn nods, ignoring whatever concern Kit is sending their way. “I’m in.”

18

Finn

It’s not often that you get to set off with your not-so-obvious girlfriend, to a dangerous river in the middle of the night, to find a corpse that’s been lost for five years.

It’s not quite the middle of the night, because my eyesight’s not as good as Hazel’s, but the rest of the previous statement stands. We’re off to find a body. In a river full of nixes that might want to kill me.

Hazel doesn’t even want to tell Vi and Chlo this time. “They’ll fuss,” she says. “The Goddess is looking out from us, and Kit is just up the bank, in the pub, if anything goes dangerously wrong.”

That’s a vote of confidence if ever I heard one.

I’ve never been swimming in the River Arun, mainly because it’s river in England. They’re known for being bitterly cold and I like all of my extremities where they are, thank you very much. So I’m not sure what exactly to expect.

I’m wearing a wetsuit that Hazel magicked up—pun unintended—from somewhere, and she’s just wearing a swimming costume, which seems mad to me. It’s hard to keep my eyes off her though, moulded as it is to her figure. Her arse looks magnificent, and if Kit weren’t relying on us quite so much, I’d be all for abandoning the corpse hunting in favour of other exertions.

The river at night is beautiful. The banks are covered in local flora and as we walk across down to the river’s edge, it feels almost misty.

Hazel puts one foot into the river—her feet are bare, unlike mine—and it’s as if she’s stuck her finger into a plug socket. Her hair starts lifting in a wild manner, and she just laughs and rolls herself in one swift movement, into the river.

She disappears at first, sliding under, but bobs back up almost immediately and she’s glowing. Or rather, the scales on her skin are. They’re a blue that match her eyes, and I find myself searching out different patches of them. There are a cluster on her throat, further back, and more on her arms and her left wrist. There’s a particularly tantalising group on her right thigh, that disappear under what she’s wearing.

I want to disappear with them.

My turn to step into the water, and it’s cold, so cold. But then Hazel swims over and doessomethingthat heats the water around my feet, and when I go to submerge myself, it’s not as shockingly bitter as I’d feared.

We don’t make it very far though, before a woman swims over to the two of us, but Hazel greets her quite happily, and they chat a bit and splash at each other in a playful manner that I assume is just politeness for river meetings.

“And this must be your…?”

“Girlfriend,” says Hazel decisively, even though we haven’t had the conversation. I feel her squeeze my hand and I squeeze back. I guess I’ve got myself a girlfriend. I can’t help but beam.

“I’m Finn, I’m the baker over in the Riverside Shops.”

The nix shakes my hand, “Yes, of course. I believe you’re registered with us.”

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