Page 65 of Cosy & Chill
“No idea.” Finn humoured her. “Thirty-ish?”
Roisin snorted. “Fifteen hundred and fifty, give or take a few,” she said. “We mostly stop counting after reaching three hundred or so.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” The hair on Leo’s neck stood straight up and he let his gaze sweep the room, expecting other strangers to make an appearance. Roisin’s grin told him she knew exactly how he felt.
“There’s nobody else here.” She sipped more coffee.
Neither Finn nor Leo said a word.
“If ye really must know… I’m a fae, born and raised on the other side of the veil. I was visiting the human world when some misbegotten arsehole stole my amulet. It’s… like a key that lets me return home.”
Leo remembered tales of the fae from school. Fickle, crazy, magical, and stubborn. He’d never thought they were any more than tales. But if they were not… If the fae were real and Roisin was one of them.... “That’s what you’re searching for. You think your amulet is in this house.”
“I do. I can sense it. It’s what drew me to this place last year.”
“Can all fae do… magic?”
Finn was so pale, his freckles stood out like splashes of dried blood. Leo wrapped his arm around his shoulders, comforting Finn the way Finn had comforted him earlier, while he wondered if he looked as if he’d seen a ghost, too.
“It’s not so much that we do magic, boyo. Wearemagic,” Roisin said, more gently than she’d spoken before. “At home, I’m nothing special. Here I’m… someone humans might be afraid of.”
“If that’s true, you should hide it better.” Finn nodded at the sparkling spatula.
“Did it occur to ye that I wanted ye to notice?”
“Bullshit.” Leo didn’t buy that one.
“Not. I could tell that ye were gettin’ suspicious and I didn’t like it.” She ran her hands through her hair again as if she were at a loss for words. “Fae don’t… we don’t usually bother ourselves with the concerns of humans. I know I never have. Then I met the two of you and… I loved your ideas, the way you reached for your dreams.”
Her words embarrassed her. Or that was how Leo interpreted the colour in her cheeks and the way she kept her gaze on her coffee mug.
“I found that I want your store to succeed almost as much as you do,” she said in a low voice. “I also want you to have somewhere comfortable to rest in the evenings. Since I’m going over the place anyhow…”
“Right.” Leo didn’t know how to answer that. Or how to judge whether it was true. The wordsfaerie glamourcame to him from a long-forgotten English class. “All this,” he said, waving at the freshly decorated walls. “All the changes you’ve made to the house. Will they disappear when you’ve found your key and returned home?”
“I didn’t even think of that.” Finn’s breath hitched.
“O’ course not! I didn’t glamour the walls, I changed their colour. When I leave, everything here will stay as it is. Word of a fae.” Her grin was a challenge and it eased Leo’s mind.
“I can’t wrap my head around it,” he admitted. “How can you paint a room without… you know… painting it?”
“Magic’s in everything.” Roisin narrowed her eyes and studied the kitchen with its off-white walls, flower-patterned tiles, and white kitchen cupboards. She flicked her fingers, and the white walls turned a pale ice blue. The cupboard doors darkened to navy, and a mosaic of copper and black replaced the existing tiles. “How about this?”
Finn’s grip on Leo’s hand threatened his circulation. Leo felt the same way.
Awed.
Shocked.
Incredulous.
“That’s… amazing,” Finn breathed. “Should everything be sparkling?”
Roisin waved her hand again. The glitter effect disappeared. “That’s the difference between my world and yours,” she explained. “There’s much less magic in the human realm. If I don’t tone it down—”
“It sparkles?” Much of Finn’s ire had disappeared. He leaned forward, eager to learn more, and Leo had to hold back his smile.
“So it does.”
