Page 27 of The Water Witch (Fairwick Chronicles 2)

I surprised myself by making a weird sound. Something between a burp and a hiccup. It burbled up out of me twice more before I realized that I was laughing.

The cat pee had done it. In our teens I had gone with Annie to visit her nonna in her fifth-floor walk-up on Elizabeth Street. Afterward, Annie had made me promise that if she ever took to keeping multiple cats and smelling like pee I’d put her out of her misery. I’d only promised on the conditionshe’d do the same for me. I considered calling Annie and telling her I’d gotten there. I might not have a cat, but I did have a pet mouse, who had crept in while I was crying and was rooting around in the wet mail. He nosed a robin’s egg blue flyer into my lap. I picked it up.Handyman Bill!it read,For all your household needs—no repair too big or too small. Plumbing, masonry, roof repair—you name it, it fits the Bill!

I snorted. “Let’s hope his handyman skills are better than his punning,” I remarked to Ralph, picking up the phone. I got a garbled voicemail message. I left my name and address and told Handyman Bill I had a basement full of water and a leaking roof and would he please get back to me as soon as possible. Then I hung up and tried three plumbers listed in the phone book. None of them picked up. They must all be out draining other people’s basements after yesterday’s rain.

Disgusted, and sick of my own smell, I boiled some hot water in the electric kettle and brought it upstairs in one of the plastic basins I’d used last night to catch drips. I mixed the hot into the cold water until it was the right temperature. Then I took a sponge bath.

I wasn’t rich but I had enough money to hire people to fix the house—just until Brock came back. And hewascoming back. I’d make sure of that, just as I’d make sure the door remained open so that my friends wouldn’t have to go back to Faerie forever. To reassure myself, I checked on the Aelvestone again. I took it out of its flannel covering and held it in my hands for a moment. Surely there could be no harm in that. Its warmth coursed up my arms and spread through my chest. A sense of well-being suffused my body. It was better than a Xanax! With this much Aelvesgold, I’d be able to help Brockandkeep the Grove from closing the door. With this much Aelvesgold, I was capable of anything! Ann Chase wouldn’t have to choose between helping her daughter andcuring her arthritis. Liz would never have to grow old and die—no onewould ever have to grow old and die! The possibilities were endless…but for right now I’d better put it away. Both Liz and Lura had said it was dangerous to handle too often.

Reluctantly, I wrapped the stone back in its cloth and put it back in its drawer. I still felt its warmth radiating through my body as I crawled into bed. I hugged the delicious sensation to my bones and fell into a deep sleep…

And straight into Faerie, as if there were a trapdoor beneath my bed that led directly to that grassy bank beneath the willow tree where Liam lay waiting for me, his bare flesh awash in the golden light of Aelvesgold.

“Am I really here in Faerie or is this a dream?” I asked.

“Is there a difference?” he replied, drawing me down beside him. I was naked, too, and drenched in the same golden light. We lay side by side, not quite touching, but joined by the same golden light. “It’s one of the gifts of Aelvesgold—it links true lovers together, no matter how far apart.”

I snorted. “You’re making that up.”

He laughed, a deep throaty sound that made the willow branches tremble and something deep in my belly tremble, too. He lifted his hand over my breastbone, holding it about an inch above me. I felt golden light caress my skin. He moved his hand, over one breast and then another, the Aelvesgold running like warm syrup over my skin. “Am I makingthisup?” he asked. “Are you telling me you can’t feel the connection between us?”

He moved his hand lower, swirling the hot syrup in spirals around my belly. It pooled in my navel and dripped between my legs. When it reached the cleft between my legs, I moaned and arched my back.

“Yes, I feel it,” I moaned, rolling over and straddling him.“Why haven’t we done this before?” I asked, riding the gold wave and coming down on him. “Why don’t we do this forever?” The gold light moved with me, a wave of heat that lifted me up and then down onto him. I guided him inside me and that heat pushed up into my core. I looked down but the light had grown so bright, so dazzling, that I couldn’t make out his face.

“Liam?” I cried, as he rocked into me, our bodies moving as if controlled by some external force. “Liam, is it really you?”

In answer, he drew my head down to his. Through the glare I saw his eyes: black with specks of green, as they’d appeared when I’d met him in Faerie. “Who else would it be, lass?” he whispered as the gold light began to spread inside me. It filled me up and then it burst, encircling us both in a golden corona of pure pleasure.

“Ah,” Liam’s voice crooned in my head. “That’s why we can’t do this forever, love. We would never want to wake up.”

I collapsed beside him onto a bed of velvety moss. “What’s wrong with that?” I asked, gasping sweet drafts of air. He turned to me and I could just make out his lips smiling at me through the golden haze.

“You’ll lose yourself in the Aelvesgold,” he told me. “Here.” He took my hand in his and pressed something into it. When I opened the hand I saw that I held the Aelvestone.

“How …?”

“You’d better put it someplace safe,” he told me. “Lock it up. Or you’ll lose it…and lose yourself.”

I felt its pulse in my hand, like the heart of a trapped animal trying to escape. I closed my hand around it, but that only made it beat harder. It was beating so hard, I heard it pounding.

I turned back to Liam, but he was fading, melting into the golden haze of Faerie.

“Don’t go!” I cried, but he was vanishing in a blaze of light so bright I had to close my eyes against the glare. When I was at last able to open them, I found myself in my room in Honeysuckle House. Watery green light struggled through the windows. I blinked at it, confused, unable to tell if it was morning or night. I felt as though I’d just gone to sleep. The time I’d spent making love to Liam couldn’t have been more than an hour…

I heard pounding. I opened my hand, looking for the Aelvestone Liam had given me in my dream, but my hand was empty.

The noise was coming from downstairs. For a moment I had the confused impression that the Aelvestone was knocking at my front door, but then realized that was ridiculous.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed. My limbs felt watery and weak. I stood up…and noticed I was naked. Hadn’t I worn a nightgown to bed? Yes, there it was, crumpled in a ball on the floor along with a discarded blanket. I walked to my dresser and pulled on shorts and a T-shirt. Then I walked downstairs, half hoping that my visitor would be gone by the time I got to the door. Who would be bothering me so early in the morning?

A glance at the clock in the foyer told me it was twenty after ten.

Oh.

I swung the door open eagerly and suppressed a sigh of disappointment. A man in a navy blue sweatshirt and baseball cap pulled low over his eyes stood with shoulders hunched, holding a clipboard up to shield himself from a funnel of water cascading through the porch roof.

“Yes?” I asked irritably. He was probably collecting signatures for some local political cause or here to read a meter.

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