“Hey, Brother!” I called as I got out of the car. “Listen, let me ask you. ” And then, getting his mental signature, I realized the man sitting on the steps wasn’t Jason. I froze. All I could do was stare at my half-fae great-uncle Dermot and wonder if he had come to kill me.
Chapter 11
He could have slain me about sixty times in the seconds I stood there. Despite the fact that he didn’t, I still didn’t want to take my eyes off him.
“Don’t be afraid,” Dermot said, rising with a grace that Jason could never have matched. He moved like his joints were machine made and well oiled.
I said through numb lips, “Can’t help it.”
“I want to explain,” he said as he drew nearer.
“Explain?”
“I wanted to get closer to both of you,” he said. He was well into my personal space by then. His eyes were blue like Jason’s, candid like Jason’s, and really, seriously, crazy. Not like Jason’s. “I was confused.”
“About what?” I wanted to keep the conversation going, I surely did, because I didn’t know what would happen when it came to a halt.
“About where my loyalties lay,” he said, bowing his head as gracefully as a swan.
“Sure. Tell me about that.” Oh, if only I had my squirt gun, loaded with lemon juice, in my purse! But I’d promised Eric I’d put it on my nightstand when Claude had come to live with me, so that was where it lay. And the iron trowel was where it was supposed to be, in the toolshed.
“I will,” he said, standing close enough that I could smell him. He smelled great. Fairies always do. “I know you met my father, Niall.”
I nodded, a very small movement. “Yes,” I said, to make sure.
“Did you love him?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “I did. I do.”
“He’s easy to love; he’s charming,” Dermot said. “My mother, Einin, was beautiful, too. Not a fairy kind of beautiful, like Niall, but she was human-beautiful.”
“That’s what Niall told me,” I said. I was picking my way through a conversational minefield.
“Did he tell you the water fairies murdered my twin?”
“Did Niall tell me your brother was murdered? No, but I heard.”
“I saw parts of Fintan’s body. Neave and Lochlan had torn him limb from limb.”
“They helped drown my parents, too,” I said, holding my breath. What would he say?
“I. ” He struggled to speak, his face desperate. “But I wasn’t there. I. Niall. ” It was terrible to watch Dermot struggle to speak. I shouldn’t have had any mercy for him, since Niall had told me about Dermot’s part in my parents’ deaths. But I really couldn’t endure his pain.
“So how come you ended up siding with Breandan’s forces in the war?”
“He told me my father had killed my brother,” Dermot said bleakly. “And I believed him. I mistrusted my love for Niall. When I remembered my mother’s misery after Niall stopped coming to visit her, I thought Breandan must be right and we weren’t meant to mingle with humans. It never seems to turn out well for them. And I hated what I was, half-human. I was never at home anywhere.”
“So, are you feeling better now? About being a little bit human?”
“I’ve come to terms with it. I know my former actions were wrong, and I’m grieved that my father won’t let me into Faery.” The big blue eyes looked sad. I was too busy trying not to shake to get the full impact.
In a breath, out a breath. Calm, calm. “So now you’re thinking Jason and I are okay? You don’t want to hurt us anymore?”
He put his arms around me. This was “hug Sookie” season, and no one had told me ahead of time. Fairies were very touchy-feely, and personal space didn’t mean anything to them. I would have liked to tell my great-uncle to back off. But I didn’t dare. I didn’t need to read Dermot’s mind to understand that almost anything could set him off, so delicate was his mental balance. I had to stiffen all my resolution to maintain my even breathing so I wouldn’t shiver and shake. His nearness and the tension of being in his presence, the huge strength that hummed through his arms, took me back to a dark ruined shack and two psycho fairies who really had deserved their deaths. My shoulders jerked, and I saw a flash of panic in Dermot’s eyes. Calm. Be calm.
I smiled at him. I have a pretty smile, people tell me, though I know it’s a little too bright, a little nuts. However, that suited the conversation perfectly. “The last time you saw Jason,” I said, and then couldn’t think how to finish.
“I attacked his companion. The beast who’d hurt Jason’s wife.”
I swallowed hard and smiled some more. “Probably would’ve been better if you’d explained to Jason why you were going after Mel. And it wasn’t Mel who killed her, you know.”
“No, it was my own kind that finished her off. But she would have died anyway. He wasn’t taking her to get help, you know.”
Wasn’t much I could say, because his account of what had happened to Crystal was accurate. I noticed I hadn’t gotten a coherent response from Dermot on why he’d left Jason in ignorance of Mel’s crime. “But you didn’t explain to Jason,” I said, breathing in and out—in a very soothing way. I hoped. It seemed to me that the longer I touched Dermot, the calmer we both got. And Dermot was markedly more coherent.
“I was very conflicted,” he said seriously, unexpectedly borrowing from modern jargon.
Maybe that was as good an answer as I was going to get. I decided to take another tack. “Did you want to see Claude?” I said hopefully. “He’s living with me now, just temporarily. He should be back later tonight.”
“I’m not the only one, you know,” Dermot told me. I looked up and met his mad eyes. I understood that my great-uncle was trying to tell me something. I wished to God I could make him rational. Just for five minutes. I stepped back from him and tried to figure out what he needed.
“You’re not the only fairy left out in the human world. I know Claude’s here. Someone else is, too?” I would’ve enjoyed my telepathy for a couple of minutes.
“Yes. Yes.” His eyes were pleading with me to understand.
I’d risk a direct question. “Who else is on this side of Faery?”
“You don’t want to meet him,” Dermot assured me. “You have to be careful. He can’t decide right now. He’s ambivalent.”
“Right.” Whoever “he” was, he wasn’t the only one who had mixed feelings. I wished I knew the right nutcracker that would open up Dermot’s head.
“Sometimes he’s in your woods.” Dermot put his hands on my shoulders and squeezed gently. It was like he was trying to transmit things he couldn’t say directly into my flesh.
“I heard about that,” I said sourly.
“Don’t trust other fairies,” Dermot told me. “I shouldn’t have.”
I felt like a lightbulb had popped on above my head. “Dermot, have you had magic put on you? Like a spell?”
The relief in his eyes was almost palpable. He nodded frantically. “Unless they’re at war, fairies don’t like to kill other fairies. Except for Neave and Lochlan. They liked to kill everything. But I’m not dead. So there’s hope.”
Fairies might be reluctant to kill their own kind, but they didn’t mind making them insane, apparently. “Is there anything I can do to reverse this spell? Can Claude help?”
“Claude has little magic, I think,” Dermot said. “He’s been living like a human too long. My dearest niece, I love you. How is your brother?”
We were back in nutty land. God bless poor Dermot. I hugged him, following an impulse. “My brother is happy, Uncle Dermot. He’s dating a woman who suits him, and she won’t take any shit off him, either. Her name is Michele—like my mom’s, but with one l instead of two.”
Dermot smiled down at me. Hard to say how much of this he was absorbing.