Huh?
“So Grandfather sent Claudine, and then when she grew worried she couldn’t take care of you, he decided to meet you himself. Eric arranged that, too. I suppose he thought that he would get Niall’s goodwill as kind of a finder’s fee.” Dermot shrugged. “That seems to have worked for Eric. Vampires are all venal and selfish.”
The words “pot” and “kettle” popped into my mind.
I said, “So Niall appeared in my life and made himself known to me, via Eric’s intervention. And that precipitated the fairy war, because the water fairies didn’t want any more contact with humans, much less a minor royal who was only one-eighth fairy.” Thanks, guys. I loved hearing that a whole war was my fault.
“Yes,” Claude said judiciously. “That’s a fair summary. And so the war came, and after many deaths Niall made the decision to seal off Faery.” He sighed heavily. “I was left outside, and Dermot, too.”
“And by the way, I’m not withering,” I pointed out with some sharpness. “I mean, do I look withered to you?” I knew I was ignoring the big picture, but I was getting angry. Or maybe, even angrier.
“You have only a little fae blood,” Dermot said gently, as if that would be a crushing reminder. “You are aging.”
I couldn’t deny that. “So why am I feeling more and more like one of you, if I have such a little dab of fairy in me?”
“Our sum is more than our parts,” Dermot said. “I’m half-human, but the longer I’m with Claude, the stronger my magic is. Claude, though a full-blooded fairy, has been in the human world for so long he was getting weak. Now he’s stronger. You only have a dash of fae blood, but the longer you’re with us, the more prominent an element it is in your nature.”
“Like priming a pump?” I said doubtfully. “I don’t get it.”
“Like — like — washing a new red garment with the whites,” said Dermot triumphantly, who had done that very thing the week before. Everyone in our house had pink socks now.
“But wouldn’t that mean Claude was getting less red? I mean, less fae? If we’re absorbing some of his?”
“No,” Claude said, with some complacence. “I am redder than I was.”
Dermot nodded. “Me, too.”
“I haven’t really noticed any difference,” I said.
“Are you not stronger than you were?”
“Well . . . yeah. Some days.” It wasn’t like ingesting vampire blood, which would give you increased strength for an indeterminate period, if it didn’t make you batshit crazy. It was more like I felt increased vigor. I felt, in fact . . . younger. And since I was only in my twenties, that was just unnerving.
“Don’t you long to see Niall again?” Claude asked.
“Sometimes.” Every day.
“Are you not happy when we sleep in the bed with you?”
“Yeah. But just so you know, I think it’s kind of creepy, too.”
“Humans,” Claude said to Dermot, with a blend of exasperation and patronage in his voice. Dermot shrugged. After all, he was half-human.
“And yet you chose to stay here,” I said.
“I wonder every day if I made a mistake.”
“Why are you two still here, if you’re so nuts about Niall and your life in Faery? How did you get the letter from Niall that you gave me a month ago, the one where he told me he’d used all his influence to make the FBI leave me alone?” I glared at them suspiciously. “Was that letter a forgery?”
“No, it was genuine,” Dermot said. “And we’re here because we both love and fear our prince.”
“Okay,” I said, ready to change subjects because I couldn’t get into a debate about their feelings. “What’s a portal, exactly?”
“It’s a thin place in the membrane,” Claude said. I looked at Claude blankly, and he elaborated. “There’s a sort of magical membrane between our world — the supernatural world — and yours. At a thin place, that membrane is permeable. The fae world is accessible. As are the parts of your world that are normally invisible to you.”
“Huh?”
Claude was on a roll. “Portals usually stay in the same vicinity, though they may shift a little. We use them to get from your world to ours. At the site of the portal in your woods, Niall left an aperture. The slit isn’t big enough for one of us to pass through standing up, but objects can be transferred.”
Like a mail slot in a door. “See? Was that so hard?” I said. “Can you think of some more honest things to tell me?”
“Like what?”
“Like why all those fae are at Hooligans, acting as strippers and bouncers and whatnot. They’re not all fairies. I don’t even know what they are. Why would they end up with you two?”
“Because they have nowhere else to go,” Dermot said simply. “They were all shut out. Some on purpose, like Claude, and some not . . . like me.”
“So Niall closed off access to Faery and left some of his people outside?”
“Yes. He was trying to keep all those fairies who still wanted to kill humans inside, and he was too hasty,” Claude said. I noticed that Dermot, whom Niall had bespelled in a cruel way, looked dubious at this explanation.
“I understood that Niall had good reasons for closing the fae off,” I said slowly. “He said experience had taught him that there’s always trouble when fairies and humans mix. He didn’t want the fairies to crossbreed with humans anymore because so many of the fae hate the consequence — half-breeds.” I looked apologetically at Dermot, who shrugged. He was used to it. “Niall never intended to see me again. Are you two really so anxious to go into the world of the fae and stay there?”
There was a pause that might be called “pregnant.” It was clear that Dermot and Claude weren’t going to respond. At least they weren’t going to lie. “So explain why you’re living with me and what you want from me,” I said, hoping they’d answer that one.
“We’re living with you because it seemed like a good idea to be with the kin we could find,” Claude said. “We felt weak cut off from our homeland, and we had no notion that there were so many fae left out here. We were surprised when the other stranded fae in North America began to arrive at Hooligans, but we were happy. As we told you, we’re stronger when we’re together.”
“Are you telling me the whole truth?” I got up and began pacing back and forth. “You could have told me all this before, and you didn’t. Maybe you’re lying.” I held out my arms to either side, palms up. Well?
“What?” Claude looked affronted. Well, it was about time I served him up what he’d been dishing out. “Fairies don’t lie. Everyone knows that.”
Right. Sure. Common knowledge on the street. “You may not lie, but you don’t always tell the whole truth,” I pointed out. “You certainly have that in common with vampires. Maybe you have some other reason for being here? Maybe you want to be around to see who comes through the portal.”
Dermot shot to his feet.
Now we were all three angry, all three agitated. The room was full of accusation.
“I want to get back into Faery because I want to see Niall once more,” Claude said, picking his words. “He’s my grandfather. I’m tired of receiving the occasional message. I want to visit our sacred places, where I can be close to my sisters’ spirits. I want to come and go between the worlds, as is my right. This is the closest portal. You’re our closest relative. And there’s something about this house. We belong here, for now.”
Dermot went to look out the front window at the warm morning. There were butterflies outside and blooming things and lots of gorgeous sunshine. I felt a wave of intense longing to be outside with things I understood rather than in here, engaged in this bizarre conversation with relatives I didn’t understand or wholly trust. If reading his body language was a reliable gauge, Dermot seemed to share the same mixed and unhappy feelings.
“I’ll think about what you’ve said,” I told Claude. Dermot’s shoulders seemed to relax just a hair. “I have something else on my mind, too. I told you about the firebombing at the bar.” Dermot turned around and leaned against the open window. Though his hair was longer than my brother’s and his expression was more (sorry, Jason) intelligent, it was scary how much they looked alike. Not by any means identical, but they could certainly be mistaken for one another, at least briefly. But there were darker tones in Dermot than I’d ever seen in Jason.