“Lower your weapon,” she says. “It won’t do you any good anyway.”
“Sure it will. Cold-forged iron bullets.”
She puts out her free hand. “Toss one over.”
I take one out. She catches it in her hand, squeezes it and then opens her fingers to show no more than a slight reddening of the skin.
“Such children,” she says, her lip curling. “Shoot me with that, and it will sting, but I would still have time to shoot both you and your lover.”
“What do you want?”
“A little chat.”
“Do you know how to use a phone?”
“I wanted both of you, in the same place, out of that cursed Tylwyth Teg town.”
I motion around us. “You wanted to speak to us together? Come during business hours. We both work here.”
“Yes, with that old woman and a constant flow of humans, and even then, you’ve barely been in this office together in the past week. Are you going to keep questioning me when I’m holding a gun on you?”
I still don’t like it. There’s more to this, and I’ve already screwed up once. I don’t want to be the “foolish human” again.
But did I really screw up? What if I’d realized the doppelgänger wanted me to fly to the office to warn Gabriel? Would I have crawled back into bed and refused to play? Of course not. I’m only annoyed that I didn’t see the ploy first.
“Poor little Matilda,” the fae continues. “It takes that brain of yours a few extra moments to catch up, doesn’t it?”
“I’m not Matilda. Mallt-y-Nos, yes. Matilda, no. There’s a difference, and if you came thinking I can do something for you—as Matilda—you’re about to be disappointed. Being Mallt-y-Nos means I’m useful to the Tylwyth Teg and the Cŵn Annwn, and nobody else.”
“Oh, I have no use for you, Matilda. No one ever did, except those two hapless fools. They were the ones with power. You were just the pretty girl caught in the middle.”
“Ouch.” I sniff. “You’re so mean. I don’t think I want to talk to you anymore.”
“That’s fine, because my quarrel is with the great Gwynn ap Nudd. You are just the means to an end, as you always were.”
Her hands fly up, and the glamour evaporates, revealing something barely humanoid, a writhing mass of thorns. She charges. I try to fire my gun, hoping to get Gabriel’s attention, but she’s inhumanly fast. She knocks it from my hand, slicing my jacket open with her thorns. I dive and hit the floor in a roll. When she launches herself at me, I slam a rolling file cabinet into her. Then I run for the door, because I’m not stupid. I don’t even know what kind of fae this is—only that I can’t fight something covered in thorns.
As I run, I dodge to retrieve my gun. It might not kill her, but it could slow her down. I’m scooping it up when thorns stab the back of my knee, buckling it. As I fall, I twist in outrage. I thought I didn’t let her get that close to me…and I didn’t. She’s still five feet away. She fired the thorns into my leg.
Seriously? What the hell kind of fae is this?
I go to grab the gun again, but thorns hit the back of my other knee, and I fall. There’s motion in front of me, and before I can look up, my gun is snatched from the floor.
“Stop,” a voice says. A very calm, very deep voice that makes my insides sink in relief. Gabriel. Then I remember the doppelgänger, and I tense, but when I look up, Gabriel’s pointing the gun at the fae, not me. His impression is completely impassive, as if he’s caught a teen breaking into his office. That look tells me this is indeed my husband.
The fae’s glamour returns. “Cold-forged iron won’t kill me. I already had this conversation with Matilda.”
“Olivia,” he says. “Her name is Olivia.”
“Oh, she has many names, and I know them all, just as I know yours, Gwynn.”
“I’m not Gwynn.”
“You think I don’t see you in there, Gwynn? I have spent centuries searching, through endless half-fae bastards, catching a glimpse of you here and there, but never enough. Never truly Gwynn. Finally, I find you, and I wait for this week—the only week you gave me—and I had to seethe as those days ticked past. I will not wait for my next chance.”
“I have no idea—”
“You cursed me,” she spits. “Out of jealousy, you cursed me so I can only glamour myself one week each year. The rest I am this.” She changes back to that thorny mass. “There is no place for fae to hide anymore, Gwynn, and so I spend my life in the shadows, slinking like a rat.”
“I am not Gwynn. I have some of his memories, but you aren’t one of them. Not who you are or what you did or how to uncurse you.”
“What I did? I just told you what I did. Nothing. You were jealous.”
He shakes his head. “I have enough of his memories to know jealousy would not be the answer.”
She returns her glamour and sneers. “Not the answer? You killed your beloved Matilda out of jealousy. You let her die rather than share her with another.”
Gabriel flinches. He might not be truly Gwynn, but there’s enough of Gwynn in him to make him flinch at that, even if he knows it’s not the truth. The story might be “jealousy” but as with any story, the truth goes much deeper, and while it doesn’t absolve him, I have enough memories of Gwynn myself to know that Gabriel is right. Whatever this fae did, she deserved the curse. The quiet and gentle young man Matilda loved grew cold and hard after her death, but he would never have issued such a curse if it wasn’t warranted—no more than Gabriel himself would do such a thing.
“You will undo the curse,” she says.
“I don’t know who you are. I have no idea how to—”
Her glamour snaps off, and she launches herself at me. Gabriel fires twice, but it doesn’t even slow her. I try to roll out of the way, only to have thorns pin me down, making me howl in agony. With a roar, Gabriel charges. He’s running straight for her. Straight for that writhing mass of thorns.
“Gabriel!”
Something flies past him. A blur of black. It leaps and lands on the fae, toppling her over as she screams.
Gabriel stops short. I wrench out the thorns pinning me down as he runs to help me. The fae is on the ground, shrieking, and all I can see is something black, ripping into her despite the thorns.
Gabriel helps me to my feet. The fae goes still. She’s still alive, but blood drips from a dozen wounds, and her eyes roll in fear and pain. And perched on her chest is a black cat.
“TC?” I say.
The door behind us flies open.
“I know who it is,” Patrick’s voice says. “The doppelgänger mentioned Thiten, and I recognized the name from my books. Gwynn…”
He stops as he sees the scene in front of us.
“Is that your cat?” he says.
“Apparently,” I say. “Our intruder really doesn’t seem to like him.”
“TC warned me upstairs,” Gabriel says. “I saw him, and I knew if he was here, Olivia was, which meant something was wrong.”
“Huh.” Patrick walks over to the fae. “She’s even uglier in real life.”
The fae spits at him but doesn’t try to rise, her gaze fixed on TC.
“Thiten,” Patrick says. “A very old fae, last of her kind. She lured young women to her home, where they were forced to work until they dropped dead. Gwynn cursed her so she couldn’t glamour herself and trick humans.”
I walk over and look down at the thorn-covered fae. “Fitting punishment.”
TC stands on Thiten’s chest, his fur puffed, and I swear I can feel him vibrating with tension. With anger? Or just adrenaline? I bend to give him a quick pat. As soon as I touch him, the world shifts, and I am perched on a castle roof.