She swung out one long leg and did a spin on the smooth wooden floor, her bare feet rejoicing in the feel of the wood. There would be no carpet for Ceridwen. The smell and feel of wood was her preference.
The sun shone upon the cut edges of the many glass panes in French doors, and it glinted there, refracting, throwing a scattering of tiny rainbows across the natural maple floor. The rooms were bright with sunshine and had been cleaned recently. She wondered if Arthur had used magick to tidy up, or if he had had Squire clean the suite earlier, presuming she would stay.
No. He didn’t know I was going to choose to remain here, she thought. Though perhaps he hoped.
And it had been clear that he was glad Ceridwen was staying behind, and not solely because she was a staunch and valuable ally. That was all right, though, for she had not been forthcoming about the entirety of her reasons for that decision. The Faerie sorceress had not lied. She had simply not provided the whole truth.
Fighting at Arthur’s side made her feel complete, somehow. As though it was meant to be. Such attitudes toward destiny were common among her kin, but she had always eschewed such ideas as flights of fancy. Now she could not decide what to think. But, then, Conan Doyle had always had that effect on her.
A tiny smile played upon Ceridwen’s lips and she shivered again at the caress of the cool breeze upon her flesh. I think it must be his eyes, she thought. Yes. His eyes. There’s iron there.
She danced over to the open doors and stepped into the warmth of the sun. Her flesh absorbed it, the heat radiating down to her bones. Ceridwen went to her knees on the stone patio and glanced around the garden. It was a pitiful thing, with little variety and less vigor, but she would soon see to that. With a satisfied sigh she plunged her fingers into the soil and she felt the life there. The earth responded to her touch, quivering beneath her. There was so much she could do here. The garden needed color and wild scents. And water. She would want a fountain, built of stone and with the water summoned from deep within the earth, a spring she would create by simply asking the water to flow upward.
Elemental magick was her very pulse.
As Ceridwen smiled, sprouts burst from the soil, a trio of small buds that grew rapidly to full-fledged flowers, the same violet as her eyes. They smelled of vanilla and oranges and they grew only in Faerie, only within the walls of Finvarra’s kingdom.
Unless she willed it.
They were the merest fraction of the color and life she would bring to this garden. But now she had other duties to attend to. A different sort of summoning to answer. Ceridwen stood and stretched, enjoying the sun on her body. The walls around the garden courtyard were high. Anyone inside Conan Doyle’s house might see her, but she knew he had thrown up wards to keep away the attentions of prying neighbors. Not that she minded. Women of the Fey were never coy about their bodies. In its way, the flesh was the fifth element, after fire, air, water and earth. She only wished she could control her flesh as easily as she did the others.
With a sigh she slipped back into her bedroom, calling a small breeze to blow the French doors closed, just softly enough not to shatter the glass. The only things of hers she had already brought into her suite were some of the clothes she had kept in the guest room upstairs. Now she examined the closet and chose a light gown the color of the winter sea. Once she had slipped it on she also donned a hooded cloak of a blue deeper and richer than the gown.
Eve wanted to take her shopping for clothes more appropriate for the modern human world. Ceridwen felt that since she had decided to remain for a time, perhaps she would take the vampire up on this offer. At the very least, it ought to be an entertaining evening out. Beyond their fondness for Arthur, the two women had little in common.
Ceridwen retrieved her elemental staff from its place by the door, the wood cleaving to her grip and the fire within the icy sphere at its tip glowing brightly within. Another wind blew up and closed the door behind her as she went out into the corridor.
This part of the old house was silent… what Arthur and his former associate, the disquieting Mr. Gull, were doing on the roof had no echo down here. Ceridwen liked it this way. In Faerie, everything was alive and vibrant. There was a beauty and sublime rightness to the dwellings of the Fey, particularly the homes constructed in the boughs of trees, but something about mortal houses brought her an inner peace. There was an elegance and a sense of artistry in a dwelling such as this one that she could appreciate in quiet moments.
Now, though, was no time for reflection.
Ceridwen swept along the corridor, a blue mist swirling around the ice atop her staff, her cloak nearly brushing the floor. They would all have gathered upon the roof by now and might already be awaiting her. Yet even as she thought this, Ceridwen passed a pair of large doors that had been thrown open and saw within the vast spectacle of Conan Doyle’s library. Nostalgia bloomed within her, a feeling rare for one of her race. Yet it was powerful enough to pause her in her purpose and divert her into that massive hall. For calling it a room would not do it justice.
The library was a glorious place, fully four stories high with nothing but bookshelves along the walls, save for the large skylights far above. The center was open and filled with comfortable chairs in which to cozy up and read. Stairs led up to the second floor, which was little more than a balcony that ran around the perimeter, looking down upon the first. The third floor balcony was slightly narrower, and the fourth the narrowest of all, so that the vast open air of the library grew wider the higher one climbed.
"Wonderful," Ceridwen whispered to herself. She could recall long hours spent here on the occasions when she had come back to the mortal world — what her people called the Blight — with Arthur.
Yet the immediacy of their situation beckoned. She turned to leave, but even as she did so, she caught sight of another figure moving across the balcony on the second story. It was only a glimpse, as he moved into one of the many alcoves of bookshelves, but there was no mistaking the leathery skin and small, sharp horns.
Ceridwen went softly up the stairs to the second floor and moved around the circumference of the room, along the balustrade, to the alcove where he had disappeared. Danny Ferrick had his back to her and wore small silver headphones. She knew that music somehow came from such things but she could not see its source. The demon boy nodded along in time with the rhythm and had not noticed Ceridwen’s arrival. For several moments she watched him curiously as he withdrew certain volumes from the shelves and perused them. Conan Doyle had one of the most extraordinary libraries in the world, replete not only with the summary accumulation of human wisdom, but with the secrets of the occult as well. The true histories of the world. Revelations of ancient societies. Lost worlds. Other dimensions. Many of the books in the library were unique and thought to have been lost at the time of the burning of the library of Alexandria.
A young man with an interest in the supernatural could learn a great deal in this hall.
She tapped him on the shoulder. "Danny."
"Fuck!" he snarled, spinning to face her and backing away at the same time. Fright and aggression warred in his eyes, and then he saw who had disturbed him, and he let out a long breath, relaxing into his sagging, teenager posture.
"You wear the face of his enemy and yet still call upon the man-god of your parents’ religion?" Ceridwen asked.
The demon boy leaned back and gazed up at the sunlight streaming in through the windows in the ceiling high above. He waved a clawed hand. "Well, He hasn’t struck me with lightning yet, so either He isn’t listening or I’m getting the benefit of the doubt. My guess is, you don’t get judged on your gene pool, but how you swim in it."