Grave Dance (Alex Craft, #2)(31)

“Oh, I thought you were.” She pressed her palms together, her smile spreading. “I saw you on television and was sure I recognized you. You were the one who stopped the eternal dance. I know you were.”

Crap. Being recognized as someone who had caused trouble in the Bloom probably wasn’t a good—or safe—

thing. The woman’s excitement grew when I didn’t dispute the claim.

She rushed forward, sidestepping Desmond. The barghest growled again, but the woman had already reached our table. She threw her arms around me, and if she’d had a weapon, I would have been dead. Instead I found myself in an emphatic embrace.

“Uh.”

“Thank you,” she said. The top of her head ended at my shoulders and her cheek felt blistering hot where it pressed against my bare arm. “I was caught in that dance for six hundred years. You freed me.”

At her words, a balance between us shifted and whether she realized it or not, the debt she owed me became a very real obligation. I ignored the feeling. I wasn’t about to start col ecting favors from strangers. I patted her back awkwardly.

“Don’t mention it.” Really. As in please be quiet. I glanced over her head. Several patrons had turned our way, listening.

I extracted myself from the woman’s hug gently, trying not to be rude but anxious to reclaim my personal space. She released me, but she didn’t back off.

“I’m Edana. I didn’t mean to interrupt your conversation.”

She nodded an apology to Rianna. “But I had to thank you when I recognized you. I can’t believe you managed to free everyone from the dance. And you talk to the dead as wel , don’t you? The newscast I saw featured you with a ghost. It looked like you were holding hands, but I didn’t think the living could interact with ghosts and shades. How did you pul that off?”

pul that off?”

“I . . .” I didn’t have a good answer for that, especial y since most grave witches couldn’t. Of course, if she’d been in that circle for six hundred years, I had no idea how much she knew about the changes since the Magical Awakening.

“I have an affinity for the dead.”

“But—” she started, but was interrupted as two men approached the table. Wel , two male fae.

Whereas Edana appeared human, the two newcomers were undeniably fae. The first had skin the texture of bark and wore a twisting vine of mistletoe in place of clothing.

The second stood only three feet from the ground. He had eight spindly legs but a surprisingly humanoid head on the top of his insectlike thorax. Behind him, I caught sight of a curved stinger as long as my forearm on the end of a thick scorpionlike tail.

Desmond’s growl rol ed soft but menacing across the table. He’d planted himself between the fae and Rianna. I was apparently on my own.

“You are the one who s-stopped the endless-s dance?”

the scorpion fae asked.

I gulped. The two fae weren’t the only ones waiting for my answer. Conversation had al but ceased in the bar. Why do I get a feeling not everyone is going to want a membership to my fan club?

“There were extenuating circumstances,” I muttered, dropping eye contact.

“You shouldn’t interfere with situations that don’t concern you,” the mistletoe-clad fae said, stepping forward and making my gaze snap up to him. “Many of the dancers were imprisoned in that circle for a reason.”

But not all. I knew for a fact that some were tricked into joining the festivities and some simply stumbled in by mistake. Not that I was going to say any of that. Arguing with the two fae wouldn’t win me any points and I wasn’t about to apologize and indebt myself to anyone if I didn’t have to, so I remained silent.

have to, so I remained silent.

My heart crashed in my chest, each beat harder than the last as the silence dragged on, but slowly the sound of murmured conversation picked up around us again. The two fae stared at me a moment longer, and then without another word they turned and walked away. The mistletoe-clad fae sat at a table with two thorn fae, and the scorpion fae joined a cluster of goblins gambling on a dice game in the back corner. They just wanted to issue a warning?

I sank into my chair, relief making my hands shake enough that I shoved them in my lap. Edana had slipped away at some point during the conflict, so it was once again just Rianna and me at the table. Wel , and Desmond. Not that I had any delusions of privacy—there were definitely ears turned toward our corner.

“So . . .” I said, tugging on the cuff of my glove. I wished I had something in front of me—food, pen and paper, anything at al —to focus on. But I didn’t. I just had Rianna sitting across from me, watching me fidget.

“You’re not going to come to Faerie, are you?” She phrased it as a question, but her voice betrayed her lack of hope.

I cringed. I’d had enough of Faerie for one day. Besides, I couldn’t claim ownership of Rianna. “You’re my friend. I can’t claim you as property. It’s weird and wrong.”

“So you’d rather someone else who is not my friend and who may see me only as a tool, take over?”

Okay, when she put it that way, it was the lesser of two evils, but . . . I released a deep breath, letting the air drag out of me and take with it the panic fluttering in my stomach.

But nothing. I couldn’t let someone else, someone who wouldn’t have Rianna’s best interests in mind, walk in and make her a slave again. The least I could do was see if Faerie recognized me as the heir to Coleman’s holdings. If it did, I could try to figure out a way to free Rianna.