Midnight's Daughter(86)

The Fey brightened. “Is this where I introduce myself?” he whispered in a loud aside to Claire, who looked horrified.

“Oh, God.”

“I have been practicing,” Heidar informed me proudly, then launched into a recital of what had to be fifty names, most with explanations.

“Never ask them their names,” Claire advised as Heidar rattled on. “Just. Don’t.”

“Okay. It seems you’ve been busy.” I poked her in the middle. “Anything in there I should know about?”

She blanched. It made her freckles stand out like spots on white paper. “How did you hear about that?”

“Are you kidding me? So far, I had that runt Kyle—”

“I hate him. I hate all vamps. That complete toad, Michael—”

“—tell me you were pregnant by a vamp—”

“—kidnapped me and—Kyle said what?”

“—and then a member of the Domi shows up and informs me—”

“The Domi sent someone here?”

“—that you’re actually pregnant by the late king of the Fey.”

“Late?!” Heidar squeaked.

I stopped and looked at him. His hair was miraculously still mostly dry, despite the downpour. Claire’s, on the other hand, was as wet as mine, frizzing and straggling around her face like a dead animal pelt. It was hard to believe they were both half-Fey.

“Let me guess, you’re Alarr?”

“It means Elven general,” Heidar enlightened me automatically. “But, please, lady, I beg of you, tell us what you know of my father.”

“I’m sorry, not a lot. Only that he’s missing and presumed dead.”

“That is impossible,” Heidar said with conviction.

I didn’t feel like arguing the point, especially when I suspected he might be right. “Okay.” I looked at Claire sternly. “You want to tell me what’s been going on?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Hit the highlights.”

“Well, Heidar and I met at work—he’d come to bid on something—only my boss—you remember Matt, the gorilla in a suit?” I nodded. Her former boss at Gerald’s did look frighteningly like a shaved ape. “He’d decided to sell me to Sebastian, who’d finally tracked me down, only it didn’t work out quite like they’d planned. Heidar and I escaped into Faerie, but the damned Svarestri attacked us. We got away—you don’t even want to know how—and made it back to New York, but when I stopped by the house, Michael grabbed me for the bounty—” She stopped suddenly, looking stricken.

“Which you failed to mention to me.”

Claire rallied quickly. “I knew how you’d react, Dory! And you don’t know what the family is like. They’re… they can be very bad news.”

“So can I.”

“See!” Claire screeched. “See, I knew that’s what you’d say! You’d have gone stomping off—”

“I don’t stomp.”

“—to see Sebastian, and my slimy excuse for a cousin would have had you killed! He was surrounded by bodyguards all the time, the little shit, and most of them were mages. With some of their spells, well, they can take down vamps, you know?”

“And we’re talking about him in the past tense because?”

“Oh, Heidar killed him,” she said, as an afterthought. I decided not to ask or we’d be here all night.

“So Michael kidnapped you and took you where?” I prompted.

“To Sebastian, for the bounty. Only of course Seb was dead and the family was busy fighting over the inheritance and couldn’t be bothered. Michael was actually pissed at me, like I’d asked him to kidnap me or something. But I told him I was carrying a half-Fey child and that its father was the king, and he couldn’t kill me then because the Fey would—”

“Separate his worthless head from his spineless body,” Heidar managed to get in.

“So you aren’t pregnant?” I asked for clarification.

“Um,” Claire said. And stopped.

“Er,” Heidar added, blushing.

I looked between the two of them. Obviously, Caedmon’s story had been off by a generation. Then I recalled something. “A couple of days?!”

“Um, yes, well, it was more like a week, actually—”

I held up a hand. I was soaking and cold and my shoulders hurt. The details I could do without. “Just tell me how you got away from Michael. I know you were at the caves.”

“That place,” Claire said, wrinkling her nose in Virgo disgust for such disorder. “Michael decided to sell me to some dark mages he knew for a null bomb. He figured he could at least get something for his trouble that way, only the mages said they wouldn’t touch me until they checked with the Fey. But Michael had been carting me around for over a day trying to get a paycheck and—”

“Where were you?” I asked Heidar.

He looked sheepish. “I opposed Claire’s wish to return to your home. The Svarestri do not know the human world well, but they have occasionally ventured here. I considered the risk to be—”

“I was only going to leave a quick note,” she said testily.