A Long Day in Lychford (Lychford #3)(6)
She went back to bed and listened for about ten minutes to the changing beat, without wanting to. If it would only stay the same for a minute or two, she could have fallen asleep to it. She really didn’t feel much like bloody dancing. Finally, she got up, put on her dressing gown, and grabbed from her bedside table the item which was now ruling her life. She’d gotten the Exercise Tracker for herself as a New Year’s present, following that rather traumatic Christmas. The little electronic sadist was already making a bit of a difference to the size of her arse. Then she headed for the stairs, intending to make a cup of tea. She could spend this extra hour sending out a few emails, getting ahead of the day’s problems. And perhaps she could play Overwatch for a bit.
She was surprised, and then alarmed, as she walked blearily down the stairs, to hear that the kettle was already boiling. She stopped, remembering that the burglar alarm was still below her in the hall. It was only relatively recently, after she’d been bathed in the water from the well in the woods, and become able to see the magical powers surrounding and threatening Lychford, that she’d even started turning it on. She couldn’t get to the emergency button, but her phone was charging upstairs. She’d started to carefully make her way back up when a voice called from below. “Do you want a cuppa?”
She recognised the voice, and the way it had just said the most ordinary of sentences as if it was learning a foreign language, and was first relieved, then angry.
She marched down the stairs and into the kitchen to find Finn, Prince of the Fairies, appreciatively watching her kettle boil as if it was some sort of modern art installation. “What the hell are you doing here?” she said.
He turned to look at her, not his usual jovial self. “Something strange is happening. I’d have gone to see, you know, the other one—”
“You mean Autumn? Your ex?”
Finn’s supernaturally handsome features creased into the most gorgeous frown Lizzie had ever seen. It really was hard to stay angry with him. Which was, in itself, worrying. “I can’t be expected to remember everyone. You people keep . . . reproducing. And then I look up from whatever I’m doing and you’ve had a millennium and I’m like ‘where does the time go?’ and—”
“Is there any point in asking how you got in? And yes, now you’re here, I do want some strong black coffee, thank you.”
Finn, as if he was following the most exotic process of preparation, and looking to her for guidance every other moment, made just that, and for himself poured hot water onto a tea bag it looked like he’d brought along, because Lizzie was pretty sure she didn’t own any that glowed green. “I got in by walking down past the walls, which was really hard, as expected, because the Vicarage still has about it some of the old shapes of protection.”
“I thought that in Lychford the vicar and, you know, magic people were always on the same side?”
Finn took a long drink from his mug, and glowed slightly green himself for a moment. “You church folk are indeed usually allies with the wise woman of the town, but the nation of my father, we’re not always friends with humans. This is reasonably easy to grasp, surely? Human beings still have different nations. You have borders even from your allies, right?”
“True.”
“So those who built the Vicarage made its shape to defend against people like me slipping in and out without a lot of effort. Hence this.” He pointed to his mug. “Keeps my strength up. Like I said, I’d have gone to see one of the other two for preference, but the old one’s got some serious ‘keep away’ hoo-hah round her place these days, and Autumn’s got a guest over.”
“Oh?” Lizzie realised she’d put the wrong note in her voice and changed it to a more neutral “Oh.”
Finn raised a frankly delightful eyebrow. “How are she and that new lad of hers doing?”
“How do you know about that?”
Finn just pointed at himself.
“Has that question got anything to do with the sort of company she’s got this morning?”
“Not sure. Probably not. So how are she and Luke doing?”
Lizzie noted that he knew Autumn’s boyfriend’s name. “They have their ups and downs, but they’re still together. He’s off on some teaching thing up north.”
“Probably for the best.”
“Why?”
“Because of this strangeness that’s been going on. As I was about to say before I was so rudely interrupted, today it wasn’t just the shape of this place that made it hard to get in here. Something has happened to the borders. Leaving fairy and getting into Lychford is normally just about taking a step here and a step there. This time it was like stumbling down a hill. I felt like I’d crash any moment, and I don’t know what crashing would even involve. When I get back, everyone’ll be yelling about this.”
“That is worrying. Okay, thanks for—”
“But that’s not why I came here! I only found that out on the way here! And now I think of it, maybe the two are connected, because this is damnable, this is unconscionable, this I was sent from the court of my father with urgent diplomatic condemnation concerning!”
Lizzie held up her hands, amazed at the sudden fury which had taken him over. It was as if he had remembered that he was supposed to be officially angry, and in that moment, took on that emotion for real. Once again, she’d been reminded that though a fairy like Finn might resemble a human being, he was actually very different. “What?!”