Give Me (Wyrd and Fae #1)(20)

It hadn’t been all that long since the glimmer glass went dark. As Elyse approached Igdrasil, Galen was on the ground with Lourdes on top of him, grinding her hips.

“Lourdes!” Disgusting. For this, Lourdes had hidden Mother’s herbs.

“Get away!” Lourdes set another boundary, not very strong. Maybe she thought Elyse wasn’t much to worry about. Maybe she needed to conserve her power to keep Galen in thrall.

Elyse flicked her wrist as Mother might. The boundary dissolved in a pastel shimmer of light.

“We’ll have a child.” Lourdes whispered in Galen’s ear, but Elyse heard it all. “Our son will be the most powerful king in the world. Sarumos will be nothing before Dumnos.”

No!

The universe shifted again. The air was sharp and cool and exhilarating, and Elyse tingled liked she used to close to Mother during a big wyrd. She didn’t know how, but she’d stopped Lourdes from having Galen’s child—or anyone’s—now and forever.





7

Strawberry Jam





21st Century Dumnos


It was colder today. The mist had burned off, and the top was down in Bausiney’s carriage. The French girls were in their glory, seated like bookends on either side of the tour guide.

Cammy handed Lilith her cell phone. “Take a picky of us with his lordship, will you?”

“I thought these didn’t work in Dumnos.” Lilith turned the thing over, looking for the camera button. She had to admit she was disappointed. When Bausiney said he’d be at the Tragic Fall at ten o’clock this morning, she’d thought he meant for her alone. Bella and Cammy had had different thoughts.

“The mobile won’t, but the camera should,” Marion said. She wasn’t joining them on the tour, but Bausiney had offered to take her up into the hills to Bausiney’s End to make sure Lord Dumnos had his breakfast.

“How’s this, then?” Bausiney put his arms around the sisters. They were dressed in bad imitations of Stevie Nicks with fringed shawls and floppy velvet hats and rings on every finger. Their necklaces and earrings boasted moons and stars and spiders on silver cobwebs. Bausiney winked at Lilith as she clicked a few shots. Her heartbeat quickened, and she avoided looking at him as she returned the phone to Cammy.

The carriage rolled to a dead stop at the village square. The square was like the hub of a wheel with seven oddly spaced narrow lanes as the spokes. Tourists streamed in via those spokes and clogged the entire works.

Bella leaned over the side and looked ahead. “There seems to be some general confusion about right of way.”

“One moment, ladies.” Bausiney bounded out into the square, gesturing at the few vehicles to stay put—two first-generation beetle bugs, as Lilith’s mother used to call Volkswagens, an old Ford van, and several bicycles. Like a professional traffic cop, he soon had a nice flow going.

“Make way!” He pointed a warning finger at a beetle bug that inched forward. “Make way for these lovely ladies, one quite possibly the next wyrding woman of Glimmer Cottage!” He bowed and smiled. “We can say we knew her when!”

The tourists were mostly women in their thirties and forties. They giggled like girls at Bausiney’s jokes and moved on to the next antique shop, the next tea shop, or the next purveyor of fine wool sweaters.

Handover Schmandover. Tintagos Village was on the receiving end of a tourist binge, lapping up the benefits of Bausiney’s brilliant marketing scheme. He glanced up through his scruffy hair. Lord Tintagos. The tourists squealed as if he were a rock star.

“I think his lordship is wonderful,” Cammy said.

“So does he,” Bella said.

“Well, he is,” Marion said. “I’ll say it, even if he is my nephew.”

When he saw that Lilith was watching, the corners of his mouth twitched and he wiggled his eyebrows up and down. His lordship was no Prince Charming. Certainly nothing like blond and brown-eyed, perfect-skinned Galen on the stairs of Tintagos Castle. But then, that was just a dream. A dream far less real now that she’d had a night of uninterrupted, blissful, restful, glorious sleep thanks to Marion’s tea.

Also unlike Galen, Bausiney was real. And unlike Greg, he was good. Greg’s intellect and ambition had been so dazzling that Lilith had never thought about his self-absorption and unkindness. Bausiney was a future earl, a guy with every advantage. He could be anywhere. Having fun. He was here, doing what he could to make life better for the people of a little village in an obscure corner of the world.

On second thought, he looked like he was having fun.

“It’s a pity Lord Dumnos won’t leave the End,” Marion said. “He’d be proud of Cade today.” She was dressed in full Handover splendor in a calf-length wool skirt and way-too-large sweatshirt with a picture of the castle ruins on the front with Tintagos Castle written above it in glitter. She wore a huge pink plastic pin that said: You may be the one! In her lap she held a vacuum jar she was taking to Bausiney’s End.

“Lord Dumnos’s morning gruel.” She said. “He’ll eat nothing else when he’s in a mood.”

Hopefully by gruel she meant oatmeal.

“The Handover has made him more hateful than usual.” Bausiney opened the door. He kissed Marion on the cheek before settling in again between the French girls. “You’re very good to him, Moo.”