Even before she’d found out about her own . . . unusual . . . genetics, she’d been drawn to the fey. She’d worked in R & D, looking into the potential healing properties of fey flora, which was one reason we’d ended up as friends. She was the only person I’d ever met compassionate enough to want to help a half-mad dhampir.
Which was probably why she was tearing up now—and rooting around in her bag, I guess for something to ease the little one’s pain, at least.
Until she suddenly stopped, and just stared at the wall for a second. Before dropping everything—literally, the bag scattered its contents of precious bottles and handmade plasters all over the floor—and running out the door. And before I had a chance to go after her, to ask what the hell, she was back.
And hell had come with her.
Or so you’d have thought, when a tableful of massive trolls suddenly surged to their feet, and a dozen weapons flashed under the dining room’s dim lighting. One of them was close enough to have given me a shave had I been the type to need one. That was happenstance, though, because the weapons weren’t aimed at me.
They were aimed at Caedmon.
He stood in the doorway, shimmering softly, because he’d drawn down the glow that the Light Fey tended to have in our world. Not that it helped. I’d always heard the expression “You could have cut the tension with a knife,” but in this case it would have taken the sword gleaming by my eye socket, because it was so thick I could barely breathe.
“Stop,” Olga said suddenly, because nothing intimidated Olga.
Something that sounded like a cross between a word and a growl came from a huge specimen on the far end of the table. He could only stand while bent over, despite the high ceilings of the room, which flattened the top of an impressive mane of white hair and allowed braids the size of my arms to brush the tabletop. And he was so heavy with muscle that he was the only one at that end of the table, because no one else would fit. He wasn’t speaking English, and nobody felt like translating, but I didn’t need it.
His expression was . . . eloquent.
“Caedmon can help,” Claire said, which didn’t.
“Claire.” I licked my lips, having seen what a bunch of pissed-off trolls could do and not wanting to see it again. “Why don’t you take Aiden and—”
But Claire wasn’t budging.
“Gessa!” she yelled unnecessarily, because the little au pair was never too far away. In this case, she was already peering in the door worriedly.
She was another relative of Olga’s, on her late husband’s side, who had been a forest troll like Fin. Also like Fin, she was tiny, only a little over three feet tall, and cute, with big brown eyes—for a troll—and a mop of brown curls that always seemed to go everywhere. She’d been brought on board after Olga got her business up and running again, and hadn’t had time for babysitting. Then Aiden came along, and now she cared for them both, with a gentleness that belied her ability with a double-headed ax, if anyone threatened her charges.
She was looking around now, like she was thinking of getting the ax, until Claire took her son from Caedmon and handed him over. “Take the boys outside,” Claire told her. To where my guards are remained unsaid.
Gessa nodded.
Stinky didn’t want to leave, but a firm pat on the backside from Olga and a stern look from me, and he loped off with Gessa, one small hand in hers and the other dragging the huge bear.
Leaving just us grown-ups.
Except for the small troll, who didn’t look that old to me.
Or to Claire, I guess, because she moved toward the forest of blades before I could stop her. “He’s a child, and he’s dying!” She stared around the table, green eyes flashing. “What is wrong with you?”
“You help,” Olga told her again, subtly getting between Claire and the male trolls.
“I can’t help!” Claire said, shoving frazzled red hair out of her eyes. “You should have come to me sooner—”
“Just found.”
“He’s your nephew?” I asked, because I really hoped not.
“No. Slave. Ran away last night, after fight.”
“What happened?”
“Slaver’s men found. Tried to kill.”
“So he couldn’t rat them out,” I guessed.
She nodded. “We find, but they find first. Killed them.” It was nonchalant.
Good, I thought.
I’d find some more to question.
Ones who hadn’t tried to kill a child.
“Listen to me,” Claire said, looking around the table. “I don’t have the skill for this. Do you understand? I need help.”
Nothing.
Nobody moved; nobody breathed. A bunch of humans would have had tired arms by now, holding weapons that heavy that still for so long, but the trolls hadn’t so much as blinked. They looked like some kind of Renaissance tableau—a deadly one, with small, dark eyes reflecting the overhead lighting, which also glimmered on the swords and axes and knives. And on the scattered pieces of armor that some of them wore, despite the fact that I’d rarely seen trolls think they needed it.
“Listen!” Claire said again, because it didn’t look like anyone was. “I can’t help your friend. But he can.”
She pointed wildly at her father-in-law, who also hadn’t moved, not so much as a finger. He was still in the doorway, hands loose, weapon still in its sheath. Not that it mattered. Every damned person in the room knew how quickly that could change, which probably explained the standoff.
Well, partly explained it.
“I thought you guys were okay?” I asked Olga, looking from her to Caedmon. They’d seemed to get along at a dinner party they’d attended at my crazy uncle Radu’s recently. Who was absolutely the kind of guy to put Dark and Light Fey at the same table and think nothing of it. Yet, somehow, everything had worked out.
More or less.
But the less hadn’t been because Olga and Caedmon were at each other’s throat. They might not be friends, because fey didn’t really understand that term the way humans did, but they also weren’t enemies. At least, I hadn’t thought so.
“We okay,” Olga agreed, and several of the nearest trolls growled.
This did not appear to faze her.
“He not hurt us,” she pointed out, with a little more liveliness than I was used to from Olga.
And got an almost shockingly long comment in return from White Hair. I couldn’t understand it; I don’t speak troll. But compared to the one-, two-, and three-word answers I was used to, it was positively loquacious.
It also wasn’t appreciated.
“She can’t help,” Olga said, using the language everyone understood, because she had manners. “He can!”
“No!” This was another troll, shorter but even more well muscled than the last, with a shock of gray hair and a face that looked like it had been dragged behind a truck at some point. Some point a long time ago, because it had healed and scarred over, yet still had little bits of gravel embedded in it, all along one side. They glittered in the low light, reminding me of the big guy from the fight, the one with all the scars, except this one lacked the exotic coloring. He was the same greeny brown as the rest, but looked like he’d lived a harder life.
Much harder.
And he wasn’t having it.
Which sucked for him, because Olga was.
The next thing I knew, she was up on the table, crossing the expanse of shining mahogany faster than I could blink. And, okay, that did not help the tension any, I thought, as the other trolls stiffened. But she didn’t pull a knife, didn’t have any weapons that I could see at all. He did—a short sword, which in this case meant slightly less than the six-foot length of some of the others’, and it was out. But he didn’t turn it on her.