Preston’s cheeks were pink, too. “Surely not. He was clear that he didn’t want to see us together again—but it would be a more convincing lie. I mean—well. He doesn’t care where I go. He’d be happier if I just left and never came back. He only cares about you.”
As much as she did not want to admit it, Effy knew it was true. But ever since the incident at the pub, Ianto had asked for nothing more than just a bit of perfunctory, chaste flirtation. She could do that.
“Then why don’t we tell him you’re bringing me somewhere?” she suggested. “Dropping me off in Laleston. Dropping me off in Laleston so I can, I don’t know, look at architectural textbooks. They have a library there. If everything goes to plan, maybe neither of us will ever come back. We can just take the diary with us.”
She spoke with more confidence than she felt. Though at least half the time, she wanted desperately to leave this sunken house and its disturbing secrets, she still felt a strange pull that urged her to stay. This was the realm of the Fairy King, after all. Perhaps this was where she belonged.
“I suppose that’s true,” Preston said. “You never signed anything binding you to him, did you? Money never changed hands?”
She found it funny that he was so preoccupied with the technicalities. Effy’s mind always skipped over those details. She let those small things slough off her; the small things were never what ruined you. If she were kneeling and examining the shells on the beach, she wouldn’t see the titanic wave rising over her head.
What sort of things would she wonder about, if she weren’t always waiting for the next wave to come? She didn’t let herself linger on it. She had to speak to Ianto.
Effy found him sitting on the edge of the cliffs, a casually dangerous pose, draped over the white rocks like a lizard in the midday sun. It wasn’t even particularly sunny that day, but even the weak, bleary light gave his hair an oily sheen. Wet. He always looked wet.
“Effy,” he said as she approached, “come sit.”
She went over to him but didn’t sit. A mile down the face of the cliffs, the sea sloshed like dishwater, lazy and gray. “I have something to ask you.”
“Anything,” Ianto said at once. “Really, Effy, please come closer.”
He was sitting so perilously close to the edge of the cliff, looking more like an outcropping of rock than a man. He had been born in the Bottom Hundred, in this very house. The danger of the sea was as familiar to him as breathing. Unexpectedly she felt a twinge of sympathy. He really did want to stay here, sinking foundation and all.
She wondered if you could love something out of ruination, reverse that drowning process, make it all new again.
Effy stepped closer, an arm’s length from Ianto. His eyes were murky and colorless. Safe, for now.
“I have to go to the library in Laleston. They have some books I need—I’m sorry, I should have brought them with me from Caer-Isel, but I didn’t realize what an involved project this would be.”
“It’s a long trip, to Laleston. Are you sure you need to go?”
“Yes.” Her heart pattered; she was actually getting somewhere. “Quite sure. It’s the closest library for miles. I don’t want to have to take a train all the way back to Caer-Isel . . .”
“Let me at least give you money for the train,” Ianto said. “It seems only fair, since you’re here at my behest.”
Effy drew a breath. “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. Preston has agreed to drive me.”
Immediately a shadow fell over Ianto’s face. In the silence, a seabird swooped and called, the noise echoing over the rolling sea. The wind picked up, carrying with it a faint sprinkling of salt water that dampened Effy’s face. Ianto’s colorless eyes shifted, a bit of the murk fading, and Effy’s muscles tensed.
“I don’t trust that Argantian boy,” Ianto said finally. “He’s been here for weeks now, and whenever I ask if he’s made any progress, all he does is stammer out some academic jargon no ordinary person could understand. And I don’t like the way he looks at you.”
Effy almost choked. “He doesn’t look at me any sort of way.”
“He does,” Ianto said. “Wherever you are in a room, he watches you. It’s like he’s waiting for you to trip so he can catch you. It’s unsettling.”
“It’s nothing like that,” she said, though she could feel her throat pulsing. “He’s an academic, like you said . . . I don’t think he has those kinds of, um, preoccupations. He’s too focused on his work.”
But of course Ianto’s words made all manner of thoughts run through her mind, most of them inappropriate, many of them downright lascivious. Until now she had not wondered about Preston’s preoccupations, if he had ever done this or that, maybe he even had a girlfriend back in Caer-Isel. All of it was distressing and flustering to contemplate.
“Regardless.” Ianto held her gaze. “I can’t have you going away for too long. Wetherell is pestering me for a final blueprint so we can discuss finances.”
“It will only be two days,” Effy said, carefully.
And then she saw the strange thing happen again: the murkiness vanished from his eyes, like sunlight beaming through clouds, and then abruptly it returned again. It happened several times—cloudy and then clear, cloudy and then clear—each time as quick as a blink.
It made her stomach knot. “It’s just, you can’t do the whole drive there and back in one day—”
Suddenly, Ianto rose to his feet. Effy shrunk back.
“You know,” he said at last, “perhaps it will be good for you to have some time away. Being stuck up here in this house—it can be suffocating.”
He spoke as if the words had taken great effort. All these shifts in him, like the trembling and crumbling of the cliffside under her feet, made Ianto impossible to read. He could swing a gun at her one day and be perfectly friendly the next. He could seize her hand and grip it so hard that it hurt and the next day keep himself at a noticeable distance.
The wind beat Effy’s hair and the tails of her coat back and forth, snatching them up and then letting them loose again. She thought again of the ghost, of Ianto’s one-sided conversation. This house has a hold on me, Ianto had said out loud, to no one. Effy was no longer certain of anything when it came to Hiraeth or Emrys Myrddin—but she was quite sure of that.
And if she remained here, it would take hold of her, too.
Ianto watched from the driveway as they packed their things into the boot of Preston’s car. Wetherell stood beside him, looking as grave and disapproving as ever, his silver hair sparkling with the fine mist that had come over Hiraeth.
Preston was worried about the drive down the cliffs. Effy just wanted to leave as quickly as they could. Jagged tree branches snaked through the fog like witch’s fingers, grasping at the air.
“I can’t believe he agreed,” Preston murmured as he lifted her trunk. His shirt came up a little over his abdomen, exposing a narrow swath of fawn-colored skin. Effy watched, transfixed, until his shirt came down again.
“You keep underestimating my charms.”
“You’re right,” he said. “On the title page of our paper, I’ll be sure to credit you as Effy Sayre, enchantress.”
She tried to keep from laughing so Ianto wouldn’t see, but her skin prickled pleasantly.
Preston walked around the car and unlocked her door. When he reached the driver’s side, he pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. After a beat, he asked, “Do you want one?”
The same warm pleasure pooled in her belly. “Sure.”
Preston lit another and held it out to her. She took it, but she was no longer looking at Preston. Some force had pulled her gaze away from him, back to Ianto, standing in the gravel path, arms folded over his chest.
It was neither the cloudy-eyed, jovial Ianto nor the bright-eyed, dangerous Ianto. It took Effy a moment to decipher the look in his pale eyes as they skimmed from her to Preston and back again. But it was worse than she had ever imagined: worse than fury or loathing or wrath.
It was envy.