Still, what could she do? She was supposed to join them before Livy had any hope of shattering this spell. Much as they all dreaded it, that was the only instruction they’d gotten from the other fae.
Strange that she was so safe from her fate during daylight hours. Livy could leave her and go to work as usual, in the knowledge that Skye couldn’t be taken. Skye considered going out in the woods during the day and holing up there, waiting for night, letting it happen already. But that last sliver of humanity left to her was strong. It wouldn’t let her. When she did go out, she returned home before sunset, every time.
Grady came over today as usual. She felt an extra flutter of nervousness before his arrival. He’d been quiet in text—ordinarily they kept in touch every few hours—and she dreaded seeing the sadness or accusation in his face, now that he knew everything with clarity and had had all night to mull it over. Indeed, now she herself knew much more than she had before.
When he arrived, an hour after Livy had left for work, he set down the grocery bag and just held her, in the front entry, their chests rising and falling against one another. The scent of him, through the soft flannel of his shirt, made her tear up. Surely he wouldn’t smell quite like this anymore after their transformation. But I won’t care; I’ll be happy then, she reminded herself.
A glance downward into the grocery bag, gaping open by her feet, proved how far his interests had tumbled: pre-wrapped deli sandwiches. Canned soup. Boxed crackers. The real Grady would have thrown this Grady out of the house in outrage.
The human world would lose two artists when the tribe took them. Would she and Grady still use their skills in the goblin village? Would she be designing their next treetop houses? Clumping together glowing mushrooms to make light fixtures? Or—a shudder shook her at the thought—would Grady be mixing up next month’s batch of jinxed fruit pastries?
She lifted her face to him, hardly able to breathe in her panic. He read her expression, and leaned down to soothe her with a kiss. She closed her eyes, felt his heat melt her sharp edges away, and sank into it. This magic brought all sorts of cruelty, but being with him eased the pain. Almost.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“SO WHEN DID YOU FIND OUT?” LIVY ASKED. “DID YOU GROW UP KNOWING ABOUT THIS?”
They were sitting in Carol’s Diner again, this time with Grady and Skye. Each of them had a cup of coffee. A shared plate of hash browns sat in the middle of the table—mostly untouched, Kit noticed. Not a lot of appetite among the four of them today.
He glanced at Livy, beside him. “Nah. My dad told me during his final illness, seven years ago. I thought he was off his head with pain meds, of course. He told me where to find the ancestral records, and I read them, but I still thought it was just a hoax, my ancestors keeping up some weird story for fun, or maybe they were all honestly crazy. I put the box away. I didn’t know what to think. Then one night after he died, these voices started calling to me from the trees. I followed them and…met them. And realized all those obligations Dad told me about were true.”
“Did your mom know?” Grady asked.
Kit nodded. “He says she did. But she’d forgotten by then, what with her own illness.” He dragged his fingertip around in some spilled salt on the table. “Explains why they seemed so stressed a lot of the time when I was growing up.”
“So when you said you moved to Idaho and Wyoming, but your problems moved along with you,” Livy said, “does that mean they followed you?”
“Yeah. They showed up wherever I tried to go. I’d think I had escaped them, then within a month they’d be chirping at me again. Calling down from trees to tell me they were going to start stealing people if I didn’t fall in line.” Kit formed the salt into a square, boxing it in on each side with the edge of his finger. “Same thing happened to our great-grandma. When she and her family emigrated to America, she hoped the gob—” He cut off the word, glanced around, and continued, “She hoped they would get left behind in France. But no. They followed her across the ocean, then across the continent. Then all the way out here.”
“How?” Livy asked. “In a boat, or…”
“They can shape-shift. They probably became fish or dolphins or something. Then birds, on the continent. Who knows. But it’s definitely the same group. Riding us to keep getting their gold.”
“That’s why the locals called them weeds.” Livy sounded glum. “They actually are an invasive species.”
“Yet another way Europeans have fucked up America.”
“Gold,” Grady echoed. “Why?”
Kit’s gaze moved to Skye, at Grady’s side. She watched Kit, dark brown eyes pinned to him like a student who knew the answer and wanted to be called on, but who couldn’t talk if he did call on her. “It’s their magic material of choice,” Kit said. “They can make just about anything out of it. Anything inanimate, at least. Maybe living stuff too, I don’t know.”
“What do they make?” Livy asked.
“Everything. Their houses, their furniture, whatever they want. The other month they wanted an espresso machine and a milk steamer.”
Grady’s eyebrows lifted in disbelief.
“They did not,” Livy said.
“They did. They’re into food. Not only because they like it, but because it’s one of the ways they tempt people. If they can get you to eat or drink something of theirs, you’re under their spell right away.”
“I thought you just had to follow their path,” Livy said.
“That’s how you see them. You might be okay if you follow the path and don’t eat anything. But…” He looked at Skye again, feeling guilty for bringing it up. She lowered her face. “It doesn’t mean anyone’s gullible or anything, if they get enchanted. The tribe probably does whatever they can to cast that spell. They basically assault people, so I wouldn’t doubt if they…forced food on someone.” He said the last few words softly, since, to judge from Skye’s traumatized face, that was exactly what they’d done.
“Did they?” Livy demanded of her sister. “Did they force you to eat?”
Everyone watched Skye, who only closed her eyes a moment, cringing. No nod, no head-shake.
“What else did they force you to do?” Livy’s voice shook. “Did they—they didn’t—was there anything sexual?”
Grady slipped his arm around Skye, gaze fixed on her, hardly seeming to breathe.
Skye straightened up and shook her head, just a little. She met Livy’s gaze.
Grady breathed again, and touched his lips to her shoulder.
“They better not have.” Livy clenched her hands in fury, on either side of her mug. “This is just…oh my God.”