Not that it would have helped. What Livy found was that the internet supplied a million theories, anecdotes, and legends, but nothing that seemed to change the actual existing spells.
She insisted Grady and Skye turn their clothes inside out. No luck. She found beach stones with holes in them, and made them wear the stones on strings around their necks, along with packets of sea salt. Didn’t change a thing. She lit a black candle and wrote down the details of the spell on a slip of paper, and burned the slip in the candle flame. Spell remained unbroken.
Kit watched with his chin in his hand. “My ancestors have tried all that, you know. I’ve tried all that. We’re dealing with a stronger kind of magic here.”
“Damn it.” Livy chucked the pack of matches across his kitchen island. “Who do we know that has magic? Other than the locals? Aren’t there human witches or sorcerers or…”
“Tried them too.” Kit didn’t move from his perch on one of the madrone stools. “People have sage-smoked the place, hung bundles of sticks over the doors, incanted all kinds of interesting words while ladling spring water over my head. Didn’t make a difference.”
“Spring water,” Grady said dubiously, from where he lolled on the sofa-bed with Skye.
“Yup.”
“Over your head.”
“Uh-huh.” Kit scratched at a drop of black wax on the countertop. “Closest I got to success was one dude who claimed he could see faeries. Like, everywhere he went, not just here. I found him on the internet and convinced him to come meet me. He looked at me, looked around the woods, and said, ‘Oh yeah, they’ve got hold of you, all right.’ Then when he learned it was goblins in particular, he got terrified, and scrambled back into his car, telling me he wished me all the best, but goblin curses were the kind of thing no sane person ever got involved with. Then he was out of here at top speed.”
“Great,” Livy said. “So we’re back to what the locals told me. They’re our only shot. I’m our only shot, with their help.”
“The only shot we know about.”
“Which is insane.”
“Yup.” Kit caught her glare, and added, “I believe in you.”
“Good, because I don’t.” Livy scooped up the ashes from the burned slip of paper and dumped them into the trash. When she glanced across the room again, she got an eyeful of Grady and Skye tangling tongues, still sitting upright on the sofa-bed but looking likely to slide into a prone position any second now.
Kit had glanced at them as well, and when he met her gaze, his mouth twitched up into a dry smile.
She cleared her throat. “Hey, um, it’s still light,” she said to him. “Want to go outside for some fresh air?”
“Sure.” He hopped off the stool. “Nice day to hit the beach.”
It was nowhere near a nice day to hit the beach. Bundled in scarves, hats, and coats, they picked their way down the pebbles to the ebbing water. The temperature hadn’t risen above freezing all day, and a frigid wind blew from the north.
“Did they not have enough sex this morning when I left them alone together?” Livy said.
Kit chuckled. “I am not going to ask. You can if you want.”
“Should we even let that happen? If the spell is making them do this, or at least altering their minds so they’d do things they wouldn’t normally…well, shouldn’t we discourage it?”
“I’m concerned too, but again, I don’t think I’m going to get into that subject with them.”
Puget Sound almost never iced over, with its constant seawater flow in and out, but the high-water line from an earlier tide had frozen into a solid rope of seaweed and sticks. Also juice-box straw wrappers and snack-size chip bags. Livy paused to wrench the plastic and foil loose from the frosty seaweed, stuffed it into her coat pocket, then kept walking down to a square wooden dock belonging to Kit’s neighbors. The low tide had stranded the dock on shore.
Livy looked at the sky. “Clouding up. Snow’s on its way.”
Kit stepped onto the dock and walked a couple of paces on its creaking planks. “Yeah? They still saying that?”
“Two to four inches overnight.”
“Damn. Not nearly enough people came in to buy tire chains, then.”
Livy put a snow-booted foot on the dock’s stone anchor, half buried in the mud. “I’ve been going out every night lately with that ring, trying to summon the locals. Get some answers.”
“Still no luck?”
She shook her head. “They haven’t shown. It’s like they’re refusing to deal with me until…it happens.”
“Don’t take it personally. The fae—well, I’ve only met the goblin type, but I gather they’re all pretty weird by human standards. They don’t think like us or act like us.”
Livy regarded his profile as he gazed down the island, the wind whipping his hair. “So, being the liaison. I imagine that’s put a crimp in your relationships.”
He nodded, still looking off down the beach. “Can’t really tell anyone, and if you can’t tell anyone it’s not much of a relationship. Last person I tried to tell, other than you, was right after I inherited the job. My girlfriend at the time. She, uh…” He hunched his shoulders, burying his hands deeper in his jacket pockets. “Didn’t buy the story. Thought I was a jerk, maybe crazy. That was the end of that.”
Wincing, Livy scraped her boot against the barnacles on the anchor. Exactly the way she’d reacted, and the way it would have ended, if Skye hadn’t dragged her back to Kit’s doorstep. “God, that must be lonely.”
“I’ve learned to deal. The art, and doing what I can for people, it’s enough. But at first…well, when I said on our date at Carol’s that I understood about depression, that’s why. When I realized I was screwed and honestly couldn’t do anything about it or even tell people, that made life pretty dark. Still does, some days.” He shot her a brief smile. “At least I can talk about it with you guys now. Believe me, that’s huge.”
She stepped up onto the dock next to him. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve listened, not stomped off.”
“You already said. It’s okay.”
“I know things haven’t been the same the last few days…” Unlike Skye and Grady apparently, Livy and Kit hadn’t indulged in any sex since she’d rocketed out of the cabin a few days ago on the heels of his revelation. “But it’s not because I want it to be over,” she added. “It’s just everything’s been so scary. And tiring.”
“Plus we’re not under some aphrodisiac spell. Which is a real shame. They couldn’t have given me that instead?”
She grinned. “Careful. Those deals may sound good, but there are always loopholes.”
He flicked his hair out of his face. “I know it. Anyhow, don’t apologize. This isn’t…I mean, I hope it’s not over too, but the way it’s gone for me with women during the last seven years, thanks to all this—hey, even if it’s just casual, even if all you want to do is hang out, then I’d still count myself grateful.”