Forest Moon Rising (23 page)

“Your family is Irish?”

“Second generation. Dad was born in County Cork but the family emigrated when he was two,” he worked his words around bites of food.

We talked about immigrant families. Mine had moved from Quebec to Massachusetts. His had come straight to Oregon.

Acquaintances waved to me but had the manners not to intrude.

We had just finished eating and settled in with coffee and bread pudding rich with raisins and cinnamon when Holly set up her harp on the tiny stage, two steps up from the main dining floor. Wide windows behind her looked out upon the river. Who could spare a glance for mere water and sparkling lights with Holly on stage?

She tossed her flame red hair behind her shoulders, spread her embroidered linen skirt, and sat on a stool with a lap harp, carved and painted with elaborate Celtic knots.

The strings had also been painted so a side view showed a St. Brigid cross in bright colors, to match the one on her tambourine. But it was more than decoration. The design had proved an effective protection for Holly when we had a small adventure together with a Pookah. The poor creature was lost. With no way to get home, he hung around the music and fed on other people’s life energy—almost to the point of death for one of them. Holly now used a St. Brigid Cross on all her instruments as a protective ward.

I helped the lost soul find a way home. In return, he gave me a prophecy.

“By the light of the moon trailing a silver path along the river you shall find an end and a beginning.”

I looked beyond the low stage to the river. No moon tonight.

The room hushed in anticipation.

Without introduction, Holly began a lively jig, her fingers dancing over the strings as light and lovely as a faery drunk on pollen.

Trust me, I’ve seen faeries dance. Sometimes I think Holly is one of them, loaned briefly to humans to impart a little joy.

The jig morphed into a poignant ballad. Her clear soprano sent knife blades of emotion to the heart. More than one cynical eye teared up. Mine always did and I never bothered to hide it.

About the time the audience needed to sniff, the ballad gave way to a whimsical story song, and then another lively tune. We sang along on the chorus. The bolder among the listeners began free-form dancing between the dining tables.

I smiled that Sean felt comfortable enough in the raucous party atmosphere, and with me, to clap along, and even lend his shouts of enthusiasm to the revelers. He didn’t sing though.

Holly brought the set to a close by the simple expedient of stilling her harp strings with the flat of her hands.

Applause filled the room along with wild stomps and hoots of approval.

The harpist ran her gaze around the room, picking out new and familiar faces. She flicked past me, then back again. I tried to look away as she nodded to me with a wicked grin. Knowing what was to come, I took a sip of water.

“How about we give my vocal chords a break, folks. Some of you know my good friend, Tess Noncoiré. Join me, Tess.” She held out her hand in invitation.

“Do you mind?” I asked Sean, still rooted to my chair.

“Of course not!” He avidly joined the applause.

How could I turn down that kind of response?

Holly handed me a mike as I came abreast of her. We bent our heads in a moment of consultation. Then she threw back her head and laughed long and loud.

The audience quieted in anticipation.

I hummed the first note coming from the harp to make sure I matched it. Then I caressed the microphone with my voice in the sexy foreplay of a torch song. Only the tune was an old folk ballad, “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

More laughter as the audience crooned along.

At least Sean got the jokes. Not a bad first date. This one might be a keeper.

After we talked about that woodland elf baby.

Have I ever said I don’t believe in coincidences?

“T
HANK YOU FOR THE CD,” I said on my doorstep, clutching Holly’s newest recording against my chest like a teenager in lust. Sean had his own autographed copy in his coat pocket.

I didn’t want to burst his bubble by telling him I already had a contributor copy. This one was special.

“My pleasure. I’d have bought it even if I didn’t know you sang backup on two numbers.” He grinned widely while surreptitiously checking his watch.

Nine-thirty. He had plenty of time to drive the three miles to the hospital for his shift in the ER.

“We had fun tonight. I’d like to see you again, Tess,” he said softly, taking one of my hands.

His warmth and sincerity spread from his touch to the coldest part of my heart.

“I’d like that.” I bit my lip in indecision about something else.

“I have Wednesday off.”

“Yes.”

“But? You sound hesitant.”

“Sean, I haven’t had a lot of luck in my romantic choices. I need to go slow this time. I need to know that you will support me in the craziness and chaos I call a career, as much as I understand and support yours. If you truly want to continue dating, there’s something ...”

“There’s someone else.” His face fell from joy to crushing disappointment.

“No, there’s no one else.” No one available anyway.

“But? There’s always a but.”

“Squishy ... I mean Pat Newman confided in me a few weeks ago about a strangely deformed baby she helped you deliver.”

“A trick of the light.”

“Just think about it a moment. Then consider that one of the reasons I end up in your ER so often is because I’m working to keep other babies like that from being conceived.”

“Are you a geneticist in secret?”

“No.”

Quickly, before I lost my courage, I reached up and kissed his cheek. “I’m not insane. Read my books. Then think about it. Call me if you still want to do something on Wednesday. I’ll clear the day for you.”

I darted inside and closed the door. I leaned against it, waiting and listening.

He stood outside, silent for many long moments before I heard his footsteps retreat down the steps.

The crystal ball is all tucked up safe and sound where it should be. I’ve arranged artifacts of power around it so no demon or witch or Powers That Be can sniff it out. A LARPER might stumble upon it if they went looking in the wrong place, but they have no business playing their games behind that particular locked door.

While I was playing hide and seek, I also retrieved a certain hair comb my Tess adores. I found it in Mum’s front yard a couple of years ago.

Like a lot of the detritus that finds its way into Imp Haven, the comb has magic. When my babe wears the comb she can see the truth in a person’s aura. We both need to know who and what this doctor is.

I don’t trust him. He’s not one of us.

He’s not Gollum.

Tuesday afternoon I shifted impatiently around my office, pretending to work. I moved from the desk to the bookcase. I opened and closed book after book, searching for ... I don’t know what.

Actually, I was hoping Sean would call.

Which felt stupid; like I was fourteen obsessing about my first crush.

Come to think on it, I hadn’t had a real date with a man who didn’t have an arcane agenda since back before I met Dill. Saturday night felt like my very first date.

The phone rang. I grabbed it on the first ring.

“Tess, have you seen Doreen?” Donovan asked. I heard a tenseness in his voice beneath his usual charming smoothness.

“Why would I have seen Doreen?” I tapped my foot impatiently, wanting to keep the line free for Sean. But something in his voice sent a frisson of alarm along my spine. I’d left with the crystal ball just as the Nörglein and his minions invaded the back office. Violently.

“She said you’d been by the store. I thought the two of you might be becoming friends.” Donovan sounded disappointed.

“I haven’t heard from her since she ordered me out of the store.”

“Oh.”

“Anything else, Donovan? Should I be worried that you can’t find your girlfriend?”

“No.” He hung up abruptly.

Frustrated and a little worried, I stretched and rotated my left ankle and knee until the muscles turned to pudding, desperate to rebuild my strength and limberness. Desperate to fill the hours.

An hour later, the phone rang again.

“Found her,” Donovan said. “No need to worry about us.” Then he hung up just as sharply as before.

What was that all about?

A timid knock came at the front door. I slid down the hall on stockinged feet. The slick wax on the hardwood floor sped me along the way before Allie could react from her nest in the living room surrounded with bride magazines and home décor books, along with her laptop and lesson plans. She’s always been better at multitasking than me. I obsess on one topic too much.

At the moment all I could think about was Sean’s reaction to the finale of our first date.

As fast as I moved, Scrap appeared out of nowhere and beat me to my destination. He clung with his toes, upside down, like a bat, peering through the wood panels.

I wished he wouldn’t do that. I hate bats. I hate any reminder of bats.

Donovan’s tribe of Damiri demons take a bat form in their natural state.

At the door, I paused long enough to breathe, smiled brightly, opened the door, and ...

My face stiffened into a stern frown. “Do I know you?” I asked two adolescent girls shifting from foot to foot and looking about anxiously.

Of course you do,
Scarp said and blew cigar smoke into their faces.

“Um ... Oak sent us,” the one on the left, the older of the two, said shyly. She had dark shaggy hair that curled in odd wisps. Tall and sinewy, she towered over me and her sister.

“She’s Blackberry. I’m Salal,” said the younger sister. Closer to my height, she was painfully thin but not emaciated. I guessed she was very supple.

If they mimicked their namesake plants, Blackberry should be bold, thrusting her personality on one and all. Salal should be shier, hiding under things, seeking dark, damp places. But then Blackberry seemed to be in the midst of changing from little girl to woman. Her human hormones should be raging, making her extremely uncomfortable in her own body. Who knew how long puberty lasted in Kajiri demons with extended life-spans.

Lady Lucia’s Damiri blood was so dilute she was unaware of it until she took thirty years to mature between eighteen and twenty-five. Even now, at the age of two hundred and four, she looked perhaps forty-five, maybe fifty.