Goblin Ball (2 page)

Cissa considered the pixies now. It was in their nature to be goofs. Max would say she must make them pay penance or chaos would reign instead of her, but she should not break their pixie spirits. The Dumnos fae was a light court, after all.

“I have it!” She felt the grin spread over her face.

“Eep!” said one pixie, her eyes wide.

“Eek-eek!” The other trembled.

All the throne room leaned in to hear the queen’s judgment. It was satisfying to feel everyone hanging on her next word, but Cissa would admit this only to herself.

“The two of you will compose an epic poem about the gloriousness of all leprechauns,” Cissa said. “To be performed at the circle under the next full moon.”

The courtiers loved it! Cissa beamed and accepted their applause and adoring gazes—until she came to the wounded Horace, still frowning.

“What then?” she said. “Is it not enough?”

The leprechaun quietly raised himself to full height, exasperated and yet dignified. “I should appreciate the return of my hat.”

He was indeed bareheaded. Not good. Leprechauns hated having their hats messed with. It upset their equilibrium—which, of course, was the very reason pixies messed with their hats.

Cissa raised an angry eyebrow, but before she could say a word, a huge, slouchy, purple velvet hat appeared and the two culprits arranged it on their victim’s head, brushing off imaginary cobwebs and fairy dust.

“Here, Horace.”

“Now don’t bore us!”

Cissa raised a fisted hand to throw a smelly bomb spell at the pixies, but they popped out.

“Thank you, Queen Narcissus,” Horace said. “You’re as wise as you are beautiful. And how wonderful! The gifting will now go forward.” A dreamy look invaded his eyes. No doubt he was contemplating the fabulous baby booties he planned to make.

The other courtiers were on their feet, swarming toward her, coming to add their compliments and congratulations on how well she’d dealt with the problem and what a queenly queen she was. She couldn’t stand it.

She ripped off her crown, set it on the Moonstick Throne, and popped out.

« Chapter 2 »
Cade

Mudcastle

Cade Bausiney parked the DB5
just off the Ring road and continued on foot through the ash and yew trees of the small wood. He passed the sacred lake and the Temple of Joy and Wonder and followed the scent of lilacs until he came to Mudcastle. The enchanted cottage was where his human mother lived with his biological father, a fairy of the Dumnos fae.

And not just any fairy. Dandelion, a fae prince, should have been the king of the Dumnos court. Instead, he’d fallen in love—a most unfairylike thing to do—with Beverly and had given up his crown to be with her. His sister Cissa, Cade’s aunt, had accepted the throne in his stead.

Until very recently, Cade hadn’t known any of that. Beverly had disappeared from Dumnos when he was a child, and everyone, including her husband and son, had thought her dead. In reality she’d been abducted, held captive by the wyrding woman Elyse for three decades—until Lilith came into Cade’s life, and together they had set Beverly free.

Cade had been raised by his aunt Moo and the man he’d always believed was his father, James Bausiney, the earl of Dumnos. Sure Dumnos was strange country, but Cade couldn’t imagine life anywhere else.

Before he could knock, the cottage door flew open and his mother came out to greet him. “Good, the summoning candle worked.” She threw her arms around him. “Hello, my darling boy. How is my granddaughter?”

“Lexi is perfect,” Cade said. “Most adorable child ever.”

“Of course she is. Tell Lilith I mean to pop over for a visit soon. Don’t worry. Max thinks it might be possible. He’s given me a glimmermist bodysuit to wear in the human realm. The theory is it will protect me from the oracle ring’s curse.”

“Fantastic… if it works.” Cade crossed over the threshold into Mudcastle’s living area, and immediately the euphoric sense of well-being that marked the fae realm settled over him.

He adored the mystical side of Dumnos and all the stories that came with it—especially the one about his ancestor, Donall Bausiney, who had encountered fairies at Faeview one Mischief Night in the 1870s and had taken the fairy cup from a party of fae who’d been drinking and dancing on the roof.

Only it wasn’t a story. It was true, and the fairy who’d left the cup behind that night was Cade’s biological father, an immortal prince, who now handed Cade a tankard of what turned out to be goblin stout.

“Thanks, Dandelion.”

He couldn’t call the guy Father, or even Dad. Sure he was over two thousand years old, but Dandelion looked no more than twenty-five. Cade was thirty-seven. And he felt forty-seven with all the problems of Dumnos now on his shoulders.

In all the talks he’d had with James about what it meant to be earl of Dumnos, the subject of human-fae relations had never come up.

The fae were real! Cade still couldn’t quite believe it. And he was half fae.
Faeling
, they called it. There was Dandelion, Cissa. Morning Glory, Lilith’s mother—meaning Lilith was faeling too.

The fae were everywhere. And Cade needed their help.

The Sarumen family of Brienne’s court in London had lately insinuated themselves into the affairs of Dumnos in the human realm. Cade meant to stop them, and Dandelion had agreed to do what he could.

“I asked Max to be here today because…” Dandelion’s eyebrows scrunched up.

“Because he’s Max?” Cade smiled. He didn’t know a lot about Max, except that he was a goblin and quite clever.

“Because he’s Max,” Dandelion agreed.

“Hmph.” Max said.

“I need to win back the Clad,” Cade said. “The Sarumens have gained control over more than fifty percent of the shares, and they mean to supply military contractors with Dumnos iron.”

“Why would that be any worse than cold iron?” Max said.

“Dumnos iron, or the steel made from it, should never be used in weapons,” Cade said. “Especially not small arms. It’s completely missed by metal detectors.”

“I agree.” Max clenched his gnarled hands. “That would be a sin against the high gods.”

“When Jenna Sarumen showed up here at Mudcastle and tried to steal the enchanted mirror, she showed her wings. She betrayed the fact that she and, by extension, her family are fae.”

“Everyone knows the Sarumen are fae,” Max said.

“Perhaps everyone in the fae realm knows,” Cade said. “Most humans believe the fae are mythological beings.”

Interesting that the goblin referred to them as
the Sarumen,
not
the Sarumens
. That was a difference between human and fae right there: humans were ultimately individuals; fae ultimately belonged to their court’s monarch—or, in this case, to their clan.

“The Sarumen are under Brienne’s command, but she’s a weak queen,” Dandelion said, “and the London fae have gone dark, beyond the influence of Brother Sun and Sister Moon. Brienne keeps to the fae realm, while many of her subjects have always lived among humans. The Sarumen have had influence back to the time of the Romans.”

“That explains the Sarumens’ connections throughout the human world,” Cade said. “Do you know of anything that can help me fight them?”

Dandelion waved his hand, and another tankard of jasmine stout appeared. Beverly smiled at Cade, but he felt her anxiety. She was always trying to get him to take fae food and drink, hoping it would ensure him the long life of a faeling.

“I don’t know the Sarumen,” Dandelion continued. “I never saw any of them in the faewood. Queen Sifae never married, but it was known she was committed to her consort. There was no reason for a foreign court to send suitors.”

Her consort.
This was how Dandelion spoke about his own father.

“I wonder if the other fairy courts will send suitors to Dumnos now?” said Beverly.

“Why?” Cade said. “I mean, that seems random.”

“To woo Cissa,” Beverly said. She looked younger than Cade too, now that she lived at Mudcastle, a liminal space that phased between human and fae realms. It was all so disconcerting.

Max grunted, then brought the conversation back on point. “I met Lord Sarumen once a long time ago, at Merlyn’s cave. I was in a foul mood, and he made it worse. He sat in a corner while Merlyn and I had… a conversation. I could feel the lust for power roiling within him.”

Merlyn’s cave.
Great gods. As young as they appeared—well, except for Max—these fae folk really were old. Cade caught Beverly looking at him, and he gave her what he hoped was an encouraging smile. He hadn’t particularly embraced his faeling nature—he wanted to live in the human realm—but he did appreciate one thing about the gift of time: the chance to know his mother.

“Cade’s right,” Max said to Dandelion. “He should be worried. The Sarumen are dangerous. I have no proof, but I’ve always suspected it was the Sarumen who enchanted the quarrels which killed your parents.”

“Sun and moon,” Dandelion said.

With a nod to Beverly, Max said, “Meaning no disrespect, but no wyrd alone is enough to bring death to an immortal fae. I speak from experience. The two magicks are needed together to call up such power.”

“I wish you’d share this theory with Cissa.” Tenderly, and proprietarily, Dandelion put his arm around Beverly’s shoulder. Cade had to admit the guy did love her. “Proved or not, it might soften her attitude toward the wyrd.”

“Hello, hello!” The familiar cheery voice broke into the discussion, and Cade’s mother-in-law popped in. “I’m here!”

“Hello, Morning Glory.”

“Oh, Cade. Good. I was hoping to find you. I have a message for you and Lily from Cissa.”

« Chapter 3 »
Lilith

Tintagos Village

In Tintagos Village Lilith
left the Tragic Fall Inn with little Lady Lexi asleep in her stroller—or push chair as everyone here called it. Across the street and just a few doors down, an oversized truck and crane took up both lanes of traffic.

“What’s all this, Moo?” Lilith asked Cade’s aunt.

“Ah, the new owners arrived yesterday. Apparently they’re changing the name.”

“No more
Tea & Tins
? Cade will be brokenhearted.”

The cherry picker unfolded but a fraction of its length. It lifted two men in the basket at the end of its boom the twelve feet necessary to reach the tea shop’s wooden sign.

“Cade didn’t mention any changes happening in the village.”

“He was always good about attending council meetings,” Marion said, “but of late he’s been a bit distracted.”

“Vain to deny it,” Lilith said. There certainly
was
a lot on her husband’s plate these days. Both their plates.

Two years ago, she’d come to Dumnos, a land of mist and rain, from Indio, California on the other side of the world, a land of sun, sun and more sun. She’d been an emotional wreck, running from the disaster of being dumped by her fiancé, Greg Decker. From the moment she’d stepped off the train into the mist at Tintagos Halt and accepted Cade Bausiney’s outstretched hand, she knew she’d come home.

From that day to this, both their lives had been turned over, what with one discovery after another about their pasts. Nothing about the world was as she’d believed.

Lilith’s supposedly dead mother was actually a fairy. A very silly one.

Cade’s father was
not
James Bausiney, Lord Dumnos, as he’d believed all his life, but a fairy prince named Dandelion. He’d lost his mother when he was a little boy, but not to a tragic death as everyone believed. Beverly had been abducted by Elyse, a half fae, half human wyrding woman who’d also cast the spell which had brought Lilith to Dumnos.

Lilith and Cade had freed Beverly from captivity, and the three of them had joined forces to release Dandelion from the cold iron cage where he’d been imprisoned by the dark fae regent Idris.

But all that was nothing compared to the latest revelation. There was a reason Lilith felt so at home in Tintagos, as if she’d lived here forever. She was the reincarnation of a wyrding woman of Tintagos who’d lived in the twelfth century, and Cade was the reincarnation of her lover, Ross Bausiney, the first earl of Dumnos.