Under the Bridge (11 page)

It would have been nice if she’d been able to
fix the rusty beast with magic, but pixie dust didn’t work well on
machines, and magic didn’t like metal. Her mother used to convince
clay pots to stay hot, but it took a small toll on her energy to
keep the magic in constant use. She’d said it was easier to gather
firewood.

Billy was supposed to be stronger, but she
didn’t want any drains on her energy with a banshee on the
loose.

Mentally dividing her paycheck as she
descended the stairs, she stopped short as she entered the kitchen.
Someone had left breakfast on the freshly polished table. Moving
closer, she saw a plate of steak and eggs with fried potatoes
neatly arranged at her place. A full glass of orange juice sat to
the side, awaiting her pleasure.

She narrowed her eyes and looked around, but
there was no sign of the cook or dirty dishes. Had the house
brownies gotten more active? They’d never cooked in this house
before. In fact, they’d done precious little while her mother had
been in residence, only recently picking up a larger share of the
chores.

Was Eyrnie apologizing? She’d seen him cook
packaged cookie dough, but that was a long time ago. Mostly he
reheated stuff his mom had cooked or made popcorn.

It could be the troll’s work, of course.
She’d actually seen him cook, and she could see a troll courting
with food. The idea that he might have made breakfast just to be
nice never crossed her mind, of course. Trolls weren’t known for
their thoughtfulness.

Well, whoever had done it, she was hungry.
She pulled out her chair and sniffed the food carefully, but
smelled nothing suspicious. Well, it wasn’t likely it was poisoned.
With a mental shrug, she dug in.

It was nice not to have to worry about
breakfast, and it gave her time to think. She hadn’t really talked
to her boss yet about more hours, just accepted filling in for Mrs.
Snider. Today she could do that. If she couldn’t get more hours,
she would fill out applications around town, see if she could get
part time work and save up some cash. At least she’d have a cushion
then if things like the hot water heater broke.

She’d been toying with the idea of opening
her own nursery someday, too. She’d need capital for that, even if
she started small. She figured she’d start some seedlings and put
out a sign along the road in the spring, see what kind of traffic
she could drum up. Some of the plants in the back garden were
unique; it wouldn’t hurt to take a few cuttings from them, either.
It would take time, but someday she could be independent. The
thought was very appealing.

A honking from the front yard disturbed her.
She glanced outside and frowned at Eyrnie’s old truck. He saw her
look and hopped out of the cab. His long legs ate up the path to
the porch, and he came in without asking. “Hey. Ready to go?”

She frowned at him. He wasn’t her favorite
guy right now. It didn’t help that she had to concentrate really
hard not to see through his glamour. Jerk. “Go where?”

“Class. You’ve got to turn in your
homework.”

She rolled her eyes and took her dishes to
the sink. She’d wash them later. “I’m going to work. College is a
money sink; I can’t afford it right now.”

He lowered his eyes to the floor. “About
that. I made some arrangements. You now have sponsors. They agreed
that you have potential and have covered this year’s tuition for
you.” His eyes flashed up to check her reaction.

She was dumbfounded. “You what? You got me a
loan? I can’t—”

“Not a loan, a gift,” he hastily interrupted.
“The only hitch is that you have to get good grades. I convinced
them that you’ll bring home great ones if you weren’t forced to
work all the time.”

She opened her mouth, but didn’t know what to
say. No one had ever done anything like this for her.

Eyrnie took advantage of her shock to grab
her backpack from the bench by the front door. “Come on. I bought
coffee. I even got you that white chocolate stuff you like.”

Dazed, she let him tow her out of the house.
They’d gone a couple of miles before she’d recovered enough to
sputter, “I need to call my boss. I said I’d come in today.”

“I already talked to her. She agrees that you
belong in school, but she’ll give you after-hours work when things
pick up after Christmas. She said she could trust you to get things
done. She’ll even let you help when she does the ordering, so you
can get some experience with that side of the business.”

She stared at him. “Why? I don’t understand
why you’ve done all this.”

He cast her a guarded glance. “We’re friends.
Besides, my dad gave me the idea. He was upset when I told him you
wanted to drop out. I thought, if he cared enough, others might,
too. Turned out there were quite a few people who wanted to
help.”

He looked forward. “Besides, you used to do
homework just to spite your mom. I didn’t want you to let guilt
stop you from doing something that was good for you.”

She sucked in a breath. At first she wanted
to deny that guilt had any part in her decisions, but she wasn’t
sure that was true. The fact that she couldn’t deny it made her
prickly. “This is awfully elaborate for an apology. You could have
just said you were sorry.”

He shot her a glance. “For last night?”
They’d reached the campus, and he pulled into an empty parking
space. Turning off the key, he turned to stare at her. “I’m not
apologizing for that. You needed to stop pretending that we’re
still kids. It’s a great foundation to build on, but there could be
a lot more. I want you thinking about the possibilities.”

For some reason she wanted to cry. She looked
away, out her window, to hide her reaction. She felt like she’d
lost something precious and been handed something dangerous in
return. She wanted her old friend, not this intense young
doppelganger. Why did he have to choose now to complicate her
life?

“You’re pushing too hard,” she said with
quiet anger as she got out. She was actually eager to get to class
and avoid him.

Men. Didn’t they have anything better to do
than complicate her life?

12. Visitor

Ash was not in class. She was thankful for
small favors as she bore the mostly silent ride home with Eyrnie
that afternoon. Once again conscious of what he’d done for her, she
still struggled with his intense courtship. Entering her dreams was
over the top, a huge invasion of her privacy. She couldn’t think of
a worse time for him to decide to change things between them, and
she resented the hormones that caused it. Why couldn’t he just be
her friend?

She glanced sideways at him, getting an
eyeful of his bare chest before she managed to change her focus, to
believe the glamour. She frowned out the window. How much of the
Eyrnie she knew was real? How far could she trust him?

For that matter, why had he never spoken up
before the troll came along? Did he even want her, or did he
not
want the troll to have her? Wondering was making her
tense. It had to stop.

She finally decided that in spite of his good
deeds, he was going to get a smack down if he didn’t lighten
up.

She saw movement in the kitchen as they
pulled up to her house, and a delicious smell met them as she
walked onto the porch. Ash was preparing something elaborate that
made her whole kitchen smell like an Hungarian grandmother’s. Since
she hadn’t properly set the wards that morning, she couldn’t accuse
him of breaking in. Still, “Am I going to get eaten if I point out
that you’re trespassing?”

His glance was more controlled than not. “You
could try and see what happens.”

She sighed and dumped her bag on the kitchen
table. “I’m going to go feed my chickens.”

“Get some thyme while you’re out there,” Ash
ordered. “The orange stuff will do.”

“Right,” she muttered. It felt surreal to
have a troll presiding over her stove. She was more used to the
pooka, but he’d never made a habit of doing his homework at her
table before. Both of them were beginning to exhaust her.

She checked on her birds, noting that someone
had already collected the tiny quail eggs and topped off the
feeders. She hoped it was brownies and not the troll; she didn’t
want him getting any more comfortable.

A whiff of garlic reached her and she sighed.
Who was she fooling? Ash was already entrenched. Getting him to
move now would be like pushing the sphinx into the sea. Unless the
guys managed to kill each other in a territorial scrabble, she was
stuck with both of them.

A soft breeze riffled her hair, and she
stared out over the woods. She was restless, and the solitude
called to her. The pull was so strong that she’d taken several
steps before she realized what she was doing. She glanced back at
the house, but decided rebelliously that Ash could fetch his own
thyme. She hadn’t invited him in, after all.

She felt freer for her little rebellion, and
walked with purpose through the trees. The afternoon shadows cast a
golden glow through the woods, and the wind had picked up. It
tossed her hair about, leaving it wild. She trailed her fingers
over the pines, caressing them like old friends. When she was in
the woods, she couldn’t imagine needing a man. What pixie needed a
lover when the trees filled her with such magic?

It didn’t take long to come to the end of her
land, and she paused at the property line, sensing a disturbance in
the wards.

Billy felt the urge to step across the line
and investigate further, which made no sense. She could see from
this side that the two ward stones nearest her were functional,
though they’d been tampered with. The troll’s work? She started to
examine them more closely when movement caught her eye. There was
someone out there, just over the property line.

A shape took form, moving just close enough
for her to realize that it was a woman. She seemed to be wearing a
wispy, flowing white dress, possibly made of many layers. There was
something about the face, the way she moved, that was familiar.
Billy could almost swear….

Dread speared her. Had her mother found her
way home?

As the thought formed, the woman moved a
little closer, tilting her head as if to study Billy. The certainty
that it was her mother grew, and a lump of ice seemed to form in
her belly. How was she going to deal with this? What could she say?
Billy was living in her house after having exiled her to sleep so
deep not even a pooka could pierce it. Though it had been done in
self-defense, she felt guilty. Did she owe her mother an
apology?

“Let me in,” her mother whispered, her soft
voice demanding.

Billy shook her head. The voice wrapped
around her mind, clouding her thoughts. Or was that panic? Surely
she could handle this. As many times as she’d rehearsed it in her
mind, she’d never been able to predict how this would go. “Mom,”
she said hoarsely. Tension was stealing her voice.

“Let me in,” her mother said again, moving
closer.

The closer she got, the more Billy wanted to
go to her. Her feet inched forward. Alarmed, she stiffened her
knees. What was this?

Her mother’s features became visible, but
they seemed hard to focus on, as if a veil of white light obscured
them. Billy began to question if she really were here in person.
Had she found a way to communicate from her prison?

Her feet slid forward another inch. She
grabbed a tree branch to brace against, but her hand didn’t want to
grasp it.

“Summer’s child,” the woman whispered, and it
was bright and terrible. Beautiful and deadly, her voice lured,
demanded. The wind rose and brushed the swirling leaves from the
woman’s path with an invisible broom.

Billy smelled ozone. Banshee!

She scrabbled for a slender willow and held
on, sinking her will into it. The tree shivered, its roots going
deep as Billy drove her fear and anger down, searching for the
cold, bright river of power within. It had come so easily
yesterday, but now…. What was different? Where was it?

The banshee sang, unearthly, brilliant with
magic. The tree shivered, unable to hold her. Billy’s hand slipped,
and her feet took her forward another step. Her body didn’t want to
fight. She was almost over the line.

The banshee smiled.

Billy screamed as her arm was grabbed. A
rotting log flew over her head like a missile and struck it in the
chest. The thing shrieked, a painful scream of fury, and skittered
away.

Billy cautiously took her hands from her
ears. It was quiet. The banshee was gone.

Ash looked at her calmly. “You were supposed
to be fetching thyme.”

She drew in a shaky breath. “Right.
I…thanks.”

He snorted and headed back toward the house.
“Hurry up; I’m hungry.”

She fell into step with him, not as eager to
be alone now. “That was…I never realized how powerful a banshee
could be. I couldn’t reach my magic.”

He shrugged. “First thing they do. If your
feet won’t listen to you, why would your magic?”

“It didn’t stop you,” she pointed out,
troubled.

“I know what I’m doing, pup.” He smiled when
she bristled. “Young hunter. You have some things to learn before
you hunt banshee.”

She looked around as they entered the house.
“Where’s Eyrnie? I’ve thought he’d come running with the banshee
making all that racket.”

“He went to town. Something about your water
heater.”

She frowned. “What, did he try to shower?
He’d better not be buying parts.” Eyrnie was great at fixing
things, but she’d never seen him tackle something like that.

For that matter, she was surprised he’d leave
her with the troll. She eyed him suspiciously.

He added thyme and stirred his pot, raising
his brows when he noticed her stare. “He’s not in the pot, lamb
chop.”