He got another hair-tweak for his attitude, but hell, they lived for stealing, so they ought to enjoy it. Then again, there were weird magical rules they had to follow, and if they broke those rules, they got some kind of smackdown from “the locals.” As far as Kit could tell, the locals were other fae. Kit, like his ancestors, never saw these locals, probably because the goblins’ taint on him kept the rest away.
The goblins stole stuff off hikers and other people in the woods by inviting them in. If you followed paths that mysteriously appeared while you were alone in the forest between dusk and dawn, then you were accepting their invitation. They’d appear, mug you, and jumble your memory so you couldn’t recall what happened.
If you were lucky, they’d leave it at that.
Kit, at least, had immunity from those antics. To a degree. Kind of.
“I’ll try to get you the milk steamer,” he said. “But listen. Tonight I also want to invoke protection for someone.”
“Ooooh,” chorused the voices.
“Is Kit in love?” one said.
“No. It’s family.” He glared past the grinning Redring into the darkness, then returned his attention to her. “My cousin’s coming to live with me a while. His name’s Grady. Last name Sylvain, like mine.” He took out his phone and brought up the photo of Grady from a social network profile: messy dark hair, goofball grin, jug-handle ears and all. He showed it to Redring. “He’s twenty-one. About five foot eleven…”
Redring waved away the phone, though her long pink nails scraped it as if she was tempted to snatch it. “We don’t need pictures. If he’s cousin to you, we will smell him.”
It sounded like an insult, but it wasn’t actually. They could smell all kinds of information off people.
“Then you’ll leave him alone?” he said. “Don’t care if he’s by himself out here, don’t care what kind of glowing paths or trails of cookies he follows into the woods, you’ll still leave him alone. I invoke protection.” He used the formal phrase, hoping it might carry extra magical weight.
Redring scowled, while the others in the shadows continued cackling and improvising crude love songs. “Fine, he is protected.” She flapped the gold necklace in his face. “But you must bring us more than this. Tomorrow. You’ve come up short this month.”
“I can’t just conjure up gold. You know that. It’s expensive, and it generally belongs to other people, and—”
“You have our magical sanction to steal.” Redring used what she probably supposed to be a sweetly coaxing voice. It was about as appealing as a blob of congealed jam stuck to the underside of a table.
Yes, his arrangement made it so he could steal for them and not get caught. Sounded like a dream come true, on paper. But in reality…
He looked down and ground a mushroom into obliteration under the heel of his boot. “I hate doing that to people.”
“But if you don’t, we get hungry, and…” She spread her fat faux-human hands in a What you gonna do? gesture.
“Hungry,” with them, could mean all kinds of things beyond merely hungry. Could mean bored. Lustful. Violent. And it often meant willing to take their knocks from “the locals” and lash out anyway just to wreak havoc.
The frustration strangled Kit. “Don’t. Just…wait, all right? Please.”
“More gold tomorrow?”
“I can’t promise tomorrow! How about a week. Give me a week.” Maybe he could drive to Tacoma or Seattle, drop in on some chain store he didn’t feel quite as terrible swiping stuff from, or at least it was better than lifting things from the small-town folks who lived around here…
Redring folded her arms. “Four days.”
“Okay, all right. Four days. Goodbye.”
He spun and stomped off, his shoulders knocking tree trunks. Wet boughs swiped his forehead, and goblin cackles blended into the whisper of the wind behind him and then washed out into silence.
They could wait a full fucking week for their loot, and if he heard of them acting out in any way because of the delay, he’d… Well, there wasn’t a lot he could do, was there. That was the trouble.
CHAPTER TWO
SKYE DARWEN STEPPED OUT OF GREEN FOX ESPRESSO AND BREATHED IN THE FRESH AIR. AFTER BEING ENCASED IN coffee steam for six hours, she found the crisp chill a relief. Though it was only a little after five p.m., the daylight had vanished, since this was Bellwater, Washington, in December. But tonight wasn’t as gloomy as most evenings had been during the past month. The low blanket of clouds had blown away, stars twinkled, and the air was calm.
Skye smelled salt water: the shore of Puget Sound was only a matter of yards away, on the other side of the cafe. A walk along the quiet beach before returning home tempted her.
Then a breeze arose, sweeping over her from inland, carrying the smell of the forest: wet mossy ground, logs, mushrooms, dirt, the Christmas-tree aroma of firs. The evergreen scent hardly changed all year, and the forest was always there for you, cool on hot summer days, calm in blustery winter.
If there was anything Skye loved more than art, it was the forest. She smiled, jogged across the street, and hiked up the sloping road toward the trees.
Skye was twenty-three, and still lived with her sister Livy in the house they’d grown up in. She had earned a bachelor’s degree in art at University of Puget Sound last year, and had been gainfully employed as a barista here in her tiny hometown ever since. The cafe used her art skills when they could—she decorated the menu chalkboards every day, and vacationers and local regulars complimented her designs. Some of her drawings and paintings hung on the walls for sale, and occasionally someone even bought one. She also sold prints and T-shirts from her Etsy store, though not at a rate that would let her quit her day job.
Meanwhile she kept scouting ads for graphic-design jobs in the Puget Sound area, and her email inquiries had gotten a few promising responses lately. So life might be about to change.
Entering the forest, Skye released her dark hair from its chopstick-held bun, shook it behind her shoulders, and smiled up at the looming trees. “I’d miss you guys if I moved to the city,” she told them. “But I’d still come visit, don’t worry.”
Branches swayed in a breeze, whispering in response. At least, she liked to think of it as response.
She had always felt the aliveness of the woods. Not just the nature: the ferns and vine maples and huckleberries, the tree frogs and deer and coyotes. She appreciated all that, with an instinctual comfort that came from having lived under these branches all her life. But she had also always felt there was something else alive in here, something more on the…imaginary side.
She’d have sworn it wasn’t always her imagination, though. She wasn’t sure what to call it. Spirits maybe, or Teeny-tinies, the name she and her older sister, Livy, had given them when they were kids. This being the Northwest, some would suggest calling it Sasquatch. But it didn’t strike her as a Sasquatch type of presence. This was less like a big animal, and more like…well, she’d never admit this out loud, but if this were Scotland or Ireland or something, they’d probably be called the good people. Faeries. The fae.