Chapter 18

Quinn cursed his out-of-control temper as drove down to the end of the meadow to Gus’ workshop. After taking some time to calm himself, he entered without knocking.

“Honey, I’m home.”

“I wish I could understand why you think that is so humorous. It wasn’t the first time you said it—it’s less now—a lot less.” Saria Glass spoke tartly from her workbench, where she was marking out dovetails for a drawer.

“Not my fault you have no sense of humor, Sar. It’s too bad I’m not up here any more often. I could coach you on the finer points of humor so you wouldn’t embarrass yourself by saying stuff like that.”

He looked around wistfully at the stacked white oak lumber drying alongside one wall. He’d always loved this cozy place. The workshop had been old Finn’s, now it belonged to Sari and Gus. The air was rich with the scent of freshly sawed oak and aromatic cedar. He’d like nothing more than to spend the rest of his days working here.

Saria was Gus’ partner in their furniture business. She was an Asrai-halfling. Her mother had had an adventure with a tall, handsome wood elf out of the Opari before she met and settled down with a human. Tall and willowy with yellow eyes one size too big for her face, she could have named her own price as a model for Vogue. Since she was not out among mundanes and didn’t need to cover her pointed ears, she wore her blue-black hair in a ponytail to keep her hair out of her eyes with their vertically slitted cat pupils. Her ears twitched her irritation. Quinn figured he must have startled her as she made a slight mis-cut on the dovetails in a wide desk drawer she was working on.

Sari’s hobby was figuring out how to be a mundane human. Because of her elvish half, she was cool-blooded and ultra rational--emotions of humans confused and fascinated her at the same time. That was one reason why she and her cousins were addicted to movies and television.

He set the bag of chocolate on her work bench.

She looked at the bag. Her nose twitched and she smiled slightly. Saria seldom smiled, so it was worth the trip to surprise her.

“Where’s Hopeless,” Quinn said. “He’s making you do all the work, as usual.”

“Stop calling him Hopeless,” she snapped tartly. “I’ve asked you not to do that a hundred times. He’s still in Seattle working on landing one of Sven’s friend’s remodeling jobs. If you quit being a jerk, there might be some work for you as well.”

“That’s good news. I’m going fishing for two weeks, but I’ve got nothing going after that.” Quinn heard a vehicle drive up. He looked out the window. A Hummer. It was Gus’ resident millionaire client, Sven. The desk Sari was working on must be for him.

“It’s your admirer,” he said.

Sari frowned.

“S’up Dude. Hello Sari,” said the big man as he slouched into the shop.

“Hey Sven. Nice to see you,” Quinn said.

“Sven.” Sari nodded to him and went back to her dovetails.

According to Gus, Sven had become his most important client in their custom furniture business. They were currently building furniture for his fishing cabin/mansion up on the bench.

Sven Anderson, although he was six foot eight and 280 pounds and looked like he could start at a tight end for the Seahawks, was an ultra-smart tech nerd. After he’d graduated from Cal Tech at 17, he sat himself down in his mom’s basement and started writing compression algorithms that were effective enough that Jeff Bezos paid him a boatload of money to license them.

He had a serious lust-crush on Sari and according to Gus was constantly dropping in “to check” on things. So much so that he knew more about things in Emory than was good for him, especially given the witches’ paranoia. According to Gus, he had practically stroked out one night when Sari’s cousins, twelve of Opari’s forest sprites, showed up for one of their Friday night Veronica Mars TV binges. Sari had to call Anna to bespell him to keep both his sanity and the Opari’s secrets.

“Hey Sven,” Quinn said. “I thought you were at a big meeting in Denver or some such.”

“It was Boulder, dude. It was a gaming programming conference. I thought I would drop in to see how Saria was coming on my desk. I thought you would be up in Montana by now.”

“So did I,” Quinn said sourly. “How’s the game project coming?”

Sven’s newest gig was the design of a video game. Quinn knew nothing about video games, a fact that was a source of amazement for Sven, who maintained that he was probably the only male his age in the world who hadn’t played at least one video game.

“Check out my latest iteration of my warrior princess.” He pushed a picture of a voluptuous armor-clad woman across the desk to Quinn.

The warrior woman looked remarkably like Sari.

“Oh wow, did you see this Sar,” Quinn said. “Look at the warrior princess. Is she hot or what?”

She gave him a cold look and finger-signaled a scathing alfar curse at him.

He laughed. His day was suddenly brighter.

A brassy hunting horn blew a fanfare outside. Once, then again.

“Mother of All, Sar. What the hell could SHE want. Take Sven over to the corner and the both of you sit and stay still. Sven, this is fucking serious. If you value your life and sanity, keep your mouth shut and pretend to be invisible—no matter what happens.”

“What’s going on, dude?”

“Just do it. That sound is the fanfare of a Daoine Sidhe princess.”

The shop door crashed open.

Two sword slender seven-foot tall Daoine Sidhe lordings shoved their way inside. They flared out from the entrance — yellow cat eyes searching for threats. They ignored Sven and sneered at Sari. They stiffened when they spotted Quinn casually leaning against a workbench, his arms crossed.

She strode in like she owned the place. The lordlings hovered protectively beside her and continued to shoot him challenging glares.

The Lady Iris of The Daoine Sidhe Court was perfection personified—her features were utterly feminine but far too perfect to have any sort of sexual allure. Huge jade colored cat eyes gleamed with vast ancient intelligence. They held no trace of kindness or warmth.

She moved like the apex predator she was—an arrogant leopard among the sheep. She had been ancient when the first Greek farmers watched her stride out of the Thinning atop the mountain, they named Olympus. The Lady Iris was Queen Uonaidh’s messenger.

“May the Singer and Song bless you, Lady Iris. You and your group are well come,” Quinn sang politely in high alfar. The three old troll women had drilled the language into him the same way they administered all their lessons—with beatings and curses. The language was not made for humankind, so Quinn’s singing still had an odd accent he couldn’t shake.

One of the lordlings curled his lip. The other sang out:

“You will bow to my Lady.”

Quinn ignored him.

The lordling stiffened at the insult and swept his black ash staff into the ready position preparing to administer the customary punishment they meted out to impudent human slaves. A blow to the knees that would cripple him.

“Hold,” the Lady Iris said.

He froze.

“Cease your posturing, “ trilled the Lady. Her voice sounded like the tinkling of a multitude of silver bells.

He gave Quinn a furious glare and stepped back.