I remembered Mom’s huge belly disappearing too soon, and the last time I’d ever seen her cry. But it wasn’t my sorrow; I was a step removed, and to me, the pregnancy had always been a bit surreal anyway. “No. Why do you want to know?”
Luke’s eyes flitted over the trees closest to the rotunda: three petite thorn trees a few yards away. “Before I decide I don’t like someone, I always try and figure out if there’s a reason why they are who they are.”
“Me?”
He gave me a withering look. “Your mom, stupid.”
I chewed my lip, feeling both defensive and relieved that an objective third party thought she was hard to live with. “She’s all right.”
Luke frowned. “I’ve had plenty of time to watch the two of you, thanks to your memories, and I don’t think she’s been all right in a while. And don’t get me started on Delia.” He shook his head, and added after a moment’s pause, “We’re going to have to protect your family. If I won’t touch you, They’re going to try to come at you any way they can.”
I imagined trying to coax Mom into wearing iron jewelry. Or trying to have an intelligent conversation with Dad about faeries. And Delia—well, she could fend for herself. Maybe I could use Delia as a decoy.
Luke laughed when he saw my face. “I think we have to find out what Granna was working on before They got to her.”
I sobered, remembering that Granna was lying in a hospital while we were laughing. “Will the doctors be able to fix her? Do you know how to fix her?”
Luke shrugged and shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about that. Some of Them might know, but it’s not as if I can just call Them up. Even if I could, I don’t know if I’d want to. Even the best of Them aren’t exactly safe.”
“They aren’t all like Eleanor and Freckle Freak?”
“Freckle Freak?”
“He was at the reception. And again, at Dave’s Ice.”
Luke frowned, remembering. “Aodhan. That’s his name.” His eyes narrowed further. “He was at Dave’s?”
“James bitch-slapped him with a fireplace shovel.” That reminded me of something else I wanted to say. “I think James is jealous of you.”
Luke rolled his eyes. “You think?” He lifted his flute as if he were going to play it, and then rested it on his knees again. “He’s known you for years, Dee. He had plenty of chances, and he blew it.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You aren’t worried about it, then?”
Luke shook his head and blew an “A” before pulling the slide out a bit on his flute. “Nope. I love you more than he does.”
I sighed. I wanted to take this moment, wrap it in paper, and give it to myself as a gift every time I felt crummy.
Luke glanced at the silent house. “We’re definitely early. Do you want to play some tunes to warm up?”
I wanted to hear him say that he loved me again, but playing tunes with him came in as an okay second. I leaned my harp against my shoulder, the smooth wood fitting perfectly into the crook of my shoulder; it felt like it had been too long since I’d played. “Sure.”
Luke seemed to feel the same, because he ran his fingers over his flute and said, “It’s been a while. What do you want to play?”
I rattled off a list of common session tunes I thought he might know, and he nodded recognition at all but one. I ripped into a bouncy reel and Luke tore in after me. It felt like we were two pieces of a puzzle: the high, breathy note of the flute filling in everything that the harp lacked, and the rhythmic arpeggios of my low harp strings pulsing beneath the melody of the flute, driving the reel forward with a force that made me forget everything but the music.
At the end of the set, I dampened the strings with my hand; Luke’s attention immediately returned to the thorn trees.
I cuffed his arm, pulling his eyes back to me, and demanded, “Okay. Enough’s enough. What are you looking at? I don’t see anything. Is someone there that I can’t see?”
Luke shook his head. “I’m pretty sure you can see Them all now, if you try hard enough. But there’s nothing to see there. Yet.”
“Yet?” That was an ominous way of saying “nothing.”
He gestured to the upward curve of the yard. “This massive hill, those thorn trees, the storm—I can’t imagine a time and place any more perfect for the Daoine Sidhe to make an appearance.”
The name seemed to whisper recognition in my soul. “What’s that?”
“The ‘Forever Young.’ The faeries who worship Danu. They’re—” he seemed to struggle to find the right words, “—of music. Music calls them. It’s what They live for.” He shrugged, giving up. “And if any music would call them, it’d be yours.”
My fingers touched the key at my neck. “Should we be worried?”
“I don’t think so. They refuse allegiance to her, and in return, she’s done everything she can to destroy Them. Of all the fey, They’re the weakest in the real world—the human world. They’d need a storm like the one we just had to even think about appearing before the solstice.” But I knew from his persistent observation of the thorns that he still regarded them as a possible threat; I raised an eyebrow. He added, “But I did say there’s no such thing as a safe faerie, didn’t I? There are Sidhe that would kill you just for the prize of your voice.”
I stared at the thorns, a bit taken aback by this new bit of knowledge.
“I won’t let anyone hurt you.” Luke spoke softly.
I almost believed it was true; I could have been convinced of his infallibility if I hadn’t seen him slain on the kitchen floor by an enemy that wasn’t even in the same building. But I lifted my chin and leaned my harp against my shoulder again. “I know. Do you want to play anything else?”
“You make me want to play music until I fall asleep, and then wake up and play some more. Of course I do.”
I leaned my harp back and began to play a moody, minor reel, slow and building. Luke recognized the tune immediately, and lifted his flute again.
Together, we twisted the reel into something at once towering and creeping, inspiring and sobering. The melody dropped low on my harp strings and Luke’s flute ripped upward, dragging an aching counter-melody ever higher in the octave. It was almost too raw; both of us laying everything that made us who we were out in plain musical language for anyone who cared to listen.