Traitor (7 page)

We were a tangle of arms and legs, his hands firmly grasping my hips as I pretended to pin his shoulders to the ground. He breathed heavy through fits of laughter. “You – you sounded like, what do you call them? Rednecks?”

“I did NOT sound like a redneck; they sound like
this
!”

We both fell into laughter once more. Liam pulled me to his side and before I could think, I realized I was the one pinned looking up at him.

Suddenly the room seemed to spin.

We stopped laughing, the smiles replaced by a longing that went deeper than anything I’d felt before.

I
wanted
him.

My bones, the very marrow inside of them, burned in yearning. My muscles moved without me instructing them to. My hands slipped under Liam’s shirt and I ran them along his sides. His warm skin felt like silk and his muscles tightened under my caress. He closed his eyes appreciatively.

“Ashlyn…” he whispered.

“I love you,” I said simply.

He stared into my eyes and I felt like I could see his hopes and dreams and goals for both of us. For there to be a forever for us. His words were filled with those unsaid hopes. “And I love you. For as long as we have,” he whispered, “whether it’s one lifetime or fifty, I’ll love you for every single one of them.”

But we couldn’t run from the situation forever.

I pulled his neck to my lips and kissed him once, twice, three times gently along his neck and behind his ear. His hair tickled my lips and nose, and I heard him suck in a breath. He smelled so good; his very essence was like a drug. I didn’t think I’d ever get enough of him. If I could have bottled this moment and kept it forever, I would have done it in an instant.

It was cruel to bring him back to reality with such abruptness. I whispered my words as softly as I could. “I’ll be back soon.”

Liam sighed and I felt the pressure of his body lift off of mine. Instantly I missed it. Wanted it back. Needed it back. He smiled as he stood and extended a hand to pull me up and envelop me in his arms. “You’d better be,” he said gruffly. His voice always got rough when he was trying to beat emotions back. “It’s not right to be as beautiful as you are and to tease me like you do. You’re going to drive me crazy one of these days.”

The smile that filled my face warmed me all over. If only he knew just how badly I wanted him. I opened my mouth to speak, but just then a long-fingered hand pressed itself against the small of my back. Tess must have untied Dalbach. “Ashlyn, we must prepare if you want to return quickly.”

I wondered who had allowed Tess to untie him. Probably no one. Tess was a force to be reckoned with when she wanted something. Nodding to Dalbach, I looked back at Tess, who stood in the doorway that connected the kitchen to the living room. She was clinging to the frame of the photograph she’d been carrying with her for the entire summer. Looking down at it again, she choked on the words she was trying to articulate. “Be careful. Please find my baby if you can.”

She looked down, unable to hold my gaze. Liam released me from his hug and nudged me toward Tess. I wrapped my arms around her while Dalbach watched curiously. It was almost as though he was amused by our display of emotion. There was no way Changelings could possibly have feelings, right? But then how did he feel appreciation for my gestures of good will toward him? Was there more to Changelings than we’d thought? There had to be; Dalbach had proven that already.

I shoved the thoughts from my mind as I hugged Tess tight. My hands couldn’t wrap completely around her stout frame, but she enveloped me in a massive embrace of her own. Her tears wet my shoulder, but still I held on. She needed this. She needed me to find Aiden. I wouldn’t stop until he was home with his family safely.

“Tess, I’ll find him. I need a picture, though.”

Dalbach snorted. “I know where the man child is. I know what he looks like.”

Tess’s head jerked up. “Did you call him a man?”

Liam was listening intently as well. “Never mind that, Dalbach said he could find out where he was when he was tied up. Now suddenly he already knows where Aiden is? Seems odd, doesn’t it?”

Dalbach raised his eyebrows and took in Liam with what looked like newfound appreciation. “You’re observant, human.”

Liam’s response was curt and sarcastic. “I need some sort of use, don’t I?”

“Indeed you do. And as for me being odd, you of all people should know you can never trust a faery.” Dalbach’s gaze rested on me, and I knew he must know what had transpired this year.

Liam turned a shade of deep red, but didn’t react to Dalbach’s obvious prod to turn the conversation into a brawl. Instead he crossed his arms and flexed his biceps. I tried to keep from smiling at his not-so-subtle threat. Plus, I couldn’t help but appreciate his physique a little. Liam began to interrogate Dalbach, but never used his name. “How old is Aiden now, Changeling?”

Dalbach glared resentfully at Liam, then smoothed his face and replied to Tess. “He is a young adult now by your standards. Sixteen or seventeen. Isn’t that what he should be? Of course, he’s immortal. He’ll never age past where he is now.”

Aiden was my age. Forever my age. My mind boggled as I thought of what Liam must think of this news. Tess stood as still as a statue, but I could tell her mind was racing. Liam was silent, looking at the ground. I broke the silence. “You didn’t tell me Aiden was my age.”

Tess answered slowly. “I didn’t know.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t know? You didn’t know your own son’s age?”

“I didn’t know how Neamar would affect him. Liam and Aiden were a year apart when he left. Obviously he’s aged some, but I don’t know how Neamar affects aging. It sounds like he’s immortal now because of his life there.”

Liam snorted. “Great. Everyone around me is immortal. I have no ability and no reason to gain immortality from Memaw or any other Glaistig. I’m holding back Ashlyn and going to get myself killed in the process. This is great.”

He turned and left the room without saying any more. As he left, the smell of his cologne – sandalwood, fresh bergamot, and leather all mingled together in perfect harmony – wafted behind him. It left me longing to go after him.

I looked at Tess and she shrugged apologetically. Dalbach tugged at my hand persistently. It was the first time I’d touched a Changeling. His skin was papery to the touch and his long, skinny fingers gave me chills as his nails lightly grazed over my skin. “We must go, Ashlyn.”

Tess patted me on the back and guided me to the back door. She gave me a kiss on the forehead before she pushed both Dalbach and me out of the door. “Liam will be fine, Ash. I’ll take care of him while you’re gone, and he’ll be here when you return. You just take care of yourself and get back here for him.”

Nodding, I looked at Dalbach and scrunched my nose. His eyebrows rose questioningly. “I need you to stand still so I can shift,” I explained.

He nodded, stood still and allowed me to picture him perfectly in my mind’s eye. My eyes squeezed shut and a warmth blossomed where my eyelids pressed together tight, then the sensation spread across my body. The familiar awareness of a transformation taking place filled my veins. My very nerves burned as they changed and took on a new shape.

My bones crunched together and the grinding sound of me shrinking made me a little sick to my stomach. Shifting was always an experience. It didn’t hurt really, but the sensations of your body being shrunk, stretched, molded and pulled into a new form was unnerving at best. I tried to focus on the end result and not on the current feeling of nauseousness that threatened to overtake me.

Moments later, I was two feet shorter and a mirror image of Dalbach. Focusing again, I made my nose a bit longer and my ears a little shorter. Two identical Changelings would cause a stir. This gave us enough of a difference that no one would think to question it.

Dalbach clapped his hands together and cackled. He did a little dance right there on the lawn; the patter of his bare feet made me laugh in spite of myself. “You’re quite something. You must have reigned in a powerful Changeling to do what you just did. I wonder who it was.” His eyes displayed both curiosity and distaste at the same time. I could understand the reaction.

“Let’s go,” I said, already adopting the Changeling’s gravelly voice. It tickled my throat to force such a guttural sound, but it was part of the job; I had to be as convincing as possible.

I turned to say goodbye to Tess, who simply lifted a hand. Her apprehension to touching me obviously came from this Changeling version of me who stood before her. While she was always big, her frame seemed even more imposing now that I was two feet shorter and quite a bit frailer. She smiled apologetically. “Find my baby.”

“That’s what I plan on doing.”

As Dalbach and I sprinted into the forest to find a safe place to create a crack, Liam’s voice called out. “Ashlyn!”

Both Dalbach and I stopped, but I was the one to turn around. Liam stood there on the edge of the porch, his mouth arranged in a mixture of apology, confusion and distaste for my new body. “I’m sorry,” he said, extending his arms to either side of him and beckoning me to come back to him.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, and took a step toward me. “It’s just that all of this gets to me. I love you no matter what, and this is part of you. If you weren’t such a bleeding heart, I wouldn’t know what to do with you.”

His smile was genuine and his arms were still outstretched. There was a magnetic pull that I couldn’t resist, and it rested in the arms of Liam. I took two steps toward him before Dalbach grabbed the back of my ratty shirt. “Ashlyn, let’s
go
,” he hissed.

I ignored him. In the span of three steps, I closed the gap between Liam and I. True to his word, he embraced me. A shudder ran through his body and he laughed it off. “Sorry, I just never thought I’d hug a Changeling,” he said.

“Just don’t remember me like this,” I whispered to him.

“No, I don’t think I will. I prefer my Ashlyn human.”

“Partly human, anyway,” I teased.

“Partly human,” he repeated.

I could tell his attempt at diplomacy was taxing him. His smile began to look forced. Before he could lose his façade, I smiled. “Thanks for understanding,” I said. “I’ll bring back your brother, and we’ll be that much closer to not having to worry about any of this anymore.”

Liam’s response was genuine, but still I could tell he didn’t like me going right into the belly of the beast. “I suppose I owe you my gratitude, then.”

He said no more, but simply turned and went back into the house. Tess gave an encouraging smile and followed him in. The outside light flickered on, and I took it as a hint to go use the light to find a way into Neamar. I turned back to Dalbach and we headed to the forest’s edge.

Before being swallowed whole by the shadows of the forest that were growing by the waning sunlight, I took one last glance toward the house. Angry rock music came from Liam’s room. I knew it would remain on until I came home safely. It might stay on for good unless I could find a way to relieve him of his duties as my Protector. Maybe then he could have what he wanted: a normal, human life with a faerie girlfriend. That seemed about as normal as he could get if he wanted to stay in my life.

W
E SLOWED AS
we made it into the cover of the dense forest. Lowlying branches and thick bushes scraped against us as we trudged along, our bare feet getting stuck in the thick mud from yesterday’s heavy rain. The ground squelched and filled the cracks between my toes. I grimaced. Dalbach looked over his shoulder at that moment and smiled. “You’ll experience worse in Neamar than a little mud. I’d work on bucking up a little bit, if I were you.”

When he turned back around, I stuck my tongue out at him. Sure, it was petulant, but it made me feel a little bit better. My gnarled hands reached out in front of me to keep the attacking brambles at bay until we reached a small clearing.

Dalbach gestured to a massive Oak tree. “That’s the one. It’ll make a good crack.”

“How come?” I inquired.

“Because it’s old. The older the tree, the stronger it is. The stronger, the more it’s able to withstand the dark magic that it takes to open a crack,” Dalbach explained. “Saplings can’t handle what we need to do to bridge the realms. Old trees, they’ve seen a long life and grown strong. That’s what we need.”

I leaned against the huge tree as Dalbach began to make circling motions with his hands. The crack was beginning to emerge in the center of the massive oak. As it expanded, it began to pull the underbrush around us into its magnetic grip. Dalbach stopped momentarily and shooed me away from the tree. “I need room to work, Ashlyn. Step back a bit.”

When I moved away, he returned to opening the crack. None of this made sense to me. My head was brimming over with unanswered questions, the least of which was why in the world Dalbach was on our side. “Why are you doing this?”

He stopped what he was doing, causing the crack to disappear in on itself instantly. He turned to face me, seemingly amused by my question. “Why wouldn’t I do this?”

I pushed off the trunk of the old tree I’d taken up residence beside and walked toward him. My body jerked oddly as I acclimated once again to the way a Changeling’s body worked and moved. I tripped on the underbrush and Dalbach caught me before I face-planted in the mud. When I righted myself, he stepped away from me. “Well, for one, you’re a changeling. Secondly, we had you tied up and the guys treated you like crap. I don’t see how that exactly warmed you up to us all that much.”

Chuckling to himself, he returned to opening the crack. “I don’t see why you stay with that man-child of yours, but I don’t ask you why you’re with him.”

That was uncalled for. My arm instantly responded, spinning him around. Once more the crack flew shut. He groaned. “You know the Changelings are going to wonder why the crack keeps opening and closing with no activity, right? That’s not something that we’d consider normal.”

“I don’t care if they’re concerned about it or not. Why do you wonder why I’m with Liam? Why do you even care?”