Maverick snarled, sweeping me behind him, and normally I would have been irritated by his high-handed protective nonsense, but I was too surprised and freaked out to protest.

  “What the hell are you playing at?” he barked at Chloe. “Who are you?”

  If Chloe was worried about the magic suddenly swirling around Maverick’s clenched fists, she didn’t show it. All her attention was on me, her mouth opening and closing like a landed fish.

  “Oh,” she breathed, when she finally remembered how to talk. “Oh, no.”

  She took a step forward, ignoring Maverick, which was impressive because he was a hard man to ignore. Her hands fluttered in the air helplessly as she looked at me and shook her head.

  “Oh, oh Candace, I’m so sorry!”

  That had not been what I was expecting. At all.

  Which was probably why I blurted out, “Taliyah.”

  Chloe blinked, her brows puckering together over her nose. “What?”

  “My real name is Taliyah. Police Chief, Taliyah Morgan.”

  More confusion. “Oh. Okay.” Chloe shook the confusion off though, still looking concerned.

  “Are you alright? I’m so sorry, I thought you were human!” Chloe continued, completely throwing me. “Your glamour—well, it must have been removed from the four-leaf clover ointment I anointed the door frame with. Did it hurt you?”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It didn’t really work, so I tried again. The frost coating the front hall slowly melted away, and my own personal little gale stopped whipping my hair around my shoulders as the wind slowed.

  “Chloe,” I started slowly, hoping I sounded calm and not homicidal. “What the hell is going on?”

  She chewed her lower lip, looking between Maverick and me, a guilty expression crossing her face. “You should probably come in and sit down. Can I get either of you something to drink?”

  I gave her a look. “I don’t think I want to consume anything from this house, thank you.”

  She winced. “That’s… fair. Please, sit. I... well, I need to explain.”

  “That you do,” Maverick said as he and I exchanged a glance, and he did the little shoulder roll of a shrug that told me he was fine to follow my lead.

  “Actually, I’m sure it’s not exactly comfortable in my house for you,” Chloe said as I nodded. Then she started towards the back of her house. “Why don’t we walk to the far side of the yard? I don’t have anything back there that will... upset you.”

  I shook my head, not trusting Chloe as far as I could throw her. Who knew what might be lurking in her back yard. “I’m fine here.”

  She frowned at me like she was more than sure I wasn’t fine. “You’re sure?”

  I nodded as I perched on that mossy looking couch, feeling myself sinking into the thick padding, but I couldn’t make myself relax.

  “Okay, then I’m going to go grab myself a cup of coffee,” Chloe said. It was hard to be patient while I heard her tinkling around with the coffeemaker, but we had woken her up. The rich smell of the freshly ground beans almost had me wishing I’d accepted her offer.

  Chloe joined us then, sinking down into a plush armchair, and hooking one bare foot behind the opposite ankle. She looked me over then, trying not to be obvious about it. “So… you are fae, then?”

  It seemed kind of pointless to deny it, sitting there in all my ridiculous glory, so I just nodded.

  Chloe also nodded, staring down into her coffee mug. “I hadn’t known. I’m sorry.” The blood drained out of her cheeks, and she jolted hard enough that her coffee slopped onto her fingers. “Oh, god, the boys–”

  “Are safe,” I interrupted her. “And human.”

  “Human?” she repeated.

  I nodded. “Adopted.”

  I’d told her as much when I’d hired her, but I thought it could bear being repeated.

  Chloe sagged back into her chair. “Oh, good. I was worried I’d made them sick too.”

  “Then clearly you knew what you were doing?” I asked.

  She nodded, then shook her head. “Well, sort of. I mean, I didn’t know about you, or I wouldn’t have left the horseshoe. Or the rowan berries.” She winced. “Or the other things.”

  “So, the things you left in my house weren’t.... meant for me?”

  Chloe looked up, shocked. “No, of course not. I wasn’t trying to hurt you, Can er Taliyah, I was trying to help.”

  Maverick, who still hadn’t sat down and was doing a very impressive loom at my side, finally snapped. “How do you even know about the fae? Much less how to ward them off?”

  Chloe frowned, looking Maverick over, like she was looking for something. “Well, because I was a Changeling.”

  I was confused again. I’d been called a Changeling in the past. A faerie sent to the mortal word to be raised by humans until my seal was broken and I could return to rule, ugh. But Chloe wasn’t Fae, or if she was, she was spectacular at hiding it. I didn’t think that was the case, though—because why would she be warding her house against herself? And there were way too many wards and charms against the Fae in Chloe’s house, enough that even Maverick was clearly uncomfortable, and he wasn’t full Faerie like I was.

  She must have seen my confusion, because Chloe put her mug down on the coffee table before leaning back.

  “Sometimes, when faeries are bored, they come to the mortal worlds and steal a human infant, leaving a goblin child in its place. They take the baby back to Faerie, and play at raising it for a while, until they lose interest.”

  She couldn’t quite seem to look at me, focusing instead at picking on a loose bit of thread on the arm of her chair. “The Fae took me at birth, but they thought of me more like a pet than a child, I think. Anyway, my ‘parents’ eventually got tired of the game and sent me back to the human world. Only, during the years I was gone, my real parents were in a car accident and didn’t survive.” Chloe made a sound that was too full of bitterness to be a laugh. “I never even got to meet them.”

  My heart hurt. Who could treat a child like that? Like a toy to be played with and discarded. That was the world they wanted me to rule? To bring my sons to? Yeah, thanks, but no thanks.

  Chloe scrubbed a hand over her face, visibly collecting herself. “Anyway, it left me kind of bitter and rootless for a few years. Occasionally, some Fae would start poking around in my life. I think I was like a novelty for them? I got tired of feeling like a zoo attraction, so I started to set up wards and charms that would keep them away, things I’d learned during my time in Faerie. I moved around, a lot, and eventually, I ended up here.”

  “Interesting,” Maverick murmured, and I wasn’t sure if he believed her. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I believed her, but what other story was there to believe?

  Chloe looked at me then, her eyes red rimmed, though she hadn’t shed any tears. “I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you or make you uncomfortable at all. It’s just, I was trying to protect the boys from the curse, but I thought you were human and you’d just think I was crazy if I brought it up, so I just set out some charms–”

  “Wait.” Maverick lifted a hand, palm out, to cut into what was rapidly becoming a ramble. “You said curse. What curse?”

  I’d picked up on that too, and the wave of fury that rolled through me was as cold and deadly as black ice. If someone was targeting my kids, if someone had dared to curse them, I’d show them that Taliyah Morgan was the one they should be afraid of, not Princess Olwen.

  Chloe blinked owlishly, like she’d forgotten Maverick was even in the room. “The curse?” She looked between us, confused, like she thought we were putting her on. “You don’t know about the curse?”

  “Enlighten us,” Maverick barked.

  She nodded. “The dark pixies... well, they put a curse on the town. Or, I guess you could say it was the Will-o’-the-Wisp. That’s more accurate.”

  “The Will-o’-the-Wisp?” I repeated, frowning. This was the first I’d ever heard of this and the suspicion must have revealed itself in my expression.

  Chloe looked more and more nervous the longer we sat there. “You must have noticed how everyone in town isn’t sleeping?”

  “That was the curse?” I asked.

  She nodded. “The curse causes insomnia, waking nightmares, sleep paralysis. The list goes on. I, well, I thought you knew.”

  “We recognized that something was going on, but we weren’t sure what it was,” I admitted.

  Chloe nodded. “Classic nasty pixie prank. I didn’t understand why they were doing it, or who they were targeting, but Taliyah, if you’re High Sidhe, it probably has to do with you. Unless the entire town managed to tick off a Faerie Court or something.”

  That might have been close to the truth, considering Fox Aspen and the fact that I hadn’t married him. But I hadn’t heard from Fox in months and, somehow, I didn’t think he’d be that petty. So that just left the other option—that whatever this curse was, it was targeting me.

  Maverick stood up straight from his slouch against the wall, his hands curling into fists. “You’ve seen this Will-o’-the-Wisp, then?” he demanded.

  “Yeah,” Chloe nodded and then motioned to her back yard, which was visible through the sliding glass door in her living room. “In the woods. And... well, I didn’t know what to do. Pixies aren’t exactly going to listen to a human telling them to stop.” Chloe shook her head, her face twisted in frustration. “All I could do was set up charms and wards and try to keep whoever I could safe.”

  My lips felt numb, my blood thick and slow in my veins. “You were trying to protect the boys. That was why you left the charms around the house.”

  Chloe tucked her hair back behind her ear, and pulled one leg up to hug to her chest. “Yeah. I mean, to protect you, too. I didn’t realize you were…” She made a gesture that somehow took in my hair, my ears, and the frost still clinging to my shoes.

  “So, upon finding out that Taliyah is Fae, why aren’t you more concerned about that?” Maverick demanded.

  Chloe frowned up at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you said you’ve had bad experiences with the Fae—enough to have warded your house against them. So, why does it seem like you’ve had no reaction to realizing Taliyah is a Faerie?”

  She shrugged then. “I mean... I guess because I know her? And the boys. And, from what I can tell,” she continued as she turned her gaze back to me. “It seems like you aren’t exactly embracing your Faerie nature.”

  “That’s fair,” I answered, frowning because that was basically the gist of it. And I believed Chloe—there wasn’t anything in her eyes or the tone of her voice that hinted at a lie. It was then that I felt all kinds of tired. Even more than I previously had. My throat felt thick. It hurt to swallow. “Thank you. For looking out for my sons.”

  Chloe didn’t know us well—not beyond the couple of weeks I’d hired her. But she’d gone out of her way to try and protect the boys from magic and monsters that obviously still frightened her, from the way she was hugging herself. And that meant something to me.

  “Of course, I did,” Chloe said. “I wasn’t about to let literal children get hurt, even if they weren’t my responsibility. I just didn’t know how to warn you, since I thought you were human and that you’d just think I was having a psychotic episode or something, talking about fairies.”

  That was fair. Even in Haven Hollow, around a little less than half the population would have just given her a strained smile and nodded politely if she started spouting off about nasty fae cursing the town. That meant she’d been stuck, left with no real good choices, other than the one she went with. And I’d have forgiven a lot more than a splitting headache and a stomach that still felt one wrong move away from evacuating completely if it meant my sons were safe.

  “Can we get back to this curse that’s been put on the town?” Maverick cut in.

  “Good idea,” I agreed.

  He continued. “Are you sure it’s the Fae behind it? Have you seen them, or are you just assuming it was them?”

  Chloe gave a long, slow blink, like she was processing what Maverick had just said. “Well… there’s an implication in what you just said that there are a whole lot more things than faeries…”

  Maverick rolled his eyes.

  “But to answer your question, yes, I have seen them,” Chloe continued. Then she turned to face me. “You’ve seen the lights in the woods.”

  And then I remembered the fireflies—or what I’d thought were fireflies. “Yes, I’ve seen lights in the woods. I thought they were fireflies.”

  “Oh, that’s not the light I was talking about,” Chloe said, shaking her head.

  “Then what light?” Maverick barked.

  “The Will-o’-the-Wisp,” Chloe answered. “It’s a form of pixie. The ‘nice’ ones will just lure you off the path and get you horribly lost in the woods. The nasty ones like to lure people into bogs and things, and watch them struggle.”

  It was so hard to think through the fog in my head. Whether this was a random attack, or the herald of something much bigger, I had to admit, depriving everyone of sleep was a chillingly effective tactic. I felt like all my thoughts had been scooped out, and cold soup had been poured in their place, all clumpy and congealed.

  Chloe gave me a sympathetic look, like she could tell I was struggling. “Do you remember how the other night you said you saw a flashlight beam and thought someone was lost?”

  I did remember the second she said it. I’d almost walked into the woods alone, thinking I was helping some poor lost tourist. “That was the pixies, then?”

  She nodded. So, someone had been trying to lure me off into the woods on my own. And I had a pretty good idea as to why.

  “Anyway.” Chloe shrugged. “I did actually go out there to make sure. Some charms are really specific, while others aren’t as powerful, but tend to affect most Fae, so I wanted to make sure I was using the right stuff. Plus, there were all the fireflies. That’s always a dead giveaway.”

  “Fireflies?” I repeated.

  Chloe nodded. “Yeah. They tend to gather whenever pixies have circles. I don’t know why, but Will-o’-the-Wisp are known for attracting lots of fireflies.”

  All I could think of were the swarms of fireflies in the woods by my house. They’d been everywhere for the past few days, but there’d been enough of them to turn the space beneath the trees as bright as twilight. They were definitely hanging around my house.

  And that was when my stomach dropped to my toes as I thought about Charlie and Sean.

  Marty was a Null. He might have been immune to the Fae curse, just as he was immune to all supernatural magic, but the boys weren’t. Furthermore, I was pretty sure it had been magic that had nearly caused me to sleep walk out the door last night. What if the Fae got to my sons instead?

  Marty didn’t have any magic of his own, that meant he couldn’t defend the boys. I wasn’t even sure he knew how to throw a punch, to be honest. And all the protections Chloe had put up in my house: the rowan berries, the salt, the horseshoe... well, Maverick and I had taken them all down. And they were now sitting in a bag in my trunk.

  That meant I’d left my boys defenseless.

  I could see it in his face the second that Maverick realized what I just had. He let out a blistering curse and jerked away from the wall.

  “We have to go,” I said while my pulse thundered in my ears. I could barely get enough air to form the words. “We have to go, now.”

  All I could do was pray we’d make it back in time.

  Chapter Twelve

  Chloe made us wait long enough for her to throw some things into a bag, and I didn’t mean clothing or shoes.

  She grabbed some bottles, some iron nails, a handful of twigs and some other things I couldn’t see and tossed them all into an oversized carpet bag like she was some kind of demented Mary Poppins. Then we hurried out the door. She didn’t even stop to put on shoes.

  Maverick didn’t argue with me when I headed for the driver’s seat. He probably understood that I had enough adrenaline racing through my system that I could have simply sprinted all the way back to my house. Exhaustion was now the furthest thing from my mind. I didn’t even wait for Chloe to do more than close the back door before I was peeling out of her driveway.

  I thought my hands would be jittery, that the cocktail of chemicals flooding my body would have left me shaky, but the inside of my head was focused, and a little scary. It was like an early winter morning, where everything is quiet, and almost eerily still—like my panic had hit a tipping point. Whatever it was, I was now firmly in the place in my head where I went when I knew I was walking into a dangerous situation.

  Calm. Cold. Focused like a laser.

  The beat of my heart was thick in my ears, every thump whispering their names. Charlie and Sean, Charlie and Sean, like something out of a Poe story. The urge to floor it was almost overwhelming.

  They were okay. They had to be okay.

  Because if anyone had so much as laid a finger on them, I’d bring the full might of Winter down on them. And worse, I’d bring the full force of myself down on them. Nevermind worrying about the princess of winter—they should have been worrying about the mom.

  The long stretch of road through the woods was eaten up rapidly. Luckily, no bird or critter decided it was the time to sprint across the black top, and I made it back to Haven Hollow in record time. It wasn’t until we’d made it back to the suburbs when an old man in a housecoat ran out onto the road swinging a broom around like a crazy person, screaming something.

  “Hallucination check,” I said, deadpan. “Does everyone else see the guy in the bathrobe?”

  “Yep,” Chloe answered.

  “Unfortunately,” Maverick grumbled.

  Okay, probably real, then. I braked, waiting for him to go by, but he stopped in the middle of the road, staring blankly at nothing I could see. Frustration pricked at me like a set of spurs, and I rolled the window down to lean out. “Sir? You need to clear the road!”