Not All Who Wander are Lost by Shannon Cahill Read Free Book Online

going to kill you when I get home!”
     
    “Complication?” Ivy said innocently.
     
    “Kate. She raised him.”
     
    “Oh, that…”
     
    “Damn you, you did know!”
     
    “I might have known something about that. Does it matter?”
     
    “Duh! Of course it matters. How am I supposed to face her after I basically threw myself at him? It was so unlady-like!”
     
    “Only you could say duh and unlady-like in the same sentence,” Ivy said shaking his head. “The Human world is rubbing off on you in weird little ways. Newsflash, sweetheart, who do you think asked for you specifically on this job?”
     
    “No.”
     
    “Yes. I think her exact words were, ‘Send Crimson, she is exactly what Finn needs.’”
     
    “Fuck!”
     
    “Now that was unlady-like!” Ivy burst into hysterical laughter. Crimson soon found herself laughing too.
     
    “You suck, Ivy,” Crimson said, snorting.
     
    “Not as well as you,” Ivy replied. “I’ve got to go. Things to do, but I’ll check in later. You going to be ok?”
     
    “Yes. Thanks, Ivy. You are the best best friend ever, you know that?”
     
    “I do. I do.”
     
     
                 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 8
     
    F inn left the cottage conflicted. On one hand, he had just had an amazing night with a beautiful woman, on the other hand, Katie was keeping something from him. It had to be something big if there was a Guardian here in Seaside. What he didn’t get was why she didn’t warn him. Katie had always been so careful to hide Finn and his sister from that world. After what happened to their parents, she had always worried that someone would come for the children.
     
    He was only a little surprised when he caught a glimpse beneath Crimson’s glamour. She was either very young, or hadn’t spent much time in the Human world to let it slip so easily, even if only for a moment. Humans are very easily frightened. A Human might be able to talk themselves out of having seen her slightly pointed ears, thinking it a trick of the light. But those bottomless catlike eyes, just a tad too red to be Human, were a dead giveaway. He had to admit, however, that staring up at him clouded with lust, they had been the sexiest eyes he’d ever seen.
     
    Crimson had not given any indication that she knew he was anything other than the Human he pretended to be. He was very practiced at holding his glamour. He had honed his skill well enough that he was relatively safe even from other non Humans. It was part of staying safe. Safe and hidden from a world that his parents had run from.
     
    Finn and Mariah’s parents were practically a cautionary tale. Two people, who under ordinary circumstances, should never have met, never fallen in love. A love that had cost them everything—their home, their families, and even their lives. Riordan, his father, was a Marbendlar. The mighty warrior son of the strongest of all the Mer-Kingdoms. Sent on a diplomatic voyage to another kingdom, his ship had gone down and much like Crimson’s “uncle” Ian, he had been stranded off the coast of Seaside. Like so many other strays, Katie had taken him in for a time and introduced him to another stray, Dealen-dé, a Sylph whose mother had been one of Katie’s childhood friends. Both young and far from home, they had fallen in love almost before Katie’s eyes.
     
    Katie hadn’t even thought to prevent it, and may have even encouraged the young lovers, having had a star-crossed lover herself, in her youth. But like the saying in the Human world goes, a bird and a fish can fall in love, but where would they live? So elementally different, a creature of the sea and one of the air as a couple was unheard of in the other realms, an abomination even. So they stayed in the Human world. They took on Human lives. Riordan worked as a fisherman.  Dealen-dé made them a home, and then gave him two children—twins, a boy and a girl.
     
    Life was good for them. The