Not Your Ordinary Faerie Tale by Christine Warren Read Free Book Online Page B

think of.”
    Luc struggled to follow the woman’s garbled explanation and discovered she might as well have been speaking a foreign language for all the sense he could make of it. Hell, she might as well have been waving semaphore flags; and normally, he wouldn’t have cared, but her mention of an “elf” when he was here in Ithir looking for a missing Fae had definitely piqued his interest. So he could admit later that he may have been a bit brusque when he snapped, “For the stars’ sake, woman, you’re making no sense. At all. Do you need smelling salts or something, or can you maybe pull yourself together and let us know what the hell you’re babbling about?”
    Rafe shot him a speaking glance, but the woman seemed to have no need for anyone else to defend her. She swept him an utterly dismissive look, then turned fully away from him to face Rafe alone.
    “I know from meeting you guys that the Others don’t want humans to know you really exist,” she continued, speaking directly to the Felix. It didn’t take a genius, though, to realize the frigid tone of her voice was aimed at someone else entirely. “Aside from people like Reggie and Missy. And the rest of our little circle now, I guess. But I know it’s not supposed to be common knowledge. Reggie made us all swear an oath when we first found out. And I know that an occasional article in the tabloids about Dracula attacking a hiker in Romania or a werewolf impregnating a housewife in Arkansas doesn’t concern you. Which it shouldn’t, because people can make fun of those, and when they make fun of them, that means they don’t suspect anything. But this isn’t like that. This is bigger.”
    She paused for another deep breath, blew it out slowly. “Today my boss asked me to look into half a dozen reported elf sightings here in Manhattan. None of the witnesses was an obvious crackpot, all of them are willing to swear on a Bible about what they saw, and all of them apparently have pretty big mouths. Now, if it were just my boss looking into it, I wouldn’t have freaked, and I probably wouldn’t be talking to you. Well, I definitely wouldn’t be talking to you, but the word is that we’re not the only ones on the story, and that’s…unusual.”
    “Your boss asked you to look into it?” Luc demanded. “Are you with the police?”
    Rafe looked up. “Corinne is a reporter.”
    Luc felt himself blanch. “A reporter. Wait, does that mean these sightings will be announced on your television sets? That the entire human world will hear of it?”
    Corinne deigned to reply frostily over her shoulder. “Not yet. Maybe. I’m a print reporter. I work for a small local newspaper. But like I said, I’m not the only one on the story. There are other papers snooping around, and my boss thinks the TV stations might be getting curious.”
    The curses Luc let fly stretched the bounds of legality and creativity, but fortunately he retained enough presence of mind to utter them in his native tongue. This wasn’t good news.
    “While I may not understand the sentiment, I’m afraid I likely agree with it,” Rafe said grimly, standing to thrust his hands in the pockets of his tailored trousers. “This is…distressing.”
    “I’m guessing from your reactions that you haven’t heard about this before. Which means I was probably right to come here and warn you. Yay for me.” Corinne stood as well and shouldered the battered leather backpack she’d carried with her. “Anyway, I’m sorry if this is trouble for you guys, but at least you know. So, you know, good luck and everything. I hope you…do whatever you need to do with the…whatever it is.”
    She turned toward the door but didn’t manage a single step. Instinctively, Luc reached out to stop her. She’d just given him his first lead in discovering Seoc’s whereabouts. Right now he needed her, and he didn’t intend to let her go until she gave him everything she had.
    He just didn’t expect that to