SWNOVELS Sheer Cupidity: Chapter 17
LEX
Stunned, I stare at the fae. “You can really see him?” I ask, shock coursing through my tone.
“I’m a seer,” he scoffs. “‘Course I can see him. Wouldn’t be a very good seer if I couldn’t, now would I?” He looks back at Belren and hooks a thumb in my direction. “This one isn’t the quickest, is she?”
Belren strides up with an excited glint in his eye. “On the contrary, she’s too smart for her own good.”
Stopping at my side, he slowly lowers himself down on the open portion of my pincushion seat. But as soon as he manages to sit, a jolt goes through me as the outline of his thigh brushes up against mine.
What in the world was that?
An embarrassing squeal bursts out of me at the sensation, but I don’t dare move. I can feel him. It’s not quite the same as the sense of touch though, it’s…softer than that. Quieter. Like the way a bead of dew forms on a blade of grass, cooled and condensing against my skin.
My eyes fasten to his face, but he’s already looking at me with wide, metallic eyes. As if he felt something too. I open my mouth to ask him, but the seer interrupts me before I can.
“Now that you’re finally both sitting, we can have a cordial conversation. I swear, your manners aren’t the best.”
Yanking my attention away from Belren, I feel righteous indignation well up in me because excuse me, I am the most well-mannered person I have ever met, thank you very much.
Belren must sense my need to defend my honor, because his hand drops to my thigh, like an automatic nudge to stave off my rebuttal. Except his hand should go through my leg.
It doesn’t.
As one, both of our faces drop, gazes locked onto where his palm rests on my thigh as if it were solid. My heartbeat starts galloping, but Belren isn’t even breathing. Oh, wait. Dead. Never mind.
“How are you doing that?”
He answers without letting go. “I don’t know.” His gaze lifts up to my face. “Can you feel it?”
I feel something.
Like an almost-touch. Like the way a soft sigh feels against the arc of a neck. Like I’m both hot and cold at the same time, a lick of sweat over pebbled skin.
So, yes. I feel it.
But my heart is beating wildly, and my breathing is choppy, and I’m feeling way too much and not even in the way he means. Which is why, instead of the truth, I hear myself saying, “No.”
Something flickers in his sterling eyes. Disappointment. Or suspicion.
Guilt and panic make me look away from him, though my body is still as stiff as a board. I find the seer watching us.
I clear my throat, trying to rid the tense air. “So sorry. I forgot to ask for your name.”
“Chuckrey.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Chuckrey,” I say pleasantly, relaxing a bit when Belren finally looks away from me. Though, when he drops his hand from my thigh, something in me aches. It takes everything in me to keep that silly smile glued to my lips—to keep my eyes staring straight ahead and act unaffected. “I have to admit. When we were told you were a seer, I thought they meant something else.”
“What, like a future-seer?” He scoffs and rolls his eyes so far that I worry he’s going to get cornea rugburn from his bushy eyebrows. “Have you ever met a future-seer? They’re crazy,” he tells me with a shudder. “They have weird obsessive and hoarding habits.”
I laugh at his joke, but his scowl deepens and I immediately swallow it. Okay. I guess we’re in denial about the plates.
“Lucky for you, I’m loads better than them.”
“Of course,” I quickly say. “So, umm, what exactly is it that you can do?”
He seems aggravated by the question. “Well, I can see anyone, can’t I?”
Belren cocks his head. “Can you see people who aren’t here?”
Now Chuckrey turns his scowl on him. “Course I can’t see people who aren’t here, you idiot. I thought she was the slow one?”
I can see now why a true seer would live in a falling-down house like this. He’s a jerk.
“We’re looking for someone, and we were sent to you for help,” Belren tells him.
“Who are you looking for?”
Belren opens his mouth to just blurt it out, but I intervene before he can. “We just need to know if you’re able to find someone. If not, we’ll go out the way we came in and be out of your hair.”
Chuckrey sits back in his chair and watches me like he’s sizing me up, while I try not to stare at a particularly nasty tangle in his hair that makes me really want to grab a comb.
Finally, he sighs, breaking the silence. “Fine. I can try. But I need payment first.”
My hand immediately goes to my pouch, but Belren stops me. “Hold on a moment. We’ll pay half now and half when you find the person.”
Shrewd eyes flicker with aggravation. “Yes, yes, fine!” he grumbles. “But hurry up about it. I don’t have all day, and it’s nearly time for my night nap.”
I blink. “Isn’t that just…sleeping?”
The look he shoots me lets me know exactly what he thinks of me, and it’s…well. It’s not good.
Since I’m probably about a second away from getting us kicked out, I dig into the pouch and pull out a coin and place it carefully on the table right in front of me.
His eyes snap to it. “Another.”
Digging out another coin, I stack it perfectly on top.
“Another.”
A third coin gets placed with the others.
“Another.”
I start to reach for a fourth, but Belren shakes his head. “That’s plenty.”
I’ve no idea if he actually remembers the value of money here or if he’s just faking it, but either way, it works.
The fae gives a sly grin. “Know my worth, do you?” he cackles. “Fine. Give me a coin.”
I’ve barely lifted my finger away from the stack before his hand darts out and pockets one of them.
“Alright,” he says, patting the breast pocket in his pajamas. “Tell me who you want to see.”
“The ex-princess Soora,” Belren replies without hesitation.
The pair of Chuckrey’s untamed brows shoot up his forehead right before he spits on the floor. “The exiled one? Why do you wanna see her?”
Belren tips his head in my direction and smirks. “This one wants to murder her.”
Oh my gods.
My head snaps over, and I give him a wide-eyed look, but he just winks at me. I don’t know if they have any sort of law enforcement on this island, but if they do, the seer would probably sell me out in a second.
But instead of jumping on a chance to put me in my place, Chuckrey nods. “Oh, that’s alright then.” All the earlier disgust is gone from his face, as if killing her is perfectly reasonable and makes him like me more. “That’s one of the most interesting requests I’ve had, but unfortunately, I can’t see her.”
“What? Why not?” Belren and I say at the same exact time.
Chuckrey shrugs. “You think other seers haven’t already tried to find the most reviled exile in the realm? There’s a bounty on her head big enough to buy your own island. But magic won’t work. She’s got a blocker on her or something. No surprise there, she’s got glamoured barrier magic.”
Belren’s shoulders slump at the news, though I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing for him. I need to keep him focused and stay on this track since the fates obviously want me to, but I’m not really sure if it’s safe for him to find Soora.
“Well, then that doesn’t help us at all, does it?” Belren says. “Give her the coin back.”
Chuckrey’s hand slaps over his pocket. “I think not. This was the agreement. Not my fault you asked to see the unseeable.”
Something close to a growl crawls up Belren’s throat. The noise is so jolting, so darn cold sounding, that even I get a little scared.
“A Cernu fae, hmm? Haven’t heard a Cernu fae growl in a long time,” Chuckrey muses as he scratches his buttoned belly, completely unfazed. “But no need to get your knickers twisted. Even though I can’t see her with my magic, I know where you might be able to find her.”
The residual growling instantly stops, and Belren’s eyes flash. “Where?”
Chuckrey arches a brow and waits.
Sighing, I pass him another coin from the pile that he snatches up so fast it’s just a golden blur. He pats his pocket lovingly.
“Well?” Belren presses. “Where can we find her?”
“The exiled princess is loathed by all high fae because they think she betrayed her own kind. But the lesser fae? They hate her even more. She made promises to them and then went and abandoned them all. But there’s one kind of fae that still stayed loyal to her.”
I sit forward, curiosity piquing my interest. “Which one?”
“The hob fae, of course,” Chuckrey replies. “Commonly called brownies—for the brown cloaks they used to always wear. But they go by lots of different names. Hobs, silkies, uruisgs, kobolds. I personally prefer to call them hearth hobs. Yep, many names for them, but it’s all the same. You find the hearth hobs, and you can bet that you’ll find her.”
Belren and I share a look, and this time, it’s not full of any previous awkwardness, because this is our first truly solid lead.
“If this is true, why has no one else tried to find them to get to her?” Belren asks him.
“Well, no one wants to piss off a hob. They might be a bit on the short side, but they get powerful magic from cleaning, doing the odd job, or if you anger them, malicious tricks that give them an extra spring in their step. They’re also deathly loyal to that wench for some reason,” he says, somewhat perturbed. “Doesn’t matter that others have searched. I bet they’re helping her.”
“Where can we find them?” I ask.
Chuckrey frowns and then digs out a pair of glasses that were stuffed beneath his pajamas and hanging on a string. He perches them on his nose, and then looks away, staring at the wall of plates for so long that I get worried.
“Chuckrey?”
“Shh!” he snaps. “I’m trying to see.”
Oh. Right.
Seconds tick by. I try not to make a sound for fear of distracting him.
Yet the longer we sit in silence, the more aware I become of Belren’s closeness again. He’s moved his thigh, so it’s not quite touching mine anymore, but there’s barely an inch between us. If my arm wasn’t pulled so close to my body, it would be brushing up against his. Even my wings are huddled painfully close, too nervous for even a feather to brush into him.
I want to know what he felt when he touched me. Did he feel the same things that I did? Was it more?
My traitorous eyes flick over to him, and once again, he’s already looking at me. A slow, steady watchfulness. A curious heat.
“You’re blushing, Pinky,” he murmurs.
Three words and a look. That’s all it takes for my heart to start pounding again, for my hands to start wringing. I don’t know if I was blushing before, but I am now.
A slow smirk crawls over his face. “I like it when you’re flustered.” My mouth parts, and his eyes move to my lips. “So distressed…”
Goodness.
Our moment is severed when Chuckrey yanks off his glasses with a huff. “Well. I’ve seen enough hearth hobs to last a lifetime.”
“What did you find out?” Belren asks.
Unsurprisingly, Chuckrey’s eyes dart down to the last coin. As soon as I slide it over to him, he puts it with the others. “Saw a few different hob islands,” he begins before hopping down from his chair and going behind us to a pile of plates on the ground. There’s a clattering of glass and tin, and then he reappears, hopping into his seat with a piece of paper ripped from a book, and a quill in his other hand. He scribbles some island names down, along with some hurried directions.
“There,” he says, pushing the paper over. “I bet your exiled princess is at one of these islands. But she’ll probably be deep in hiding, and the hearth hobs are too loyal to give her up. It’ll be a chore to find her.”
“I’ll find her.” Belren’s reply is said with so much confidence that I believe him. Maybe he’s feeling the remnants of his mortal life and his ability to find things. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
I glance at the paper for a moment before moving to grab it, but Chuckrey slams his hand down on the other end, making me jump.
When I look up, I see him watching Belren. “The ghosts I see aren’t usually like you, you know.”
Belren’s posture has gone stiff, but he tries to play it off with an easygoing smile. “Yes, I know. I’m much better company.”
“Doesn’t matter though,” Chuckrey goes on. “In the end, you’re all here for the same reason. You’ve all got a hook dangling on the line. Unfinished business.”
Now it’s my shoulders that go stiff. “What?”
Chuckrey drags his eyes away from Belren long enough to answer me. “This one might seem more alive, but make no mistake. He’s as dead as the rest of them,” he tells me, making dread sink like rocks into the pit of my stomach. “And all the deads have only two fates.”
“And what might those be?” Belren asks, and although his tone seems light, I can somehow feel an undercurrent of anger in it.
“Usually, they slowly fade from their wallowing madness until they disintegrate into air and nothingness,” Chuckrey says, and just the thought of that makes nausea churn through me. “Or…they finish their unfinished business and then lose what little hold they had on the mortal world and get sucked back into the ether, gone. Either way, ghosts aren’t permanent, and neither are you.”
The skin around Belren’s eyes goes tight, and his smile goes feral and cold. My heart races, worry making my palms go slick, as the words unfinished business repeat in my mind.
After a second of tense silence, Belren seems to put on his blasé mask once again. “Is that so? Well, it sounds like you’re doing a bit of fortune-telling after all. My fate sounds very exciting.” When his gray eyes drop down to the paper that Chuckrey is still holding hostage, the seer takes the hint and lets go. I quickly slip the paper into my pouch and get to my feet, Belren right at my side.
The two of them glare at each other, and I clear my throat at the awkwardness that’s descended on us. “Well, thank you very much, Chuckrey. You’ve helped us a great deal.”
He helped…and got a little aggressive there at the end. And also at the beginning. Also, some parts in the middle. I don’t think he gets out much, unless it’s to buy more plates.
He waves a dismissive hand. “Yes, yes, of course I helped. Now get out. I don’t want to miss my dusk doze before my night nap.”
Of course. How silly of me.
Belren and I walk out, and luckily, the house doesn’t topple down over my head. That, plus the fact that we actually have a more solid lead on Soora’s whereabouts should make me feel accomplished. Instead, my emotions are in turmoil, all because of the male walking beside me. The male who’s either going to disintegrate after slowly going crazy or snap out of existence if he finishes his unfinished business that he may have. Which may or may not be me tracking down Soora. Which we are actively trying to do, because I worry he’ll slip away from me if he doesn’t have a goal to focus on.
Great.
I wasn’t supposed to let things get so muddled. I also wasn’t supposed to let myself grow attached. But despite all my efforts…I have anyway, and now look at what I’ve done. I’ve put him on a track to disaster.
Unless Emelle finds a way to de-ghost him, we’re stuck between a rock and a dead place, and completely out of options.