The Fox’s Tale

“Is that pizza? Because I’m starving.” Ellery made a beeline for the pizza boxes and more appeared on the table.

“Shouldn’t you be resting?” I asked as she tore into a pizza with pineapple and ham on it. She looked at me while she chewed.

“Two things,” she said after she swallowed. “One, I just found out that one of my best friends is actually my grandfather and two, I needed some distance.”

That’s when I heard it; a steady thumping, moaning, and Lucas’s deep voice murmuring. My eyes went wide. They wouldn’t. All the Shifters in the room sniffed the air and froze. Quinn sniffed the air too and cackled with glee.

“Bow chicka wow wow!” he crowed before reaching to steal one of Ellery’s slices of pizza. She smacked his hand.

“This is mine.”

“Okay, okay.” Quinn withdrew his hands.

Ellery went on eating as if it was perfectly normal to be sitting in a room full of mortified individuals while your grandparents were getting it on just a staircase away.

“They’re not in our bedroom are they?” I asked, stricken by the thought. Ellery shook her head.

“Nope, they started out in my favorite chair and,” there was a crash that made Ellery wince, “now I think they’re on the carpet.”

“For god’s sake, can’t you do something to give them some more privacy?” I begged as Esmeralda cried out.

“Oh yes Lucas, right there, don’t stop!”

Ellery looked up at the ceiling and a blanket of silence muffled all the noises of passion coming from upstairs.

“I can’t believe she’s,” Ryan waved his hands around, “when she’d just been sitting on my lap running her fingers through my hair. Are they really your grandparents?”

Ellery gave Ryan a look that made him recoil. “They are, and they haven’t been able to be together for two hundred years. If any of you have a problem with that, there’s the fucking door.”

“Nope, we’re cool. Everyone’s cool.” Ryan waved his hands again, this time in a sign of surrender. Ellery went back to eating and then Lee cleared his throat.

“So….how are we going to catch the bastards who did this?” he asked. “I mean, I know you took care of the immediate threat, but they were hired by someone.”

“Yeah, and we want in on fucking them up,” said Scott.

“We only have hunches and speculation, unless?” Ellery turned her face to Quinn, questioning.

“He didn’t cough up any names, but he did tell me what they were going to be paid with. Tons of Connemara marble and gold. Oh, and he told me where the advance payment was, and guess what it was coated with.”

“Aconite.” I said, barely needing to think. My mind had already started piecing things together, I just needed a few more details and then everything would be made clear.

“Lady and gentlemen, we have a winner! Even if you hadn’t killed them they’d have been dead within hours of touching their payment.”

“Quinn, is Wolfsbane’s family one of the ones who made an alliance with Peregrine?” I asked, my mind whirling.

“And the future Duke of Thrones is on a roll!” Quinn grinned at me. “Sorry, I’m just really happy. My favorite brother is with the love of his life, Ellery’s safe, none of us got our souls sucked out by the Sluagh, and a bunch of bad people got what was coming to them.”

“The Sluagh? You encountered the Sluagh?” Ellery stood up. “Do you know what this means?”

I thought about her question for a beat and then shook my head. “Not really, other than it was fucking terrifying.”

“Only the High Cleric is able to control the Sluagh. We finally have proof of Alastair’s treachery!” Ellery spun in a circle with glee.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! I’d love to pin this on that slimy dick too, but Alastair doesn’t have the magic to control the Sluagh.” Quinn sat back with a sigh.

“Quinn,” Ellery leaned forward on the table. “What do you know that I don’t know?”

“Alastair’s magic is weak and,” he snapped his fingers, “what’s the word I’m looking for? Ill- fitting.”

“Ill-fitting?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Faerie magic is natural, intuitive. It fits the wielder like a glove, but not him. His fits him like,” he paused trying to come up with a good analogy, “like me trying to stuff myself into one of Lucas’s leather jackets.”

He hunched his shoulders. “It’s tight, stretched to almost bursting.” He shrugged. “No fucking way could he control the Sluagh.”

“Well, who does have the power to control them then?” she asked.

Quinn scratched his head as he thought. “In the Unseelie realm? Her majesty, you, Tarquin, maybe some of the members of the other original Unseelie families, oh, and Lucas.”

“Lucas can control them?” I asked, about to lose my mind. “We ran like bats out of hell and he could control them?”

“Oh, no, not if someone else released them. There’s a spell that has to be chanted to let them out of their prison, and they will only follow the directions of that spell caster. And it takes a heavy toll, man. Siphons years off of your life, and if you try it without the power or the control it will kill you and the Sluagh would be freed to wreak havoc on the realms.

“Quinn, how do you know all of this?” asked Ellery.

“Plumeria taught it all to me. Then she’d quiz me at random times and if I got the answers right I got rewarded, but if I got them wrong I got punished. She and Ola would-”

“That’s enough Quinn.” Lucas came into the room leading Esmeralda by the hand. “No one wants to hear about it.”

“I would,” said Sam.

I rolled my eyes at Lucas. “Like we didn’t all hear the two of you.”

Lucas grinned. “You’re one to talk. You can’t even make it a day. I waited two hundred years.”

Esmeralda giggled, sounding so much like Ellery when she laughed that I felt weird deep inside. “Well…not exactly two hundred years my love. After all-”

“You cannot count that Esma. I was unconscious.”

“I know, but dearest, technically-”

“Technically?” He moved closer to her and tilted her chin up. “Tell me, my Chosen, did I satisfy you as much in the dream realm as I did today?” His voice dipped lower and Esmeralda quivered.

“Lucas,” she breathed.

“Stop it! Stop it right now! Your granddaughter is in the room, not to mention the rest of us!” I broke in before it could go any further.

“Shit, I always thought I was straight, but now I’m not sure.” Scott looked startled when Lee and Matt moved over a fraction and everyone else looked at him. “Oh fuck, did I say that out loud?” His eyes darted around the room. “I think I will go to bed.”

“Don’t worry about it!” called Quinn as Scott beat a retreat to one of the bedrooms. “Lucas makes almost everyone question their sexuality. Besides, he and Darcie look alike!”

“You’re not helping!” Scott hollered back as the rest of the guys also began heading towards the bedrooms. Quinn turned around to find Lucas watching him with a bemused expression.

“What?” he asked as he reached for another piece of pizza. Lucas crossed his arms.

“Who has questioned their sexuality because of me?” he demanded.

Quinn snorted. “Uh, like fifty guys at the school, a handful of lesbians, countless Unseelie and Seelie, not to mention other Incorruptibles, and that’s just the ones I know about. Ask Elly if you want to know more.”

Lucas looked like he wanted to ask more questions, but after a quick glance at me and Ellery changed his mind.

Instead he said, “shall the five of us continue our conversation upstairs?”