Jane Godman - Otherworld Challenger

Vashti remembered a conversation with her father about those missions.

“Why do you send us and not your sidhe warriors?”

Moncoya’s eyes had narrowed. Those eyes were as blue as her own and with the same sidhe ring of fire, yet subtly different. Probably because Moncoya wore eyeliner and Vashti didn’t. “Do you question my judgment?”

“No. I’m not stupid enough to do that.” It was true. Vashti might be more defiant than Tanzi, but she never deliberately incurred his wrath.

He had laughed. “You are my statement to the world. My beautiful twin daughters. My perfectly matched pearls. No one expects you to also be my killing machines. Each time I send you into the mortal realm, it gives two messages. One is about your loyalty to me. The second goes deeper. It tells the world the faerie race is not what legend would like mortals to believe. We do not sit at the bottom of the garden benignly waiting to bestow our favors upon the earth-born race. We have stepped out from between the pages of a child’s tale. Yes, we still look good—” he’d waved a hand to encompass them both “—but we can kill a mortal with one hand.”

Even though, at that time—before she had known the full scale of his villainy, including the fact he had murdered their mother—her loyalty to Moncoya was absolute, the words had caused Vashti to shiver. Yet she knew there had been a time when faeries and mortals had coexisted amicably. Their childhood nurse used to tell Vashti and Tanzi tales of the old days. Days before Moncoya’s rule. It was dangerous talk, but she had risked it. Vashti knew Cal hoped the challenger—if he could be found—would restore some of that lost harmony between mortal and fae. It isn’t lost. It has been systematically destroyed by my father. It had never occurred to Vashti to question the origin of her father’s hatred for mortals.

Cal and Moncoya were half brothers, sharing the same faerie father. While Moncoya’s mother was a sidhe, Cal’s mother was a mortal woman, a nun who had hidden her talented sorcerer son away from his scheming father during childhood so he could not be given to Satan as part of an evil pact. Cal had grown up to become Merlin, the great sorcerer and now the leader of the Otherworld Alliance. Moncoya, through his ruthless drive and ambition, had usurped the faerie throne in a bloody coup. They might share a father, but no two brothers had ever been less alike. Perhaps the fact the brother he hated was half mortal explained Moncoya’s all-encompassing loathing for the earth-born.

Under Jethro’s skillful handling, the powerful bike purred along the country roads like a dream, eating up the miles until they reached a rugged stretch of coast. They followed the scenic route, hugging a dramatic shoreline of soaring, jagged rocks and gunmetal waters on one side and patchwork trees in every shade of green, gold and orange on the other. Finally, Jethro pulled into a narrow lane and halted the bike alongside a wooden boathouse. On the pebbly shore where they stood, the little building was level with the ground, but, as Vashti walked around to stretch her aching limbs, she saw it extended out into the water on raised stilts. A small motorboat, big enough for two people, was pulled up onto decking at the rear of the boathouse.

“Don’t tell me. This is your place and that’s your boat.” She was beginning to wonder if Jethro had transport tucked away all over the mortal realm. But surely she’d heard it was meant to be a big place and that would be beyond his means?

Jethro nodded as he wheeled the bike into the boathouse. He indicated the boat. “Twenty minutes and we’ll be there.”

Where is “there”? Vashti supposed she would find out soon enough. When Jethro had finished stowing their bags in the boat and locking the bike away in the boathouse, she joined him in the little vessel. “It feels like we’ve been traveling forever.”

“Welcome to my world.” He started the engine and the boat was soon skimming over the dark waters. Behind them the coastline with its tall pines and dramatic rocks began to fade. Ahead, an island, roughly horseshoe in shape, covered in the same spiky pines, came into view. “Home.”

There was something in Jethro’s voice as he said that single word. A note Vashti had not heard before. Emotion was something she still could not fully understand, but she had a feeling she was witnessing it now in its rawest form.

As they drew closer, she could see a jetty poking out from the island into the water. Above that, there was a single wooden house. Tall and majestic, set like a jewel among the encircling pine trees, with the sun’s dying rays glinting on high, arched windows. It was hauntingly beautiful.

“Who else lives there?”

“Just me.” Jethro steered the boat toward the end of the jetty. “Welcome to de Loix Island.”

Vashti shook her head. “You own this?”

He laughed at her expression. “I’m a loner. I don’t like sharing. Besides, it belonged to my parents before me.” He brought the boat to a halt alongside the jetty. Springing lightly onto the wooden boards, he reached down a hand to help Vashti.

“A fleet of planes. Motorbikes and boats strategically placed where you need them. Your own island. I may not know much about the mortal realm, but I know enough to know none of those things are normal.” Her hand was still in his as she gazed up at him. “Who are you, Jethro de Loix?”

“Just an ordinary boy—” his irresistible grin appeared; the one that made her want to grab him and kiss him until he begged for mercy “—who happens to have outrageously wealthy parents and kick-ass necromancer powers.”

Chapter 5

Jethro leaned his forearms on the deck rail and looked out over the darkened water. The half-empty glass of Scotch whiskey in his hand was doing its job, as was the feeling of being home. Cal had asked him if he had to come back here. The answer was simple. Yes, he did. He had to remind himself every now and then that life wasn’t all about fighting monsters. That peace and beauty still existed. That his own little corner of tranquility was here any time he wanted it. And he had to check everything was right in his world. This time, of course, he had another reason to return. One he hadn’t divulged to Cal.

Who are you, Jethro de Loix? He’d given Vashti his standard, flippant response. It was the answer he’d honed over the years. Because the truth was too difficult to contemplate explaining to another person. I don’t know who I am. How crazy does that make me sound?

Most of the time it didn’t bother him. He didn’t think about it. Then there were times—like now—when Jethro was reminded of the kindly, elderly couple who had brought him up and the unanswered questions would buzz around inside his head like an annoying, trapped fly. He knew he had not come into their lives by any conventional means. The thought made him smile. His parents—Bertha and Gillespie de Loix—had been older than the grandparents of other boys his age...and they’d both looked younger than their actual years. There had been no baby pictures, no anecdotes about first steps or first words, and no family tree to help him establish his place in the world. Jethro had grown up knowing that, despite their wealth, he meant more to them than gold.

Bertha and Gillespie had done their best to give him a conventional upbringing, yet they had been overawed as they’d watched him grow up to be stronger, faster and smarter than his peers. Gradually their pride had become tinged with fear when it became obvious he had other talents.

How many other children who, having just learned to speak, spent hours sitting alone in the graveyard holding lengthy conversations with unseen companions? When Bertha’s aging tabby cat had been trampled by a horse, it should have been dead. It was dead, she’d insisted later to Gillespie. But after Jethro had whispered a few soothing words and laid his hands on the poor, broken creature, old Mitzi was like a kitten again.