Those Words I Dread (Tales of the Tuath Dé #1)

2

“So, I’m what they call gean cánach,” Ciaran began, pausing to peel the sticky shirt away from his wound. “People end up dead because of me. It isn’t out of malice, you understand; in fact, I don’t even rightly kill them at all.”

“Kind of you,” Trent scoffed.

“Do you want an explanation, or do you want to be a shite?” Trent scowled at him. “Stuff it then. At any rate, I don’t kill anyone. Quite the opposite. It’s a bit awkward to explain, really. This is why I don’t tell people. You see, gean cánach, we have a bit of…what would you call it, a toxin? In the skin, see.”

“You’re poisonous?”

“Eh, not quite. More like addicting, right? I’m sure you know, everyone has urges, don’t they, and so, when I give in to those urges, as it turns out, the women can’t get enough. When I leave, as I eventually do, they pine away and die for want of me. It’s flattering to start, but it gets a bit worn out, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

Trent gave him a deadpan stare. “You’re telling me that you’re being hunted because you’re a fairy who is so good at sex that the women literally die when they can’t have you anymore?”

“They stop eating, don’t they?” He shrugged, rubbing a hand over the dark, messy hair on his head and showing the tips of slightly pointed ears. “They don’t do a thing but seek me out, but I’m nowhere to be found, of course—”

“Get out.”

Ciaran paused. “What’s that?”

“I said get out. This is bullshit, and I don’t have time for bullshit.” He stood and walked back to the kitchen island, scooping up his cell phone. “I can’t believe I even listened to this. Fairy magic,” he grumbled, flicking his thumb to unlock his phone’s screen. “You’re a crazy person with some kind of blood disorder, and I need to get better sleep at night.”

“Shall I prove it to you?”

“Prove to me that you’re some sort of sex fairy?” Trent muttered without looking up.

“Well, not that bit. It don’t work on men.”

“Convenient.”

Ciaran sighed, and with a slight wave of his hand, the phone in Trent’s hand twisted into a hissing snake. Trent dropped it to the floor with a short cry and stepped back from the snake’s exposed fangs.

“Mind your screen, lad. You’ll break it that way.”

“What the fuck is this?” Trent demanded, not taking his eyes away from the thing’s rattling tail.

“Didn’t you say you were smart? It’s a snake.”

“I know it’s a fucking snake; why is my phone a snake?”

The fairy snapped his fingers, and the snake vanished in a small puff of smoke, leaving Trent’s phone upside down on the stone floor. “It’s only a glamour. An illusion.”

The young man tentatively reached down for his abandoned phone, half expecting it to hiss at him, and he clicked his tongue as he turned it in his hand. “You couldn’t have done something that didn’t crack my screen?” He stood and weighed the phone in his palm as he watched the man on his sofa. He looked homeless. But a normal homeless person wouldn’t have been able to get by the doorman, and definitely couldn’t have turned his phone into a snake. “What is it you want from me, exactly?”

“Like I said, a place to stay whilst that hunter’s after me. Once I’m healed up, I’ll be on my way, and you can do…whatever it is you do in peace.” He shrugged. “Honestly, it’s happening regardless of what you say, so you might as well be hospitable about it.”

“Hospitable?” Trent echoed with a slight sneer.

“Or whatever approximation you can manage.”

“And what happens if I say this still isn’t remotely my problem, and I let this hunter have you?”

“Well, aside from that being extremely rude, you’d have a bit of blood on your hands, wouldn’t you? He isn’t exactly trying to give me a slap on the wrist, you know.”

Trent let out an irritated sigh through his nose and set his phone back on the marble counter. He didn’t want this person in his house or in his life, but on the off chance that it was all true, he didn’t really want to deal with a dead supernatural something on his conscience or on his rug. At least if he cooperated, Ciaran had promised to leave. He gave another small sigh. “For how long? Precisely.”

“Hard to be precise.” Ciaran lifted his shirt to inspect the wound in his stomach, cringing as he exposed it to the cool air. “That iron is nasty business, you see. A few days, a week or two at most.”

“A week or two?” Trent echoed with a scowl.

“You’ll hardly notice me,” he assured him. “Just carry on as you will, hm?”

“Sure. With a fairy in my house. Don’t you have your own place? Or you’re some sort of hobo fairy?”

“What fairy have you ever heard of what had a house? I’m transient by nature, lad. Part of what makes me such a good house guest.”

“This is being a good house guest?”

“Comparatively, sure,” Ciaran chuckled.

Trent almost laughed in disbelief, and then he gave a small gesture of resignation. “Fine. Whatever. If you can stay out of the way.”

“It’s an agreement, then?” Ciaran pressed. “You’ll show me hospitality?”

“Or whatever approximation I can manage,” Trent said with a slight sigh. He shook his head and started the short walk back to his office, but he was interrupted by Ciaran’s conspicuous throat-clearing. He paused to look at him, and the fairy had one arm reached out over the back of the couch, gesturing with his hand and glancing pointedly at the bag of candies. Trent’s lip curled, but he tossed the bag into the other man’s waiting hand, earning himself a short laugh in place of a thank you.

“Clean up the pantry,” he ordered on his way by.

Trent left the doors to his office open while he took his place at his desk, not trusting his intruder enough to leave him completely unsupervised. He had school assignments to do, and he wouldn’t be able to use “fairy houseguest” as an excuse for late work. Every crunch of hard candy behind him grated on his nerves, but he refused to pay the man any attention. Green eyes and high cheekbones scattered with freckles would not be enough to distract him from the insanity that Ciaran had brought into his house. He kept his focus when he heard the fairy stirring behind him, relaxing ever so slightly as the pantry door opened and closed in the distance. Maybe he was actually picking up after himself.

Trent pointedly kept his gaze ahead of him when he finally emerged to cook dinner, breezing past the reclined figure on his sofa and opening the refrigerator. He paused. “Did you drink all of the milk?”

“Aye, and I was a bit let down, to be frank,” Ciaran called across the room. “Why don’t you have whole fat?”

Trent snatched up the empty jug and held it out accusingly. “And you put it back like this?”

“Where should I have put it?”

“Literally anywhere else.”

Ciaran climbed over the back of the sofa and limped across the living room to stand in front of him, then took the empty jug from his hand, lifted his eyebrows in acknowledgment, and immediately set the jug on the counter directly in front of him.

Trent’s eyes narrowed at the fairy’s teasing grin, and he let the fridge door drop shut behind him.

“So, what’s for supper?” Ciaran asked, not seeming to notice the other man’s agitation.

“Didn’t you just eat an entire bag of candy?”

“And now I’m asking you what’s for supper.”

“I don’t know what you’re having. Didn’t you say we were going to stay out of each other’s way?” He leaned an inch closer to the fairy’s face, urging him to move out of the kitchen. “So stay out of the way.”

“You wouldn’t leave a person to starve,” Ciaran objected, though he obediently stepped aside to let Trent go by him to the pantry.

“ If you want what I’m making, and if I happen to make too much, then you can have some.” He opened the pantry door and clicked his tongue at the misplaced items on the shelves. He supposed an attempt was better than nothing at all. He picked up the large container of rice and set it on the counter when he emerged, ignoring Ciaran’s chin very near his shoulder as he prepared the rice cooker.

The fairy lingered much too deep into Trent’s personal bubble the entire time he was cooking, obviously having no intention of being unobtrusive or staying out of the way. Trent hesitated with his hand on the cabinet door, but with a small huff, he took down two plates instead of one and spooned out the mixture of rice and vegetables equally between them.

“You’ve a tender heart, a chara,” Ciaran chuckled, snatching away the plate before the other man could change his mind.

Trent only brushed past him on his way back to the office, leaving him alone in the kitchen and returning to his school work. In the time it took him to glance down at the open book beside his laptop, Ciaran had somehow appeared beside him, plate in hand and feet swinging as he sat on the corner of the desk. Trent jumped, but the fairy didn’t seem to notice.

“So, this is a posh place for someone so young,” Ciaran noted as he poked at the rice on his plate with his fork. “You some sort of boy genius, are you?”

“It’s my parents’ place,” Trent muttered, returning his attention to his screen.

“They accustomed to you having houseguests, then? Won’t be a rude surprise for them?”

“They’re in Hong Kong. Don’t you have a toadstool to sit on somewhere?”

“Starting right in with the racial stereotypes, are we?”

“Go away.”

“Bit rude, is all I’m saying.”

“Go. Away.” Trent looked up at him over the black rims of his glasses, his lips pulled down into a tight frown .

Ciaran felt a momentary urge to bite that scowl off of the other man’s lip, but instead he only dropped his half-eaten plate on the desk with a heavy clunk and slid back to the floor, leaving Trent to brood at his computer in peace. He curled up on the sofa again, comforted by the slight weight of his hand upon his wound.

By the time Trent emerged from the office and put away the dishes, his guest was sound asleep on the sofa, one arm over his stomach and the other having long ago slipped off the side of the cushions. He paused on his way by, watching the other man breathe for a few moments. His head had fallen to the side, his lips parted to let out his slow, even breaths. Trent hesitated, biting the inside of his cheek and silently cursing the way the lights of the city shone through the balcony doors onto the fairy’s freckled nose. It would be a tousled, smirking one that showed up in his house and claimed to be a fairy. He shook his head. It hadn’t been so long that he was going to let this person intrude on his solitude just because he had a pretty face.

He reached down to shake Ciaran’s shoulder. “Go and get in the spare bed,” he said brusquely, so that the other man wouldn’t mistake it for friendliness. “If you bleed on that, at least I can clean the sheets.”

Ciaran’s brow furrowed as he shifted away from the touch, tugging his shoulder away and curling up on his side. Trent huffed at him and tried flicking him in one pointed ear, but that only drew an irritated grunt from the sleeping man.

“Fine.” Trent walked around the sofa and pulled on Ciaran’s arm, shaking it in an attempt to wake him. When that didn’t work, he gave a short sigh and bent down, slipping his arms under the other man’s knees and shoulders. He braced himself as he moved to lift him, but Ciaran was so light that he nearly stumbled backwards into the glass coffee table. Trent paused, looking down at the sleeping face against his shoulder, and snorted.

“You’re pretty light for someone so full of shit.”

He carried Ciaran into the guest bedroom and dropped him onto the bed, not bothering to pull down the blankets. The fairy settled into the soft mattress with a contented sigh, and Trent hesitated beside the bed, his eye focused on the other man’s stained shirt. Keeping an eye on Ciaran’s sleeping face in case he stirred, Trent reached down to pull up the hem of his dirty t-shirt. The wound underneath was a black blemish on the otherwise smooth, tanned skin of Ciaran’s stomach. The edges of the cut were an angry, infected red, and dark veins were visible around the perimeter of the open wound. At least he was telling the truth about being injured.

Trent released the shirt and shut the bedroom door behind him as he left the room. He hoped there wouldn’t be a dead body there in the morning.