“Fae?”
Siobhan groaned. “Fae?”
“Yeah…you know, fairies and shit.”
“Oh, Shane.”
“Wow, you just channeled my foster mom to a scary extreme.”
“Saying fae like they’re one entity is like saying you’ve heard of insects.”
“A pest is a pest.”
“The fae are much more than that. You understand nothing.”
“Jesus, lady, take a chill pill.” Shane propped himself up on his elbows and furrowed his brow at her. “How about you differentiate some frigging order or genus or some shit like that? Instead of treating me like an idiot, why don’t you tell me what you want me to know?”
Just like that she boomeranged from being prepared to kick him to the curb to thinking he might have hope yet.
“It’s complicated.”
“Should I be taking notes?”
Siobhan shifted on the bed, her hand coming to rest on Shane’s knee where she squeezed in a silent message somewhere between shut the hell up and seriously shut up before I stick my giant glowing knife in you. “Have you ever regretted saving someone’s life?”
“No, but I think I’ve made a few people regret saving mine.”
She smiled and tapped a finger to her nose before releasing his leg. “I’m sorry. I’m just used to being with people who have been raised to know these things. The ignorance of humans is sometimes…staggering to me.”
If Shane was offended by her calling him ignorant, it didn’t show. “Are you not human?”
“I’m…more than human.” She wanted to say better, because pride of her line made her believe she really was better, but she stuck with more seeing as he was being patient with her attitude to this point, and she thought it better not to push him too far before he agreed to help her.
“Define more than human.”
“I’m a druid.”
Shane sat all the way up and crossed his arms over his chest. “Like, ancient Celtic dudes in cloaks who built Stonehenge and sacrificed humans to the gods? Those druids?”
Siobhan huffed out a breath, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. “Close enough,” she said with a sigh. Trying to explain the different clans, their purposes and the gates they protected might take hours. She was going to have to give him the CliffsNotes version. “Druids are protectors. There are gates…metaphysical passageways between this world and the reality belonging to the fae. The two realities exist simultaneously, one on top of the other but never mingling. These gates allow fae to pass from their reality into ours.”
“And that’s bad, I take it.”
“It isn’t always disastrous, but it’s never…advisable.”
“Okay, so if these gates are such a bad thing, why doesn’t someone close them?”
Siobhan snorted. “The gateways have been open for millennia, since the fae wandered freely on this realm and wreaked havoc at will. Then my people became the defenders of mankind and—”
“The defenders of mankind?” Shane started laughing and didn’t stop even when Siobhan glared and started thought-stabbing him. “Lady, you’ve got a pretty inflated sense of purpose.”
“Siobhan,” she replied curtly. “My name isn’t lady, so I’d appreciate it if you either called me Siobhan or kept quiet. In fact, given your habit for saying truly moronic things, I think it would be best if you just didn’t interrupt until I’m done.”
“You sure know how to woo a dude into helping you…Siobhan.”
Siobhan thought it best to ignore him at this point and plow forward with her story. “The gates are now guarded by druidic clans all over the world. There are two gateways in New York. One is under the protection of a fae guardian. The other is exposed and watched by my people, the Claughdid clan.”
She waited for Shane to interrupt, but he only nodded, and she carried on. “The few who break through are not the kind we want mingling with humanity. Fairies have freedom to pass at will since they are the guardians on their side as we are on ours. It’s the lesser fae we have to worry about. The trolls, like the one you saw today, goblins and sprites, and other unique and repulsive creatures who would rather eat people than coexist with them. That’s what we are here to protect people from.”