“Well, you’re a winged unicorn,” she said. “And I’m, er, not a maiden. I thought, well…”
She trailed off. From the expression on Aodhan’s face, this was definitely one piece of lore that was wholesale fiction.
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “So that’s not a problem?”
“I am a winged unicorn,” Aodhan said, enunciating each syllable with icy precision. “I assure you, I do not have a virginity fetish.”
“Well, there must be some issue, otherwise you wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to try to summon something for me to ride.” Aodhan’s face froze over, and Cathy added hastily, “It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me. Whatever it is, it’s clearly not something you want to discuss.”
Aodhan was still eying her as though she might try to throw a lasso over his head at any moment. “And… that matters?”
She was beginning to feel like they were having two entirely different conversations. “Of course it does. You’re a person!”
Aodhan’s only response was a slow blink.
“I mean, I don’t know how it works over here, but in my world people have a right to privacy,” she said, wondering if she’d fallen into another culture gap. “You must have a good reason for not wanting me to ride you like a pony.”
Too late, she heard her own words. Her whole body went hot with embarrassment.
“Literally ride!” she yelped. “Uh, that is, actually clamber up onto your back. When you’re in your alicorn form. Which is what you meant. Not anything else. Obviously.”
Aodhan was still staring at her, and she had the oddest feeling that he was seeing something completely different to one flustered, middle-aged, out-of-place single mom. He was looking at her like… like… she didn’t know what it was like. No one had ever looked at her that way before.
“Well,” he said gruffly. “Let’s leave that as a last resort, then. We’re not completely out of options yet. And I do not, by the way, include ‘leaving you alone in enemy territory armed with nothing more than a cooking pot and a puppy’ on that admittedly short list.”
“I really would be fine.”
He snorted, his face settling back into familiar lines of weary aggravation. “But I wouldn’t be, so that’s the end of that discussion. Give me a minute. I need to think.”
Apparently, thinking involved stalking up and down the clearing, scowling at the ground and occasionally muttering things like “no, not without mandrake” and “where the hell is a jungle harpy when you need one?” Cathy, deciding that she was unlikely to be able to make a useful contribution, left him to it.
She occupied herself with tidying up the remnants of Aodhan’s ritual, pitching pinecones back into the undergrowth and scuffing over the lines he’d drawn in the dirt. She didn’t know if there was any harm in leaving the magical equivalent of picnic trash lying around, but she’d always taught Kevin that it was important to leave natural places the way you found them.
“Right,” Aodhan said suddenly, as she was feeding the last of the discarded pretzel pieces to Noodle. He swung round, brown robes flaring around his calves. “I’ve got an idea. Though you’re not going to like it.”
Cathy dusted crumbs off her lap, scrambling up. “If it gets us closer to finding Kevin, I’m ready, willing, and eager.”
“Don’t be too quick to make promises.” Aodhan raked a hand through his short blond hair, mouth pulling to one side in a grimace. “I know someone who tends to frequent this area. He might be able to help, with the right persuasion. But we’ll have to attract his attention. I know this is a stretch, but do you think you could pretend to be a helpless damsel in distress?”
Pretend?
Cathy searched his face for any sign of sarcasm. As far as she could tell, he was being completely serious.
“Yes,” she said cautiously. “I think I could manage that.”
Aodhan tapped his thumb against each finger in turn, back and forth. He was always doing something with his hands, she’d noticed. In anyone else, she would have thought it a nervous habit, but she couldn’t imagine the mage ever being less than totally self-assured. It was more like someone continually fiddling with an expensive wristwatch or an engagement ring; taking pleasure in their treasure’s presence, and checking it was still there.
“In that case,” he said, “you get to be the bait.”
* * *
It’ll be easy, Aodhan had insisted. Just get in there and bathe alluringly.
Cathy was pretty sure that she had never bathed alluringly in her entire life. She certainly didn’t feel alluring with her jeans rolled up to mid-calf and duckweed around her ankles.
The secluded woodland pool had looked pretty, with lush emerald vegetation spilling around mysterious, glimmering water. As it turned out, even fairy ponds had mud at the bottom.
With effort, Cathy managed to wrench a shoe out of the ooze, taking another step into the pond. She dabbled her hands in the greenish water, wondering if she should scoop some up and pour it over her head. The result, she suspected, was likely to be more ‘drowned muskrat’ than ‘shampoo commercial.’