Page 15 of The Shadow Path
“Tell us about the trolls,” Carys said.
“They are mostly harmless as long as you remember what they’re there for,” Dru said. “They want to trade, they want to eat, and they want tonotbe noticed.”
“If they didn’t want to be noticed, seems like a bad idea to start a giant black market right in the middle of London,” Laura said.
Dru stopped walking and stared at her. “Why are you here, human?”
Laura lifted her chin. “Because Carys is my best friend, and I have a really good bullshit detector no matter what magical species I encounter.”
Dru nodded. “Very well.” He started walking again. “Don’t look into a troll’s eyes. Glance, don’t stare, no matter how strange they look. Unless you’re buying what they’re selling, do not linger.”
Glance, don’t stare. Glance, don’t stare.Carys repeated it like a mantra because this was going to be really hard.
Trolls were a fascinating mix of contradictions. Old Norse in origin, it shouldn’t surprise her that there were trolls in Anglia, considering the Norse influence through both blood, conquest, and trade.
In some legends, they were small and fae-like. In other tales, they looked almost exactly like humans. And in others, they were tall and monstrous.
Basically, Carys was trying to prepare herself for anything.
The traffic as they turned onto Knightsbridge was bustling as the main road filled up with cabs, buses, and cars inching along, passing elegant hotels, and tooting their horns when the automobile in front of them didn’t go as fast as they liked.
They continued through a busy intersection and walked through a construction tunnel before the road suddenly grew much more quiet and the lights seemed to dim.
Duncan muttered, “They feel him coming, for sure.”
“What did you expect?” Cadell said. “If you wanted to slip in unnoticed, you shouldn’t have invitedhim.”
Carys glanced at the back of Dru’s head and noticed that he seemed to grow taller before her eyes.
Light fae were usually taller than the average human, but the dark-haired bartender did such a good job blending into the human world that she hadn’t noticed before.
Dru’s chestnut hair fell in waves around his face, covering his pointed and gold-pierced ears, and his manner, unless you were talking directly to him, was mild.
Laura leaned toward Carys. “Who is this guy?”
“As far as I know, he’s a fae guy who owns a pub in Scone.” But Carys was starting to feel like there was more to the story than what she knew.
“Here.” Dru stopped at the glass door of a Chinese restaurant. Unlike the bustling pub next door, the restaurant was dark, and the red lanterns hanging in the windows were not lit.
Despite the darkness, Dru pushed the door and it swung open. He walked through, leaving Duncan to hold the door for the rest of the party.
A moment after they walked through the door, a stout Asian woman in a yellow dress appeared from a hallway at the back of the shadowed restaurant. “We’re closed!” She gasped a little bit when he saw Dru. “You.”
“It’s me.” Dru hung his hands in his pockets and stared at the woman. “I’ll be taking them downstairs.”
The woman appeared to grow in stature before Carys’s eyes. No longer a forgettable middle-aged restaurant proprietress in a yellow dress, she was nearly as tall as Duncan, and when she shook her head, Carys could see gold rings lining her pointed ears. “He won’t like it.”
“He won’t know I’ve crossed over unless someonetellshim.” Dru’s gaze drilled into the fae woman. “Is that going to be you, Lian?”
Lian cocked her head and looked at the dragon, the three humans, and the fae standing in her dark restaurant. “I didn’t see you, but he will.” One dark eyebrow lifted like a bird in flight, and then she disappeared back into the dark hallway from where she’d emerged.
Dru watched her leave, then turned to Carys and smiled. “My people. So dramatic.” He walked to a hallway that Carys hadn’t noticed before, pushing aside a red beaded curtain before he disappeared into the shadows. “Come, Carys Morgan. Day is dawning in the Shadows, and the market is waiting for you.”
The mazeof passages beneath the restaurant was eerily quiet. Nearly as soon as they descended from street level, Carys could see the weeping blue lights of the wisps begin to glow overhead.
“The fae built this gate long before the city was established.” Dru spoke quietly as they walked. “It was only marshlands then. But the tides of the ocean shifted, and the old god who was this river retreated into the Shadowlands. Over time, the humans changed the course of the river, but the gate stayed.”
Carys saw nothing in the blackness, but she listened for the sound of Dru’s voice and followed him, her right hand grasped in Duncan’s and her left clutching Laura’s.
