Chapter 29

ChapterTwenty-Nine

Alistair stood in front of his house, hands on his hips, trying his best not to give up. Yesterday it was the roof. Two days ago, the stairs had given out. Today? Apparently, today the windows were going to break on three different levels.

The house was bleeding money. No. Hemorrhaging money to such an extent that he didn’t know how his father had kept up with all of it.

“No,” he grumbled. “I know exactly how you kept up with it, you old bat.”

Debts. Mountains and mountains of debt that his father hadn’t been able to crawl out of. Thus, the debts landed on his damned lap. But he supposed the old saying of shit rolls downhill really was true, and he should have been more careful when he was younger.

Or more reckless, and he should have run away.

Squeezing the bridge of his nose, he tried his best to push the headache away. At least, until Nora opened the front door and shouted, “If you keep doing that, you’re going to make the headache worse!”

“I didn’t hire you as head housekeeper to turn you into a harpy!”

“No, you hired me to take care of the house!” She pointed up at the windows. “Those need to be fixed before Thea gets here!”

The word sent him into a spiral of nausea, heartbreak, and outright fear. A cold sweat broke out over his entire body, and he had to grab onto the sharp iron fence to balance himself. Alistair was quite certain that he had gone white as a sheet and likely looked as though he were going to pass out.

He felt like it. The mere mention of her name turned him into an angry young man again. He’d run down the docks to salvage what little he could of their relationship, and then all the fires had happened.

He’d stood on the dock for hours, certain that he was watching her die. And though no Orbweaver man would be caught dead crying, he had forced himself to stay frozen on that dock. Watching. Waiting. Hoping.

And at the first light of day, he thought he’d heard her scream that she would never forgive him for this. That she hated him.

And he’d deserved that. Alistair had taken those words, and he had become them. Absorbed them. Used them to become a different man. A better one, he hoped, at least as much as he could be in a place like this.

He’d thought after ten years that hearing the sound of her name wouldn’t make him flinch, but it still did. All the guilt that had only grown in the years that had passed since the last time he’d seen the love of his life suddenly welled over his head and awakened something inside him.

His heart.

His soul.

His Thea.

He shook his head and staggered to the front door. Bracing himself on the door frame, he asked, “What did you just say?”

“Oh my,” Nora said, her own face paler than normal. “I told you to look at the paperwork! I thought you at least saw the name, you foolish man.”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, maybe it’s a different Thea? There could be countless of them in Waterdown. Neither of us knows.”

He knew. In his gut, he knew there was only one Thea, and she was now coming to his home. “It’s her. I know it’s her.”

“Why would she take a job from you if it was her? You two have a history.” Nora shook her head. “It’s not. I’m quite certain it’s not.”

He might have once sided with her just so that he didn’t have to feel this anxiety building in his chest, but he knew. He could tell. Thea was returning to Wildecliff, and he had been the one to bring her here.

He’d have to relive all of those horrible memories. She’d be afraid of his home once again, but this time, she worked for him. He could never let her do that. The absolute fear that had taken over her the first time she’d stepped foot in this house was not something he could expect anyone to suffer through—especially not one of his staff.

Damn it. He was going to be her employer. That added a whole new layer of depravity to how he felt about her.

Sinking down onto the front step, he cupped his head in his hands. “Nora, what am I going to do?”

“Oh, it can’t be that bad.” Although she most assuredly knew it was that bad and that he would lose his mind if they weren’t careful.

She sat down beside him, and they stayed like that for a while. Quietly sitting in each other’s company as they had for many years before this. She always knew when to talk and when not to, thankfully. Like the older sibling, he’d never had.

Finally, she let out a brief hum of breath. “Well, there are two things I know. First is that she must have seen who was hiring her, and thus, she chose to come here and work for you. That has to mean something. And second, we’ve got a little work to do before she gets here. But if you cannot see her, then we will have you at the Academy when she first arrives. You can take some time and then decide from there when to meet her. It’s not usual for a new maid to not meet the master of the house for some time.”

“She’s not just a maid,” he muttered into his palms. “She’s the love of my life and the only person who has ever made me feel as though I wasn’t Alistair Orbweaver.”

“But you are.”

“Sometimes I don’t want to be.”

Nora grunted. “Well, that’s just ridiculous. You are who you are and there’s nothing wrong with that. You shouldn’t be ashamed of being a good man. Besides, you’ve been on your own for this long. Maybe it’ll be good for you to see her again. She can’t be the paragon you remember.”

Thea wasn’t a paragon of a woman, though. Not even in his memory. She’d been gritty and strange—a wild creature trapped in the skin of a tame-looking woman. But that had been part of the allure. Thea was a girl made of moonbeams and wrapped in spider silk. A beauty he would never be able to catch in a jar who still could light up his entire world like a firefly.

And here he was. Thinking about her again. He’d promised himself he would stop doing that, and ten years had dulled the feeling. Or at least, that’s what he thought.

But now, the mere idea of seeing her in the flesh made his entire body sweat like he’d run ten miles. “I will be her employer, Nora. I can’t be in love with one of my staff.”

“You aren’t in love with her. You’ve just been existing in a state of loneliness for so long that you don’t know how to see another person as a person.” Nora rolled her eyes at the expression he gave her. “Fine. Fine! I don’t know why you’ve wrapped yourself up in this girl, but I understand even saying that was foolish. You know how you feel.”

He took a deep breath and let one of his deepest thoughts take flight. “It’s been years since I’ve seen her. A lifetime since I’ve spoken to her. So long that the letters I wrote her have curled, and the ink has faded. But sometimes I think of her, and it still gets harder to breathe.”

Nora’s expression changed from her teasing look to one of complete and utter tragedy. “Alistair. You have to let her go.”

Did he, though? It had been ten years, and he still wanted to hold her against his heart. He still wanted to apologize and tell her he’d been an idiot for ever letting go and not seeing what his father had planned. His heart beat for her, and it only continued beating on the off chance that he might see her again.

Now she would work for him. In his house. Living under the same roof. Breathing the same air.

Even though he knew those thoughts were foolish, yet he couldn’t stop thinking about the first time she’d come into this home.

He glanced over his shoulder down the dark, empty hall that led to the stairs. “She’s afraid of this house. I don’t know why she’d ever agree to work here.”

“From what I’ve heard, times are rather desperate in Waterdown still.”

“And here. Times aren’t easy for any of us.” He nodded up at the windows. “I haven’t the faintest idea how we’re going to pay for that. But I know she can’t see the house like a ruin when she arrives, or I’ll never live it down.”

“Because she’ll be angry at you? Or because we’re paying our staff so well that they could leave at any point and buy their own house?”

Perhaps that. But he wouldn’t be his father. Alistair could take some money away from the staff and pay for all the fixes in a heartbeat. But these people deserved to have their own lives as well, and he refused to be the reason they had to choose between fresh bread or day old.

Nora grabbed onto his hand and squeezed it. “You’ve given them all a good chance at having a good life. But we’ve got a new staff member coming on to work, and she has enough skills to take on the role of a maid. It might not be the easiest transition for her, but if you think Miss Thea can be spared from paperwork for a while...”

He already knew where she was going with it. Letting go of one of the staff members would hurt, but it would save them seven gold a month. Alistair hated the solution, but he knew a dead end when he saw one.

“I’ll let you choose who, then.” He stood and dusted off his pants. “And send one of the boys out to talk with a glass maker. Those windows need fixing before the winter hits.”

“I’ll do that promptly.” Nora stood as well, although she did so a little slower than he did. Years of hard work hadn’t been kind on her back, as she liked to remind him. “And what are you planning on doing while I get all this figured out?”

His mind raced.

Thea was coming here. To his home. The place she hated. There was still a trapped fae or god in his basement that made the entire building freezing cold. He had no idea what he was going to have her do, but it didn’t feel right to make her work. Thea had every reason to hate him, and that meant she would have no safe place and no one to lean on while she was here.

Sighing, he put his hands on his hips and narrowed his gaze on the stairwell. “Send up four of the butlers to the second floor for me, would you? To my room.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer. There was work to be done, and unfortunately, it was work that needed to be done sooner rather than later. Alistair marched up the stairwell with his father’s voice whispering in his ear.

“How dare you let one of them into my house? A Waterdown woman! I told you we all have our dalliances, but the moment you let a woman like that into my house—“

Alistair waved his hand through the faint outline of his father’s spirit and continued toward his room. Opening the door, he motioned for Atlas to fly over to him. His beloved familiar hadn’t aged a day. But, he supposed, that was the gift of familiars.

“What do you think about a new view, my friend?” He stroked his finger down Atlas’s chest and the soft downy feathers there. “We’ve been looking out the same window for ages, and I think it’s time that we move to one of the better rooms. Shall we?”

Heading out of his bedroom, he left the doors open and waited for the butlers to meet him at the head of the stairs. They had all been with the family for some time. If they had opinions on how Alistair ran the house in comparison to his father, they kept those opinions to themselves.

“Move my things to the eastern wing,” he said. “I would like to set up my old bedroom into a guest room, of sorts. Do we have any extra furniture that we haven’t sold?”

The oldest butler in his neatly pressed black suit nodded. “There are a few in the attic, sir. Enough to furnish a room, albeit plainly.”

“Good, that will do.” Atlas walked up to his shoulder and clacked his beak in Alistair’s ear. “Don’t worry about cleaning. I have a few favors that I’m going to call in. Just make sure that the furniture is there and that the old furniture ends up in the new room.”

“New room?” The youngest butler appeared confused by all this. “Where are you moving, Master?”

“To my father’s old room,” he replied. “It’s pastime I take the master bedroom as my own.”

All the butlers looked surprised at that, and he couldn’t blame them. Alistair had declared that no one was to go into the eastern wing. Not because of some memory of his father or anything he wanted to keep sacred there. But because there were plenty of spells lingering that he didn’t want anyone to get caught up in.

Which reminded him....

Alistair left the butlers where they were and meandered toward the eastern wing. He reached into his pocket for a handful of caramels that he always kept with him in case he needed to summon the fae.

“Brownies?” he called when he was out of earshot of the others. “I need to ask a favor of you all.”

Like little balls of lint, three tumbled down from the top of a serving table. Two brownies opened up tiny doors that looked like mouse holes near the trim of the hall. Four more peeked out at him from underneath the rug nearby. Not quite as many as he hoped, but household spirits were scarce when there weren’t as many people to help.

He drew out the gold foiled wrapped caramels and held them out for all the fae to see. “I need help curse hunting in the eastern wing. I hoped you might be interested in a little fun?”

The brownies all raced toward him, their hands outstretched and their mouselike whiskers twitching frantically.

“Thank you,” he said. “My father was rather adept at casting curses and if I’m moving into his bedroom, I’d like to not get trapped in the dreaming world.”

The nearest brownie had on a tiny red dress. She took her caramel with very gentle hands, holding it with both hers, and then looked him in the eye. “We’ll keep you safe, little Alistair. Just as you’ve kept us safe all these years.”

Sometimes he thought they meant allowing them to live in the house and providing them with fresh milk and cream. But sometimes, he wondered if it was much more than that.