The pookas share, p.1
The Pooka's Share, page 1
The Pooka's Share
By K.L. Noone
Published by JMS Books LLC
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Copyright 2019 K.L. Noone
ISBN 9781646560974
Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com
Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.
All rights reserved.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America.
* * * *
For my Internet Family, without whom none of this would’ve happened.
* * * *
The Pooka's Share
By K.L. Noone
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 1
Aidan Callahan sat on the scratchy low fence by the apple orchard, letting one leg swing idly, and waited for the pooka.
The pooka was, in fact, late. At least according to the ritual timeline.
Aidan knocked a boot against wood in irritation. Supernatural creatures who’d been gleefully munching on someone else’s crops ought to have the decency to arrive on time, he decided.
His phone buzzed. He checked it, sighed, texted back, Nothing yet, I’d tell you, and you’re supposed to be on bed rest. After a second Len sent back a gif of a flickering pumpkin with a middle finger carved into it, because Elena Ruiz hated being sidelined even with a leg nearly bitten in half, and consequently at the moment also hated selkies and their teeth. Aidan, who preferred his Magical Enforcement Division partner alive, answered with a row of kisses, and got a very nasty curse—not a magical one, fortunately—in Spanish in reply.
At least Len was okay. He shifted position on the fence. Tried not to think about selkies and aggressive territorial disputes gone bad, or the healing bite on his own shoulder, or how much worse that assignment could’ve gone.
He knew it might’ve been easier if he’d been someone else. Something else.
He didn’t especially want to think about that, either. He’d joined the MED for all sorts of reasons; if he felt like being honest with himself, which he generally was, those reasons spanned the selfish and the less so. He’d wanted to protect other magical beings. He’d wanted to be a part of making the world at least somewhat better, or safer, in some ways. He’d wanted to run from his family. He’d wanted to avoid the disappointment in his mother’s voice, his father’s eyes, when regarding their only son. He’d wanted to do some good.
He thought he had. He kept trying. He hoped he was doing enough.
It’d be a lot easier with more backup. But that wasn’t anyone’s fault. The MED had always been shorthanded, given the rarity of magical talents among the population, given the previous—before Joanne’s new directorial policies—insistence on primarily human agents. They were even more depleted at the moment, after that string of bad luck and injured agents. And Aidan himself had always been both a magical weapon and a magical liability, given his very specific and very complicated gifts—
No. Not thinking about that. This mission, here and now. Simple enough. A faerie-horse. Stealing apples from humans.
Moonlight hit bark and tree-leaves and slid down in a flood of silver: turning the orchard mysterious, uncanny, luminous. The moonlight got into Aidan’s hair too, mother-of-pearl through a stray wisp of white-blond across his gaze; he blinked, brushed it away, made a face at the night.
He did not need reminders of his hair. Of his heritage.
He should’ve brought a hat. Would’ve also helped with ice-spiked autumn air.
He glared at determinedly pooka-less groves. He did not whistle, because that’d be a spectacularly bad idea. Giving away not only his presence, but who and what he was. Admissions, and admissions.
He tried to huddle further into his jacket for warmth, failed because his jacket wasn’t really all that warm, and sulked about this for a minute or two.
He watched the apples left on the trees. The pooka’s share, said the legend. The share left out on November first, to placate the faerie-horse for the coming year. Or, in this case, as a response to the previous year; the human-owned farms in this area had all been suffering depredations, nibbled fruit, thefts in the dark. The incidents formed a pattern, moving westward. Aidan had seen last year’s records, and the notes from farmers in the neighboring town who’d followed the advice of a local hedge-witch and left an offering and been left alone since. The pooka had wandered on. It had found more farms, out here in California inland desert, in the lazy rounded foothills of the local mountains.
It’d be nice if said pooka would bother to show up. The first of November had just about ended. Five minutes left.
He wondered why it didn’t have a herd. Most pookas did, with clearly defined territories. They kept to themselves, usually. Skittish with regard to strangers, though most purely faerie-creatures were. Mischievous if in the right mood. Sometimes helpful—they were magical, after all, and could bestow blessings and encouragements of growth, with regard to the natural world—and sometimes not.
Sometimes, apparently, they wandered around stealing apples. Or at least this one did. Which was a small problem on the scale of possible problems.
But apple-theft did technically violate several of the agreements about faerie-human interactions, both the legal and the time-honored customary. Hence the MED involvement. Hence the assignment, passed on to them from the governmental higher-ups.
Which meant Aidan’s presence. In an orchard. Being cold.
If the faerie-horse did not appear, he’d’ve spent the night sitting on a distinctly uncomfortable splintery fence for no reason. Which would mean someone’s information had been wrong. Which was not a good thought, mostly because he was already tired and overworked, and he did not want to have that conversation with his colleagues, not when they were all tired and overworked, after San Francisco and the selkies and the sharp-fanged loss of two agents who should’ve known better.
The bite on his shoulder, which had healed over but remained pink, sent a ghost of pain out to tap along nerve-endings as he thought about it: a reminder.
He did not run fingers over his badge, nor over the particular item he’d borrowed from the family vaults for tonight. He did not get up and go and steal an apple himself, though he contemplated it. Maybe a stolen apple would make him warmer. Maybe the apples were in fact secret embodied enchantments and could solve all his problems.
Maybe he should’ve brought gloves. Or coffee. Or actual patience.
He kicked the fence again.
Patience had historically not been his strong suit. Leather jackets and long legs and a talent for charm and a reputation as the best rising-star agent of the MED, instead. Not yet thirty years old. Nice smile. Emphatic tons of charisma. Sweet-talking witnesses and townsfolk. Impressive record of cases solved and negotiated and generally handled. Taking care of the whole southwest region these days, singlehandedly because he didn’t have much of a choice now that Len was on the wounded list.
Plus, of course, he had that other talent. That inheritance. His family.
He grimaced at apple trees. Wondered when silent knotholes and fallen leaves had gotten quite so judgmental. Some star agent, they suggested. Not even a hat? In this autumn chill? With your hair?
He ignored this vegetative commentary with great purpose.
He generally tried to ignore his hair as well, in much the same way. This was difficult for at least two reasons, also related to his family and that inheritance. Tonight he’d vengefully tied it up in a complicated knot. It kept finding ways to escape.
Silent, he thought again. Too silent. No wind. No rustles.
He stopped swinging his legs and sat up.
The pooka came out of moonbeams and the scent of apples and a flutter of shadows.
One moment nothing had moved; Aidan knew as much. The next moment the swirl of shapes resolved: a magic crystal, a child’s seeing-eye game, illusion made flesh. Ink and smoke and flowing grace. Rippling mane and tail. Sinuous elegance, ribboning through trees and starshine. Soundless hoofs and powerful muscle. In horse-form it moved like a wary panther and caught his gaze like a spell.
And it was a spell. It was enchantment, sorcery, the drum-beat in veins; it was in-drawn breaths and irrepressible curiosity, a forbidden whisper. It sent scurrying shivers of autumn wind down his spine, laced in gold and purple and bronze; it pulled him off the fence and onto both feet, taking a step. He trembled with want; heat kissed the nape of his neck, throbbed under skin, pooled between
His own magical nature leapt in response. He was shaking with impossible fascination. He wanted to be swept away: to leap onto the horse’s back, to be carried off into power and dreams and a wild endless ride—
The pooka stretched out its neck. Nibbled at an apple, delicate and fastidious as an old-fashioned lady. When it turned its head, it caught his gaze.
Aidan’s next inhale got lost in confusion, in comprehension.
That wasn’t a horse looking back. That glance was as self-aware and sarcastic and dismissive as anyone he’d ever known.
For a split second he wondered, bizarrely, whether the pooka knew about his family. Whether it felt equally disappointed in his choice of magical-cop profession.
And then he thought, angry at the faerie-spirit and at himself and at the whole damn apple orchard, oh fuck THIS—and sang a brief high wordless note that crashed through the spell like a spear.
Everything froze in shock—the pooka, the moonbeams, the apple trees—and Aidan took a step forward and slid the bridle out of his jacket and over the pooka’s astounded head.
His voice command wouldn’t hold for long—he could do more than most banshees could, given who and what he was, but on a fellow faerie-creature it’d only be a temporary effect—but it’d last long enough for the bridle to take hold.
He hoped, anyway. What good was being that once-a-century male banshee child, with all that supposedly mythical power, if he couldn’t use it for restoring order?
The pooka gazed at him, trembled all over, shook its head. Hair fell wildly across its eyes. Feet stomped. Breath huffed. Flanks heaved. It flinched when Aidan held out a hand.
No. He flinched. The pooka was a he. Aidan didn’t know how he knew, but he did. Something in that gaze. In those scared long eyelashes. In the shiver of emotion, raw and tangible under moon and stars. Elemental and fey and quivering. Under the bondage of a bridle.
Aidan, rather distressed by this realization, said, “Shh, I’m not going to hurt you,” and held out a hand. Could he promise that? Had he caused hurt already? “I just need you to listen—this orchard isn’t yours, and they need the crops to, I don’t know, make cider and pies and apple butter or whatever it is they do up here, and I’m pretty sure you can hear me, so can you nod if you can hear me, and also, is this hurting you?”
The night hung poised on a rope. On the shimmer of ancient pooka-hair and braided legend, the relic he’d asked for and been allowed to use. His family had toys to spare; his mother had simply shrugged and told him to do what he liked, given that he did in any case, and she’d added that he did not need to bother her about it.
Light ran along the space between his outstretched fingertips and an arching equine neck.
That shape glimmered. Shifted. Melted and changed. The bridle changed with him. Aidan hadn’t known it could do that.
The young man now standing in front of him had tumbling black hair, wide dark eyes with long lashes, and star-pale skin; the young man also had swiveling dark horse’s ears, poking up through all the hair, and a fall of satiny horse’s tail, long enough to brush calves and to swirl around legs. The young man was beautiful, and incredibly naked.
The young man had a web of braided horsehair, the net of the bridle, around his throat. A collar, it clung in voluptuous onyx. The end of the leash remained in Aidan’s suddenly lax hand.
The young man looked at him, and said, defiant and tense, “I don’t trust your voice. Banshee.”
“Only half,” Aidan explained. “My father’s a theoretical magician. Very human.” He fiddled with the leash, added out of some strange compulsion, “It won’t work as well if you’re expecting it. The voice.” The suspicion in those eyes stabbed into his chest. He wasn’t used to being frightening.
Intimidating, sure. Serious about the job, carrying the badge. Flamboyant, definitely. Equally good at flirtatious glances in certain leather-tinted clubs, at smiling across crowded rooms, at tracking wayward magic. Skilled at coaxing and compelling and gently persuading were-badger clans to come to a truce about burrows. Splendid at issuing orders in bed, if those roles were in play—but carefully, always carefully, because he knew what he could do otherwise.
But the thought that someone innocent—relatively innocent, at least—might be genuinely hurt because of him twisted like arrows in his gut.
The pooka regarded this confession with skepticism. “Why would you tell me that? A weakness.”
Aidan raised eyebrows. “You’re already wearing my bridle. I’m trying to get you to listen.”
“High King Brian’s bridle only keeps us in place. It doesn’t compel us to behave.” The pooka crossed arms. His ears flicked back and forth. “Why do you have it, anyway?”
“Long story. Family story.” Having to do with promises and mythological old kings and the family banshee given human form and a wayward prince and falling in love and magical gifts while wooing. Aidan’s family had been around a very long time. The treasure vaults were extensive. “Look, I’m not here to compel you. Or even to arrest you. I want you to leave these people alone. And I’ll let you go.”
“You could’ve…arrested me?”
Aidan sighed, stuck his free hand into his jacket, found the official badge, waved it vaguely that direction. “MED? Southwest region. The only person working the southwest region, because we’re shorthanded to begin with and still down two people after the incident with the selkies. I was in Tucson this morning. I’ve been sitting on a fence all night and I think I have splinters in horrible places. And you’re late. It’s not even November first anymore.”
“You’re MED.”
“It’s the hair, isn’t it?”
“Actually,” said the pooka, “it’s the kindness,” and they looked at each other for a moment, through leaf-dappled starlight.
Finally Aidan said, “What?”
The pooka shrugged. “You said you’d let me go. You told me you couldn’t really hurt me with the voice. You’re enough of a martyr to do the work of three people. Kindness.” He touched the web of the collar, seemingly without thought. His fingers were long and pale too; his forearms bore soft tufts of feathery dark hair, the fetlocks of a unicorn in a classical painting. “I’d’ve moved on in in the morning in any case.”
“Would you,” Aidan said, without force because he couldn’t gather any. Knocked off-balance by uncomfortable insight. By big black eyes that’d reached in and scooped up his soul and saw only the golden parts, not the glinting reckless armor or the scars of old thrown words about lost potential, about extravagant sorcerous talent he should’ve inherited and hadn’t, about uselessness.
He batted his hair—ridiculous banshee hair, which grew persistently long and fair and flowing, and did so without regard for scissors or trimming—out of his face. Shoved it behind an ear. Contemplated charming it all off. It’d grow back, but he’d get a day or so of peace.
He touched the leash again instead. He wasn’t holding it taut, but the pooka still had fingertips skimming enchanted bonds too, exploring, intrigued. The touch sang along braided horsehair and reverberated, magic that wasn’t precisely magic, purely coincidence and emotion.
Their eyes met, inadvertent but drawn together. True north and a compass-needle.
The pooka swallowed. Hard.
Aidan said, very softly, “Is this hurting you?”
“No.” Trembling. Not from cold. “No.”
“You like it.”
“Yes.”
The words landed as lightly as autumn mist, and waited.
The pooka said, equally light, not breaking their gaze, “Most people aren’t strong enough to command me. Or…”
“Or?”
“Or kind enough.” His smile came and went, a curlicue of merriment in moonlight. “Because you would be, wouldn’t you? Concerned about whether I’m hurt. While you’re punishing me.”
Aidan breathed in. Breathed out. Felt that shiver down his spine again: absolute lust, head-spinning desire, and some quieter more profound other emotion, one he couldn’t place, reflected in faerie-dark eyes.
Standing there in jeans and boots and battered leather jacket, surrounded by the scents of apples and dry wood and night, he murmured, “So you want me to punish you…”
