A Study in Drowning(23)

Electricity sparked along Effy’s skin. She lowered her voice and leaned closer to the shepherd. “Do you mean the Fairy King?”

The man did not immediately reply, but his eyes shifted left and then right, toward the hills and then toward the sea, as if he expected something to come rising or lumbering out of either one.

Effy thought of the creature in the road, its wet black hair and bone crown. She had seen it. Wetherell had seen it. Perhaps the shepherd had seen it, too. Her whole body felt like a live wire, blood running with adrenaline.

“Guard yourself against him,” the shepherd said. “Metal on your windows and doors.”

“Iron. I know.”

The old man reached into his left pocket and dug around for several moments. Then he held out his hand. Cupped in his palm were a bevy of stones, white and gray and rust-colored, like the pebbles on the beach. Each one had a small hollow in its center, through which Effy could see the man’s wrinkled, ancient skin.

“Hag stones,” the shepherd said. “The Fairy King has many clever disguises. Look through these and you’ll see him coming, in his true form.”

He grasped Effy’s wrist and pried her fingers open, then deposited the stones in her palm before she could protest. They were heavier than they had looked when the old man held them. She put the stones in the pocket of her trousers.

When she looked up again, the shepherd had turned around and was walking down the road, away from her, up toward the green hills. His sheep bobbed after him like buoys on the water. One paused in the road and looked back at her.

Her skin was still electric. Effy reached into her pocket and lifted one of the stones to her eye, peering through the hollow in the middle. But she only saw the sheep staring back at her, unblinking and frozen.

She lowered the stone again, feeling foolish. Fairy tales or not, back in Caer-Isel, she never would have stopped to listen to the ramblings of some strange old man in the street. She put the stones back in her pocket and wiped the sea spray off her cheeks. It occurred to her that she’d just been the exact opposite of pickpocketed.

The pub had a name, but the sign was so damp and wood-rotted that Effy couldn’t make it out. She pushed through the door with more confidence than she felt. The hairs on her neck were stiff and risen from listening to the shepherd’s words.

At once she was bathed in the pub’s warm, golden light. There was a stone fireplace in the corner that crackled with a sound like twigs snapping under the tread of a boot. Above it, the mantel bore old sepia-toned photographs. The room was crammed with a number of circular tables and two booths in the far back corner. The wood on the booths was shinier, newer, clearly an effort at modernizing.

Behind the bar were rows and rows of liquor bottles, some of them clear, others green or amber, gleaming like hard candies. The record she’d heard earlier was still turning, playing a song by a supine-voiced woman Effy didn’t recognize.

The pub was empty save for two older men sitting by the window—fishermen, judging by their thick sweaters and rubber boots—and the bartender, a woman about her mother’s age, with hands that looked like they’d worked as many years as Effy had been alive. And Preston, whose untidy hair she spotted over the top of one of the booths. She darted around the nearest table so he wouldn’t see her.

She had only been to a pub once or twice in her life, when Rhia had taken her. She didn’t know any of the unspoken etiquette. She didn’t drink, either. Alcohol, the doctor had said, reacted poorly with her medication, and Effy already had enough trouble discerning what was real.

The bartender gave her a pitiless, glowering look. “You going to order something?” she asked, her accent as incomprehensible as the shepherd’s had been.

Effy took a step toward the bar. “Yes. Sorry. I’ll have a gin and tonic, please.”

It was her mother’s drink of choice and the first thing that came to mind. The bartender raised a brow but busied herself fetching a glass. Effy felt her cheeks heat. It was only just past nine in the morning, but she hadn’t known what else to order.

She let her gaze wander toward the fishermen, who had stopped their conversation to watch her, eyes small and keen under their bushy brows.

The shepherd’s words thrummed in the back of her mind. Look through these and you’ll see him coming, in his true form.

To religious Northerners, the fairies were demons, underworld beings, the sworn enemies of their Saints. To smarmy, agnostic scientists and naturalists, the Fair Folk were as fictitious as any other stories told in church. But to Southerners, fairies were a mere fact of life, like hurricanes or adders in your garden. You took precautions against them. You shut your windows and locked your doors. You didn’t go overturning any large rocks.

Effy almost raised the hag stone to her eye again, but she would have felt stupid, here in open sight of the bartender and these men. Besides, the Fairy King was vain until his very last breath. He would choose a more dignified disguise.

The sound of a glass being placed on the bar jolted her from her thoughts. The bartender looked at her expectantly.

“How much?” Effy asked. The bartender told her, and Effy dutifully counted out the coins. The fishermen were still watching. The bartender took the money and Effy picked up her glass. “What’s the most popular drink here?”

“Usually scotch. But seeing as it’s winter now, most people order hot cider.”