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.”
Effy clutched her cold glass, flushing. As soon as the bartender went back to wiping the counter, she scurried away.
Once she was out of sight of the bartender, she considered her options. She could sit at one of the tables, in full view of the leering fishermen, or she could take the booth right next to Preston’s and—what? Sip her drink in silence, while Preston worked on the other side, both acutely aware of the other’s presence with only the thin glossy wood between them like a church confessional?
Effy could scarcely imagine anything more awkward. And after the episode in the car, she felt as if she needed to reclaim some of her lost dignity. Before she could lose her nerve, she marched toward Preston’s booth and sat down across from him.
He startled at once, slamming his book shut. With the flush painting his cheeks and his darting eyes, he looked like a guilty schoolboy. She supposed that was what he was, only she didn’t know what he had to feel guilty about.
“I guess you finished your phone call,” he said.
“Yes,” Effy replied. By Preston’s elbow was a glass of scotch, half full, which made her feel less foolish for ordering a drink at nine in the morning. She still hadn’t decided if she was actually going to take a sip, but she was glad she had it—it made her feel more like Preston’s equal.
He slid his book back into his satchel, but not before Effy saw the title on the spine: The Poetical Works of Emrys Myrddin, 196–208 AD.
He caught her looking and gave a defiant look back. “One of your library books,” he said. “I didn’t mean to salt the wound.”
She decided not to let him fluster her. “You must have just been reading it, then. ‘The Mariner’s Demise.’”
“It’s not one of Myrddin’s well-known works. I’m surprised you recognized it.”
“I told you. He’s my favorite author.”
“The scholarly consensus is that Myrddin’s poetry is generally middling.”
Effy’s face heated, anger curdling her stomach. “Why bother studying something you clearly find beneath you?”
“I said that was the scholarly consensus, not my personal opinion.” Which of course he wasn’t going to share. He was much better than Effy at keeping his cards close to the vest. His glasses had slipped a bit down the bridge of his nose; he pushed them up again. “And anyway, you don’t have to love something in order to devote yourself to it.”
He said it so offhandedly, she knew he hadn’t meant to rile her, but that only made it worse—that he had to do so little to wound her so much. “But what’s the point otherwise?” she managed. “You scored high enough on your exams to study whatever you want, and you chose literature on a whim?”