The Druid Next Door Read online

  Riptide Publishing

  PO Box 1537

  Burnsville, NC 28714

  www.riptidepublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.

  The Druid Next Door

  Copyright © 2017 by E.J. Russell

  Cover art: Lou Harper, louharper.com/design.html

  Editor: Rachel Haimowitz

  Layout: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at [email protected].

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-621-7

  First edition

  August, 2017

  Also available in paperback:

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-622-4

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  Professor Bryce MacLeod has devoted his entire life to environmentalism. But how effective can he be in saving the planet when he can’t even get his surly neighbor to separate his recycling?

  Former Queen’s Enforcer Mal Kendrick doesn’t think his life could get any worse: he’s been exiled from Faerie with a cursed and useless right hand. When he’s not dodging random fae assassins in the Outer World, he’s going toe-to-toe with his tree-hugging neighbor. And when he discovers that the tree hugger is really a druid, he’s certain the gods have it in for him—after all, there’s always a catch with druids. Then he’s magically shackled to the man and expected to instruct him in Supernatural 101.

  All right, now things couldn’t possibly get worse.

  Until a mysterious stranger offers a drunken Mal the chance to gain back all he’s lost—for a price. After Mal accepts, he discovers the real catch: an ancient secret that will change his and Bryce’s life forever.

  Ah, what the hells. Odds are they won’t survive the week anyway.

  Dedicated to those of us who believe we’ve learned all there is to know about ourselves, only to realize (to our great astonishment) that it’s never too late to uncover a new truth that changes everything.

  About The Druid Next Door

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Dear Reader

  Acknowledgments

  Also by E.J. Russell

  About the Author

  More like this

  A jar of pickles.

  A fecking jar of fecking pickles, gods damn it to all the hells.

  Mal Kendrick stood in the middle of his kitchen, the victorious pickle jar jammed in the crook of his right elbow, his thrice-blasted useless right hand flapping in the air. Foil a coup to topple the Queen from her throne and this is my reward?

  Sod it, he was a bloody legend on both sides of the Faerie threshold: the never-defeated Enforcer of the Seelie Court, the designated muscle for every supe council from vampire to dragon shifter, the undisputed lord of Outer World bar hookups, who’d never failed to pull the hottest man in the place for his shag-du-jour.

  Yet he was helpless against a jar of fecking pickles.

  “It’s not fair.”

  “Talking to yourself is a sign of mental instability, Mal.” His brother-in-law swept into the kitchen, a grocery bag in one arm and a cardboard box tucked under the other.

  At least David hadn’t brought his infernal physical therapy machine this time.

  “Don’t you ever knock?” Mal set the pickles on the counter next to the bloody energy-efficient refrigerator.

  “Why bother? You never answer.”

  “I could have been banging some guy over the counter for all you know,” Mal grumbled, relieving David of the grocery bag with his left hand.

  “In that case, I’d have discreetly withdrawn and done a happy dance all the way down the sidewalk.”

  “Spare the neighbors that sight—they hate me enough already.”

  David pouted, which was far more adorable than should be allowed. “Alun loves my dancing. He told me so just last night.”

  “He’s your husband. He has to say shite like that. Besides, maybe he needed a good laugh.” He peered into the bag. Beer. Thank the Goddess. He was running dangerously low. “The sight of you dancing would be enough for the covenant committee to fine me for violation of the eyesore ban. They might ask me to vacate the premises.” He stopped, one six-pack of microbrews in his hand. “Although that might be a good thing. Go ahead, boyo. Dance away.”

  “I don’t know why you don’t like this place.” David set the box on the fecking recycled glass countertop. “We thought you’d like it because you’ve got the whole wetlands preserve practically in your backyard.”

  Mal shrugged. “It tries too hard. Solar panels. Geothermal energy. Drought-resistant ground coverings. Feh. Besides, I never asked you to buy me a fragging house.”

  David’s gray-blue eyes turned serious and so kind that Mal wanted to punch the refrigerator in its energy-efficient gut. “If you hadn’t stopped Rodric’s sword strike, Alun would be dead. I’d buy you fifty houses, a hundred, the whole freaking subdivision, and it still wouldn’t be payment enough. Besides,” he flipped open the box, “I’m the one with the dragon treasure. I can afford it, and we’re family now, so you can just shut up and deal.”

  Although David’s chin lifted with the stubborn pride that kept Mal’s perfect big brother totally dick-whipped, he still looked like an apprentice brownie who’d spent hours on a feast for his master, only to have the bastard throw the beautifully prepared meal on the floor.

  Ah, shite. I can be such a bloody arse sometimes. Most times, actually, but he used t
o be able to cover it up with something resembling charm. Seems he’d lost that ability along with his hand, his job, and his place in Faerie.

  He pulled one bottle out of the six-pack and pried the cap off with the opener Alun had mounted on the underside of the counter. Shite, he wouldn’t have been able to open his own damn beer without help from his brother. “Yes. Sure, Dafydd bach. It’s great.”

  David smiled crookedly and turned away to poke about in the box, but not before Mal caught the hurt his lake-storm eyes. “You know, I’m still not used to your face without the scruff.”

  Mal rubbed his perfectly smooth chin. None of the highborn fae sported facial hair, although when he’d still commanded his fae powers, he’d manufactured a little magical stubble to make the club boys swoon. “What can I say? No connection to the One Tree—no glamourie. No glamourie—no scruff.”

  “Oh. Right. Well, um, I brought you some things.”

  “You brought me beer, so you’ve already qualified for sainthood.”

  “You don’t believe in saints.”

  “Just because the fae don’t have any doesn’t mean I can’t adapt to my new home.” His permanent home. Away from Faerie. Away from the Seelie Court and everything he’d ever known. Away from the only work that gave him any satisfaction. He chugged half his beer. “Not like I have much choice.”

  “Mal, you can’t lose hope. Alun says there’s always a way to reverse a curse, that the end is always contained in the beginning.” He took Mal’s unresponsive right hand. “That night, the Queen said—”

  “I have to make whole what I cost her. Not a chance.” Mal pulled away and strode to the French doors that opened onto his patio—paved with recycled concrete, for shite’s sake—and stared at the greensward that sloped to the edge of the wetlands. “Even if I could put that bastard Rodric’s hand back on his arm, I wouldn’t. That piece of shite deserved what he got and more.”

  David’s footsteps whispered on the cork floor. “Believe me, no one is more on board with that than I am. I’m the one he planned to sacrifice, remember? You didn’t only save Alun that night. You saved me. You saved the Queen. You saved every single Seelie fae from suffering under Rodric’s rule. Trust me—I don’t blame you. But there has to be a way to lift the curse. We just have to find out how.”

  “Can you . . .” Mal swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

  He immediately wished he could take back the words. David had recently discovered he was achubydd, the last known member of a meta-magical race who could heal with a touch, whose essence had the power to reverse catastrophic harm or effect extraordinary physical change. But the bigger the change, the higher the toll on the achubydd. Until now, Mal had resisted begging for help because—well, for one thing, he never begged. Why the hells should a jar of fecking pickles push him over the edge?

  “I’d do anything for you or your brothers. But I’m still learning how this stuff works.” He recaptured Mal’s hand, stroking the palm, but Mal felt nothing. Not a touch. Not a tickle. Nothing. “With Alun’s curse, I could see the lines of energy running through his body, the pain backed up in his veins. But with your hand . . .” He shook his head. “It’s as if it’s not there at all. Your energy patterns are perfectly normal. They simply stop at your wrist.”

  Mal tugged his hand away and tucked it under his left arm. “Maybe you should just amputate the useless thing. At least then I could get a prosthesis.”

  “Don’t say that. We’ll find a way.” David sounded so fierce that Mal had to chuckle. His brother-in-law had more determination than any ten men, and he’d needed it to break through Alun’s armor of guilt and self-recrimination. “But, in the meantime, come and see what I’ve got for you.”

  Mal groaned. “Goddess preserve me.”

  David grinned and smacked Mal’s shoulder. “Don’t be a jerk. Accept our help. It won’t kill you.”

  “No. I’ll just wish it had. At least you didn’t bring that blasted physical therapy machine this time.”

  David caught his lower lip between his teeth, and his gaze skittered away from Mal’s face. “Well . . . as a matter of fact . . .”

  The front door creaked open, and something scraped and clattered against the slate tiles in the entryway.

  “Dafydd bach?” That sounded like . . . No, it couldn’t be. “Where the hells should I put this thing?” But even the obvious irritation in the tone couldn’t mask the beauty of a true bard’s voice.

  Mal turned a stunned look on David. “Gareth? How did you . . .?”

  David shrugged, sheepish. “Um . . . surprise?”

  Mal set his beer on the table and bolted around the corner into the living room. Sure enough, his younger brother was standing inside the door, the cables of the PT machine draped over his shoulder, the sun backlighting his golden curls like some freaking halo.

  Mal covered the distance between them in three strides and grabbed Gareth in a tight hug, pounding him on the back, one-handed. “Shite, man. I had no idea you were back from your tour.”

  Gareth returned the hug and the pounding with interest. Little brothers. Always trying to one-up their elders. “I’m not. Portland’s one of our stops. We’re playing the Aladdin tonight, so I decided to squeeze in a trip out here to the wilds of—what is this benighted place again? Oh right. Hillsboro.”

  “Smart-arse.” Mal pulled back and flicked Gareth’s hair with his fingers. “Get a haircut. You look like a revenant from the Middle Ages. Or the seventies.”

  Gareth’s expression locked down. “I like it this way.”

  Shite. It wasn’t Gareth who liked the outdated hairdo. It was his lover, gone these two hundred years and more.

  “Well. Come in and check out the house Alun and his husband have forced on me.”

  Gareth handed the machine off to David and strolled into the living room. “Seems like a nice enough place. Beats the hells out of that hut where you squatted in bleeding Faerie, right?”

  “It wasn’t a hut.”

  “A hut, Mal, face it.” Gareth pointed to the flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. “You have anything like that in Faerie?” He waved a hand at the L-shaped sofa upholstered in slubbed natural fibers. “Furniture that doesn’t numb your arse? Hells, indoor plumbing?”

  “I didn’t need it.” Mal gritted his teeth. “I had magic.”

  Sorrow flickered across Gareth’s face before he recovered his habitual sardonic half smile. “Nothing technology can’t replace. Trust me—in another few days, a month at most, you won’t miss Faerie at all.” He wandered through the archway into the dining room. “Goddess knows, I never do.”

  Mal followed in time to catch David opening the insulated blinds in the kitchen, flooding the rooms with unwelcome sunshine.

  “I don’t know why you want to live in a cave, Mal, I really don’t.”

  “Don’t you know, Dafydd bach?” Gareth sauntered over to the table and dropped into one of the ladder-back chairs, his long legs stretched out in front of him “It’s his natural habitat.”

  “Then sunlight will do him good. You too, since you spend most of your time in dark studios or concert halls.”

  Gareth snorted and got up to wander off down the hallway.

  Mal waited until he was out of earshot. “He’s spending time with you and Alun now?” he murmured. “They’ve made up?”

  “They’re . . . working on it. Gareth still gives us the side-eye sometimes because you know—” David gestured between the two of them. “Cross-species relationship. He’s still not a fan. But at least he’s not treating Alun like a monster anymore.” He held out a strange wooden object: a hinged wooden rod, each arm bowed out in the middle into a padded half circle. He brought the ends together to form a full circle, about ten centimeters in diameter. “Here.”

  Mal took it, letting it fall open again. “What is it? Some kind of kinky sex toy?”

  “No, doofus. It’s a jar opener. Aunt Cassie asked Nola to m
ake it for you.”

  Mal dropped it on the counter as if it were hot iron. “Druid crap? Not on your life. With druids, there’s always a catch.”

  “It’s not bespelled, if that’s what you’re worried about. You can buy something like it at Fred Meyer or Kitchen Kaboodle, but Nola’s is prettier.”

  “No, thanks. I’ll manage without.”

  “Honestly. You and your brothers. Does y Tylwyth Teg mean ‘stubborn as a twenty-mule-team hangover’? Go club-hopping and find someone to bang over the counter, for pity’s sake. Work off some of that temper with sex the way you used to.”

  “How many guys do you think would be interested in me now? I can’t even jack myself properly, let alone live up to my reputation.”

  David propped his fists on his narrow hips and glared. “Listen up. You’ve sustained a traumatic injury, like many other soldiers, and you’ve got a disability—a temporary disability. Don’t you think it’s time to accept that and learn to take help when it’s offered?” His expression softened. “From where I stand, you’re a hero—but not even heroes can handle everything on their own.”

  Mal scooped up his beer bottle and drained it. Damn it, he’d never had to ask for help before. Goddess knew he didn’t want to do it now. He’d had no trouble twisting people around to do his will before, when it was only a matter of taking the mickey out of Alun or Gareth or even David. But now? When he had no choice? It stuck in his craw like an enchanted fishbone. He couldn’t do it.

  “Where’s Alun today? I’m surprised he didn’t tag along to make it a full family funhouse.”

  “He’s mediating the quarterly supe council executive meeting.” David shot Mal a half-guilty glance as he jockeyed the PT machine into position next to the dining table. “I’m sure they’d have asked you, just like usual, but two of the werewolf packs had a territorial dispute and the council leaders thought Alun’s psychologist chops would be necessary.”

  Mal’s hand clenched around the empty bottle. Typical of David to try to spare his feelings, but Mal held no illusions about his usefulness to the council. He’d only been the stand-in, the understudy, the Queen’s Enforcer.