In the grass, there was blood. Ainsel swallowed the taste of bile. The liquid trailed from where she stood -- at a red splatter across a scuff in the ground -- to the bushes lining the far end of Liam’s property. She stared into them, waiting for any rustle, any twitch, beyond the brushing breeze. There came none. Whatever was among the leaves must be dead. But she had to be certain.

Ainsel checked again that the gardening gloves she wore were fastened firmly to her sleeves. She had duct taped them in place to prevent any salt from touching her skin. The canister in her hand required more protection than a fifty-pence plastic shaker: this was the posh sort, and purer. Already, she’d poured quarter-sized piles along the fence. Now, she held it at the ready, breath bated.

Dried undergrowth crunched beneath her boots as she followed the blood path. Wind swept through the trees, making them groan. Ainsel jumped; Soiléireacht flared free and wound around her in circles. She started to reach with her hand to peel back the bush’s branches, then grabbed a stick thick enough and used that instead.

The smell was horrendous. It rolled forth in waves of rotting-meat stench, like the mound of flesh and cloth and bone at her feet had festered for weeks. She guessed that it was maybe the size of a fox. Right then and there, she wanted to be sick. Even her magic withdrew thread by thread. Ainsel braced herself before prodding the thing with her stick. Poking it made it squelch. She turned away and retched, but her mouth was dry and now she could taste the reek of death.

Letting clean wind wash over her, Ainsel took a pause. Moments later, dread pulsing through her at every heartbeat, she knelt to inspect it. The head, though intact, was so covered in blood that she couldn’t discern any features besides wads of matted hair. It might have been grey, judging by roots showing through their coating. Her eyes traveled further down the body; what she’d first thought was cloth was actually clothing. If the tunic had been this torn before the creature died, she couldn’t be sure. Its hat caught her attention anyways: long, pointed, and scarlet.

She coughed hard enough to shake her shoulders and burn her throat. Liam had promised that such things were far from his home -- yet, here was a redcap crushed beyond immediate recognition.

There were no bite marks, only fragmented shards of bone jabbing through the skin around its joints. Best as Ainsel could tell, it either had been hit by a car or fallen from a tree. Regardless, she would have to bury the thing. She’d done enough without spreading some unknown disease to the fauna of Earth.

Ready to vomit all the while, she scraped out a hole by hand -- thank the gods for gloves -- then pushed the broken body in. It landed with another shudder-inducing shlop and another wave of meat-smell. She gritted her teeth and swept dirt in to cover it.

Even the woods were silent as she slowly stood.

Ainsel grabbed the salt and sprinted at full speed toward the house. She reminded herself of a child running to their room after a horror movie -- but unlike the other night, her fright was more than justified. On the threshold, she emptied the canister before locking herself in safety.

Her shivering calmed and the sense that more goblins were lurking outside relented. She sank onto the sofa, where she wrenched off the gloves, tape and all, and glanced about for something to do with them. Tossing them in the wash wouldn’t do; a mixture of blood and dirt had congealed on the fabric. Instead, throwing them out would have to work.

Ainsel made for the kitchen, where the window prism’s reflections were absent, thanks to thickening clouds. She dumped the gloves in the trash bin, already forming a lie for when Laim saw them there. The redcap had just been roadkill on the pavement -- that was close enough. The thought gave her an odd twinge: by now, she and Liam should be telling each other the truth. But she’d seen how his anxieties tugged at him. It was there in the way he’d watch her when he knew she had a secret. And it lingered when he wasn’t saying something that he needed to say. Ainsel could have told herself that she was irritated whenever he didn’t communicate. Yet that, too, would be a lie. It wasn’t annoyance: it was worry.

She had too much of the latter to begin with. In her few weeks here, she had come tp link peace with chamomile tea. As such, she grabbed it from the cabinet, started the kettle, and lightly shook the flowers in their half-empty jar while waiting for a boil.

Once the tea was made and the mug clasped in her hands, Ainsel slouched into a seat at the table. She kicked off her boots -- black leather, not dirtied suede -- to await Liam’s return. Attempts to keep from thinking about what she’d found outside failed.

What did it mean that a redcap had been in the yard? Had it, like she wanted to believe, been injured elsewhere and dragged itself? Still, that raised the question of why. Why this yard in particular?

Often, war brought the goblins. They flooded in droves to battle sites and contested borders -- Ainsel had heard, thirteen years prior, that the Anglo-Scottish line was notorious for them. A phrase flickered into memory: red ground. When a place saw violence to such degrees, the Unseelie believed that its ground would stain red.

Liam’s property was no such place.

Unless...

Ainsel sat straighter, gazing at nothing. Almost dying was sufficiently violent, wasn’t it? Was it her fault that such a being had died here, too?

A deeper, darker idea floated to the surface -- that it had been sent.

Right away, she dismissed that fear. Redcaps were the same to her people as they were to Liam’s: animals. Things to be eradicated. But beneath the fear lay paranoia: after all this time, had someone from the Realm located her?

“No way,” Ainsel murmured. She slurped her tea and didn’t care that its heat stung.

There was no way someone could know that she’d grown sick of hiding in her own home and sought the Seelie Court’s portal cairn. The cairns’ use was not even mainstream nowadays, what with advancement of newer portal techniques.

Gravel crunching snapped her to the present. Images of last night played across her mind: his hand on her chin. Her leaning on him. Falling asleep on him. The fact that she’d admitted her crime at all was dangerous. Not because of what she’d done, but because he cared. Ainsel only hoped that he didn’t care in the way she thought he might.

The door swung open; she jumped, almost spilling her tea.

“Morning, Ainsel,” Liam said, his arms full of reusable grocery bags.

She mumbled a greeting and reached for one. He set the rest on the table; they stayed side by side, unloading groceries in heaps. Ainsel inspected them, marveling occasionally at how strange they were -- plant collagen powder, brazil nut butter, kelp noodles, vegan cream cheese. She hadn’t known that companies made vegan cream cheese, and seeing the sugar content, imagined it tasting like frosting. And why would anybody make noodles out of kelp?

Liam handed her a cucumber that must have been as long as her arm.

“Could you get the plastic off of this?”

Ainsel nodded once, peeled the wrapping away, and stepped to the rubbish bin. There,

she froze. The lid had never closed, revealing the gloves. She flipped it shut, avoiding a crisis, and placed the cucumber by the fridge. Liam bundled the bags together and gave her a smile.

It was such an ordinary scene that Ainsel found herself waiting for something to burst in and dismantle it -- either a horde of redcaps, or some revelation from Liam himself. The former would be far easier to handle.

“Liam?” she asked. “Are there any shops around here that sell knives?”

He looked up from stowing his totes under the sink. “Like a pocket knife?”

“No. An iron one.”

Liam paused, closed the cabinet door, and stared hard at her. “Isn’t iron...?”

“Deadly? Yes. But I know how to work with it.”

“Well...” He shrugged and rested against the counter, tapping the edge. “I mean, I can ask Tom if he has one you can borrow... Why do you need an iron knife?”

“So I can defend myself.” And she added, “Duh.”

“But you have your magic,” he countered.

“I can’t always use that. What if I’m in public? What if I’ve run out, or I --”

“Alright. I understand; you need a weapon. What I don’t understand is, why iron?”

For a lightning split second, Ainsel wanted to shout at him to mind his business. Instead, she took a breath, maintaining calm.

“Why?” he said again, and now, jagged panic edged his voice. “Ainsel? Do you have faeries after you?”

The air seemed to leap with energy, bright and nervous. Her calm became forced.

“It is only a precaution. Don’t jump to conclusions.”

Liam was silent, his position that of deep thinking -- fingers clasped, shoulders hunched, elbows on the countertop. When he did speak, his eyes bored into hers.

“Jumping to conclusions is the last thing I’m doing.”

Ainsel knew, in that moment, what people meant when they said something evaded them. He was implying something; the closer she came to grasping it, the further away it slipped. The feeling trapped her between reason and wild theorizing. Again, Ainsel wished that he would say whatever it was.

But he didn’t grant her wish. Instead, he made his own tea without a word and retreated to his room rather than facing her. Ainsel would not stand for that. She marched after him; Clarity caught the door before the St. John’s wort barrier was completed. Liam’s look of defeat lasted an instant; he sat at his desk, quiet, and sipped from his mug.

When she realized that she hadn’t planned this far ahead, Ainsel had nothing. She perched on the edge of his bed, glanced about, and picked up a pink stress ball from the nightstand. It sank like foam beneath her touch, then sprung back to shape.

Finally, she could bring herself to ask, “What did you mean by that?”

“By what?” He slid his laptop from his desk drawer, opened it, and began typing.

“I don’t have to specify. Tell me.”

“I just... I just don’t want to assume anything about what you think of me.”

Ainsel’s immediate response was to scoff. Her heart climbed into her throat. “What do you suspect I think of you?”

“I’ve got no bloody clue; that’s the whole point.” Liam squinted at his laptop as if trying a bit too hard to appear focused.

“Fine.” She kept a casual, if rather offput, tone -- with any luck, it would sound that he’d bothered her over something minor.

“Right,” he said, and their silence returned with a heavy helping of awkwardness.

“Liam?”

“What?”

“How long do you want me here?”

He looked up, one brow arched, autumn-sea eyes glinting. “Haven’t we been over this? You said that you’d stay however long is safe for me, and nothing has changed. I’m really as safe as I ever was.”

“Are you, though?”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Ainsel could not answer. She stared at the stress ball and gave it another squeeze.

Liam must have thought that she wouldn’t hear, for he muttered, “Oh, Christ’s sake.”

He then set his laptop aside, stood, and shook his head. The entire time, he watched her, and though well aware, Ainsel kept her head low.

“All I want is to make things as close to normal as they can be. If you’re going to stay from now on, then great! I’ll make up whatever cover story Tom and my parents will believe!” Liam held up his finger, stopping her from interrupting. “It’s enough of a miracle that you haven’t hurt me, and you wanting to be here -- you trusting me -- that is completely uncharted territory. I just need answers, Ainsel, please.”

“I have given you answers!”

White light flared. Strands of Soiléireacht snaked from her hands. Liam paled and stepped back; they inched away before vanishing.

It could have been seconds and could have been minutes before either of them moved. Ainsel bit her lip and swiped her sleeve across welling tears.

“I have given you answers,” she repeated, subdued.

He shuffled forward, hesitated, and sat beside her. She couldn’t quite decide whether it was Clarity or nervous energy that sent sparks bursting between them. Either way, she didn’t budge a centimeter, lest they come any closer together.

“I need more.” His voice was gentle now, each word crafted from the same hush that the fog brought to the forest. “I need to know why you’re so adamant on staying. And what you think of me, though I don’t expect you to be honest yet. Not about the last part.”

“It’s... it’s so easy. Being here. It’s like...” Her breaths began to tremble -- the second warning sign of crying, right after wet eyes, without fail. Nevertheless, she pressed on. “Like I can do something good because I’m in a good place. You don’t want to see what the Realm is. Everything is ugly there. Even if it looks lovely, it’s so ugly.”

“This is a good place to you?”

The thread of surprise through his tone was something Ainsel had expected: she didn’t belong here, and yet, felt as if she did.

“It’s better than the botched revolution I ran from.”

“So you are running.”

Ainsel could have slapped herself. “It was a slip of the tongue!”

“Uh-huh. Sure it was. At least it explains one of my questions. You’re staying because nothing has come after you, and I’m alright with your company, so you can relax here. Now, the other one.”

If Ainsel had been on edge before, then now, she was tumbling straight off of the cliff. She couldn’t help herself: a grin spread across her face, and a laugh sputtered out, halfway stifled. Liam was visibly perturbed, which made her laugh more.

“This is ridiculous!” she managed among gasps and giggles. “I’m a criminal, and an enemy of the state -- not to mention, a faerie -- and we’re acting like a pair of school children! ‘Oh, what do you think of me, Ainsel? Why aren’t you killing me in my sleep?’ Grow up!”

Only when Liam winced, breaking eye contact, did she realize how nasty she had gotten. Again, she swept away tears.

“Liam? I didn’t mean...”

He didn’t ask permission. Instead, he tucked his arms around her waist, and his head against her shoulder, and stayed there, clutching the draping fabric of her jumper. In this moment, there was nothing -- no Clarity, no fear, no rationality to tell her that the idea she had was terrible. So, without the latter to guide her actions, she did just as he had: she placed her fingers under his chin and nudged him so he had to look at her. Before he could pull back, in she leaned until her forehead met his. The touch felt like rain; Ainsel knew full well what he expected her to do.

That would be worlds too far.

“Let me help you with something,” she said. “Anything at all. I’m a lot of things, but I am no freeloader.”

His response sent brushes of whispered air across her skin. “Healing. You can assist me in healing. And gathering supplies from the woods. There’s useful stuff out there, you know. Stuff that can be infused with magic --”

“Don’t ramble,” Ainsel whispered.

He stopped, and his gaze trailed down toward her lips, and Ainsel’s sense of rationality snapped awake. She almost tripped on the carpet as she retreated from the bed. Liam seemed dazed, perhaps struggling to process what had happened. Though she knew that she should have apologized, at least, Ainsel fled to her room.

Luck willing, he’d not find her sobbing the morning’s frustration into a pile of pillows.