"You're raw and untrained. It's all there, but your young mind doesn't quite know what to make of it. It misfires. It misidentifies. Your lore is correct, yet you are not applying it where it ought to be applied." He lifted a glass. "It's safe to accept my food and my drink. Just don't ask me for salt." A soft laugh, as if sharing a private joke.
Again I opened my mouth to protest. But what good would that do? I knew this wasn't just a man.
Not a man? Not human? What the hell else could he be?
"I don't understand," I said finally.
He gave me a sympathetic look. "I know. But you're a smart girl, and you'll figure it out as soon as you admit there's something to be figured out. About me. About Cainsville."
"What about Cainsville?"
"What about it indeed. Just an ordinary little town. So very ordinary."
"If you have something to tell me--"
"That's more like it. But I can't. Not my place. I'm just"--he pursed his lips, as if choosing his words--"making contact. I have what you want, Olivia. I could get metaphysical and say that I have what your soul wants, what your heart and mind want, what you need to be happy and complete in your very uncommon life. And I do. But for now, I'll settle for saying that I have the answers you want. Particularly the ones you want most."
"Which are those?"
"You know, just as you know, deep down, that when I say I knew your parents, I'm not talking about Arthur Jones and Lena Taylor."
He reached into his pocket and tossed something to me. I caught it. A tooth. No, more like a tusk. A couple of inches long, carved with strange markings and capped with copper.
"A boar's tusk," he explained. "Or the tip of one. Keep it with you. For protection."
"From what? The hounds?" I said before I could stop myself.
He smiled that indulgent you-are-such-a-child smile. "You don't need protection from the hounds, Olivia. They mean you no harm. Nor do I. Others, however . . ." He stepped toward me and lowered his voice. "Beware and be wary, bychan."
Then he set the champagne flutes on the floor and started to walk away.
"Who are you?" I called after him.
He glanced back. "Who? Is that really your question?"
"What are you?"
I met his gaze, and I heard the hounds baying, and I heard horses snorting and hooves pounding, and I smelled sweat and musk and wet earth.
"Cwn Annwn," I said, whispering the unfamiliar words as if they'd been pulled from me. I expected him to frown, to ask, "What?" But he only chuckled, and then he walked away.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
After the man left, I wandered back toward the party, dazed, as if I'd taken another blow to the head, the world fuzzy and off-kilter, the ground unsteady.
"Liv?"
I saw James hurrying toward me and snapped out of it.
"Hey," I said. "Sorry. Restroom break took a little longer than I thought."
He laughed. "It happens. I was starting--" He glanced at my hand. "What's that?"
I lifted the boar's tusk. "I found it on the floor. At first I thought it was a pendant, but . . ."
"It looks like a tusk."
I tried not to seem relieved. I hadn't dared identify it, half expecting James wouldn't see what I did.