Indulge!
Was it insane to want his love at all costs, even at hidden costs, or was that the only sanity? Delicious epic romance sprinkled with rich fantasy.
When death robs artist Ethan McCarthy of his wife Elizabeth, he makes a Faustian deal with a leanan sidhe—a muse who lives on the life of the artist she inspires—100 years of service for a chance to win his wife again.
“Did you know, boy,” the feather dress fluttered about the muse as she stood and tip-toed towards the paintings, “that when humans create a piece of art, tiny bits of their life break free and animate their work? The greater the passion, the deeper and richer the life it extracts.” The muse licked the tip of her purple fingernail, traced it down the length of the painting, and then savored the smell of it with eyes shut. “In each bit of life, flourishes a tiny mist of soul. The Leanan Sidhe feed upon the life, but the soul remains in the art and gives it life.”
When death robs artist Ethan McCarthy of his wife Elizabeth, he makes a Faustian deal with a leanan sidhe—a muse who lives on the life of the artist she inspires—100 years of service for a chance to win his wife again.
“Did you know, boy,” the feather dress fluttered about the muse as she stood and tip-toed towards the paintings, “that when humans create a piece of art, tiny bits of their life break free and animate their work? The greater the passion, the deeper and richer the life it extracts.” The muse licked the tip of her purple fingernail, traced it down the length of the painting, and then savored the smell of it with eyes shut. “In each bit of life, flourishes a tiny mist of soul. The Leanan Sidhe feed upon the life, but the soul remains in the art and gives it life.”
Prologue
1980
—From the unfinished manuscript of Ethan McCarthy
I dropped my brush into a paint-smeared can of thinner. On the canvas in front of me, I had breathed life into the image of death. The brush of the angles was sharp. From writhing shades of grey, blue, and brown, the beauty of misery gazed back at me, cursing me for having created her. The painting provoked in me a pleasant revulsion mingled with morbid attraction. The genius of my work—slave though I was—mortified and thrilled me at once.
Overhead, the sunroom lights flickered. My shoulders stiffened. The appearance of the leanan sidhe, my muse and master, invariably troubled the current.
The mantel clock ticked relentlessly. A bronze peasant boy adorned the clock. Beneath his smiling gaze, a horse plodded under its burden. I felt more of an affinity with the beast than the boy. A relic from more than a century ago, the clock had been ticking since before the Civil War. How many times had it ticked since Elizabeth died? Seconds, such flimsy strands of time. But how they bind together to flog the mind of he who mourns!
A whistling breeze swept down the chimney. In its wake, an ebony cloud wound a crooked path from the flue to my shoulder. The fog slithered along my neck, through my hair and the paint-crusted stubble on my jaw, caressing and coaxing.
Fixing my eyes on the pendulum swinging below the clock’s bronze foundation, I refused to respond to the muse’s advances. Rebuffed, the mist spun itself into a vortex of tiny, black feathers. An evening gown appeared in the torrent. The raven muse, Brann Sidhe, appeared in the dress.
The birth on canvas of the seed she had sown in my dreams tantalized the fey. She licked her fingers and breathed the aroma of my sweat. Drawn to the nectar of life set free in the act of creation, her violet nail brushed the skin on my neck.
Brann’s fingers shredded my locks, which would have been iron-gray by now, were it not for our hellish bargain. The muse snaked one hand through my arm and around my back. She could be quite humanly solid when she chose to be; with me, she chose to be often.
Her purple lips murmured at the base of my rigid neck. “Never has a lover of mine so perfectly fashioned the visions I sowed as I walked in his dreams. You are an exceptional artist, Ethan.” The tip of her pink tongue wandered down my earlobe.
I flinched, but promise of a forthcoming end to my servitude emboldened me. “Are we finished here, then? You’re satisfied?” My monthly offering would conclude at sunset—sooner if she were pleased. The end of this slavery was only a wedding vow away.
“Satisfied?” Brann scoffed. “A leanan sidhe is never satisfied.” Her eyes focused on my chin. “Is that a gray hair?” A playful squeak pursed her lips. She reached a finger to my unshaven face. Tiny feathers of her sleeve scurried to keep up with her motion.
A violent riot of emotions rippled from her touch. Compelled and repelled at once, my breath hitched before I recoiled into the sickly sunlight shambling through the window panes.
Far from angry at the rejection, Brann giggled. “One hundred and seventeen years, and you look barely ten years older than when we first made our little bargain.”
Decades of scalding experience had taught me the folly of rising to her flirtatious baiting. Any response only stoked her appetite. Turning my back on her, I strode to a wall of heavy purple drapes.
“Always in such a hurry these days.” She pouted and then smiled seductively before disappearing altogether only to reappear so close to my face that the tip of her nose touched my chin. Her hair smelt of savory wine—thick, intoxicating, earthy. “Admit it, Ethan. The power of creative genius moves you. Ah, I could give you such pleasure in exchange for the three days a month I require.”
Our wager gave me fifty years in which to win Elizabeth again—heart, soul, and child. If I succeeded, God help me, it would all be worth it. One hundred years of raging despair and bondage I would gladly trade for a few measly days more in her arms.
A demon of deceit, the leanan sidhe was ever true to her word. After I had served my century, Brann restored my Elizabeth’s soul to the living vessel of a baby named Sara Elizabeth Vale, born in 1962.
The muse surveyed her feast on canvas. “It’s worth a small fortune, you know, if you choose to sell it.”
The walls of the renovated mansion were covered with tortured masterpieces. I had recently purchased the house surrounded with orange groves flourishing beneath the warmth of the Southern California sun. Tiny bits of soul and life that I sacrificed on the altar of this vile goddess purchased me a second chance to win my wife’s love again. “The life of the eccentric, reclusive artist suits me. I can transform into the seventeen-year-old version of myself, pass him off as my son, and send him to school with Sara Elizabeth. My tastes and appetites are not as voracious as yours, mistress. The few paintings I sell provide well enough for me and my ‘sons’.”
At the mention of the younger selves in which I spent most of my time, a craving sparked in the muse’s eyes. She threw her arms around my neck and pleaded, “Ethan, dearest, why do you not spend more of your days as the small boy? It slows the aging when you do.” Her gaze penetrated so deeply that I imagined she could see, hidden between the folds of the clay I currently wore, the child I had been so long ago, yet so recently. “He is so soft and warm—and playful.”
“He is only four. It doesn’t matter that he has been four for over a century; he is still four. He can’t be left unattended. The neighbors would notice.”
“But it delights me so to attend to him. They think me the doting, devoted aunt. It’s quite touching.” She drifted closer, her raven dress fluttering about her. Her fingertips strummed the flesh beneath the unbuttoned plaid I had pulled over jeans. Time should have faded and stretched the lines across my chest, but I had thwarted time. Elizabeth was right. My crime was to hunger for more instead of contenting myself with the easy abundance of our lot. When Brann’s nails found bare skin, she smiled. The beauty of her face, her weapon and her allure, distorted my rationality. “I would see to his every need.”
The muse was irresistible. She compelled to the surface, into my muscles and all along my skin, the passion of anger, the brine of injustice, the ardor of violence. It washed over me like a flood that swept me into her arms.
I ravished the purple lips with the fervor of my disgust and then pushed her away. Craving and remorse, they are the steps to my unholy waltz with the leanan sidhe. “You have me; you will never have my youth.” The coin that hung around my neck drew my hand. In its metal lay the ages of my youth, stored up to appear at my bidding, fortified against the siege of time.
Brann Sidhe retreated, gingerly wiping the corner of her mouth before she pouted. “This feast at the full moon fills me to the brim, and then I must languish for weeks, gnawing on the carcasses of the woeful creatures you lure to me.”
I flinched at her calloused words, knowing well the cost of the carcasses. This evil dressed as beauty left in her wake emaciated youth, shriveled genius, and desperate insanity. I’d watched dozens of fragile artists wither in her web. Even after decades of failure, I still tried to free them from her silken bonds. But inevitably, their obsession to birth beauty consumed them, numbing all instincts for self-preservation. There was nothing to be done. The vibrant faces grown pale, the bright eyes gone opaque, racked my every waking thought. Anger, tainted with guilt, fueled the exquisite darkness of my art—just as the muse intended.
“But you are anxious.” Brann Sidhe felt my thoughts and nourished herself with the pain she extracted from them; it is the way of the Leanan Sidhe. “You have waited already seventeen years. What difference can one day make?” She sighed and sank into the purple velvet of an armchair. “I suppose you must have your turn in our game. Go! Win her love—if you can.” The wave of her hand released me.
The amethyst curtains hid a time-warped wooden table covered with the tools of my alchemy. With mortar and pestle, I ground dried herbs and smoking liquid into paste. Hope animated my fingers. I was so close to winning my wager with the demon muse, so close to redeeming the soul I had tossed recklessly into the pot. In my mind, burned the memories of the seventeen-year-old boy that the alchemical elixir would bring forward from the past. My wife reborn, Sara Elizabeth, the young woman she had become in this purchased new life, loved that boy. She’d said as much.
But even as the drops of mercury dripped into the wooden chalice etched with runes, doubt shook my hand. The tiny bottle of silver liquid tipped and stained the wood. Elizabeth’s reincarnation, was so spritely and capricious. I could not tell if it was the influence of the new flesh her soul wore or simply the time and place that had shaped it. Of one thing I was certain, the leanan sidhe that gambled with my soul would not hesitate to conceal within her feathered bodice an ace to play against me. Her deceit lay, not in the words she spoke, but in those she left unsaid.
Unclasping the gold chain, I dipped the dangling coin into the cup and then refastened it. Never looking back, I downed the potion. My body shivered. The air around me shimmered translucent and then folded in on itself. Reaching out a hand, I took a step forward. The bones of my fingers uncurled, the skin smoothed and lost the freckles of age. My hair, reflected in the mirror above the table, thickened, and the stubble on my face disappeared into a smattering of light fuzz. The creased canvas around my eyes and mouth turned to pressed silk as I transformed into my seventeen-year-old self. The plaid shirt and jeans of the man hung limply on the sturdy but slight limbs of the youth I had once been. Only the old deck shoes still fit.
had enrolled this boy in school as Elliot Fey. As my adult consciousness faded into a corner of the boy’s future, Elliot turned to look at the muse but said nothing as he left. Instead, his first thought was to glance at the mantel clock. It was early. If he hurried, he could still make the Friday evening performance of Eurydice. Sara Elizabeth was playing the role of one of the three stones. Her rendition was to die for.
Dearest Elizabeth,
How did I find myself the slave of a creature such as Brann Sidhe? If only I could say that I was cheated, deceived, or ignorant of the consequences of my bargain. But the Leanan Sidhe do not take unwilling victims. The truth is, I made my choice—as did you. But I, unlike you, struck a bargain with full intent and understanding. And I fear that, even now, drowning in the river of ruthless tragedies that flow from her hands—although mine are in no way clean—I would make the same choice a thousand lives over, if only for the mere possibility of one life in which to entwine again the threads of our souls. This is the hope that drives me.
Listen to my story, Elizabeth, and tell me if there is redemption for such a man as I.
Forever,
Ethan
1980
—From the unfinished manuscript of Ethan McCarthy
I dropped my brush into a paint-smeared can of thinner. On the canvas in front of me, I had breathed life into the image of death. The brush of the angles was sharp. From writhing shades of grey, blue, and brown, the beauty of misery gazed back at me, cursing me for having created her. The painting provoked in me a pleasant revulsion mingled with morbid attraction. The genius of my work—slave though I was—mortified and thrilled me at once.
Overhead, the sunroom lights flickered. My shoulders stiffened. The appearance of the leanan sidhe, my muse and master, invariably troubled the current.
The mantel clock ticked relentlessly. A bronze peasant boy adorned the clock. Beneath his smiling gaze, a horse plodded under its burden. I felt more of an affinity with the beast than the boy. A relic from more than a century ago, the clock had been ticking since before the Civil War. How many times had it ticked since Elizabeth died? Seconds, such flimsy strands of time. But how they bind together to flog the mind of he who mourns!
A whistling breeze swept down the chimney. In its wake, an ebony cloud wound a crooked path from the flue to my shoulder. The fog slithered along my neck, through my hair and the paint-crusted stubble on my jaw, caressing and coaxing.
Fixing my eyes on the pendulum swinging below the clock’s bronze foundation, I refused to respond to the muse’s advances. Rebuffed, the mist spun itself into a vortex of tiny, black feathers. An evening gown appeared in the torrent. The raven muse, Brann Sidhe, appeared in the dress.
The birth on canvas of the seed she had sown in my dreams tantalized the fey. She licked her fingers and breathed the aroma of my sweat. Drawn to the nectar of life set free in the act of creation, her violet nail brushed the skin on my neck.
Brann’s fingers shredded my locks, which would have been iron-gray by now, were it not for our hellish bargain. The muse snaked one hand through my arm and around my back. She could be quite humanly solid when she chose to be; with me, she chose to be often.
Her purple lips murmured at the base of my rigid neck. “Never has a lover of mine so perfectly fashioned the visions I sowed as I walked in his dreams. You are an exceptional artist, Ethan.” The tip of her pink tongue wandered down my earlobe.
I flinched, but promise of a forthcoming end to my servitude emboldened me. “Are we finished here, then? You’re satisfied?” My monthly offering would conclude at sunset—sooner if she were pleased. The end of this slavery was only a wedding vow away.
“Satisfied?” Brann scoffed. “A leanan sidhe is never satisfied.” Her eyes focused on my chin. “Is that a gray hair?” A playful squeak pursed her lips. She reached a finger to my unshaven face. Tiny feathers of her sleeve scurried to keep up with her motion.
A violent riot of emotions rippled from her touch. Compelled and repelled at once, my breath hitched before I recoiled into the sickly sunlight shambling through the window panes.
Far from angry at the rejection, Brann giggled. “One hundred and seventeen years, and you look barely ten years older than when we first made our little bargain.”
Decades of scalding experience had taught me the folly of rising to her flirtatious baiting. Any response only stoked her appetite. Turning my back on her, I strode to a wall of heavy purple drapes.
“Always in such a hurry these days.” She pouted and then smiled seductively before disappearing altogether only to reappear so close to my face that the tip of her nose touched my chin. Her hair smelt of savory wine—thick, intoxicating, earthy. “Admit it, Ethan. The power of creative genius moves you. Ah, I could give you such pleasure in exchange for the three days a month I require.”
Our wager gave me fifty years in which to win Elizabeth again—heart, soul, and child. If I succeeded, God help me, it would all be worth it. One hundred years of raging despair and bondage I would gladly trade for a few measly days more in her arms.
A demon of deceit, the leanan sidhe was ever true to her word. After I had served my century, Brann restored my Elizabeth’s soul to the living vessel of a baby named Sara Elizabeth Vale, born in 1962.
The muse surveyed her feast on canvas. “It’s worth a small fortune, you know, if you choose to sell it.”
The walls of the renovated mansion were covered with tortured masterpieces. I had recently purchased the house surrounded with orange groves flourishing beneath the warmth of the Southern California sun. Tiny bits of soul and life that I sacrificed on the altar of this vile goddess purchased me a second chance to win my wife’s love again. “The life of the eccentric, reclusive artist suits me. I can transform into the seventeen-year-old version of myself, pass him off as my son, and send him to school with Sara Elizabeth. My tastes and appetites are not as voracious as yours, mistress. The few paintings I sell provide well enough for me and my ‘sons’.”
At the mention of the younger selves in which I spent most of my time, a craving sparked in the muse’s eyes. She threw her arms around my neck and pleaded, “Ethan, dearest, why do you not spend more of your days as the small boy? It slows the aging when you do.” Her gaze penetrated so deeply that I imagined she could see, hidden between the folds of the clay I currently wore, the child I had been so long ago, yet so recently. “He is so soft and warm—and playful.”
“He is only four. It doesn’t matter that he has been four for over a century; he is still four. He can’t be left unattended. The neighbors would notice.”
“But it delights me so to attend to him. They think me the doting, devoted aunt. It’s quite touching.” She drifted closer, her raven dress fluttering about her. Her fingertips strummed the flesh beneath the unbuttoned plaid I had pulled over jeans. Time should have faded and stretched the lines across my chest, but I had thwarted time. Elizabeth was right. My crime was to hunger for more instead of contenting myself with the easy abundance of our lot. When Brann’s nails found bare skin, she smiled. The beauty of her face, her weapon and her allure, distorted my rationality. “I would see to his every need.”
The muse was irresistible. She compelled to the surface, into my muscles and all along my skin, the passion of anger, the brine of injustice, the ardor of violence. It washed over me like a flood that swept me into her arms.
I ravished the purple lips with the fervor of my disgust and then pushed her away. Craving and remorse, they are the steps to my unholy waltz with the leanan sidhe. “You have me; you will never have my youth.” The coin that hung around my neck drew my hand. In its metal lay the ages of my youth, stored up to appear at my bidding, fortified against the siege of time.
Brann Sidhe retreated, gingerly wiping the corner of her mouth before she pouted. “This feast at the full moon fills me to the brim, and then I must languish for weeks, gnawing on the carcasses of the woeful creatures you lure to me.”
I flinched at her calloused words, knowing well the cost of the carcasses. This evil dressed as beauty left in her wake emaciated youth, shriveled genius, and desperate insanity. I’d watched dozens of fragile artists wither in her web. Even after decades of failure, I still tried to free them from her silken bonds. But inevitably, their obsession to birth beauty consumed them, numbing all instincts for self-preservation. There was nothing to be done. The vibrant faces grown pale, the bright eyes gone opaque, racked my every waking thought. Anger, tainted with guilt, fueled the exquisite darkness of my art—just as the muse intended.
“But you are anxious.” Brann Sidhe felt my thoughts and nourished herself with the pain she extracted from them; it is the way of the Leanan Sidhe. “You have waited already seventeen years. What difference can one day make?” She sighed and sank into the purple velvet of an armchair. “I suppose you must have your turn in our game. Go! Win her love—if you can.” The wave of her hand released me.
The amethyst curtains hid a time-warped wooden table covered with the tools of my alchemy. With mortar and pestle, I ground dried herbs and smoking liquid into paste. Hope animated my fingers. I was so close to winning my wager with the demon muse, so close to redeeming the soul I had tossed recklessly into the pot. In my mind, burned the memories of the seventeen-year-old boy that the alchemical elixir would bring forward from the past. My wife reborn, Sara Elizabeth, the young woman she had become in this purchased new life, loved that boy. She’d said as much.
But even as the drops of mercury dripped into the wooden chalice etched with runes, doubt shook my hand. The tiny bottle of silver liquid tipped and stained the wood. Elizabeth’s reincarnation, was so spritely and capricious. I could not tell if it was the influence of the new flesh her soul wore or simply the time and place that had shaped it. Of one thing I was certain, the leanan sidhe that gambled with my soul would not hesitate to conceal within her feathered bodice an ace to play against me. Her deceit lay, not in the words she spoke, but in those she left unsaid.
Unclasping the gold chain, I dipped the dangling coin into the cup and then refastened it. Never looking back, I downed the potion. My body shivered. The air around me shimmered translucent and then folded in on itself. Reaching out a hand, I took a step forward. The bones of my fingers uncurled, the skin smoothed and lost the freckles of age. My hair, reflected in the mirror above the table, thickened, and the stubble on my face disappeared into a smattering of light fuzz. The creased canvas around my eyes and mouth turned to pressed silk as I transformed into my seventeen-year-old self. The plaid shirt and jeans of the man hung limply on the sturdy but slight limbs of the youth I had once been. Only the old deck shoes still fit.
had enrolled this boy in school as Elliot Fey. As my adult consciousness faded into a corner of the boy’s future, Elliot turned to look at the muse but said nothing as he left. Instead, his first thought was to glance at the mantel clock. It was early. If he hurried, he could still make the Friday evening performance of Eurydice. Sara Elizabeth was playing the role of one of the three stones. Her rendition was to die for.
Dearest Elizabeth,
How did I find myself the slave of a creature such as Brann Sidhe? If only I could say that I was cheated, deceived, or ignorant of the consequences of my bargain. But the Leanan Sidhe do not take unwilling victims. The truth is, I made my choice—as did you. But I, unlike you, struck a bargain with full intent and understanding. And I fear that, even now, drowning in the river of ruthless tragedies that flow from her hands—although mine are in no way clean—I would make the same choice a thousand lives over, if only for the mere possibility of one life in which to entwine again the threads of our souls. This is the hope that drives me.
Listen to my story, Elizabeth, and tell me if there is redemption for such a man as I.
Forever,
Ethan