Frowning with the first wariness I’d seen him display, the redheaded Sidhe called, “The Seelie Court has business with this changeling, Lady Warder; she is ours. Your interference is neither needed nor welcome.”
“Not from where I’m standing, son,” retorted the old woman, jerking her head at me, at Christopher, at Jude. “She lives in Seattle, and that makes her mine. Same goes for these other two kids. Now we can do this the magic way—”
A wave of something that felt like a much larger version of what Christopher had tried to hurl at the Sidhe rolled over the parking lot, and I realized in shock that it came from her. It slammed into Tarrant and his leader, sending both of them stumbling back several steps. Behind them, the singer kneeling over their cornered compatriot leaned hard sideways as though struck by a sudden gale—but he kept the sword in place at the female Sidhe’s throat.
Without even blinking, the old lady went on, “Or I can just introduce you to Butch.” She cocked the shotgun, meaningfully. “See, I got this little theory that cold iron bullets will cause even the Sidhe a world of hurt. You Pact-breaking bastards have until the count of ten to get the hell out of my sight before I choose.”
Black eyes hard as obsidian, she lifted her weapon higher, aimed straight for the red-haired Sidhe’s heart, and readied her finger on the trigger.
Last night: a troll ambush.
This morning and evening: fairies and goblins and the creatures in the hedge, not to mention whatever the hell had been hiding under the vending machine at work.
Tonight: beings of frightening beauty, with eyes all too like the ones I’d last seen in my own mirror, who wielded abilities they seemed all too ready, willing, and able to use to bewitch an entire bar full of people. Or me, in whom they’d exhibited an interest that alarmed me even more than their swords.
Now: a woman old enough to be my grandmother threatening those same beings with a shotgun and a magical wallop of her own.
My brain tallied up these highlights of the last day or so, threw up its own personal Blue Screen of Death, and shut itself down for maintenance. This was a good thing. It kept me from babbling out nonsense or getting myself run over by a passing bus in the mad dash to get somewhere, anywhere else. Stunned into immobility and speechlessness, I kept a modicum of dignity while I took in the tableau.
It didn’t take long to break. The red-haired Sidhe glowered for a long, tense moment at the gun-toting granny; his gaze flashed once to the double barrel pointed at his chest. Then he bit out through gritted teeth, “Tarrant. Melisanda. We withdraw.” He didn’t need to add ‘for now’. Those words blazed like a brand across his fine-boned face, and trumpeted through the proud, haughty way he thrust his blade back into its sheath and beckoned to his two followers.
His weapon still out and held at the ready, his graceful form poised a heartbeat away from combat, Tarrant did not yet move. As if he couldn’t decide which of their heads to lop off first, he whipped his attention back and forth between the old woman and the singer who still held the female Sidhe at sword’s edge. “The Unseelie,” Tarrant spat, “releases Melisanda, or I go nowhere.”
“This ain’t under negotiation, boy!” The old woman’s grip on her shotgun didn’t falter for an instant, even as she shifted her stance just enough to keep Tarrant, Melisanda’s leader, and the singer in her sights at once. To the latter she bellowed, “Let the lady up, sonny, or so help me God I’ll shoot you first. You’re included in that general order to
git
.”
Midnight eyes flashed a glance no less wary than the redhead’s towards the little old lady. Then in one swift movement, the being Tarrant had called an Unseelie lifted his blade and himself away from his opponent, giving her room to shoot to her feet unhindered. One moment Melisanda was sprawled flat on her back; the next, she was upright once more and shooting a scathing glare at the singer, edged enough to wound him without the aid of the sword he’d knocked from her hand. He made no move to interfere as she retrieved her blade, but he did give her a broad, devilish grin as she stalked back to join the other two Sidhe males. The grin only broadened as she flipped him off over her shoulder.
Then the trio made their exit, Tarrant and Melisanda falling in to flank the redhead on either side. I watched them go, conscious of the weird buzzing throughout my body diminishing, as though a tide were withdrawing to the sea and leaving me trembling upon a disturbingly altered shore.
The old woman skipped two nimble steps to her right, her eyes sliding sideways beneath her fedora brim as she too monitored their departure. But the instant they were out of sight, her gun swung round to target the singer.
“Don’t make me repeat myself, sonny! Move it!”
The grin vanishing from his face, the Unseelie slowly sheathed his sword as the others had done and then held out his empty hands to either side. “I fought on behalf of the mortals, Lady Warder,” he proclaimed while turning his head in my direction, “and claim the right to ask a boon of the changeling.”
What? Who? Me?
“Kendis?” Jude stumbled to my side, her face ashen and her eyes gone huge. “Are you all right?”
As if triggered by those words, my brain snapped back online. My friend looked as dazed and as thunderstruck as I felt, but she also looked like Jude. Brown hair cut short and butch. Brown eyes with no eldritch light. Warm brown skin overlain with the pallor of a computer professional in a city where sunlight is a rare and precious thing for over half of the year. She looked normal, and human, and as I sprang to my feet, I practically bowled her over with the sudden strong rush of the hug I gave her.
“No,” I admitted. “What about you? What’re you doing out here anyway?”
Jude hugged me back hard, and I could feel her body trembling in echo of the stammer in her voice. “Looking for you! Didn’t know where you went, so I came out here, and then—well, I’m not sure, but…” She glanced around the parking lot, finishing, “Who are these people?”
Good question. I could answer it, however, for only one person of the three around us. And as Christopher was struggling to stand, I whirled to give him a little help. “Well, this one at least is Christopher, the guy I took to the hospital.”
Christopher grabbed hold of one of my hands for support, but even as he rose, he grimaced queasily; his body had to be giving him hell about getting up.
“You okay?” I asked him, trying hard not to think too closely about what he might be or what he’d tried to do to the Seelie just now.
Jude followed my lead and took Christopher’s other hand to help me get him on his feet. “Um, hi!” she chirped, trying on a tentative smile as she looked him up and down. She couldn’t quite manage it; the concern filling her eyes offset the attempted nonchalance. “Maybe we better take you back to that hospital? That other guy belted you hard, I saw it, and if you were already hurt—”
“I’ll live,” he croaked.
I wasn’t a hundred percent convinced. But before I could call him on it, the singer cleared his throat and interrupted, “If I may have a moment of your time before you go, Miss Thompson… about that boon.”
The singer. The Sidhe. The Unseelie. Whatever he was, I didn’t want to turn to look at him. Something within me tangibly thrummed at the memory of his singing, but I fought it down. The song had felt all too close to what the red-haired fey had done to me, and now I knew to fear it, to banish it from my mind with every scrap of will I had in me.
And yet, I looked at the Sidhe anyway.
He still stood with his hands spread under the gimlet eye and unwavering gun of the old woman in the hat. His beautiful features arranged in a pleasantly bland mask, he looked back at me and waited.
“There is no fucking way,” I burst out, “that you look like Elvis Presley!”
His dark brows rose, and in tones of affronted dignity he retorted, “My dear Miss Thompson, I am over nine centuries old; I was here first. Elvis Presley had the profound good fortune to resemble me.”
“You’re dressed like him,” I accused. Well, he was. Young Elvis, anyway. “And you’ve got his hair, or are you going to tell me you invented that haircut? And you were in there singing one of his songs. What’s with the impersonation act?”
Mischief gleamed in the singer’s eyes while he deadpanned, “I’ve traced my descendants to a small Mississippi town. It’s like getting in touch with your roots, only in reverse.”
“Bullshit.”
“A deep and abiding passion for the music?”
“I don’t think so. Try again.”
His vindictive grin flared up once more. “Extremely easy money. Even the Sidhe have to eat.”
That, I believed. But I was tired. Fright still sliced along my nerves, waiting to erupt again at the slightest provocation. I was horribly confused, enough to set off a migraine behind my eyes, and I’d never had a migraine before in my life. Between last night’s erratic sleep, the caffeine at work, and the alcohol in the bar—not to mention everything that had happened since the troll had jumped me on the trail—my head throbbed. “Enough of this,” I barked. “What do you
want
?”
Christopher’s hand clapped down on my shoulder. I shot him a look and found his face gone stony, unrelenting. “Whatever he’s after, don’t let him have it.”
The old woman let out a brief, sarcastic cackle of laughter and chimed in, “Boy didn’t have all his brains knocked out of him, looks like. He’s right, girl! Don’t bargain with the fey. Unseelie Court especially.”
Smoothly the Sidhe asserted, “I’m not here to bargain. Merely to convey an invitation on behalf of my Court to discuss with Miss Thompson matters of mutual interest, at any time and neutral place of her choosing.”
I didn’t like the sound of that, any more than I’d liked anything else I’d heard this evening. It made my headache pound with greater force. “No,” I shrilled, rubbing both hands across my eyes, “I can’t deal with this anymore. Not right now. Whoever you are—”
“Elessir a’Natharion at your service.”
“Whatever! Whoever you are, whatever you want, go away. I can’t cope.”
The old woman grinned wickedly, hopping a few feet closer, like a frog. “You heard what the girlie said,” she hooted, dipping her gun a short but significant distance towards a lower portion of Elessir’s anatomy. “Skedaddle, boy, unless you want to start doing your Elvis act as a soprano.”
Elessir graciously inclined his dark head and even gave a bit of a bow, elegant and incongruous with his overall country-boy-from-Memphis look. At the same time, though, his gaze slanted down to mark the new angle of the gun—and for an instant, he looked almost as queasy as Christopher. “Consider me skedaddling. Miss Thompson, should you change your mind, I can be reached by email at the address upon this card.” He dipped a hand into a pocket of his jeans and produced a small black business card, holding it out to me. As the old woman and her shotgun hopped another step nearer, he waggled the card insistently, adding, “If you would be so kind. As the Lady Warder has made her desire for my departure plain, I would like to retrieve my guitar.”
Grudgingly I took the card. In subtly gleaming silver script, it bore his name, a phone number with an unfamiliar area code, and the email address [email protected] I scowled at it.
And the old woman scowled at Elessir, jabbing her gun to within inches of his chest. “You thrall one person in that bar, I’ll know about it!”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Lady Warder.” Elessir backed off, dropped us another liquid bow, and retreated to the door of the bar. As he went he called back over his shoulder in a perfect Tennessee drawl, “But ya wouldn’t stop a man from singin’ if folks asked him t’ sing, would ya, ma’am?”
When the Sidhe was gone, the old woman eased off on her trigger, propped her shotgun up along her bony shoulders, and turned to face the rest of us. “He ain’t a man any more than I’m an armadillo,” she snorted, sounding disappointed that she hadn’t gotten to shoot somebody, “but if he doesn’t thrall anybody, I can’t interfere with him. Humph.” With that, her hard, bright gaze focused on Christopher. “And you! Jesus H. Christ, boy, what were you thinking, hitting a Seelie lord with ungrounded power like that? Are you
trying
to blow your own head off?”
Christopher couldn’t get any paler; he was already as pale as a white boy with a tan and a head injury could get. But indignation flushed his cheeks a dull red while his eyes went dark so swiftly that they seemed eclipsed. “What else should I have done?” he bellowed. “The girl was in peril!”
“For starters, you can damn well put your money where your magic is! What the hell kind of Warder do you think you’re going to be if you go giving a city a taste of your blood and don’t back it up with a pure heart?”
“I don’t want to be a Warder! You’re welcome to the job, old woman!”
“Little late for that, ain’t it, sonny? Or are you going to tell me you didn’t mean to spill your blood on Seattle ground?”
“STOP IT!” I shrieked, stamping my foot, and peevishly ignoring my own shrill explosion. They could all cope; I’d had a hard night. “Stop arguing!” In sequence, I jabbed a finger at everyone, starting with Christopher. “You really need to be in a bed.” Then the old woman. “You—lady, look, I don’t know who you are or what you did to make those people back off, but Christopher got hurt saving me last night. And it was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen, so lay off of him!” Half a beat later, it occurred to me that getting on the wrong side of a woman with a shotgun was less than smart. So I added, “Please. And, uh, thanks for the help.”
As if I’d started speaking in Swahili or grown a second head, Christopher blinked and stared down at me. But though that stunned, wondering gaze of his tugged at my attention, Jude tugged harder. Literally, for she tugged at my arm even before my finger came around to her.
“I could really use some cluing in here, chica,” she stage-whispered to me.
My finger slowly lowered. We were both in the dark, but if I was groping for a light switch, Jude probably couldn’t even find the wall. How in the world could I begin to explain?