Shadow's Bane

  And then stopped and stared, but not at Ymsi. At the hall beyond him. Which was . . . different.

  “Did somebody die?” I asked, but only got those weird crunching noises back.

  I stared some more, my eyes trying to figure out what, exactly, they were seeing.

  At first, it just looked like every flower in the garden had been squashed into my hall for some reason. Which wasn’t that odd, since trolls have a sincere appreciation for beauty and a love of growing things. Sven, the strawberry blond twin, was currently consumed by the warrior arts, practicing regularly with the Light Fey contingent in the backyard, who Claire’s relatives had sent to guard her. But Ymsi didn’t seem interested in learning how to kill things; he had all but taken over Claire’s already-sizeable garden, adding a whole section just for flowers.

  He often brought me the fruit of his labors stuffed into mason jars or old coffee tins, to brighten up my bedside table. But that’s not what he’d done here. Or, no, I thought, my concern level ramping up a few dozen notches. Not him. Because Ymsi might be talented, but he hadn’t managed this.

  “Pretty,” Ymsi said, stealing a glance at me.

  I nodded. That was one word for it. Of course, I could think of a few others.

  Because these flowers weren’t in jars or vases or cans. They weren’t even piled in heaps on the floor. They were growing out of the floor—and the walls, and the ceiling.

  Especially the ceiling, I thought, staring upward, where great swags of cherry blossoms festooned the old hardwood planks, dipping low enough to brush my head. Some were on new-growth branches that crisscrossed over the plaster; some came straight out of the old, dusty, been-dead-for-a-century-or-so-now boards. And they were thick, like spring on the National Mall, all squeezed into the area by the stairs, just garlands of them, massing overhead and drooping down the walls—where they could find room. Because the walls were already laden with some kind of growth of their own, and what the hell was that?

  I looked closer, because it looked like someone had installed moving wallpaper. Bright green moving wallpaper. Which was busy thrusting out little pods that burst open to spew something at us every few—

  Oh. I figured it out when I noticed what Ymsi was up to. Because he had a basket in his lap, and some papery brown things cracking in his fist, and was busily doing what trolls did best. Only, this time, the fat green clusters of pecan pods were raining down nutty goodness faster than he could eat it.

  Which was pretty damned fast.

  Although, in fairness to Ymsi, he was also being besieged by other crops growing up from the floor. The parquet floor, I realized, blinking. Because the ceiling was century-old cherrywood, the house having been built back before such things were scarce, and the walls were—of course—pecan. But the floor was a scuffed old parquet that I’d never paid much attention to, like to wonder what woods, exactly, had made it up.

  Magnolia, oak, and apple, I thought, taking in the huge, white, waxy blooms, the tiny brown acorns, and the rampant pink blossoms that made it look like the floor near the stairs was growing a crazy carpet. One that still followed the zigzag pattern faithfully. Well, except for where Ymsi had harvested parts of it, with the half of his basket that wasn’t stuffed with pecans overflowing with the apples that kept bubbling up from the chaos, because the whole growth thing appeared to be set on fast-forward.

  “Well, shit,” I said.

  Ymsi gave me a commiserating look, and proffered an apple.

  “Thanks.”

  I took a bite.

  It was good.

  Of course it was.

  I started wondering if I could fit through the tiny round window at the end of the hall, when Ymsi thwarted my escape plans by picking me up and depositing me in front of the stairs. Where a cascade of apples he couldn’t reach had overflowed the floor design and were bump, bump, bumping down the steps alongside my feet. And where the pecan pods hung from actual branches, brushing my head as their produce erupted at me, like brown rain, and then rolled everywhere.

  I somehow got downstairs without breaking my neck, and peered inside the kitchen door.

  Yep.

  That’s what I’d thought.

  “Dory! You’re up!”

  I was also halfway turned around and headed for the front door, but the desperation in Claire’s voice stopped me. Because her housekeeping frenzy wasn’t, as I’d supposed, due to irritation at Louis-Cesare, but to something else entirely. Something worse.

  Something sitting at the kitchen table, perched on a stool with a cutting board in front of him, holding out a finger. “Dorina!” The lilting voice made my name sound like a cascade of bells. “Come and see. I am wounded.”

  It was said with all the panache of a dying hero announcing a mortal blow.

  I sighed and turned back around. “Hello, Caedmon.”

  “Come,” he demanded. “Kiss it better.” He waggled the supposedly injured digit at me.

  I sighed again and walked into the kitchen.

  Most women would have been happy to kiss it, or anything else Caedmon chose to name. He was Claire’s soon-to-be father-in-law, but he didn’t look it. I don’t know how to adequately describe how he did look, because there’s simply no practical equivalent. We’re talking seven feet of finely muscled leanness; hair like actual sunlight, as in it glowed from within; eyes like genuine emeralds, deep green and glinting with an odd mix of wit and wisdom; and a face that would have been literally stunning if it wasn’t currently pouting like a child.

  Or maybe not a child, I thought, as one side of those sculpted lips edged upward, barely a fraction of an inch. And yet miraculously changed the expression from sass to seduction. He waggled the finger at me again.

  “Healing’s not really my specialty,” I told him, leaning against the table. “I’d only hurt it more.”

  The not-smile edged up another tenth of an inch. “How much more?”

  He sounded intrigued.

  “Let me see your knife.”

  “Dory!” Claire sounded a little shrill, like she was afraid we were going to duel it out right there in her kitchen. Which wasn’t likely, even if I’d been in any shape to take on a king of the Light Fey. Because where was the room?

  The kitchen wasn’t as bad as my hallway, but there had been some . . . additions. Caedmon was king of what was known on Earth as the Blarestri, one of the three great houses of the Light Fey. It wasn’t their real name, of course—which we mere mortals weren’t good enough to have—just a placeholder meaning “the Blue Fey.” But it was descriptive of their realm, high in the mountain fastnesses of Faerie, with blue skies all around and lush greenery everywhere. Because nature loved Caedmon.

  Literally, I thought, as a little vine tried to twine itself in his long, flowing hair.

  “There, there,” he said absently, and pulled it out, to wind it around the back of a chair instead.

  It had a lot of company.

  Claire’s window-box garden, where she grew the herbs she used for cooking, had exploded, for lack of a better term. It was now a window jungle, one leaning not outward, toward what looked like late-afternoon sun, but inward, scrawling across sink and countertops and floor like a toddler’s drawing. And then climbing here, there, and everywhere, just to get a little closer to the glowing fey sitting at the table.

  It wasn’t the only one. The bedraggled pot of begonias that Claire had brought inside and placed on top of the fridge had draped the appliance in dark green leaves. They were huge and healthy now, and framing clusters of crimson flowers that brushed the floor on either side. They made the old, dented fridge look like it was wearing a long red wig, one more luxurious than Claire’s currently frazzled locks.

  “Stop it,” she muttered, as another mass suddenly plopped over the fridge front, like bangs, making the resemblance that much more startling.

&nb
sp; “What’s for dinner?” I asked, because priorities are priorities. And if I had to deal with Caedmon, I was going to need energy.

  “Soup,” she said curtly, and then jumped when a spider plant, including pot, suddenly slammed in the screen door from the outside, pulling itself along on its weird little handlike protrusions, earthworming toward its god. “Oh, for—Dory!”

  “Got it,” I told her, scooping the crazed thing up. And presenting it to Caedmon, who sighed as it wound its creepy little vine-hands about him, in a fervent embrace.

  “At least something loves me,” he said soulfully.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, taking the—thankfully glass—cutting board and wailing on some carrots before they sprouted. Because he was clearly too injured with his paper-cut-like wound to manage it himself, and I wanted to eat already.

  “Helping with dinner.”

  Claire, looking tired and sweaty, shot him a glance over her shoulder.

  He failed to notice, being too busy petting his new admirer. “I always like to be a thoughtful guest.”

  “Uh-huh. And why are you guesting, exactly?”

  The beautiful green eyes widened. “Why, to see my grandson.”

  “And?”

  “Oh, how remiss of me.” Caedmon took my hand and kissed it playfully. “And your lovely self, of course.”

  I sighed and looked skyward—

  And got clobbered by a bushel of apples. Because a tree branch had inched its way in from the hall, pushing aside the old boards of the ceiling until it found a more formidable foe in the brass ship’s lantern in the center. And then dropping half a bushel of fruit during the epic battle between them.

  Onto my head.

  “Caedmon!” Claire whirled on him, hearing my surprised yelp. And then hurried over, wiping her hands on her apron and reaching for me, because her old profession—before she traded it in for fey princess—was nurse.

  “I’m okay,” I told her. I’d managed to dodge most of them.

  “By luck! She’s supposed to be recuperating,” she told Caedmon furiously.

  “Really?” He looked me over. “Ill?”

  “Injured.”

  “Ah, I can relate.”

  “You are not injured!” Claire snapped, grabbing a box of Band-Aids from a cabinet and slamming them down in front of his paper cut.

  Caedmon looked at them sadly. They were SpongeBob, which I suppose he felt was lèse-majesté. He opened the box anyway.

  “And can you please stop this?” She gestured around at the leafy carnage.

  “It will stop on its own in a bit,” he assured her.

  “I’d prefer it to stop now,” she said, as several apples plopped into the soup.

  Claire went to scoop them out, while I watched a little tendril on Caedmon’s shoulder wind around the point of his ear. “Why can’t you stop it now?” I asked.

  “The same reason I don’t simply heal my wound. Too much power buzzing about.”

  “What?”

  He grinned, and flexed SpongeBob at me. “I might grow an extra finger.”

  I decided to quit while I was ahead, but Claire was braver than me. “And why do you have so much power ‘buzzing about’?”

  The perfect lips made a slight moue. “There was a bit of a dustup getting through the portal. Oh, nothing serious,” he assured us. “Although it’s sweet of you to be concerned for me.”

  Claire didn’t look concerned; she looked pissed. And sounded it, too. “Dustup? I thought you said everything was fine at home, and that’s why you could afford to leave?”

  “Well, yes, it is,” he agreed. “At home. But we weren’t at home—”

  “We?”

  “Heidar and I.”

  And now Claire did look concerned, and with reason. Heidar, her fiancé and Caedmon’s son, had recently gone on a scouting trip into territory controlled by another great fey house, and not one of the nice ones. The Svarestri—aka the Black Fey, due to the color of their armor—were heavily involved with the group currently trying to go Chuck Norris on our asses.

  “You were with Heidar?” Claire said sharply.

  “Yes—”

  “Where is he? Is he all right? You said there was an attack—”

  “It was nothing,” Caedmon said, soothingly. “I sent him through one portal, and took another myself, although it was a bit of a ride to get there—”

  “Why did you take another?”

  Caedmon looked like he was debating something, possibly lying.

  “Caedmon!”

  “The first disappeared . . . somewhat abruptly. The Svarestri caused a landslide—”

  “Landslide?” Claire suddenly sat down.

  “Heidar made it through well before,” Caedmon assured her. “I sent him back to one of our staging areas and fought my way clear—”

  “And came here. And not to see Aiden, as you said!” Claire accused, talking about her and Heidar’s child, and Caedmon’s current heir.

  “I do want to see him,” Caedmon protested.

  “That would be a first!”

  Caedmon looked put-upon. A little cactus in the middle of the table bristled, as if about to come to his defense. Claire threw a dishrag over it.

  “You know we’ve been through this,” Caedmon said. “Our women raise the male children until they are old enough to handle a sword, after which the men in the family take over. To do otherwise would break tradition, and also make him appear—”

  “Caedmon!” Claire’s complexion was getting dangerously close to her hair color. “Why. Are. You. Here?”

  He sighed prettily. “Oh, very well. And while I was visiting my charming grandson, I was wondering if I might borrow a little something.”

  “Borrow?” Claire looked confused, probably wondering what we had that would interest a fey king. “Borrow what?”

  “Nothing much, just—ah, there he is!” Caedmon smiled and held out his arms. “My boy!”

  I looked up to see a towheaded Aiden, still in his jammies, because when you’re a year old, any time is jammie time. He was looking angelic, all big blue eyes and blond hair like his daddy, and standing in the kitchen doorway next to my own little bundle of terror. Who was Porky-Pigging it in a ratty T-shirt and dragging a battered pink bear, which had already lost most of an ear. I sighed.

  “Gran’pa!” Aiden raced across the kitchen floor, which had mercifully not yet sprouted anything, and jumped. And was plucked up and spun around by an obviously delighted fey king, who, okay, maybe had wanted to see his grandson a little bit. Because he was grinning hugely.

  “How you’ve grown!” he told Aiden, lifting him overhead, where the apples politely drew back out of the way. “Such a fine, handsome boy.”

  I picked up Stinky, who was not a fine, handsome boy, but deserved some love, too. “Do you like your bear?” I asked him, which had traces of soot on it in addition to the badly mangled left ear, but was otherwise holding up pretty well.

  He nodded, but I clearly didn’t have his full attention. The wizened, fuzzy face, which sort of looked like a monkey, a Muppet, and a snaggletoothed cat had met up in a blender, was focused on the sword at Caedmon’s side instead. It was a beautiful thing I hadn’t noticed because he’d been sitting down. And because I’d never seen him feel the need to go about armed while inside before.

  “Not yet, dear boy,” he told Stinky, smiling down at the face of his grandson’s staunch friend. “That day will come soon enough. Enjoy the time you have now.”

  “Caedmon!” Claire was nothing if not persistent. “Borrow what?”

  He looked back at her, blinking, while holding Aiden up again so that he could pick a fruit. “Oh, nothing much, my dear. Just a few dozen dragons.”

  Chapter Nine

  I was saved by the bell—the one on the fro
nt door, to be exact, which took that moment to start clamoring for attention. I gladly gave it some, because the decibel level in the kitchen was mounting. And because I was hoping it was the Girl Scouts, since it didn’t look like I was going to be getting dinner anytime soon.

  It wasn’t the Girl Scouts.

  It took me a second, because it looked like I had a bunch of clean-cut Mormons on the stoop, who’d decided that they needed extra support for the crazy house, so had brought the whole congregation. But then I noticed that the smiling faces were a little too fixed, the eyes were a little too blank, and the air above their heads was shimmering a little too much. And, suddenly, it was like those dot paintings when you finally see the real picture hidden by the pattern.

  Or when you see the large creatures hidden by glamouries that didn’t fit, because Mormons are not twelve feet tall.

  I’d have been worried, despite still being inside the house’s formidable wards, because we’d gotten some less-than-friendly visitors in the past and some of them had been tricky. But I had Stinky on my hip, who had a sixth sense for trouble yet was just calmly gnawing on his bear. And then I noticed a familiar pink satin clutch tucked under one burly guy’s arm.

  And felt my spine relax.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have any muffins?” I asked hopefully.

  “Not today.”

  “Worth a shot.”

  I got out of the way.

  The missionaries shoved their way in, and despite the fact that the front door was a double one, it was a tight fit for a few. At least, that was judging by the scraping sounds and the paint flaking off on either side. And by the heaviness of the feet causing the glass in the transom to chime as they passed underneath it.

  And, okay, that was weird. Because I knew Olga’s boys, and they weren’t that big. Most of them were family, various relations she and her late husband had helped come over and who she was sponsoring until they started to figure things out.

  These didn’t strike me that way, and not just because of the size. The adolescent trolls I’d met had a cheerful innocence about them, like Ymsi with his flowers or Sven with his sword practice, which had caused even the jaded royal guards to crack a few grins, although they usually stifled them when they saw anybody watching. But the point was, the twins were endearing.