Except Clyde, who glanced up dully. “Gallow.” He blinked, and his face settled back into sullen shock.
“Clyde. Jesus. Panko?”
The foreman pointed at the coroner’s van.
“No.” Jeremiah didn’t have to work to sound shocked. “What the hell?”
“Someone had a knife. Where’d you go?”
“Ended up outside.” Just like a sidhe—lie with the truth. “I thought, that girl…”
“What girl?” Clyde scratched at his cheek gingerly. His gaze was very far away. Maybe shock, or just too exhausted to respond. A stripe of drying blood on his cheek smudged as he rubbed at it with his knuckles. His hand dropped back down again, a limp, callused fish. “Cops took my name. Fuck.”
“You didn’t do anything.” Fat lot of good it would do, though. The truth never shielded anyone. Not in this world, certainly never in Summer or Unwinter… and, he’d bet, not even beyond the Second Veil itself, in those realms even the fullborn feared to tread.
“Yeah, well.” Clyde shook his head. “One minute, everything’s fine. The next, Jesus. All hell breaks loose.”
He would probably be repeating that for a while. A mortal trick, seeking acceptance through repetition. Just like pacing outside a hospital room, wearing a rut in the linoleum as your wife tried to breathe with the aid of mortal machines, her fragile body shattered by mischance.
Jeremiah shut his mouth. Stood close enough to feel the other man’s heat. Death smelled like brass, and tasted of the bitterness in his throat now.
Just like a sidhe to spread this chaos. She’d been trying to escape, but…
Had she even thought of the trouble a quirpiece would spread in a human hole, with alcohol lowering inhibitions and—
That’s not the real point, Jeremiah. He winced as his conscience pinched him. He had probably led the rider right to her, and wasted the lives she hadn’t even thought about ruining. That was the trouble with being tainted by the Fair Folk, the Strangers, the Gentle Ones.
You could never be innocent.
“Jesus Christ,” Clyde kept repeating, rubbing at his face.
Jeremiah agreed completely.
One in the morning, the entire trailer park still and quiet. Porch lights burned, and the serious domestic disturbances had either finished over dinner or wouldn’t get under way for another hour or so. He eased his truck down a long shallow grade and back up, going slow out of habit. Their trailer—only his now, since Daisy was gone—was at the top of another slight rise, the very last on a loop of crazycracked concrete. The garden she’d worked so hard over was a shambles, vines clutching at the fence he’d cobbled together, weeds thriving.
The Garnier place next door was dark. Melody had thrown Paul out a week ago, and the man was probably still on a bender somewhere. He’d be crawling back after the weekend, repentant and filthy. In the meantime, it was quiet, and the Garnier kids were probably enjoying it that way. On the other side, Mama Loth’s ancient cave of a trailer listed, looking like the next good wind would blow it away.
The old lady wasn’t sidhe, but she wasn’t quite mortal, either. The world was more crowded than mortals ever dreamed, even if they spun themselves stories out of hints and moonlight. If the religious or the door-to-door salesmen came through the park, they often avoided Loth’s home. Those who didn’t had a certain hard gleam in their gazes, a certain aggressiveness in their stride—but after they mounted her steps and knocked at her rickety screen door, there was no more trouble from them.
Ever.
Loth’s sagging rocker on the gap-boarded porch moved a little, pushed by the unsettled breeze. Behind them, the field sloped down to a stand of trashwood, and there was even a grove of pale young beeches behind the scruffy bushes. The field was reasonably level and studded with refuse, but he hadn’t stepped out to practice in a long time.
Tonight might change that, though. The urge to hurt something, even just empty air, itched under his skin.
The truck rumbled into its oil-spotted parking space under the listing carport Daisy had laughingly called “the arbor.” She’d planted climbing roses, and coaxed them up the supports… but they were dead now, brown leaves and thorns reaching their bony knotted fingers for the roof.
He twisted the key, drew it loose. The engine shut itself off.
The cops hadn’t asked him a single question, assuming he’d already been spoken to. Clyde thought he’d been swept outside in the chaos of the fight. Panko’s van still crouched back near the Wagon Wheel; there was nobody to come pick it up. At least, not unless the cops could find someone who cared. Panko’s neurotic wife was never going to be mocked for fearing the cellar ever again.
Monday morning at the jobsite was going to be awkward at best. Should he dislike himself for dreading the disruption of the routine, inevitable questions, mortal curiosity hemming him in?
Jeremiah scrubbed at his face, thin skin moving over bone. Stubble scraped his fingers. Daisy would have been frantic with worry at his lateness, standing in the door outlined in golden light, her hair a mess of ruddygold curls because she would have been pushing her hands back through it and—
Stop it. He opened his left fist. The quirpiece glinted; he walked it over his knuckles like a gambler’s shadowcoin, felt the sardonic scowl twisting his mouth down. The truck’s engine popped and pinged, metal cooling.
The lance’s marks itched. Restless and unsatisfied.
“She looked like Daisy.” His own voice startled him. When he looked up again, the truck’s windows were fogged. How long had he been sitting here, staring at the gleam of the quirpiece, flipping over his knuckles one by one, his hand moving without any real direction on his part? Round and silver, its surface brushed with faint scratches, it caught a stray gleam from the porch lights.
He should have left it in the bar. In the morning it would be a dead leaf, or moss. He would likely never see the redheaded sidhe again. Gone like a whisper, gone like the wind.
Jeremiah opened the truck door, climbed out. Stamped up his porch stairs. He still remembered Daisy bringing him cold beer while he measured and sawed and hammered, and her delight when he’d finished. You’d’ve thought he’d built her a palace.
“I would’ve,” he muttered as he twisted the knob. It was never locked. Without Daisy here, there was no reason. He couldn’t have cared less if someone stole anything inside; her few bits of jewelry were under a chantment and safe enough. “If she’d wanted one.”
The living room looked like a tornado had hit it. Clothes, fast-food wrappers, the television with its big blank hole in the screen—his fist still smarted a little, remembering that night. It had made him stop bringing hard liquor home.
A low glow came from the kitchen—they always left that light under the cupboards on, since Daisy was so frightened of the dark. He never turned it off now; it was the only thing that greeted him. The whole place smelled dusty, sour, like nobody in here breathed the air.
Like an open grave.
He slapped the quirpiece down on the counter next to a stack of plates slowly congealing together. He’d long since stopped washing them, only occasionally rinsing off a spoon if he needed it.
The fridge was bare and white inside. Not even a bottle of beer. He’d found out the milk was turned this morning, and revulsion crested inside him again as he thought of it.
Milk turned. Means the sidhe’ve been around. Or just that I left it in there for a month.
He swung the fridge door closed. Stood in the half-dark, emptiness pressing against him from every side. It was a struggle not to find something to break before he trudged back to the bedroom, his shoulders aching and the rest of him shaking with tired rage.
FOR THAT WHICH MATTERS
12
She spread her fingers against the skinny, age-blackened door. A slight tingle against her palm told her he was home, and she pushed just a little. The wood flexed, trembling, and she stepped through it like the curtain of seeming it was.
/> “Stone! What are you doing here?” He looked stretched, with a wight’s long fingers and lean hungry face; no matter how much he ate, Parsifleur Pidge would never fatten. His skin was old bark, complete with moss in the crags, and his hole was dank and stuffed with odds and ends.
“I wish to leave an item in your care.” Robin didn’t dare give him more. Confusion would help her here.
She dug in her pocket, ignoring Parsifleur’s cry of dismay.
The glass ampoules were there, a quick sparkle against her fingers. The amber fluid inside them coruscated, and she glanced at the Twisted woodwight, who was rubbing his twiglike hands together. Outside his hole, there was a rumble—the subway, a giant dozing worm-beast who occasionally dreamed.
Parsifleur’s blue-sheened eyes were wide and wet, and the bright rags hanging on his wasted frame quivered. It could be that her visit made him concerned.
Or it could be something else.
“You may cripple over the border and take these to Summer Herself for a reward, Pars.” The smile skinning her lips back wasn’t nice, but it was certainly gleeful. “Aren’t you happy about that?”
“Don’t want to. Don’t want you here. Go away.” He was actually wringing his hands, and Robin’s skin rippled into gooseflesh.
She did not feel the cold, much—no Half did short of deep-ice or a steppe’s keening, once they had breached Summer or Unwinter’s borders or discovered the warming breath. So it was something else, and Robin stilled. The music under her thoughts did not dim, but it took on a sonorous quality she did not quite like. While she watched Parsifleur’s uneasy fidgets, the feeling grew worse.
“Please,” the Twisted sidhe half moaned. “Don’t stay. Always trouble following on your wings, and warrior I am not.”
“I return so often because you’re trustworthy, Pidgins.” But you may not be. “Keep this for me, and it shall be good night, Stone bless, and good riddance.”
“I’ll not!” His skin creaked, moss shivering free as he lunged. He spread himself against the door, skinny arms wide and thin legs braced. “Go. Flee. Not this way. Other way.”
Right into the arms of whoever visited thee before me, Parsifleur? She shook her head, a single curl falling in her face and tossed away by the motion. The small package burned against her fingers. “Now, why would I wish to go into the dark, Pidgie?”
For the other road from his hole was into the subway’s maze. The cold iron there was perhaps why he had twisted as he had, but she did not care enough to barter for such information. It was enough that he couldn’t use chantment against her, being Twisted, and besides, she often brought him bits of living oak to ease the pain of crippling.
He owed her.
“Please!” The water swelling in his eyes might be a clever ploy, but who could tell? “They must have scented you. They’ll come back—go, go!”
Come back? Does he mean Unwinter’s kin came visiting? Later she would think she should not have hesitated, her mouth opening slightly and the song blooming deep below her throat. It came from a place other than breath and biting, past tasting and swallow. Parsifleur must have seen it on her face, for he cowered against the door of his bolthole…
… so his was the life they took when their curved, silver-chased flintblades pierced the veil of seeming and found flesh.
Robin stumbled back over piles of oddments, her heels sinking in and her ankle threatening to twist before she saved herself with a fishlike sideways jump. Parsifleur hung against his illusion-shell door, the light in his wet eyes dimming as his mouth worked weakly, and the song burst from her throat full-born.
They were cold pale barrow-wights, not bark-skinned or Twisted as poor Pidge had become, their eyes alight with Unwinter’s will and their grasping fingers clasped about hilts chased with moon-gems. It made no difference, for the key shifted and Robin’s song dropped a full octave, becoming a river of sharp-edged sunshine that blasted the illusion-door and the solid concrete wall on either side with considerable force. There was a rumble, a high keening, and twisted steam-threaded bodies flopped as Robin inhaled, backing up still further in a quick, light-clattering shuffle. Here, with enough breath and a means of escape to hand, she was slightly more sanguine about her chances.
Still, such a broad spread of the song’s force would not last long. Robin was no warrior. Fleeing was always better, using the song to distract or stun so she could escape.
And yet.
Orange-veined and smoking, the ruin of Parsifleur Pidge crumbled to the floor of his hole, and she spared another few counts of precious breath to sweep through his remains and make certain. The song crackled, full of the hot sough of a forest fire’s breathing under the organ notes. It was all she could do, burning the wood-spirit that remained, however twisted by the cold iron that had been driven through his ley, so that he could not be taken by Unwinter and forced to serve as part of the Hunt.
Or worse, the Sluagh’s ghostly cavalcade.
Then she had to breathe again, sucking in smoke-laden air and conscious of the rumbling silence that was full of little hisses and twitches as the wights found they were not quite torn from living’s embrace just yet.
Not until she could gather more air, and bring more killing sunshine into this dark hole.
“Ragged,” one of them snarled in the darkness. “He wantsssssss you.”
No need to ask who. Only Unwinter would send barrow-wights. He’ll have to catch me first.
She did not say it. Save the breath for that which matters, the first lesson she learned in Summer’s beautiful, treacherous Court. Now her lungs were full, and her shoulders hit the weeping concrete wall next to the back door. If she killed now, any reinforcements arriving later would have trouble tracking her over cold iron, and she could use her own quirpiece’s echoing to find the trail of the knight who had saved her earlier. All things should be so simple for the one who had crafted it, and she, unlike most sidhe, did not have to worry about the chantment fading with dawn’s cold rise.
Later, though. First, the Ragged Robin had to survive.
They came for her, their eyes lunar sparkles in the cold dimness, and Robin’s back, scraping against the wall, ran with prickles and danger, again. The sensation was useless, so she discarded it and opened her mouth completely, letting her throat relax and the music swell out. As long as she was breathing, they would not catch her here.
The hot salt water on her cheeks was a weakness, and she denied it, even as she sang Parsifleur’s assassins into dissolution. All but one, and that one was her own self, scrambling through the escape-tunnel on hands and knees, hoping the wights were the only pursuers she would face tonight.
It does not matter, Robin. Run now, and pray for absolution later.
There was no absolution to be had, but Robin ran.
A REVERSAL OF ANGER
13
Morning sun striped his face. He kept forgetting to close the blinds. Jeremiah Gallow woke flung on his back, a chill running through his bones and the sudden sense that he wasn’t alone filling his head with tingling danger-heat.
He sat up in one motion, the lance sending jabbing warnings up his arms. The bedroom was deserted, as always, but there was…
He sniffed, cautiously. Recognized the salt and crisp goodness.
Bacon? And a woman’s voice, speaking softly. A crackling.
Jeremiah shut his eyes. Rubbed at his face again. He didn’t dare to think her name.
He stepped blindly into his boots, stood up from the frowsy bed and its yellowed sheets, moved down the short hall floored with cheap nylon carpet. Daisy’s sewing room opened off to the side; she’d sometimes talked about what would happen if she caught pregnant. They would turn the sewing room into a nursery, blue for a boy or pink for a girl. He would train the child to be free sidhe—though he never told his wife so—and she would quit her job at the restaurant; he’d go for management so she could stay home or just simply glamour what they needed. He might even tell her, after a w
hile, what he was.
The living room was full of sunlight, too. The French door to the back was wide open, the clawed and broken screen pulled to. The smell of a hot griddle rode the golden air.
The living room was still a mess of trash bags and dirty clothes, but she was down on her knees, the blue dress pooling on harsh orange-patterned nylon. Slim, delicate fingers patted at the hole in the television’s face, and her hair was a glory of reddish curls. Her soft speech sharpened a little; cracks and slivers of glass eased together seamlessly.
It was no mortal tongue. Pure sidhe, the Old Language falling from her mouth like rain. Chantment.
Other glass slivers hopped up, melding themselves into the hole. It shrank, a reversal of anger, and she kept patting as if the television were a small shivering animal needing to be soothed. Her shoulders were pale flawless cream, and the coffeemaker clicked on in the kitchen. It began to gurgle and sigh, providing a counterpoint to her soft melody.
His mouth was dry.
The last sliver of glass hopped obediently from under the couch. How had it gotten there, of all places? It whooshed across the room like a dart, and she smoothed it in. Then she ran her palms down the huge, ancient television’s curved face, stroking. The almost-smoky fragrance of sidhe magic blended with the sudden good smell of coffee and the outright-luscious reek of bacon, and the glass screen flickered once. A moonlit flash, and she peeled her hands away with a half-pained flick of those long, pretty fingers. Unpainted nails, soft skin, and as she glanced toward the kitchen those reddish curls bounced and slid.
She rose, and the blue dress fell. Barefoot, her calves shaped like a dancer’s. Muscle moved smoothly under that satin skin as she reached the kitchen, and Jeremiah made a sound deep in his throat.
He couldn’t help himself.
“You’re up.” A husky contralto, not Daisy’s sweet cracked soprano. The coffeemaker gurgled afresh, in counterpoint. “I thought you’d sleep later. But the salt pork must have called you.”