Death's Mistress

  “Well, that’s what I’ve been saying.” She sighed. “Is there no alcohol in this house?”

  “I may be able to come up with something.”

  “Wonderful. Let’s sit on the porch, though. I could use some air.”

  Claire went to her old room to find some clothes, and I went to the kitchen for a couple of glasses from the drying rack. I was just pulling up the trapdoor in the hall, where I keep the good stuff, when she clattered downstairs. She was wearing a green wraparound shirt that matched her eyes and old jeans, and she had a well-behaved baby on each hip.

  “I don’t know how long we’ll be able to stay outside. It looks like a storm’s blowing up,” she told me, before catching my expression. “What?”

  “You managed to get Stinky into clothes?” The fuzzy armful on her left hip was wearing a pair of bright blue running shorts, like it was no big deal. The last time I’d gotten him dressed, I’d practically had to have Olga sit on him.

  “He did it himself.”

  I shot him the evil eye. Okay, now I knew he was trying to make me look bad.

  I grabbed a couple of bottles from the small space, shut the door and carefully replaced the carpet runner. “I didn’t know we had a smugglers’ hole,” Claire said, following me down the hall.

  “There are hidden compartments all over the place. I think your uncle used them for storage.”

  Claire’s late uncle Pip had been a bootlegger, and a highly successful one, at that. He’d purchased the place when the captain died and quickly realized he’d hit the jackpot. Two ley lines—the rivers of power generated when worlds collide on a metaphysical level—crossed directly underneath the foundation. The result was a rare commodity known as a ley- line sink, which generated enormous magical power.

  It was the equivalent of free electricity for life. Only instead of lamps and refrigerators, he’d used it to power wards and portals, including a highly illegal portal to Faerie. It allowed him to bypass the heavily regulated—and heavily taxed—interworld trade system. And not any old trade either. He’d gone straight for the gold and started trafficking in the volatile substance known as fey wine.

  The magical community’s police force didn’t catch on because he didn’t use any of the official portals. The fey didn’t pay him much attention because he wasn’t purchasing the wine directly, just the ingredients, and probably from many different sources. Once he had them in hand, he’d set up a still in the basement and started making magic.

  “But why do you need it?” Claire asked. “There’s plenty of cabinet space.”

  I glanced at her over my shoulder. “Have you ever seen trolls drink?”

  She laughed, and suddenly she looked like Claire—the real one, not this pursed- lipped stranger. “They don’t show up too often at court!”

  “Well, if they ever do, hide the liquor.” I bumped the back door open with a hip and stepped out into the sound of crickets and the smell of impending rain.

  I paused to scan the yard, because I am not prone to hallucinations. But the only thing out of the ordinary was the weather. In the square of sky visible above the trees that bordered the right side and back of the yard, clouds hung low and ominous, seeming to glow from the inside. And above the neighbor’s privacy fence on the left, near the horizon, a sheet of gray rain wavered in the wind like a billowing curtain.

  “What is it?” Claire was peering into the darkness with me. Red curls whipped around her face, blowing across the lenses of the pair of glasses she’d dug up somewhere.

  “You still need those things even though . . .” I made a gesture that encompassed the whole thing in the hall.

  She shifted, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Yes. In this form, anyway. My other . . . Well, it actually sees better at night.”

  I usually did, too, but it wasn’t helping right now. I leaned through the porch railing to look up into the branches of the massive cottonwood. Some of them overhung the porch, but all I saw were rustling leaves. I concentrated on the more sensitive peripheral vision, paying attention to any change in the light, any shifting forms. But the result was the same: nothing.

  “What are you looking for?” Claire asked again, a little more forcefully.

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “We can go back inside if you think there’s a problem.”

  “The wards protect the porch as well as the house. It’s no safer inside.”

  “It’s no safer anywhere,” she said bitterly.

  “Careful. You’re starting to sound like me.” I paused, listening, but my ears failed me, too. I could hear the wind snapping the tarp we’d put over a hole in the roof, the squeak of the weather vane and the creak of the porch swing’s chains. But nothing else.

  Claire hugged her arms around herself. “You scare me sometimes.”

  “This from the woman who just handed me my ass in there.”

  “I didn’t mean I’m afraid of you,” she said impatiently. “I’m afraid for you. You look like you’re planning to take on an army all by yourself.”

  “Are you expecting one?”

  “Not yet,” she muttered.

  “Well, that’s something.” I decided to let the wards do their job and concentrated on setting up the porch for civilized living.

  It had been furnished more with comfort in mind than style. An old porch swing, with flaking white paint and rusty chains, sat on the left. A sagging love seat that Claire had brought with her from her old apartment, and which the house wouldn’t permit past the front door, sat on the right. And a potting bench nestled up against the back of the house, next to the door.

  I put the bottles and glasses on the bench and went back for the takeout. I returned to find Claire frowning at a small blue bottle and the boys hunched over a chess set my roommates had left out. They were sprawled on their stomachs near the stairs, happily watching the tiny pieces beat the crap out of one another.

  The board was Olga’s. The pieces were trolls on one side and ogres on the other, all equipped with miniature weapons—swords, axes and what appeared to be a small catapult half hidden behind some trees. The game was played on an elaborate board complete with forests, caves and waterfalls, and it bore, as far as I’d been able to tell, no relationship to human chess whatsoever. Olga maintained that I only said that because I always lost.

  “I could make us some tea,” Claire offered, as I put the bags on the makeshift bar. “I saw some in the cupboard.”

  “I don’t like tea.”

  “But you do like this stuff?” She held up the rotund bottle containing her uncle’s bootleg brew.

  “I like some of the things it does for me,” I told her, plucking it out of her fingers and pouring a generous measure into my glass.

  “I thought you were supposed to be on some task force to keep that kind of thing off the streets,” she said accusingly.

  I smiled. “I assure you, I’ve been keeping off all I can.”

  “I don’t think the idea was to stockpile it for your own use. It’s illegal because it drives people crazy, Dory!”

  “And it makes those of us who already are a little more sane.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  I held up the glass. The crystal clear contents reflected the lights from the hall, shooting rays around the porch and making Stinky cover his eyes. “Here’s to the best antidote for my fits I’ve ever found.”

  One of the fun facts of my life is frequent rage-induced blackouts. They can last from a few minutes to a few days, but the results are always the same: blood, destruction and, usually, a high body count. They are what passes for normal with my kind—the result of a human metabolism crossed with a vampire’s killing instinct—and they are one of the main reasons why there are so few of us. And, because the problem is genetic, there is no cure.

  Not that anyone has looked very hard. Like most human drug companies, the magical families who specialized in healing liked to make a profit. And there was little money to be made in devisin
g something to help a scant handful of people.

  Claire’s eyes widened as she stared at my glass. “That really helps your attacks?”

  “Stops them cold. And unlike human drugs, it works every time.”

  She picked up the bottle and took a cautious sniff. She made a face. “It’s worse than I remembered.”

  “It’s pretty strong,” I said as her eyes started watering. In fact, it could double as paint thinner, which was probably why it was usually used as a mixer. But I wasn’t drinking it for the taste.

  “It isn’t really wine,” she told me, setting it down. “It’s a distillation of dozens of herbs, berries and flowers, most of which have never been tested in any scientific way. And I don’t like the idea of you as the guinea pig.”

  “I thought I volunteered.” Claire was a scion of one of the oldest magical houses on Earth, one that specialized in the healing arts. She’d been working at the auction house only because of a dispute over her inheritance, which had left her on the run from a greedy cousin. Before then, research had been her specialty, and lately, she’d been experimenting on fey plants, hoping to find something that would help my condition.

  “That’s different! I know what went into everything I sent you. It was safe—”

  “And ineffective.”

  She frowned. “Anything could be in there. I have no idea what ingredients Pip used. The recipes differ widely from family to family, which is why you get so many varieties of this stuff. And Pip never left any notes lying around.”

  “More’s the pity.”

  “You don’t get it, Dory. Drugs—and this can definitely be classified that way—often have a cumulative effect. Even the fey experience some mild side effects over time—”

  I laughed. “Mild for them, maybe. I’m not a fey.”

  “That’s my point! This is a controlled substance on Earth because it brings out latent magical abilities in humans. Before it addicts them and drives them insane!”

  “I’m not human, either.”

  “You’re half.”

  “Which is why I’m careful.”

  Claire’s eyes narrowed; something must have come through in my tone. “What have you been experiencing?”

  “As you said, some mild side effects.”

  “Like what?”

  “Heightened memories, mostly. With sharper sensations, Dolby surround sound, the works.”

  “Like hallucinations?”

  “Like heightened memories, Claire. It’s no big deal.”

  She didn’t look convinced. “And you can control them? You can snap out of these memories whenever you want?”

  “Yes,” I said easily. “Now, do you want to eat, or do you want to lecture me some more?”

  The look on her face said this wasn’t over. But her stomach growled, momentarily overruling her head. I flopped onto the love seat, passed around oyster pails, paper plates and chopsticks and we dug in.

  “God, I missed this,” she told me a few minutes later, her mouth full of chow mein.

  “What?”

  “Greasy human takeout.”

  “They don’t have the equivalent in Faerie?”

  “No. They also don’t have TV, movies, iPods or jeans.” Her hand ran over the threadbare denim covering her knee. “Damn, I missed jeans.”

  I laughed. “I thought you’d like being waited on hand and foot—”

  “And having servants follow me everywhere, and having to dress up every damn day and having everybody defer to me but nobody talk to me?” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah. It’s been great.”

  “Heidar talks to you, doesn’t he? And Caedmon?” Heidar was Claire’s big blond fiancé. Caedmon was his father, the king of one branch of the Light Fey.

  “Yes, but Heidar’s gone half the time, patrolling the border, and Caedmon’s holed up in high-level meetings deciding God knows what while I’m supposed to hang around and, I don’t know, knit or something!”

  “You don’t knit.”

  “I’ve been so bored, I’ve been thinking of learning.”

  “Sounds like you need a vacation.”

  She chewed noodles and didn’t say anything.

  I tugged off my boots and chucked them by the door, enjoying the feel of the smooth old boards under my feet. They’d absorbed a lot of heat through the day, and were giving it off in steady warmth that contrasted nicely with the cooler air. A few moths fluttered around the old ship’s lantern overhead, which was swinging slightly in the breeze.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” I finally asked, when Claire had finished most of her whiskey and still hadn’t said anything.

  She’d been staring out at the night, but now she shifted those emerald eyes to me. “How do you know anything is? Maybe I decided to take that vacation.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “You keep odd hours sometimes—”

  “With no shoes, no luggage and no escort?”

  She frowned and gave it up. “I don’t want you involved in this. I only came this way because I didn’t have a choice. The official portals are all guarded since the war.”

  “The ones we know about,” I agreed.

  “I mean on the fey side,” she said, as if it were obvious that her own people would be trying to prevent her from leaving.

  “Okay, back up. You came through the portal in the basement—”

  “Because nobody knows about it. Uncle used it to bring in his bootlegging supplies, so he kept it quiet.”

  “And you needed to slip away unnoticed because ...?”

  “I told you, I don’t want—”

  “I’m already involved,” I pointed out. “You’re here. You’re obviously in some kind of trouble. I’m going to help whether you like it or not, so you may as well tell me.”

  “I don’t want your help!”

  “I don’t care.”

  Claire glared at me. She had one of those faces that could really only be appreciated when she was animated. Ivory pale, with an aquiline nose humanized by a wash of freckles and a strong chin, it was pretty enough in repose. But with emerald eyes flashing, color high and that glorious mop of hair blowing around her face, she was beautiful.

  She was also one of the few people I knew with more of a hair-trigger temper than me. It was always possible to get the truth out of her, if you made her mad enough. “I’m here to save the life of my son. All right?” she snapped.

  Chapter Four

  I focused on the little boy. He was the usual pink-cheeked, chubby-limbed baby as far as I could tell. He was currently poking at a couple of chess pieces, trying to get them to fight each other.

  He had taken them out of the game and put them in the circle made by the round wicker bottom of the table. He was watching them avidly through the open side of his makeshift combat ring, waiting for some mayhem, but they weren’t obliging. One had hunched down to clean his sword, and the other was having a smoke. Tiny rings wreathed its head for a moment, before the wind pulled them away.

  “They’re friends,” I told him. He’d accidentally picked up two trolls instead of one of each.

  Puzzled blue eyes looked up at me.

  “They’re allies,” Claire said harshly, and a flash of comprehension crossed his features.

  A chubby hand rooted around in the game and plucked out an ogre, its small tusks gleaming behind a metal faceplate. He put it into the ring and immediately both trolls fell on it. He frowned and pulled one of them off, making it an even contest.

  “He doesn’t know the word ‘friend’?” I asked, a little appalled.

  “In Faerie, you have allies and enemies,” Claire said, getting up to get a refill. “Friends are a lot more rare.”

  Stinky had joined the little prince, and they had their heads together, one shining blond, one fuzzy brown with pieces of egg roll in it. I picked them out as Claire came back with what looked like a double. “He looks healthy enough to me,” I commented. “What’s wrong with him?”
r />   “Nothing! And it’s going to stay that way.”

  “Why wouldn’t it?”

  “Because he had the bad luck to be born a boy,” she said bitterly.

  “Come again?”

  “The fey don’t allow women to rule—at least, our branch doesn’t—so a girl wouldn’t have been a threat.”

  “A threat to who?”

  “Take your pick! Everyone at court has had hundreds of years to make plans based on the idea of the king being childless. Then, a century ago, he had Heidar, but no one cared because he can’t inherit.”

  I nodded. Heidar’s mother had been human, and he’d inherited his heavier bone structure and more substantial musculature from her. It was the same blood that ensured he could never take the throne. The law said that the king had to be more than half fey, and Heidar was a flat fifty percent.

  “But then I came along,” Claire said, after taking a healthy swallow of her drink. “And I’m slightly more than half fey. So when Heidar and I announced that I was pregnant, everyone did the math and freaked out. Courtiers who’d hoped their daughters would snag the king realized that Caedmon had no more need to marry now that he had an heir through his son. The daughters in question, the male relatives who’d hoped to inherit if he died with no legitimate heir, the people who had spent a fortune sucking up to said relatives—they were all furious.”

  “But murder—”

  “The ‘accidents’ started almost as soon as he was born,” she said, quietly livid.

  “What kind of accidents?”

  “In the first month alone, he almost drowned in the bathwater, was set upon by a pack of hunting dogs and had the ceiling of his nursery collapse. And things only got worse from there.”

  “And Heidar didn’t do anything?”

  “The maid was fired, the dogs were put down and the ceiling was reinforced—none of which helped the fact that my son was surrounded by a bunch of killers.”

  I sipped my own drink for a minute, trying to think up a tactful way of putting this. It wasn’t easy. Tact was Mircea’s forte, not mine. “Is it at all possible that at least some of these things really were accidents?” I finally asked.

  “I’m not crazy, and I’m not hallucinating!” she snapped, her spine stiffening with a jerk.