Wondrous Strange

  “Nah, don’t think so. A whole pack of pissed-off nyxxies gave us a bit of fun for the first hour or so, but after that it was quiet as a grave.”

  Sonny frowned, thinking about his similar encounter with the piskie-fae. And the fact that the diversion had prevented him from being in time to catch whatever had come through at the Lake. He wondered if all the other Janus had been similarly occupied for that first hour. “Where was the Wolf?” he asked.

  “Aw, Fennrys doesn’t like crowds—you know that. He’s claimed the upper fourth of the park like he owns it. Might as well have gone around and peed on all the bushes up there. He’ll fight anything—even other Janus, if they get in his way.” Maddox looked at Sonny quizzically. “Been meaning to ask—how was your night?”

  “It was…interesting.”

  Maddox’s eyes gleamed with curiosity. “Something nasty?”

  Sonny went to a closet and grabbed a pair of boots and a jacket. “Maybe. Look, I’m starving. Let’s get something to eat, and I’ll tell you about it.”

  Sitting in the booth at the back of a diner, the two Janus were far enough away from the other patrons that they didn’t necessarily have to keep their voices down, but the subject matter dictated that they do so anyway. As Sonny had predicted, Maddox was deeply amused by the tale of his piskie brawl.

  “Don’t take it so hard, Sonn,” he said in between shoveling up mouthfuls of a western omelet the size of his head. “At least it wasn’t hinkypunks!”

  “The day I get my arse kicked by a hinkypunk is the day I hang up this,” Sonny growled, tapping the iron medallion hanging from a braided leather cord around his neck—his Janus badge of office. “With my neck still in it.”

  “Especially since they only have one leg to kick with!” Maddox laughed, and, pushing back a plate that had been pillaged clean, sighed contentedly. “Now. Leaving aside nyxxies and pixies and all that small change, why don’t you tell me what it is that’s really got your knickers in a twist, hey?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, old Sonn, that something about last night has parked a thundercloud on your doorstep, and it wasn’t a piskie drubbing that did it. You’ve got more of a sense of humor than to let something like that bug you.”

  Sonny picked up a coffee spoon and toyed with it for a moment. Then he sat back and told Maddox what had happened during the time he’d been fending off the piskie attack. Or, at least, what he thought had happened—his theory was based on circumstantial evidence, after all.

  Maddox remained silent throughout, chewing thoughtfully on his bottom lip. “A kelpie, huh?” he asked finally.

  “I think so,” Sonny said. “Horsehair and hoofprints would seem to indicate that.”

  “You know, I’ve never seen one?”

  “I did once—from a great distance—when I accompanied Auberon on a visit to Queen Mabh’s Borderlands. They mostly lurk in the swamps thereabouts. Vicious things.” Back in the days when the Gates had all stood open, kelpie were known to appear near sources of water. They’d take on the guise of beautiful horses to lure unwary mortals. Once a person was mounted, the kelpie would plunge below the surface of the lake or river, dragging its hapless victim away to the Otherworld, or down to a watery death. Some kelpie even ate their victims.

  “When I was a kid,” Maddox said, “you know, before I was taken, I used to hear stories. The old village wives would screech something fierce if any of us kids went too close to the riverbanks. Said the kelpie’d come for us and take us away to drown.”

  “Well, this one was gone by the time I got there, and there wasn’t a whole lot of forensic evidence left behind.”

  “In other words, no blood or body parts strewn about.”

  “Right. None of that. Just trampled rushes and these.” Sonny pulled the black stone beads out of his satchel and put them on the table. Strands of horsehair, bright as copper filaments, remained knotted on the beads.

  Maddox reached for one and examined it minutely. “Hmm. Strange…What are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He handed the bead back to Sonny. “Of course, no body parts strewn about does not necessarily preclude abduction….”

  Sonny nodded mutely. He thought uneasily of the trampled script he’d found and the notion that something terrible might have happened to the girl he’d gotten used to thinking of as Firecracker. After a moment he decided to solicit Maddox’s help in a little detective work. “There was something else in the park yesterday too, Madd. Or, maybe, someone else.”

  Maddox settled back, crossing his arms over his chest, and waited.

  Sonny pulled the tattered copy of the script out of his messenger bag and pushed it across the table. He told Maddox of the “anomaly” he’d sensed in the Shakespeare Garden—the girl—and about finding her script later on the lakeside. As Janus, neither of them was terribly prone to believing in coincidence, and Maddox was intrigued.

  “You did have a busy day yesterday,” he said.

  “Not bad for the new kid on the job, right? Listen, we’ve got plenty of time before sundown—d’you want to come do a bit of nosing around with me? See if we can’t track down my little stray.”

  “What, the kelpie? Or the girl?”

  “The way I see it is this: Find the one…and we just might find the other.”

  “And how do you propose we do that?”

  Sonny pointed to a note scrawled on the script: Rehearsals @ Avalon Grande on 52nd. “We start by paying this place a visit”—Sonny pointed again, at the letters indicating it was Kelley’s Script—“and asking this girl some questions.”

  VII

  “D on’t go in there!” Tyff screeched at Kelley as she shuffled groggily in the direction of the bathroom.

  Hand on the doorknob, Kelley turned to peer blearily at her roommate standing in the far corner of the living room—as far away from the bathroom as one could get in their apartment.

  “Step away from the door, Kelley!” Tyff was just this side of wild-eyed.

  Kelley did as she was told, trying as she did so to kick-start her brain into gear.

  Tyff must have gotten in really late—or really early—and Kelley hadn’t heard her, having fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep on the couch. The remnants of tumbled dreams swam through her brain—weird music that she couldn’t quite remember and dancing lights, the pale perfect face of a woman with golden eyes and hair spread out behind her like seaweed floating in a watery current. And something else. Something about a…

  “Horse! There’s a horse in the bathtub!”

  Oh, right. A horse.

  Kelley squeezed her eyes shut. It hadn’t been a bad dream after all. “Uh…Tyff—”

  “In the bathtub!” Tyff pointed sharply with one manicured finger, her model’s features drawn tight with anxiety.

  “About that…” Kelley rubbed at the back of her neck. “I was going to tell you. I guess I fell asleep….” She stared warily at her roommate who, in turn, glared at the bathroom door.

  “Tyff—believe me—if I’d known he was going to follow me home from the park, I never would have rescued him. I mean—no, I probably would have, but I mean—”

  “Wait a minute.” Tyff’s head swung toward her. “You mean to tell me this is your fault?”

  “I guess so. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but…” Kelley stopped, confused. “Who else’s fault could it have possibly been?”

  “Never mind. Go on.” Tyff gestured Kelley to continue, her eyes still on the bathroom door.

  Kelley sank down onto the couch and told Tyff the whole story.

  By the time she finished, Tyff seemed to have calmed down—slightly. “Can you at least get it out of the bathtub?” she asked.

  “That’s the thing—he won’t move. I tried last night. Maybe…” Kelley hesitated at the suggestion, then said, “maybe we should call the police.”

  “No! What, are you crazy? If our landlord finds out about this, we are both out on the
street!”

  “I know, I know…that’s what I thought.”

  Uncharacteristically, Tyff tore at the corner of one polished fingernail with her teeth. She was a “parts” model and got paid huge amounts of money to have her hands and feet and legs photographed for advertisements in glossy magazines. Chewing on a fingernail, therefore, was—for Tyff—a sign of major stress. “What the hell are we—no, wait. What the hell are you going to do with it?”

  “I don’t know!” Kelley groaned. She got up stiffly and limped to her bedroom to find something to wear. She had no idea what time it was, but judging from the light streaming through the window, it was a lot later than it should have been. Pulling on jeans and a hoodie, she continued, “Look, I called the city’s Animal Control, but they wouldn’t believe me.” Kelley went to the bathroom door and opened it. The horse stood there, fetlock-deep in scented water, chewing placidly on the corner of a bath towel. “I think the lady who took my call thought I might be smoking something.”

  “If you are”—Tyff glowered—“considering the circumstances, you’d better share.” She moved to peer nervously over Kelley’s shoulder. “Why does it have beads in its hair?”

  “What?” Kelley hadn’t noticed that. “Where?”

  “There.” Tyff pointed. “And there. Shiny little black gems—they’re knotted all through its hair. Its mane.”

  Kelley edged farther into the tiny room to get a better look. The light of the bathroom bulbs reflected the glitter of dozens of onyx gems.

  “I have no idea.” Kelley was mystified. “They’re tied all through its tail, too. Hey—maybe it’s a circus horse! That might explain how it got up the fire escape.” Kelley reached out a tentative hand to pat the horse’s gleaming red flank, and he whickered with pleasure. “You know, if we both push, we might be able to move him into the living room at least.”

  Tyff raised an eyebrow in silent censure at that idea.

  The alarm on Kelley’s cell phone chirped, and she went into the kitchen and picked it up off the counter, glancing down at the time display. She wasn’t called for rehearsal until the afternoon that day, so she should be all right…except her phone said 12:35 p.m. “Oh no!” Kelly couldn’t believe how long she’d slept. “I’m gonna be late for rehearsal—I gotta run!”

  “Kelley…” Tyff’s voice took on a threatening tone as Kelley edged toward the door.

  “Listen, Tyff. There’s a bag of rolled oats with your baking stuff in the back of the cupboard—”

  “Winslow…”

  Kelley winced. Tyff only called her by her last name when she was genuinely pissed. “Could you maybe feed him some? Maybe you could entice him out of the tub!”

  “You are a craptastic roommate.”

  “I’ll be back as soon as rehearsal is over.”

  “Craptastic.”

  “I’ll owe you forever, Tyff—I promise!”

  “Do not say that. I didn’t hear that. La-la-la…” Tyff stuck her fingers in her ears and was still la-la-laing as Kelley crept out the front door and took off down the hall as fast as her sneakered feet would carry her.

  The last thing she heard as she reached the relative safety of the stairwell was Tyff’s outraged cry. “Is that my French bubble bath?!”

  By the time Kelley got to the theater, she wasn’t sure which was making her feel worse: her guilt over leaving Tyff in the lurch, or the restless sleep she’d gotten the night before. As the fairy dancers warmed up onstage, she sat in her dressing room with her head in her hands, fighting off a major headache.

  “Hey, kiddo.”

  Kelley looked up to see Mindi standing in the doorway with the corset for Titania’s costume in her hands. It’d had to be taken in rather drastically, and most of the lacing grommets had been replaced.

  “I had Wardrobe do the work on this last night—you should get used to wearing it. See? They added some lace trim to hide the alteration seams. What do you think?”

  “Oh, Mindi, it’s gorgeous!” Kelley ran a finger along the handiwork appreciatively. “It looks brand-new.” She glanced up into the older woman’s face, feeling suddenly guilty. “I guess this means Barbara’s really not coming back, huh?”

  “Frankly, hon, I think it’s better this way. You’re doing a bang-up job—well, at least, you will. You know. I mean it was only your first rehearsal, right?” Mindi shrugged. “And this role needed some new blood, if you ask me. Now let me see how this fits.”

  Mindi turned Kelley to face the mirror and wrapped the stiff, sparkling garment around her rib cage, holding the two ends together at the back.

  “Perfect.”

  Kelley smiled for the first time that day. Getting into costume was always one of the best parts of the whole process for her. She looked at her reflection in the mirror and could almost see a fairy queen lurking in there somewhere. Light glinted off the rhinestone detailing along the top hem and the embroidered front panel of the corset.

  “Hey, Mindi?” Kelley touched her necklace, which also sparkled in the mirrored reflection. “Do you think I can keep this on for the show?”

  “What is that?” Mindi peered through the half-glasses perched on her nose. “Like a four-leaf clover or something?”

  “Yeah. The stones are green amber. My aunt gave it to me when I was a baby.” Kelley rolled her eyes a little, admitting, “It’s sort of a good-luck charm.”

  “Sure, hon,” Mindi said. “It’s pretty—the green goes with your costume. And as far as I’m concerned, this production can use all the luck it can beg, borrow, or steal!”

  “Thanks, Mindi.”

  “Don’t mention it. Now get your butt out there—you’re due onstage for your bower scene in five.”

  Grabbing her wings from the hook on the door, Kelley ran down the hallway, the exhaustion that had weighed her down all morning left behind in the dressing room.

  VIII

  T he Avalon Grande turned out to be an old church converted into a theater, and it held more than one surprise for Sonny and Maddox. Aside from the fact that it was disconcerting to watch a bunch of mortals wandering around pretending they were nobles of the Faerie courts, it was substantially more disconcerting to discover that not all of the actors were, in fact, mortal. It was Maddox who noticed it.

  “Well now,” he murmured in a tone of voice that made Sonny turn and look. “There’s interesting for you.”

  “What? Where?” Sonny craned his neck to see what it was that Maddox had seen.

  “There.”

  “Maddox, if you’re pointing at something, I can’t see it. We’re invisible,” Sonny hissed. They had secreted themselves in a dim alcove backstage and had called up strong veils just for good measure.

  “That one way over there—in the green tunic. The one playing Puck.”

  “What about him?”

  “Let’s just say he’s not exactly ‘acting’ the part.”

  “He’s a boucca?” Sonny’s eyes went wide.

  “Sh!” The veils might have hidden them from the sight of humans—even other Janus—and all but the most powerful Faerie, but they didn’t mask the sounds of their voices, and the acoustics in the old building were surprisingly good.

  “Sorry.” Sonny stared at the actor in green cartwheeling around on the stage. “Are you serious, Madd?”

  “The real deal.” Maddox’s tone was tinged with wariness. Boucca were a rare breed of Fae that were almost as powerful as High Fae royalty. Characteristically mysterious and notoriously changeable in their moods and allegiances, they had been known to serve the various Faerie courts, but mostly preferred to serve themselves. Wherever they went, stories of mischief and mayhem abounded. They were a colorful lot, flamboyant, but they also had a reputation for being dangerous if provoked.

  Sonny was dubious. The figure cavorting clownishly around the stage, hanging upside down by his knees from the set scaffolding as he said his lines, didn’t seem so very threatening. “Gods. No wonder he’s slumming at a theater. Pooks
and their bloody theatrics.”

  “Yeah, see…I wouldn’t call him a ‘pook’ to his face if I were you.”

  “Ooh, I’m scared.” Sonny snorted, but he cast his Janus awareness in that direction, to get a sense of whatever it was about the boucca that had managed to impress Maddox so very much. After a moment he frowned. “I’m not reading him.”

  “No—and you won’t.” There was a great deal of respect in Maddox’s voice. “That there isn’t just any garden-variety boucca. He’s old magic. Powerful. A boucca like that can fly under your Janus radar without so much as breaking a sweat.”

  “How can you know for sure?”

  “I recognize him. I used to see him coming and going from the Unseelie Court in the days before Auberon shut the Gates. Before your time, Sonn.”

  Sonny blinked. “You don’t mean to tell me he’s the original Puck?”

  “Dunno,” Maddox mused. “I heard a rumor that the actual Puck has been stuck in the mortal realm for the last hundred years or so—trapped in a jar of honey buried under a rock somewhere in Ireland. Ever since he did something that royally pissed off a leprechaun.”

  “Wow.” Sonny whistled low. “I wonder what he did to deserve that.”

  “Who knows? Consider it a cautionary tale.” Maddox chuckled. “Leprechauns have their own fair share of ancient power and no discernible sense of humor.”

  From a seat in the audience, one of the mortals—the director, it seemed—had called a stop to the boucca’s scene, apparently satisfied with the work done on it (or perhaps just tired of telling Puck to “quit bouncing around the bloody set”). At any rate, they moved on to a scene with Sonny’s girl from the park.

  “C’mon, let’s get closer,” Sonny whispered to Maddox as he stepped farther into the wings, nearer to the stage proper.

  “Why?”

  “We might be able to find out something about her. You know—get a clue.”

  “You suit yourself. I’m not getting any closer to that boucca than I have to.”