Faerie Blood (12 page)

It made me wonder what she saw. And what she knew.

Awaiting us in the living room was a plate of homemade bread and Gouda cheese, a porcelain teapot with steaming tendrils that smelled of hot cocoa wafting up from its spout, and five cups. Next to the teapot stood a bottle of brandy, and at the sight of it Millicent whooped, “Looks like you’re prepared enough for me!” Snagging the bottle and one of the cups, she plopped down into the papasan chair in the corner and got comfortable. She kicked off her boots, propped feet in brightly colored, hand-knit socks onto a nearby footstool, tilted back her hat, and proceeded to pour herself a cup of brandy and sip it. “You kiddies can talk amongst yourselves. I’ll chime in when I need to,” she added magnanimously to the room at large.

I almost snickered. With her wildly mismatched attire, she looked like a refugee from the food bank where my aunt sometimes volunteered her time, and something in the proud hook of her nose and the faint reddish cast to her tan hinted at Native American blood somewhere in her background. But she cradled that cup in her fingers as though she were a fine British lady at tea.

“I’m glad to see you haven’t changed, Millicent.” With a low chuckle, Aggie waved the rest of us over to the couch. From me she took the old Warder’s rolled-up blanket, the gun nestled within it, and the whistle in its bag, and set them all on the dining room table. “And you young people make yourselves at home. Jude, it’s good to see you again.” Then her gaze fell upon the young man who crept into the house behind me, moving with the wary, deliberate care of a tightrope walker in a high wind. “You must be Christopher.”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, barely loud enough to hear. “Christopher MacSimidh.”

I seized on the sound of his odd last name, hoping to learn how he pronounced it, but my aunt’s attention focused on Christopher’s bandaged forehead. “My niece told me you saved her life, but she didn’t tell me you were hurt.”

Christopher avoided her scrutiny, his gaze angling off to the knickknacks on Aggie’s nearest bookshelf. His blush cut high across his cheeks out to his ears, distinct against his pallor. “I’ll do well enough, ma’am,” he muttered in reply. “Thank you.”

“Carson, Jake, and I got him to the hospital last night,” I put in, though I wasn’t quite sure whether I was trying to soothe my aunt’s concern or Christopher’s chagrin.

Aggie nodded to let me know she’d heard me without looking away from Christopher. Gratitude shone in her face, but she let him off the hook and didn’t actually voice it. That was my aunt for you. Instead, she told him, “You’re welcome. And as I told Kendis, you’re welcome in my house. Now sit down, boy, before you fall down.”

He sat, slowly and stiffly, claiming one end of the L-shaped burgundy-colored couch that dominated the living room, fierce discomfort spilling off him in an almost palpable aura. Jude didn’t look much more at ease, but she tried on a smile and ventured, “So, um! Hot chocolate and brandy? This looks great, Ms. Deveaux. Who wants what? I’ll pour.”

That helped settle us in. The middle of August was hardly the season for hot chocolate, but no one complained. It was very good hot chocolate, made the way my aunt had always made it, from chocolate syrup and milk, real marshmallows, and a dash of raspberry for flavor. Jude gave Christopher a shot of the brandy in his cup after making sure he wasn’t on any painkillers for his head; for me, she did it without even asking, offering a tiny, sheepish smile along with the mug she held out. I took both with no small relief. The alcohol melded with the chocolate, giving it an extra bite of warmth. Along with Jude’s visible effort to deal and all of us being in Aunt Aggie’s house, I was encouraged to try to relax.

As we nibbled bread and cheese no one spoke, and it dawned on me that everyone was waiting for me. Joy. I swallowed down what I had in my mouth, sighed, and looked around the room. “So,” I said, “I guess I’d better start with what’s been going on with me since last night, just to make sure we’re all on the same page. Nobody interrupt me, all right? I’m not sure I can make it through this even once, so just let me try.” Aggie nodded her encouragement. Millicent watched me shrewdly, Jude with anxious concern. Christopher kept his gaze fixed into the depths of his cup. But I found myself watching him sidelong while I looked back and forth between everyone else and started making with the recap.

I went over everything, at least in the big picture sense: Christopher coming to my rescue on the Burke-Gilman Trail, and getting him to the hospital. Seeing yellow eyes instead of brown ones in the mirror, and no one seeming to notice the change. Strange things lurking in trees and hedges near my house and on Capitol Hill. My entire body prickling in that unsettling way, pretty much non-stop since the ambush on the trail. And last, but most certainly not least, the run-in with the four Sidhe at the bar.

Some things I left out, though. Like the terror of a troll turning to stone on top of you. Or the blissful, dangerous compulsion of both Elessir’s singing and the—what was it Millicent had called it?—thrall the red-haired Sidhe had thrown on me. I wasn’t sure I could put that into words. Or if I should. It seemed dangerous somehow, as if to talk about the thrall would somehow turn it loose within me again.

Neither did I mention the way Christopher kept pulling my attention to him. Part of it was that unseen current still flowing between us; even across the room, I could feel it. But part of it had a far simpler cause. He was handsome, I realized with a pleased little tremor. The effects of injury aside, the lines of his face were appealingly rugged, and I especially liked his wide, expressive, mercurial eyes. I kept glancing at them as I spoke, wondering if they would be green or brown or amber the next time I looked.

Jude’s eyes went through a progression of their own as I recounted my tale, getting rounder with every word, until at last they seemed ready to roll right out of her head. Aunt Aggie still showed no surprise, but her broad, brown face grew more strained of expression as she listened to me. It made her look tired and old, almost as old as Millicent, and when I finished I noted with a pang of worry that her eyes, too, had altered. They glistened with hints of tears.

As for Millicent, she let out a merry cackle. “Well then. That makes a lot of things clearer, dearie. For me, anyway, not so sure about you. You don’t look too keen on having joined the ‘Guess What! There Are Elves In Seattle!’ club.”

Understatement of a lifetime, that. “Um, no,” I admitted. My voice shook; so did my hands. I took a moment to pour myself a bit more cocoa. Holding the cup and breathing in the scent of brandy-laced chocolate steadied me some. “It’d help a lot if you and Aunt Aggie could fill me in on some stuff now though.”

I glanced from her to my aunt, my brow crinkling, and decided Millicent was a slightly safer subject to question. My head felt about to explode from trying to make sense of everything that had happened—and if I was going to erupt in a burst of frustration, I didn’t want to do it to Aggie. I didn’t want to do it to a stranger, either, but I was too tired and too freaked to keep a hint of challenge from escaping into my voice. “To start with, who are you, why haven’t I known about you if you’ve known Aunt Aggie for most of my life, and what’s a Warder?”

The old woman considered me cagily over her cup, black eyes glinting. “You’ve got my name and my station already, girlie, and you haven’t known about me yet because you weren’t supposed to. I do my Warding better the fewer who know what I’m up to. But I knew about you the moment your auntie brought you over the city Wards when you were a baby. And I’ve been keeping an eye on you ever since! Promised Aggie here I would.”

Well, that was a start. And the simple fact that we were all here, now, told me Aggie trusted this woman. That was enough to make me hear her out. “The Seelie,” I began with a frown, hesitating over the word. But Millicent nodded at me, so I apparently had it right. “The Seelie talked about Wards. They didn’t want the one who’d laid them to find out what they were doing.”

That provoked a vindictive snigger out of Millie, and as she poured herself another helping of brandy, she replied, “No, I don’t imagine they did. I might be getting old and the city’s Wards full of holes, but Butch and me, we can still plug any Sidhe up to no goddamned good full of enough cold iron to make ’em clank when they walk.”

Jude started to laugh in the middle of a swallow of cocoa, and had to cough to clear her throat; I reached over to thump her between the shoulders, while a reluctant grin pulled at my mouth at the thought of a shotgun named ‘Butch’. It set me a little more at ease. And that, perhaps, was what Millicent intended. Amusement flickered across her face as she watched me.

“So you set Wards on the city,” I said. “And this means what? Magic?” It sounded stupid, said out loud, and I rubbed the back of my hand across my eyes. They still prickled, though not so vehemently now. “Which, given everything else that’s been going on, I presume is real?”

Beaming, Millicent nodded firmly. “Yeah. Magic. You can think of Wards like magical roadblocks. Put one up, make it strong enough, you can keep out practically anything supernatural.”

“Sort of a magical security system,” Jude said. It wasn’t a question, and that surprised me. When I blinked at her, she went on with a grin, “Hey, I’m pagan. I get the idea of magically protecting a space.” Then her grin went a little lopsided, as she sheepishly appended, “Though last I checked, I wasn’t doing it with actual, um, magic.”

“You’d be surprised, girlie.” The old woman shifted position on the papasan, broadening her attention to include Jude as well as me; Aunt Aggie and Christopher, I supposed, were way ahead of us on this particular topic. “Burning a candle or incense, prayer, invocation… it’s not that far off from what us Warders do. We just do it with a little more zing.”

I pondered this, studying Millie and peeking sidelong at Christopher every so often as I did. The Sidhe had called her a Warder—but they’d called Christopher a Warder-blood. “But you’re human.”

“Human as they come, girlie.”

“But with magic.”

“But,” the old Warder drawled, a mischievous grin flaring across her face, “with magic. Boy howdy, the Sidhe don’t like that.”

“And you’re Seattle’s Warder.” Jude, following my lead, worked her way through the concept to make sure she had it down. “How’s that work? What do you Ward against—the Sidhe?”

Millicent inclined her head at my friend, a gesture that seemed incongruously dainty when taken with her cackle and the fedora on her head, but which went bizarrely well with the way she sipped her brandy. “Sidhe, trolls, or anything else wants to make a supernatural nuisance of itself,” she said. “I keep ’em out of Seattle. Now mind you, not all the fey folks and critters are a hassle. Some of ’em’ll just want to live and let live, same as you and me. And even most of the Sidhe, they can cross the Wards on a city and be welcome. Warders got a Pact with ’em, actually. We promise to let ’em into a Warded city, they promise to behave themselves.” Her grin vanished, though, and her expression went darker. “What happened back there at the bar ain’t covered by the Pact.”

A chill crept along my skin, prickling or no prickling, at the thought of this added layer of magical politics; I was having enough of a problem buying that magic existed in the first place, without extra complications on top of it. “But you were outside the bar when Jude and our teammates and I got there. You weren’t following me, were you?” I asked, a little more challenge in my voice now.

“Nope,” Millicent replied, not batting an eye. She gestured at Christopher with the brandy bottle. “I was following him.”

Christopher let out a throaty groan, tilting his head back over the top of the couch and spreading his fingers across his face. “The grass,” he rasped behind his hand. “My blood on the grass.”

“Felt it soon as it happened, son. Got a bead on you from a mile away.”

My head swiveled back and forth between the old woman and the young man. Comprehension dawned—at least in regards to Christopher. “That’s why you wanted so badly to leave, isn’t it?” I asked him. He didn’t utter a word, but the expression that stole across his features was all the answer I needed.

And as I watched him, Millicent spoke again. Her voice had gone soft, but not gentle; she lifted her chin and pinioned Christopher with her stare, challenge of her own ringing beneath every word. “Earth, air, and water… the doings of the people… they all go into a city’s living energy. All it takes is a taste of Warder blood on the land—and that energy rises up for its Warder. Who damned well better be prepared to take up his side of the bond before he spills his blood on a city’s earth!”

“I already told you, old woman, I don’t want…” Christopher wobbled even as he surged forward where he sat on the couch, angry words wavering into silence almost as soon as they erupted out of him. He looked sick. He looked stricken. And I couldn’t tell whether it was because being a Warder was the last thing he wanted on his resume, because he was about to heave, or both.

“And I already told you, son,” the old Warder woman began, glowering, but I leaped to my feet and glared at her to cut her off.

“Whatever you two need to work out, do it later. Please,” I told them both, working to keep a civil tone because Aunt Aggie was in the room. To Christopher, I added uncomfortably, “Take it easy, okay?” I reached for his shoulder, but stopped short of actually touching him as the thought that he’d shed blood on Seattle earth because he’d gotten hurt defending me crashed over me. Guilt was shaping up to be the theme of the night.

Aunt Aggie had no such problems. “Millicent, I think it’s time we changed the subject and left the boy alone for a while,” she said as she rose to fetch the brandy bottle.

“Humph,” grumbled Millicent.

Christopher rested his head on his hands, gingerly, as though he feared it might fall off his neck at any moment. But as he grew aware of my presence beside him he lifted a tense, pained gaze to me—and then to my aunt, as she poured him a sparing shot of the brandy into his cup.

“I probably shouldn’t have any more o’ that,” he muttered.