Whiskey and Water (48 page)

She moved efficiently, swiftly, with a
bright focused intelligence that humbled him. "Kit says there was an angel
in attendance. Or an angel's agent. He saved Matthew's life, I wot. Just a
garden-variety miracle."

The intersection of Ernie Peese and
miracles hurt Don's head more than winged demons, legendary witches, or
stepping through the looking glass. Ernie Peese, on the side of the angels.
How
about that.

"Damn. And I always kind of thought Ernie
was on the take." That got him a blank look, so he shrugged and pointed to
Matthew. "He'll need a transfusion. He left blood on the road."

"He needs rest," she answered,
stripping away the clothes that Don-all had so hastily rearranged. "And
building up. Don't worry, my leechcraft involves very little leechery, and I'm
not fool enough to bleed a man who's already sucked pale. Ask Kit about my
doctoring if you fear it."

"He's not going to get rest,"
Kit said, crouching with a basin and a rag. He dipped the latter and wrung it
out, and she accepted it without looking. "He must be well for the duel,
which is tomorrow."

The blood was already drying on Matthew's
skin, scaling or caking in strings. He moaned and turned his head when Morgan
scrubbed at it. "Warm some broth, Kitten."

Kit made a moue at the nickname, but
obeyed.

Morgan just clucked her tongue, and Don
faded back against the doorpost to watch, his hands cocked awkwardly in front
of him to keep from smearing his clothes. Lily had vanished somewhere. Don hadn't
seen her slip out, but the door was open if she shouted. He glanced over his
shoulder and saw only rain falling on nodding flowers.

He couldn't stand the blood on his
motionless hands. Two steps carried him forward, until he could drop to his
knees beside Morgan. "Let me do that."

Wordlessly, she handed him the basin and
the rag, then started cutting Matthew's shirt off. Blood washed from Matthew's
skin and from Don's hands in the same gestures. Matthew stirred slightly, his
left hand flexing as if he meant to push Don away. The handcuff welts on his
wrists were healed too, though Don could see the outline of the manacles in
clotted blood.

He scrubbed that off quickly.

When Matthew's eyelashes flickered, Kit
brought the broth, and Morgan tipped it into the Mage's mouth spoonful by
spoonful. It seemed to help; Don caught the cut-grass scent of herbs rising
from the mug, and a tang of heated alcohol. He shuddered: brandy in beef stock?

But Matthew didn't complain. He drank like
he couldn't get enough, although Morgan rationed him, her knees under his
shoulders, her palm cradling his head. The second cup Kit brought wasn't
steaming. The fluid was cloudy and straw-colored, pungently sweet.

Cider," Kit said, for Don's benefit,
as Matthew's hand covered Morgan's, tilting the cup and then pulling it away.

He coughed lightly, and pressed a hand to
his throat, as if it could soothe the ache inside. "Damn.
What was
I
drinking?"

A naked expression of relief blanked Kit's
face before he masked it. He was still arranging his folded arms so that nobody
could see his hands shaking when Don sat back on his heels and said,
"You're all right?"

I have one hell of a hangover, that's for
sure," Matthew said, glancing from Morgan to Kit as Morgan smoothed his
clotted hair back, wiping off and discarding a translucent, gelid string. He
pointed to the empty cup in Morgan's hand. "Is there more of that? Or
water?"

"Your wish," Don said,
collecting the cup before he stood. He paused, though, and didn't acknowledge
either Morgan or Kit when he said, "I kinda fucked that up."

Thoughtfully, Matthew rubbed his wrists.
"You kind of did. Jane's idea?"

"She tried to stop me." The
wooden mug was wider at the rim, polished smooth inside. "At least, I think
she did. It was the other guy—"

"Felix," Matthew said, rolling
his eyes. The exertion of speaking paled him. Morgan's hands slipped to his
shoulders and she pulled him up so his head was propped on her lap. "Is
that all my blood?"

"Enough of it," Kit murmured,
under Donall's voice as he continued, "No, not Felix. Black man, Australian
accent — and not the ones you hear on TV—expensive suit. Nice shoes."

"Bunyip," Kit said, startling
Morgan. He shrugged her stare aside curtly. "Fae, not Promethean. We met
him in New York."

Morgan shifted. "That's a
problem."

"They're working with devils too,
though I don't think they know. Christian — her apprentice — " Matthew
said, weak but clear.

Don's hand tightened on the cup.
"A
devil?"

"Your other friend's channeling
angels. Get used to it."

Don said, "I trusted them."

"Oxytocin." Matthew must have
noticed the baffled look on Dons face, because he smiled. "It's a chemical.
Increase the level in their blood, and people will trust you. Easy enough to
manipulate once you know the trick of it."

"You mean Bunyip bewitched him."
This time, Kit laid a heavy glance at Morgan. She blushed, like red ink wicked
into her freckled skin, and dropped her gaze.

"And probably Jane too." Matthew
stared at Donall's ring. "Made any hasty decisions in her favor lately?"

Don said, "You've done that to
me."

"You won't cop to liking me on my own
merits?" Matthew's mouth pressed thin. He didn't have the strength to
laugh. "Anyway, it's well in Jane's power. How do you think she got
elected? It wasn't fiscal policy, I'll tell you what." Don turned away and
went to find the water. Behind him, he heard Matthew struggling to rise. "I
need to talk to Jane."

"Lie down, Matthew." Morgan's
voice carried no trace of impatience, but the sound of Matthew shoving
ineffectually at his nursemaids did not abate.

Don was dipping the cup in the barrel by
the door when Kit spoke. "Where's water?" he said. "Come along,
Morgan, warm him a bath. There's no point getting in his way."

"Yes," Morgan answered,
crouching, Matthew's arm slung over her shoulders as she pulled him to his feet.
The Mage was solid, a limp, muscled weight, but she didn't grunt. Rather, she
glared at Kit, who smiled. "I've met the like."

Morgan's cottage is never the same place
twice. Always the roses, always the vermilion door. Always the well-chinked,
whitewashed field-stone walls hung thick with tapestries and witch-globes and herbs
dangling from pegs and always the raven roosting in the thatch, notable for his
twisted wing. Morgan's loom dominates the single room, on the wall away from
the hearth, and behind it rises the ladder to the loft, a bedchamber tucked
between rafters and struts, cozy with all the luxury the downstairs does not
pretend toward.

But there are the changes. Things
misremembered or reinvented, stories set aside. Sometimes the flagstone slates
are gray, sometimes red. Sometimes the mantel stone is granite, gray and uneven
and mica-necked, and sometimes it is silvery schist studded with fire-cracked
garnets. Sometimes the thatch is sod.

And on that day, there was a bathtub
tucked behind the loom, mostly screened from sight by the tapestry under
construction.

Kit drew the water the old-fashioned way,
bucket by bucket out of the well. Rain soaked his hair and the borrowed, baggy
jeans, but he'd left the blood-soaked shirt on the floor by the hearth. Morgan
could burn it. Probably already had.

The rain felt good on his skin, sluicing
away sweat and easing the chafes from his borrowed wings. He knew the path to
the well and toiled back and forth under a yoke, regular as a pendulum while
his boots splashed through puddles.

Lily had been watching him carry water,
and finally stepped out of the shelter of a red Japanese maple into his line of
sight. "Christopher?"

"Kit," he said, the buckets
swaying as he stopped. The motion of the water was transmitted up the ropes,
shifting the yoke on his shoulders, and he swayed to compensate. Ripples wiped
away the dapple of raindrops on the surface until the raindrops pattered over
the ripples again.

She smiled, the last traces of her
lipstick smeared on her face. She'd been kissing someone, and Kit couldn't
condemn her. "Is he okay?"

"He'll endure," Kit said, and
watched her shoulders slump in relief. "The water's for a bath."

She nodded. Matthew's sweater hung to her
knees over the vivid darkness of the skirt. "You and Lucifer — "

She saw him flinch. And then he peered
into her eyes, and the flinch became a startle. He bent his knees, let the
buckets touch earth, and shrugged out of the yoke, which he balanced across
their rims.

"They won't let you go," he
said. And then he stepped toward her, meeting her halfway as she came to him.
"Christ wept. And my fault."

"Your fault?"

"I didn't tell you." He turned,
lank hair streaking his neck. The rain rolled in thick droplets across his chest,
glossing the scars over his heart and below the curve of his ribs. "You
drank."

"I did." She licked her lips at
his silence, and then nodded, sharply, as if to confirm it to herself.
"And he came."

"He always will," Kit answered.
"He will be the perfect lover. The perfect companion. There when needed
and gone when you wish to be alone. And the gifts"—he stole a glance, and
again could not hold her gaze — "are seductive."

"Where's the bad? And don't tell me
my
immortal soul."

"The bad? Mean you when he'll break
your heart, or when he'll break your flesh? Will you be so sanguine about
offering him your body when he wants it for a sacrifice?" He stopped,
hard, and clenched his hands.

The rain ran into her eyes when she ducked
her head. She reached out, cold fingers and outsized hands, and touched his
chest. His scar was as chill as her skin. "He did that to you."

"He arranged it done," Kit said,
with a shrug. He caught her wrist, and plucked open her fingers, turning upward
her palm so the rain fell into the hollow. "And yet ..."

"It was him you turned to in New
York."

"Aye," Kit said. He stepped
back, shaking water off his lashes. He dropped a knee on wet gravel and ducked
under the yoke again. But before he stood, he looked at his hands, fingers
curled over the bucket handles to steady them, and sighed under his breath. Not
a Promethean talent, but—he excoriated himself—an easy enough trick for a
witch.

He dipped his fingertips in the water, and
when he stood it steamed. Lily stood in the rain, red and violet as the flowers
massed behind her, and stared at him over a bitten lip and folded arms. He
said, "Did you mean to carry water?"

"Are there more buckets?"

"Aye," he said. "They're
over by the wall."

He stepped past her, paused, and waited
while she turned. He spoke over his shoulder, not sure if she could hear. Not
caring. "It doesn't
work,
Lily. Good girls don't redeem bad boys
through the power of their love. Trust me on it, madam: I wrote the play. And
you have there a very bad boy indeed."

Lily let her borrowed sleeve brush his
goosefleshed arm. "But
you
know it works in fairy tales."

Within, Morgan helped Matthew into the
bath. His fair skin gleamed with blue pallor between the ink where it wasn't
tanned, but she thought if he had the blood in him he would have blushed to his
navel. He managed a tired sort of chuckle, as she steadied him over the lip.
"Hell of a second date."

Blood is astounding stuff. It makes its
way into crevices and crannies, dries obdurate, discolors pores. Spilled, it can't
be gotten wholly clean through any art—bleach, paint, scouring.

Shakespeare was right. The stain lingers.

It stained Morgan's hands and daubed her
blouse, and caked and smeared her hair. Don was by the fire, warming cider so
that honey would dissolve in it, and Matthew's gestures were already broadening
from the brandy Morgan had added to the first mug.

"Second date?" she said,
crumbling herbs into the water Kit had warmed. The scent of lavender rose up,
acid and strong.

Matthew's eyes were closed, his breathing
light and even, slow enough that she reached to check his pulse, callused
fingertips stroking his throat. He stirred, but didn't argue. The pulse was
steady. She let her hand drop, brushing flesh as it fell.

"Yes," he breathed, lips barely
moving. "Five days and seven years ago, you kissed me."

He wasn't handsome. His features weren't
so much rugged as prominent, and his jaw jutted and so did his nose—but his
body was quite beautiful under the water and the ink that chilled her hands.
Mere nudity could not render him naked, not with all the iron worked into his
skin, though she watched him shamelessly.

Nudity couldn't. But his face was naked,
without the spectacles, and
that
left him vulnerable. Her hands, armed
with a flannel, dipped into the water, and she smiled. It could have been much
worse.