Bone Walker (33 page)

Did all the Sidhe do this, at least, all the ones with magic? Did they all use their gifts to ensnare those who weren't as strong?

“I'm sure!” I practically screamed it, muffling the volume only by crying out the words right against Christopher's neck. Then I caught myself and said it again, more gently, trembling in earnest now as I squeezed him with all my might. “I'm sure, love.” My last few words were on purpose, but the small, vulnerable tone in which I uttered them wasn't part of the plan. I let them stand, anyway. “Help me remember this body's mine. Please?”

“All right then.”

That was all Christopher said in reply. The shape of his embrace changed around me, protectiveness yielding to passion, while he resumed his evident quest to brush tantalizing kisses along every square inch of my face and throat. I did my best to respond in kind, and sent my fingers on a hunt for every button between his skin and mine.

What we did after that… well. We were both young, more or less in one piece, madly attracted to one another, and coming down off the adrenaline rush of a crisis that had almost destroyed the city and possibly also me. You're smart people. I'm sure you can do the math. And I'm sure you'll forgive me if I don't go into details.

After all, sometimes a girl just needs her privacy.

It's probably a measure of how much my life had changed in the last few months that I wasn't terribly surprised by how fast I'd made my shoulder heal.
Don't get me wrong—on some level, I was absolutely tickled about it and had to resist the urge to make smug little jokes about mutant healing factors to myself, even if I made a much better Storm than I did a Wolverine. But that was only superficial. It took only three days for me to get back enough energy to do more than sleep or read, and by then, the place where I'd been shot settled down into a grumpy sort of stiffness that manifested only if I twisted the wrong way. That and a small puckered scar from the shotgun shell were the only souvenirs I had from what had gone down in Discovery Park.

Well… physically speaking, anyway.

I had nightmares, more than one, in which Melorite embraced me with arms of ice and turned me in slow pirouettes until I was dizzy with the need of her. Sometimes she kept me for herself, and kept me spinning until she was the only fixed point in my sight—and when I clung to her, my body dissolved into a ghostly shape of smoke and light. She breathed me in until I made her glow, suffusing her flesh with the stars that I had become.

Sometimes, though, she led me to Luciriel. That was even more frightening, for in the peacock-and-frost sight of the Unseelie Queen, I was laid bare. She had but to lift a hand, and I called forth my magic to shape myself at her whim. I made braids of my hair, and each braid became a flowering vine between my palms. In turn my hands changed to slender branches, and in languorous rapture I danced until my feet sank roots into the welcoming soil and I could move no more.

I was the Queen's rowan, one with her forest of air and darkness, one with the Unseelie Court.

The first time that nightmare hit, I woke up screaming. After that Christopher began to spend the night at my house—not that I told him outright about the dreams, since I was skittish about admitting their existence to anybody, even myself. But with the house Wards being fueled by his power, I'm certain he just
knew
. Sleeping was easier after that, as long as I did it in his arms.

But he couldn't stay glued to my side all day no matter how much we might have both wanted it. He had a city to Ward. And for that matter, for once I actually didn't want him tagging along when I finally went in search of Millicent.

Seattle's Warder First had made herself strangely scarce once it was clear I was out of danger. I never lacked for care, mind you. Jake's healing abilities were still mostly mortal, but he kept after me to do careful, gentle exercises to work the stiffness from my shoulder. Thanks to the house brownies there wasn't much in the way of household chores to do, but Aunt Aggie elected herself in charge of my meals—and cleaned my entire kitchen on general principle. How she worked around the brownies, she never said. But it would have taken a small nuclear device to dislodge her from my house, for which I was immeasurably grateful. She was after all the woman who'd raised me, my mother in almost all the ways that counted, though Elanna ana'Kirlath had been the one to give me life.

What I needed to fight off the dreams that haunted me, though, I could only get from Millie.

At any other time, I might have had to search the entire city for her. She'd always been prone to wander the streets, a habit she was passing down to Christopher—for Warders indeed walked their cities. Yet she did have a house, a fact I tended to forget along with the fact that she had a car. On the fourth day after the battle in the park, several hours into the morning and long after the daily walking of the Wards, I followed a niggling little instinct to that house.

It was raining again when I arrived, a blessedly normal Seattle rain, barely more than a drizzling mist and not even worth the trouble of an umbrella. Not that my shoulder appreciated the weather. The damp chill of November nipped at the air, aggravating the ache in my flesh even as I appreciated the walk from the bus stop to Millicent's front steps.

As I came up those steps, Millicent opened her front door. I paused halfway up the concrete steps, caught between pleasure that I'd been right to seek her here and concern at how gray and worn she looked. Still, her eyes were alert as ever as she beckoned me inside. “You look like a drowned cat, girlie,” she said. “Get in here and let me put something hot into you.”

“You don't have to tell me that twice,” I admitted as I stepped inside. Coat and hat hooks hung just inside the front door. I began to shrug out of my raincoat… only to have my shoulder complain halfway through. But I didn't miss the old Warder's tight little grimace. Or how she suddenly seemed unable to meet my eyes. “Look, Millie. You must know why I'm here, so let's get this out of the way—for the record, I'm not mad at you for having to shoot me.”

She smiled a little while briskly moving to help me the rest out of the way out of the raincoat. Because of that sadness lurking in her eyes, I let her. “I'm glad, honey,” she said. “Because I really didn't like having to do that. I never have.”

“I didn't like having it done.” I offered her a crooked smile of my own and hugged her with the arm that wasn't currently griping at me. Then I studied her, smile fading. “Wait, you had to shoot somebody before? Do I want to know?”

Millicent pushed me in the general direction of her kitchen, which wasn't exactly far. Her house was smaller even than my half of the duplex I shared with Jake and Carson, and in a few short steps I was through her tiny living room and taking a seat at her kitchen table. I couldn't resist a few peeks around, since I'd never set foot in the place before. What I'd expected… well, even knowing Millicent as I did, I'd half-expected the place to smell like an old lady's house. It didn't. It smelled like the dozens and dozens of books she had on the shelves that lined almost every wall in sight. It smelled like a breeze wafting in from outside; she must have cracked open a window somewhere in the house, to air it out. And it smelled like the pot of good black tea she had near her stove, from which she filled two cups as I sat down. Next to those, she set a jar of sugar and a small porcelain pitcher of cream.

The tea helped make the kitchen seem homelier. Still, as Millie sat down across from me at the table, sipping at her tea, her dark look didn't ease up. “To answer your questions in reverse order, probably not, and yes, I do. Or at least I can make a damned good guess. Luciriel, am I right?”

I nodded, and my hands shook a little as I added sugar and cream to my tea. “Do you know if there's anything I can do?”

My words came out small and plaintive, shaking a little, like my fingers. The tea helped, and I drank it readily, but as soon as I spoke I felt myself tear up a bit. Just asking that question, with all that it implied… God. That was hard.

Compassion welled up in Millicent's eyes, not exactly dimming her sadness, but at least offsetting it somewhat. Without warning, she reached over to clasp my nearest hand. “If it helps, honey, from what you told me, you struck the best possible bargain you could. It got you back to us intact. It got Luciriel to reaffirm her commitment to the Pact—and she may be scary as hell, but if she promised this, she'll keep her word. And it gave us a way to save the city.”

All of which was true, and none of which did a damn thing for the lump rising in my throat. “But now she's got a hold on me.” I opened my mouth and closed it again, trying to figure out how to put into words that the Queen of Air and Darkness was in my dreams… and that part of me now wanted her there. “She… eventually she's going to get to call me in. Millie, I don't want to go!”

That pulled the old Warder up out of her seat again, and she came around the table to pull me into a motherly embrace. I threw my arms around her and cried. “Oh, sweetheart, I know,” she murmured. “God help me, I wish I could give you a way to back out of this safely. But you've already won what you need to find that yourself.” When I started, lifting my head to blink wetly at her, she gave me a wan little grin. “Time. You have the rest of Christopher's natural life for the two of you to solve this.”

“Don't talk like that,” I begged. I didn't want to think of how, when Luciriel finally claimed me, it'd mean that I'd outlived not only Christopher, but also everyone else I now knew and loved. But the idea that Millicent might not last another five or ten years—never mind several more decades—frightened me almost as badly. “You're Millicent Merriweather. You're damn well indestructible.”

“If only. I'm ornery, but not that ornery.” Her expression gentled, and she placed her gnarled hands on each of my shoulders, studying me solemnly. “Honey, I'll be square with you. I'll do everything in my power to prepare you for surviving the Queen's Court when the time comes, and you and I both know Christopher would give his right arm to keep you safe. But we're human. We're Warders. Much as I hate to admit it, Elessir was right when he said we're out of our league teaching you properly.”

Elessir.

I blinked again, realizing all at once that I hadn't laid eyes on him in the last four days, not since he and Christopher had seen me safely to my bed. Before I even realized the question was about to pop out, I heard myself asking, “He… he hasn't left town, has he?”

Millicent's eyebrows went up. “He ain't shown hide or hair of himself to me or Christopher, anywhere we usually walk. But for what it's worth, girlie, he ain't crossed the city's Wards either.”

So he was still in Seattle. Somewhere. “He's… actually taught me a few things,” I began. Never mind that Christopher wasn't going to like this. I wanted to dropkick the entire concept off the top of Mount Rainier the instant it took shape in my head. But yet again, what choice did I have?

What Seelie mage was going to want to teach me if they knew I'd bargained with Luciriel? Would anyone less than Amelialoren herself be willing to take me on—and oh God, what was the Seelie Queen going to do when she got wind of my bargain? I hadn't told Melisanda much besides asking her to tell House Kirlath I wasn't fit to lead them. I hadn't dared to tell anybody but Millie and Christopher what it had really taken to get me home again. Had I doomed myself against any further goodwill from the Seelie Court?

But what Unseelie mage could I trust not to deliver me right into Luciriel's hands?

And so, even more reluctantly, I finished, “Maybe I'd better ask him if he'd be willing to teach me more.”

Millie's mouth skewed, a clear signal she didn't care for this notion any more than I did—but to my surprise, she didn't shoot it down. “Sidhe mages we can trust are thin on the ground around here, so I say go for it. Tell that bard if he'll do it, I'll give him free run of Seattle for as long as it takes.”

After that, I could probably have gotten either of the Warders to help me track Elessir down. But the sheer fact that the Unseelie hadn't shown himself in our company suggested that, even if he hadn't left the city, that he wasn't exactly eager to come find us. And something told me I might have a better chance of finding him if I went looking alone. I didn't ask Millicent or even Christopher for a link into the network of Warder energies they used to monitor the city—but I did call Christopher after I left Millie's house and tell him what I planned. It was only fair and proper.

As it happened, I didn't even have to try to recreate what we'd done before to scan Seattle environs and find anyone of fey blood within the Wards. Some small niggling instinct pushed me onto a bus heading downtown, and within an hour I was heading into Kobe Terrace Park. Green growing places drew me. Maybe, I thought, they'd draw the bard too.

The park, like much of the rest of the city, was sorely changed after the assault of wind and weather that Melorite had committed. On the way onto the grounds I walked past several trees missing branches, and in a few places, vegetation that should have been there was missing entirely. The great stone lantern had withstood the storms, but more fragile structures hadn't been so lucky. I saw a picnic table that had been split by a lightning strike, and multiple spots on the trails through the park where stone and brick had been damaged in turn by uprooted trees. Some effort had already been made to clean the place up, mind you. There were new trash bins all along the trails and places with beds of flowers so new that I could still smell the freshness of recently turned soil.

Not that there was anyone else in the park besides me to see the changes. December was right around the corner, and with dusk coming on and the inevitable—and thankfully normal—Seattle rain on the wind, no one else seemed hardy enough to brave its paths at this hour. That was fine by me. Because I noticed one other thing as I headed towards the spot where we'd met Makiko and her sons: the liquid flowing voice of an acoustic guitar. I'd heard my share of guitars in my time, but never one that sounded to me like the speech of the Sidhe.