Bone Walker (7 page)

We both readily agreed. The others all opting to give us some space and quiet time was well worth it.

But Millie's wise, dark gaze was on Jude the entire time, and as she ambled after everyone else into the other half of the house, I saw her frown. That stayed with me while Christopher and I settled on my couch with my violin in my hands and Fortissimo sandwiching his furry bulk in between us. What songs came to my strings and bow were solemn ones, in minor keys, and I had to hope and pray that they would not become laments.

It wasn't so much that she resented Kendis having a boyfriend now. That kind of thing did, after all, happen. Maybe not so much when the boyfriend in question had magical powers and was sworn to protect the city from things that went bump in the night. But that wasn't even the point, and as she gave in and let Millicent mother-hen her into going to bed, Jude mused grumpily that the point was that when your best friend had a boyfriend, that meant they went on dates.

So no, she hadn't wanted to go to the concert, even though Kendis had invited her. No matter how
best
a best friend might be, nobody wanted one along on quality time with a boyfriend who looked like Christopher.

As she drifted off into sleep, though, a stealthy little voice uncurled itself in the very back of her mind.

Besides, your own date was cancelled too. That was a date you were on, wasn't it? And she didn't even ask how it went.
Then there was laughter, droll and inviting, and ever so slightly bitter.
At least, up until the part where she interrupted you—but I guess that part wasn't about her.

The voice sounded like a dream, and so with a dream's unthinking logic, Jude accepted its presence if not its actual words.
That's not fair and you know it. Dinner with an old girlfriend doesn't automatically equal date. There was nothing for Kendis to know.

Still
, the voice purred,
it would have been nice if she'd asked.

She had to admit, that was true. That one little nugget of truth remained in Jude's mind, following her deeper into dreaming. Then, in the next instant, she stood out on one of the many bike trails that crisscrossed Seattle. The sun shone with the warmth of high summer, and there should have been bikers on the trail, or people of all ages out for walks with their children or their dogs, or all by themselves. Yet she was alone. And the temperature was beginning to drop.

I should go in
, she thought.
It's going to snow.

But there was that nugget of whispering truth, lodged now behind her breastbone, cold and growing colder. Jude took a step on the trail and then stopped, looking down in bemusement at the snowflakes blowing up and out from her chest. Frost was growing there, heavy and numbing. It sank into her bare skin even as it sent tiny flurries of snow out to gust around her.

And it was oddly pretty.

Don't go in yet
, the voice in the back of her mind crooned. Or had the voice moved now into the frost? Or was it in both places at once?
I want to make a snowman… no. A snowwoman. Doesn't that sound like fun? Would you like to help?

Jude smiled and nodded once, slowly, while the swirls of flakes grew stronger around her. Snow gathered at her bare feet, but she held patiently still as the chill crept up her legs to meet the frost expanding at her chest. Unseen hands, somewhere in the blowing snow, brushed approving fingers along her cheeks as the laughter sounded again, a soft little clatter of amusement edged in ice.

Oh, you're going to be an excellent snowwoman indeed. And just think what fun we're going to have when we wake up!

What sleep I managed was spotty at best.
My magic, roused by the whatever-it-was that had invaded Jude's body, coursed through my system like the world's biggest shot of caffeine. Even with the comfort of Christopher beside me, I kept dreaming that something was wrong with Jude—that she'd stopped breathing, that she'd had a heart attack, or that Jake had had to call an ambulance for her. Nor could Millicent and Christopher help. Millicent kept insisting she was on the watch for dragons, while Christopher kept adding layers to Wards that seemed far too insubstantial to my dreaming sight.

The Wards won't work if the thing's already here!
I tried to yell a warning to both the Warders, but had somehow lost control of my voice. Nor could I leap up off the couch to go to Jude, no matter how fiercely I ordered myself to move.

Through it all, I was strangely, uncomfortably cold.

Dawn comes early in Seattle, even in October. Even under the best of circumstances it would have been too early for my blood—blood that had, ever since the rising of my magic and the revelation of my fey heritage, found the night a far easier time to be awake. Normally Fort would have demanded his breakfast at six-thirty sharp. This time, as sunlight invaded my living room the next morning, something else beat him to the punch.

“Jude!” Her name exploded out of me, and I shot bolt upright on the couch even as I realized that Christopher had put an arm around me, trying to keep me from rolling onto the floor. Before he could speak, I blurted, “Something's wrong.”

He didn't contradict me, which worried me. Neither did Millicent, which worried me more. The Warder First stomped in from Carson and Jake's side of the house with enough lightning in her eyes that she could have set off earthquakes with a single glance. “Jude's gone,” she barked without preamble.

“What!” I pulled out of Christopher's embrace and scrambled to my feet. “Gone where? Did you see her? When did she leave?”

“Can't have been more than ten minutes ago. Girlie bailed when my pants were down. Literally. Took off when I was in the damn bathroom!”

Christopher rubbed a hand across his eyes and stood up beside me. “Did you see her before? Had she woken up yet?” His voice was far more alert than I felt. But weariness shadowed his eyes, and his expression was profoundly troubled. “I shouldn't have dozed off. By the time I felt her leaving, she was already driving away.”

“We're Warders, but we're still only human, boy. Neither of us could have stayed up all night. And damned if I could sense anything different about her, even sleeping right next to her.”

“Did she leave a note?” Stupid question, I was almost certain, since if there'd been one Millie surely would've produced it. Still, I had to ask. Likewise, I had to grab my cell phone off the coffee table, and despite her scowl, Millicent gave me a nod of curt approval.

“Not a peep out of her, written or otherwise. She waited till the boys left for work before she took off, too. Get her on that thing if you can. See if she's answering.”

No dice. When I tapped Jude's number in my address book, it rang straight through into her voice mail. “You know the drill,” her recording announced with her typical straightforward cheer. “Message after the beep, yadda yadda, and go for it!”

I went for it, keeping any trace of anxiousness out of my voice as I chirped into the receiver, “Hey babe. It's Kendis, what's with bugging out of here without even saying bye? No rosemary-and-rock-salt bagels for you. Call me!” For good measure, as soon as I flung that message at her, I followed it up with a text. Then I frowned at the Warders. “It's not like her to run off like that. Not like her at all.”

“We should go find her.” Christopher got to his feet and studied me, brow furrowed under tousled hair. “To her apartment, if she's after going there. She'll be okay, Kenna.”

Millicent snorted. “We don't know any such thing, not after what we saw go into her last night. But you're right. You two kiddies are going to have to go after her. Do it while you're walking the Wards.”

“While
we're
walking? What about you?” I said, blinking.

“That Unseelie still sleeping in your bed says one of us needs to stay here.”

Oh God. Elessir.
I'd forgotten about him in the waking haze, and I glanced down the hallway now as memory snapped back into place. “Is it safe for any of us to leave until we know what's up with him? What if it takes both of you to keep him from going haywire?”

“I didn't feel anything from him while I was awake,” Christopher ventured. “Or hear anything, for that matter.”

“Yeah, boy's sleeping like the dead,” said Millie, “and I still ain't getting hide or hair off him, magically speaking. Jake briefed me on his medical supplies and I ain't above shooting him up with whatever it takes to keep him asleep either.” She jabbed a finger at me. “I want you back here before he wakes up if you're what it takes to keep him calm. So git, the both of you.”

There wasn't much for it but to do as Millicent bade us. Christopher and I did the absolute minimum to get publicly presentable, clothes- and hygiene-wise. Christopher had kept watch and then dozed in the same clothes he'd worn to the concert, so he was stuck with that, but I risked ducking into my bedroom long enough for something clean to wear. And more importantly, for the wolf's head necklace Jude herself had given me, which Christopher had imbued with some of his Warding power. I hadn't worn it much in the last couple of months, since things had been quiet enough that I hadn't needed the protection, and I didn't want to risk losing it.

I had the unpleasant suspicion I was going to need it now.

Breakfast would have to be on the go: granola bars and Gatorade. Fort demanded breakfast of his own, but Millie overruled my efforts to feed him and shooed us on out the door. Armed with my reloaded tote bag, I headed with Christopher out into the morning, and prayed as we went that this day wouldn't end as disastrously as the one before.

She was cold through and through, and yet, she burned. It felt as though she should be ill, but Jude didn't
feel
ill. If anything, she had enough energy brimming through her limbs that if she'd had a mind to, she could have jogged around the entire city. Walking the Wards, just like Millie, just like Christopher.

The thought made her giggle as she escaped Kendis' house with no one within it the wiser. Power, just like the Warders, that's what she felt as though she had. Magic to do anything she wanted, anything in the world, and all she had to do was seek it out—

Then the autumn morning struck a hammer blow across her senses before she even made it to her truck. Even the feeble sunlight of this particular land in the mortal realm was more than she'd felt upon her skin in time beyond counting. Clean, rain-kissed air was sweet wine to breathe in; the bright shades of leaves against the pale blue of the sky were such relief after immeasurable darkness that she almost wept at the sight.

Mortal realm?

Darkness?

Wait, what…?

Jude swayed, grabbing at the door handle on her truck for support, and even the simple contact of her palm against cool metal struck her speechless.

What's wrong with me?

Then the voice from her dream came back, louder now, and every word that sounded across her mind wrapped her flesh in a cloak of snow.

Nothing at all is wrong with you, my little snowwoman, nothing that I can't handle. You don't need to worry about anything at all.

Right. She
was
a snowwoman, Jude remembered now. Shaped from the blowing flakes, packed into a pleasing shape by the clever unseen hands in the cold. Her chest was ice, her limbs shimmering frost, and she would be forever preserved and shining. All she had to do was just vanish into the snow.

I can do that.

Approval was the last thing she remembered before her mind's eye filled with winter. She never felt the heat building in her hand, somewhere far outside the statue of snow she'd felt herself become, or sensed her fingers opening the door of the truck.

She never saw her own face, reflected in the window glass before her, smiling.

Christopher didn't say much as we hopped a Metro bus to head to Jude's apartment in Laurelhurst. I didn't call him on it, at least not while we were still on the bus. Conversation about Sidhe and magic and the Unseelie bard we'd left in my bedroom wasn't something I wanted to have where we could be overheard. He did at least keep an arm around my shoulders during the ride, and there was comfort in that, even if he stared out the window in a brooding funk the whole time.

Once we got off the bus and out of earshot of the stop shelter, though, I tugged at his hand. “You're awfully quiet. What are you thinking?”

He slanted me a sidewise look, and one corner of his mouth curled up. “Petty, jealous thoughts. You don't want to hear 'em, Kenna.”

Oh-ho-ho? I blinked at this and stopped on the sidewalk so I could loop my arms around Christopher's waist. Two months this man had been my boyfriend, and he was still surprising me. “Wait, what? What in God's name do you have to be jealous about?”

Christopher humored me, wrapping his arms around me in turn, though the gaze he turned down to meet mine was an unhappy one. “He clung to you like you were his last hope,” he said, “and I didn't care for that, much.”

My face fell as I went still in Christopher's embrace. “Neither did I,” I admitted. With that gaze of his upon me, dark against the wan October morning, I could offer nothing less than absolute honesty. “He scares me. Showing up out of nowhere like that, and who knows what the Queen did to him? And then Melisanda shows up out of the blue, and”—I flailed one hand about, seeking words that refused to let me voice them, and I had to finish weakly—“and everything else happened. And all I can think is how they're Mom's people, how I got that blood, and am I going to turn out like that someday?”

“If you can ask that question, lass,” said Christopher, “I'm thinking it's not a problem.” His expression gentled, and he tipped his head down towards me, brushing his lips across mine. He did no more than that, since we were standing on a public sidewalk with early Sunday traffic trickling past us, yet that relatively chaste contact played havoc with the rhythm of my pulse. That he was in fact old-school in our relationship wasn't something I really wanted to push, since I wasn't done savoring its charm, not in the slightest. But when he made those sorts of overtures, with intriguing little presses from his hands… well. I'm as healthy as the next fey-blooded girl. I'm sure you can work it out.