Fire Touched (19 page)

“All right,” Margaret said, her voice a little husky from pain. “There are supposed to be three Gray Lords meeting with me, and I'm allowed to bring my people with me. I had intended it to be just Thomas, but they allowed me six. With your permission, I'm going to give you, Adam and Mercy, a little glamour, nothing fancy—just something that will help them dismiss you as thugs numbers one and two. If you do something to draw attention, the glamour won't hold.” She looked at Zee. “You, I expect, can do your own and be thug number three.” She turned back to Adam and me. “It won't hold if they really look at you, but it should give us the element of surprise. And any advantage is to your favor—they'll respect you for it.”

“Fine,” said Adam. I nodded.

Her magic settled over me like a cool mist. Sometimes magic doesn't stick to me, but this time it seemed to.

“Thomas?” I asked.

“He doesn't need it,” she said. “He can do it without magic. When he doesn't want people to notice him, they just don't.”

I rubbed my pleasantly tingling skin, and said, “You're just going in to tell them ‘no,' right? Which you could do with just Thomas. The glamour is to help us?”

She smiled. “It's fun. I don't like them. Don't like the games they are playing. I'm happy to help. Now hush, someone could be listening.”

“Probably not,” I said. “I would smell anyone close enough to listen.”

Thomas looked at me as though I were interesting. “Better than a werewolf?”

“For fae and magic, yes,” I told him. “To be fair, there is a lot of ambient noise right now. Someone would have to be very close to overhear us.” I didn't tell them that fae glamour might be awesomely powerful, but it seldom worked on scent. Let them think I was special.

We walked into the hotel, following Margaret. She didn't travel fast, but no one evinced even the slightest impatience. Adam took the left-rear position. I don't know if he did it for the reasons he'd told me in the car, or if that was just where he happened to be. Zee took the right rear. Thomas walked in front of Adam, and I took the leftover spot next to Thomas.

Inside, the lobby was overflowing with beige tuxes and unflattering teal gowns. They were most densely clustered near the bride, recognizable as such by her thirties-style off-white lace gown. She was patting the back of a middle-aged woman in a bright green sparkly suit who was sobbing on the bride's shoulder. The whole lobby was trying not to watch—and so no one noticed us at all.

As if she'd been in the hotel a hundred times, Margaret headed for one of the banks of elevators. We waited in silence for the doors to slide open. When they did, we stepped inside—it was a tight squeeze. The elevators weren't built for a fairy princess and her guards. Fortunately, it was a fast elevator, and we got off on the second floor. Margaret headed down the hallway, and we spread out behind her like a wedding train.

She passed a couple of doors on her left before opening the door on her right, discreetly marked
WALLA WALLA
. She waited while we flowed around her to precede her into the room. There was a conference table and someone, maybe the hotel, had put bright
bouquets of carnations in shades of red on either end of the long table. Five people were already seated on the side of the table that faced the entry door, two more stood against the far wall in parade rest. All of the fae were wearing their human glamour.

I knew some of them. Beauclaire, the handsome former lawyer who'd declared fae independence, was seated on the far left. Next to him was a dark-haired woman whose sunglasses concealed her blind eyes—Nemane, the Morrigan, who'd once been the Irish goddess of battle. I didn't know the man next to her. He was pale-skinned, bald, and fine-boned, with bulging eyes and broken blood vessels on the sides of his nose that were so bad it was almost hard to focus on anything else. Next to him was an extraordinarily beautiful woman with childlike features, porcelain skin, and deep red lips. The final seated person was a middle-aged woman who was comfortably plump and clothed in a badly fitting, three-piece business suit in salmon pink. Her hair was gray and brown, and her features were absolutely unremarkable.

The two people who stood before the wall were Uncle Mike and Edythe, who I still thought of as Yo-yo Girl because the first time I'd seen her, she'd been playing with a yo-yo. Edythe looked like a young girl—like Aiden, she appeared to be somewhere between nine and eleven. Unlike Aiden, she chose that guise because she enjoyed looking like a victim. Which she very much wasn't. I'd seen her do some scary stuff and watched other fae skittle out of her path. She met my eyes and gave me an ironic lift of an eyebrow. Apparently, Margaret's magic wasn't working for her. The two Gray Lords who knew me looked past me without the hesitation that they'd have given if they'd really seen me, and so did Uncle Mike. I filed Edythe's immunity in the mental file I kept marked Why Edythe/Yo-yo Girl Is Scary. It was a big file.

Margaret looked at the five people seated on the opposite side of the table, letting her gaze linger meaningfully on the last two. “You told me there would be three of you,” Margaret said coolly. “Do the fae negotiate in falsehoods now?”

“It's my fault, Margaret,” said the beautiful woman in a husky voice that I'd last heard coming out of Adam's phone a few hours earlier. “I was visiting this reservation and heard that you were expected. My associate”—she touched the middle-aged woman's arm lightly—“and I asked to be included for old times' sake. I once knew your father very well, and I couldn't resist the chance to see his daughter.”

Margaret spread her hands, as if to display herself. “As you now do.”

“You look bad,” said the man who sat in the middle seat. His voice, high and fussy, fit his outwardly meek appearance. “You need to come home with us, and we will see you restored to your proper self. It's been several years since the incident, hasn't it? So it is obvious that you need help to recover from your ordeal.”

Margaret directed her attention at him even as she waved a hand over her shoulder at us, and we four spread out on the wall behind her. The door was on the far left-hand side of the wall, so we didn't have to worry about anyone's coming in from outside between us.

She walked with painful slowness—more slowly than I'd seen her move before, in fact. When she reached the table, she pulled out a chair left of the middle, directly in front of Nemane. I couldn't tell if it was deliberate, or if the chair was closer to the door so she didn't have to walk so far.

She took her time seating herself and arranging her crutches so that everyone in the room could see just how crippled she was.
Only when she was comfortably seated in the leather executive chair did she speak.

“Incident,” she said. “What a curious word. ‘Incident.' So . . . bland and small. I truly appreciate your words, Goreu, but I think not. I am healing at precisely the correct rate for full recovery.”

Goreu. I should remember something about that name. I'd been reading a lot of stories about the fae lately. Goreu sounded like it should be French, but I was thinking it came from
The Mabinogion
, which was Welsh.

“You are fae,” said the beautiful woman. “You belong to us.”

I couldn't see Margaret's expression, since I was directly behind her, but a raised eyebrow was evident in her voice anyway. “Curious choice of words. I do not belong to you.”

“You are fae, child,” said Nemane. She took a deep breath through her nose, tilted her head in a birdlike gesture—and smiled at me. She couldn't see me. But Nemane didn't need her eyes for much. She chose not to say anything. My dealings with her had been almost friendly, but she wasn't an ally. Instead of asking Margaret why she'd brought the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack and his mate to a fae meeting, she said carefully, “Neuth chose her words poorly. You belong with us.”

“You think so, do you?” asked Margaret. “I disagree. Which I have explained in several letters, e-mails, and one . . . no, two phone calls, if you count the one where I hung up on the Council representative. I am here, now, to explain it in person. I will not go. I will not put myself in your power. I have been under the power of the fae before, and I will not do it again.”

“You
are
fae,” Beauclaire began carefully, but Goreu went on the attack before Beauclaire could make his point.

“You think you can resist us?” asked Goreu, though I don't think he meant it as a question—his tone was too confident.

“Do you mean to try to force me?” Margaret countered. She looked at Beauclaire. “You—who set the world on this course in search of justice for your daughter—you would seek to imprison me for the crime of being my father's daughter?”

“There are many,” said Nemane, “who would rather be elsewhere. But we are few, child. Too few to survive a war—no matter what some say. We have to make a show of strength. We need you in order to survive.”

Margaret raised her head and squared her shoulders. “Do you know what I learned when I was trapped in the earth for more than half a century? With neither food to eat, nor water to drink, nor light to see by, when there is no sound except that you make yourself, some things become very clear. Death is not to be feared. Death is easy. It is living that is brutal. The fae may survive or not. I do not care. I am not one of you except through my parents—and they are both dead.”

Goreu reached across the table with the speed of a striking snake and slapped something on Margaret's wrist that closed with a click—a fine silver bar bracelet with a red cabochon stone. Goreu held a similar bracelet and shut it on his wrist. As he clicked it closed, he drew in a breath as if it had hurt.

Margaret sat frozen.

It wasn't one of the set of bone cuffs, Peace and Quiet, that had once been used on me. Tad had destroyed those.

“If you cannot be persuaded any other way,” the Widow Queen said, “then you leave us no choice. We owe it to your father to protect you and return you to health.”

Margaret looked down at her wrist. Then she looked at Goreu. “You have made a mistake.”

I couldn't help but look at Thomas. He was very, very still.

“Perhaps,” said Goreu. “I did argue that there were those who might be of more use to us—we have only one artifact that can hold a fae against their will for very long.”

“You are so arrogant, all of you,” Margaret said. “Goreu, Custennin's son, you may be powerful, I do not contest that. But it has been a long time since you beheaded your uncle—and that you did after he was already defeated. But these bracelets are not about how powerful your magic is. You have made a mistake.”

The name Custennin rang a bell. Margaret focused on the bald little fae. She said, “Crawl across the table to me.”

Custennin had been a shepherd who had twenty-four children. I remembered that because it was twice twelve, and twelve is a number that occurs quite a lot in fairy tales.

Goreu opened his mouth—then lost his smirk. He braced himself on the edge of the table.

“Crawl,”
Margaret said.

All but one of Custennin's children had been killed by a giant, Custennin's brother. The single son who remained was named Goreu.

Slowly, very slowly, sweating and shaking, the fae boosted himself up onto the table and crawled. The bracelet made a scratchy sound as he dragged it across the gleaming cherry finish of the table. He bit his lip, and blood dripped from it onto the wood.

There must have been some sort of protocol at work because none of the other fae in the room gave him any aid. They stayed in their seats and watched Goreu struggle. The Widow Queen looked mildly amused. The middle-aged woman took out a file
and became engrossed in buffing her nails with vicious, jerky movements.

Nemane and Beauclaire looked as though they were competing for who could look the most relaxed. Unseen by the other fae because of her position at the wall behind them, Edythe smiled at Margaret, lifted a finger to her tongue to wet it, then drew an imaginary point in the air.

If Margaret reacted, I couldn't tell. I'm not sure she even saw Edythe's gesture—Margaret was engrossed in the strange battle she was engaged in with Goreu.

According to
The Mabinogion
, the Goreu who was Custennin's son had traveled with King Arthur and his knights, eventually returning to his home and killing the giant, his uncle. He was a hero—unless I'd gotten the story wrong, because the Goreu in this room didn't look at all like a hero.

When the unheroic fae arrived at Margaret's side of the table, she reached out and grasped his wrist. As soon as she touched it, a thin red line began drawing itself across the plain silver of Goreu's bracelet. It began slowly, then, as Goreu breathed in quick pants, moved more and more quickly, drawing glyphs that became part of more complex patterns until the bracelet was nearly solid red.

Margaret sat back in her chair, took the bracelet off her wrist and caught the other as it fell off Goreu. She tossed both of them to Zee.

It broke the effect of the light glamour we'd all been wearing. Goreu scrambled backward off the table, half falling in his effort to get away—not from Margaret, but from Zee. The middle-aged woman dropped her file, and the Widow Queen froze.

Uncle Mike smiled—and so did Beauclaire. Nemane kept her relaxed pose, but then she'd known who was in the room the whole time.

I glanced over at Zee, who had his happy face on again. It was just . . .
wrong
to see a happy face on Zee.

“Hello, Goreu,” Zee said. “Interesting to see you once more. I'm sure we'll meet under different circumstances. I'm looking forward to it.” He looked at the Widow Queen. “But not as much as I'm looking forward to some other meetings. You look more pale than you did the last time I saw you, Neuth,” he said. He looked at the middle-aged woman, who was frozen in her seat, and his smile grew brighter. He said nothing at all to her.