Old Dog, New Tricks (16 page)

“Ask your dad sometime.” I winked. “He’s the one who explained it to me.”

The Huntsman struck me as wise for a guy covered in mud with sticks in his beard.

Mac chuckled, scooted forward and let me catch my balance, then began hopping down the hall. He padded to a stop when the floor under our paws turned crystal clear. Water rushed beneath us in a dizzying swirl of colors and sound. Mac skirted the glasslike floor, leaping over a single six-inch tile to land on an opaque square in another bland hallway. Flexing my whiskers, I bunched up and leapt.

Lucky rabbit’s feet don’t fail me now.

I made the jump, botched the landing and skidded nose-first into the opposite wall. “Oww.”

A paw landed on my shoulder. “Thierry?”

“Nailed it.” Never mind the glittery carrots drifting in and out of my vision.

Nudging me with his shoulder, he got all four of my feet under me. Once I shook the veggies from my eyes, we set off again. Mac scouted ahead, leaving me to coordinate my legs well enough to keep up with him. With a wiggle of his tail, Mac leapt into a low, arched entryway and glanced back at me.

Rich and delicious scents rolled over me, and my stomach rumbled. “The kitchen?”

He nodded and lifted his head, inhaling in fast rabbit-nose twitches, ears swiveling. “This way.”

We had covered the distance of four tiles when I heard a humming sound and froze.

My whiskers flexed. “Mac?”

A slapping noise grew louder then stopped abruptly. “What is that sssmell?”

Padding quietly, Mac eased under a low shelf built into a butcher block table on heavy casters. I followed, settling against his side so we both faced out and could see the person entering the room.

The scents of hot sand and scales hit my nose, and it stopped twitching altogether.

“Sssomeone has been in my kitchen.” The fae hissed, “Thisss isss not to be borne.”

Low as we were, I saw the cook’s feet first. Veined and flat, they reminded me of scuba fins and smacked like flip-flops against the tile when he walked. The cuff of rolled-up white pants started at his ankles, and peering up at him, I took in the traditional chef-style top and the knobby green arms sticking out of the sleeves. He flicked his forked tongue between his lips, tasting us on the air, and my borrowed fur stood on end.

Bony knuckles covered in red spots dug into his narrow hips as the cook glared around the room through his round blue eyes. Like a birthday streamer blown too hard, his tongue whipped between his lips.

Hunched as he walked past, I startled when a drawer slammed over our heads. Dull thumping on metal rang out. Stirring the pots simmering on the stove? He grunted as he hefted a thick log onto the fire. It burned in a four-by-six-foot oval chamber built into the wall five feet above the floor with a tiled backsplash. Flames rose and magic siphoned the heat into the oven and stovetop without raising the temperature in the room. Mac used the same convection spell in his den.

A loud slurp and then a murmured, “The sssoup will do.”

No one else was here except us bunnies. Lizard Lips enjoyed hearing himself talk...a lot.

Feet flapping on tile, he left in a snit, muttering about speaking with someone, which meant we had to speed this up before more company arrived. Giving Lizard Lips time to get out of range, Mac cocked his head, rotating his ears. A thump of his rear leg was all the warning I had before he bolted.

Clumsy as ever, I followed. He squeezed through a narrow gap left where someone had propped open a door leading outside. Into a garden maybe? Yep. After wriggling through, I popped out into a room with walls of glass overlooking the fields Mac and I had crossed to get here. Sun beamed down onto us through the transparent ceiling. My paws sank into rich, damp soil mounded in neat rows and spiked with growing things. This was every gardener’s dream greenhouse. Even I was jealous of it.

Though it might have been the lush carrot tops sticking up that made me drool...

Man, I had to get out of this skin.

A thump of sound brought my head around in time to see Mac leap over a row of cabbages. Ears pricked, he stopped on the far side of the room, in front of the glass wall. I joined him without any major disasters, and that was when the design in the glass registered. Vines rose from the dirt floor to the ceiling, twining to create an archway. Etched with frosted morning glories, it made my heart beat faster. My gut clenched. This was it? This was Summer’s tether? Integrated into the wall?
Oh crap
.

I had yet to sever a tether without the structure attached to it crumbling.

I loosed a slow whistle. “Is this as bad as I think it is?”

Furry shoulders lifting, Mac shrugged. “The etching was done prior to my anchoring the tether.”

“Yeah, but an anchor pre-existing its tether didn’t save the bridge...or the arbor...or the—”

“We have no choice.”

“You’re right.” A shiver rippled under the skin. “Let’s do this before Lizard Lips gets back.”

“Lizard Lips...” Mac shook his head.

A pulse of magic swept over him, and I backpedaled as Mac—the person—burst from his pelt. I calmed my racing heart and thought Thierry thoughts until the subtle spell transformed me as well. A touch of Mac’s fingers to my forehead made me wince. I reached up and felt the goose egg swelling.

“Don’t worry about it.” I swatted at his hands. “It will be healed up by the time we get home.”

Home
. The word lumped in my throat. Mac’s den was nice, but it wasn’t where I belonged.

Runes aglow, Mac extended his left hand. Jaw tight and lips numb, I clasped his with my injured one and stifled the scream rising up my throat when he tore open my wound. A silent tear warmed a damp trail down my cheek. I wiped it dry and set to work with shaking fingers, ready to be finished.

Leaving me to do the heavy lifting, Mac played gardener, examining each row of plantings until spotting a cluster of greenish-blue leaves. Long stems wreathed in tiny silver-colored flowers shot up from the center of the clump to tower above the plant’s base. Mac knelt by it and started trimming.

Sure. Why not? These days Rook was cooking for us, and Mac was what—harvesting garnish?

My second sight hummed in my head when the magic surrounding us revealed itself to me. I let my eyes go unfocused and located the threshold of the tether before dripping a line of blood across it that I bent and smeared to cover every inch. Making a fist to slow the blood flow, I recited the Word unique to this tether, its coordinates, and braced for the fallout. Three rapid heartbeats later, I peeked through eyes I didn’t remember squinching. Glass crackled and veins spiderwebbed up the wall.

Mac slapped our hands together, flashing new skin over my cut and making my vision blur.

A tinkling sound brought my attention to the widest crack. “Um, is it supposed to do that?”

Water pushed through the seams, pooling in the dirt at our feet.

“We’re underground.” His eyes tightened. “I didn’t realize the river extended this far.”

A millennia ago, when he anchored the tether, it might not have. Wait. We were underground?

Pause and hit rewind.

“This is all glamour?” I stammered. Some of it sure, I figured that, but all of it? Whoa. I grabbed him by the elbow. “We should go.”

He fell back a step before yanking his púca skin from his air pocket. I still had mine clutched in my uninjured hand. Plopping the pelt onto my head, I tugged it in place one-handed to avoid staining the fur with my blood. A twist of magic caught me, swirling me down, down, down until chill water covered the tops of my paws and soaked my fur. Like a chocolate wrapper crinkling, glass crackled and water ran in rivulets through the garden. Backing away, I tripped over a fuzzy muskmelon vine.

“What isss that sssound?”

Belly exposed, I wriggled onto all fours as Lizard Lips charged into the fracturing greenhouse.

Mac leapt the cabbage, darted between the cook’s legs, and shouted, “Run.”

Lizard Lips stumbled over the muskmelons, arms pinwheeling, and his gaze shot from me up to the ruined wall. Round eyes bulging, he hissed at Mac, “Nasssty little púca, what have you done?”

LL vanished into the kitchen. I was hot on his flippers, and Mac was already ahead of me.

Damp paws sliding, I scrabbled across the floor. I yelped as an icy draft swept up my back and glanced over my shoulder. A cleaver spun on a chipped tile, and I was smearing a bloody trail.

What the...?
My tail is gone
. He cut off my freaking tail. Snarling low in my throat, I pivoted, putting myself right in his path. Fur lifted down my spine. Head angled low, a growl rumbled out of me. A body part was missing.
Gone
. Freaking monkeys. Who knew what I might have lost once I shifted?

The cook drew back his arm, and metal glinted. Mac’s shoulder hit mine and sent us skittering.

“You’re prey, Thierry,” he snapped. “Act like it.”

“Thierry,” LL echoed. “That isss familiar.”

Cursing under his breath, Mac headbutted me to get me moving.

Turned out all I needed to figure out how to coordinate my bunny limbs was a crazed lizard man wielding cleavers flip-flopping after me. He belted out a keening cry that brought more fae running.

“Kill the púcasss,” he lisped. “They dessstroyed the tether.”

Voices rose, and shouts rang out. Feet hammered the floor, rumbling tile under my paw pads.

I ran for all I was worth, retracing our steps, wishing I hadn’t left blood behind that they could use as a focusing object for any nasty spells they wanted to design just for me. But at least my tail stub had stopped bleeding. The floor behind me was clean. It meant when Mac cut a sharp corner, I left no evidence behind. After my run-in with the never blade, I’ll admit I was a tad nervous it might affect other areas of my healing abilities. This reprieve wouldn’t buy much time—not with a lizard’s sense of taste/smell—but it gave us the precious seconds needed to locate the púca tunnel we had used to breach the Halls.

Clambering inside the opening, I slumped against the moist earth and peered into the welcoming darkness.

“That was close,” Mac said, already wriggling through the bottlenecked tunnel.

Flexing my stump, I ducked my head and squirmed to safety. “Too close.”

Any closer to my rump, and LL would have been serving rabbit stew tonight.

Chapter Twelve

––––––––

M
y right butt cheek smarted when I plopped down in my chair in Mac’s living room. The chilly cushion was under me, and my girly bits were numb. Thanks to the lizard man, I now knew that skin physiology translated almost exactly from pelt to person. As in, I lost my tail as a bunny. So I lost an ungodly notch of butt cheek as Thierry. The wound hadn’t bled since leaving Summer, and the thick scab was about ready to flake off. I had no intentions of picking at it and risking an unfortunate scar.

Shaw would laugh his ass off when I told him.

A ribbon of doubt sliced through me that I might never get the chance to hear him tease me, and I sobered.

I would get him back.
Soon
. He was running out of time. Days were melting away.

Rook sat across from me in Mac’s usual chair. He leaned forward, elbows braced on his kneecaps, watching me fidget with a pensive expression on his face. I glared at him, and he spoke, his voice whisper-soft, pitched low so Mac wouldn’t hear us.

“Who did this to you?”

I started at the question, and then I snorted. “Like you care.”

Fishing for information on where we had been and what we had done was more likely.

With a growl, he shoved back in his chair. “I can’t help you if you don’t trust me.”

“Then you can’t help, because I don’t trust you.”

“You need me to get your incubus back,” he said smugly.

“It would be easier if you cooperated, but Mac and I can find our own way in if we have to.”

“Tick, tock.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You’ll run out of time being stubborn.”

My eyes clamped shut, and I focused on breathing. In and out. Nice and slow. Strangling Rook, while oh so satisfying, wouldn’t rescue Shaw any faster. Though being a widow versus a divorcée...

Shaking my head, I opened my eyes and grinned as Mac ambled into the room, papers in hand.

I scooted onto the edge of my seat. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“I did.” He passed me the topmost sheaf. “It’s as I said, you require a majority vote.”

Paper in hand, I skimmed it and groaned. “Oh joy.”

The Seelie consul had seemed like the best bet, but shattering the tether had nixed that. If the Seelie had any doubt who was at fault, LL had heard Mac call me by name. No wiggling out of that blame. It left me one option—the Unseelie consul. He liked me marginally better than the Unseelie magistrate back home, which was like saying you would rather suffer a fork through your left eye instead of the right. No longer his princess, I doubted Daibhidh would be willing to work with me without some leverage.

“A majority vote...?” Rook echoed, eyes narrowing on the paper.

Seeing no reason not to tell him at this point, I smiled. “The honeymoon’s over, darlin’.”

“An annulment?” He shot to his feet. “You aren’t serious.”

“You lost the throne.” I amended, “
We
lost it. There’s no reason for us to be married anymore.”

He grabbed my hand. “Except that I—”

“Don’t even try it, feather duster,” I snarled. “You never cared about me. I was a commodity, and my value has expired. If you have a single decent bone in your entire body, you will help me end this.”

“You are here to fight my mother for the crown.” He adjusted his grip and snatched the paper. “If you are successful, things can be as they were. You and I can mold Faerie. Together.”

“No.”
I stood and faced him. “I’m here because this is the right thing to do, because if Mac and I can’t stop your mother, then no one else stands a chance. People will die. Humans. Fae. Half-bloods. The realms will both be destroyed. I hate to break it to you, but your mom is a few feathers shy of a boa.”