Roadside Magic (24 page)

T
here was some commotion, and they carried her to a rickety trailer. The owner of the troupe, a fat balding man with the stub of an unlit cigar stuffed in his mouth, filthy as a dwarf though not nearly as sweet smelling, waved his hands. “For God’s sake, we’re not a charitable concern! And that dog—”

Said dog, his fine fringed tail lashing, gave a short yipping bark.

Alastair Crenn, seawater in his leathers and slosh-weighting his mortal boots, narrowed his eyes. The sea, both mortal and Dreaming, filled his hair, too. Maybe the salt would kill the moss, maybe not. His throat burned from the gallons he’d swallowed, and his stomach was none too happy with him.

Still, he had managed to find her. Mortal hands had pulled her from the water. He had been left to make his own rescue.

“—Who’s going to fucking feed that dog?”

“For God’s sake, Leo,” the taller woman, also wet clear through, spat. “
I’ll
feed him. If you don’t have any Tylenol,
shut up
.”

The slighter, shorter girl, her long hair dripping, pushed at a youth with sun-colored hair. “Go get some Tylenol, Joey. Gus?”

“Here.” The stolid, muscular man in flannel appeared with an armful of blankets. “I knocked on Geta’s door; he’s bringing soup.”

“What about Marlon?” the girl wanted to know, subtracting the blankets from him with quick efficiency.

Flannel-Man shrugged. “Dead drunk. He took a night off with a vengeance.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” The owner raised his hands to heaven. “I am
not
running an orphanage or a hospital ward!”

“Leo, if you’d prefer us to call the cops—”

“Don’t know why I ever hired you. Troublemaker! That’s what you are!” He shook a fat finger, and Crenn tensed, but the generously hipped matron seemed supremely unconcerned.

“You hired me because I’ll feed your crew on biscuits and gravy even when there’s nothing but dust to eat, and because I put up with
you
. Go count your money; I’ll deal with this.”

“Come on, old man.” A squat, dark-haired troubadour, carrying a guitar, took the owner’s arm. “We’ll drink. I have some ouzo and some cheese. I’ll play you ‘Moon River’ again.”

“I hate that song,” the owner muttered. “All right, Marylou, fine. But she works, or she doesn’t stay! Just like her damn dog!”

“Leave the dog alone!” she called after him. “And you, Rick, go sit with Marlon.”

“Why is that always
my
job?” This man, keeping to the shadows in a way that made Crenn’s nose twitch, was already moving to obey.

“Because he’s
your
husband,” the girl shot after him, and the matron shushed her, taking the blankets.

“If you ever bite your tongue you’ll die of poison. Go get cleaned up.”

“I got her first.” The girl tossed her hair and put her newly freed hands on her hips. There was a feral sharpness to her
features that bespoke some manner of sidhe blood in her ancestry, but she smelled purely salt-iron. She hadn’t been taken over the border into any sideways realm, and might not ever be; she would most likely die a mortal death if she never manged to breach the Veil. “Come on, Joey. Let’s find some goddamn Tylenol.”

The dog kept wagging its tail, ears perked. It shook itself, sending sand spraying everywhere, but nobody noticed. The man in flannel waited until the girl and the young lad had vanished, the girl’s sharp voice chivvying the boy along, before he looked up at the matron. For an instant, his sad mortal face was alight with a kind of hunger Crenn almost recognized.

“I suppose I’m not coming in tonight,” the flannel-clad knight said.

The woman looked down at him, pausing before she spoke. “Not unless you’re going to sit up with her.”

“I will, and you can sleep.”

“Who can sleep with you breathing on them?”

“Come on, Marylou.” A softness in his growl of a voice, and her shoulders relaxed.

“Sorry. It’s just . . . Leo. You know.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll sit up, you get some sleep. He’ll be a bear tomorrow, and who knows what she is?”

“She doesn’t smell townie.”

“You and your nose. What else does it tell you?” He put a boot on the lowest step into her frail trailer. The whole thing rocked alarmingly. Crenn stilled, his breath turning thief in his throat.

The matron smiled at the flannel-clad man, her expression crossing the border into tenderness without even stopping to show its papers. “Trouble on the wind, Guster. You can come
in, until they bring the Tylenol. No telling how she might act if a man’s here when she wakes up.”

“
If
she does.”

“Well, if she doesn’t, there’ll be a whole new set of problems for Leo to bitch about.” Marylou retreated into the trailer, tapping the door with a heel just before it slammed to keep it quiet.

“No, boy,” Guster of the Red Flannel said to the dog. “You did your part. Wait out here. Maybe Marylou has a bone in her fridge. I’ll check.”

Pepperbuckle, as if he understood, plopped down to sit next to the steps, his tongue lolling. The door closed again—softly, so as not to disturb the sleeper within.

Crenn sagged on the roof.

She was alive. They were rough people, but they had given her shelter. In the old days, they would be rewarded with gold or chantment, all he could scrape out of purse or glamour-strength.

Alive
. It was up to him to provide the rest, whether she would thank him for it or not. His newly smooth, traitorous cheek twitched a little, and he closed his eyes for a moment. There, on the roof of another shoddy trailer, Alastair Crenn dropped into a doze.

A
nother mortal night, another dispirited drizzle of rain. Gallow stumbled, his side aching, and Puck Goodfellow whistled a little, a wandering, tuneless melody. “Just a little further,” he crooned, the words threading through the breathy scree of air.

He was, after all, a very musical sidhe. It would make a mad sort of sense if he
was
Robin’s father. Daisy had been purely mortal; maybe Puck had left the mother and only thought to return later, when Robin was older?

I was twelve when I was taken
, she had told him. She’d never given any indication she viewed Puck as anything other than a question mark. Except . . . Jeremiah had left her sleeping in his own house, and when he’d seen her again Puck had been with her. Robin, as a sidhe of Summer, had given the invitation to Unwinter to step over the border and cause havoc.

And Puck himself had called her
daughter
.

Puck led him up a long, gentle slope, ducked through a tangle of broken chainlink fencing. A mortal city closed around them, its stink of exhaust and cold iron. Pavement that bruised the feet, concrete walls that closed around the soul. For all that,
it was better than Summer, and Jeremiah’s shoulders relaxed slightly. It was a relief to tread in familiar surroundings again.

I really do prefer mortals. Mostly.
He shook his head, sweat slicking his forehead and his hand clamped to his side.
Think, Jeremiah. Come on.

Every single turn of goddamn events lately had Puck Goodfellow all over it. Even him leading Jeremiah to Robin at the Rolling Oak, neat as you please, and disappearing when the barrow-wights arrived. Probably leaving Robin in Gallow’s care, since she looked so much like Daisy, and . . .

And of course, Puck had forced Robin into extending the invitation into Summer. How long had he been laying his plans? And if he’d planned the breaching of Summer’s borders, well, what else had he designed? Had he just seen an opportunity, with the plague running rife among both Summer and Unwinter?

Recognition jolted through Jeremiah. The city was familiar. It was, after all, his own. Summer’s Gates moved according to their own whims, slowly but definitely, and they’d been here for some twenty mortal years. In another ten or so, they’d be in another city, and the smaller entrances would follow in their almost-random patterns, branching through the mortal world like secret, sweet-poison veins.

Unwinter, of course, could be reached from anywhere.

Puck nipped into an alley; Jeremiah followed. A fire escape loomed, and they began to climb, Puck hissing as he skipped glove-shod along iron grating. “Just a little more, my fine Gallow. Then we shall see, we shall see.”

Where the hell are we?
He looked down, saw an alley, then a familiar slice of street. Ninth, with the
shawarma
place he’d eaten at damn near every day while they worked the Claigh Bank Building’s upper floors. That had been a hell of a job, and
Clyde the foreman had brought a flask to work for the last week and a half.

Think, Jer. Where are you?

It had to be the Savoigh Limited. He stumbled a little, fetched up against the railing, and the entire iron contraption rattled.

“
Fool!
” Puck hissed. “Come, up to the roof. We may parlay there. Be warned, Gallow-glass, Glass-Gallow, if you cannot find her, I will—”

“A father’s care.” Jer cleared his throat. The consciousness of danger bloomed along his skin, and the marks tingled. He had in mind a different weapon, though, and his right hand crawled to his throat. “Touching.” The proverb rolled from his lips. “
It is a foul father who eats his own.
”

Puck halted. His narrow, supple back was to Jeremiah, and he had the high ground. His head turned slightly, the fluid, terrible movement of sidhe articulation in every joint. It was enough to make you nauseous if you weren’t used to it. “You are a canny beast indeed, Half.”

“Not as canny as I should be.”
I’m slow, I know as much. But I get there.
“You don’t mean Robin any good.”

“Hers is a fine voice.”

She’s more than just a voice
. “You don’t love her.”

Puck shrugged, a loose, easy, repulsive motion. “What is love?
You
took the dregs instead of the fine floss, and well my Robin knows it.”

Does she?
“You left her in the trailer park,
Fatherless
. Not me.”

“And I returned; I brought her to Summer.” Puck kept climbing, and Jeremiah followed. “ ’Tis not any concern of yours,
Armormaster
.”

The marks tingled on his arms. “There is something that
does
concern me, Puck.”

“Oh?” Puck reached the top, clambered lightly over the waist-high barrier to the roof. Jeremiah followed, cautiously, but Puck merely paced across the rooftop to a particular spot, where a slug-opalescent residue of a sidhe death shimmered faintly. The lance solidified in Jeremiah’s hands, and the Horn burned cold-furious at his chest. His side burned, too, with a deeper, frost-rimed flame.
I need one of the antidotes, dammit. Which will just leave me with three.

Sort of ironic, how he wanted to
live
now. He couldn’t have been bothered before, but at this particular moment, he found he really, truly did want to survive. No matter what.

He wasn’t ready to lie down and show his belly just yet.

The drizzle intensified. A single huntwhistle thrilled into the ultrasonic to the south.

It wasn’t one of Summer’s.

“Yeah.” The lance lengthened, its blade dulling through silver, flushing along the sharpening edge. “Daisy.”

Puck spread his narrow hands. “A mortal chit, a pale reflection of my Robin.”

“My wife.”
You and Summer both told me she went to meet a sidhe the night she died. A straightaway, a dry road, and an oak tree. Robin waited for hours, but Daisy didn’t show.

It was pretty goddamn simple, when you thought about it.

A gleam of yellowgreen irises, an impatient movement. “That does not make us kin, Half. Now, can you find my Robin?”

“I can.”
I have the locket.
“Why can’t you?”

Puck shook his head. “You have something of hers. Some gift my fine girl gave to thee.” His smile widened. He didn’t seem particularly concerned by the lance’s sudden solidity. “I shall take it from thy corpse, and send thy head to Unwinter.”

“There’s two problems with that plan.”

The boy shrugged, spreading his extra-jointed fingers.

“First, I’m still breathing.”

“That can be remedied—”

Jeremiah was already moving, the lance shrieking as it yanked his recalcitrant body through space. A lateral sweep, Puck skipping aside with the eerie blurring speed of the sidhe. More huntwhistles bloomed, north and west; the lance doubled on itself and jerked back, tassels of moonfire blurring off its blunt end. Puck ducked, weaving, and Jeremiah’s breath tore in his chest. The burning in his side slowed him, he should have taken an antidote vial before this.

It didn’t matter.

Daisy, at the door.
Just a quart of half-n-half, since you like your milk so much
. Her shattered mortal body giving up its soul, the flat, atonal cry of the machines as her heart ceased. Daisy, flinching a little just like Robin did. She rarely spoke about her childhood, and he’d been content to leave it there so he didn’t have to talk about his own.

It was the shadow of his own stupidity he chased across the rooftop, the lance warming to its work and humming, its hungry core alive at the prospect of worthy prey.

Puck darted in, trying to get close enough for claws, and had to leap aside, ducking as the lance whickered through space and kissed a lock of his shaggy mane. The hair crisped, puffing up smoke-steam as cold iron blighted it, and Puck snarled, his face losing all its boyish handsomeness. Had Daisy seen that before she died? Pressed against a windshield, it would give any mortal a shock and send them veering off the road.

Puck didn’t have his knife. Why? Jeremiah found he didn’t care. Here on open ground, with foe finally clearly revealed,
all that mattered was the death he would mete out. A last gift, both to Daisy and to Robin.

He hadn’t done right by either of them, but God, how he’d
wanted
to.

Puck darted for the edge of the roof, but the lance swept in again. Had the Fatherless still possessed his pipes or his knife, it would have been a much different fight. The battle-madness was on Jeremiah now, and for once he didn’t try to control the lance.

Instead, he gave himself up to its hunger, and the Horn was a cold star against his chest.

Sidestep, blade singing, every possible move unreeling inside Gallow’s head, all narrowing to a single, undeniable point—Puck faded aside again, but the lance was there, sinking into the boy-sidhe’s left arm with a
crunch
that sent tiny cracks spiderwebbing out across the rooftop. An HVAC vent a little ways away resounded like a gong, and the iron blade bit deep across Puck’s chest, grating on ribs.

The Fatherless screamed, whipped aside like a spider flicked into a candleflame, arms and legs folding in around the wound. Jeremiah panted, his knees buckling, and lunged forward, but Puck was rolling across the rooftop, his passage throwing up dust from the cracking, heaving rooftop, scattering steam from the flashing drizzle and spatters of thick blue-green ichor.

The lance keened, hungry to finish the job, but fire-claws gripped Gallow’s side. His breath heaved, and his knees grated against the rooftop. Tried to surge to his feet. Couldn’t.

Puck panted, harsh cough-choking breaths. He lay crumpled against the HVAC vent, curled into a tight ball, his yellow-green irises flashing, dimming. “I shall repay thee for this, Gallow.” His face, horrifically beautiful, was the last thing
his mortal prey would ever see. A hideous blood-freezing grimace, but Jeremiah was past fear now. “Do you hear me?
I shall repay
.”

“Sure you will.” Gallow coughed, swallowed blood.
I need one of those goddamn antidotes.
“You fucking sidhe
bastard
.” The lancebutt socked into the rooftop, the entire building shuddering like an unhappy horse. He dragged himself upright and tacked drunkenly for the vent, the lance lengthening. Even if Puck somehow scurried away, the ironblight would give him something to worry about.

He drew the lance back a little. Its tip, leafshaped now, quivered hungrily. “Daisy,” he murmured.

“You’re not the first to wound me in her name,” Puck panted. “Gallow. You think you can kill
me
?”

“Let’s find out.” The lance lunged forward with a crunch, and Jeremiah Gallow
twisted
it. Blood hot on his lips, dribbling down his chin.

Puck Goodfellow screamed.

The huntwhistles rose again, so close the drizzle flashed into sharp silver ice. The lance shrieked, gulping life into its fiery core. He twisted it again, and the scream rising from the flopping, jerking body pinned to the rooftop pushed his hair back. Windows broke all around, sweet shivers of broken glass, and the building sagged again. Anyone in it probably thought it was an earthquake.

It is.

One last time, Jeremiah Gallow
twisted
, the blade growing serrations, tearing and ripping flesh, tangling in ribs, drinking greedily. Lava filled Gallow’s veins. So much power. So
much
.

They boiled over the edge of the rooftop, nightmare steeds
and bright-eyed hounds, a crowd of drow with golden nets, but Gallow was past caring. The poison burned afresh, but he couldn’t let go of the lance to dig in his pocket for a vial and let Puck wriggle away just yet.

He jammed the lance further down into the rooftop, and did not need to twist it again. The lance hummed, sucking Puck’s dying agonies into its core. Its bearer slumped over its hungry keening, not even bothering to flee.

Jeremiah Gallow was well and truly caught.