Roadside Magic (3 page)

D
usk turned to dark well before true nightfall as the storm’s wing passed over a small trailer park on Guayahoya Avenue. The sun, as it sank, peered underneath the clouds, turning the west to a furnace of gold and blood. The last streakflashes of crimson and yellow faded to indigo dusk. Quiet fell, broken only by cars grinding to a halt and quick bursts of supper-scent puffing out before trailer doors slammed. Evening thickened, swirling under trees whose wet branches now had hard little green nubs, spring overflowing forth all at once.

A soft breeze rattled droplets from bough and bush. Night tiptoed over the city, thief instead of
grande dame
.

A feline hiss brought Robin into wakefulness with a terrified jolt, a taste of bitter almonds on her tongue and every nerve taut-prickling. The cat, her formal black and white disarranged by the puffing of her fur, hissed again, and Robin was off the bed in a flash, instinct driving her toward the closet before she halted, her skirt swinging.

No. Be canny, Ragged.

They were not close, not yet. She shut her eyes, listening,
taut as a bard’s lutestring, the mortal house a very thin shield indeed.

There.
A silver buzz against the nerves, a faraway ultrasonic thrilling most mortals wouldn’t hear. They would
feel
it, though—a cold brush up their backs, a sudden uneasiness.

Huntwhistles. Unwinter’s knights rode tonight, perhaps even Unwinter himself. She was no longer stumbling-weary; milk and rest had soothed her aches. She had two pins, the bone comb, her wits, and the music below her thoughts—the massive noise that could kill if she let it loose for long enough. Not to mention the knife at her belt and the pipes tucked in her secret skirt pocket—a collection of age-blackened and use-lacquered reeds, lashed together with tendons too fine to be animal.

Puck’s treasures, now hers.

But it was night, and only spring instead of the full season of glory. Even though Summer had opened the Gates, Unwinter could still ride dusk to dawn if he chose. Slipping into Summer to rest might have been an attractive option, save for the thought of some sidhe remarking on her and carrying tales to the Queen. Robin did not wish to face
her
again so soon, either.

Did Summer know who had invited the lord of the Hunt into her lands? Could she guess? Goodfellow perhaps had not told her, but Robin could not trust as much. Then there was Sean.

All the stars of Summer’s dusk ground into shattered amber dust, the child she had cared for gone into whatever awaited mortals after death.

No, when she saw Summer again, Robin wished to be thoroughly prepared.

First, though, she had to survive the night. The silver
huntwhistles were far away, but the cat began to growl low in her chest, an amazingly deep noise from such a small animal.

Robin kept breathing. Four in, four out, you could not sing if you could not breathe, and though her hand wrapped itself about the cold hilt of the loathsome dagger, the song was still her best weapon.

A scratching. Much closer than the huntwhistles. The knights were coursing abroad, probably hoping to find any prey at all, a net she might be able to elude. It was the silent hunters she would have to worry about.

More scritch-scratching, and a desire to laugh rose in Robin’s throat, killed a-borning by the discipline of breath. The music under her thoughts took on a sonorous dissonance.
Who is that nibbling at my house?

Only the wind
, she replied silently,
the child of heaven
. Mortals never realized how much truth was in the old tales. Sometimes they slipped through into the sideways realms—mostly children, but also adults who had not lost the habit of seeing. Usually a swift death awaited them, or a return to the mortal world full of slow, lingering illness, not realizing what they pined for. A few survived somewhat unscathed, and their stories passed into myth and child’s tale, warning and dream.

Her gaze traveled across the bedroom, to the neat dresser and the invitation-card with its tinsel. She ghosted across cheap carpet, still listening to the scratches. Mortals did not bury iron under their doorsteps anymore, or nail up horseshoes to bar ill-wishing. There was salt in the kitchen; she could have poured thin lines over every windowsill and doorstep, but that would simply tell any passerby that someone wished to guard something of value.

Sidhe were a curious, curious folk. Always peering and poking, prying and noticing.

Soft padding footsteps. More scratching. How many of them? Why had they not broken in already to lay waste to flesh and trailer alike? She was an ill guest indeed, bringing destruction to such a neat, humble home.

The wedding invitation was heavy paper, and inside, written with purple ink under the printed date and time, was a round childish hand:
Uncle Eddie, you’d better be there to give me away! Love, Kara.
The moonglow tinsel on the card unraveled under Robin’s quick fingers, whispered chantment dropping from her lips. The Old Language slipped and slithered between the strands, the pins and needles of Realmaking spreading into her palms.

Realmaking was precious, but it required something to begin with. She could not simply spin chantment out of empty air; that was a fullblood’s trick. When given something, though, she could make something
else
, something that wouldn’t fade into leaf and twig come daybreak. It was strange that a tinge of perishable mortal in one’s blood was necessary for Realmaking. They were rare, those architects of the fully real, and no fullblood, highborn or low, had ever been among their number.

A flick of the wrist, another, silver glitters attaching to her fingertips. A full complement of ten, and a swift lance of pain through her temples as a jolting impact crashed into the side of the trailer, rocking it on its foundations.

What in Stone’s name is that?
She skipped down the hall, past the tiny scrubbed-clean bathroom with its strangely unsmelly litter box. Her shoes lightened, their chantments waking, too, as she called upon speed and lightfoot, and by the time the living room window shattered she was in the kitchen, her fingernails throwing hard, sharp darts of hungry moonlight as she tweezed open the cabinet near the oven. A blue canister of salt was tucked behind other spices. Her hand darted in and the
small bottles and cans holding pepper, garlic, onion salt, oregano, thyme, all swept out in a jumbled mass, falling like rain, shattering and spilling their fragrant cargo. She whirled, and it was not as bad as it could have been.

Not barrow-wights, with their subtly wrong, noseless faces and their strangler’s fingers dripping with gold leached of its daylight luster. Not fullborn knights, either, or Unwinter’s narrow-nosed, leaping dogs with their needle-teeth. Instead, it was two lean, graceful drow and a woodwight, accompanied by a looming silver-necklaced shadow that chilled her clear through until she realized it was a stonetroll on a moonfire leash, making a low, unhappy grumbling sound as one of the drow poked it with a silvertipped stick.

None of them were familiar from song or rumor, or known to her. They piled pell-mell into the mortal living room, one of the raven-haired drow leaping atop the couch and hissing, his handsome face distorted as the teeth elongated, rows of serrated pearls. The woodwight swelled, his lean brown frame crackle-heaving between treeshape and biped, living green sprouting from his long, knobbed fingers. Serrated leaves, a dark trunk—an elm, a bad-tempered tree indeed.

The troll heaved forward again, widening the hole in the side of the trailer. Glass shattered, cheap metal buckled and bent, and Robin flicked her right pinkie fingernail with the pad of her thumb.

A silver dart crackled into being, splashing against the woodwight and scoring deep. Golden, resinous sapblood sprayed, and the wight’s knothole mouth opened bellow-wide. A furious scream made of creaking, snapping, thick-groaning branches poured out.

The troll halted, its tiny close-set eyes blinking in confusion. It withdrew slightly, and the second raven-haired drow peered
over its shoulder, poking at it afresh with the silvertip stick. Robin flicked her right middle and ring fingers, one dart catching in the woodwight’s branches and tangling, the other flying true and striking at the troll’s eyes. Index finger, another dart made a high keening noise as it streaked for the first drow, who batted it away with contemptuous ease. The spray of sapblood from the woodwight eased, and the thing hissed a malediction at her, a black-winged curse flapping, ungainly, through the close confines.

The troll howled, the noise and its stinking breath fluttering Robin’s skirt, cracking the screen on the ancient television, and batting the flying curse aside. It lashed out, horselike, with each limb in turn, the first its left hindleg, catching the second drow with a crack audible even through the uproar. The first drow leapt forward, shaking out something that glittered gold with flashes of ruby, and Robin’s skin chilled all over.

Is that what I think it is?

She flicked her thumbnail now, and a high piercing whistle burst between her lips. Ruddy orange flashed, the dart becoming a whip of flame, and it kissed the edge of the woodwight’s trunk.

Golden sapblood kindled, and a new layer of noise intruded. Robin ignored it, skipping aside with the canister of salt now in her right hand.
A fine time to wish I had cold iron
, she thought pointlessly, and dodged, for the gold-and-ruby glimmer in the first drow’s hands was a net, hair-fine metallic strands with red droplets at their junctures, supple-straining as it sensed its holder’s quarry. It retreated with a cheated hiss, and the drow snarled at her again.

So
someone
wished her taken alive. Unwinter had sworn to Puck Goodfellow that he would not hunt her, but drow were not of Summer unless they were half something else, whether
mortal or another manner of sidhe, and in any case it did not matter.

The Ragged did not mean to let these suitors, or any other, press their attentions
too
closely upon her. The curse, flapping in the living room, vanished under a sheet of flame. Robin’s whistle ended, and she whooped in a fresh breath, bringing her left hand forward.

The sinister hand. These darts would be more brittle . . . but far more powerfully malefic.

The troll, fire-maddened and half-blinded, heaved. The entire trailer lifted, foundation to roof, buckling and breaking. The woodwight, screaming and completely alight by now, blundered into the couch, thrusting itself straight into the troll’s face as well. The poor creature—stonetrolls were not known for their intelligence—was hopelessly entangled with the side of the trailer, insulation and sharp metal ribboning around its hard hide. It heaved again, and the drow with the net slip-stumbled between carpet and linoleum, his dark, liquid eyes widening as footing became treacherous.

Robin jabbed her left hand forward and the drow dodged aside, crashing into a flimsy closet door—but she hadn’t released the darts, and now she flicked them all, fanwise and deadly, a baking draft scouring her from top to toe and her eyes slitted against the blast. Smoke billowed; it would make the air unbreathable after a few more moments. The back door was behind her; she fumbled with her left hand for the knob, her right hand sweeping in a semicircle, scattering salt in an arc that would not halt Unwinter’s minion.

But it would delay him, and salt could be fashioned into other things. There was the song, too, her loosening throat scorched with smoke-tang, and just as the drow with the net shook himself free of the ruins of the coat closet and the troll
heaved again, the knob turned under her fingers and she half-fell backward, saving herself with a wrenching fishlike jump as the wet wooden steps outside splintered.

The troll heaved yet again, dragging his leash-holder with him, breaking through the remainder of the wall and, instead of backing away from the inferno, plunged forward, crashing entirely through the other side of the trailer. The noise was incredible, mortals would soon take notice, her heels clattered on a narrow strip of damp pavement. The mortal whose home they had just destroyed had a charcoal grill set here, all rust carefully scrubbed from its legs and black bowl. It went flying as Robin’s hip bumped it, clattering and striking gonglike as it rolled.

Did I strike him, please tell me I did—

The net-bearing drow bulleted out of the burning trailer. The wight’s scream and flapping curse had vanished into a snap and crackle of flame, a burst of hot air lifting smoke and sparks heavenward as the fire could now suck on the night air outside the shattered home, window-glass shivered into breaking. Robin kept backing up over the small concrete patio, light, shuffling skips, and the urge to cough tickled mercilessly at the back of her palate. She denied it, saw she had, indeed, managed to hit the net-bearer. Thick yellowgreenish ichor threaded with crimson stained his side, his face was a ruin of scratches and soot, his hair full of burning sparks, and one of his feet was tangled with a mass of glittering spikes, fading quickly as they burrowed through his boots, seeking the flesh underneath.