War for the Oaks (30 page)

She laughed. "Or both. But why did you assume I wasn't one of your allies, and decline to shake my hand?"

"The way the phouka behaved," Eddi said.

The woman turned another look, longer this time, on the stage. "Ah, of course, your watchdog. Don't trust too much to one guardian—he's not incorruptible, my dear."

"Who is?"

The woman's throaty laugh was quite genuine. "Exactly! I've built a very old reputation on that principle."

Hedge took a step forward, his hands curled into fists and raised.
Eddi and the dark woman turned almost in unison, each equally wary, it seemed, of breaking eye contact.

The dark woman stared at Hedge, then smiled one of her quiet smiles. He glowered and turned his face away.

"Leave him alone," Eddi said quietly. "We're not on the battlefield now."

"No, we aren't—quite." The woman returned her attention to Eddi. "And there are better targets."

She set her black hat on her head at a striking angle, casting a diagonal of shadow across her features. "Again," she said to Eddi, "a marvelous band, and I was delighted to meet you. I'm sure we'll see one another soon." And she left the gallery, her heels making small, sharp noises with the measured cadence of her stride.

"Front door's locked," Eddi said thoughtfully.

"Oh," Willy replied, "she'll get out."

The phouka sank down on the edge of the stage and buried his face in his hands. Eddi hurried to him, alarmed.

"Phouka . . .?"

"Heart failure," he murmured through his fingers. "I warned you, my primrose, that I would be like to die of it, should you go on as you have."

She made a disgusted noise and pulled his hair. He lowered his hands and grinned wickedly up at her.

"Creep," she said. "All right, guys, who was that?"

Hedge looked at his feet. The phouka drew breath to answer, but it was Willy who spoke first. "The Queen of Air and Darkness," he said. His voice was soft and pitched low, but every surface in the room seemed to catch his words and whisper them back.

Willy was standing at the back of the stage, his eyes fixed on the empty oblong of the gallery door. He rubbed his hands absently over his upper arms, as if he suffered from cold and knew there was no relief for it.

"She scares you," Eddi said.

"She scares anyone with any sense," Willy replied sharply. He stepped off the back of the stage and went outside through the double doors. After a moment and a long inscrutable look at Eddi, Hedge went, too.

"Where are Carla and Dan?" Eddi asked the phouka after a respectful silence.

"On their way home."

"No mass outing for coffee?"

"They didn't seem in need of it," the phouka said.

Eddi raised her eyebrows. "Which didn't they need, the caffeine or the camaraderie?"

"They seemed quite happy, and almost incapable of beginning a sentence, let alone finishing one."

"You're right. They need to sleep. Well, then tell me who the Queen of Air and Darkness is."

"You don't—? Ah, of course. Never mind. She rules the Unseelie Court."

Eddi took a deep breath; it wobbled when she let it out. "Oh." Then she added, "I guess I understand why you might feel heart failure coming on."

"I should not have said that," he said seriously. "You managed that confrontation very well indeed, my sweet. I suppose I spoke out of a spasm of guilt—here was the villain of the piece, and I had done nothing to prepare you for her."

"Is she really the villain?" Eddi sat down on the stage next to him. "I kind of liked her."

With a rueful snort, he replied, "It would hardly be to her advantage, my primrose, to be repulsive."

"Why did she tell me you could be corrupted?"

"Oak and Ash," the phouka muttered, "do you remember everything that's said to you? She was sowing at random, hoping that a seed of doubt would find fertile ground in you."

"Well, it didn't," Eddi said crisply.

The phouka turned and studied her face. She resisted the sudden shyness that urged her to look away. "Thank you," he murmured.

"Any time," she said lightly, but she thought,
If I'm not supposed to thank him, what the hell does it mean if he thanks me?

"If you're interested," Willy's voice came from behind them, "there wasn't any fertile ground here, either."

"What?" The phouka looked confused; then his frown disappeared and he turned to Willy, who stood in the door. "Ah, that's right—she aimed a bolt or two at you, didn't she?"

Willy strolled in and sat next to Eddi. He was trying to seem at ease, his equilibrium recovered. It was very different from the real thing. "I don't think she seriously intended them to work," Willy said. "She was
shooting in the dark, probably, just to see if anything would break."

"So you no longer think I might be her agent?"

"She wouldn't have made the crack about not doing better herself if you were."

"I shouldn't point out, I suppose, that she might have done it to lay your suspicions."

Willy looked disgusted. "Don't be a pain in the ass."

"I thought I was being a devil's advocate." The phouka looked brightly at Eddi. "Are they synonymous?"

"Don't be a pain in the ass." Eddi smiled and shook her head at him. Then she turned to Willy. "Where's Hedge?"

"He's gone home."

It occurred to her that she didn't know where or what Hedge considered home. "We should follow his lead. It's been a long night, kids."

"Now there's a suggestion with merit." The phouka bounced to his feet and held out a hand to Eddi. When she took it and stood up, he executed one of his casual bows. She copied it back at him. It made him smile.

"Eddi?" Willy said behind her. The phouka looked over her shoulder, raised an eyebrow, and shrugged.

"I'll be outside, my primrose," he said, and went out the door without another word.

She rounded on Willy. "Did you send him away?"

"No. Or at least . . . I looked as if I
hoped
he'd leave, and he did. You tell me."

"Given your rank, doesn't your wish become his command?"

Willy snorted. "For the phouka? You've seen him in action. No, I think he decided to do me a favor."

"So are you grateful?"

"Yes, yes, I'm grateful. Eddi—" He rubbed the space between his eyebrows. "Air and . . . I don't suppose we could start the last minute and a half over again?"

"Not really." But she felt sorry for him, and sat down again. "What is it, Willy?"

He sat for a moment, watching his right thumb stroke the edge of his left. "I . . . It's been a long while. . . ." He pulled his hands apart suddenly, and they made a pair of half-finished frustrated arcs. "I've run out of charming euphemisms. Eddi . . . I don't want to sleep alone tonight."

He met her eyes (oh, those speaking green gemstones of his), then looked away into the darkened room.

She waited for her emotions to stop flailing, until she knew it was hopeless to wait. Then she said, "No." That was too bald. "I'm sorry. But no." Was that worse? Probably. There was almost certainly no good thing to be said, after all.

He gave her one of his fiery, intense looks, and this time she had to turn away. "Is it still because of the glamour? Because I hid what I am?"

"No. And the problem wasn't that you hid what you are, damn it. It was that you became someone else, and
made
me like him."

"But still, that's not the problem?"

"Oh, hell." One voice inside her said,
I don't need this now
. The other said,
I will not cry, I
will
not cry
. "You don't love me. And I don't want to sleep with you."

Anger crossed his face in a series of tensions and tics, crossed and was gone. "So, you've never slept with someone when you didn't want to?"

She almost told him no, she hadn't. "All right. Yes, of course I have. I'm only human"—he smiled coldly, and she wanted to hit him—"and sometimes you don't realize until afterward that you didn't want to. But why the hell should you want me to repeat past mistakes for you?"

"You're sure they were mistakes?"

"Of course I'm sure! Sex without love is like a goddamn business transaction. And sometimes both parties feel as if they got a good deal, but that doesn't make it any less so. If I go to bed with you as a favor, because you need it—son, I might as well charge you for it, because there are places where they do."

He must have battled his pride, to be able to ask her for this. His terrible lordly pride. Perhaps she should have granted his wish. But combining sex and self-sacrifice—it was obscene, like mixing sex and cruelty. And surely Willy had seen enough people set aside their needs and desires for his? She wished she could be sure.

She stood, before she lost the courage of her convictions.

"I'm going home," she said.

He looked up, one eyebrow raised. When he spoke his voice was full of mockery, and Eddi couldn't tell if it was at her expense or his.
"No sad speeches about hoping we can still be friends—I'm grateful for that, anyway."

"You've seen too many movies."

"I suppose I have. I didn't get that from personal experience, you know." Bitterness slipped from his voice, replaced with—surprise? Curiosity? Now that Eddi thought about it, she realized Willy's experience with rejection was not likely to be extensive.

He shrugged. "Safe trip home."

"Aren't you leaving?"

"Soon."

Eddi looked back when she reached the double doors. Willy was still sitting on the stage, staring out into the dark room.

The phouka was a shadow in the shadow of a tree. He detached himself from it and ambled toward her when she came out.

"No, my sweet," he said cheerfully, "don't mind me for an instant. I live to wait for you, outside in the cold and damp." His face, in the streetlight, was at odds with his voice; he looked sad and sympathetic.

"Did you overhear any of that?"

"No, I try not to eavesdrop unless it's likely to profit me. Ought I to have?"

"No, you ought not, and don't you
dare
ask me about it."

The phouka sighed hugely. "And now I haven't even the excuse of stage fright to offer you. Come along, my obstreperous primrose. Everything will be improved by a night's sleep and a day's reflection."

He might have been right, but Eddi couldn't swear to it. She spent much of the night awake, between sheets that seemed unusually harsh and cold.

They were playing the Uptown Bar, one of Eddi's favorite venues. At least, it began with the Uptown Bar, and with the memory of a good first set. Then piece by piece the surroundings turned inside out, until the stage was on the roof of the building, and Eddi and the Fey were gathered around it. Eddi couldn't find her guitar. It was probably still inside, downstairs. Carla called to her from the stage, warned her that it was time to begin. But it would only take a minute to get the guitar. . . .

She stared down the stairs and discovered that the building had grown several floors. On every stair landing there was a party, elegant people of the sort she'd never seen at the Uptown Bar—and of course, it wasn't the Uptown. It was the Guthrie Theatre, with the lobbies and wide iron-railed staircases thronged with concertgoers. A tall, black-haired woman in a cream-colored dress stepped out in front of her. "Great show, Eddi," the woman said. "I didn't think you'd live this long."

"Neither did I," Eddi heard herself saying. "But I have to find my guitar."

Her axe was backstage, of course. But where was backstage? The band would be waiting. If she asked an usher, she'd have to prove she was with the band. No one would believe her.

Eddi pushed her way despairingly through the crowd. Suddenly she saw Stuart Kline, halfway up the next set of stairs. He looked the way he had when she first met him, young and clear-eyed and clever. He wore formal dress, white tie and tails. She waved furiously, and he saw her and smiled, and beckoned. Eddi fought her way to the foot of the stairs and saw him disappearing around a corner at the top.

There was no one on this flight of stairs; Eddi ran up unhindered. At the top of the next flight was a gray metal fire door, swinging closed. Eddi caught it before it latched and pushed it open. Before her was the roof of the Walker Art Center, the Guthrie's sister building. A
Calder mobile creaked gently in the wind, its black silhouette like locust leaves against the night sky. So many stars—more than the city lights ever allowed for.

Stuart sat on the low wall around the roof. He had her guitar, the red Rickcnbacker, propped on his thigh, and she heard the melody of Peter Gabriel's "Here Comes the Flood." The Rick resonated like an acoustic. Stuart looked up at her and struck discord. He smiled.

"What are you doing with my axe?" Eddi said.

"You were looking for it, weren't you?" He hopped up on the wall, and the wind tugged at his brown hair and the tails of his jacket. He held her guitar by the neck in a gray-gloved hand, out over the street below.

"Why are you wearing gloves?" Eddi asked him.

He looked at his free hand. "They're burned," he said calmly. He shook the glove off, and the wind took it. His hand was charred black. As she watched, the black began to flake away, swirling off bit by bit after the glove, until it revealed the hand beneath, pink and new and much smaller than the old one. Then Stuart turned and walked off the wall.

He didn't fall. He stood in midair like something from a cartoon, smiling and waving her guitar. "Come get it!"

She stood beside the wall, unable to move. Stuart did a little dance step on nothing. "Well, come on. What, didn't your new friends teach you this?" Then his face changed, still Stuart, but cruel and angry. "Oh, that's right. They don't want you to know shit. Your taste in friends sucks, Eddi."

"It's getting better. I used to hang out with you."

"Come on." Stuart waved her guitar. "Before I drop it."

Eddi climbed up on the wall, which was tall and narrow now. The wind caught her under the arms, a warm wind full of the smell of lilacs, and she stepped out.