War for the Oaks (7 page)

"There," said the phouka in his furry dog's voice. "Look your fill and be done; I don't feel especially doggish just now and would like to change back."

"Mary Mother of God," Carla said in a flat voice. "Change the hell back. Please."

Eddi, for no reason she could explain, felt comforted by that. "Get used to him. He says he's going to be my shadow until they finish their war."

The phouka returned to human form, and Carla took a long shaky drag on her cigarette.

"Can I talk you out of taking
her?
" Carla said at last to the phouka.

"No." His gaze was fixed on the floor, and his voice was soft.

"If . . . if anything happens, I'll get you. I swear I will."

He met Carla's hard look, and nodded. "All right."

Eddi looked at Carla's profile and saw her filling slowly up with some dangerous resolve. The vision chilled her. She remembered the sight of Stuart in the doorway, his eyes asking for reassurance, and she remembered him leaving, the way he'd straightened his shoulders before he stepped out into the hall.

She had been drafted by the fairies. But wars have a way of coming home, she knew, and not all the shots are fired on the battlefield.

Eddi took a deep breath and said to the phouka, "I don't suppose you'd go for a walk or something for half an hour."

He stretched in his chair. "No indeed. But it's sweet of you to think of it."

"I want to talk to Carla in private."

The phouka looked elaborately hurt. "Oh, my heart, what can you say to her that you may not say to me?"

"Do you expect to listen in on every conversation I have for the next six months? Because if that's true, you can find yourself another sucker."

He shrugged. "There's the bedroom."

"This is
my
living room. Why don't
you
go sit in the goddamn bedroom?"

The phouka cocked his head. "Are we going to have a fight?"

Carla bounced out of her chair and grabbed Eddi's arm. "Don't beat him up, kid," she said lightly. "It'd probably give him some kind of moral satisfaction.

"And
you"
, she added to the phouka, "can quit bugging her. What good does it do you to be such a jerk?"

He shrugged and made a regretful face. "It's the way I'm made, I suppose. For centuries, my kind have delighted in luring travelers off the path and into the marsh for the sheer pleasure of seeing them wet their feet."

"What," said Eddi, spitting out each word, "does that have to do with my living room?"

"Nothing, but it serves to explain why I've done a necessary thing in an unnecessarily annoying fashion."

"Can I have my living room to myself?"

"No," said the phouka.

"Are you going to tell me
why not?"

He laughed, not at all unpleasantly. "I hadn't intended to, but see how sweetly you beguile me?"

Eddi made a disgusted noise.

"If the two of you sit in the living room and I in the bedroom, my primrose, you might take a notion to try to slip out the door. I would find you and bring you back, of course, and you would be embarrassed. See the suffering I have spared you?"

"My," said Eddi, "I guess a pair of handcuffs would make me the happiest girl in the world."

"And," said the phouka, "not incidentally, as long as I am between you and the door, I am also between you and anyone who might come in."

"What does that mean?"

"It means, my child, that the Unseelie Court will find out about you. Soon, unless I miss my reckoning. When they do, they will want—how shall I say this?—to do you a mischief. Should they choose a bold attack over a sly one, I would rather be the one to meet them at the door."

"In her own damn apartment?" Carla said, but the phouka paid no attention.

Eddi pushed her hair back with both hands and stared at him. "I'm not safe here."

"Not really."

"Oh." Eddi supposed she ought to be afraid, but in place of fear she found only a simmering anger.
This bastard chases me all over downtown, moves into my apartment, mauls my boyfriend, refuses me my own living room—and tells me he's just protecting me from somebody worse? If these are the good guys, who the hell are the villains?

She looked down her nose at the phouka and said, "All right, play guard dog if it makes you feel good. I'll go climb out the bedroom window." She turned and started away.

"It's painted shut."

"How do you know?"

"Gracious, pet, I'm a supernatural being."

"You're a shithead," Eddi said sweetly, and led Carla off to the bedroom.

Eddi paced the tiny space at the end of the bed, and Carla drew her feet out of the way in mock alarm.

"Don't worry, I won't tell him how to handle you."

Eddi glanced at her deadpan face. "I don't think I want to know this."

Carla shrugged. "Anytime I want you to do something, I convince you it would be stupid and annoying."

Eddi laughed and sat on the bed beside her. "You
don't
want me to start a band?"

Carla shrugged. "Sometimes I forget."

Eddi pulled a strand of Carla's shiny black hair. "Silly bitch." Then she grew solemn. "Listen, kiddo, you don't want to be in on this—this war, or whatever it is. Really. You're afraid I'll screw up without you. And you're probably right."

"You betcha."

"But whatever else these guys want, they seem to want me in one piece. I'm taken care of."
I hope
. "If you get mixed up in this, I don't know if they'll care so much what happens to you. So why don't you pretend that I've gone to Europe for the summer?"

"What, and not even any postcards?"

"Carla—"

"It's an idea, though," Carla said, rolling backward on the bed. "Why not go to Mexico or something, and give these guys the slip? We'd get the money from someplace."

"Money is not the problem. The problem is getting past the warden out there."

"You mean Rover?"

Eddi fell back on the bed, giggling. "Jesus, Carla, don't call him that to his face!"

"Why not? What can he do to me?"

Eddi had a vivid memory of the speed that had brought Stuart down, and the careless strength that had held him there. "I don't want to know. And neither do you."

"Listen," Carla said firmly, poking the air with her finger for emphasis, "I will buy that he's one bad dude. I will
not
buy that he's invincible."

Eddi sighed. "There's probably something short of a stick of dynamite that'll move him out of that living room. But whatever it is, I don't think either of us have it."

Carla propped herself up on her elbows. "Why are you so sure?"

"Carla, this is a guy who turns into a dog."

"So you might as well give up?"

"You didn't see him last night."

"No, I didn't. All I
have
seen is a guy who turns into a dog, and I'm not even sure about that. I'll bet Steven Spielberg could get the same effect."

Eddi blinked. "In my living room?"

"All right, all right. But that still doesn't make him unbeatable. And it doesn't prove anything about this fairy war jazz."

"There was the glaistig. Who walked on water, by the way."

"In the dark."

Eddi threw up her hands. "Okay, it's all wires, or mirrors, or hypnotism. But if they're not who they say they are, and they don't want what they say they want, what's going on?"

"What do you mean?"

"Carla, why would anybody go to this much trouble and expense to get me? Either they're who—and what—they say they are, or I'm wacko and imagining the whole thing."

"You could ask me to go back to the damn Seven-Eleven and call the cops for you."

Eddie shook her head. "When the police got here, all they'd find is a chick keeping a dog in a no-pets apartment building. A weird unemployed rock 'n' roller chick."

Carla made a face. "Maybe they'd take him to the pound?"

"No. I'd just get kicked out of the apartment." She rumpled Carla's hair. "Don't worry, kiddo. We
will
think of something."

"Well, all right. As long as you promise to keep thinking."

"I promise."

"Good. What was Stuart like? Awful?"

Eddi thought of all the things she could say. None were small enough to get past the lump in her throat. She pressed the bruised side of her face lightly. Maybe if she hated Stuart she could wring out of herself all the righteous anger that had to be in her somewhere. "Let's not talk about it now. I think sometime soon I'll have a nice burst of hysterics over Stuart. But not now."

"Do you suppose Bowser would let you go out to eat?"

"God only knows. You're hungry?"

"Yeah, and you cook like a guitar player. I didn't have breakfast. Come to think of it, what did
you
do for breakfast?"

Eddi jerked her thumb at the living room. "He made it."

Carla raised her eyebrows. "He makes breakfast for his hostages? And you didn't even have to sleep with him?" Then she frowned. "You didn't have to sleep with him, did you?"

"The subject didn't come up."

"Huh. Well, if it does, and you don't want to . . . just don't be a wimp about it, okay?"

"I am
never
a wimp," Eddi said grandly.

"Hah. C'mon." Carla jumped off the bed and grabbed her hand. "Let's go ask him."

"Ask him what?"

"If he'll let you go eat, you gas-head. Everything looks better after dinner." She pushed the bedroom door open. "As my grandma used to say, 'You feel better, you eat-a some a dis nice-a lasagne.' "

"Someone is discussing food," said the phouka. He lay crossways on the couch with his head on the trunk coffee table, his bare feet propped against the wall. His jacket had disappeared; in its place he wore a green tank top that displayed rather a lot of corded brown muscle. He was reading a copy of
City Pages
, leaving the sections strewn on the floor as he finished them.

"Jeez," said Carla, "I haven't seen that pose since all those cute Fifties illustrations of 'Teenager on the Phone.' "

Eddi stalked over to the couch, grabbed up scattered pages of newsprint, and stuffed them in the trash. "If Roberta saw you getting footprints on the wall, she'd have heart failure."

"That's the harpy downstairs, yes?" He smiled brilliantly. "I think I shall set myself to charming her."

"The hell you will! You stay away from Roberta, do you hear me?"

Carla started to giggle.

"What?" Eddi snapped.

"You look like me yelling at the cat."

And, of course, she did—the phouka still had his head on the trunk, and he was beaming up at her while she stood over him and shook her index finger. She gathered up her dignity and went to sit in one of the straight-backed chairs.

"As I was saying—," Carla began.

"Ah, yes. You were going to talk about lasagne."

"Nope. I want to know if you'll let Eddi out of your sight long enough to go to dinner with me."

"Me? I am grate—"

"No,
not
you. Eddi."

"Ah." He nodded. "It is, however, the same answer. You must think of Eddi and me as if we were new lovers. I shall not be parted from her for more than a moment."

Eddi rolled her eyes.

"Look," said Carla. "I give you my word of honor that I'll bring her back."

His smile became a roaring laugh. "And easy as that, you expect to trick the trickster? No, sweet child, try again!"

Carla glowered at him.

"However," he said at last, "I shall not deprive you of your dinner. We shall all go."

"I'd rather starve," said Eddi.

Carla considered for a moment. "Well, I wouldn't. And the thought of eating something out of your refrigerator makes me queasy. I say we go for it."

"Carla, are you crazy? We can't take him out in public! God knows what he'd do!" The phouka looked achingly innocent.

"Hmm." Carla frowned and paced to the window and back. "We'll go to the New Riverside Cafe. He can do anything he wants and nobody'll notice."

"Gnnng." Eddi pulled at her hair. "Weird vegetarian eggplant food."

"Maybe they'll make you a nice Wonder Bread and Skippy sandwich," said Carla.

Eddi glared at the phouka. "Why me? What did I do to deserve you?"

The phouka looked, for once, genuinely regretful. "We cannot always choose what life brings us, or how it is brought."

"Platitude."

"There may be truth in platitudes."

"Gnnng."

"Go get a jacket," Carla scolded.

The phouka was smiling a little, and something in that smile, the tilt of his head, offered Eddi a lazy challenge. She narrowed her eyes at him and went to the bedroom.

She put on her big denim jacket and turned the collar up. "Tough girl," she said to her reflection in the bathroom mirror, and tried out a sneer. It made her feel better.

Carla's wagon was parked at the bottom of the hill that was Spruce Place. In the shadow of the apartment buildings that lined the street, the air was chilly. "Don't you need your jacket or something?" Eddi asked the phouka. The skin of his arms and shoulders was smooth as melted chocolate, without a goosepimple in sight.

"What jacket?"

"The one you had on earlier. Aren't you cold?"

He tipped his head back and laughed.

"Excuse me for asking." She wasn't really annoyed—not until they reached the car. Then she looked up from yanking open the slightly sprung passenger's side door, and found him eyeing the car, his lip curled.

"What's wrong?"

He made a face, as if he'd stepped barefoot on a dead squid.

Eddi leaned back against the car. "If you want to walk, we'll meet you there"—she smiled sweetly—"maybe."

"I . . . will not be comfortable in that."

"Gosh. I should have told Carla to bring the Mercedes."

Carla stuck her head out her door and looked at them over the roof. "Hey, Rover—we'll roll the window down, and you can ride along with your tongue out."

Eddi looked quickly back to the phouka, but he seemed to have missed the "Rover" entirely. He said only, "I would feel much better with the windows open."