by Karen Chance
The king of the fey looked pooped.
“Fish, tracks, door,” Olga said suddenly.
I looked up at her. “What?”
“Fish, tracks, door. You understand?”
“No.”
I lay back against the boards. They were sun warmed and velvety smooth, the way wood gets after being worn down by weather and feet through the years. They went nicely with the buzz of bees raiding the garden, the creak of chains holding up the old swing, and the tinkling sound of an ice cream truck in the distance. It didn’t come down this street anymore for reasons, but still gave a melodic accompaniment to the scene.
Nice, I thought sleepily, and seriously considered taking a nap. Which I absolutely was not going to do, because dinner was almost ready. Assuming we had enough to accommodate all our extra guests, that is.
Because the trolls hadn’t left.
From what I understood, they were some big shots in the local troll community who had been at the fights last night and offered Olga their help. She had been glad to accept, since apparently all hell had broken loose shortly after I passed out. The slaver had ended up dead somehow, and as soon as they heard, the slaves had started to flee.
That wouldn’t have been so bad, even if most of them were new arrivals who had no idea how to navigate the human world. Worst-case scenario, they’d be picked up by the Corps, a bunch of nosy mages who think they’re the supernatural police, and sent back to Faerie. Best-case scenario, somebody like Olga would find them, and they’d get adopted into the local Dark Fey community. Or, at least, they would have, except the slaver’s assistants had preferred to kill them rather than let them escape and give evidence.
Hence the hell.
The fight had quickly devolved into two camps, although not exactly the way you’d think. Some of the slaves had sold themselves to the slavers in order to escape the wars in Faerie, which were even more likely to get them killed. They’d been promised money and a new start if they survived so many fights, and those nearing the end of their contract had been persuaded to help the slavers in return for an early payoff.
Others had sided with the slaves, like the big scarred guy, who had torn a swath through the slavers’ initial advance. Larger trolls like him had given the smaller ones—mostly water boys and cut men there to help with the fights—a chance to flee. But the slavers had called in reinforcements from their compound in Queens, and somebody else had called in the Corps, which caused a panic, since a good percentage of the spectators were just as illegal as the fighters.
The lot had quickly turned into a knock-down-drag-out—literally, the Corps had been dragging people out—which explained why Olga was still in her sparkly pink outfit. She hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep. She and her guys had been on a mad scramble to find the slaves before the slavers did, while somehow avoiding arrest, since not all of Olga’s people were exactly legal, either.
Fortunately, she’d had the charms to help with the latter and the former had been simpler than one might expect, because we’re talking trolls here. Young, hungry trolls—because the bastard slaver had only fed the guys who were going to fight and needed to bulk up. So, of course, every escapee had made a beeline for the nearest source of food.
Olga’s group had fished one guy out of a mom-and-pop grocery, where he’d been going to town on the produce. And a couple more who’d popped open a semitruck and were helping themselves to a bounty of Tastykakes, wrappers and all. Olga said their digestion would take care of it. I had decided not to ask what that meant. And a third group who had broken into a local brewery, and been found with bellies so distended by all the beer that they’d had to be carried out because they could no longer walk.
So, yeah, she’d welcomed help from the Elders, which was the best translation of the big guys’ titles. Together they had managed to recover a number of slaves, including the tiny one currently asleep in the trundle bed in the boys’ room. However, relations appeared to have soured all of a sudden. I wasn’t sure why.
I just knew that the boy had been carried upstairs by Olga herself. And that, when the other trolls tried to follow, they’d had their faces smashed into a ward that she’d flicked on as she went past. That had not been appreciated, especially by Gravel Face, and a somewhat . . . lively . . . conversation had thereafter taken place in the middle of the hall. It was still going on, only without Olga, who had left halfway through.
I didn’t blame her.
Those guys were dicks. . . .
“It what child say,” she told me, suddenly.
I jerked back awake, which was a surprise, since I hadn’t recalled drifting off. “What?” I stared around. “What is?”
“Fish, tracks, door.”
I frowned, trying to get the brain to work when it didn’t want to. “What child? The troll child?”
She nodded.
“Just now? When he was about to—” I blinked. “What did he say, again?”
She repeated it. I sat up. The motion made me dizzy, which pissed me off. I drank some beer and told my body to deal with it already.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Olga shrugged.
“Well, it must have been important.”
“What’s important?” Claire asked, coming out of the back door.
I looked up. The sun was setting in her hair, making it almost look like it was on fire. “Fish, tracks, door.”
She frowned at me, like maybe I’d hit my head harder than she’d been told. “Are you all right?”
“More or less.”
She frowned some more, put down the crate of dishes she was carrying, and started pawing through my hair. “You have quite a bump.”
“It’ll go down by tomorrow.” If she’d stop poking at it, I didn’t add, because she was trying to help.
“I can get you an ice pack,” she began, before I held up my dripping one.
“Got it covered.”
She seemed to accept this, because she let me go. “They want to see you,” she told Olga, who sighed, but got up and lumbered inside.
That left the swing free, but Claire sat down beside me instead.
“Are we eating soon?” I asked hopefully, eyeing the dishes. They were for the picnic tables that we used far more often than the dining room, since it was nicer out here in the garden, and we couldn’t fit everybody inside anymore, anyway.
“As soon as the pizzas arrive.” She shot me a chagrined look. “No way to stretch soup that far.”
I nodded. I’d seen trolls eat. And those were what I was coming to view as normal trolls, instead of the hulks I’d been encountering lately.
“How many pizzas?” I asked, feeling like I could eat a whole one all by myself.
Claire didn’t answer.
She had one of those faces that was in turns perfectly plain and completely beautiful, all depending on her mood. When she was in a temper, the emerald eyes flashed, the ivory skin flushed, and the bright red hair, only a shade or two off from Olga’s fiery locks, seemed to have a life of its own. She was almost half human, but I swear, when she was really, truly angry, she didn’t look it.
She wasn’t angry now. Now, the eyes were a dull olive, the cheeks were pale and pinched, and the freckles on the long, thin nose stood out clearly. The hair reflected her overall mood, sagging dispiritedly around her face.
“Want a beer?” I asked, and passed one over when she nodded.
She looked like she could use a bit more than that, like maybe a shoulder to cry on for some reason. Only I didn’t know how to offer one without making things worse, because Claire could be touchy. Comes with the territory when her recent history involved almost being killed by her slimy cousin, who’d wanted to inherit the family business; being spirited away to Faerie by a handsome prince; getting pregnant; having a kid; having said kid almost killed by a murderous fey
court who didn’t like the idea of a part-human heir; and escaping back to earth, where she was now living in a crazy house with a dhampir, some adolescent trolls, and a bunch of royal guards camped out in her backyard, stepping on all the vegetables.
It was enough to make anyone cranky.
But she didn’t say anything, just drank half the beer, like she could use it, then narrowed her eyes at the fey across the yard. “What are they cooking?”
I tried on an innocent look. “Couldn’t tell you.”
“Don’t lie.” She leaned forward a little, and the sharp eyes narrowed on a pile of something that I don’t think she got a good look at, because a fey flicked a cape over it a second later. She started to get up, then sighed and sat back down again. And drank the rest of the beer.
“Are you all right?” I asked, because Claire always took care of everybody else, while often forgetting to do the same for herself. And it was hard to remind her, because sensible people backed off when she said “I’m fine” in that certain tone, and her eyes flashed.
Of course, I’ve never had much sense.
“You don’t look fine,” I said idly, and passed over another beer.
She looked at it. “I’ll get drunk.”
“Off two beers?”
“Off an empty stomach and two beers.” She took it anyway. “And a truckload of stress!”
“Why are you stressed?” I asked, and immediately regretted it. If storm clouds could grow a face, that would be it. And, okay, stupid question.
“Oh, I don’t know, Dory!” she said, throwing out an arm. But she didn’t say anything else. Just chugged the beer in a way that would have won her another round in any campus bar, then set the bottle neatly by the porch post, where I’d been piling mine.
And lay back against the sun-warmed boards, her hair going everywhere, like she enjoyed the feel, too.
I decided to join her. For a while, we both just stayed there, watching a spider build a web across a Victorian curlicue in the top of the railing. Gessa could be heard telling Stinky to let go of something, and then wrestling him for it when he predictably declined. Aiden laughed. A horse we shouldn’t have had whinnied. I sighed.
The portal had a setting that let out into the garden, but for security reasons, it didn’t work the other way. The only entrance was in the basement. So, to get the illegal animal out of here, we faced the prospect of leading it through the house and down a narrow flight of stairs. And then across a crowded basement where the portal light would probably cause it to freak the hell out.
At least, that’s what had happened last time, and no one had thought it fun.
And since the troll twins didn’t trust the Light Fey in their sanctum, and the Light Fey didn’t trust the trolls with their precious horses, it was probably gonna be left to me again, and frankly—
“It’s getting worse,” Claire told me abruptly.
I rolled my neck over to look at her. “What is?”
“You know what. I think—” She swallowed but didn’t turn her head to look at me. “I think it’s getting stronger.”
I didn’t say anything for a minute, because yeah. I did know. Because Claire and I had a similar problem, if for totally different reasons.
I was stuck with a crazy other half because of a weird mental operation Mircea had done, once upon a time, without really understanding what he was doing. I didn’t blame him; nobody else had known what to do, either. Dhampirs were so rare that there was no money in figuring out how to help us. My condition, or whatever you wanted to call it, might have been around forever, but it hadn’t preoccupied the attention of anyone in the healing profession.
Until Claire. I hadn’t understood why she, who was mainly interested in the fey, would want to help a human/vampire hybrid. Especially a crazy one. But she had, cultivating some extra-powerful fey weed for me that calmed the beast when nothing else could. But, lately, I’d come to believe that maybe I did know why she’d given a damn. Even if she hadn’t known it then, we weren’t that different.
Because Claire was a hybrid, too.
Her mother had been human, with a tiny bit of Brownie in the mix somewhere. That wasn’t particularly odd for the magical community and hadn’t seemed to affect her. But her father . . . well, her father was something else altogether.
It was why Caedmon was here, trying to bum assistance for whatever he was up to in Faerie. It seemed that the fey had their own version of shape-shifters, just like our weres. Or, no, not just like. Because while weres could be terrifying, especially in large numbers, none of them held a candle to their fey cousins.
None of them morphed into a two-thousand-pound dragon.
Claire hadn’t realized that her mother’s lover—who had been in human form when they met, obviously—was anybody special. Nobody in the family had ever said anything, and she’d never shown any signs of peculiar abilities. Until she took a trip into Faerie with Heidar, and discovered the hard way that she was something known as two-natured among the fey.
The revelation had been a little traumatic, from what I’d heard. And apparently, things hadn’t improved since. Her other half was still an adolescent, because living on Earth had stunted its development, but lately, it had been making its presence known.
“Still craving rare steak?” I asked. Because Claire—the old Claire—was a strict vegan, something her other half was not on board with.
She waved the question away, with a flutter of long, white fingers.
“Yes, but I can handle that. I can’t—” She stopped, her throat working. And then she blurted it out. “How do you do it?”
“How do I do what?”
“Not explode!” She sat up, her face white, but her eyes bright. “I felt it, what you carry inside you—all that anger, all that rage—every time I pulled it off you. The first time, it was such a shock. That you could even function. And in the garden that night—it was amazing. Just amazing.” She shook her head.
Yeah. That was one word for it, I thought uncomfortably. She was talking about an incident a couple weeks ago, when Louis-Cesare said something that offended Dorina, and she’d almost gone ballistic, threatening not only him but everybody else we’d had over that night. Including the commune that lived across the street, and as far as I knew, were one-hundred-percent human. It had been terrifying, because I’d been fighting with everything I had, but I still couldn’t control her, and I didn’t know what she’d do if I let go.
Thankfully, Claire had been there, and even more thankfully, her human half is what is known as a null witch, someone capable of pulling magical energy off other creatures. That was how we’d met. She’d been working at an auction house after fleeing her homicidal excuse for a cousin, calming down the odd little items they had up for sale, some of which could be dangerous if a null wasn’t around to drink all that excess energy. I’d been shopping to bulk up the arsenal, and we’d started talking. And had ended up as roommates because our abilities complemented each other. I’d kept her safe from her weird-ass family, and she’d kept me . . . well, more or less sane.
Except for that night, when even she hadn’t been able to drink it all, because Dorina was pissed.
Luckily, Louis-Cesare had old-fashioned manners, and had apologized the way that one master did to another, by kneeling and offering his neck to her sword if she’d had one. It was archaic, but then, so was Dorina. And it had done what nothing else could, and sent her back to sleep.
Leaving the rest of us seriously weirded out, especially me, because I wasn’t used to being awake when she emerged. Not that she had entirely, but it had been close enough to shake me. And, apparently, it hadn’t been any better for Claire, and now I was kicking myself for not even thinking about that.
“I’m sorry—” I began.
But she was already shaking her head. “It’s okay. I just meant—you fought it, somehow.
If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have had time to do anything, and who knows what would have happened? I need to know how to do that. I thought I understood, that I could handle my . . . problem . . . like I did yours. But that was something from outside of me, someone else’s emotion. It was distant, you know?”
Not really, but she was looking at me hopefully, so I nodded anyway.
“But now . . .” She bit her lip. “Dory, I almost lost it in there. When they wouldn’t let Caedmon help, when they were just going to watch that child die, I almost—” Her eyes met mine, and there was genuine fear in them. “It wasn’t distant then. I wanted to kill them, to rend them, to hurt—” She put her face in her hands.
I sat there, feeling awkward. Because I wasn’t used to having friends—the fits had always made it too dangerous—much less to comforting them. I sometimes looked around at all the people in my life now with sheer amazement, and no little fear. That I wouldn’t know what to do in any of the roles I suddenly found myself in: parent, lover, best friend. Because I’d never played them before.
But Claire had been there for me when I really needed her, and she clearly needed something from me now. But I didn’t know what. So I just hugged her, remembering how much it had helped when Louis-Cesare had done the same for me. And after a startled second, she hugged me back.
“I wanted to eat them, Dory,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “I wanted it so . . . damned . . . much. And I just . . .” She hugged me harder, and it hurt, because my ribs were apparently never going to freaking heal, but I didn’t say anything.
She was hurting more.
“How do you do it?” she asked again, sounding fairly desperate. “I can’t turn into this thing. I won’t!”
