by Jocelyn Fox
“I think you just enjoy being the bearer of news,” Tess replied with a slightly raised eyebrow.
“That as well,” said Robin without skipping a beat. He glanced down the table toward the nearest small group of Unseelie, and lowered his voice to a pitch that would be difficult for them to hear even with their keen Sidhe senses. “There are rumors that Queen Mab is losing her grip on her Court.”
Tess blinked. She’d expected something more trivial, some tidbit about a burgeoning relationship between this member of that Court and another. Robin looked at her steadily, waiting for her to speak. “In what sense?”
“In the sense that she grows ever more suspicious of her own subjects, even those closest to her,” Robin continued quietly.
A chill ran through her as she thought of her friends in the Unseelie Court. Who was closer to Queen Mab than her own Three? Not for the first time, she wished that Ramel hadn’t been raised to that honor. Then she shook her head slightly at her own thoughts. How was it an honor to be bound by blood to a cruel Queen? She took a deep breath, consciously calming her burgeoning anger. She felt Forsythe place one small hand on the curve of her ear in silent support, and she focused on the gratitude she felt for such loyal friends.
“The news is disturbing,” said Robin, still looking at her with his clear gaze.
“Yes,” she replied honestly. “And though I don’t support rumors, thank you for telling me.” He nodded, and she sighed. A plaintive note entered her voice. “Now can we just eat?”
Robin grinned. “I should know better than to distract you from a meal.”
Tess rolled her eyes and picked up her fork again. Forsythe leapt from her shoulder to the table. With a better view of him, she saw that one of his iridescent wings protruded at an awkward angle, like a bone that hadn’t been set and healed wrong. He still used his wings to glide gracefully during the arc of his leap, but it was clear he couldn’t fly like his Glasidhe brethren.
“Did you injure your wing in the battle?” Robin asked bluntly. Tess almost choked on her mouthful of cheese and fruit – she was used to being the most forthright person in the room.
“No,” replied Forsythe. “After the Battle of the Royal Wood, the Vaelanmavar-that-was imprisoned the Vaelanbrigh and the Bearer.” The Glasidhe crossed his arms, his aura faint enough for Tess to see the smile of satisfaction on his small, handsome face. “My sister and I and our kinfolk objected to his treatment of Lady Tess.”
“He had some terrible things to say about the Glasidhe Queen too,” she added, remembering the cold smile on the face of the now dead Vaelanmavar as he told the Glasidhe that Lumina had been tortured because the Small Folk supposedly knew the hiding place of the Iron Sword.
“Which in the end were just to provoke us,” Forsythe said, flicking his good wing derisively. “I doubt that Queen Mab, even in her darkest days, would harm Lady Lumina. She would have had to kill all of us to touch our Queen.”
Robin offered no opinion other than raising one eyebrow slightly as he completed his focused destruction of the pile of food on his first plate.
“But after all is said and done, a wing is a small price to pay for honor,” said Forsythe staunchly.
“I’ve no doubt you would have given much more than that if called upon,” Robin agreed gravely, sliding his first empty plate to the side.
“Many gave much more than me,” the Glasidhe warrior said.
Tess swallowed her mouthful of fruit. “How did the Glasidhe fare in the battle?” Her stomach turned a little as she asked the question.
“In truth, better than the ground forces,” replied Forsythe. “We were not without our casualties, but we are small and nimble and difficult to catch.” His aura dimmed. “Galax fell defending Lady Lumina, and I will have to teach Wisp to ride his own feathered mount.” He stepped forward and touched her hand at her stricken look. “It is not so terrible, Lady Tess. He may yet fly again, but only time will tell.”
“What about your sister and cousins?” She pushed a lone crumb of bread across her plate to distract herself from the anxiety churning in her now full stomach.
“Farin lost an eye, but she is in good spirits and says she rather likes the look of the eye patch,” Forsythe said, his voice warming fondly at the mention of his fierce, indomitable cousin. “Forin will have some scars, but nothing too permanent. And my lovely sister proved her worth in battle ten times over with nary a scratch.”
“I’m not surprised,” Tess said.
“At which part?”
“All of it,” she said, letting herself smile a little. “Farin thinking that her looks are improved with an eye patch. Flora whirling through the battle so fast that nothing could touch her.”
Forsythe nodded. “We had many of our kin fall that day, but it seems those closest to the Bearer are touched with uncommon luck.”
She pressed her lips together grimly. “I doubt that had anything to do with it, but people will think what they like.”
“Aye,” said Robin, closing in on finishing his second plate. “Like the fact that you fought for three days and slew hundreds of Dark creatures in the courtyard of the Dark Keep, and single-handedly defeated Malravenar when you thrust the Iron Sword through him.”
“It was far from single-handed,” she protested. “The Queens were weaving their enchantment, and I wouldn’t have made it through the courtyard without the rest of the vanguard.”
“Legendary,” said Robin to Forsythe, lowering his head slightly.
“If your goal is to annoy me with that nonsense, you’re halfway to succeeding,” she said mildly, finishing the water in her cup.
“I thought you said she was only contentious when she was hungry,” Forsythe said in a low voice to Robin.
“I said no such thing,” replied Robin, leaning his chair back and draining his own cup. “I just observed that hunger is simply one cause of irritation.”
“Dealing with friends who don’t know when to leave well enough alone is another,” she said with a little grin to take the sting out of her words. In truth, it felt good to banter with Robin and Forsythe. It made the memories of shadows and blood recede just a little, like the ocean drawing back from the sand of the shore with the tides. But just like the sea beyond the safety of the shallows, she knew the memories were waiting, dark and deep, their invisible currents ready to drag her into their cold and lightless depths. Tess collected her plate and cup and stood, listening with half her attention to Forsythe and Robin’s continued conversation. For now, she stood safely on the shore, but dark memories would come again as sure as the tide, and she had to be ready to swim.
Chapter 4
“Rosaline Cooper?” The secretary pronounced the name “Rose-ah-leen.” Close, but no dice.
“Just Ross, please,” said the young woman sitting in one of the chairs against the wall, looking at the fire chief’s secretary with composed brown eyes. Ross wondered briefly why the secretary had put so emphatic a question mark after her name – she was the only one waiting for an interview, so was it a matter of pronunciation or disapproval at her application?
“Rose?” the secretary asked, her salt-and-pepper eyebrows rising fractionally.
“Ross,” came the unruffled repetition, slightly louder in volume but accompanied with that same steady gaze. “Ross, rhymes with ‘boss.’” She let herself smile just a little at the memory of Noah coining the phrase to help him remember how to pronounce her nickname. True, he’d also been fairly concussed and looped up on some nice pain medication after a training accident, but the catch phrase had become a fond hallmark of their relationship. She could even use it without the internal wince of pain now.
The secretary narrowed her eyes slightly, looked down at the open folder on the desk in front of her, and looked back up at Ross. “I just want to ensure that I have this correct before I send you in to the chief’s office. You’re qualified as a paramedic, but that’s not the position you’re applying for?”
“T
hat’s correct. I would be happy to work Ambulance as a substitute if needed, but I’m applying for a Truck position.” Ross kept her voice level, as though she were just discussing the weather.
The secretary – Ms. Evelyn Patterson, according to the nameplate on her desk – pressed her lips together into a thin line, looked down at Ross’s application again and back at the composed young lady sitting in one of the cheap plastic chairs that were all the fire department could afford right now with the budget crisis.
“Is the advertised position not open? Or is the chief not available for my scheduled interview?” Ross asked, letting her face settle into the determined expression that she’d honed since childhood. She’d watched herself in the mirror a few times, and it was hard to pin down exactly what changed about her face, a hardness in the eyes that most people associated with men, perhaps, and a firmness to her mouth that welcomed challenge. In any case, if she didn’t know how to describe the expression, she at least knew how to use it, because people invariably understood that she meant business when she was wearing it. It counteracted the initial perception of beauty and therefore femininity that seemed to be the default reception when most people met her for the first time. She couldn’t change the “good genetics” (her mother’s cheerful term) that had bestowed her heart-shaped face, smooth golden tan skin and almond eyes, but she could damn well change how people viewed her, given five minutes. That, and they invariably noticed the muscles that changed the lines of her petite body from slender to sleek and predatory. She changed what she could with hard work, and if people didn’t respect that or looked askance at her strength, well, she didn’t have time for them.
“The position is still open,” said Ms. Evelyn Patterson slowly, “and the chief should be finishing his conference call with the district chief shortly.” The elder lady sighed and took off the glasses that perched on her nose, as though she would be able to see Ross more clearly without the interference of the thick lenses. “All I am saying,” she continued in a marginally gentler voice, “is that we do have a paramedic position open as well. A different shift, but it might be an easier fit.”
Ross smiled thinly. “Ma’am, I’ve never been one for easy.” She considered rolling up her sleeve, showing her the furrow that raked across her bicep, the puckered scar a permanent souvenir of her second deployment to Iraq, courtesy of an improvised explosive device that had flipped her Humvee. But she kept her hands folded in her lap and decided not to give the older woman the satisfaction of seeing any emotion. Better to keep it locked up in the black box in her chest. The bare bones of her story were laid out on the black-and-white pages of her resume anyway; she’d tell more if asked, but she didn’t owe anyone an explanation.
To Ross’s surprise, Ms. Patterson’s lips turned upward slightly at the corners in an echo of a smile. The elderly secretary placed her glasses back on her nose and said, “Well, then, perhaps you’re exactly what this station needs…Ross.” She closed the folder which had Rosaline Cooper inked neatly in block letters on the index tab and stood, straightening the hem of her pearl buttoned sweater as she strode over to the fire chief’s door.
Ross shook her head slightly and let her smile widen for just a moment as she watched the plump secretary open the door, the steely-haired woman’s head disappearing into the office. Then she straightened, feeling her phone vibrate in the cargo pocket against her thigh. Good thing she’d realized she hadn’t put it on silent before the actual interview. She deftly slipped it out of her pocket and glanced at it cursorily, her fingers already feeling for the volume button. But as she looked again at the screen, a crease appeared between her eyebrows. She didn’t recognize the phone number, but the area code was local. She tapped “Accept” and held the phone up to her ear, a voice on the other side of the line ringing out as soon as they connected.
“Hello?”
It wasn’t possible. That voice. It couldn’t be him. But all the same her body reacted – she forgot to breathe and her heart stuttered. Wild hope and sharp pain at the impossibility of that hope warred in her chest. She took a deep, shaking breath and ran through the facts of her life in her head. Noah had been killed almost eight months ago in an intense, fiery explosion. They’d told her, off the record, that it had been an IED the likes of which they had never encountered previously, and hadn’t since. Noah had been gone for six months before that, deep into another deployment. She hadn’t heard his voice in what seemed like an eternity... except for the last voicemail he’d left her the day before he disappeared, twenty-four seconds long, thick with static, and replayed again and again.
Ross slid to her feet in a fluid movement just short of a jump, pacing the small waiting area with long strides. She swallowed hard. Her voice came out more like a growl. “Look, if you’re some asshole who thinks he’s hilarious for getting this number and pulling a joke, you can go eat a…”
“Ross! Ross, thank God.”
Her knees liquefied and she stumbled as she sat down hard in the cheap plastic chair again. The world fell away when she heard his voice, her heart leaping again and banging painfully against her sternum. The growl disappeared, replaced by a whisper. “Noah?”
“It’s me, Ross. It’s me.” She heard him take a shaky breath. His voice sounded hoarse. “I can’t talk long. I’m…I need your help.”
“What the hell?” she whispered, still not trusting her voice. Tears – of relief or anger or both, she wasn’t sure – choked her. Vaguely she registered that Ms. Patterson had finished her conversation with the fire chief and stood looking at her expectantly. “What…what happened, Noah? Why are you calling me and not someone from your unit? Did procedure all of a sudden disappear?” Anger was easier. Anger she could do. “What the hell happened? You’re dead. I helped arrange your funeral. I went to your funeral…”
The words choked her as memories rose unbidden in her mind, whirling with savage emotion. She breathed in deeply through her nose and clenched her jaw, compressing the maelstrom into a dense knot in her chest. She would not let it overtake her. Not here, not now, not ever again.
“Ross,” Noah repeated, “I promise I’ll explain everything. I’m on a payphone at the Exxon in Cairn. I need you to come pick me up.”
Her entire body went cold and then hot and then cold again.
“Miss Cooper?” the fire chief’s secretary said.
She swallowed. “I…dammit, Noah, I’m about to go into an interview.”
In some part of her mind, she acknowledged that she was not a ‘normal’ woman. Her dead fiancé had just called her on her cell phone and she was calmly – relatively calmly – considering the impact to her job prospects. The knot in her chest tightened a bit, and she savagely shoved it into a smaller space. Fighting back against the emotion—that, she could do.
“Then come after the interview,” said Noah, unshaken, “but I need to know you’re coming. Please, Ross.” He probably knew what was going through her head, and he accepted her approach: one problem at a time, focus on the immediate issues and press forward. It was one of the reasons they’d gotten along so well from the start. He’d never called her strange for being something different. Someone different.
Ross took a deep breath and looked at her watch. “I’ll be there before eighteen hundred.”
“Thank you.” Noah’s voice was fervent. Honest. “And Ross? I love you.”
“Miss Cooper,” said the secretary again.
Ross swallowed hard and ended the phone call. She set her phone to silent and slid it back into her cargo pocket, taking the moment to compose herself. She stared down at the black toes of her Converse shoes and took a deep breath. When she looked up at Ms. Patterson, her face was perfectly composed and courteous. “I apologize, ma’am. I went to check if my phone was on silent and my – my fiancé called to wish me luck.”
Ms. Patterson accepted the half-truth without blinking an eye. “Well, Ross, the chief is ready to see you now.”
Ross mustered a grateful smile
as she stood, her hands unconsciously skimming around her waist, checking to ensure that her shirt was neatly tucked into her waistband and the buckle of her belt was aligned with the seam of her fly. “Thank you, Ms. Patterson.”
The elderly secretary raised one eyebrow slightly and said, “Call me Eve, Ross.”
Ross nodded, and her smile turned genuine as she walked toward the door of the fire chief’s office, confident in the knowledge that she’d made at least one ally in the firehouse. She took one more deep breath as she crossed the threshold of the office, squaring her shoulders and focusing on the task at hand, able at least for the moment to put aside the fact that her fiancé had, for all intents and purposes, just risen from the grave.
Duke hung up the receiver of the pay phone, listening to the quarters tumble through the antiquated machine. He nodded to the gas station clerk, a guy in his late forties with a bristly mustache and grease stains on his faded jeans. “Thanks again for lending me the change. You work this shift every day? I’ll pay you back for it.” His voice sounded like gravel to his own ears.
“Don’t worry about it son, you look you’ve been drug to hell and back,” said the clerk, pausing to spit tobacco juice contemplatively into a white Styrofoam cup. His eyes paused on Duke’s face. “Gonna be a nice shiner on your chin there.” Duke didn’t reply. “Tell you what, you need some water, take a few from the cooler.” He motioned with his chin toward the glass door of the refrigerator.
“I…thanks,” said Duke. “Really. I appreciate it.”
The man nodded. He played the small town hick role well, but his eyes were sharp as he watched Duke take two bottled waters from the case. He spit again into the Styrofoam cup and replaced the makeshift spittoon below the register. His stained fingers drummed on the countertop. “You’re him, ain’t you?”
Duke paused on his way past the register, looking over at the clerk. “Who?”
“The one that went missin’ over there.” The clerk said the last two words like they were the name of a foreign country… which Duke supposed they were. A country of blinding heat and sand, but also soaring mountains and savage rivers, a land that could be as beautiful as it was treacherous. He tried to move casually, not letting his body tense to give away the sudden surge of adrenaline that flooded him at being recognized so easily. What had he expected? He turned back toward the register and schooled his face to show a mild curiosity in the clerk’s words.
