“True,” said Baba Yaga. “True.” She made a humming sound. Then in an apparently complete change of subject, she said, “Órlaith is missing.”
I started to ask her what that had to do with anything. But then I remembered that Órlaith was the Gray Lord who had tortured Zee. Maybe it wasn’t a change of subject. So I held my tongue. Aiden was staring at me, his expression frozen. I looked at Adam and tilted my head. He saw Aiden’s face and went over to him, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“We won’t send you back,” he told Aiden.
“I thought we’d already agreed upon that,” said Baba Yaga, though she couldn’t have seen who Adam had been talking to. Probably, it was only a good guess.
“What is it that the fae need?” she asked. “I always look at that first when I’m bringing someone a present. What do they need?”
I blinked at the phone, then I looked at Adam. Who shrugged.
“They need Underhill to play nice,” I ventured.
“Yes,” Baba Yaga agreed. “We’re not going to give them . . . uhm, let me rephrase that. You aren’t going to give us Aiden. That’s right. But you might listen to what he’s going to tell you. I’ll give you a call back in five minutes or so, and you can let me know if he says anything interesting. Ta.”
She hung up before I could respond.
Aiden and Jesse had been clearing the table; Aiden still had the plastic-wrapped salad in his hands. He seemed to become aware of it after I put the handset back in its stand. He moved away from Adam and put the salad in the fridge.
“I will go back,” he said, turning to face us. He looked at Jesse for a moment. “She should be safe—and while I am here, she will never be safe.”
And moments like that were why, even though sometimes he was very difficult, I still liked him.
“You’re not going back,” said Adam. “And are you implying I can’t keep my daughter safe?”
“Or she can’t keep herself safe?” Jesse said. She looked at me. “I forgot to thank you for teaching me how to shoot your rifle.”
“No trouble,” I said. “I enjoyed the company.”
Aiden tilted his head, then shook it. “You can’t stop me.”
“Maybe I could,” said Adam. “But I won’t. I misspoke earlier. You can’t go back and be our tribute for the fae so that they will sign a pact with us. You can go back. But we will tell them that you did it without our knowledge or consent, and so they owe us nothing.”
I fought it for a second—but then I kissed Adam, the kind of kiss that made Jesse say, “Really, Mercy? Dad? Get a room.”
I stepped back and met Adam’s eyes. “You know I love you, right?” I looked at Aiden. “So your sacrifice is refused. Baba Yaga seems to think you are the key, though she made it clear that returning you to the fae would be a bad idea. You are outvoted and outnumbered. Help us think outside of the box.”
Jesse said, “She told you not to return Aiden to the fae? Good. Artifacts might work, but Zee isn’t here, and he’s the only one who would have an artifact that would be powerful enough to make them accept.” She held up a hand to me. “The walking stick won’t work because it won’t stay with them. Giving them something that will only take itself away again will force them to abandon any pact they make.”
“Right,” I said.
“Back to Baba Yaga,” she said. Her father watched her with a smile on his face. “She said something about Underhill.”
“Not quite,” I told her. “She asked me what the fae needed—and I told her that they needed Underhill to behave.”
Aiden sat down on a chair. “Underhill contains a lot of artifacts,” he said. “I know where some of them are.”
“You can’t go back there,” Adam said.
Aiden nodded. “Yes, yes, I can. I can get out, too. The same way I got in, I know how to open the doors to Underhill whether she wants me to do so or not. Water figured it out—and she taught all of us.”
“One of the other elemental changelings?” asked Jesse.
I was still stuck on the “I know where some of them are” part of what Aiden had said.
Aiden answered Jesse’s question. “There were only four of us who survived. Sort of survived anyway. I guess I’m the only one who got out and survived the fae afterward.”
Jesse said, “Good for you. So if Dad can get the fae to guarantee you safe passage to and from Underhill, you can go in and get an artifact that is powerful enough to please the fae? Something that will let them interact with Underhill better?”
He stood up and took Jesse’s hand and kissed it. “Yes, my lady, that is exactly what I have to say.”
The phone rang.
“Hauptmans’ mortuary,” I answered. “You stab ’em, we slab ’em.” Baba Yaga was wearing off on me.
“Hard-boiled is the best way to eat eggs,” said Baba Yaga. “But I’ve quit eating eggs—it upset my household. What did the boy-who-isn’t-a-boy have to say?”
I decided I didn’t want to know what inspired the information about eggs. “He said that if the fae will guarantee safe-from-them passage, he knows of an artifact that will help the fae deal with Underhill.”
“Very good,” she said in a chipper voice that was more usual in bad children’s programming on TV. “So you and yours have safe passage to Underhill and back from Underhill. We will sign the treaty before you go in—just in case you don’t come out again. That way no one’s sacrifice is in vain. No, I’m not listening in, Mercy—that would be rude.” She rolled her “r” on rude. “People are just so predictable. You should bring your walking stick, Mercy. Oh, and that oh-so-handsome Russian-blooded wolf. Just you four should be enough.”
“Four?” asked Adam.
“You, Mercy, Aiden, and the walking stick,” she said. “That should be enough. The right ingredients make the stew, you know.” She hung up.
I’d just replaced the handset when it rang again.
“Yes?” I said.
“I’m waiting for more cleverness,” Baba Yaga said. “Hauptman House of Horrors, don’t mind the screaming—we don’t. Something of the sort.”
“Okay,” I said. “Hauptman House of Horrors—”
“Sssss,” she said. “You and that Coyote are always ruining my fun. Anyway. I forgot to tell you—we accept your bargain. You should come tomorrow early.”
“Come where?” I asked.
She laughed. “To the reservation. Guides will meet you along the way so you won’t get caught up in the protections. I don’t think I’ll see you there, but I’ll see you sometime. Ta’, darling. Give that wolf of yours a nudge for me—I do love Russian men.”
She hung up, and I set the phone back on the counter and watched it. While I waited for her to call again, Adam told Jesse and Aiden what Baba Yaga had said.
Jesse frowned at him when he was done. “Okay. You, I understand. You can keep everyone safe. Aiden has to go in, but why Mercy? Why not Zee, who is fae, or Tad, who is nearly fae? Or another werewolf?”
“The walking stick,” said Adam after a moment. “It only follows Mercy.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “One of the things it can do is show us the way home. That might be useful in Underhill.”
“Every boarding party needs its guide to light the way, its wizard to defeat the magic, and a tank to kill everything that tries to stop the party,” Jesse said. She had been playing too much ISTDPBF with the pack lately, and it was affecting her thinking. She looked at her father. “The tank is not sacrificial.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” said Adam with only a little irony in his voice.
“You come home, Daddy,” she told him. “I love my mother, but if I have to live with her for very long, one of us will commit a homicide. And you bring Mercy and the pip-squeak back.”
“Am I the wizard or the guide?” I asked our captain.
&n
bsp; “Aiden is fire touched,” she told me after considering the matter. “You can only turn into a coyote. So he’s the wizard, even though he has to guide the party in. You guide the party out. And Dad makes sure you all get out alive.”
“Next time,” said Aiden, who’d been learning the fine art of playing pirate on computers, too, “I want to be the tank.”
—
Jesse came with us.
“No one will touch her,” Zee told Adam, breaking into the middle of the heated after-breakfast discussion. “I will be there. Tad will be there. Nothing will happen to her.”
Zee and Tad had shown up in the middle of the night, neither of them willing to talk about what they’d been doing. Since Baba Yaga had sort of told me already, I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know.
“What do you mean, you’ll be there?” asked Adam.
“Underhill doesn’t like our kind,” Zee said. “So we won’t follow you in. But Tad and I will come with you, we will watch over Jesse and see that nothing befalls her. I agree that Underhill is no place for someone who is wholly human.” He glanced at Aiden, who grimaced and nodded emphatically. “But Jesse is no longer a child. It is her right to witness what her father does.”
The Alpha wolf and the Dark Smith held each other’s eyes.
“Daddy?” asked Jesse.
The Alpha stare-down broke up with neither participant a winner or loser.
“Please?” she said.
“Fine,” Adam huffed, because Jesse’s awesome, seldom-used secret power was that she had her father wrapped around her little finger.
“Now that that’s settled,” I said, “we should go.”
I took my dishes to the sink and stopped to kiss Adam’s cheek as I passed him. I would have moved on, but he held me against him for a moment. He smelled of me, of our early-morning lovemaking, and of the pack. But mostly he smelled like himself: mint and musk and Adam.
We loaded ourselves in Adam’s SUV. I took the middle of the front while Jesse took shotgun, leaving Aiden, Zee, and Tad to sort themselves out in the backseat. As Adam backed the SUV out of its parking space, I saw Joel, in human form, leaning against the frame of the front door. He wasn’t happy at being left behind, but that was an argument Adam had won.
Ben, who had listened in, had quipped lightly, “You know you’ve got a good Alpha when everyone beats each other up trying to throw themselves in the tar pit after he jumps in.” But he’d patted Joel on the shoulder, and said, “Enough. We all know you’re willing—and if you weren’t, there are a dozen of us who would have his back if he needed it. He appreciates it, but you’re distracting him from what he needs to do.”
And so Joel had given in. He watched us drive off with an unhappy expression on his face, but he would wait. He was pack; he knew he was valued, that he had purpose. That didn’t mean he had to be happy about obeying orders, just that he obeyed. Which is why he mostly fit in the pack a lot better than I did. Suggestions I might follow: I had trouble with orders.
It was still dark out as we pulled into the road. Adam’s shoulder against mine was warm. For an accidental moment, I caught his thoughts.
It was just a visual of my face, lit by the blue light of the dash. It wasn’t the face I saw in the mirror every day. He thought I was beautiful. He was worried for me.
I saw his hands tighten on the wheel and put my hand on his thigh. I don’t think he knew I’d caught what he was thinking. I was lucky he wasn’t thinking I should lose a few pounds or clean under my nails better. Or how gorgeous that early-morning jogger we just passed was (and she was).
“Adam?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, still lost in his thoughts.
“Hey, Adam,” I said again.
“Woolgathering,” he told me with a faint smile.
I grinned at him. “An appropriate activity for a wolf.”
“Did you need something?” he asked.
For this trip to be done. For all of us to be home and safe.
“No,” I said lightly. “Or if I did, I’ve forgotten what it was.”
Silence fell in the SUV again. It was early. I wiggled to get comfortable—the center seat was more suited to a child than an adult. From the backseat, the scent of fear was getting stronger.
To distract him—because it wasn’t Zee or Tad who was worried—I asked, “So, Aiden, what do you think we’ll find in Underhill?”
“Underhill,” said Aiden stoically. He was afraid, but he also smelled resigned, like the rabbit who knew it was dead and quit struggling. The confidence he’d shown us last night was gone. He cleared his throat, and said, “Sometimes the terrain is forest or desert, sometimes it’s a snowy mountaintop or an ocean so deep, you can’t find the bottom. If you blink, it can change—but it doesn’t matter where you are, Underhill is always there.” His voice tightened. “Watching.”
“What do you think will happen?” asked Jesse.
After a moment, Aiden said, “She’ll pretend to ignore us at first, I think. She’ll be mad at me, and she’ll want to take her time to decide what to do.”
“Why mad?” asked Jesse. Since Aiden was telling her more than he’d told Adam or me, I thought I’d just keep quiet and see what Jesse could pull out of him.
“Because I left,” he said. “None of us was supposed to leave her. And I was the last one. Water. Earth. Air. Fire. Her creations, she called us. Her children. The others died or were killed when they left her. She told me about it.” He hesitated. “I think she caused their deaths. Or did something that made the fae cause their deaths. I left last because I was afraid to leave.”
“So why are you going back?” Jesse’s voice was cool. “If she caused their deaths, don’t you think she’ll kill you?”
“No,” he said, when, I could tell, he hadn’t intended to say anything at all on the subject. “Not while I’m in Underhill itself—because that would be cheating. If we get attacked, and I can’t defend myself, that’s a fair death, but she can’t turn her hand specifically toward that end, or she’ll ruin her own game.”
—
When Adam turned off the highway and took the road that used to lead to the reservation, dawn was lightening the sky, though the sun herself wouldn’t be up for fifteen or twenty minutes. He drove steadily past vineyards and cornfields into the hill country. I was pretty sure that he’d driven farther than it had taken to get to the reservation, but it didn’t seem to bother him.
The road took a sharp turn I didn’t remember, then Adam had to hit the brakes hard so he didn’t run into the horsemen lined up across the road. There were three of them, each riding a white horse and dressed in gray. As soon as the SUV stopped completely, they turned their horses and began trotting down the road.
“Our guides?” Adam asked the backseat denizens.
“Ja,” said Zee. “Good to know that drama is still alive and well among the fae. Schimmelreiter. Bah. Theatrics.”
Adam was smiling his hunting smile as we followed the three galloping horses who moved as fast as the SUV could safely negotiate the narrow mountain road that bore no resemblance to the road that used to go to the Ronald Wilson Reagan Fae Reservation.
—
The road might go different paths, but the walls around the reservation had been left, block cement topped by stainless-steel razor wire. The guard towers were apparently empty, and the gates hung wide open. It looked abandoned, but it didn’t smell that way. It smelled green and alive, even through the filter of the SUV.
The horses slowed to a walk to cross through the threshold of Fairyland, and Adam slowed the SUV to follow them.
Zee made no sound as they crossed into the reservation, but I could smell Tad’s sweat. Aiden’s heart beat double time. Jesse and Adam were the only ones in the car who weren’t affected. I include myself as the affected. The one time before that I’d been in Underhill
had been a scary, scary thing.
We followed the walking horses through streets that could have been in any unimaginatively-laid-out suburb in America as the sun rose and lit the world. The streets were set in a numbered grid—as if the original architect feared that people might get lost here. I knew how they felt, but I also thought that the hope that a sign could lead someone out of Faery was the belief of an innocent.
Magic was stronger here than it had been the last time I’d come. I gripped Adam’s thigh and practiced a swimmer’s breathing, in through my mouth and out through my nose, in an effort to block the overwhelming rush. It wasn’t as bad as when Beauclaire sank Cable Bridge, but it was bad enough.
“Are we feeling Underhill?” asked Adam in a low voice.
I looked at him. Adam wasn’t very sensitive to magic, but his wolf looked out through his eyes, so he was feeling something.
“Yes,” said Aiden. His voice was faint. “This is what happens in places where there are too many doors in too small an area. Her magic leaks out.”
“Even though the doors have long been closed in the Old Country,” Zee added, “there are places that people avoid because the spill of magic lingers. And others that they visit in hopes of miracles.”
There were still fae in Europe, I knew, but most of them had come to the New World fleeing the spread of cold iron. Iron had followed them here, too, but they seemed to have come to some sort of terms with it. Tolkien’s elves had traveled to the West, and there were scholars who argued that Tolkien had known some of the fae left behind who spoke with longing of their kinsfolk who had traveled to the New World.
The horses stopped in front of what had once been a municipal building of some sort—the sign in front of it was hacked into indecipherable splinters, the bits of wood left where they lay, though the lawns were mowed and tidy.
As soon as the riders began to dismount, Adam turned the SUV off and got out. I scooted out behind Jesse because I wanted to make sure she wasn’t standing alone in the reservation for long. Of the six of us, she was the most vulnerable—which was why Adam had tried to leave her at home. Standing here, among our enemies—or at least our unpredictable and dangerous acquaintances—I wished he’d succeeded.
Fire Touched Page 27
