“The Seelie must have returned them before they put me back here,” he added.
I sat down with my tray, but didn’t touch my food. “And?”
He shrugged. “More or less what we knew already.”
“That cannot be all,” Robert said. “For the love of the gods, man, you were in the Otherworld. Surely you have something to say about that!”
Julian’s gaze was distant—almost puzzled. When he spoke, the words came haltingly. “I … I can’t describe it. If you look directly at it, it’s not much different from here. It has grass and trees—lots of trees—like this place. The plants aren’t exotic. But there’s a strangeness to it, seen out of the corner of your eye, that makes your hair stand on end. You know it isn’t your own world.”
“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more,” I murmured.
“Exactly,” Julian said. “As if you’ve lived your whole life in a world with certain colors, then suddenly Nature’s painting with a different palette. Things are still green, and blue, and red, but they’re not the same.” He shook his head. “Words can’t describe it.”
I remembered Falcon’s inhumanly green eyes, and thought I understood.
“What else, though?” Robert asked. “How did you pass from one to the other?” A wry smile twitched at the corners of his lips. “Did a door open in the side of a hill, or was it a transporter beam from on high?”
Julian shook his head. “No. For one thing, it’s not that easy. The Unseelie were trying to pull me through on Halloween, but it was too soon. The worlds were too far apart. They might have succeeded if it hadn’t been for Kim, but her interference was enough to stop them—then.”
“We tried to stop them this last time, though,” Robert said. “All three of us together. Have the worlds moved that much?”
“The summoning circle,” I whispered.
Robert blinked at me. “Pardon?”
I stared at my food, all appetite gone. “A summoning circle makes it easier to bring something to you, whether it’s an object, or an imp, or the spirit of a dead person—whatever. Right?” Robert was staring at me. Did he think I hadn’t learned anything last term? “It thins the boundary between that place and another. Which means….”
Robert went white around the mouth. “Dear gods. We handed them your head on a platter.”
Julian’s face was impassive. No doubt he figured this out a while ago, and hadn’t said anything. I supposed it wasn’t entirely our fault. The first time, when the Seelie took him, it was all his own doing.
Not that I felt any better, thinking that.
Neither Robert nor I said anything. After a moment Julian bent and applied himself to his food, seeming not to care what he ate so long as he ate something.
We continued in silence. I had plenty of questions, but one in particular weighed on me. I couldn’t bring myself to ask it, though. Not after seeing the damage left behind.
So Robert asked it for me. “What did they do to you?”
He didn’t have to specify. Julian’s fork paused above his rice, then lowered slowly. “I don’t know. Not for certain. I’ll have to ask Falcon to be sure.”
“It looked like they tried to rip you in half,” I said.
I regretted the words the instant Julian closed his eyes. He released his fork abruptly. “That’s what it felt like.” He laughed, a black sound. “But only some of the damage you saw was from that. When it failed … they weren’t happy.”
My stomach twisted as I realized what he meant. The rage they must have felt upon failure, vented against their helpless prisoner … gods, Julian had to live with that memory.
“And then the Seelie freed you,” Robert said, mercifully breaking both of us from our thoughts.
Julian opened his eyes and nodded. “I have no idea how. I wasn’t very aware of my surroundings by then. I didn’t always realize I was no longer with the Unseelie.” He raked his hair back, grimacing. “I think I owe some of the Seelie an apology. I seem to recall attacking quite a few of them.”
My mind called up inescapable images of Julian’s torn mind. We’d repaired some of it, but by no means all. We’d just splinted things so healing could happen. “Would you consider allowing Liesel to help you? I know she’s not fully trained, but once she knows more about what happened—”
“No,” Robert said, cutting me off. “We do not tell her.”
“But she—”
Robert shook his head emphatically, before I could explain. “We tell no one. As per Grayson’s orders. Also as per our discussion, or have you forgotten that?”
“Are you calm?” I asked.
Robert blinked at the non sequitur. “I beg your pardon?”
“Are you calm? Do you feel no fear, no stress, no worry that you’re going to turn a corner and find the Unseelie waiting?” I went on almost before he shook his head. “Of course not. And maybe Liesel can’t read Julian, but she can sure as hell read us. You leak, Robert, and so do I. We’re not going to be able to hide our emotions from her.”
“She need not know their source.”
“So you’d have her suffer in ignorance?” The mere thought was enough to make me angry. “That would break her. And I’m damned if I’ll do that to my roommate. If she has to deal with my emotional turmoil, she deserves to know why.”
“But Grayson—”
“For all Grayson knows, Liesel knew already.” I met him stare for stare. We would need Liesel’s emotional stability in the coming days, and we’d only have it if she knew what was going on. “She’s strong, Robert. We can rely on her.”
Robert turned to his roommate for help. “What say you?”
Julian hesitated, his face unreadable as he looked at me. I bit my lip. He was so close-mouthed, he would never—
“I trust Kim,” Julian said. “If she thinks Liesel should know, we tell her.”
Warmth spread to my fingertips. Robert stared at him, then at me. Had Julian told him anything of what we’d said that afternoon? I had a feeling not, and wondered if he would. Or if Robert would guess on his own, blind though he could be.
“I do not like it,” Robert said, as if his views weren’t already clear.
“Tell Liesel,” Julian said to me. “But I don’t need her help—though I appreciate the offer.”
I opened my mouth to say that yes, he did need the help, but stopped myself. It was his mind. He could deal with it in his own way.
Besides, Liesel didn’t know anything yet. We’d see if she was in any condition to help anyone after I told her.
~
Liesel stared sightlessly at the floor. The silence in our room was unbroken by even the ticking of a clock; all of ours were digital. A sudden burst of laughter in the hallway came like a thunderclap, but Liesel didn’t seem to hear.
From time to time she shook her head, perhaps in disbelief, and opened her mouth as if to say something, but each time bewilderment overcame her again and she remained silent. I watched her anxiously and wondered what was going through her head. Was she panicking? Praying? I’d told Robert she was strong, but still….
“Wow,” Liesel said finally. She shook her head again, slowly, and made a sound that wasn’t really laughter. “Wow. I can’t even think of anything more intelligent to say.”
“I know exactly how you feel.”
She fell quiet again. I studied her before speaking. “Any questions?”
“Millions,” she said. “But none of them will resolve into something coherent enough to be asked. Give me a second; I think my brain is still struggling to swallow.”
“Take as long as you like. I’ve had a day and a half, but that’s not nearly enough.” My snort was bitter. “I doubt a year would be enough.”
Liesel got up and paced the length of the room in uncharacteristic distress. “The thing that scares me the most is, we have no idea what they can and can’t do. Or what their weaknesses are. How are we supposed to fight them?”
We weren’t supposed
to do anything; that was Grayson’s job. Still, I agreed with Liesel. Having almost no intelligence on our enemy wasn’t a great way to start a war—or prevent one.
And at the moment, the four of us had more first-hand experience of the sidhe than anyone living, and Julian most of all. “I didn’t really press for details,” I admitted. “I hate making him think back to his captivity.”
“What about legends?”
Now there was a good idea. “If the Courts are real, other things might be, too—especially from the Celtic legends.”
“So what else is there?” Liesel sat down at her tidy desk and pulled out pen and paper. Her hands were shaking, but I had sense enough not to mention it. “Vulnerability to iron—you can’t say for certain that it affected Falcon, but given that it makes us bloods uncomfortable, I’d say it’s a pretty sure bet.”
This was my way of dealing with stress, not hers. But I didn’t point that out, either. If she wanted to steady herself by steadying me, who was I to complain? I took over the job of pacing instead. “Power of names. Julian says they don’t give us their real ones, and Falcon avoided calling Julian by name, too—even though that one doesn’t affect us.” Did it affect wilders? Some people chose secret names for magical use. Some people concealed their birthdays, too; I didn’t know Julian’s, except that it had fallen some time in the middle of his disappearances.
“Possibly keeping their word, too,” Liesel said. “In a lot of those fairy tales, they were devious, but if you got them to swear to something, they couldn’t back out on it.” She stopped writing and looked thoughtful. “Bloods tend to be like that, too. Not that we can’t break our words, but can you think of many people who do?”
I was breaking my word right now, by telling Liesel—but as a general thing, she had a point. “Not really. I mean, sometimes—when we have good reason—but not readily. Liesel, you’re amazing.”
A brief grin eased the tense lines of her face. “Okay. What else?”
“They might be vulnerable to fire, or music. Maybe we can find a way to test that, without seeming hostile.”
“Maybe.” Liesel scribbled that down, and we were both silent for a moment, thinking.
“Okay, what about abilities?” I said, resuming my pacing. “Glamour. We can do illusions; they can probably do them better.”
She wrote it down. “Shape-changing, maybe. I wonder if they’re limited to animal forms, or if they could do inanimates as well.” Liesel chewed on the end of her pen.
I racked my brain, trying to think of ideas common in fairy tales. “Things happen in threes. Eldest of three is unlucky. Old crones are probably special.” I shook my head in irritation. “But fairy tales mostly don’t have fairies in them. We need legends.”
“Hollow hills?”
“Not according to Julian.”
“What about standing stones?”
“None here, but they do tend to stand on magical loci. Sacred caves, too, which I guess might qualify for the hollow hills. But there’s been nothing at the cave here, so far as I know. Maybe mushroom rings?” I snorted. “This is getting silly, but I don’t know of any better source of information. Unless I could get Falcon to sit down and list his weaknesses for me.”
“I doubt it.” We fell silent again. After a moment, Liesel gave a quiet breath of laughter.
“What?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “I was just thinking about all the heroes and heroines who rescued their true loves from the Fair Folk. Julian’s got someone to pull him out, but gods help Robert if he gets caught by the Unseelie.”
I grinned, but her words put a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Once that would’ve been a flippant comment. Now it might become all too real.
Then another idea came into my head. “The Wild Hunt.”
That went onto the paper, too. “And elfshot.”
“Wasn’t that old flint arrowheads?”
“Something like that.”
“What about religion?” I added. “As a weakness. There’s all those medieval charms and things against the Fair Folk’s interference, calling on saints for protection.”
“But I bet they only work for Christians.” Liesel sighed. “Most of the Wiccans I know are more inclined to think the fairies are their friends. I hope they believe the Unseelie are a real danger.”
I collapsed onto the couch with a sigh. “We’ve only hit the Celtic stuff, though, and we can’t assume other cultures don’t have anything accurate in their legends. Lots of people had some group separate from humanity but inferior to gods. Russians, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks—”
“Norse,” Liesel said.
“Crap,” I said, wincing. “Yes, but I barely know anything about them. Weren’t there two groups there, too, like the Courts?”
“Lios-alfar and svart-alfar, I think. But I don’t remember all that well.” Liesel massaged her fingers. “I see a date with Talman and the library catalogue in our futures.”
That at least made me grin. “See? You’re good at divination after all.”
“Yes, I can see the future when it bites me on the nose.”
“It’s a start.” There was a soft knock on the door, and I rose to answer it.
Julian waited in the hallway. From his appearance, he’d just gotten up, but he looked infinitely better for having slept. “Come on in,” I said. “Liesel and I were just talking.” He passed me in the doorway, then paused, glancing at Liesel once before looking back to me. “I told her.”
He nodded, facing my roommate. “And what do you think?”
Liesel stood, hands nervously twiddling. “It makes sense—I mean, once you understand that our theories on the separation were wrong. But still … I’m not prepared to deal with this. No one is.” She managed a wan smile. “We spend every Samhain remembering the departure of the sidhe. Now they’re back.”
Samhain, the death of the old year and the birth of the new, the night when the veil between the mortal world and the Otherworld had traditionally been thinnest, and the spirits of the dead were free to walk once more. The legendary night when the Fair Folk rode, emerging from the hollow hills to mingle with humanity for a few short hours. No wonder it started then.
Julian caught sight of the sheet on Liesel’s desk and, with a glance to her for permission, picked it up and began to read it.
“Ninety percent of that is probably worthless bullshit,” I admitted. “I’m just hoping for a few kernels of truth, so we won’t be working completely blind.”
“Iron, yes,” he said, sounding distant. “Names. And glamour, I think. After that, I’m not certain.” Putting the list down, he frowned in thought. “I have a book, or rather several, on the Celtic lore. I can look at that later to see if anything sparks.”
“I hope it does,” I said soberly.
He nodded. “We need an edge. So far, we haven’t even been thinking tactically; we’ve just been reacting. Myself included. We have to get past that, form some kind of strategy for dealing with this.”
It wasn’t Julian the college student speaking. Standing next to Liesel’s desk, the lamp throwing into relief the hollowness of his cheeks, he sounded more like a Guardian. “Who’s this ‘we,’ buddy?” I said lightly, trying to bring him down. Julian was in no shape to put himself back on the front lines. “The whole point of telling Grayson was to get this into the hands of the people with the training—and the authority—to deal with it.”
He shook his head, but not as if disagreeing with me. More rueful amusement. “I’m not hungry just yet,” Julian said, changing the subject. “Care to walk a bit?”
I was starving, but suspected that request wasn’t as casual as it sounded. “Sure. Let me just grab my coat.” Knowing him, we’d be heading for the Arboretum to talk, snow and all.
It made me wonder, though, just what he didn’t want Liesel to hear.
Chapter Eight
My shoulders tightened as the trees closed around us. Sure, this was a good place to avoid
being overheard—by other students. “Are we safe out here?” I asked as we followed a path deeper into the Arboretum.
Julian nodded. “We’ll be fine.”
How exactly did he draw that conclusion? Trust him, I told myself. At least we weren’t going anywhere near the patch of riverbank we’d destroyed. Our footsteps crunched softly in the snow, leaving a trail anyone could follow. But the sidhe probably didn’t need that kind of sign.
I exhaled and tried to calm my nerves. Julian had his hands in his pockets and was studying the path intently, not looking at me.
He’d brought me out here for a reason, but he seemed reluctant to get to it. My patience for tiptoeing around subjects, however, had grown thin lately. “What did you want to talk about?”
Julian shot me a startled look, then shrugged. The gesture looked false. “I wanted to ask you when you thought Falcon would be back. I … I need to speak to him.”
If that was all, I’d hock my tarot cards and take up a career as an accountant. “Bullshit, Julian. You have something to tell me. Delaying won’t make it any easier.”
Julian ran both hands through his hair, looking pained. We’d stopped walking, and the setting of white snow and black trees around us made everything just the slightest bit unreal, as if this was one of the dreams I couldn’t remember.
“It’s … complicated,” he said. “I don’t know if I can even explain it to you. There’s so much you don’t understand—”
“Try me,” I said, through my teeth. “Maybe I will understand. Unless what you really mean is that you’re trying to protect me from something. If so—for gods’ sakes, Julian, we’ve been over that. At the rate things are going, I’ll find out sooner or later. And if it’s bad, I’d rather hear it from you.”
“It’s not bad,” Julian said. “It’s just—gods.” He slapped the trunk of a tree, and as if that had opened a floodgate, the words began to rush out of him. “You don’t know what it was like, Kim, talking to them, learning from them. Not a light bulb turning on—a light from the heavens coming down like a blessing, making everything clear. I know what I am, now. What all of us are. I had some clues, and the Seelie had others, and together they made answers.”
Lies and Prophecy Page 17
